a self-portrait with models. Thatâs how picayune this picaresque is and I think itâs also the most truthful. Because itâs not so strange, this smallness of cast list. Everyone in general knows everyone you know, or at least in this landscape it can seem so.
in which melancholy revelations occur
And therefore I should not have been so amazed to see Romy engaged in amorous and intimate conversation with some beatnik schlub called Epstein, a beatnik schlub I knew as one of Candyâs friends from her days out of university in anarchist study groups. It was just, it was still a shock, after all, because I only had a very short time in which to cope with the knowledge impressed on me by their general pose and vibe that in some way they were a couple or at least loosely together â but that is often how a social existence works, that very quickly you are forced to absorb distressing information. Yes, there Romy was, talking biopolitics or some other chic topic with Epstein, of all our beatnik friends the most beatnik, who was currently dressed in some exaggerated cardigan, while Romy herself was in her usual outsize glasses and boxing boots. For Romy had this thing that she was one of those people whose erotic allure is not in doubt but also not part of the immediate effect, like she went to such lengths to disguise her beauty â the dark blondeness of her hair, the way she had soft freckles all over her face, as if a tracing had been laid over her skin â that it now occurs to me if perhaps such a disguise was in fact a grander form of vanity, all along. Each of her efforts to disguise her beauty only served to make it more poignant. Like her hair would be just secured with a felt-tip pen in a lazed-out bun, it was that kind of drawly thing. She waved me over because she wanted to say hello and so I wandered to her, leaving Candy to investigate the range of drinks available, while feeling a little frustrated at myself because evidently, even though I was trying not to show it, a question or enquiry was still there in my gaze, because Epstein immediately began as if he needed to explain things:
â Yeah so weâve been seeing each other for a while now, he said.
I wanted very much to look at Romy but I knew that was not allowed, for that would indicate too quickly a manic need for explanation, and in public I had no right to such explanation, although also I knew that if I were not to look at her at all then it would be in some way a sign as well, for this is how life is, you emit a sign by either doing or not doing something, there is no neutral space.
â I hear, said Epstein, â you helped this lady out.
â How so? I said, or somesuch dumbass phrase.
â When she had that thing, he said. â Itâs cool you could be there for her. In the hospital.
â Oh, yeah, I said.
â I called him that morning, said Romy.
â Naturally you had to get back to Candy, said Epstein.
â Naturally, I said.
I really did need to examine him further but also I needed to examine Romy, too, and it was difficult, this way of being, to be as insouciant as possible. I was trying to work out if this meant that she had been with Epstein even when we woke up in that hotel, and then afterwards, throughout all the correspondence and assignations of our tense and no more consummated affair â although of course she had no obligation to tell me, just as I had no right to assume that she would not be seeing anyone else at all. But in retrospect it therefore coloured the whole imbroglio and I did not know how I felt, in the way you might feel if you send a naked photo of yourself to a boy and then discover later that you sent it just as his girlfriend arrived for a night in with pizza and raki. Even if the present moment was pleasure, when it turns out to have been based on false assumptions that pleasure will just disappear whenever you think about it in your memory.
that
in which melancholy revelations occur
And therefore I should not have been so amazed to see Romy engaged in amorous and intimate conversation with some beatnik schlub called Epstein, a beatnik schlub I knew as one of Candyâs friends from her days out of university in anarchist study groups. It was just, it was still a shock, after all, because I only had a very short time in which to cope with the knowledge impressed on me by their general pose and vibe that in some way they were a couple or at least loosely together â but that is often how a social existence works, that very quickly you are forced to absorb distressing information. Yes, there Romy was, talking biopolitics or some other chic topic with Epstein, of all our beatnik friends the most beatnik, who was currently dressed in some exaggerated cardigan, while Romy herself was in her usual outsize glasses and boxing boots. For Romy had this thing that she was one of those people whose erotic allure is not in doubt but also not part of the immediate effect, like she went to such lengths to disguise her beauty â the dark blondeness of her hair, the way she had soft freckles all over her face, as if a tracing had been laid over her skin â that it now occurs to me if perhaps such a disguise was in fact a grander form of vanity, all along. Each of her efforts to disguise her beauty only served to make it more poignant. Like her hair would be just secured with a felt-tip pen in a lazed-out bun, it was that kind of drawly thing. She waved me over because she wanted to say hello and so I wandered to her, leaving Candy to investigate the range of drinks available, while feeling a little frustrated at myself because evidently, even though I was trying not to show it, a question or enquiry was still there in my gaze, because Epstein immediately began as if he needed to explain things:
â Yeah so weâve been seeing each other for a while now, he said.
I wanted very much to look at Romy but I knew that was not allowed, for that would indicate too quickly a manic need for explanation, and in public I had no right to such explanation, although also I knew that if I were not to look at her at all then it would be in some way a sign as well, for this is how life is, you emit a sign by either doing or not doing something, there is no neutral space.
â I hear, said Epstein, â you helped this lady out.
â How so? I said, or somesuch dumbass phrase.
â When she had that thing, he said. â Itâs cool you could be there for her. In the hospital.
â Oh, yeah, I said.
â I called him that morning, said Romy.
â Naturally you had to get back to Candy, said Epstein.
â Naturally, I said.
I really did need to examine him further but also I needed to examine Romy, too, and it was difficult, this way of being, to be as insouciant as possible. I was trying to work out if this meant that she had been with Epstein even when we woke up in that hotel, and then afterwards, throughout all the correspondence and assignations of our tense and no more consummated affair â although of course she had no obligation to tell me, just as I had no right to assume that she would not be seeing anyone else at all. But in retrospect it therefore coloured the whole imbroglio and I did not know how I felt, in the way you might feel if you send a naked photo of yourself to a boy and then discover later that you sent it just as his girlfriend arrived for a night in with pizza and raki. Even if the present moment was pleasure, when it turns out to have been based on false assumptions that pleasure will just disappear whenever you think about it in your memory.
that
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