During the summer holidays after my first year at Bristol University, I bought a bottle of liquid latex from a stationer’s in Croydon to take with me back to the halls of residence where I lived during the academic part of the year. The rubber solution was to be used as an aid for painting: I was a great fan of Scarfe and Steadman at the time, both of whom, I heard, sometimes used latex as a liquid masking device. (Paint latex on and allow to dry, spray ink over a larger section of the canvas, then peel the latex off. Voilà – a non-inked area whose shape, size and position corresponds exactly to the just-peeled-off latex.) The bottle of latex sat for some time in my cupboard, and slowly the desire to use it for creative artistic activities was overcome by a hankering to abuse it in a non-sexual way.
One morning I applied a little to the underside of my left eye, and was much pleased with the resulting effect of swollen skin once it had dried. I went thus down to the communal breakfast to see if I could provoke a reaction. A few people did ask what I had done to my eye. I explained that it was a bit sore, but that I had no idea why. I kept the latex on all day and attended lectures and tutorials. The odd and slightly concerned looks made the day more interesting, and I owned up to no-one.
The next morning, then, it was only natural to apply a little more, as if the infection had somehow got worse. Anticipating this development, I had bought some make-up the day before, and with this was able to simulate bruising quite successfully. The result now was quite a deformity, and out I went into the world again to provoke some alarm at my condition. Over the next couple of days I continued the act in this way. Friends and acquaintances were insistent that I seek medical attention, none more so than the chap upstairs whose name time and embarrassment have caused me to forget. As much as I perversely delighted in the attention, I also felt a little embarrassed at their concern, and realized that to own up to the deceit would understandably annoy them. So within a few days I was stuck with having to continue the charade.
After a little less than a week, even though I was removing the latex every night, the solution was beginning to irritate my eye. Struck by the irony of developing a real eye complaint through this nonsense, I decided to apply less latex and wear an eye-patch instead. I still remember the very mixed expression of the girl in Boots on Whiteladies Road as I went in with one quarter of my face horrendously deformed to ask if she stocked any eye-patches. I had also, by this point, developed a quite convincing twitch in the eye which quite added to the overall effect.*
One person to whom I had had to own up was Debbie, one of my dance partners at the time. We were, for reasons that now seem foreign and obscure, top of the Cha-cha ‘A’ team in the university Ballroom Dancing Society, and we would proudly swing our booties to strict-tempo classics at student competitions across God’s clean England. Clearly she had to know the truth behind my ‘infection’ as she had the unenviable task of spot turning, underarm turning and New Yorkering in very close proximity to what appeared to be a heavily diseased face. On one memorable night we were rehearsing our sexless and grotesque routine on the first floor of the Students’ Union and a chap came over and asked if he could have a look under my eye-patch. Debbie was amused but good enough not to say anything. This prompted an exposing of the eye, followed by an offer of a lift from this guy to take me down to the eye hospital. I thanked him for his concern but said (as had become my story) that I didn’t trust doctors. The chap replied
that he was in fact an eye surgeon and insisted that I go with him immediately to have it seen to. Debbie, who was enjoying a mid-cha-cha-cha refreshment at the time, laughed involuntarily at this development and snorted soft drink from her dancer’s nostrils. He spun round to look at her and said, with some anger, ‘I don’t know why you’re laughing; this guy is probably going to need plastic surgery.’ At this point, Debbie excused herself and ran to the toilet, crying tears a bystander might have mistaken for concern.
I owned up to the doctor, as there was no avoiding the matter. Doing so was fairly excruciating. By now fully ashamed of myself, I allowed the apparent infection to die out over the next few days, and a little while later told people that it had been a sham. The guy upstairs who had shown unusual concern for my welfare admitted that his reaction had been driven primarily by guilt: he had been brewing beer in the communal baths and had feared that the lingering fumes had done some damage.
I barely need the benefit of hindsight to see that this was a sustained, pathetic and childish play for attention, and while a secret part of me remains undeniably pleased that I did it, the outside part finds it quite torturous to think back on. I mention it only because transparently insecure ploys of this sort were clearly signs of a desire to perform, and they led organically into the equally diaphanous practice of getting myself known as a hypnotist around the student community. Please, don’t for a moment imagine that there was anything cool about me at the time. I wore violently ill-coloured clothes that mismatched to a degree seen only in the quieter but equally unfathomable jacket/trouser combinations of professional academics. I was no stranger to purple and green boots and a floral shirt, bowtie and braces, oblivious to how objectionable I must have been. And to polish it all off, happy to talk to anyone about God.
From time to time I would have friends of friends come round to get hypnotized. I had borrowed whatever books I could from the library, and bought a few from one of those evil alternative bookshops my pastors had warned me about. I had an induction script that lasted about forty minutes, which I would use to lull my subjects into a trance as they slumped in the 1970s orange and brown comfy chair that was the focal point of my student room. Perhaps, on reflection, it was the feng-shui that brought it all together. I’m sure it wasn’t my natural charisma. Once I felt they were suitably hypnotized, I would then tentatively suggest that perhaps an arm was feeling lighter or a foot was too heavy to lift. If such things seemed to work, I would be delighted, and then slowly awaken them. As my confidence grew, I learned to shorten the induction and try more interesting tests, and would finish the session by implanting the suggestion that if they came back on another occasion I would be able to place them back into a profound trance simply by clicking my fingers and telling them to ‘sleep’.
A formative moment arose one evening when someone came for a session whom I believed I had hypnotized before and left with this suggestion. As it turned out he had visited before, but we’d only spoken about hypnosis, not tried it. However, thinking he was primed to respond to my cue, I sat him down and told him to ‘Sleep!’, clicking my fingers in front of his face. He immediately closed his eyes, lolled his head and drifted off into a trance. My realization, after the session, that this was the first time I had hypnotized him was very confusing: how could he have responded to the suggestion if I had not given it to him? I realized that day that hypnosis works not because of a carefully worded magical script from a self-help book, but because the subject believes the process is effective. Over time I have refined this understanding, but the revelation was an important one.