The Three Halves of Martyn Manning--Chapter Four: Big Little Man

When Martyn was a child of eight or nine he used to have a recurring dream where he'd be sitting in his primary school classroom dressed in nothing but a pair of baggy grey Y-fronts. During the dream neither his classmates nor his teachers made a big deal out of it and it didn't particularly bother Martyn. He assumed this dream was something to do with insecurity and was quite normal for a pre-adolescent boy. Then in his teens he started to have the one where he was Macbeth. Or at least he presumed it was Macbeth. It was always set at night in a Highland castle where flaring torches cast long shadows. He'd be dressed in the full 18th century Highland gear of tartan blanket and coarse shirt and carrying a claymore and the small round Jacobite shield. He'd step out of his personal rooms into a long dimly-lit corridor and look left and right. As he did so an armed opponent would appear at each end of the corridor and rush towards him. There was no escape. But then that was it. It never developed any further and it was over in seconds. Luckily, as he'd grown older he'd slowly gained the ability to know when he was dreaming and to some extent be able to direct his dreams. But he'd never been able to understand how on Earth it was that he could sometimes quite seriously startle himself whilst having a dream. Surely the whole of the dream was coming from the same mass of chemicals, synapses and electrical impulses in his head. In order for him to surprise himself then clearly one part of his brain must be hiding information from and working secretly against another part. How could that happen? It just wasn’t logical. This subject obviously required further research.

The night his wife left him Martyn had a dream. He found himself sitting in some sort of bare waiting-room amidst sparse and cheap government-issue office furniture in what appeared to be a series of inter-connecting pre-fab buildings. He was facing an office door besides which was some exposed electrical wiring and two naked light bulbs, one red and one green, arranged vertically with the red above the green. The red bulb was lit. After several minutes the red bulb went out and the green came on and Martyn walked through the door.

Inside the office Martyn took a seat in front a battered sheet metal desk. Behind the desk sat a small, balding, white-haired man in late middle-age. With his shabby brown sports jacket, faded yellow shirt and stained green tie he looked every inch the lower-ranking civil servant hoping to keep his head down for his last six months before retirement and an index-linked pension. Martyn noticed the coloured tops of several biros sticking out from the man’s jacket breast pocket. On top of the desk were lying several pastel coloured cardboard files. The man had one of these files in his hands and was flicking through the contents. It was several minutes before he broke the silence.

“Well Mr Manning, at this point I normally give our new arrivals ten minutes to ask a few questions if they want to. Is there anything you’d particularly like to know?”

Martyn knew he was asking a stupid question before he even opened his mouth.

“When and how am I going to die?”

“I think Mr Manning that you know full-well you are already dead. Another question?”

Martyn thought for a moment. “Will my children lead long and happy lives?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know?” said Martyn, “I thought you were omnipotent and omnipresent and all the rest of it?”

“I am” said the man “but I can only answer questions about the past. I haven’t decided what the future is yet.”

Martyn frowned and paused. Then he composed his words carefully.

“Out of all the girls and women I’ve ever met in any circumstances in my life, who would I have been happiest settling down with?“

“Suzie Donat.”

“Who? Pete Donat’s wife? But I hardly knew her and she wasn’t available and I’m not sure I even fancied her that much?”

“You didn’t specify whether they were available or whether you found her attractive.” said the man. “You only asked who you’d have been happiest with. Among other things you had complementary personalities and very well-matched libidos and had you ever got together you’d have been very happy.”

“That’s a surprise to say the least. So why didn’t you get us together?” asked Martyn, a little over-aggressively.

“Mr Manning, you must realise I have a lot more important things to worry about than a human being’s individual happiness. Was there anything else?”

“Yes. Like last time it’s out of all the girls and women I’ve ever met in any circumstances in my life, but this time, who was the best-looking secret admirer I would have been the most astonished to have got off with if only I’d had the bottle to try?”

“Nicky Montague but you probably don’t remember her. She was in the year below you at Durham reading Biochemistry. She was on the Social Committee.”

“Oh My God! You can’t mean the one with the corn-blonde hair and pneumatic hips whose Dad owned a quarter of Derbyshire?”

“That’s the one.” The man glanced at his watch.

“Oh come on, don’t do this to me. You have got to be joking. I spent two years wanking about her. I still do occasionally.”

“Well in actual fact she spent several months wanking about you too. She was absolutely gagging for it. All you’d have had to do was sit next to her in the library coffee bar and she’d probably have ripped your clothes off and got down dirty there and then.”

Martyn’s head was reeling from this new found information. He knew he was running out of time but he couldn’t think clearly. In desperation he blurted it out.

“How big is my dick?”

“What do you mean “How big is my dick?”?”

“I mean when it’s up and ready for action. How does it compare to other men’s? I’ve never had any complaints but then I’ve never had any compliments. It’s not the sort of thing you ask a girl is it, just in case you get the wrong answer. And you can hardly get your mate’s round to compare hard-ons. I just wandered, that’s all.”

“For someone of your ethnicity your dick is slightly below average in length and very slightly below average in thickness.”

Martyn paused. “Below average enough for anyone to notice? And would it have made any difference to my performance? You hear so much about size not mattering but I’ve always found that a bit hard to believe.”

“Mr Manning, I can assure you that no-one ever noticed and that in actual fact you were quite an accomplished lover. If you want the hard facts you were better in bed than 77.8% of other men. Now, unless you have another question I really do have some other people to see.”

At this point Martyn realised he was dreaming and took control, forcing himself slowly back to consciousness. It was still dark and the house was still silent. He took a few minutes to think about when and how he really would die but soon gave up. Who cares? What’s so great about life anyway?