The car and I crawled cursing up the street to my flat. You just cannot park round here any more. Even on a Sunday afternoon you just cannot park round here any more. You can doublepark on people: people can doublepark on you. Cars are doubling while houses are halving. Houses divide, into two, into four, into sixteen. If a landlord or developer comes across a decent-sized room he turns it into a labyrinth, a Chinese puzzle. The bell-button grills in the flakey porches look like the dashboards of ancient spaceships. Rooms divide, rooms multiply. Houses split — houses are tripleparked. People are doubling also, dividing, splitting. In double trouble we split our losses. No wonder we're bouncing off the walls.
... I like to think of my West London flat as a kind of playboy pad. This has no effect on my flat, which remains a gaff, a lair, a lean-to— a sock. It smells of batch, of bachelordom: even I can nose it (don't let batch into your life, into your bones. After a while, batch gets into your bones). Like an adolescent, throbbing, gaping, my poor flat pines for a female presence. And so do I. Its spirit is broken, and so is mine. (Her dressing-gown, her moisturizing creams, the treasure-chest of her knicker drawer—they're not here any longer, they're all gone now.) My pad has tousled cream carpets, a rhino-and-pylon sofa and an oval bed with black satin counterpane. None of this is mine. The voile walls are not mine. I hire everything. I hire water, heat, light. I hire tea by the teabag. I've lived here for ten years now and nothing is mine. My flat is small and also costs me a lot of money.
Standing in the nordic nook of the kitchen, I can gaze down at the flimsy-limbed joggers heading south towards the Park. It's nearly as bad as New York. Some of these gasping fatsos, these too-little-too-late artists, they look as though they're running up rising ground, climbing ground. My generation, we started all this. Before, everyone was presumably content to feel like death the whole time. Now they want to feel terrific for ever. The Sixties taught us this, that it was hateful to be old. I am a product of the Sixties — an obedient, unsmiling, no-comment product of the Sixties — but in this matter my true sympathies go further back, to those days of yore when no one minded feeling like death the whole time. I peer through the spectral, polluted, nicotine-sodden windows of my sock at these old lollopers in their kiddie gear. Go home, I say. Go home, lie down, and eat lots of potatoes. I had three handjobs yesterday. None was easy. Sometimes you really have to buckle down to it, as you do with all forms of exercise. It's simply a question of willpower. Anyone who's got the balls to stand there and tell me that a handjob isn't exercise just doesn't know what he's talking about. I almost had a heart-attack during number three. I take all kinds of other exercise too. I walk up and down the stairs. I climb into cabs and restaurant booths. I hike to the Butcher's Arms and the London Apprentice. I cough a lot. I throw up pretty frequently, which really takes it out of you. I sneeze, and hit the tub and the can. I get in and out of bed, often several times a day... Ah, you saw me at my best in New York, at my most disciplined, decisive and dynamic. Over here, I find I have a tendency to go downhill. There's nothing to do and no one to do nothing with. I never do anything. I wish I could find someone to be unfaithful to Selina with. I thought little Doris, for instance, was dead keen. Women! Drink! It puts you at a big disadvantage with the ladies, being drunk all the time — though Fielding astounded me on the phone the other day by saying what a hit I'd made with Butch Beausoleil. Yes, you saw me at my very best, at my most suave and attractive, over there in New York. Oh for some of that New York spirit! Over there, you can look all fucked-up and shot-eyed and everyone thinks you're just talented and European. I made my mistakes, I admit, as we all do when we go over there to try it on. Like bawling for more drink at two-fifteen in thinning restaurants. Like instigating singsongs in bars and falling over all the time in nightclubs and discos. One morning, two trips ago, I attended a breakfast meeting with Fielding and three preliminary moneymen in the office suite of a velvet hotel off Sutton Place. Half way through my synopsis the cork of nausea abruptly popped in my throat. I only just made it to the adjacent can, which was large and acoustical: my imitation of an exploding hippopatamus through the closed door in full quadraphonic (as Fielding later explained). I got one or two funny glances on my return, but I just butched it out and I don't think it did me any harm. If I were them, I'd enjoy the spectacle. It does my poor old ticker good to see someone really totalled — by his own hand, mind you. Not blasted by outside nature or misfortune, which only frightens me. But they're a bit more puritanical in the States, hence the looks of incredulous solicitude, that morning over juice and scrambled eggs and coffee gurgling in heavy silverware, as I attempted to talk on. I started making an extraordinary noise — I heard that noise again the other day, while trying to force the last drops of ketchup from a plastic tomato. It was no big deal. I simply coughed myself into a crying-jag and had to be helped downstairs and into the Autocrat. All good knockabout stuff. I don't like seeing women in this state. You don't see it so much in women, and I'm glad. You see it round my way sometimes, the dead blondes in the scarred pubs ... What happened that night, that night in the Berkeley? What happened? Something did... I've solved one minor mystery. I now know how I managed to make my flight from New York. Fielding rang JFK and informed Trans-American that there was a bomb on board my flight. 'It's no big thing, Slick,' Fielding told me on the phone. 'I always do it when I'm running late. They grill the latecomers but not if you're first-class. It's not economical'... And then there is the second mystery, the mystery that lingers.
Now on this Sunday afternoon I walk from the kitchen to the bedroom. I open the white slats of the fitted wardrobe and take out the suit I wore on that last night in New York. Not for the first time, I tug the trousers out and flatten them on the bed. On the lateral creases of the crotch there is a large splattered stain, dark tan against the fawn, ending in tapered trickles down either leg. The soiled contours of the material crackle faintly to the touch. What is it? Tapsplash? No. It is champagne, or urine. I think I know the truth. The memory is there somewhere, it has its being— but it is loathsome to the touch. Ay! don't let it touch me! Keep it away,. So I lock the suit in again, back in the slammer with its partners in crime, shut up safe for the night, far from my touch.
——————
Something is missing from the present too. Wouldn't you say? Mobile, spangled and glamorous, my life looks good — on paper, anyhow— but I think we're all agreed that I have a problem. Not so? Then what is it? Brother, sister, do the right thing here and let me in on it. Help me out. You'll tell me it's the booze ... the booze isn't brill, I warrant, but the booze is nothing new. Something else is new. I feel invaded, duped, fucked around. I hear strange voices and speak in strange tongues. I get thoughts that are way over my head. I feel violated ... The other morning I opened my tabloid to find that, during my brief absence, the whole of England has been scalded by tumult and mutiny, by social crack-up in the torched slums. Unemployment, I learned, was what had got everyone so mad. I know how you feel, I said to myself. I feel how you feel. I haven't got that much to do all day myself. I sit here defencelessly, my mind full of earache and riot. Why? Tell. Inner-cities crackle with the money chaos — but I've got money, plenty of it, I'm due to make lots more. What's missing? What the hell else is there?
Randomly prompted (and that's how I'm always prompted these days: it is all I have in the way of motivation), I went next door and ran an eye over my book collection: Home Tax Guide, Treasure Island, The Usurers, Timon of Athens, Consortium, Our Mutual Friend, Buy Buy Buy, Silas Marner, Success!, The Pardoner's Tale, Confessions of a Bailiff, The Diamond as Big as the Ritz, The Amethyst Inheritance — and that's about it. (Most of the serious books are the accumulations of Selina's predecessors, except for The Usurers, which I remember buying myself.) I stared at my space-age sound system. Many years ago I outgrew rock music, and I have failed to grow into any other kind since. I waited, I hung about, but it just didn't happen. Breakfast television is as yet only a dream, a whispe
r. I'm going to hang around for that too, maybe. Maybe not. Watching television is one of my main interests, one of my chief skills. Video films are another accomplishment of mine: diabolism, carnage, soft core. I realize, when I can bear to think about it, that all my hobbies are pornographic in tendency. The element of lone gratification is bluntly stressed. Fast food, sex shows, space games, slot machines, video nasties, nude mags, drink, pubs, fighting, television, handjobs. I've got a hunch about these handjobs, or about their exhausting frequency. I need that human touch. There's no human here so I do it myself. At least handjobs are free, complimentary, with no cash attaching.
On the quartz coffee-table serving the spudjacket sofa a deck of unopened mail is carelessly fanned. For how long now in my life has mail confined itself to one topic? When I look at the cards in this pack, when I eventually rip and snarl my way through these trap-faced offers and demands, these begging letters, I want to say, Look, can't we change the subject? Just once, after all these years? Isn't there anything else you can talk about?... When did I last get a love letter, for Christ's sake? When did I last write one?
It was half-past six. Time to repent. I called Doris Arthur at her hotel and did a lot of apologizing. How much apology can a person contain? I'm going to need a lot more of this stuff when I return to New York — for Martina ... Doris let me off pretty lightly. They always do, at first. Besides, she's getting a hundred thousand bucks to stay interested. Then I found a ballpoint, a pad, some envelopes, a sheet of stamps. I flexed my chequebook. As I worked, I whispered to myself and to money.
The last letter bore an ink-written address, referring to me as Mr John Self Esquire. When I'd flicked through this khaki stack on the dreadful morning of my return from New York (sitting there, at London noon, in the emptied flat with a drink in my fist: i.e., a gin and tonic at six a.m. — now this has to be good news for both body and soul), looking for a friendly, a helping hand, I had glanced at these gawky graphics and fingered the letter for a tactful forget-me-not from one of the spine-specialists, rug-gurus or ticker-experts I need to use ... They get foreign chicks to hand-address the mail: it lends a personal touch. But this letter suddenly seemed very personal indeed. I tore its throat open with my heart climbing. And I quote:
John Darling Take me back. I cant believe you mean't those terrible things you said. How could you think such things of me. Send for me please, I dont know what to do if your not there to look after me.
Love, Your Selina XXXXXX PS. I'm pennyless.
Dangerously excited, italicized with surefire lust, I poured myself a drink and scanned the letter for clues. The postmark said Stratford-upon-Avon. Its dateline was ten days old. Within, the letterhead proclaimed the Cymbeline, Hotel-Casino, with a seven-figure telephone number in two-five formation ... What was all this take-me-back stuff? What were these terrible things I was supposed to have said? Not for the first time I tugged myself back to the eve of my departure for New York. What happened? I took Selina out for an expensive dinner. We had a vicious row about money. Back home, there followed a detailed bout of valedictory lovemaking, with Selina game and longsuffering, and me as effusively carnal as ever. Then I had a few nightcaps, as I recall, and composed myself for sleep. In other words, a completely ordinary evening. I might have given her a bit of lip last thing, but that was pretty standard too. When I woke at noon the next day Selina had long taken her leave. I didn't give that a thought either. I had an Irish coffee, packed my things, and left my number on the kitchen wall.
A male voice answered, and levelly agreed to do my bidding.
'I knew it would be you,' she said, with urgent, husky restraint in her low louche voice.
'Come here. Come home,' I said in the same kind of way. 'I want you. Now.'
'Oh my man. How have I lived?'
'Get a taxi.'
'A taxi!'
'Po it.'
'Yes.'
'Soon, then.'
'Yes.'
I walked round the flat. I picked up the letter. My eyes, how they itched and burned. You know something? This was the first time I had ever seen her handwriting — her floppy, amateurish signature, her scribbled kisses. How was it possible? I mean, I know we're not the most expressive of couples, but all the same. God damn, two years on and off, and not even a note? God damn. I dropped the letter. I looked up. Had I ever shown her my hand? Yes, she'd seen it, on bills, on credit slips, on cheques.
I roved out into the foaming malls. My mission? To buy champagne. Selina, she likes a lot of outlay. You cannot do pornography by halves. Pornography and money enjoy a dose concordat, and you have to pay your union dues... The Cymbeline, eh ? Now I've stayed in that joint myself—with one or other of Selina's forerunners, some model or stylist, some Cindy or Lindy or Judy or Trudy. It's an expense-account, no-account gin palace and gaming den, very expensive, full of yanks and maple-leafers, touts, tarts, hustlers, dirty weekenders. I recommend it. Me, I was up in Stratford making a TV-ad for a new kind of flash-friable pork-and-egg bap or roll or hero called a Hamlette. We used some theatre and shot the whole thing on stage. There was the actor, dressed in black, with his skull and globe, being henpecked by that mad chick he's got in trouble. When suddenly a big bimbo wearing cool pants and bra strolls on, carrying a tray with two steaming Hamlettes on it. She gives him the wink—and Bob's your uncle. All my commercials featured a big bim in cool pants and bra. It was sort of my trademark. No one said my ads were subtle. But boy did they sell fast food fast.
Now I ducked from the wet white light into the prisms of the Liquor Locker. Jesus, have they got a lot of booze in here, and a lot of it is bottom-line — tubs of Nigerian sherry, quarts of Alaskan port. They even stock a product called Alkohol, sold in cauldrons of label-less plastic. The Liquor Locker must have started up in direct response to the many bagladies, bums and limping dipsoes who haunt this part of town. There were certainly some dreadful faces flickering through the racks. As I tarried in the malt-whisky showroom an old head presaged by spores of woodrot breath came rearing up at me like a sudden salamander of fire and blood. Dah! In his idling voice he used distant tones of entreaty and self-exculpation, pointing to the recent scar that split his heat-bubbled cheek. No you don't, pal, I thought—you can't beg in here: it makes all kinds of unwelcome connections. I'd have given him a quid just to keep him at bay but, sure enough, a member of the pimply triumvirate guarding the till came over with a yawn to drop a heavy hand on the poor guy's shoulder, aiming him back to the streets, where he belonged. Out, old son. Why? Because money says so. I scored three bottles of the tissued French usual. At the desk they cleared my Vantage card in the little paperback which lists the numbers of busted frauds and proven losers. .. Then I clanked next door to the place called Chequepoint or Chequeup or Chequeout where a caged chick cashes cheques round the clock but seems to keep half your dough as commission for this fine service. Actually, it's more than half, or feels that way by now. It goes up all the time. One day I'm going to come in here, write a cheque for fifty quid, slide it over, hang about for a while, then ask: 'Come on — what about my money?'
And the caged chick will look up and say, 'Can't you read? We keep all that now.'
I walked home the long way round, to kill time before she came— my shop-soiled Selina, my High-Street Selina, once more going cheap in the sales. How I love it. How I love it all. Like Selina, this area is going up in the world. There used to be a third-generation Italian restaurant across the road: it had linen tablecloths and rumpy, strict, black-clad waitresses. It's now a Burger Den. There is already a Burger Hutch on the street. There is a Burger Shack, too, and a Burger Bower. Fast food equals fast money. I know: I helped. Perhaps there is money-room for several more. Every other window reveals a striplit boutique. How many striplit boutiques does a street need — thirty, forty? There used to be a bookshop here, with the merchandise ranked in alphabetical order and subject sections. No longer. The place didn't have what it took: market forces. It is now a striplit boutique, a
nd three tough tanned chicks run it with their needly smiles. There used to be a music shop (flutes, guitars, scores). This has become a souvenir hypermarket. There used to be an auction room: now a video club. A kosher delicatessen — a massage parlour. You get the idea? My way is coming up in the world. I'm pleased. No, I am. A shame about the restaurant — I was a regular patron, and Selina liked it there—but the other stuff was never much use to me and I'm glad it's all gone.
Slipping off the demographic shuttle, I moved into the calmer latticework of dusty squares and sodden hotels. Some of the residential allotments are going up in the world too: they are getting gentrified, humidified, marbleized. Ad-execs, moneymen, sharp-faced young marrieds, they're all moving in and staking out their patch. You even cop the odd sub-celebrity round my way now. An old actor, singing arias of bitterness in the backstreetpubs. There's a chick newsreader whom I sometimes see cramming her kids into the battered Boomerang. Every day a failed chat-show host and an alcoholic ex-quizmaster grimly lunch at the Kebab House in Zilchester Gardens. Oh yeah, and a writer lives round my way too. A guy in a pub pointed him out to me, and I've since seen him hanging out in Family Fun, the space-game parlour, and toting his blue laundry bag to the Whirlomat. I don't think they can pay writers that much, do you ?... He stops and stares at me. His face is cramped and incredulous — also knowing, with a smirk of collusion in his bent smile. He gives me the creeps. 'Know me again would you?' I once shouted across the street, and gave him a V-sign and a warning fist. He stood his ground, and stared. This writer's name, they tell me, is Martin Amis. Never heard of him. Do you know his stuff at all?