Master WLTM Slave (Non-smoker preferred)

Andy is the landlord of a pub. It’s a young people’s place, and if I’m with him, those who recognise him look at me respectfully, but if I’m in there by myself, I feel as inconspicuous as an old man in a school uniform. It’s the sort of pub that, while employing the façade of a normal boozer, everybody in there is under the age of 25. I’m alright if I’m with Andy, because they recognise him as being the landlord, and therefore I must be his mate. I’ve been telling him over lunch in the pub about my idea for a night there. He listens attentively but seems unconvinced by my enthusiasm.

“A night out for manic depressives?” he asks. “Who’d go to that?”

“Other manic depressives,” I say.

“What kind of music will you play?”

“Really, really depressing music.”

“But there have already been clubs that have played only sad songs, remember? There was that one in Scotland, read about it in The Face once. What was it called again?”

“Club Misery,” I say, my voice rising in frustration, knowing where this was heading. I was being talked out of it and I had to fight back.

“It was called Club Misery, but you knew they weren’t really miserable. They were having a good time, getting rave reviews in style magazines. I bet they even had groupies! How depressed could they have been, tell me? Listen, I’m really depressed and I want this club to be really depressing too, for other people who are also really depressed, so we can all be really depressed together. People who pretend to be depressed because they think it’s cool to look tortured only make those who are depressed even more depressed about their situation. You only have to open a copy of any magazine these days to read about how the latest member of the in-crowd photographed who, week in week out, is having the best time of his or her life, is actually suffering from depression. I bet they bloody are! They’re the same as top-ten pop stars wanting indie credibility. How do you think that makes someone who is actually depressed feel? That someone, having that good a time with their whole life in front of them, is also ‘depressed’ like me? I tell you it is this shallowness, this lack of sincerity in what people do, how no one genuinely believes in anything these days, apart from looking cool, which is what makes people like myself depressed. I’m a sensitive guy, you know? Being depressed is all that some people have left to call their own.”

I knew he had given up. He had a wife and children as well as the pub to run. I was one of those old friends from his past that he’d been able to shake after he’d straightened himself out. “I tell you what, I’ll give you three weeks,” he conceded in defeat, “but it’s got to be a Tuesday and do you think you’ll be ready in three weeks’ time?”

“Perfect,” I said, remembering the phrase “Terrible Tuesdays”, and what Tuesday, not Monday, feels like when you’ve been up all weekend.

“By the way,” he said, “have you got a name that you want to call it yet?”

“Depressed Beyond Tablets,” I told him.

“Half Man Half Biscuit,” he acknowledged in recognition of our ages.

Vice fiction issue, December 2010