Lurid & Cute (16 page)

like his behaviour in this bedroom

Inside the room, Caycee turned to me and released her girdle and motioned that I should undress too. So I took off my dressing gown, which was in fact not difficult since I have always found those towelling dressing gowns difficult, so that in fact I had been shuffling with it held together in my hand along the heavy carpets. And I felt quite feminine and odd. I wonder if this is what women have to often feel, this denuding and unsureness. I was still in my plastic sandals. I wanted to take them off but also I was a little unsure about the carpet in this room and the general hygiene. Caycee was in transparent perspex platform heels and was remaining in them. The inequality upset or perplexed me but I wasn't concentrating on my perplexity, I was thinking instead about her legs or rather between her legs, where there was a perfect smoothness. It was like the beauty of one of those drawings where in just four lines the genius artist has drawn a face. In the same way when she lay down there was only a smooth curve between her legs. So I lay down too, with my feet still resting on the floor, since while I didn't want to remove my plastic sandals I also felt it was wrong to have sandals on a bed. It was dark and the air was heavy with her perfumes and also cleaning chemicals. And I now think that I should have been amazed but I wasn't. I was only suddenly happy and it was like it always was when you are naked with a girl, except it was slightly not. She lay down and made various suggestions, and I realised that in fact I hadn't thought at all about what we might actually do, which meant that until this point I had in no way thought about the possible dangers of disease. And I think maybe I hadn't wanted to think this because the thought seemed to me to be shameful. But now that the thought was occurring I also really didn't want this moment to have consequences that would haunt me for ever. But then, maybe that ancient fear was part of the whole experience. Also I am nervous in these kinds of performances. In a new environment, I can get perturbed. Sure, she was beautiful, but I was definitely thinking that in fact she in no way wanted me, and in that kind of situation I don't think it's unreasonable to find it difficult to be aroused. Even if a girl just seems ever so faintly bored or tired I want to stop and this was very much worse. Because I was also compelled to admit that while I was probably younger and perhaps with smoother skin than the usual customer or patron, I was not uniformly attractive, like I remember Romy saying that it was strange to be with me because in general she preferred a more muscular physique and although I said it didn't upset me, still, I found it difficult to forget. So yes I was worried about the mechanics of my penis, and worried about disease, and worried that Caycee was really not wanting this to happen at all, and mostly I was now wanting to be finished so I could give her all the money I possessed and the transaction would be over. But on the other hand, I understand this, I could have therefore done nothing, I could have absolutely done nothing and just paid her anyway, and I suppose if I didn't it was just that I have this constant curiosity. Always I will keep looking. So I said that maybe just a blow job and then she looked at me with what I hoped was a smile that understood that I was somewhere in my heart an honest man, I would only demand the most minimal things, and then she asked me if I wanted it with a condom or without. And I said something which I think now in retrospect sounds a little too innocent –

— Well, what do you think would be better? I asked – like I was in a cafeteria lunch queue or massage spa deluxe.

— I think for the end it's better with, said Caycee.

So she did it with a condom. I lay down on my back and looked away, in the familiar guise of the nineteenth-century wife. I also wasn't sure that I had an erection at all. It was like I was in such a panic that I had lost all feeling or awareness of my penis, like the frankfurter must feel inside a corn dog. I just assumed that if she was carrying on, then some version of an erection must exist, but perhaps such an occurrence is all too common in these situations and Caycee was so civilised that she could cope with soft extremities, like the older woman in that old movie instructing a soldier in the definitions of
fiasco
. She was kind of crouching over me to one side and I asked her if I could touch, and she nodded yes. So I touched the skin inside her buttocks, the rougher skin and the wrinkled hole. Then I touched her where normally it would be slippery and wet but here it was very dry and very smooth. And I did feel a slight disappointment at this absolute lack of wetness. I know there is no reason she would be finding this exciting but there was a part of me that did, or hoped she might. I couldn't help it. So I tried to think about something else. At first I was just thinking that in fact this was the first time I had ever had a blow job with a condom on, and couldn't really work out what it was feeling like, but in so far as this was a novelty the greater novelty, obviously, was the fact that I was paying this girl to put my penis in her mouth, but before any of these thoughts could continue towards conclusions I had come. It was definitely the fastest orgasm of my life. Slightly I was relieved that therefore if I had come, presumably I had been erect. But still, I could not conceal from myself a disappointment. She tied the condom in the most lissom and minute of motions. She was very neat, and I thought that in fact there is nothing neater than coming in a girl's mouth. People think it's mess but that isn't true. I came inside a condom inside her tidy mouth. How domestic can you get?

— That was quick, she said.

I wasn't concentrating so hard on her tone but I think it sounded more like she was pleased than that she was being sarcastic or ironic. I think from her point of view I must have represented good value for money. It also added to the tone I was hoping we had developed of being friends, or in which I tried not to impose. And then I realised that while if this was real life, and it was of course, but if it was let's say another aspect of real life where we had met as normal in a bar and afterwards found ourselves in such an intimate environment then we would have developed in this aftermath a conversation, and this is something I always like, to develop conversation, because it did feel that maybe there were things we needed to discuss, but here she was wanting me now to just get dressed. And so I did. I didn't want to upset her at all. She was very nice and personable.

in which all moral values are revised

We walked back down the corridor and I went into the changing room while she stood outside, waiting, and I came back with all the cash I had, because I wanted to show my gratefulness. I tipped her what was possibly double the actual payment. But then I am always unhappy with tipping, because the tip is saying that the system of society has failed, that the price advertised is not equal to the service rendered, and of course, señoritas, the system has failed, of this we have no doubt, but the tip therefore becomes the place where somehow restitution will be made. Even if in doing so it struck me that I was committing another injustice, since this cash of mine that I had given to Caycee was in fact really my father's, because all the money I had right now was given to me by my father, and it felt a little wrong that I had used it for this purpose, rather than on improving books. That felt like the greater betrayal, even, than the betrayal of my marriage vows with Candy – and so my true feeling at the moment, a little like the morning I had woken up beside Romy, was more like nostalgia, like I wanted to call Candy right there and listen to her voice. She just seemed very far away, like I wanted to be talking to her, even if of course she was the absolute person to whom I could never tell this tale. I would have to make do with my voice inside my head, and other confidants, like Hiro. And so I went back into the salon, where Hiro gazed at me.

— You totally did it? he said.

— Well, not entirely, I said.

— Me too, said Hiro.

— What do you mean? I said.

— We were talking and she said that she was tired. She said she'd been working twelve hours.

— Uh-huh, I said.

— So I gave her a massage instead.

I envied him, I really did. Somehow Hiro had managed to have a sweeter experience than I had. But that's what happens when you hang out with someone way ditzier than Buddha. It destroys all your moral faith.

 

4. THE PISTOLET

 

THE PISTOLET

the basis of larger schemes

Already I was feeling that in the matter of world transformation, we were maybe quite advanced, we were extending new manners of behaving in every direction, stretching out the world, like stretching out the dough to make a pizza, but in Hiro's opinion we were losing ourselves in abstraction and inaction. We had no grander scheme.

HIRO

This could carry on for ever.

ME

You're bored.

HIRO

I am more than bored. I am frustrated.

Our analyses of feelings, and feelings about feelings, in which we specialised, thought Hiro, were not enough, or at least, while possibly amusing in themselves, they were not the proper way to live. We needed larger activities. Or this was what he announced one dark morning in a cafe, when we discovered that we could only pay for one tea, and one elderflower doughnut, for one of Hiro's aims was always to exist as gigantically as possible – and I had to admit that I agreed with him. When you have no resources it's not easy to create ideal communities. And recently my father had decided to end the money he was giving me, being as it was spent on so many luxuries and lazy pursuits – not that he disapproved of those in themselves, he wanted to emphasise, he just disliked being the person who was funding them for other people. By which I guess he did mean Hiro. He tended to think you should fund your very own laziness, and while I tried to wonder if maybe the truest form of resistance to the world in its current form is to waste the money of other people, I did not have the heart for it. Possibly I agreed with my father too. For to be as dependent as I was seemed to me in no way a good profession.

MY FATHER

At your age I had already founded a business.

ME

But that's my point.

MY FATHER

It wasn't easy.

ME

It's not so easy to be me.

To have it difficult in your early years, I think, is a good recipe for self-respect. Whereas to have it good – to be the one on the sunlounger beside plashing fountains exclaiming
che beleza!
– is definitely to have it bad. Which is just a more general way of putting the sentence:
I live at home with my mother and father and wife and I feel as if in constant pain
. To come from a family is unavoidable, of course, but also it's a terrible affliction. There is no amount of white pills that can make this cloud feel better. And when life does this to you, it's difficult to react very well. I suppose depression would be one way of describing my ongoing state, but I preferred the more romantic terms that were once in vogue, like
melancholy
. My therapist said no. She said I should say
depression
. But that was long ago. I grew up in so much comfort I was totally dependent. To the zillionaire I suppose it wasn't much. I just knew that I could always go home, in a taxi, and there would be clean sheets on the bed, and maybe the window open slightly so that the small sounds of the city could be heard, and downstairs my mother would be making me hot chocolate. Elsewhere there were addicts to junk burgers or to malls or sleeping pills. Me I was addicted to my station in life's bazaar. Don't you think such comfort might not be so good for a nature like mine? I don't mean my parents meant to do me harm but harm as we all know can emerge through so many sewer pipes and gutters that there's no real way of keeping the harm away. Maybe other people could maintain their independence even in such conditions but I was not one of them. So although it was hard to bear, this knowledge that my father was now through with me financially, I could also see it as a bright occasion. Like I was the ball and this situation was the basketball star and now we were only waiting for one final element to arrive and slam me into the hoop.

with firearms for accessories

In Hiro's opinion, the first problem was the eternal problem of cashflow – and of course I could not disagree at all, it was the pure difficulty now in our lives – but also, added Hiro, the more difficult conundrum was this: we did not want to work for it. His basic thinking was: if it's possible theoretically to get rich quick, why take your time? Or, to put this more philosophically, the gangster in her desire to get rich quick is doing something of extensive resistance to the social order. She is very much bored with the world of work, and this is not, perhaps, to be despised, or at least certainly not so stupid. And Hiro now, it turned out, was also in this business – and to prove his point he then brought out a very gorgeous gun, not so much the Uzi or small-bore but some sort of petite Magnum, I'm not so sure of the category, and the sight of this machine on Hiro's knees in a retro cafe, with photos of dead stars from the worlds of snooker or daytime television, caused an excited response in me which is not I think unusual, because it's not so ordinary to have a gun in your life, or at least not if you are the kind of innocent prodigy and general person I am. But also I would say that if you have never held an object that looks like a gun in public you have not lived. Whether replica or real, it doesn't matter. The thrill is cool.

— The fuck is that? I said.

— It's kind of obvious? said Hiro.

And I did not want immediately to seem too reluctant or disapproving, partly because in the end the person with the gun in their hand is always very persuasive, but also because I had this theory that I could make at least some people very happy, and maybe in the end the only person this was true of would be Hiro, so how could I deny him? And also as I said, I was slightly sad and angry at my station in this life. I had this melancholy rage inside me and that's a destabilising condition to be in when trying to make your everyday moral decisions.