Crossed Wires

I’m getting fed up with crossed wires. They seem to be everywhere, tripping us up, untidy useless bits of thin stuff which catch our semantic ankles and cause accidents.

There are no potatoes, which are given in the wrong anger or in sadness on this beautiful day of the peace and the sock commodity. See what I mean? Crossed wires, even in a blog post.

I seem these days to spend too much time either uncrossing wires, pointing out that this wire crosses that wire, or looking ahead down the wire to see future points of scrambled confusion in an often vain and frequently thankless attempt to prevent the crossing. I sometimes feel like King Canute of Crossed Wires, standing firm as the onrushing waves of wire mock my idiocy, other times like John the Baptist preaching the Messiah in full knowledge of my own wired disposability.

Once my friend was in trouble. I knew he needed help, but he was too worried by everything that beset him to ask for it. Perhaps he was also too proud and did not want to show that he needed help, perhaps too weakened by circumstances to see the terrible danger he was in. Either way, I knew that if he didn’t get help, he problems would only get much worse. I started to worry about helping him, but I knew that his problems were so great, and his isolation so immense, that the chances of crossed wires were high.

I was in therapy at the time, and I brought it up at my weekly session. My therapist smiled as explained my concerns, how powerless I felt to intervene, how nonetheless I felt obliged to help. What should I do? I asked him; If nobody tried to help, he would succumb to dark, evil forces. If I did nothing, I would be consumed with guilt. If I intervened, he would likely misread my intention and become angry.

“It could be worse,” he said. “You could be Catholic, or worse, Jewish.”

I was startled by this. My therapist was eminent, intelligent, tolerant. Was he joking? Was he serious? I scrtunised his implacable face across the room and I started to suspect crossed wires.

Then he calmly told me this joke: How do you make a Jewish princess angry? Fuck her up the arse and then wipe your cock on the curtains!

My jaw dropped. He smiled and said, “Time’s up.”

I left the session with no solution but a filthy joke, which was the therapy I needed.

I wasted no further energy. I went straight round to my friend, demanded an audience, ignored his protests, helped him, brooking no resistance, and wiped my feet on the way out.