LITMIR.BIZ

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that Joseph of Arimathea visited, that King Arthur is buried here.* What’s certain is that the myths are pressed down hard, layered like the peat in the moors, and that now we dig them up and shovel them out the same way in every New Age shop and emporium. It’s been this way since the mid-sixties when the first tepee went up, the first long-haired aristo clip-clopped in on his horse-drawn caravan.

      Today, you can buy fifty-six different varieties of Tibetan Bell in the High Street of my home town along with every conceivable shape of crystal and candle.

      The problem is you’re screwed if you want half a pound of tomatoes.

Bad Ponytail Peter’s already on the pavement outside the Avalon Alternative Health and Therapy Centre† when I arrive with Danny snapping away in front of him. Once approaching him from the back like this would have been the best way to observe the long straggle of greasy grey from which he got his name. But then one day, possibly because of that grey, he shaved it off.

      ‘Shocking,’ Danny said the first time we saw him without it. ‘The loss of a national treasure.’

It was more as a tribute than anything else that we decided to keep the name. Thus, shaven-headed as he is, he remains Bad Ponytail Peter, a.k.a. Peter Tarantine, Reiki Grand Master, author,* Thought Field Therapist, re-birther, channeller, chakra cleanser, aura diviner, director of the Wicca Academy …

      ‘He’s also a Grand Vizor …’

      ‘I’d never have known.’

      Which is why Bad Ponytail Peter will be conducting the ceremony at Magda’s wedding.

      This being the Flake Date of the Month it’s no surprise that Magda’s here drinking her dandelion wine, biting into her lentil vol-au-vent, or that there are more aromatherapists, reflexologists, Indian head massagers, I Chingers, crystals healers and white witches that you could shake a stick at (shaking a stick somehow seeming an appropriate piece of imagery for this bunch with their assorted weird modus operandi).

      ‘So, you think there’s a demand?’ I asked Peter (my standard business start-up question). He gave me a pitying look through the new rimless glasses he’s adopted, probably to make him look more like a therapist.

      ‘My dear,’ this is in his smooth, creepy Aleister Crowley voice, ‘the world is awash with phobias.’

      Now, before we go any further, I should like to point out that whereas I don’t have the first idea where my chakras are, I do know I’d have to be held down by a team of ten before I let Bad Ponytail Peter cleanse them, plus I wouldn’t let him near my aura.

      ‘Many people’s lives are ruined by phobias, not least because they don’t even realise they have them,’ he said, and I pretty much knew what was coming. ‘For instance, they may have problems with relationships.’

      He pronounced the word in the manner of an accusation, so that I figured if I could open up his forehead, pull it down like a hatch I’d see the vision he has of himself, in Joy of Sex mode, leading some luckless female through an ecstatically gymnastically challenging position. He’s pitiless when it comes to sex, according to Magda, who had an deeper than usual channelling session with him one Friday night.

      ‘He’s just so serious,’ she said after one glass of wine too many. ‘He won’t give in. You just feel this terrible responsibility to have an orgasm.’

      Meanwhile, it seems there’s no end of the weird things people can be scared of. The list on the leaflet I picked up from Peter was full of them – clowns, chickens, feathers, chins …

      Chins?

      ‘I mean, how can you be scared of chins?’

      But Danny’s looking sideways in the office mirror. ‘Easily.’ He slaps a hand at his throat. ‘Particularly when you think you might be getting another one.’

      It’s tough life being a gay man, the way I hear it from Danny. He’s ten years younger than me but still he says, ‘On the scene, let me tell you, I’m past it.’ Not that he’s really interested in the scene. He only goes occasionally to clubs although he does do the odd personal ad and online dating.

      I nag him sometimes. ‘You’re burying yourself down here in the country. You should get out more. Go up to town. Meet more people.’

      He says, ‘Look who’s talking.’

      He’s been pretty much single since he moved down here nine years ago, and this in part to start a new life without Doctor Jack, the big love of his life, who spent most of their time together turning him over emotionally before finally dumping him.

      ‘You’re getting too comfortable, too contented, that’s your trouble,’ I say to him sometimes. ‘Trust me. I know about these things. I’m a spinsta.’

      Sometimes I’ll wave exotic job ads in front of him, and he’ll take them with a show of interest but somehow he never applies for them. More often than not he’ll use his parents as an excuse. ‘I like to be near them.’

      Danny loves his parents, not least because of the way his father handled Danny’s coming out, which occurred with supremely bad timing at his sister’s wedding.

      Danny got rather drunk at Ruth’s wedding, having not long been dumped by Jack. Thus when he was asked by an ancient aunt when he too would be getting married, he answered glumly that he couldn’t say, first because Jack had just dumped him, but more importantly because as yet it wasn’t legal. His mother, standing close by and overhearing this, thus had her worse suspicions confirmed. She promptly burst into tears, refusing to stop until Danny’s father shouted in exasperation, ‘For God’s sake, woman, stop your snivelling. The boy’s queer, not dead.’ Thus instead of pointing a quivering finger at the door and quoting Leviticus (a particularly useful Old Testament book, apparently, especially if you’re in two minds about how to sacrifice your bullock) he merely gave Danny a severe dressing-down for the way he’d broken the news to his mother.

      ‘Totally thoughtless.’

      Which as a matter of fact, growing more penitent, not to say sober, by the minute, Danny agreed with.

      Ten years later, Danny’s brother-in-law now being a high-flying academic and his sister all over the place (they’re currently en famille in America), Danny, the gay son (as is so often the case) is the mainstay of the family. Truth to tell, he plays the spinster daughter, visiting his parents once a week (they live in Bath) and accompanying them on their annual cultural trips to Europe (Italian painters, Echoes of Byzantium, etc., etc.). More often than not it’ll be some single attractive woman he makes friends with, and I can’t help imagining the disappointment they must feel with this handsome forty-two-year old, with his serious air and his cropped head and his rimless glasses. Because apart from the odd eye-rolling moment, he hates the whole campy thing and is undemonstrative in the main. A gay man would spot him, of course. Eye contact would do that. But for a straight woman … how sad.

      ‘Don’t worry,’ Danny says, patting my hand. ‘They soon get the picture when they realise we’re after the same waiter.’

      Meanwhile there are fears from Arachnophobia to Zemmiphobia on Peter’s list. Zemmiphobia? Fear of the Great Rat?

      ‘Fear of the Great Rat?’ Danny shook his head, reading out from the list. ‘What the hell’s that about?’

      ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I guess if I’d had it, I’d have been ready for Lennie.’

      ‘Deipnophobia? A fear of after-dinner conversations. Wooh, that’s weird too.’

      ‘Not at all. It’s the reason I don’t do personal ads and on-line dating.’

      That was when I felt a tap on my

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