Brief Encounters With The Pigeon Whisperers

Over the years, I have noticed a tendency amoung the more…colourful members of society to single me out for attention in a crowd. You know the ones I mean; the people that sit there gibbering away to themselves, holding discourse with pigeons and plastic bags and wondering why no-one else joins in. It seems to be a recurring theme that when these court jesters decide it’s time to engage in genuine social intercourse with other sentient beings, they will zero in on me. On a bus, on the streets, on a train, doesn’t matter. Apparently, I’m their man.

I don’t know why the loonies always pick on me. Perhaps they sense some latent kinship. Perhaps they recognise in me the signs of someone who could be one bad day away from where they currently reside. It’s a fair point and I can’t say I blame them. I’ve been to parties where talking to a plastic bag seemed like the most attractive option. I’ve caught myself in heated debate with myself in public. Sometimes it can seem like you’re the only person on your wavelength.

Here’s an example from last Saturday night. I’m walking through the centre of the town I live in. I’m heading home after a really good day spent with my son, Jack. I haven’t slept in 30 hours, so I’m a fair bit knackered (look it up, Americans) and all I want is to achieve a warm, comforting interface with my sofa. I’m not the most gregarious of people at the best of times and when I’m tired and set on a determined course, most people can see to get out of my way. Not so, the bizarre woman who singled me out for her whacky attentions. Where others saw a black-clad, grumpy looking cruise missile, she saw the perfect foil for her amusing mental quirks.

She was standing outside a pub as I lumbered past. She was short, plump and had wide staring eyes. They were, by turns, slightly mad and slightly terrified. She looked like a cross between Hannibal Lecter discussing fava beans and Bambi watching his mum take both barrels. There were a dozen other people available, but clearly none so enticing as me. Maybe it’s the words ‘I’m bored with humanity, please entertain me’ tattooed across my forehead.

She approached me, strangely cautious. “Excuse me, do you think it’s okay to whip your woman?”

I stopped walking. As you would. Okay, I thought to myself, this is different. I tried to remember if I’d ever been asked that before. I may have been asked, back in Art College in ’88, if I thought it was okay to paint your woman. But that was purely rhetorical and we’d had too much mescal.

I looked at her, doing my best to appear to be giving the question its due consideration. “No, I don’t think so”. I was assuming she meant leather whips and not whipped cream, which would elicit a wholly different answer from me; something in the affirmative involving strawberries and belly buttons, probably.

She nodded, mulling over my answer. It was impossible to tell if it was the answer she was looking for and I could already see the next question marching from her brain to her mouth. “Do you think it’s okay for your woman to whip you?”

Ah. We are in the land of equal opportunity. That’s nice. Again, though, I was forced to answer in the negative. Don’t get me wrong, I have no moral objections to two consenting adults playfully beating the shit out of each other. There isn’t much I do have moral objections to. It’s just not my bag. Punishment without sin is bad enough. Punishment as sin is just plain dumb.

So once again, she absorbs my response in all seriousness. I can see that this bizarre survey isn’t over yet and I’m now starting to remember how tired I am. I realise that I’ve been given a choice between going home and crashing on my sofa, or standing in the middle of the street on a cold, October night discussing the merits of S&M with a fucking nutter. It occurs to me that I’ve made the wrong choice.

The next question comes dancing. “Do you think any kind of whipping is good?”

At the time, I didn’t even consider the question. In retrospect, however, I’m forced to wonder what other kind there is. I mean, we covered both sides of the male/female whipper/whippee question. One could easily extrapolate my view on homosexual whipping from the available facts. Were we about to bring animals or inanimate objects into the arena? What the fuck was this woman getting at?

Instead, I snapped. “Why are you asking me this?”

She looked up at me with those weird Hannibal Bambi eyes. There was a definite increase in the Bambi levels. “Sorry. My head’s not quite right.”

No fucking shit, lady.

I did my best to smile, but in my exhausted state I probably resembled Hannibal Bambi; minus the Bambi. “It’s okay,” I said magnanimously, “I can relate to that.” She smiled, offered her hand; I shook it and went on my way.

So there you are; one example from many. It’s happened so many times that it’s a running joke between me and my son. I attract them and he finds it hilarious and irritating in equal measure.

I do often wonder what separates us from the pigeon whisperers. Maybe they’re the sane ones. Who knows? What pushes a person that little bit further? I had a nervous breakdown last year, but even then I never reached the stage where I wanted to keep the company of shopping trolleys. I just got a little more eccentric. I’m English, it’s required.

Is it genetic? Are some people simply predisposed to buckle under the weight of it all? Or do we all have our limit? Are these people merely a vision of our future?

In the end, does it really all come down to one bad day?