A crisis of identity

Whilst cuddling up against the decaying corpse of a Dachshund that the Noble Physician allows me to use as a pillow, I dreamed a hunchbacked dream, a vision of a half-man.

My quarters are spartan, what would pass in polite society as a charnel house I prefer to describe as my snug little parlour. Most people would not decorate a front room with an assortment of small animal bones and scraps of toothmarked fur, but to me they give a jaunty personal touch to what would otherwise be nothing more than a damp hole.

Speaking of damp holes it has been an eternity since I was let out of the basement to prowl the streets of Kings Cross and my imagination is not what it was. I find as I get older the lissom phantoms that accompanied my teenage rubbings have faded from three dimensioned animated tableaus to barely discernible scratchings on a toliet wall.

Any road up, the lack of conscious imagination seems to have been replaced with an increase in my involuntary dreamings. Just last night I had a vision that I was stepping out into the world (or at least the part of East London that I think of as the world) a fully stretched man, so to speak. I was spinally intact, a corpus delicti.

For those amongst you who have never been a hunchbank (or do not have that to look forward to at some future point) - I must tell you that there are many benefits of being a full head height lower than most. It is very natural to casually stare at a ladies bosom, from even quite close distances. Standing and eating from a trough is easier as there is less far to stoop, and most importantly the natural curvature provides instant refuge from the good doctor's lash.

On balance I would not care to be a full-man. Rather a happy half-man than a miserable full man. It is better to live on your knees than die on your feet, as I believe the saying goes.