Vac by Paul Ableman

We quarrelled for a week.
    I sat glumly on the divan in the field of the weaving buttocks of the girls. Milo said:
    — For fornication. This kind of party has no other use.
    When they refused to admit her, Rita burst into tears and punched her fist through the glass panel in the door. She received numerous cuts, several of them deep, and I was secretly glad to be spared the grim erotic quest that evening by the self-imposed task of stanching Rita’s wounds.
    — I don’t know where David is.
    As we danced, I was implacably conscious of the press of bodies around us.
    Water gushed into the sink and sprayed the girls clustered around the man who was ineffectually trying to mend the tap.
    Rita lay down the floor, tugged her skirt up to her waist and screamed:
    — Fuck me, somebody! For God’s sake, fuck me!
    I stood by the slops on the table and watched the writhing bodies. I took a paper cup from the table and furtively trickled whisky into it from my reserve supply.
    I went into the bathroom and found a girl changing her skirt for thick, winter trousers. I grabbed her at once. As we kissed I watched the door anxiously lest you appear on my trail.
    I sat on the divan and watched a weaving forest of legs.
    — Who David? I haven’t seen him for months.
    There was a camp-fire in the garden. There was a balcony round the studio. There was a spiral staircase leading to split-level bedrooms. There was a huge kitchen with a bath in themiddle. There was only one lavatory and nearly two hundred guests.
    — Is that David over there? I’m leaving.
    They’re smoking pot in the small kitchen upstairs. There’s a blue film running in the front room. They’re charging half a crown to see it. I’ve stashed two bottles of special Dutch gin at the back of the fridge. There’s a girl having hysterics in that bedroom. There are three blokes with her. They claim they’re looking after her but they’ve got her half-undressed. There are seven policemen at the door. There’s a girl standing on the balcony holding her skirt over her head. There’s a bloke vomiting in the lavatory. He’s been at it for two hours. There’s an ambulance in the street.
    — There’s a party tonight.
    — Oh?
    Large-eyed, with the transparent evasiveness of a child, you received the electrifying news. I asked flatly:
    — Do you want to go?
    You shrugged with bogus indifference.
    — Don’t mind—do you?
    Cliché situations that mobilized petrified attitudes. We were not exploring each other’s views. We were rehearsing tacit pleas. I was silently imploring you to say:
    — Yes, oh yes. I love you, but tonight let’s be wild and free. We’ll go to the party and if we get separated it doesn’t matter. And if I see you embracing another girl it doesn’t matter. And whatever happens doesn’t matter because morning will reunite us in the stable routine of our love.
    And your counter-plea was:
    — If we’re together, of course I want to go to the party. Or to Shanghai or to the deep of the night! As long as we’re together. But I’m afraid you may desert me if we go.
    And the silent struggle between my corrupt and your matutinal desire would generate beastly words. Sick with self-revulsion I would lash you with beastly words.
    After we parted I often felt lonely at parties.

18
    W E CREATE EACH OTHER .
    We invent reality.
    As our glance meets, stark alien, we construct each other’s face.
    I define your potential. Independently of your will, you do the same for me.
    One could describe the universe in a word.
    Any word.
    The anguish inherent in Western consciousness is an awareness of the perpetual destruction of the present. This is felt most keenly when consciousness is most intense, that is in childhood.

19
    A CAR DRUMS N ORTH with two old friends inside it. The humane, sophisticated millionaire speaks several languages. The face grins quickly. The voice is dented with the inflections of a Kansas farmer. He now belongs to the cosmopolitan