Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame (24 page)

‘We must travel in the direction of our fear.’ John Berryman

One night in New York, it was so hot and humid in a bookstore where I was reading my poems, I was soaked with sweat, my pants kept sliding down, so I had to constantly pull them up with one hand while I held the book in the other. A fellow I knew told me afterwards that he was enthralled. He and his companion were sure I’d forget for a moment and let them fall down. Another time in Monterey, California, I was reading in a nearly empty auditorium of the local college adjoining one in which the movie
King Kong
was being shown to a packed audience. At one point, during one of my most lyrical love poems, I could hear the great ape growl behind my back as he was on his way to strangle me. Back in the 1960s, in some youth centre in some miserable little town on Long Island, I was put on the programme between an amateur magician and a fellow who was a mind-reader and the audience of local punks was not told who I was and what I was supposed to be doing. I recall their bewildered expressions as I was reading my first poem. In Detroit, I had a baby howl while I read and then a lapdog someone had sneaked in started to yelp. I was so drunk in Geneva, New York, I demanded that all the lights be turned off except the one on my lectern, and then I proceeded to read for two hours, some of the poems twice, as I was told the next day. In the 1970s, after hearing my poem ‘Breasts’, a dozen women walked out in Oberlin, Ohio, each one slamming the door behind her. In a high school in Medford, Oregon I was introduced as the world-famous mystery writer, Bernard Zimic. In San Jose, I lost the fellow I was supposed to be following in my car at the peak of the rush-hour traffic and realized I had no idea where the reading was. I drove ahead thinking he would notice I’m not behind him and stop by the side of the road. I went past all the downtown and suburban exits and finally figured the hell with him, I’m going home to San Francisco. Since I had to go back the way I came from, I decided on the spur of the moment to take one of the exits and ask, except there was no one to ask at eight in the evening in a neighbourhood of small apartment houses and tree-lined streets. After circling for a while, I saw an old Chinese man walking alone. I stopped the car and asked him, very conscious of how ridiculous I was, did he happen to know of a poetry reading? Yes, he said, in the church around the corner. In Aurora, New York on beautiful Lake Geneva I gave the shortest reading ever. It lasted exactly twenty-eight minutes, whereas the crowd and the organizers expected a full hour. I had an excellent excuse, however. I squeezed the reading between the first and final quarter of an NBA playoff game and ran back to my motel outracing a couple of women who wanted me to sign books. In Ohrid, Macedonia I read into a dead mike to an audience of thousands who would not have understood me even if they had heard me, but who nevertheless applauded after every poem. Now, I ask you, how much more can one ask from life?

‘It’s the admirer and the watcher who provoke us to all the insanities we commit.’ Seneca

Literary gatherings are, of course, to be avoided for many reasons: people asking who you are in the polite expectation that they will have heard of you – they won’t – while others engage you with enthusiastic praise, having mistaken you for someone whose work they admire and you freeze behind the ghastly smile of a trapped iguana. It is equally possible (if you’re me) to spend an entire evening lavishly complimenting a Great Man who turns out to be another Great Man entirely – although enthusiasm always renders me incoherent, so I may have got away with that one. Beyond these minor troubles, I would also not advise wearing black trousers and then sitting carelessly on white patio furniture – this may lead to your spending the rest of the evening at a distressingly A-List affair (your invite being due to typing error) wandering about with white stripes across your arse and thighs which nobody mentions until you get home and are then more than able to point them out to yourself.

Writers’ trousers are famously unpredictable in many ways, but I haven’t met another author whose trousers simply disintegrated en route to a reading. There I was, young and nervous and not wearing a frock due to poor body image issues, stuck on a late afternoon train to Edinburgh, leafing through my notes in a preparatory way and yet also feeling, somehow, chilly. After a brief investigation I discovered that the outside seams of both legs were merrily falling apart and that I was not asleep and therefore would not wake up and find I didn’t have to deal with this. I then participated in the perfect preparation for a gig – namely sprinting (gingerly) through Edinburgh in search of a sewing repair shop that was still open. I did, miraculously, find such a place and persuade it to stay operational while I removed my trousers and had the unparalleled joy of standing in my jacket and socks as the sewing machine chattered away and a small but interested crowd gathered outside the plate-glass window to wish me well – or certainly to wish me something.

Obviously, I am one of the many authors who should not be encountered semi-nude without prior warning. Which means that visiting the ablutions before an event should always be undertaken with great care. A Radio Three outside broadcast and a dodgy lock once combined to introduce me to an audience member rather more than we would have wished. That particular event was already going swimmingly – I am never anything other than delighted to arrive and find a poster on the door showing the other participants’ names clearly printed and my own name scrawled at the bottom in biro as a late and unwilling addition. This is always a tactful way of indicating that the other twelve people they asked before you all died or went insane and they’ve finally settled for you, rather than an empty seat: but it was a close-run thing.

Making broadcasts of any kind is, naturally, a mistake. The form itself can produce intense embarrassment directly: being mocked and reviled by passers-by while just wandering about like a tit, because shots of writers always show them just wandering about as if they have forgotten their own address. (In France I was once actually urinated at by a standing woman as I just wandered about.) Or the particular programme may release immense potential for discomfort. I can personally recommend just wandering about in an Ayrshire graveyard – a life-sized, wax, male, nude torso blazing quietly behind you. Passing Dog Walker: “This about Robert Burns, then?’ Shamefaced Author, ‘Erm, yes.’ PDW, with gentle contempt, ‘BBC Two?’ SA, ‘Ah, yes.’ Schools broadcasts may at first appear less perilous, but one must constantly bear in mind that they are broadcast to schools. Therefore, for every showing, you must expect a subsequent two-month period of shouted abuse from all local boys under sixteen. Interestingly, the most common and elegantly simple slur is, ‘Writer!’ This goes to prove that education does work and a whole generation has successfully learned that to call anyone a writer is a grievous insult.

Which is why any writer in their right mind will avoid answering the question, ‘So, what do you do?’ with any degree of truthfulness. The following question will always be, ‘Published?’ delivered with a darkly incredulous stare and beyond that no response will ever be believed or believable. This is tricky, but not half as tricky as those times when you’re at a normal party, or hill-walking, or buying swedes and suddenly find yourself subjected to the third degree. Party Guest, ‘So, where do you think the European novel is heading?’ Author, ‘Do you want all of those sausages?’ PG, ‘The standard of spelling has just dropped and dropped, hasn’t it?’ Author, ‘I think I can see some pie over there.’ PG, ‘Modern stuff’s just crap, though, isn’t it? I mean, not yours. Well, I’ve never read yours, actually – but it is all shit, really, don’t you think?’ Author, ‘I have to take one of my pills now.’ Better by far to claim that you are a war criminal fleeing justice, or that you rehabilitate wasps. Although it provides clean and tidy indoor work, although it allows adults to behave like children and often get away with it, although it occasionally provides a living wage, very few people – out loud, at least – will insist on being a writer.

‘A half truth in argument, like a half brick, carries better.’ Stephen Leacock

I was in my late twenties. I had published some short stories but no first novel yet. I had no girlfriend either. One afternoon the phone rang in the flat I shared with a Dutch cameraman and I answered it.

‘Are you Carlo Gébler?’ The speaker was a young Dubliner, her voice breathy and lovely.

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve read some of your stories,’ she said. Her name was Olivia, she added.

No sooner had I got her name but an image of Olivia was cast up before my mind’s eye. She was a Celtic Charlotte Rampling, tall and willowy and sensitive and lonely like me.

Olivia explained she was calling on behalf of the London branch of the graduate society of an Irish university. She was the new secretary.

‘We meet every month,’ she said. She mentioned an Irish Centre in north London. ‘We always have a speaker,’ she continued. ‘Usually from sport or business. But I want to broaden things so I wondered, would you read a story?’ Of course I would. Anything for you, Olivia, I thought. But lest I appeared eager, I asked about the evening. ‘There’ll be a bit of society business first and then you read for half an hour, say. Then everyone will pile into the bar. And we’ll pay you too.’ She mentioned a modest sum.

It was a done deal. I noted the time, place and date in my diary. We said goodbye.

Time passed, and finally what I had recklessly come to consider as the evening of my date with Olivia arrived. I dressed carefully. Assuming all the males at the meeting would be Price-Waterhouse trainees in suits, I opted for the conventionally unconventional look of leather jacket and red tie. This would impress her.

Then I went to the street and I eased myself into my car, in those days a very fogeyish 1962 Morris Oxford saloon. To avoid being seen behind the wheel I parked some way from the centre and walked the last quarter mile. The venue was a sixties monstrosity with posters of shamrocks in the windows. The bar was decorated with shillelaghs and rank with the smell of old Guinness. I hardly noticed or cared. I had eyes only for O. But striding across the vomit-crusted carpet, I was appalled to see that the figure gliding towards me with shining knees and bobbed hair, was less than five foot high. It couldn’t be, could it?

‘You must be Carlo,’ said the throaty voice. Oh yes, it was Olivia.

My mouth opened but no words came out. This was because an incredible act of fantasy reassignment was underway in the brain. Instead of the willowy woman of my dreams, Olivia had turned out to be an Audrey Hepburn lookalike.

Could I like her? I asked. Oh, you bet! came the reply.

‘Yes, I am,’ I said, beaming. That was the moment when I noticed a man lurking behind, tall and gangling and bespectacled. He was, I immediately guessed, the boyfriend, a figure I had typically not included when, over the preceding weeks, I had imagined this evening.

‘This is Declan,’ said Olivia, embracing the etiolated love object. ‘He’s also the society president.’ I shook my rival’s hand.

The next part of the evening was a blur. I had a drink and made small talk. The room filled as fifty members showed up, mainly lusty men and girls from the west of Ireland. Among these was the society’s treasurer, a lantern-jawed behemoth called Keith. As we were introduced I couldn’t help noticing that Keith refused to acknowledge either Olivia or Declan and that no sooner had he finished shaking my hand but he darted off.

‘My ex,’ whispered Olivia.

Of course, ex-boyfriends hadn’t been part of my picture of the evening any more than boyfriends had.

‘Oh, right,’ I said grimly.

We adjourned to the Limerick Lounge. I sat at the back. The members sat in rows with their backs to me. The committee, Olivia, Declan, Keith and two or three others, sat behind a table at the front facing us. Olivia had said there’d be a few minutes of business and then she’d call me down. I leafed through the manuscript of the story I had brought to read. It was about an incident in the west of Ireland in my childhood.

The meeting opened. Declan said something. Keith sniped viciously at him. Members hissed. Declan called for calm, adding, ‘It’s nobody’s business but ours.’ What must have happened, I now realized, was that her loveliness had only recently switched from Keith to Declan. The two love rivals had murder in their hearts, feelings shared by several members on the floor.

The rhetoric got nastier. I tried to slide away but Olivia caught my eye and signalled the end of this ordeal was imminent. I bolted for the door but she ran down and stopped me before I could leave. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but was actually an hour of procedural hideousness, I stood. I sensed, correctly, no one wanted to hear me. Panic surged in my gut. Instead of going to the front I blurted out the first sentence to the backs of the heads before me.

Well, now I’d started, I thought, I’d best continue. I remembered the advice of my speech teacher. When reading aloud, pick someone in the audience and read to them. If they’re captivated, so will everyone else be.

There was no difficulty deciding to whom to read from among the members of the committee facing me. I locked my sights on Olivia and read on. She did not disappoint. Her liquid eyes looked back at me, full of attention and interest.

I was winning, I thought. I could win them round. I could make them listen.

Pride, as we know, comes before a fall. In the crowd, I could feel a change in mood. Something was going on. At first I couldn’t tell what it was or where it was happening. Then I saw. Keith had silently moved his seat back from the committee table to a place his rival couldn’t see him and he was now, dumb-show fashion, satirically re-enacting intercourse between the diminutive Olivia and the stringy Declan. This involved some ugly finger work. Suddenly, alerted by the tittering, Declan twigged. He turned and, realizing he’d been mocked and by whom, he picked up the glass in front of him, and threw its contents in Keith’s face. The sodden treasurer smirked and muttered, ‘You eejit.’