is?’
‘Actually, I think I know why she won’t now. She’s so thick that she’s forgotten she ever fucked me in the first place.’
‘They are hell, aren’t they. What do they think is the point of them if they won’t do that?’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘Torka the town,’ he said.
‘Have a good time. Perhaps I ought to go queer like you.’
‘Thanks. Are you staying in?’
‘Yeah, I — ’ But he picked up his cape and waved. ‘Good night,’ I said.
I stayed in. I drank whisky until ten, dined on packet ham and cold baked beans, had a long swampy bath, and went to bed. Hot, exhilarating dreams of striving and crisis, a short wakeful period between five and six, more dreams, and something else in the bed while I smoked an early-morning cigarette, as if my neglected body were at last coming alive again.
That day, too, I asked her to the pub, and she came.
Another really cute ploy I’ve hit upon is this: through a tissue of hints, mild playacting, duplicity, reticence, subterfuge and lies, I have managed to give Jan the impression that I’m fucking, or used to be fucking, or at any rate have at some point definitely fucked, Ursula! Such precepts are arguable, I know, but I’ve always gone along with the view that, first, the surest guarantee of sexual success is sexual success (you can’t have one without the other and you can’t have the other without the one), and, second, that the trappings of sexual success are only fleetingly distinguishable from sexual success itself. (Third, I’m all fucked up anyway, and this can’t do me any harm. I am not a sexual success with women. I just
am not
. Gregory isn’t either, particularly. He’s just a success with sex.) So: the fecklessly beautiful Jan is swivelling on her swivel chair in the focal office area: leaning easily on the table by her side, his blue eyes bright, his strong arms folded, his ginger hair falling out, is the Trainee Seller, Terence Service, talking with vim and without a trace of condescension to the flower of theclerical staff — when, at exactly 12.45, in walks this other girl of mine, this chick, this broad called Ursula, whose curious, up-market good looks I allow Jan time to register as I blurt
Uh-oh
out of the corner of my mouth and spring up guiltily to introduce them (first names only), in confused apology, before sailing out with Urs — to buy her a large and nourishing meal. (And that’s more, by the way, than Gregory does these days. The other week, apparently, they had a very depressing half-hour together in some sandwich bar near the gallery — he wasn’t meant to stay out any longer, he said, and he even had to borrow 60p off Ursula to help pay for the lunch. Most heartening. Ought to find out the truth about that job of his.)
I suspect, anyway, that this Ursula ploy is telling soundly on young Jan, who has not once but twice questioned me about her (unjealously, alas, but with respectful interest) and has several times remarked on how ‘really pretty’ she was. (Girls always like the way Ursula looks, doubtless because she’s got no tits.) I go hurt and wistful whenever she’s mentioned. ‘Yes,’ I said yesterday, chewing on a large creased lip, ‘it’s sad that things aren’t quite … clicking between us the way they once used to.’ Jan said, ‘Oh dear.’ I gazed out of the drizzly window. ‘Yeah. But, hell, at least we’re still friends.’ (I feel tremendous when I say things like that; I feel like a mountain. It’s far and away the sexiest I’ve been all year.)
And surely Jan’s fast-escalating alcoholism must continue to hold me in good stead, must continue to be a source of true security and encouragement.
Christ
can that girl drink. She makes me feel virtually teetotal, and I’m fighting drunk, falling-down drunk, drunk out of my mind all the time these days. I now grant the full potency of the cliché,
as if it were water
. I’ve seen her drink three pints and four glasses
‘Actually, I think I know why she won’t now. She’s so thick that she’s forgotten she ever fucked me in the first place.’
‘They are hell, aren’t they. What do they think is the point of them if they won’t do that?’
‘Where are you off to?’
‘Torka the town,’ he said.
‘Have a good time. Perhaps I ought to go queer like you.’
‘Thanks. Are you staying in?’
‘Yeah, I — ’ But he picked up his cape and waved. ‘Good night,’ I said.
I stayed in. I drank whisky until ten, dined on packet ham and cold baked beans, had a long swampy bath, and went to bed. Hot, exhilarating dreams of striving and crisis, a short wakeful period between five and six, more dreams, and something else in the bed while I smoked an early-morning cigarette, as if my neglected body were at last coming alive again.
That day, too, I asked her to the pub, and she came.
Another really cute ploy I’ve hit upon is this: through a tissue of hints, mild playacting, duplicity, reticence, subterfuge and lies, I have managed to give Jan the impression that I’m fucking, or used to be fucking, or at any rate have at some point definitely fucked, Ursula! Such precepts are arguable, I know, but I’ve always gone along with the view that, first, the surest guarantee of sexual success is sexual success (you can’t have one without the other and you can’t have the other without the one), and, second, that the trappings of sexual success are only fleetingly distinguishable from sexual success itself. (Third, I’m all fucked up anyway, and this can’t do me any harm. I am not a sexual success with women. I just
am not
. Gregory isn’t either, particularly. He’s just a success with sex.) So: the fecklessly beautiful Jan is swivelling on her swivel chair in the focal office area: leaning easily on the table by her side, his blue eyes bright, his strong arms folded, his ginger hair falling out, is the Trainee Seller, Terence Service, talking with vim and without a trace of condescension to the flower of theclerical staff — when, at exactly 12.45, in walks this other girl of mine, this chick, this broad called Ursula, whose curious, up-market good looks I allow Jan time to register as I blurt
Uh-oh
out of the corner of my mouth and spring up guiltily to introduce them (first names only), in confused apology, before sailing out with Urs — to buy her a large and nourishing meal. (And that’s more, by the way, than Gregory does these days. The other week, apparently, they had a very depressing half-hour together in some sandwich bar near the gallery — he wasn’t meant to stay out any longer, he said, and he even had to borrow 60p off Ursula to help pay for the lunch. Most heartening. Ought to find out the truth about that job of his.)
I suspect, anyway, that this Ursula ploy is telling soundly on young Jan, who has not once but twice questioned me about her (unjealously, alas, but with respectful interest) and has several times remarked on how ‘really pretty’ she was. (Girls always like the way Ursula looks, doubtless because she’s got no tits.) I go hurt and wistful whenever she’s mentioned. ‘Yes,’ I said yesterday, chewing on a large creased lip, ‘it’s sad that things aren’t quite … clicking between us the way they once used to.’ Jan said, ‘Oh dear.’ I gazed out of the drizzly window. ‘Yeah. But, hell, at least we’re still friends.’ (I feel tremendous when I say things like that; I feel like a mountain. It’s far and away the sexiest I’ve been all year.)
And surely Jan’s fast-escalating alcoholism must continue to hold me in good stead, must continue to be a source of true security and encouragement.
Christ
can that girl drink. She makes me feel virtually teetotal, and I’m fighting drunk, falling-down drunk, drunk out of my mind all the time these days. I now grant the full potency of the cliché,
as if it were water
. I’ve seen her drink three pints and four glasses
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