the BDU.
Roza told me that the BDU had invited a beautiful and original and athletic girl to dinner, and had made her something special in his wok. I thought it would have been hard to have a romantic dinner in a house where the wiring was hanging off the walls, there were stair treads missing, the carpets were congealed with grease, and there wasn’t a proper roof, but those kinds of young people had different standards, I suppose. It turned out that after dinner the girl had said, “I hope you’re not expecting any gymnastics, because Moira’s my lover.”
The Bob Dylan had assumed that this Moira was just a flat-mate. He had been very besotted with his dinner guest, and had definitely been hoping for some gymnastics. I know the feeling, I thought.
Roza, on the other hand, chose this day to tell me about some gymnastics of her own.
She said that she’d entered into a period when she was very depressed. It happens to lots of teenagers, I told her. My own daughter gets like that sometimes. No, said Roza, this was particularly horrible, because life lost all its meaning.
She stopped doing anything very much, became surly and hostile, and spent all day in bed, so that at night she had insomnia. The world was two-dimensional, like a cinema screen, and she became detached from it.
She told me that she kept thinking, “What for? Why bother?” and started to write poetry all about suicide and nothingness. She visualised what it would be like having her parents and Tasha standing by her graveside in the rain. She took to wearing nothing but black, and was very peeved when her father said that it suited her. She painted her room dark purple, and painted a mushroom cloud on the wall, around the bullet holes left over from the war.
She ostentatiously read Baudelaire in front of her parents’ guests when they were expecting her to be sociable, and read books about psychology. I’d heard the name but I didn’t know anything about this Baudelaire, so I went and found out afterwards. I am afraid I like best the poems about cats, and there’s a very striking one about a corpse. She started reading Freud, and accused her father of being an anal retentive. He just said, “Come into the toilet when I’ve had a shit, and I’ll show you something to the contrary.” I had to look up “anal retentive” as well. It’s not a phrase or concept for which I have subsequently found much use, I have to say.
I said to Roza, “What you’ve described is just a typical teenager of a certain type.” She looked at me with some irritation, because no doubt she’d been expecting me to take her afflictions seriously. “It was a crap time,” she insisted. “I never felt so crap in my life, not even when I got raped.”
“Oh God,” I thought, but I knew her well enough by now. I knew she’d tell me sooner or later, so I didn’t press her, even though she must have wanted me to. I definitely didn’t want to ask her about being raped. The thought of it made me feel sick inside.
She went and fetched some more cigarettes, and I looked at the way that the paper was peeling off the walls. It was probably a pattern from Edwardian times, I thought. It must have been quite smart, once. The cracks on the ceiling made a map of the Isle of Wight. When she returned, clutching her pack of Black Russians, I said, “So how did you get out of the depression?”
She lit up and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She looked at me coquettishly, tilted her head, blew out some smoke, smiled, and said proudly, “The night before I went to university, I went into my father’s room, and we had sex.”
“Oh Christ,” I thought.
She said, “It was my idea. I got into his bed and cuddled up to him just like the old days. But this time I knew what I was wanting. He couldn’t help himself. He never got over it, I don’t think. It was very mean of me. Poor Daddy.”
FOURTEEN
University
You’ve got to be careful of strangers.
T he next
Roza told me that the BDU had invited a beautiful and original and athletic girl to dinner, and had made her something special in his wok. I thought it would have been hard to have a romantic dinner in a house where the wiring was hanging off the walls, there were stair treads missing, the carpets were congealed with grease, and there wasn’t a proper roof, but those kinds of young people had different standards, I suppose. It turned out that after dinner the girl had said, “I hope you’re not expecting any gymnastics, because Moira’s my lover.”
The Bob Dylan had assumed that this Moira was just a flat-mate. He had been very besotted with his dinner guest, and had definitely been hoping for some gymnastics. I know the feeling, I thought.
Roza, on the other hand, chose this day to tell me about some gymnastics of her own.
She said that she’d entered into a period when she was very depressed. It happens to lots of teenagers, I told her. My own daughter gets like that sometimes. No, said Roza, this was particularly horrible, because life lost all its meaning.
She stopped doing anything very much, became surly and hostile, and spent all day in bed, so that at night she had insomnia. The world was two-dimensional, like a cinema screen, and she became detached from it.
She told me that she kept thinking, “What for? Why bother?” and started to write poetry all about suicide and nothingness. She visualised what it would be like having her parents and Tasha standing by her graveside in the rain. She took to wearing nothing but black, and was very peeved when her father said that it suited her. She painted her room dark purple, and painted a mushroom cloud on the wall, around the bullet holes left over from the war.
She ostentatiously read Baudelaire in front of her parents’ guests when they were expecting her to be sociable, and read books about psychology. I’d heard the name but I didn’t know anything about this Baudelaire, so I went and found out afterwards. I am afraid I like best the poems about cats, and there’s a very striking one about a corpse. She started reading Freud, and accused her father of being an anal retentive. He just said, “Come into the toilet when I’ve had a shit, and I’ll show you something to the contrary.” I had to look up “anal retentive” as well. It’s not a phrase or concept for which I have subsequently found much use, I have to say.
I said to Roza, “What you’ve described is just a typical teenager of a certain type.” She looked at me with some irritation, because no doubt she’d been expecting me to take her afflictions seriously. “It was a crap time,” she insisted. “I never felt so crap in my life, not even when I got raped.”
“Oh God,” I thought, but I knew her well enough by now. I knew she’d tell me sooner or later, so I didn’t press her, even though she must have wanted me to. I definitely didn’t want to ask her about being raped. The thought of it made me feel sick inside.
She went and fetched some more cigarettes, and I looked at the way that the paper was peeling off the walls. It was probably a pattern from Edwardian times, I thought. It must have been quite smart, once. The cracks on the ceiling made a map of the Isle of Wight. When she returned, clutching her pack of Black Russians, I said, “So how did you get out of the depression?”
She lit up and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She looked at me coquettishly, tilted her head, blew out some smoke, smiled, and said proudly, “The night before I went to university, I went into my father’s room, and we had sex.”
“Oh Christ,” I thought.
She said, “It was my idea. I got into his bed and cuddled up to him just like the old days. But this time I knew what I was wanting. He couldn’t help himself. He never got over it, I don’t think. It was very mean of me. Poor Daddy.”
FOURTEEN
University
You’ve got to be careful of strangers.
T he next
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