Empty Stages

I’ve been called a groupie. It’s a nasty title, reducing me to nothing more than how I get my rocks off, and being a guy makes it worse. It’s hard to keep the shame at bay, but I can’t stay away from theatres and concert venues.

Getting in is the difficult bit – you can sneak backstage and hide somewhere but it’s humiliating to be caught, fighting to hold my head high while some official harangues me publicly. Paying someone to let me in is expensive but has more dignity: money is its own form of power.

I hope that they don’t watch as I go to the empty stage. Even worse, there’s the risk of someone filming, of my pleasure being shared online and mocked. Wearing a mask is only a small protection. The world can be a horrible place.

You probably wonder how I got into this. I’ve always been a little different. As a kid I was told that I had too much imagination, that I needed to be more down to earth. But I can’t see why people are so desperate to be normal, when normal people are so unhappy.

When I’m taking my clothes off, folding them over a chair, I feel nervous, even if I can usually hide it. These huge spaces are chilly sometimes. I like to light a candle or some incense as I think it gives the event some ceremony.

The first time I did it – my first time with a ghost – was in the school theatre. She was the sad spirit of a sixties suicide. Playing Orphelia had gone to her head and her drowned body was retrieved from the weir. I went back to find her during the cast party. The ghosts of performers are drawn to the stages where they were happy. Starved of human contact she almost overwhelmed me. Afterwards, alone among pieces of set, with my sperm cooling on the floor, I felt alive for the first time.

It was never the same for me with living partners and I eventually gave up. These couplings with spirits keep me alive. I found a soprano in a deconsecrated church in London who I’ve met with several times. In Hamburg, at the site of an unbearable onstage tragedy, three ghosts had their way with me at once. I sometimes think about learning German, moving to that city, seeing if I can find a way to get more access to that theatre.

I know that there are others like me, that these ghosts aren’t choosy about who they spend their time with, but it feels good at the time, and that’s what matters.

Recommendations

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees is about a serial killer who lives in a quiet American town. The difference here is that the town is populated by anthropomorphic animals. Samantha Strong is a bear who runs the local hardware store. She gets on well with her neighbours and carries out her killings in the nearby city.

Patrick Horvath’s graphic novel was recommended by my local comic shop, 2 Tone Comics. The book is beautifully drawn and sells the concept well. Samantha comes across as a sympathetic character, which is disquieting given the brutal murders she carries out.

What’s surprised me is how much this book has got under my skin. As well as the ‘people’ in Horvath’s world there are also animals. Samantha encounters a wild bear while burying one of her victims, and it sets out an unsettling contrast between people and nature. Seeing anthropomorphic pigs walking past dead animal pigs in the butchers is disturbing.

The story that Horvath’s graphic novel tells is a relatively simple crime/serial killer drama. But these deeper themes of nature vs ‘civilisation’ are the real horror in this book.