So my day became a strange one of tracing paper and invisible ink. I sat there reading, re-reading, and sieving my mind and room for clues and taunts. Beasts of England. Boxer, the big drudge. The face-flannel in the bathroom looked like a roller-towel in a busy cat-house: where did that lipstick come from? Whose lips imparted it? She could only have been a professional. No one kisses me willingly any more. Squealer, the liar. It must be the booze, it must be the … As I bathed my boil (whew — my ass was never one of the world’s great sights but it’s a real clock-stopper now) I couldn’t help thinking of the Happy Isles: She-She — she did it. I have a confession to make. I might as well come clean. I can’t fool you. The truth is, I — I haven’t been behaving as well as I’ve led you to believe. No doubt you suspected that it was all too good to be true. I’ve gone back to Third Avenue, not to the Happy Isles but to places like it, to Elysium, to Eden, to Arcadia — no more than once a day, I swear to God, and only for handjobs (and on the days when I’m ill or unusually hung-over I don’t go there at all). I go to adult movies on Forty-Second Street instead. I go to porno-loop parlours. There is no kissing in hard core. Come to think of it, there is no kissing in Third Avenue either. There is French and English, Greek and Turkish, but no kissing. I must have paid extra for this perversity. I must have paid through the nose. Ah, I’m sorry. I didn’t dare tell you earlier in case you stopped liking me, in case I lost your sympathy altogether—and I do need it, your sympathy. I can’t afford to lose that too. Napoleon, the bully: this pig likes his apples. I found a bookmatch in my jacket pocket: Zelda’s — Dinner and Hostess Dancing. Where else have I been? Maybe I should ask the woman who trails me around New York. She’d know. I found a three-pack of condoms in my wallet, two joint-ends in my turn up, and a cocktail stick in my rug. Is it any wonder I’ve got a boil on my ass? It must be the booze, it must be the junk, it must be all the pornography.
You know (and the afternoon is now tilting past me in strictest blue, and the book is also turning on itself and getting nearer to being over), I lie here and cower to a sense of cautionary justice in matters of the body— and maybe there simply isn’t any, any justice. Think of the nun who wears her grey skin and its no-sex cosmetic as she twists with curse-pains and life-change in her standardized cell. Certain children are perfectly capable of dying young from old age. Deprived of their zinc or iron, their manganese or bauxite, impeccable stoics start to crackle and fizz. The foes of my body are legion, and far more vicious than my sins. They have the organization. They have the finance (who tabs them?). They have infantry, spies and snipers, streetfighters, minefields, chemical-weapon systems, thermonuclear devices. And they have more than this, for now my body monitor in intensive care is playing space invaders too, with swarmers, mutants, baiters, bristling zipships and twanging smartbombs. Hell, we’re all up for grabs. And spare a thought also for the peeping torn with his twenty-twenty vision, the sprinting veering mugger and his good, his excellent heart, the X-rated moviestar with his thick rug and flat belly, the charming child-murderer and his sterling smile.
How can you grow up, with a boil on your ass? Who would take you seriously? A joke is being played, at my expense.
It must be the booze, it must be the junk, it must be all the pornography.
‘Actually I quite enjoyed it. What next? Rupert the Bear? Come on, give me a break. How about a real book next time? Porker and Squeaky and the rest of the guys. I’m too old for animal stories. I mean, we don’t have to start that far back, do we?’