‘Positive.’
I turned my back and pretended to fumble in the drawer. ‘Ah yes. Here we are. – Whoops! Dropped it in the waste-paper basket! … damn …’ My fingers curled round the Gloria-moistened trojan, flicked it aside, and burrowed deeper into the pool of tissue, banana skin and cigarette ash, until it found the one used that afternoon on Rachel herself. I have my standards, thank you. Excuse me, but I do have my principles. True, Gloria’s would have been nicer, because Rachel’s was much dirtier and danker and colder than hers. All the same, that would have been, well, vulgar – and an insult to a fine girl.
Luckily, I had the sort of erection that only familiarity can breed. Wide-eyed with horror, I forced it over the tip, and down.
There we are.’
Rachel opened the bed to let me in.
Twenty minutes later, next door, I stood gazing into the mirror above the basin. The face there seemed too hollow and disinterested to be my face. As I watched, its expressionless-ness became self-conscious, became a smirk, became a smile. Look, kid, the under-twenties do this sort of thing non-stop. Remember: you are only young once. Because the teenager is not designed for guilt but for canine lust; not for regret but for exultation; not for shame but for dismissive, ignorant cynicism. As you yourself have put it, in one of the more hay-fevered passages of ‘Only the Serpent Smiles’ :
Face full of goo. Annotating Fuck-lists, mating Smells honey-dew; Stoked-up heat-haze. That guiltless laughter in the bathroom : the dog days.
The true teenager is a marooned ego but his back is always turned to the new ships; he has a kind of gormless strength that can bear to live with itself. For her, every day, you have been selling your youth. Keep that in mind.
I gave me a wink and reached for the razor-blade. Now: to slit the condom’s throat, so that it would flush down the lavatory; a delicate business, since in most moods the bathroom was big enough only for my prick or a cutting edge, not for both, and I was presently to juxtapose the two. Eyes shut, I groped for the teat – stretch it outwards, glance down, and lop the nozzle. It felt rather tight (contraction due to over-use?), but I elongated it (oddly painful), positioned the razor, and looked. Instead of elastic, pinched between finger and thumb, was my foreskin.
My first thought, as the blade tinkled to the floor, was how near I had come to auto-circumcision. My second was: where had it all gone?
I found the rubber-band, half buried in hair, shrivelled round my root.
It had broken. Rachel was pregnant.
But the night was young, even if I wasn’t.
Rachel sat propped up against the pillow, like a guy, smoking.
‘Where’ve you been ?’
‘Just freshening up.’
She made room for me.
‘Rachel. Would you want me to tell you something that would really worry you even though there might turn out to be no need to worry? Even though it might be quite unnecessary?’
‘Of course. And you’ll have to tell me now, anyway.’
‘Even though I could probably tell you later, when there’d be no need to worry?’
She kissed my cheek. ‘Yes. Because I’ve got something I must tell you, too.’
‘Really? What?’
‘Tell me first, then I’ll tell you.’
‘No, you first. Go on. I promise I won’t mind, whatever it is.’ I couldn’t keep the eagerness from my voice.
She drew on the cigarette. The smoke flowed from her mouth and nostrils as she said:
‘You know all the things I’ve told you about my father. All lies. I’ve never seen him or spoken to him or heard from him in my life.’
I watched the ceiling. ‘What, all the stuff about Paris… ?’
She shook her head.
‘What, he never even used to telephone you or anything?’
‘All lies.’
‘Not even a letter?’
‘Nothing. Ever.’
My legs stirred.
‘Christ.’
She kissed me hurriedly. ‘It’s so silly, I always do it. I don’t know why. I don’t mean to.’
‘Why do you?’
‘I don’t know. I just feel it makes me more …’