I took a deep breath — and heard the tiny tide of protest from the enemies in my lungs. He sat on the stool beside me. T-shirt, veined, tendoned biceps. He ordered a glass of water. Tap water, not designer water. He wasn't going to tangle with those bubbles, not Spunk.
Now I had to remember that this was a complicated young guy. He didn't drink. He didn't smoke. He didn't sniff. He didn't eat. He didn't gamble. He didn't swear. He didn't screw. He didn't even do handjobs. He did handstands. He did push-ups. He did meditation and mind control. Born again, a true believer, he did charity work: he cared about the poor and the disadvantaged ... Yes, all my man-management skills would be needed here. I looked into his clenched face and said, 'Spunk? It's about your name.'
'Yeah? What about it?'
'You're probably going to hate me for this.'
'I hate you already.'
'The thing is, Spunk,' I said, 'in England —'
'I know what you're going to say. I know what you're going to say.'
I waited.
'You want me to put an e in Davis. Well forget it, Self. Go get a whole new idea. I ain't doing it. No chance.'
'No,' I said, 'the Davis bit is fine. Spunk, you can keep Davis exactly as it is. Davis is fine. It's the other bit we have the problem with.'
'The other bit?'
'Is the problem, yeah.'
'You mean Spunk?'
'That's the bit I mean.'
He looked surprised, wrong-footed. I ordered another scotch and lit another cigarette.
'The thing is,' I said, 'in England, it means something else.'
'Sure. It means grit, pluck, courage.'
True. But it also means something else.'
'Sure. It means fight. Guts. Balls.'
'True. But it also means something else.'
'What?'
I told him. He was devastated.
'I'm sorry, Spunk, but that's the way it is.'
His young face dipped and trembled, with toothache creasing in the corners of the eyes. Why hadn't anybody told him this before? They probably never dared, I thought, and shrugged, and drank my drink.
'I mean,' I went on, 'if you were working with an English actor called, I don't know, Jizz Jenkins or something, you'd have to —'
To hell with England. What do I care about England?'
'It's a problem, you admit... You could just change it a little. How about Spank?'
'Spank? Give me a break. What kind of a name is Spank?'
'There are quite a few American names like that. Skip. Flip. Rip. Trip. Hank. Hunk. Hunk Davis,' I said experimentally. 'Or Bunk, or Dunk, or Funk, or ... Junk, or Lunk, or —'
'You say one more word and I'll rip my ears off.'
'Or Punk,' I said. 'Or Unk.' I considered. When you come to think about it, it doesn't seem to be a very popular noise, that unk sound.
Suddenly Spunk slid to his feet. Holding my tie as if for balance, he let me have his actor's stare, right between the eyes. This went on for a long time. I think he was trying out his thought-control on me, though I couldn't be sure. Then with the chunky knuckles of his right hand he sent his full tumbler of water surfing Western-style up the skiddy steel bar. The glass wobbled to a halt, inches from the edge of the cliff.
'Spunk —?' I said.
But Spunk just walked away.
Coolly I ordered another drink, and swivelled on my stool. If Spunk had been hoping to rattle me by picking this place for a venue, then Spunk was out of luck. I'm used to all that by now. What with the diesels, bull faggots, strippers, cross-dressers and money-lovers I have to work around, I can't get worked up about abnormality any more. The world wavers. Who's straight? Are you? Is Martina Twain ?... I looked this way and that—the faces, the shoulders, the hands. Me, I have no faggot history whatever. I have no faggot past. But who knows these days? Maybe I have a big faggot future. As a faggot, I might be a roaring success.
Hey, you guys, you gays who made the break. I mean you out there, not you in here. So you decided to go it alone. You decided to butch it out. What's it like, without them? Just think: no weather. No lunar wind or rain, no biology. A temperate zone. Full of blokes. Humanity having been halved like that, is it reassuring, the sameness of it all? Isn't it strange? Yeah and tell me something I've always wanted to know. Are there times when you both can't raise it? Do you get those me-neither nights? Well, it's been your century, you guys, I'll give you that. I heard recently that Australia has come whooping out of the closet. Australia! All those pumpkin-faced hicks and tripledecker beach hugies — they're all bumboys now. What's happening, God damn it? Some people blame the women. I blame the men. The first sign of bother, after a carefree fifty million years, and we throw up our hands and go gay? Now is this any way to behave? I mean, how faggy can you get? Come on, you guys, don't run out on me like this. Where's the old cave spirit? Don't surrender. Don't desert. What's the problem. They're only women, after all.
I ordered another drink. Glancing sideways I saw something strange, something anomalous: a girl, a plump little bobbysoxer, edging tremulously down the bar towards me. She couldn't have been more than sixteen, this poor lost child, in her brief pink skirt and jean bolero. Gay heads turned. She clambered on to the stool beside me and requested an orange juice from the unsmiling barkeep. I soon realized what I had to do. Why, I could see it all now. Back to her brownstone, an explanatory chat with her mum, a silent, grateful handclasp from her dad, a game of checkers with her little brother, and, as I took my leave, a royal knee-trembler in the rumpus-room.
'Hi,' I said.
She turned. 'Ah fuck off,' she said, and turned again.
Actually, I took her advice. I had a few tyre-sized pizzas in a Mongolian snack-bar, and cabbed back to the hotel. I then had dinner at the Barbarigo, my local Italian joint. Big day tomorrow. I'm seeing Martina, so I've got a lot of reading to get done.
——————
Martina's present was called Animal Farm and was by George Orwell. Have you read it? Is it my kind of thing? I positioned the lamp and laid the cigarettes out in a row. I then drank so much coffee that by the time I cracked the book open on my lap I felt like a murderer getting his first squeeze of juice from the electric chair. George Orwell changed his name from Eric Blair. I don't blame him. His book kicked off with the animals holding a meeting and voicing grievances about their lives. Their lives did sound tough — just work, no hanging out, no money — but then what did they expect? I don't nurse realistic ambitions about Martina Twain. I nurse unrealistic ones. It's amazing, you know, what big-earning berks can get these days. If you're heterosexual, and you happen to have a couple of bob, you can score with the top chicks. The top prongs are all going gay, or opting for pornographic berk women. At the animals' meeting, they sing a song. Beasts of England ... I went and lay down on the sack. My head was full of interference. I need glasses. I need a handjob. But I must get on with my reading. The big thing about reading is, you have to be in condition for it. Physical condition, too.
This body of mine is a constant distraction. Here I am, trying to read, busy reading, yet persistently obliged to put my book aside in order to hit the can, clip my nails, shave, throw up, clean my teeth, brush my rug, have a handjob, take an aspirin, light a cigarette, order more coffee, scratch my ear and look out of the window. I started reading again. At the animals' meeting, they sing a song. Beasts of England. It was oppressive, it was very oppressive, the heat up here in my room. I went and inspected my back in the mirror. All healed now, except for that wound that got inflamed, enraged. The wound is much angrier than I am. I'm prepared to laugh the whole thing off, but this wound in my back still looks really furious, really pissed. I started reading again. I went on reading for so long that I became obsessed by how long I had gone on reading. I called Selina. Six o'clock in the morning over there and no answer. She'll just say she disconnected. Bitch. I started reading again. At twelve-forty-five I'm due across town to lunch with Caduta Massi at the Cicero. But it's still
only eleven-fifteen. I started reading again — I always was reading, or at least quite a few pages seem to have gone by. I must admit, I admire the way in which Orwell starts his book fairly late in, on page seven. This has to work in your favour. Reading takes a long time, though, don't you find? It takes such a long time to get from, say, page twenty-one to page thirty. I mean, first you've got page twenty-three, then page twenty-five, then page twenty-seven, then page twenty-nine, not to mention the even numbers. Then page thirty. Then you've got page thirty-one and page thirty-three — there's no end to it. Luckily Animal Farm isn't that long a novel. But novels... they're all long, aren't they. I mean, they're all so long. After a while I thought of ringing down and having Felix bring me up some beers. I resisted the temptation, but that took a long time too. Then I rang down and had Felix bring me up some beers. I went on reading.
I returned from my lunch break at a quarter to five, in excellent form, having looked in at a bar or two on my way back across town. Three hours and a hundred and twenty pages to go. Ninety seconds per page: no sweat. Caduta Massi didn't give me any trouble either, up in her vast suite. I just sat there nodding along with her old Prince Kasimir (still on the mend from World War II) while Caduta talked like a folksong about kids, mums, birth, the seasons, and her own Tuscan hills, where the grass grows, the wind blows, and the sky is blue. Over there on the slopes of Caduta's homeland, apparently, spring is a time of renewal, the soil gives forth fresh life, the buds quicken, and the sap rises in the young trees. 'Now I shall leave the men together to enjoy their coffee and port, free of a woman's chatter,' said Caduta, and disappeared. Kasimir and I sat drinking heavily in total silence for forty-five minutes, until Caduta returned bearing three fat albums devoted entirely to her godchildren. Godchildren are the only kind of children Caduta's got, but, boy, has she got a lot of godchildren. I sat close to her on the sofa and sneaked in many a filial caress ... By now the book and I were bowling along. This reading lark, it's a doddle. My theory is that whisky helps. Whisky is the secret of trouble-free reading. Either that, or Animal Farm must be unusually easy to follow ... The only thing that puzzled me was this whole gimmick with the pigs. Pull the other one, mate, I kept saying to myself. I mean, how come the pigs were meant to be so smart, so civilized and urbane? Have you ever seen pigs doing their stuff? I have, and believe me it's a fucking disgusting experience. I checked out these pigs when I was on a farm making a commercial for a new kind of pork-character rissole. I almost walked off the set when I realized what I'd have to be working with. You should see these hairy-jawed throwbacks, these turd lookalikes, honking and chomping at the trough. To eat your girlfriend's tail when she isn't looking—that counts as good behaviour, that counts as old-world courtesy, by the standards of the sty. And when I think of what they get up to in the hay even I have to shudder. I tell you, it's no accident that they're called pigs. And yet Orwell here figures them for the brains behind the farm. He just can't have seen any pigs in action. Either that, or I'm missing something.
The creatures outside looked from pig to man, I read, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. Brill. I rang Martina and mellifluously arranged to meet her at the Tanglewood on Fifth Avenue. She made some footling objection—I can't remember what. I showered and changed and arrived in good time. I ordered a bottle of champagne. I drank it. She didn't show. I ordered a bottle of champagne. I drank it. She didn't show. So I thought what the fuck and decided I might as well get loaded... And, once that was accomplished, I'm afraid I have to tell you that I threw caution to the wind.
——————
I grew up — or got bigger — out here, out here in the US of A. Between the ages of seven and fifteen I was a resident of Trenton, New Jersey. I did all the stuff American kids did. I stowed my sandals and shorts and scored my sneakers and longs. I had buck teeth, big ears, cropped hair, and a squat bike with whitewalls and an electric horn. I pitched my voice somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. Alec Llewellyn tells me that on occasion I still sound like an English disc jockey. I don't remember everything seeming big out here but I remember everything seeming small when I returned. Cars, refrigerators, houses — pinched, derisory. Out here I collected many subliminal tips on wealth and gratification. I did the groundwork for my addictions to junk food, sweet drinks, strong cigarettes, advertising, all-day television—and, perhaps, to pornography and fighting. But I don't hold that against America. I don't blame America. I blame my father, who shipped me out here soon after my mother died. I blame my mother.
I hardly remember her. I remember her fingers: on cold mornings I would stand waiting at her bedside, and she would extend her warm hand from beneath the blankets to fasten the cuff buttons of my shirt. Her face was ... I don't remember. Her face stayed beneath the covers. Vera was always poorly. I only remember her fingers, her fingerprints, her blemished nails and the mark of the white button on the contours of the tip. Presumably I couldn't fasten my own cuffs. I seemed to need the human touch. I'm going to burst into tears in a moment but I'm not going to. Actually I was never going to, and never will. I seemed to need something to remember her by, and what have I got? Only her fingers and the difference in the house, the judgment, the shame, when she'd gone.
I liked my aunt and uncle, Lily and Norman, out in Trenton there. Vera, Lily, the sisters: their faces in the lost photograph look questing and American—wide smiles with inward-sloping top front teeth, funny bones, sweet teeth. The sisters look happily conscious of being sisters. There is gene enjoyment. Here's to you, girls, I always thought when I saw that photograph (where did I lose it?) Have a good time. Also the faces are frightened. They were twenty and twenty-one. I know the feeling. When you're young like that, the deal is — you keep looking confident while understanding nothing. The sisters came to England in 1943. I don't know if English husbands were what they were after, but English husbands were what they got. Lily went home again with Norman. Vera stayed, with Barry Self.
I liked my two cousins, Nick and Julie, who were younger than me. Nick and Julie liked each other too — they were younger, and turned into Americans in a way I never quite managed. Except when they were threatened and I fought or bullied to protect them, they usually preferred it if I wasn't around. Younger, not their fault. Yet I still feel the old exclusion. Where would I be in Animal Farm? One of the rats, I thought at first. But — oh, go easy on yourself, try and go a little bit easy. Now, after mature consideration, I think I might have what it takes to be a dog. I am a dog. I am a dog at the seaside tethered to a fence while my master and mistress romp on the sands. I am bouncing, twisting, weeping, consuming myself. A dog can take the odd slap or kick. A slap you can live with, as a dog. What's a kick? Look at the dogs in the street, how everything implicates them, how everything is their concern, how they race towards great discoveries. And imagine the grief, tethered to a fence when there is activity — and play, and thought and fascination — just beyond the holding rope.
I have always understood that America is the land of opportunity. Vigorously mongrel, America is a land with success in its ozone, a new world for the go-getters and new-broomers, a land where fortune grins and makes the triple-ring sign... Yeah. Or not. Uncle Norman — he started out in the dry-goods business, in a small way, of course. Norman worked hard. The days were long and sweet. Years passed. And nothing happened. He was still in a small way in the dry-goods business. So he sold the concern and poured all his energy into household appliances. He failed again. Household appliances didn't seem to care whether he poured all his energy into them or not. He tried his luck in the timber yards. Failed at that, didn't have any luck. At this point Norman threw a curve: he took a mortgage out on the bungalow and put every cent he had into ventilation engineering. Ventilation engineering swallowed the money up with no trouble at all and didn't give any back. Then he did the really hard thing. He came home.
I was returned to my father, at the Shakespeare, fifteen now and
as big as Barry. I went out to work, which suited me right down to the ground. My small family scattered. Lily has married again: she helps her husband run a delly in Fort Lauderdale. Julie is married, too, with kids, up in Canada somewhere. Nick does God knows what in the Gulf — Qatar, I think, or the Emirates. Norman is in a home. I reckon he would have gone there whether he failed or not. A kind, baffled man, always scheduled for great confusions. It was written. Norman is the man that I owe money to. I once sent him some. They sent it back. In a home — that's the only place where money isn't worth anything one way or the other.
I felt big and eager, at fifteen, and willing to use any talent I had. In the early mornings I would hump crates with Fat Vince. All day I ran messages at Wallace & Eliot. In the evenings I would help Fat Paul dribble the drunks out of the public bar, there, at the Shakespeare. I ... I don't quite see why I tell you this. It's all so far back in my time travel. Points of a journey do not matter when the journey has no destination, only an end. On the streets the women click — they are ticking through their time ... It happened, but now this is happening. Like the vanished Vera the past is dead and gone. The future could go this way, that way. The future's futures have never looked so rocky. Don't put money on it. Take my advice and stick to the present. It's the real stuff, the only stuff, it's all there is, the present, the panting present.
——————
'What happened to you?' I asked the telephone. I was all prepared to be big about it.
'... I didn't show up.'
'Yes, so I seem to recall.' I waited. 'Why didn't you?'
'No point. I tried to cancel on the telephone but you weren't listening.'
I waited. 'I waited,' I said.
Martina sighed. 'You were drunk. You know, it's quite a lot to ask, to spend a whole evening with someone who's drunk.'
... I had always known the truth of this, of course. Drunks know the truth of this. But usually people are considerate enough not to bring it up. The truth is very tactless. That's the trouble with these non-alcoholics — you never know what they're going to say next. Yes, a rum type, the sober: unpredictable, blinkered and selective. But we cope with them as best we can.