Narcissism for Beginners by Martine McDonagh

Author:Martine McDonagh [McDonagh, Martine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-11-21T16:00:00+00:00

The Grace of Guru Bim #1 & #2

I’m awake at five-twenty a.m. Too early in any language. But later than yesterday so I am optimistic for tomorrow. It’s important to believe in progress, right? It’s too early for breakfast and the pool is closed until seven a.m. The tapes are still there at the side of my bed and I’m still dozy enough to think I can take it.

It’s kind of fiddly getting the tape into the machine and I only think at the last second to check if it needs batteries, but Thomas the fixer was there before me, and everything works. Surprising really because these tapes must be, like, twenty years old. So here we go, Part One of the recorded autobiography of Robin Agelaste-Bim, aka Guru Bim. It’s short. My anxiety hardly has time to wake up and it’s already over.

One two one two. I knew a girl at university who said she always listened carefully to what a man said about himself in the first ten minutes because that was the only time he would tell you the truth about himself. She was Mrs D. She never heard my first ten minutes. This is my first ten minutes. I am an abecedarian. I was a menopausal aberration. Sent by the Universe to upset the Apple(sham) cart. I was born… under a wandering star. No. I was born… between parties. To Mrs A-B, a son, a Robin. The little red-breasted thing on the window sill cocked a snook at my mama and she said that’ll do… Oof…

It sounds like he’s shifting positions. One thing I remember about him now: one or other of his body parts was always hurting.

… That’ll do. To Mrs C a dead baby daughter and two milky bags full. Their contents sold to the highest bidder. All worked out very nicely, thank you. For a mistake. For an aberration. Mrs A-B a beauty, Mrs C not. Mrs D, I remember only her words… her shiny hair… Mrs E not at all…

A wheeze, possibly forced.

… 1968, the when of it, England, the where. This is my first confession.

The tape clunks off. I check to see if it broke but nope, that’s all there is. It’s weird to hear him speaking almost like a normal person and not in his preachy voice. To be honest, it could be anyone, except he knows the stuff Mrs C told me that nobody outside his family could know (playing kind of fast and loose with the word family, right?), that only Mrs C could’ve told him.

I fumble around for the next tape, number two. Probably Thomas numbered them; that doesn’t seem like something my dad would have done himself. There weren’t many things my dad would do himself. Take a piss, maybe. And anyway, he would have lettered them, what with being an abecedarian and all.

Here we go, then, Part Two of the recorded autobiography of Guru Bim. He’s singing, real slow and croony:

Suki take it off again, Suki take it off again, Suki take it off…

Yeah, I switch it off immediately.

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