supremacy, but I kept thinking about Sally. Perhaps the old man on the train was right after all. Sally rang again today. This time it was to ask if I thought animals had souls. It was her question of the week.
Some of the time passes helping Dad to prepare the dishes that he will serve up later in the week. While I was chopping up vegetables, he asked me if it would be possible for me to transfer my research to Cambridge? I promised to think about it. At last it is time to leave. I kiss Mum tentatively. Why so tentatively? Is cancer indeed infectious? Dad drove me to the station. He was querulous. Did I really have to leave this evening? I really did. I have a supervision on Monday. I promised to return next weekend.
On the train now, writing this, I am gleeful, set free, like a man who has escaped from a plague-stricken city. Suddenly it occurs to me to wonder if I really can be their son?
Sally met me at Liverpool Street. I stepped off the train into a cloud of soap bubbles. The bubble-blowing kit was a present for me to remind me of the transience of maya . She danced ahead of me down the platform, leaving me to follow her train of iridescence. Outside the station, she took my arm and started to question me about my mother. Although she was all sympathy, that sympathy was muddied by various loopy ideas about how the universe works. If I have got it right, Sally believes that my mother has allowed herself to fall under the influence of Cancer, the astrological sign. This sign of the Zodiac is negative and governs the stomach in an adverse way. Cancer and the moon preside over the grave. In order to heal herself, my mother should align herself with a positive fire sign like Leo, wear warm-coloured clothing, eat lots of curries and sunbathe. It is that simple.
Back at my place, she has my jeans off in seconds and is down on me, performing a hum job, so that my penis thrills to the mantric hum of Aum, Aum, Aum. Later, while strains of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat are coming from the record player, she produced another little present. It is a crucifix which I am to wear under my shirt, in order to protect me from the baleful influence of the Black Book Lodge. Once again she asked me to give the Lodge up and once again I replied that I had only signed up with them in the spirit of sociological enquiry.
‘So you are writing it all down?’ she wanted to know.
‘Yeah, I’m a writing a diary.’
‘Am I in it?’
I nodded.
‘Can I read it?’
I shook my head.
‘Why not? What’s to hide? We ought to be open with one another you know.’
‘It would cramp my style showing it to anyone. I don’t want to have the feeling while I’m writing it that there is a reader over my shoulder.’
‘Screw that,’ she replied. ‘Now I’m always going to have the feeling that you are spying on me and writing me down in your reports.’
‘Sally, it’s not like that. Even I am not allowed to read my diary.’ (I am lying.) ‘I am saving it all up – bottling it, as it were, saving it up to read in old age. You can read it then too.’
Sally was satisfied with that. Thank God for that. I could not have her discover how its writing is being directed by Dr Felton, nor those frightful kissing lessons, nor what I think about some of her nuttinesses. As for us reading the diary together in old age, the hell with that – old age is another country, inhabited by foreigners speaking a language I can’t understand. Also, I do not know why, but I have not told her about all the money I am accumulating. We used to be completely open with one another, but now just the bare fact of having a secret inside me is changing me. It is like I am secretly pregnant.
For a moment, though, I was tempted to show her my notebook. There would have been an adrenalin kick in such a gesture of total honesty – letting her see these pages, to be psychologically as well as physically naked before her … it definitely has an erotic buzz.
But
Some of the time passes helping Dad to prepare the dishes that he will serve up later in the week. While I was chopping up vegetables, he asked me if it would be possible for me to transfer my research to Cambridge? I promised to think about it. At last it is time to leave. I kiss Mum tentatively. Why so tentatively? Is cancer indeed infectious? Dad drove me to the station. He was querulous. Did I really have to leave this evening? I really did. I have a supervision on Monday. I promised to return next weekend.
On the train now, writing this, I am gleeful, set free, like a man who has escaped from a plague-stricken city. Suddenly it occurs to me to wonder if I really can be their son?
Sally met me at Liverpool Street. I stepped off the train into a cloud of soap bubbles. The bubble-blowing kit was a present for me to remind me of the transience of maya . She danced ahead of me down the platform, leaving me to follow her train of iridescence. Outside the station, she took my arm and started to question me about my mother. Although she was all sympathy, that sympathy was muddied by various loopy ideas about how the universe works. If I have got it right, Sally believes that my mother has allowed herself to fall under the influence of Cancer, the astrological sign. This sign of the Zodiac is negative and governs the stomach in an adverse way. Cancer and the moon preside over the grave. In order to heal herself, my mother should align herself with a positive fire sign like Leo, wear warm-coloured clothing, eat lots of curries and sunbathe. It is that simple.
Back at my place, she has my jeans off in seconds and is down on me, performing a hum job, so that my penis thrills to the mantric hum of Aum, Aum, Aum. Later, while strains of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat are coming from the record player, she produced another little present. It is a crucifix which I am to wear under my shirt, in order to protect me from the baleful influence of the Black Book Lodge. Once again she asked me to give the Lodge up and once again I replied that I had only signed up with them in the spirit of sociological enquiry.
‘So you are writing it all down?’ she wanted to know.
‘Yeah, I’m a writing a diary.’
‘Am I in it?’
I nodded.
‘Can I read it?’
I shook my head.
‘Why not? What’s to hide? We ought to be open with one another you know.’
‘It would cramp my style showing it to anyone. I don’t want to have the feeling while I’m writing it that there is a reader over my shoulder.’
‘Screw that,’ she replied. ‘Now I’m always going to have the feeling that you are spying on me and writing me down in your reports.’
‘Sally, it’s not like that. Even I am not allowed to read my diary.’ (I am lying.) ‘I am saving it all up – bottling it, as it were, saving it up to read in old age. You can read it then too.’
Sally was satisfied with that. Thank God for that. I could not have her discover how its writing is being directed by Dr Felton, nor those frightful kissing lessons, nor what I think about some of her nuttinesses. As for us reading the diary together in old age, the hell with that – old age is another country, inhabited by foreigners speaking a language I can’t understand. Also, I do not know why, but I have not told her about all the money I am accumulating. We used to be completely open with one another, but now just the bare fact of having a secret inside me is changing me. It is like I am secretly pregnant.
For a moment, though, I was tempted to show her my notebook. There would have been an adrenalin kick in such a gesture of total honesty – letting her see these pages, to be psychologically as well as physically naked before her … it definitely has an erotic buzz.
But
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