It

" IT "
by
James Burr

Extract from the personal journal of Dr Andrew Rasmussen,
Senior Consultant, The Gill Clinic, W1 : -

It started with Lisa I'Anson.
There'd been rumours before that of course, of disappearing artists,
fashion designers, literary critics and of a sudden dearth of cafe
philosophers in Paris, but most people simply closed their minds to it,
refusing that such a hideous disease could exist. Even in medical
circles Its existence was almost brushed under the carpet so that now,
despite its several year history, it still lacks a proper clinical
name. It's referred to simply as "It", as in "has he got it?", or "did
you read that so-and-so has it?"
But after Lisa I'Anson, no-one could deny Its existence, as she
succumbed so publicly, falling ill in the middle of a live broadcast of
a late night TV show. And that's when I realised that this wasn't just
another hypochondriacal rumour circulated by a paranoid Press, but was
a real, and utterly terrifying disease that made Ebola look like a
touch of the sniffles. The broadcast was replayed endlessly over the
following weeks, but I'd actually seen it live, as I lay in bed unable
to sleep, absent-mindedly scanning through the channels. It was almost
as if I knew something was going to happen, something so profound that
it would alter all human culture inconceivably.
She was fronting a broadcast from a tribal gathering in Somerset, and
had been spouting her usual pseudo-babble, when in the middle of a
sentence ("a phat bass and junglist rhythms on a distinctly Balearic
handbag tip" if I remember correctly; we spent months poring over the
recording to see if there was some kind of phonetic trigger to the
seizure), she stopped talking and released a massive, bowel-clapping
fart. Then, a puzzled expression on her face, she tried to continue
talking, but despite her odd mouthings no sounds came out. Instead
there was a sickening cracking of bones, and a strange, wet slopping
sound, her abdomen folding in on itself as her pelvis cracked open
inside her skin, and her chest folded inwards and downwards with a
nauseating sucking noise like a basin draining of water. Within seconds
she had collapsed into her own rectum, her painted fingernails
momentarily clawing at her sphincter to prevent the process, before
these too were lost within its pink ring, and the Channel Four camera
was left focused stupidly on her contentedly pulsing anus.
The director had quickly interrupted the broadcast, but even as the
late-night adverts for telephone chat-lines and local car-dealerships
flashed across the screen, I couldn't shake the image of the throbbing
fleshy doughnut that was all that was left of Lisa I'Anson from my
mind's eye.
No-one had ever seen anything like it, and her condition was a
talking-point across the nation for weeks. However, everyone just
presumed that it was an isolated incident, a rare biological occurrence
like spontaneous human combustion. But it seemed as if within only a
month or two of her succumbing, dozens, if not hundreds, more cases
were coming to our attention.
Its early victims were almost all clubbers of various kinds, which led
to speculation that it was somehow related to prolonged and excessive
Ecstasy use, or that it was perhaps triggered by a certain combination
of Ecstasy and cocaine, or a specific ratio of E and other
amphetamines. Because of Its unusual nature, studies were even made
where the relative wavelengths of sound were examined, and compared to
the volume of the PA systems used in It hot-spots. From the
Government's point of view this had a relatively beneficial side-effect
as, fuelled by a rabid and ill-informed campaign by the tabloids,
Ecstasy-use stopped almost overnight, those few people who refused to
believe what they perceived as propaganda being treated as pariahs by
their peers.
It was at this time that I started my research work on It, and I have
to admit that for a while, I too believed what came to be known as "The
E Hypothesis". However, while the majority of its victims were
clubbers, (sometimes whole Clubs would be discovered to be full of tiny
throbbing arseholes, pulsing away in time to the regular scratch of a
needle at the end of the groove), I noticed a small number of other
victims that seemed to contradict the prevailing belief put forward by
the likes of "The Express" and "The Telegraph" that "normal" people
couldn't catch it.
A few literary theorists had also been found, in cafes, in their
offices, sometimes in the Archives of busy libraries, their fleshy
ring-pieces resting within feet of their new Structuralist manuscripts,
or winking smugly at the screens of their word-processors. This not
only confused the medical community, but it also raised panic amongst
those who believed that these old Academics, many of whom didn't even
drink let alone take Class A drugs, must somehow have caught it off
their drug-ridden student-body.
But as we blindly thrashed around in the dark for a cause of the
disease, let alone a test or cure, the number of victims started to
number in the thousands. There seemed to be no link between the
increasing number of cases - sex, age, life-style, sexuality, race -
all seemed irrelevant. There seemed to be an unusually high incidence
in the Capital and relatively few cases in the North, but there seemed
to be no carrier agent in the water or the food chain that could
account for this.
And as artists, journalists, fashion designers and television
executives all started to rank amongst high-risk groups, we had to
admit amongst ourselves (whilst regularly releasing reports of new
breakthroughs in research) that we were stumped. British and French
film-makers were high-risk, yet their American counterparts had yet to
suffer from a single case. "The Times" had lost almost all of its staff
(A.A. Gill being the first to go, disappearing so far up his own arse
that he was one of the few cases who almost ceased to exist - his
succumbing only being verified by microscopic analysis of his keyboard
and the discovery of a few trace rectal cells), while the likes of Gary
Bushell continued to pound out "Eastenders" trivia at an unaltered
rate.
It seemed hopeless.
Homeopaths and faith-healers regularly proffered fraudulent cures,
whilst others claimed that a combination of crystals could align the
body's disturbed energy matrices and thus prevent seizures.
Fundamentalist Christians claimed It was the wrath of a vengeful God on
hedonistic behaviour, while some groups, most notably the Californian
"It Transcendental Astral Pioneer Group" claimed that to to journey up
one's bowels was to raise oneself to a higher plane of existence.
If they were right no-one could say, as they all succumbed within
months of their formation.
In the established medical community, we became so desperate, that
even the likes of twisted old quacks like Dr Emanuel Kokoschka,
so-called expert of psycho-sexual disorders, was asked to help with
research into a cure. I remember seeing him once at a Conference in
Brighton, and the first thing that struck me about him was the distinct
relish with which he went about his work. I saw him demonstrating the
culmination of his feverish efforts, and almost salivating as he fitted
his Kokoschka Rectal-Brace TM, to a nubile young club-chick, licking
his lips as he pushed the rigid stainless steel frame into various of
her orifices, and wrapped the apparently useless metal struts around
her pert, young breasts.
But the breakthrough came, not from any member of the medical
community, but from a most unexpected quarter. On Thursday the 11th of
November 1999, the cause of It was discovered, and along with it, a
cure.
It was during a broadcast of BBC2's Late Review, watched by some
million viewers live in their own homes, that this breakthrough came,
and again, I was fortunate enough to see this pivotal moment of medical
history live. Whilst discussing the Turner Prize exhibition at The
Tate, guest reviewer Waldemar Janusczak (many of the show's regulars
having unfortunately succumbed to It) was holding forth on one of the
video-installations and claiming that it was a zeitgeist-capturing work
that effectively reflected (with ironic distance, of course) the
Pre-Millennial tension of the contemporary artist, when there was a
sudden, sickening crack. Janusczak twisted uncomfortably in his chair,
as he released a long, slow fart. His sternum started to noticeably
crease under his shirt, and I, along with a million other viewers,
watched the scene in terrified anticipation, knowing what was
happening, but praying that it wouldn't.
It was then that Tom Paulin, apparently unaware of what was occurring
at the other end of the table, announced in his laconic Irish tones,
"This is just a collection of rubbish by a bunch of talentless
no-hopers."
The cracking and squelching stopped, and I watched in rapt awe.
"You can't possibly be so final, the works of Emin, for
example......," Janusczak coughed out, like most It victims unaware of
his predicament, and the snapping continued as he slid under the table,
his torso being sucked into his bowels as he spoke.
"Ah, rubbish," said Paulin. "It's all utter twaddle. It's the sort of
thing a sixth-form art student would produce if he was trying to be
clever." And the noises stopped again, and Janusczak, reluctantly
nodding in agreement, popped out of his own rectum, as if being born
again.
And then the stunned Mark Lawson realised the importance of what he
had seen and spluttered something about a cure for It, for this was the
first time that an It seizure had ever been reversed. For unbelievable
as it seemed, the noted poet and critic, Tom Paulin, had discovered
something that had eluded the finest medical minds in the world.
He had discovered a cure for It.
Once the cause had been verified as indeed being unembarrassed
pretentiousness and shameless strivings to be street, the Ministry of
Health issued a massive leafleting and television campaign warning of
risky behaviours. White kids had to stop pretending to be Jamaican,
hanging loose and sputtering cod patois; whilst those with no direct
links to America were advised to stop using American argot and wearing
T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of baseball teams they had never
seen. Middle class kids were told that assuming a working class accent
was incredibly high risk behaviour, as indeed was their parents'
leanings towards pretending to be wealthier and more successful than
they actually were. The expressions "keeping it real" and "respect due"
were found to be an almost guaranteed trigger for It, the leaflets
warning of their danger having only half of each expression printed on
two separate flyers (employing two different printing firms).
Whole sections of libraries were deemed to be high-risk - in many
institutions rows of modernist and postmodernist work were pulped lest
they lead the unwary into danger, and the modern French literature
section disappeared altogether. The Ministry's spin doctors (themselves
a high risk group) came up with the It equivalent to their
predecessor's "Don't Die of Ignorance" campaign, the rather simple
phrase (for fear of the disease itself), "Call a Spade a Spade."
Thus all pseudo-intellectualisation ceased - no more Marxist analyses
of bus timetables, or revisionist theses on "The Carry On" films. And I
have to say, for I was one of them, it seemed as if out of the hideous
spectre of It, had come the promise of a future Golden Age. Rock stars
could no longer claim their music was a political statement, but had to
begrudgingly admit that it was trivial rubbish that they had banged up
when drunk; politicians could no longer avoid answering questions by
giving pre-prepared, convoluted and deliberately obscufcating
statements, for obvious lying and half-hearted bullshit was also a
primary cause of It.
And of course, the Italians had to finally admit that they were not
great lovers.
It seemed as if Mankind was suddenly placed in a world of total
honesty, where things were as they appeared, and people concentrated
more on what they actually believed rather than what was fashionable to
say.
However, and I'm ashamed to admit that it took me so long to see this,
as it was in fact about two years after the cure had been developed,
there was the inevitable downside. At first it was just a few minor
annoyances, those things that irritate without really drawing your
attention to them - the never-ending Oasis on the radio, The Guardian's
and Times' exclusives on bordellos in Tipton and sexual peccadilloes of
Coronation Street stars; the RSC's dozenth season of Andrew Lloyd
Webber musicals and re-enactments of selected episodes of "Classic
Blind Date", for example.
But it only really hit me how profoundly the disease had impacted on
the world when I went to the Tate to see the Sensation II exhibition.
As I walked around the gallery there was just row after row of the same
kinds of canvas. The cream of the work of Britain's most exciting young
artists consisted almost entirely of paintings - no videos, no
installations, no happenings. There weren't even any photographs. There
were just paintings, all of them figurative - man at a bus stop; couple
on the beach; a Scottish castle..... and dozens and dozens of pots of
flowers. And all of them painted as Classically as possible - no
primitivism, no Expressionism or Impressionism. Just flowers. On
tables. In pots.
Even the likes of Damien Hirst had produced row after row of
still-lifes, although he had tried to challenge the disease (and the
ever-vigilant curators) by exhibiting his famous bisected cow with a
cardboard notice stuck to the case saying, "This is just a bit of
rubbish I knocked off - nothing special really," written on it.
And as I left the gallery and flicked through my copies of Take A
Break and Loaded, I looked at the people around me, some genuinely
happy in this new dumbed-down world, but some reading their Rugby
magazines with a smile and a glint of quiet desperation in their
eyes.
So now, even though the number of new It cases has dropped to a slow
trickle and our funding has been cut, I think I may have finally found
a cure, an alternative cure, a less costly cure, for this terrible
disease that has changed everything. Dozens of It cases have been cured
with a simple enzyme derived from the liver of the turbot, of all
things. In my hands lie the possibility of curing most, if not all, It
patients, and of providing a vaccine for everyone else. I've taken the
vaccine myself and have suffered no ill-effects.
But it's a great, a terrifying, responsibility. For days now I have
been staring at Lisa I'Anson's anus as I consider the possible
repercussions of my actions.
Perhaps for now I'll just sleep on it, leave it till tomorrow.
After all, I'm tired, and Proust takes some concentration.

THE END

Copyright James Burr 1999.