A quiet autumn together, just me and Marcus.
September 2026 was the last time I saw Greenford House, and the last time I saw Dr Zim. Marcus was in charge of me now. I guess I was particularly heavily medicated on the way back to Dalston. What I remember is waking up in Marcus’s flat, with the familiar smell of laundry and tobacco smoke. I say Marcus’s flat but even then, he never described it like that. As I came to, groggy, not knowing where I was, my first sense was his aftershave, then his voice, then his hand taking my pulse, ’you’re home Jaydie, in our place, you’re safe now.’
Perhaps he had been badly shocked by seeing the Jacob ‘delusion’ manifest as strongly and as vividly as it did? Anyway, he barely let me out of his sight for months after that, not even for the football. The autumn of 2026 eventually settled into a routine which lasted for the rest of the year. Me, the obedient house boy, serving Marcus, in bed and out of it.
I admit it, this was a totally stress free period, I was never anxious, there were no clients, nothing, just Marcus and me. That was the first time in my life I can remember not having any anxiety, I didn’t have to worry about anything. No job, no decisions, no essays to write, exams, deadlines, managers, reports, meetings, the bank, the clients. Just Marcus’s protocols, serving him. I kept our flat spotless. Every day, as I went to sleep it was perfect, and each day, when I woke up early at exactly 06.30, it was just as I’d left it. There were only two sounds that early in the morning. One was Marcus snoring, he snores heavily. The other a clock in his bedroom which, if you listened very carefully, you could hear ticking.
Christmas, and a remembrance of Christmas long ago.
Vague, impressionistic memories of my childhood Christmases surface sometimes, mainly the emotional fumes given off by suppressed family rows. Childhood; it always seems dark in my mind. It was Walton-on-Thames where I grew up, it couldn’t be more middle class could it? I remember the big windows in a house my parents clearly couldn’t afford, looking out onto solid grey English skies. A neat suburban garden, bleak, overly ordered. No flowers of course. The only winter colour a small rainbow windmill spinning intermittently in the wind, looking like it didn’t belong there at all.
My mother and father’s anger wasn’t passionate, mainly a series of silences. I’ve come to understand this better from my clients, the ones who tell me they are married, or have girlfriends. No matter what the ethnic or social background the clients talk to me. Marcus says I am paid to shut up and listen as well get fucked. These men, the ones who speak about it, they tell me they feel obliged to marry, or hitch up with a woman, to go and get money they can barely earn, for a wife, and perhaps a child, and a lifestyle they can’t afford. I’d read Thoreau at university, on the advice of a tutor, ’Lives of quiet desperation.’ That’s exactly what these men have. I think that’s what my parents had. When they died in the car crash, in my first year at University College London, there wasn’t anything left, just debts bigger than the house and contents were worth put together. That’s one thing in all this I suppose, Jacob Ellis’s student debt, my student debt. They won’t come chasing Jayden Conner for that now will they! The trainee banker in me can be certain of that.
That first Christmas with Marcus we didn’t do anything on Christmas Day. ‘Sorry Jaydie fella, got to do a shift at Greenford, I’ll be back late. We’ll do it tomorrow eh Jaydie, just you and me, Boxing Day.’ But he caned me hard that Boxing Day. I remember that, four strokes. The marks lasted for some days. Why the caning? He was in a bad mood, ‘your fucking attitude Jaydie.’ That’s what he’d said. But the real reason was the sex work was going to have to start up again, and the football. There was the money, I got that. But the football and especially the sex work, that was Dr Zim’s orders, a perverse Christmas present from him to Marcus, for me to continue with the conditioning. And he held the strings didn’t he? Marcus could see all of that and it made him angry. You never get silences from Marcus, he tells you what he thinks. He’s a passionate man. Most of all he’s passionate about me.
My life as a life of quiet desperation?
Marcus used his connections as before, and the clients started coming again in the New Year of 2027. That meant mephedrone, and daily skunk. I developed a taste for both of those, I still have that to some extent, all this time later. In fact, I would have used both more than I did. But Marcus rationed it. ‘If I ever find you’ve used stuff without my say so Jaydie, it’ll be more than a caning, you know that.’ That was never a rhetorical question either. That’s not his style.
‘Rhetorical’ there’s a word Jayden Conner would never have used. That said, even if he had been able to remember what it meant, what would he have used it for? Life in that time came in simple black and white, ‘Yes Boss, No Boss,’ never, ‘tell me about that Boss, what do you mean Boss?’ In its way, that was a relief. And it makes me laugh, Marcus doesn’t do passive aggressive, just aggressive.
I was advertised on-line, simply as ‘Jayden’. A list of what I could do, and the prices, ‘not too expensive Jaydie, not too cheap either.’ I was on any number of escort websites. This meant a regular stream of clients, typically two or three a week as before, sometimes more. Mainly I got fucked and sucked them off, sometimes dirtier stuff too. The mephedrone and skunk made it all go down a lot more easily. Sometimes I even looked forward to it. You can get used to things. One lot of spunk inside me is much the same as another I guess.
Football started up again too. I still played in that shiny blue kit, too tight. Luckily I don’t have to take my underpants off to shower. A lot of the guys on the team are of Muslim heritage, so they don’t ever do that, take off their underwear I mean, in front of other men. So it wasn’t unusual that I didn’t. I was glad about that. What would they say about my cock cage, and sometimes the marks across my arse cheeks after a caning?
One guy I remember in particular, Tariq, Arab heritage I think, so a bit unusual there, where most were British-Bengali. ‘Eh shorty Bruv, how tall? What’s it like, bein’ a short arse?’
‘Dunno bruv, just is.’ I could tell he was interested, wanted to fuck me. He told me he lived with his Grandmother, everyone else, back in Syria, or Germany, or wherever. ‘She’s out bro, for the day, come back for a smoke?’ I wasn’t sure, what about Marcus? But Tariq was a very hot guy. ‘Yeah bro..’ So I did. Same spliff as Marcus, same dealer probably. There Tariq sat, all 6’2” of him, sweating, looking at me, his muscled, thick legs, toned by football, spread wide apart. You could see his hard on from Mars. So I knelt between his legs, got it out, and sucked. I know what I’m doing, it’s my skill set after all isn’t it? Sucking a guy off, deep throating him, swallowing his cum. After he came, he just looked at me, with a sort of contempt, maybe even hatred, but whatever it was he felt, it wasn’t good. We didn’t speak and I just left. Next time we played football, he was cold to me. Like it had never happened. Which I was relieved about. Some time after that he disappeared, back to Syria they said, maybe. Who knows? Perhaps he’s married now, in Damascus, trying to earn money for a life he can’t afford? Strange, a man like that, looking like Tariq did, he could have earned a lot of money just by getting his cock sucked, easily more money than me. But cock sucking, well, that was my job wasn’t it?
We hear how the truth about Jacob comes out.
Roughly seven years on from my last stay at Greenford House, in early 2033, Dr Zim left London for a lucrative and prestigious job in California. Leaving London meant that his “experiment”, that is me by the way, would come to an end. The medication, the pipeline of prescription drugs from Greenford House, would stop.
Before he went he told Marcus the truth about me, I know this because Marcus decided to tell me everything. Marcus has never been a good liar, so in one way, it was not difficult for him. In another, it was probably the most difficult thing he has ever had to do. Not that I didn’t know all about it of course. The truth is that whilst Jayden, me, is real enough now, Jacob isn’t a delusion and never has been. I don’t know what Marcus did when Zim told him. Probably he didn’t do anything, Marcus was too compromised, almost certainly too shocked. What can you do against a powerful man like Dr Zim? He gave Marcus various documents, information about his experiment; about me that is. That material was for Marcus to share with me as he saw fit. It included a diary extract from 2026. This set out Zim’s justification for it all.
Dr. Elias Zim's Private Diary
Sunday 20th September 2026
‘Jacob Ellis first came into my orbit this March. Twenty-three, mid-level trainee banker in the City, going somewhere, intelligent, bright; yet deeply dissatisfied with his life, a classic case of late capitalist alienation. Perhaps Marx himself might have diagnosed it? Jacob’s disconnection from any solidarity was clear, only a commodified lifestyle: no real religion, no real beliefs, no philosophy or ideology; adrift in an atomised society, all the while craving bonds, connection, something to ground him beyond mere money.
I battled to give birth to the authentic man that I knew existed beneath that void, and have manufactured a victory in the shape of Jayden Conner. However, whether an unmedicated and un-dominated Jacob Ellis can ever accept this truth is another matter. The Marxist in me might say I had used violence to colonise Jacob, and then commodify him in the form of another man. Perhaps the truth is that I am just another bourgeois imperialist? I have satisfied my desire for learning, for data and for entertainment by seizing a man by force and violently exploiting him. But in reality, how different is Jayden’s position to Jacob’s? Jacob was a man trapped in the bourgeois system of early 21st century London, a construct designed not to satisfy his authentic needs. In this space, as Jayden, he is no longer alienated from himself; his fundamental essence is finally realised.’
So that was Dr Zim’s justification or, at least, the one he wanted me and Marcus to see. That diary entry was written nearly seven years ago. I have been with Marcus all that time, seven years, practically a couple. And where else would I be? Where else would I want to be? The question is, what happens now?
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