We might have a long evening ahead of us, but at least Henry and I could have a conversation before Bushy arrived. Henry philosophising about his desire always entertained me. I said to him, “This orgy idea—”
“Yes, what about it? Hey—d’you think I should wear lipstick?”
“Only a little.” I went on: “Isn’t it a dream of merging? Of there being no differences between people? No one is left out. Sexually, it’s a totalitarian idea. Isn’t the orgy where people lose their individuality rather than find it?”
“I’m telling you this. You might feel a fool in those clothes, but who gives a fuck? This is an important and radical freedom.”
“At a time of harsh controls—indeed of terror—this represents liberation, man?”
“I am aware of your amusement, but all this bullshit about the conflict between civilisations, Islam and the West, is only another version of the same conflict between puritans and liberals, between those who hate the imagination and those who love it. It’s the oldest conflict of all, between repression and freedom.” He was standing in front of me. “How am I looking?”
“I can’t begin to describe it.”
“A couple of generous words, my friend?”
“Only to confirm that make-up and facial hair don’t go together.”
“They do now.” He went on, “I like London being one of the great Muslim cities. It’s the price of colonialism and its only virtue. At the same time, London is full of people with their heads covered—either in hoods, like your son, or Muslim women. I have to say I hate that and even glare at the women, no doubt adding to their sense of persecution.”
I said, “It shows that we are fascinated and disturbed by our bodies—covering, uncovering, the whole thing. We can never get it right, never be finished with this body business. Tattoos, weight, clothes…”
“You want to know why I’m listening to this opera? I’m trying to find something subversive and lubricious, a work that might speak to our condition. Want a Viagra?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” He handed me the blue pill, and I swallowed it with vodka. “You’re going to stage Don Giovanni?”
“It’s too puritanical for me. He goes to hell in the end.”
“Doesn’t he refuse to recant? His is an ethical position, at least.”
I was aware of how powerful Henry’s connection with his work still was when he tapped his watch and said, “It’s seven-fifteen. Every day at this time it occurs to me that all over this city, throughout the country in fact, there are actors preparing for a show tonight, sitting in dressing rooms, putting on their slap, doing warm-ups and vocal exercises, terrified and exhilarated. Performers. The people I have spent my life with—those who can do difficult things in front of people who have travelled to see them.”
A couple of weekends before, Miriam and Henry, accompanied by one of her own kids, had driven down to a pop festival in a borrowed caravan, with Bushy driving. Henry had insisted on accompanying them, not wanting to be alone. But he had become restless, hating the caravan and, after a couple of hours, hating the music. It was “just white” and not as “authentic” as the hip-hop he liked to discuss with Rafi. Miriam and the others had started to call him Grandad.
I was surprised, therefore, when not long after, they started out on another short jaunt, this time to Paris, where Henry had been invited to a conference on culture. Naturally Henry despised “official” culture, but saw the trip as an excuse to see his friends—gallery directors, producers, writers, actors.
While he and Miriam were eating well with Marianne Faithfull, Bushy’s contacts in the Cross Keys had put him onto some Africans who hung around the Gare du Nord. Bushy also picked up some hot hip-hop in various African lingos for Rafi. On the way back, they filled up the car with booze and fags to sell to neighbours and in the Cross Keys. If there was anything left over, Wolf could offload it “up West.”
Henry had told me he’d been “offered something” at the Comédie-Française, but had turned it down. He seemed both flattered and tempted. I wondered when he’d go back to work and how Miriam would react to not having him around.
He said, “You say to me, why don’t I think about working again? What have I accomplished anyway? I have staged the work of others, but I am not the originator. What value do I have? The actors I respect. What they do is dangerous. Have I achieved anything original or worthwhile myself? One time someone called me a facilitator, and I nearly killed myself.”
“Aren’t you just tormenting yourself?”
“Chekhov’s characters are always going on about work. We must work, they repeat. I’ve never understood why he would consider work such a virtue.”
“Work is the price of guilt.”
He looked at me. “Come on, we’d better go.”
Bushy had rung. He and Miriam were nearby, waiting in the car.
Watching Henry prepare for the evening, and envying his commitment to the far-out—“To know sex,” he had said, “you have to risk being destroyed by it”—I’d decided not to be so uptight. Along with the gear the Goddess had arranged for me, I was wearing lipstick, slap, a blond wig belonging to one of Sam’s girlfriends—I hoped it was the Mule Woman—a black hat and dark glasses.
“Evenin’, doctor, if it really is you,” said Bushy as I opened the car door. “Lookin’ good, lookin’ good. You made the right choices, the pukka decisions.”
“Thank you, Bushy, my friend,” I said. “I can always rely on you for an accurate review. What do you think?” I asked Miriam, who was wearing a combination of black spiders’ webs in various materials, more or less her everyday look, apart from the miniskirt. “Miriam?”
“I’ve lost the power of speech.”
“Put that camera down!” I said, trying to grab the phone she was holding up.
“Get off! Just one for the kitchen wall!”
“No—no!”
“Girls, girls!” cried Henry as he got into the car. “Save your excitement for later.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Not far across the river at Vauxhall, we came to a line of railway arches which were used as motor workshops. One of the doors was painted black, and there were a few people gathered around it. Pushing through three thick curtains, we were greeted inside by a middle-aged couple who had known Bushy when he worked in a warehouse nearby.
We helped Bushy unpack his stuff and carry it into the crepuscular Sootie. Henry found a way to light Bushy on a little raised stage at the back of the place. Miriam was attempting to powder his sweating face; Bushy was shy about having his nose overilluminated. He was nervous and oblivious to the fact that everyone around him was dressed in unusual clothes, and even that they were beginning to kiss and caress one another.
The place was filling up. Bushy sat down in his position, tuned up and began to play a quiet blues. To encourage him, Henry and Miriam cheered and whistled as they did while watching trash TV. “All I need is me guitar, an amp, a joint and my doctor,” Bushy said, pointing at me.
I donned my mask and walked through the numerous tunnels and rooms of the Sootie, wondering at the people and their lives.
I turned a corner, and she walked past me. My wife was tall in the heels I’d bought her years ago, when I still believed in our love. Her legs were long and she looked good in her clothes. I was surprised to see her but not unhappy. Often, when we met outside the house, we found we got on. We wouldn’t speak all day at home, but then, in the evening, at a party, we’d ignore everyone else and begin talking as if we were friends who hadn’t seen one another for a year. But tonight she seemed to be in a hurry, walking about alone, looking for something or someone, and I didn’t want to follow her.
I could hear that Bushy had begun in earnest, and I wanted to see him. By now his foot was bouncing, his muscles pulsing, his voice like dirty metal and Captain Beefheart.
He was competent in most styles, with great technique, but he couldn’t complete a tune, as though he wanted to play ever
ything at once, like some kind of psychotic jukebox. As he switched among complicated jazz chords, bits of blues and popular tunes, he talked or rambled. He had studied the bluesmen and remembered the dates, saying this song was written in March 1932 or whenever. Sensing some interest, he’d give you more: Did you know John Lee Hooker was a Jehovah’s Witness? He’d do an impression of Hooker, almost a skit—the voice, the whole thing—coming to your house with his Bible, a copy of the Watchtower and a tune.
Bushy was compelling, keeping people from sex. What higher compliment could there be for an artist? Henry stood there proudly, leaning against a pillar. When a man approached to ask whether he was Bushy’s manager, Henry said yes. The man gave Henry his card, took Henry’s number and promised to get in touch. “Bushy will always work now,” Henry said to me. “I wish it had occurred to me before to represent talent for a living.”
Later, beyond a heaving pile of what looked like colourfully decorated slugs, I came upon a screen with slits and holes in it, and a chair behind it. I was looking through it as two men led her in. She seemed determined now in her search for the holy grail of pleasure, the paradigm of luxurious abandonment.
I sat to watch as Josephine lay down, with her face turned towards me. I was so startled—it was as though she could see me. I thought for a moment that my ears might burst—I almost fled. I was more than tempted to lie in her arms again. To do it anonymously would be one of the oddest things I’d done.
I walked towards her as she lay there with her throat exposed, the other figures rising and falling in the mirrored wall, reminding me of how she liked sex in front of a mirror, with one leg up on a chair; little of me would be visible, just my dark hands moving over her fair skin as she watched herself.
I thought: in an opera, at this moment, someone would kill her. I was trembling, and wondered if I might fall down.
She was excited: her face appeared to be glowing. She lived in fear of blushing—“an erection of the face, along with the desire to be looked at,” as someone described it, which made her even more self-conscious. At times she didn’t want to go out because of what she saw as her “embarrassment.” Shame would have been the better word. When she became angry her face seemed to pulsate with blood pushing to the surface. “An exploding strawberry,” I called her, helpfully.
Now it was my turn; she whispered in my ear as though she knew me. “Hallo,” she said, and “Please” and “Yes, yes.” I said nothing, smelling the other men on her, wondering if she’d know me by my flickering eyelashes, which she’d often commented on.
In the low light, I was able to see, in her hair on the back of her neck, a mole I hadn’t noticed before, which I kissed. Not far away Bushy was singing a Mavis Staples song, “I’ll take you there…I’ll take you there…” I could almost have fallen in love with her again as I thought: a better man than me would announce himself, pick her up, cover her, and carry her out of here, to a cleaner place. I wasn’t sure anymore what it was to love an adult, but looking at her familiar white limbs, I knew I preferred her to anyone else.
I noticed Bushy was no longer playing. I was going to the bar when Henry found me.
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said, pulling anxiously at his beard. “Bushy won’t come out.” He pointed at the disabled toilet. “The Security here can force him, but it would be easier if he heard your voice.”
I knocked on the door. “Can I come in?”
“Git out!”
“Can I talk to you—about the music?”
There was a silence. The door opened, and I entered the lighted box, Bushy locking the door behind us. The taps were running and the strip light was buzzing. The dryer had jammed and sounded, in that space, like a motor mower. It was hot in there. Perhaps I was stoned: Bushy’s body was almost anamorphically distorted. I had interrupted this dirty Orpheus naked in front of the mirror, examining his scabrous hooter with a razor blade in his hand. His eyes, wide and unblinking, appeared in the strange light to be buried in one yellow socket and one that was lurid blue.
“Don’t get the wrong idea.” He had suspended the blade over his nose, as though looking for the ideal spot. “I’m not cutting it off. I’m going to nick into a section of it. I’m going to prune it—that way it won’t toilet me no more.”
“You can’t slash your snout. You’ll get blood everywhere.”
“Why else would I be undressed?” He glanced at me and tapped his nose. “You think this is the right place?”
“It’s not the right place and this is not the right time. You’ll make a mistake,” I said, coming up behind him with his clothes gathered up under one arm.
He said, “Keep off!”
“I can’t help it, friend, we’re in a toilet together. People are backed up out there, waiting to pee.” I put my other hand out. “Don’t let everyone down now you’ve got them interested.”
He dropped the blade into my palm. He took the clothes and began to dress. “You haven’t said anything about the music.”
“It’s heavy.”
“I’ll give ’em my Latin.” He checked himself in the mirror and looked at me. “Your wig’s crooked.”
“Can you adjust it for me?”
“A pleasure, man of leisure. You’re looking good, man, fully expressed. I told you I needed you here with me.”
Bushy went out before me, back to the stage area. Henry was waiting outside, with so much sweat coming off him I thought a pipe had burst over his head.
I showed him the blade before putting it in my pocket. “A close shave.” Henry could see from my face that something bad had happened. “I need a drink. Christ, Henry, some people are really crazy.”
Bushy’s second appearance was indeed quieter, mostly Latin tunes accompanied by some gruff crooning. The music became so smooth and serious that people began to make love around him, on sofas and cushions; as they copulated, Bushy adjusted his time and rhythm. “I was the illustrator of fuck,” he told me later. “As their rhythm changed so did mine, in fuck-adjustment. Then I saw I could influence their fuck movement, making ’em do different fucking things.”
A couple lying on a sofa invited me to join them. I was left in no doubt, in such a place, where other mundane norms were suspended, of how polite and courteous everyone was.
“He likes to watch,” she whispered. I just about managed to fuck the woman while the man looked on, idly stroking his flaccid penis, smiling and nodding at me as though I were doing him a great favour. After a time I felt I was. Occasionally, the woman attempted to suck him, but otherwise he left all the love work to me. “Thanks,” he said as I rested breathlessly in his wife’s arms. When I left, we shook hands.
It was late when Bushy drove us back. Henry and Miriam were asleep in the back of the car. I wanted to shower.
“Thanks for my tune, Bushy,” I said.
“Pleasure,” he replied. “Enjoyed it, sir.”
As an encore, and to thank me, Bushy had played Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads.” One time in the car, when he’d been humming it, I told him it was one of my favourite songs. It was, after all, at a place where three highways meet—a crossroads—where Oedipus kills his father, the paedophile Laius, after which Jocasta, his wife and mother, says, “Have no more fear of sleeping with your mother. / How many men, in dreams, have lain with their mothers! / No reasonable man is troubled by such things.” Bushy considered this founding myth a little soap-opera-like for his tastes. He replied by saying that Robert Johnson, who had bad eyesight and was rumoured to have sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his talent, was poisoned by a jealous husband in a bar called Three Forks.
Now Bushy said, “People don’t realise how difficult it is to play that song properly, using Johnson’s fingering. But I learned it for you, because you helped me.”
“Thank you again, Bushy,” I said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I found Miriam washing up the next time I went to her house to watch the football. She didn
’t turn round to address me but said, over her shoulder, “You’ve been keeping away from me.”
“I’ve had new patients. I’ve been asked to lecture. You know, I really enjoy my work.”
“So what? You didn’t like the Sootie. You’ve told everyone but me.”
“Didn’t I look funky in the wig? Even you admitted I made an effort.”
“You were taking the piss, calling them the clusterfuckers and stuff. You were acting superior that night and you know it.”
“Not only me.”
“Who?”
I said, “Henry was like an officious parent commanding his children to enjoy their holiday. ‘You must like this or else!’” I added, “It reminded me of our society’s implausible commitment to optimism, and how much the depressed are hated.”
She turned and threw water at me. “Snob-nob! What did you actually say to Henry?”
“I told him it wasn’t a real orgy. The real orgy is elsewhere.”
“Where?”
“Baghdad.” I went on: “It suddenly became my job to calm Bushy down, while you sat with a group of women discussing animals and tattoos, just as you would at home. The men and their penises didn’t appear to inject much zing into your ming.”
“I may have been quiet, but I was having a lookout,” she said. “There’s a masked woman Henry always goes for.”
“Is she there often?”
Miriam shrugged. “I’m not certain which one she is. People look similar with their clothes off, and I never wear my glasses in there.”
I raised Miriam’s cat above my head. “Of course not. Are you jealous?”
“He fucks the women, but he always comes in me. That’s the rule. He’s mine and he bloody well knows it, otherwise I’ll tattoo my name onto his arse myself.” She said, “Jamal, I’m warning you, if anyone annoys me today, I’m in one of my moods, they’re gonna get it, okay? By the way, that cat’s about to piss on you.”