The Speechwriter by Martin McKenzie-Murray (latest books to read .TXT) 📗

anxious about how their knowledge of capital gains tax might reflect poorly on their cool. But the staff didn’t care if you liked their music or not, and even less that your silk tie and PhD disguised the heart of a punk. I pointed Archibald to a free booth, and went to the bar.

‘You know, I just think the tone of the album is problematic,’ the bartender said. She leaned against the bar, her body turned from the queue of customers.

‘I, like, totally agree,’ the other bartender said, twirling his moustache. ‘Don’t pretend to like kink more than you do, right? Their appropriation of kink lifestyle is basically, if you think about, a kind of kink shaming. Like, is this parody?’

Evidently it was vital that, before serving anyone, these two complete their disquisition on Cum Sloth’s second album. The service here was notoriously awful, but I now found that it pleasantly ratified my newfound misanthropy. What I really loved was the self-consciousness of their rudeness. Its careful sculpting. The bar staff weren’t innocently enraptured by their conversation. They were addressing us, the customers — declaring their enlightened politics and heroic indifference to bourgeois hang-ups like hospitality. As I stood, invisible, I closed my eyes and watched all fondness for humanity erupt in a glorious blaze. What was happening to me?

When I opened my eyes, the two had exhausted their specialised vocabulary and I ordered two pints of Embryonic Mirth — an obscenely tart pomegranate cider that, like the service, deliciously enhanced my hatred.

‘It’s nice,’ Archibald said, after I had returned to our booth, but his face puckered and then collapsed like a supernova.

‘Don’t lie, Archibald.’

‘It’s different.’

‘It’s foul.’

‘It’s … distinctive.’

‘Archibald?’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve given you half a litre of acid—’

‘Thank you.’

‘—to test the boundaries of your politeness.’

‘Toby?’

‘Yes?’

‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but recently you’ve seemed … nihilistic.’

‘Let me ask you something.’

‘Sure.’

‘Why have you given yourself to purgatory?’

‘I have?’

‘You work at DARE.’

‘Do you know what purgatory is, Toby?’

‘I think we’re currently contracted to it.’

‘But really.’

‘Is it a bus stop where the bus never comes?’

‘Interesting, but no. It’s a place of temporary pain, where the soul is purified with fire in preparation for our unification with Him.’

‘So there’s an end? A point, a purpose to the suffering?’

‘Yes.’

‘That doesn’t sound like DARE.’

‘Well, that depends on how you look at it.’

‘I’ve begun looking at it quite unfavourably.’

‘I’ve noticed.’

‘How might it become purgatory, then?’

‘You must reorient yourself.’

‘To Him?’

‘To your soul.’

‘I don’t think I have a soul, Archie. I don’t think any of us have souls. I’m starting to think we’re just talking carbon.’

‘You don’t have to think of it as something divine. Merely as the essence of your humanity.’

‘Teach me,’ I said, punishing myself with a large swig of cider.

‘Okay. When you were at the bar, I couldn’t help but overhear the couple behind us.’ Archibald lowered his voice to prevent their embarrassment. ‘Perhaps I didn’t quite follow them, but they seemed to be mourning the death of the record — a casualty of Spotify. But, if I’m not mistaken, records are still being produced. Instead, what perturbed these young people, Toby, was that our listening habits have been manipulated. Our focus attenuated. We have become bowerbirds.’

His story checked out. On any visit to the Goose, you were guaranteed to hear at least a dozen eulogies for The Album — a victim of the streaming age, our cherry-picking of tracks, and indifference to artistic intention. The subject was infinitely fascinating, as were artists’ ‘problematic politics’. No-one here seemed to enjoy culture anymore, preferring instead to excitedly police it for crimes of privilege. But their luxuriating in this outrage testified powerfully to their own.

‘Now,’ Archibald continued, ‘life will endlessly encroach upon our attentiveness, our discipline, our sense of enchantment — things that comprise a soul. And we must vigilantly guard against those encroachments. That is our responsibility. No-one else’s. The couple behind us have abandoned their post.’

I was moved by this — but did I believe it? Did I care? Was my creeping nihilism justified? Was it a product of privilege? Environment? Depleted serotonin? All of the above?

‘And what does this mean for me?’

‘Don’t abandon your post. If the department is diminishing your soul, leave. No-one is keeping you there, Toby. But I suspect that something inside you is.’

Well, he was wrong there. I was leaving. And as for my soul, I was beginning to think it was too late. The boat had been pushed out.

I didn’t confess my sins to Archibald, as I knew I wouldn’t. But I did take our unfinished cider back to the bar and, after a 40-minute wait, ordered us something palatable.

Having secured my place in the Prime Minister’s office, just two nightmares remained to be overcome in my final week at DARE. The first was writing a speech congratulating Scott Luscious on winning our $70,000 essay competition. His detailed study of his six-week addiction to Monster energy drinks, and his subsequent ‘shaming’ by friends, had won the country’s most lucrative essay prize.

It opened: ‘What is a Monster? Is it a beast under the bed, or an energy drink in our supermarkets?’ and so it continued, a perfectly executed woke slalom course. Luscious met all the gates — ‘erasure’, ‘stigmatisation’, ‘problematic’, ‘triggering’, ‘enslavement’ — before declaring the drink a symbol of ‘toxic masculinity’.

It was harrowing to have to commend it. So then I thought: Why fucking bother? I’d be out of here soon, ushered into the highest sanctum. So liberate yourself. Discard your chains. And I did. Relaxed, I wrote what I considered the ideal speech for the Minister on the occasion of Scott Luscious winning his prestigious prize.

Ladies and gentlemen, tonight I’m going to be blunt. This won’t be popular, but I was drugged recently and have lost my talent for feigning generosity.

PAUSE

Hands up who’s orbited the Earth in a fucking space shuttle?

PAUSE AGAIN FOR AUDIENCE RESPONSE

That’s right — no-one.

But Scott Luscious has. And Mr. Luscious, thinking his moral conscience more interesting than his experience, or those of the astronauts he had