I’m sorry reader but this is going to be a little strange.
Please let me explain myself.
If, as I sincerely hope, you have engaged with the tale put forward by our antipodean friend Ben, then you will be wondering why you no longer hear his voice as we enter the second part of this book. It is a curious story and I offer you this explanation.
My name is Bill. Bill Delaney. I live and work in this great city. This mess of culture and opportunity that is London. I’m an optimistic man, meaning to say that I am mostly Irish and generally happy.
I have lived here now for close to four years. Physically I live in modern Orwellian austerity in a large room rented from a middle aged and mad Canadian therapist. It is close enough to Brixton that a short stroll enables a world of diversion, whilst sufficiently removed that I don’t tread in vomit when I walk to get my newspaper.
I say physically, because I seem to spend the majority of my time online. I do this not because my touchable world is such a bad place. If you will permit me reader, I will say that I am quite a good looking man. At 27 my waist is yet to expand and my boyishness is framed by only the slightest wrinkles of experience. Imagine Lionardo De Caprio playing JFK but without the make up or the wardrobe. Reduce that vision 50% to account for the glamour and the camera angles, add some more Irishness, and you should just about see me.
Let me tell you strait that if there is one thing that I never wanted to be, it was a writer. I am supplying these words about myself mainly as a tool to glue together the strange story put forward by our narrator Ben. As his writings have been incomplete, and perhaps in need of a slight interpretation and even perhaps a smoothing over, I felt it best to put myself forward as a character rather than to simply hide in the editorial shadows.
What I do, and my unlikely connection to this story, is that I am a publisher. Several years ago I had endeavoured to create a web space where serious writers could put forth their work. To create a community of thought. It had been a vision, a dream. To make a living by enabling the art of others.
As I sit here now I can tell you that it has been both a great success and a failure so complete that I shrink from the thoughts of my original ideal. I have made a very good living. But it was not artists that arrived at my site. It was much baser and darker things. Those things which crawl into your house at night whilst the curtains are drawn.
Porn pays, my friends. And I have been selling.
How did Ben stumble onto my site? Probably the usual way. But why then he chose me as a publisher to send his story to, I can’t say. But choose me he did and so I have been drawn in.
And what do we think of him? Let me just say that if there had only been what we have read so far, we would not now be having this chat.
He does seem fairly well read, in a school boyish manner. He also seems a little angry, though that’s probably a reasonable initial reaction to Londoners. A little insecure maybe?
He has some interesting material in terms of travel and he does possess something of a turn of phrase, albeit somewhat grungy and Australian. I’m certain that he sounds exactly as he writes himself.
He has left his girlfriend fairly wooden (probably can’t write female characters) and does seem to have a highly erotic attachment to technology.
Bens writing grabbed me because it stood out from the muddy sleaze which is my regular correspondence. But over the last few weeks I have become genuinely concerned for his safety. And genuinely excited that I may at last have a story worth publishing.
