Last night I awoke suddenly at 2am, having no idea who I was or where I was sleeping. Bolt upright in an instant, the whole situation was deeply, deeply troubling. Whose sombrero was that over by the picture frames arranged on the floor? And whose bedroom was this? Mine? If not......why was I there? And where was its actual owner? Downstairs making me a hot drink......or sharpening a machete with which to gut me (then drink the hot drink themselves)? Did they erase my memory? And who said there was a downstairs anyway? Was this a bungalow, or a high rise tower block? What type of person forgets who they are, and whose room they are in, and whether or not they live in a single, double or multi-storey domestic residence?
It's a strange thing to forget your own name, even stranger then to forget every facet and tenet of your personality. As my District Line train merrily rolled over Putney Bridge after the sun rose from its hazy reverie (having remembered myself enough at least to know that I get the tube), I looked out the window and got to thinking: if I hadn't successfully remembered who I am, who would I have chosen to be instead? This moment of total amnesia was a clean slate after all, and it would be foolish not to wonder.
My primary character selections were as follows:
- Otto Blintz: Eastern-European shipping magnate and patron of the libertine expatriate community. Daredevil multi-billionaire, with a town house in Belgravia, vineyard in Florence, apartment on the Upper West Side and villa overlooking Holetown. A cooler, more refined Tony Stark / Bruce Wayne crossed with Alexander Lebedev and the Duke of Westminster. Dabbles in art, motor racing and Victoria's Secret models
- Jango J Jasper: owner and proprietor of small beachside recordshop-bookshop-cafe-hybrid, in either Brighton, Budleigh Salterton or Biarritz. Spends the day hanging out and mediating pretentiously on Borges and Janis Joplin while his geeky yet adoring female student work-slave vigorously scrubs the clogged innards of the neglected cappuccino machine propping up a stack of first edition Dahls (The Witches)
- Ranulph de Moulham-Burgess: libertine, adventurer and anachronistic 1960's cold war spy. Essentially a poor man's James Bond, but with slightly more sneering / clinical assassination techniques and a lot less open brawling. A ruthless, semi-alcoholic, cold-blooded killer, driven by an inviolable sense of national duty (but with an awesome car). Advantage: bit of a cliche. Disadvantage: massive cliche
- Stig van der Graaf: CEO of hugely successful international whaling fleet. Made his name at sea, as the most fearsome hunter of nature's most fearsome leviathan off the coast of Okinawa. After having his eye gouged out by a particularly right-wing sperm whale, retired to the confines of the London headquarters office and quickly took his killer instinct from actual killing into metaphorical business killing.....becoming as revered for his strong leadership and brutal management techniques as his scarred visage and intensely gravelly voice
Not really sure who I'd choose, now that I look at it. They're all a bit high-profile. Something tells me it would be none of these, and in actual fact secret choice number five: a nameless hermetic farmer on a Scottish island so remote that I can only see other people on television, and the television only works on Wednesdays because that's the only day the one satellite that reaches me passes overhead. The rest of the week: just me, a huge field and - as a treat - the BBC World Service on the wireless before bed.
Is that depressing? I just don't know any more.
Your loving friend,
Action Squid
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