(no subject)
Of Puppets
When he was young, nearly out of primary school, close to the surface, but still cocooned away from the big bad world, his father bought him a ventriloquist’s dummy. While other boys had played with guns and battleships, and the girls had grown into fashion models and pop-stars, or just taken arms with the rest, he still had entire seasons of Sesame Street, recorded from the television, and of Saturday morning children’s television, shows with names which had too many capital letters, and little regard for proper punctuation. He had never seen the point of pretending. He had never enjoyed loud explosions, façades of martyrdom in some imaginary corner of some hypothetical foreign field. He had always been entranced by the simple, naïve joy of Puppets.
All children, he knew, grew up learning to spell with frogs, and learning to count with monsters, and learning to treat each other well with large yellow things of indeterminate lineage. All children spent their years from first steps to first bike sealed away in a plastic-walled utopia, lacking a roof, to let the strings in. He had simply, like Peter Pan (the only hero he thought truly worth his salt - who tackled evil without resort to the complicated and messy solutions of the adult world), refused to leave.
In the playground, they called him names (Puppet Paul, Strings, and, most originally, Paul the Baby), asked him if he’d learned to dress himself, or if he’d had help from the fuzzy wuzzies. They ostracised him, and bullied him, and inflicted every mental torture upon him that the playground had taught them, but he emerged unscathed. Their insults merely reinforced his prejudices against the real world. If they were more grown up than he, and still capable of such hatred and malice, then what was the cause for growing up, if staying young was staying pure? If the safe, fantasy (for, although he was unwilling to grow up, he was not mad; He knew it was a fantasy) world inside the television was childish, then let him be childish.
His father showed him how to work the dummy, taught him how to speak with his throat and his tongue, and keep his lips still, and he practised, while watching his tapes. His puppet mirrored those on screen, repeating dialogue, and, where form allowed (for Talking Bob was no indeterminate-large-yellow-thing), mimicking movements. Eventually, he was able to hold entire conversations with himself, or, more accurately, with Bob.
As the close of the school year approached, bringing him onto the last step before maturity beckoned, his teacher announced to the class that they would, as a special treat for working so well, all year, have a show-and-tell day, and they were each to bring in something which they valued more than anything else they owned, so long as it was not alive.
Despite their playground ridicule, the other children in the class could hardly fail to be surprised when Paul pulled a tiny, be suited man, with a wooden head, face shiny with painted-on make up, from a case which looked more suited to an instrument, perhaps a trumpet, or saxophone. They sat still and watched, with a mixture of awe and a macabre desire to see him embarrass himself. He did not oblige, but rather proceeded, with a good deal of nerves, but no little panache, to entertain them for an entire hour, from Lunchtime to Afternoon Playtime. Bob (or, as he introduced himself, the Rt. Honourable, Reverend Lord Robert Smith-Smythe-Johnson-Pembridge, but you can call me Bob) began by telling the class a story, which Paul had found in a book of his fathers, of a girl who was taught to speak by a huge man-eating tiger, and they sat, like lambs before god, mouths open, watching. The act continued with a short comedy routine, based entirely on the premise of Bob teasing Paul, with the myriad insults that his peers had thrown at him over the years. This was not so well received. Though the children laughed throughout, the teacher, a woman of nearly 50, who had never had any children of her own, left the room, returning only once "that hateful puppet" was back in his box. While she was out of the room, after he had finished the playground routine, Bob conducted his finale, a loud rendition of "Jingle Bells" with what Paul considered, at his age, risqué new lyrics. They applauded, and Bob disappeared back into his case.
Bob followed Paul through his life from that day on. At secondary school, Paul performed in front of his class at the school’s annual charity talent show, and took woodwork and art classes most seriously, though he found, to his surprise, that he enjoyed the academics just as much. By the time he was beginning to hear about things called exams, and realising that school wasn’t half so casual as it had seemed, he had built his first puppet, which he named "Chiken" (most definitely [sic], the spelling an homage to a poorly spelled fast food restaurant chain near his school), and was a miniature, but fully working replica of the large-yellow-indeterminate-puppet of his youth. As he grew older, his collection grew, until his "menagerie", as his father called it, contained over twenty creatures, seven of which he had designed himself. These sat on a shelf all of their own, labelled "String’s Imaginary Menagerie".
Leaving school, with a collection of exam results that made his parents swell with pride, he followed a fine arts degree to completion, falling in love here and there, although never to any lasting effect. In his final year of university, his father died, making him that thing which he, like all children had feared since youth, an orphan. Shaken by this sudden turn in his fortunes, he almost failed his final examinations, pulling back to a 2,2 what would, without the extenuating circumstances, have been a first class degree.
At the age of twenty five, he found himself working as a puppeteer on a new show from one of the flurry of kids-only television channels which had burst into being with the digital television revolution. From day to night, he operated the characters which he had been comforted by since childhood, and he was happy in his job, but for one duty. Every episode they filmed (a process which took, depending on the complexity of the motions involved, a matter of hours or a matter of weeks) contained a segment which, in the parlance of the show, was called "Diddle with the Kiddles". This segment lasted about 4 minutes, and contained a dialogue between the show’s lead character ("Diddle") and 2 or 3 children, usually on some issue of basic scientific or civil awareness. Being the lead puppeteer on the show (he had been called, by the show’s producer, "the most skilled operator I’ve seen since I worked with Henson himself"); it was his duty to squat, just out of camera, somewhere around the children’s feet, and operate the puppet. The producers of the show told him it was necessary, as, by showing real children with the puppet, the audience were encouraged to believe that the puppets were, in fact, real beings. It increased the show’s ability to suspend disbelief. Paul maintained that the producers hadn’t seen the look on the face of every child, as they realise that, instead of meeting Diddle, companion, friend, and educator, they are really meeting 35 pounds of fibreglass, fur and operating devices, controlled by a disillusioned arts graduate.
After filming his first ten shows, the other puppeteers (who were the closest thing he had to friends, though he could barely hold a non-work-related conversation with any of them), threw him a small party, attended by puppeteers only, and their characters. That night, the nightmares started. Each time he dreamt, he was still at that party, surrounded by the grinning men, grinning, euphoric puppets on their arms, both man and puppet holding drinks, laughing in slightly discordant voices. From there, he was pursued by the lumbering, no-longer cute and friendly, but menacing and overpowering form of Diddle, down meandering corridors strewn with cables, black electrical tape, and cyclopean, red-light-blinking cameras.
The dreams always ended in the same room, his childhood classroom. He was ten again, sat on that stool with Bob. His classmates and his menagerie sat, watching. Now, instead of making his classmates laugh, finally accepting him, even if momentarily, he bares their deepest secrets and insecurities to the room, until, one by one, weeping, hair greying before his eyes, they throw themselves from the room’s third storey window, until he is alone with the wood, the strings, and the fur. At this point he wakes.
On his fifteenth show, he was moved onto one of the less intricate characters, his hands shaking from weeks of fretful sleep. The childish, freckled face of Diddle mocked him across the studio floor, and the dreams became more lucid.
He went to see his superior, the chief puppeteer, an old, grey-haired man, who laughed like an earthquake, infrequently, but with startling force. He shrugged, and suggested therapy. So Paul went, twice a week, after work, and paid to lie on a leather couch, and cry over the faces of children and imaginary characters that haunted him nightly.
His twentieth show came and went, and the other puppeteers began to avoid his company, whether due to his unevenly-shaven stubble, his odd, stale odour, or some ethereal atmosphere of bad luck. The show began to suffer in the ratings, whether through the growing cynicism of children, or just through a downswing in niche-media, and the set became a minefield of tension and stretched nerves. Soon, the crew began to be laid off, and Diddle lost his best friend, Doodle, who had always been slightly camp and risqué, and then the Wee-Town marching band, a procession of tiny, furry puppets, playing various tunes on little wooden instruments was disbanded, never to liven up the Main Street again. Throughout the lay-offs, Paul remained, whether through some superstition in management, or through the affection the producer felt towards him, a shattered talent, broken and alone in the world.
Paul approached the director, the board of executives, and the producer, with the suggestion that they should cut the "Diddle with the Kiddles" section, giving no other reason than a barely coherent account of how that was where all the trouble started, with the tears in the eyes of the little children, and the sacrifices of innocence for innocence. They laughed him out of the boardroom, but that night, the dreams were less violent, and for the first time in nearly a year, he slept an entire night without waking, and felt more together in the morning.
Finally, in his third year on the show, the network filed for bankruptcy, and the show was cancelled. He received a small sum as a golden handshake, which he donated to a children’s charity (his father’s life insurance had ensured that Paul would never need to work again). He packed up the things in his locker and went home, for the last time. That night, the dreams stopped.
Six months later, he broke a window in the backstage toilets, and snuck into the old studio. Using his key, which he had failed to return on his final day, he opened the storerooms, and found his way through the maze of shelves to a cupboard on the back wall. The word "Cast" had been struck through, and replaced with "The real stars". That night, Paul had a fire. Diddle smiled his last, ever cheerful smile to the December stars, leaving this world alongside Talking Bob, Chiken, and the rest.
Later that year, Paul married, and grew old in a quiet suburb. He never allowed his children to watch the pre-school puppet shows, but never gave a reason why. Sometimes, when things are tight at the bank, or when one of his children has been injured, he still dreams of a third floor classroom, and a grinning mound of fibreglass and fur.