8 Rooms author - Guy Mankowski

When I wrote ‘A Body of Strangers’ I was living a slightly bizarre double life. By day I was working as an Assistant Psychologist in a private hospital in London, with some of England’s most unusual patients. But each night I was moonlighting with ‘a glam, Dickensian pop band’ in London’s sleaziest (and this often just meant dirtiest) music venues. At five o clock on the dot my cheap suit would be shed, and I’d find myself donning a range of (what we tended to call) ‘street urchin chic’, to take to the stage in. When I say ‘take to the stage’ I actually mean something far less glamorous than this implies. Nine times out of ten this would be a deserted venue, perhaps with a smattering of disinterested scenesters in attendance, somewhere in the grimmest parts of the East End. We might be on before a jazz band – we might have kidded promoters we were the jazz band. I would usually have sneaked into the hospital that morning with an oversized hold all (invariably containing a velvet coat, some cheap cosmetics, a pair of pointy shoes and possibly at least one dodgy hat), while fellow psychologists went for the slightly more typical three-books-under-the-arm-look. I’d leave at quarter to five, and start gradually getting changed on the District Line, in order to make sound check on time. After meeting my band mates and finding a cheap place to eat, (usually a noodle van in Camden, offering Chicken Chow Mein for £2.75), we’d play the gig, and afterwards pawn cds, mingle with strangers, and just see where we ended up. This existence seemed strange enough, with me trying to hold down a respectable job on four hours sleep a night, but one day it sank in just how ridiculous it was. One of the patients I worked with was a recently reformed violent criminal, and part of my job was to help him reintegrate himself with the community. I don’t mind admitting that I was scared of him. But I became even more scared, when having only had time for a quick shower to wash off the previous nights gig, he one day turned to me and said ‘Tell me the truth. Have you been wearing glitter?’ That kind of conversation was becoming less and less unusual. On a Monday morning my boss would typically ask what I’d got up to over the weekend, and I would almost always feel stumped for an honest response. This man was going to write me a reference one day. It never seemed right to say ‘I did a gig on the circle line, and ended up sleeping on a roof garden in Bethnal Green’. I’d usually plump for ‘I had a quiet one’, and hope he didn’t use Google.

I enjoyed working at that hospital, and the work I did there inspired me to write again for the first time since school. What interested me most was the one-on-one sessions I had with patients. I was always intrigued to learn about the strange worlds some of them had created in their own minds. One patient was sure he had played a major role in the Spanish Armada, and he would only drink coconut milk. Another frequently interrupted sessions to let the ‘three blue men’ behind him have a say in matters. But what seemed apparent to me was that, to a greater or lesser extent, many of us have created fantasy worlds we can’t quite tear ourselves from. And also, far from them being something we need to be ‘rehabilitated’ from, they can be our lifeblood. In ‘A Body of Strangers’ my narrator has a delusional, dangerous way of looking at the world, and also for conducting his personal life. But because of his success (he is a well-known translator) such delusions can be upheld in the eyes of the world. ‘Fantasy worlds’, and to an extent delusions too, seem validated if they become useful or ‘art’ – but not if they become dysfunctional. With my story I wanted to question whether the line we draw between ‘okay fantasy worlds’ and ‘not okay fantasy worlds’ is quite as concrete as we like to imagine. There were other issues I wanted to address with it too, issues I feel perhaps more strongly about, but I’d like to leave it to the reader to interpret the piece how they see fit. I’m pleased to be part of the ‘8 Rooms’ Collection. I think short stories are a unique way to express your imagination, and I’m sure collections like these will give people an opportunity to connect with this often overlooked but nonetheless exciting medium.

Guy Mankowski

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Comments

[Pandora]

FIT

[roy fox]

fucking Bethnal Green, eh! Fucking tell me about it, mate.
I'm going to look out for that book down the library, fella! Cheers.

[Josie]

It certainly sounds very interesting!

[Andy Kirby]

This in itself is a great story, Guy. I can't wait to read it.
From a fellow contributor,
Andy Kirby