Now I began to wash, laundering my orifices; they went all to hell if not scrupulously maintained. The works: from undergrowth nose to foamy navel – the works. Of course, I thought jovially, I know very well that my worries about this body conking out on me are pure anxiety (again, just something to take an interest in) – yes, quite – but knowing it was anxiety didn’t make me feel less anxious.
With comb and fingertips I styled my pubic hairs. It was a good idea to spruce myself up for Rachel, the reason being that one honestly did never know. One night last July: at 10.5, in Belsize Park tube station, a girl was telling me to go away before she called the police; at 10.17 I was lying on the floor -between untouched cups of still quite hot tea – helping her off with her greasy panties. Admittedly the girl was quite hideous, had smelled unclothed of open wounds and graveyards, etc., but you still never knew. It was a theory of Geoffrey’s that pretty girls liked sex more than rough ones. Take Gloria, whom I had seen only yesterday. What an excellent time I was having in London. Oxford seemed years away, like childhood.
I bundled myself up in some towels and ran on tiptoe to my room and crouched, shivering, in front of the fire: all things Dr Miller had told me to avoid doing. There was a bathroom next door that was at present too filthy to use. I could lick it out, I supposed, over the next week, which would be a good way also of paying back Jen and Norm.
I dried myself, showered in talc, and slipped into my most daring underpants. I looked down over concave chest, neat little stomach, prominent hip-bones, completely hairless legs -not half bad, I don’t mind telling you. As I dressed I thought about the setting up of the room. I couldn’t be as slapdash as I had been with Gloria. It was a hundred to one that I wouldn’t get her even into the house, but all the same everything had to be … just so. I assembled the relevant pads and folders, stroked my chin.
Not knowing her views on music I decided to play it safe; I stacked the records upright in two parallel rows; at the head of the first I put 2001: A Space Odyssey (can’t be wrong); at the head of the second I put, after some thought, a selection of Dylan Thomas’s verse, read by the poet. Kleenex well away from the bed: having them actually on the bedside chair was tantamount to a poster reading The big thing about me is that I wank a devil of a lot.’ The coffee-table featured a couple of Shakespeare texts and a copy of Time Out – an intriguing dichotomy, perhaps, but I was afraid that, no, it wouldn’t quite do. The texts were grimy and twisted after a year of A-Level doodling. I replaced them with the Thames and Hudson Blake (again, can’t be wrong) and The Poetry of Meditation, in fact a scholarly American work on the Metaphysicals, although from the cover it could have been a collection of beatnik verse: Rachel could interpret it as she wished. Unfortunately the Time Out had a rangy, black-nippled girl on the c6ver. What instead ? Had I got time to run off and get a New Statesman? Not really. I looked round the room. Something incongruous, arresting. After a quarter of an hour I decided on a Jane Austen, the mellow Persuasion, face down, open towards the end, by my pillow. The little touch/That means so much.
At three thirty I was standing dressed in front of the mirror. Eyes narrowed, I scouted for spots. All clear. I’m not troubled by straight acne so much as by occasional sub-surface hugies, the ones that spend two days coming up and two weeks going down. An old favourite was the Cyclopean egg which put in regular appearances between my eyes, giving me a mono-browed mass-murderer’s expression. But no big boys in town at the moment.
I put on, then took off, then put on again a red white-dotted scarf. Eventually I left it off: a bit obvious. Now, gazing dreamily at myself in the mirror … Rachel would have to be out of her mind to throw up a chance like this: the medium-length, silky, thin brown hair, the ingenuous brown eyes, the narrow but wide mouth, and that jawline, really – its evenness and squareness, its cool Keatsian symmetry. I pressed my back teeth painfully together to accentuate it … Hi there. Great, lover, and you ?