by Derren Brown
Bad friend of Dorothy
The obsessive habits took all forms. As a teenager, I performed as part of my school curriculum a duty known oddly as ‘General Studies’, which consisted of volunteer work. In my case, I visited a lady of a certain age every Tuesday along with R—, for tea, cheese and crackers, to be followed by shopping excursions with Dorothy in her wheelchair. R— was only with us a while, as he found Dorothy to be in essence quite repellent. This was unfair, but some people seem to possess a true horror of old ladies and no amount of encouragement from me would alleviate his nausea. Of course his reluctance to touch or even look directly at her caused me much mirth and I enjoyed cheerily volunteering him for all manner of unsavoury and intimate tasks whenever they arose.
His disinclined personality contributes to my memories of school principally due to a lazy habit he developed when writing short stories for English homework. He was not a keen English student (his greatest talents lay elsewhere, in the realms of music and history, if I recall correctly), and his attempts at fiction were half-hearted at best. The solution he found to the problem of creative writing was to cast himself as the protagonist, lumber through some surreal adventure and then, when the tricky problem of finding an ending became unavoidable, abruptly curtail the narrative with his trademark device: the sudden, final non-sequitur ‘Then I woke up, then I died.’ Time and time again he employed this stratagem, to the increasing amusement of the English class and the frustration of the teacher. We would call for his stories to be read aloud, and then at the eagerly awaited denouement explode into bounteous laughter, cheering and applauding.
I, however, continued to visit the cackling, immobile Dorothy regularly until I moved away to Bristol. I would wheel her through the leafy dells of Croydon in search of places to picnic on grated cheese sandwiches and Fanta, or seek out post offices from which to collect pensions, and she would pinch the buttocks of girls as we went past so that they would turn around and glare at me with furious incredulity.
Here, too, I developed an obsessive custom that plagued our journeys around her locale. The particular pavement we would follow in order to make our way to the preferred nearby shopping area declined fairly steeply for a hundred yards or so, meaning that rather than push Dorothy in her chair per se, my task was actually to pull back gently against the weight of the chair as we made our way forward, and thus try to keep the chair under control. The habit I came to both enjoy and dread was as follows: once we had begun the decline, I would (a) let go of the handles of the wheelchair and, while it continued freely under its own impetus with me walking behind, (b) close my eyes. Dorothy, an exhaustingly verbose woman, would continue to chatter away happily, unaware of the momentum that was gaining beneath her as she began trundling, freely and alone, down the hill. The challenge of this behaviour was to see for how long I could walk behind her, eyes closed, picking up speed myself, continuing to offer casual oh-yeses and reallys to the unwittingly freewheeling octogenarian in front of me, before being overwhelmed by a gripping fear that one of the following events would occur: Dorothy would turn and see that I was no longer in contact with the wheelchair, but instead walking some way behind her with my eyes closed; or the chair would reach a critical speed, I would be unable to catch up to grab it, and she would instead be propelled further down the hill at a rapidly increasing velocity, her cracked voice rising in pitch and volume as she called and then screamed to anyone for help, as I ran, terrified, behind her, unable to gain ground; panicked pedestrians jumping out of the way as she hurtled towards a turn in the road that she would not be able to navigate; unable with her tiny gnarled fingers to steer the wheels which would by now be whirring like propellers on either side; her long life flashing before her eyes . . .
My eyes would spring open and I would grab the handles of her chair and curse myself for such unforgivable behaviour while simultaneously enjoying the thrill of having got away with it. Her chair steady again, I would resume conversation with an air of relief, and then, after a few seconds, let go again and repeat the procedure.
The obsessive private habits we foster are scandalous revelations that immediately delight or shock others when we describe them: to talk openly of such things is either to miraculously find ourselves in the company of a fellow obsessive, or more likely to have our peers drastically reappraise us to allow for what sounds like a sickness of the brain. Indeed, some of these rituals do seem to knock tentatively at the looming fortified door of the asylum. But before we reach the corridors of the pathological hand-washers and those who spend miserable nights relentlessly and repeatedly arising from the bed to check that all doors and windows of their home are locked, there are those who may, to be sure, not toy inexcusably with the life of an elderly lady but when walking will (a) close their eyes for a few yards, (b) avoid or specifically aim for pavement cracks, or (c) calculate with what frequency they will step evenly across such a crack if they walk at their normal, regular pace. To mention such behaviours in company is immediately to divide a room: some feel the relief of discovering that they are not alone, while others who do not know the bizarre private moments of the occasional obsessive are generally horrified to hear of such routines.
This latter, more common reaction is similar to the incredulity provoked by a person defending, in the face of a room’s derision, his or her means of wiping his or her bottom or bottoms. A friend of mine once mentioned to a group of friends, including me, and with the casual deportment of one who believes he is stating something of such everyday banality as to be of no interest to anyone, that he half-stood in order to perform that particular sanitary process; another friend that he wiped back-to-front rather than front-to-back. In each case, a sudden, deafening roar of dismay stopped the individual in mid-sentence and he, taken aback by this emotive abreaction, responded first with dumbfoundedness, then quickly shifted to a passionate defence of the normality and convenience of his preferred method of ensuring cleanliness. These attempts at self-vindication by our friends only increased the room’s insistence on how demonstrably preposterous and probably unhygienic their takes on the act were. We stood or tipped sideways on our chairs to illustrate our points, and performed exaggerated, incredulous mimes as clear proof of our friends’ insanity. Still they vehemently defended the act to which they were accustomed, having none of it, insulted by our unambiguous conclusions that they self-evidently lacked the basic level of personal hygiene appropriate for a modern adult.
I have since, however, found several other half-standers (no other back-to-fronters, I hasten to add, though I am sure one or two readers must be experiencing a boiling defensiveness similar to that which my friend endured following his blasé admission), so clearly this method at least has a minority following. But of most interest is the horror and disbelief felt by friends when they realise that one in their midst has the mark of an outsider and is therefore not to be trusted. Some deep ancestral fear seems to be triggered: perhaps of discord, possible attack or, even, in this case, infection. To admit to releasing an old lady’s wheelchair ensures a not dissimilar response, albeit one mitigated by the discussion that then follows and the bifurcation of the group into those who understand the tyranny of obsessive acts and those who cannot relate to the problem on any level.
Of course, had Dorothy been accompanied by more than one of us on those days, and had we all been chatting as we went along, the urge to let go would have been easily resisted had it surfaced at all. Distraction is the key: when the mind is occupied with real, external things, the compulsion to perform the taboo act cannot gain ground. Again, this is negative suggestion, the equivalent of being left to live in a locked room that is empty save for a large, shiny red button on the wall and a sign fixed above warning the incarcerated not to press it. When the mind is not occupied with real concerns, it feeds upon itself; the thought I must not . . . has the capacity to send one spiralling towards the very action one is determined to avoid.
Here, though, the negative suggestion
is helped along by muscle-memory: namely, the body’s capacity to remember familiar sequences of physical actions without conscious thought. This type of memory is invaluable to performers: a pianist can allow his fingers to play without having to consider which note comes next; the actor finds himself reaching the same way every night to pick up a prop without thinking about it; the dancer does not have to consider each step; I find myself moving automatically on stage, shifting into emotional states, even coughing or glancing in certain directions, identically night after night, because habit has set into place a number of automated sequences that sweep me along and keep the show moving at pace. Before a show, I warm up my voice through a series of relaxed hums and aaaahs and ga-ga-gas which make me sound like I am in the grip of a turgid yet flamboyant orgasm, and I know that the muscle-memory of producing sound that way means that on stage I can produce a voice which will remain comfortable despite two hours of projecting to large houses every night. We use muscle-memory when we shake hands: we do not need to reflect upon what comes next in the sequence of actions involved when a person extends his hand to us, instead we simply lift our hand in return, grasp theirs, move up, down, and so on.
This ability to have our bodies lead us effortlessly into automatic actions can also be a curse, for the smoker hoping to quit, for example, or the person plagued by habitual tics. The muscle-memory of facial tics or bizarre tension-release sequences carried out by the sufferer of such things is strong, and due to the localisation of the tic to a particular set of tiny muscles, it is easier to give in repeatedly to the urge than it is to, say, persistently excuse oneself from the table, step outside and smoke a cigarette. As an adult, I have a slight nod which surfaces during times of self-consciousness or unease. This is unfortunate as a performer, as those times tend to be when I’m in front of a couple of thousand people, or before a single journalist. When happily on my own or with friends, I rarely do it. I also notice an odd momentary stammer that occurs when I am asked for my name over the telephone.
The mixture of muscle-memory, the self-consciousness and auto-suggestion that perpetuates the tic (I’m doing it now, I look odd already, I’ve crossed that line, I might as well carry on), its value as a release of tension, and the overarching fact that we are surely creatures of habit more than we are creatures of survival (hence the habitual smoker), all make for a familiar crippling behavioural cocktail for many.
My childhood was marked by a series of such habits, of which the sniffing was probably the worst. As a pre-teen, any feeling of sudden excited anticipation was accompanied by a need to stand up, run around in a circle, and sit down again. This childlike display of excitement was harmless, amusing to all, and did not feel unduly compulsive, but it soon became compacted into a tension in the knees (no doubt the first stirrings of the previous need to stand) which could then only be abated by knocking the knees together. The painful kneebanging (I naturally developed painful bruises, which made the ritual hurt even more) soon itself took over as the compulsive behaviour, and before long it had become a regular habit: I was unable to avoid it once the thought to do it had let itself be known in my mind. The more I carried out the compulsive act, sat in the front room watching television with my parents, the more that sitting there became a trigger to do it again, like finishing a meal becomes a cue to light up for the smoker. Worse, the negative suggestion from the pressure not to do it (my parents, exhausted by these habits and not knowing how best to deal with them, would only tell me to stop, and I would feel awful, not knowing how to stop) completed the vicious circle; I would become increasingly tense, inwardly fighting the compulsion, which in turn compounded the desire to carry it out, focusing as I was on the very muscle-groups in question.
My grandfather, whom I adored, was creative enough to suggest a hypnotherapist to rid me of this demon – hence my first taste of this arcane world that would eventually lead to my strange career lay in being treated for debilitating tics. My mother booked an appointment to visit such a practitioner at his suburban home surgery, and we both drove there curious as to what the consultation would entail. He turned out to be a tall, astonishingly hirsute, suitably medical-looking man who stared unnervingly through heavy eyebrows and spoke softly from behind the luxuriant growth of his beard. There was not a hint of the limp, holistic, New Age quackery that would be hard to avoid today. He sat us down and asked me how my bowel movements were (I answered, ‘Fine thank you, I pass water regularly’; my mother corrected me with a gentle, prompting ‘Other end’), and a number of other questions to gain a sense of my general health and relationship to my family. Then he and I had a private chat, during which he asked me more about my home life, and then it was my turn to sit outside and read the numerous certificates which formally illustrated his authority and authenticity along his hallway – a hallway which, while trying to appear professional and suitable for clients to sit in while their mothers were being told that their sons were not worryingly abnormal, betrayed touching signs of family life: a pair of unclean wellies just by the door, and, under a console table, a toddler’s Fisher Price ring-stacking toy comprising several colourful plastic doughnuts of decreasing size atop each other and encircling a white central stem. I must have been entirely unaware of what hypnosis was at the time for I do not remember any sense of apprehension, nor did I amuse myself by searching through the framed credentials issued by the various national medical and hypnotic associations with imposing names, to see if I could spy daunting diplomas boasting ‘Most Number of Onions Believed to be Apples’ or ‘Most Effective X-ray Specs Used Allowing Audience Members to be Seen in the Nuddy’.
Despite the promise of success implied by the hypnotherapist’s height, hair and calming manner, he was entirely ineffectual. The once-fortnightly Thursday-afternoon sessions did, however, have the very positive result of getting me out of school sports just as often, and I distinctly remember encouraging the continuation of the process for that very reason. Remedially, though, nothing changed. Once, during a session, I opened my eyes a sliver to peep through my lashes and see what the doctor was doing, and was shocked to see that he had gone from the room entirely; his voice was emanating from a cassette-tape recording into which he had seamlessly segued at some point after my eyes had closed. Even when present in the room he did little else other than give me techniques that did not work, and ask me questions that I could not answer and made me upset.
Instead, I simply grew up, and the tics have almost entirely been left behind. I would forget a particular habit for a long time; the muscle-memory would dwindle and I would no longer be gripped by it. I would sometimes develop another in its place, which would also eventually pass, and soon the tics became almost entirely a relic of my childhood and teenage years. Today I notice minor variations in plenty of people I meet. There is that guttural, sucking ‘throat thing’ that many will confess to, a noise irritating to long-suffering office colleagues, who will normally spend some time unable to identify its source, sounding as it can like the faint sound of a radio left on in the background. Others with this obsessive streak roll their eyeballs oddly behind closed lids. Stepping into more familiar territory, a larger number bite their nails as the result of a similarly generated compulsion. Many nail-biters, in part enjoying the masochistic pleasure of tearing back at tender finger-tips once the thought comes to mind, occupy one end of a long line that passes through throat-snorters and knee-bangers, continuing on to those poor souls seized by Tourette’s.
When I took driving lessons at eighteen I was still not entirely free of these devils: I would close my eyes for as long as I felt I could get away with it while my instructor gazed firmly at the road. Unsurprisingly, I failed my test, and part of the reason why I have not endeavoured to re-take it is the fear, upon realising how commonly such dangerous urges occur among drivers, that I would find myself open to all sorts of terrible temptations. The horror caused by finding out that someone close to you is prone to these enticements when you have no experience of
them yourself was never as apparent to me than when discussing such behaviours with a couple I knew well. The fact that I did not drive had arisen, and I had explained the reason (not knowing if I could entirely trust myself on the road), citing Dorothy and her freewheeling chair as an example. The wife, with audible relief, at once declared herself to be plagued by a powerful recurring urge to swerve her car, with both children on board, into oncoming traffic at full speed. The husband was unable to process this news without voicing the most severe distress, clearly fearing genuinely for the safety of his family. Our petitions that the urges were common enough horrors that played on the minds of many, that they all but never resulted in the feared behaviour, and that he should not be so alarmed, rang hollow.
The tics and habits may, I sometimes suspect, be a by-product of the naturally obsessive nature of the solitary creative spirit, and aside from whatever medical intervention may exist, I do not know how they may be effectively stopped in their tracks. Certainly being calm, happy and engrossed in activity for extended periods can in most cases cause them to lose the grip they otherwise maintain through repetition and familiarity.
If an isolated, artistic childhood temperament increases the chances of developing obsessive rituals and twitches, then I was asking for it. My brother was not born until I was nine years old. My mother came into my bedroom and asked, ‘How would you feel about having a little brother or sister?’ Misunderstanding, I thought the decision was being left to me. My reply: ‘I don’t know. Let me think about it. When do I have to decide?’
Most of the childhood I remember was spent engrossed in drawing or Lego. I recall at age four or so spending many frustrating hours at my desk trying to reproduce the nose drawn on the cartoon face of Fred Basset’s owner in the Daily Mail. It was simply an upside down ‘7’, but to me, bewilderingly three-dimensional: I could not understand how the nose seemed to rise from the paper and descend again to meet it.
