(and other psychotic states)



The wonderful world of Palace Chat opens up a whole area of human behaviour that is just not available in real life. You can be whoever you want to be, dress in whatever clothing you like and explore any fantasy character you care to create. In real life, this luxury is normally confined to the mentally insane and professional actors; both of whom have a thin grasp of reality. Though of course, acting pays more.
This liberation from your body, background, gender and even species is extremely good fun and liberating. It allows you to cast off responsibility. It allows you to be beautiful, free, single, or the CEO of a Multi-National organisation. But it is so addictive that it is very easy to develop Palace Madness, of which, I confess dear reader, I was a victim.

Palace Madness occurs when the unreality of Palace begins to leak uncontrollably into your normal every day life. The first symptoms of my illness were when I went round an entire nightclub, checking the name tags of the bouncers to see if any of them were wearing a Wiz star, so that I could complain about the room being too bright and the fact that the Bots at the bar didn't work.

This, in itself was not too much of a problem. I hadn't yet realised that this was the beginning of Palace Madness. It was only when I started to look through my wardrobe, frantically looking for the prop bag button, that I knew something was wrong.


But it was too late. I descended into Palace Madness with gay abandon. Very gay in fact. I spent an entire day as a member of the Village People, singing YMCA, which, when I recovered consciousness, was both alarming and depressing, because I found myself in KayMart dressed as a Speed Cop.


It got worse. Palace Madness had a hold of me now. The next day I spent an entire morning as a beautiful woman called Sharron, who looked suspiciously like Meg Ryan. Looking back, this was quite good fun, until Palace Paranoia kicked in and I realised to my horror that all the women I was talking to were actually men called Pete and Dave and not really Britney Spears after all.

The sad end to this terrible illness was when I looked in the mirror and saw myself as a strange deformed character, only 2cm tall, wearing baggy trousers, a baseball cap back to front and sucking a pacifier. My name incidentally was FDYKuddlyKidplkÓÔ. (Oh the shame!!!!!)


I was taken into care. I was given drugs to help me hallucinate normally, like real people do. And now, I think I'm on the mend. I no longer have to look for the Back button to get out of the supermarket. I can talk to people under 16 without them appearing to change image twenty times a minute. I no longer try to play msay jokes in auction rooms.

Yes, I think I'm o.k. now. So if you come on Palace and see a Rubber Dominatrix Penguin…….please say hello. Remember, it could have been YOU!!!