Seven years of writing this stuff. Seven bloody years! How do I keep doing it? Well, I wish there was a simple answer. Perhaps the question should be why do I keep doing ? It certainly isn’t for money. I’ve never made a penny from this site. Quite the opposite, in fact. I subsidise the whole thing from my own pocket. I suppose the short answer as to why, would be love. A love of sleaze! I just can’t deny it! I’m never happier than when wading through the sewers of the civilised world, in search of those gems of depravity, lunacy and perversion which inspire me! Now, I’m sure that some of you out there think that I spend all my waking hours reading dubious publications, watching highly illegal DVDs, hanging out in strip bars and porno cinemas or peering through people’s windows, in order to slake my appetite for sleaze. Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, my everyday life is mundane, much of it spent doing a boring job in order to pay the bills (and keep this publication going). In fact, why don’t we take a look at a typical day in my life. A day in the sleaze, if you like. I suppose it should kick off “I read the news today…” and go on to describe some sleazy incident in a psychedelic fashion. However, as I’ve already indicated, it’s actually starts more along the Paul McCartney lines of “I got up, had a cup…” before rushing off to work. Hang on, though. Let’s rewind my average day a bit, to before I get up. The Beatles’ lyric needs to be amended along the lines: “I woke up, had a wank…” Actually, to be entirely honest here, I more usually think about having a wank, imagining the fantasy that would accompany it and the pleasure I’d derive from it. Which is pretty sad really. I guess it must be an age thing – just another aspect of life which is more pleasurable to contemplate than actually do, as one grows older. Come to think of it, it’s getting to the stage where I don’t so much think about masturbation as dream about it. Jesus! Erotic dreams have been supplanted by masturbatory dreams! I really need to seek therapy…

Getting back to the day, another early morning ritual is to have a dump. I’m blessed with very regular bowels. Every morning, at six o’clock on the dot, I have a dump. The only problem is that I don’t get out of bed until seven o’clock. Oh my! The old ones really are the best, aren’t they? But, back to the point. Taking a dump is the first stage of sleaziness in my day (so long as you don’t include the imagined wank and imagined masturbatory fantasy involving a couple of local female TV presenters and some low fat margarine, which would have accompanied it, if I’d had the energy to actually do it, rather than just think about it). The state my innards leave the toilet bowl in at that time of the morning have been the inspiration for many a story – whether it be the face of Christ appearing in the crapper, or ‘ectoplasm’ crawling up the sides of a haunted thunder box. There’s something very satisfactory about having a good dump – not just the physical relief, but a real sense of achievement. There’s no doubt that Freud was on to something when he ascribed a child’s fascination with its own crap to the fact that it represents a creative product. When you look back into that toilet bowl, what you see there is entirely of your own making – nobody else can take credit for it. It’s the same with the skid marks in your underwear – proof of your creative abilities. For men, of course, passing a particularly large turd has added significance – it is the closest we’ll ever get to experiencing the birthing process. And there you have it – the first stage of sleaze! I’m sure that everyone thinks about their own bodily waste, but they just don’t vocalize those thoughts, or give them shape with the written word. But for me, the sleaziness of defecation seeps through into my conscious world. So it is with all manner of other everyday things I encounter. My drive to work, for example, usually turns into a swear-fest as I hurl abuse at the moronic road users I’m forced to deal with – the inspiration behind last issue’s editorial on The Art of Swearing. It really is incredible how many expletives you can pack into a ten minute journey.

During my average working day I’m forced to deal with the dregs of humanity – and that’s just the legal profession! No, really, I have to deal with stupidity of the highest order, ignorance, arrogance and deprivation. I have to visit some of the most disgusting excuses for dwellings, inhabited by some of the most unhygienic creatures on earth – flea-infested hovels where they think nothing of shitting on the floor. All the time, I’m mentally ranting and raging at them, cursing them for their stupidity, or arrogance, or disregard for normal human values. But, unlike when I’m in the safety of my own car, I can’t vocalize these thoughts. So the rage builds up over the day, and needs some outlet – hence The Sleaze. In between these encounters are long tracts of mind-numbing boredom. These I try to ameliorate by – in my imagination – taking the attitudes and behaviours I’ve seen exhibited to their extremes. Many a good story has resulted from such musings. All of this activities mean that by the end of the day, I’m like a ticking time bomb, ready to blow up at the slightest provocation. I find it particularly difficult to contain my rage when shopping after work. Supermarkets clogged with idiots and their offspring are the stuff of hell. I wander around the shelves silently screaming at all the smug parents indulging their obnoxious brats. “For God’s sake, stop bloody molly coddling them,” I shriek inside my skull. “You aren’t doing them any favours! Just tell them the truth: life is grindingly awful, with the world continuously crapping on you and ensuring that your every dream and ambition is crushed or, worse, still born! And then you die!” Perhaps one day I should say it out loud! Obviously, my days aren’t all doom and rage. Other inspirations for sleaze can be found in the media – TV now gives us non-stop, wall-to-wall idiocy twenty four hours a day, obsessed, as it is, with the trivia of celebrity culture and ‘lifestyle’ programmes. I’d like to see some of their ‘lifestyle’ gurus improve some of the homes I see. But it isn’t just TV, with its parade of pomposity on the part of so-called celebrities, which gives me inspiration; the print media equally fuel my sleaziness. From the dangerous bigotry of the Daily Mail, to my misreadings of Guardian headlines (which have led me to believe in cucumber dinosaurs and that monkey telephone teleportation had been invented in Africa), it is a rich source of story ideas. As are overheard conversations in pubs. Oh yes, just scratch the surface of your average British pub goer and you’ll find a full formed racist bigot screaming to be let out! So, there you have it, you don’t need to spend all day immersed in porn and video nasties to get sleazy, you just need to get in touch with your inner sleaziness! Trust me, it’s there. It just needs the right stimuli to thrive – stop repressing it and instead open yourself to those dangerous thoughts! Until next time, keep it sleazy!

Doc Sleaze