Joe Haldeman - Worlds

Nudism strikes me as un-British, but it’s part of the bath’s attraction. All very homey to me, of course, but some of our group found other things to do. Jeff and Manny joined me and Violet, and it was a nice lazy time. Jeff does look startlingly like Charlie, except in penile particulars (I’ve never been able to look at an elephant without thinking of Charlie). Both Jeff and Manny were circumcised, something I’d seen only among Devon’s World tourists. Manny is Jewish, but I wonder what Jeff’s reason is.

Violet is spectacularly endowed and she moves pretty well when men are watching. Jeff and Manny got into the water fast, obviously to immerse their salutes. Pity.

(I’d like to be a man for a day so I could figure out their odd behavior. Erection is just an attractive reflex, but it dominates them so. Maybe it drains the blood out of their brains.)

The others ran from the hot bath to splash into the cold one, but that’s a form of masochism I’ve never been able to understand. The dressing rooms were segregated; Violet and I sat under the hair dryers and discussed the two men. She likes Manny and I thought it was mutual. I told her I’d be glad to get lost for the evening, if she’d like to have the room, but look what happened.

On the floater back to London, Violet whispered something to Manny, then Manny whispered something to Jeff, then Jeff whispered something to Violet, and I was starting to feel really excluded, then Jeff brought the whispering over to me. He said that Violet and Manny wanted to spend the night together, and would I mind taking the other bed in his room.

Well, it was time to strike, of course. I told him I would very much mind taking the other bed, but could be cajoled into his own. He laughed, relieved, and said something about making the floater speed up.

He was really remarkable. A totally different person in bed, very warm and passionate and unselfconscious. And he has recuperative powers like Charlie’s. We made love twice and went out for dinner, then came back and had each other for dessert. Then the goat poked me awake sometime after midnight (actually, that was a nice dreamy time; I don’t think either of us was completely awake—succubus and incubus). It was a merry Christmas (written 26 Dec.).

26 December. Jeff and I went to the Palace of Westminster to see Parliament in action. There was not too much action really, since most of the members were on vacation.

We watched a debate in the House of Lords from the “Strangers’ Gallery.” They were discussing a bill that the House of Commons had passed, regarding standards of analysis for the regulation of dairy products. One Lord denounced the bill very eloquently and bitterly. Another asked him how many dairy cattle he owned; he admitted it was something over two thousand head. For some reason I had this outrageous vision of two thousand cows loose in the park, in New New.

I have to admit I was a little repelled by the obvious accumulation of wealth and power in the House of Lords. It seemed to me to epitomize the philosophical gulf between Earth governments and the administration of New New. No one needs that kind of wealth. No one who loves power should be allowed to administer to the will of the people.

But at least it’s displayed openly here. The people who rule the United States do it behind the closed doors of boardrooms.

Jeff is a changed man. Well, not changed, really; it’s just that he wasn’t truly himself all last quarter. He was grinding hard at school and working overtime every week, to accumulate leave. Also, he had been in love with a woman, proposed marriage and was rejected, about a week before I first met him. When he kissed me Christmas Eve it was the first physical contact he’d had with a woman since August.

We had a long and earnest talk in a Westminster pub. I told him all about Daniel, and how I felt about sex and affection. It looks safe. Right now he also needs a friend rather than a lover.

We went back to the hotel and sealed our bargain. I asked him about the circumcision, and he said it was a line tradition. A man’s first son is circumcised; only first sons are eligible for membership in the elders’ council—if they stay in the line long enough to be an elder. I told him I wouldn’t stay in any line that chopped off a piece of my body when I was too young to have a say in the matter. He shrugged that off, and pointed out (speaking of barbarism) that at least he had never undergone voluntary mutilation, such as having his ears pierced.

I didn’t pursue the argument, since I’ve never had a foreskin that didn’t belong to someone else, and also didn’t mention what I thought about a line that only allowed men to be leaders, though I suppose he knows me well enough to know what I’d say about that.

There is the obvious problem, that I’m not going to write down. I’ll be careful.

(27 December-30 December: Stratford-on-Avon, Scotland, Wales, York and the Yorkshire Moors, Killarney, Limerick)

30 December…. that it’s easy to understand why John was so impressed by the Irish countryside. Even in mid-winter it’s beautiful; I’d love to see it in the spring.

We haven’t seen much of Dublin except for the zoo, which is unforgettable. The regular part of it is impressive, more variety than the Bronx one, with the animals in environments that resemble their native habitats. But it’s the O’Connor Laboratory exhibit that draws people from all over the world.

Research in genetic manipulation is legal in Ireland (though not on humans), and the O’Connor people have set up a display in the zoo to help finance their work. The ticket was fifty pounds, with student discount.

The ant is the thing that stays with me the most. It was the size of a dog, nearly a meter long. Swimming around mysteriously in a tank of pale blue fluid (it had to float, they explained, because its legs would not support its weight in gravity). There was a goat with two heads, with her two-headed kid. A hairless chimpanzee that looked like a grotesquely malformed old man. Dwarf bats like ugly little moths. There was a shrew that seemed normal but had been alive for fifteen years, ten times its normal life span…..

31 December. If London is the place to spend Christmas, there’s no place like Dublin for New Year’s Eve. Oops, I should have labeled that January 1st It’s 2:30 a.m., and I am trying to control my handwriting here, after ten or twelve pints of good Guinness and one glass of champagne, writing in a brightly lit hotel room with Mr. Jeffrey Hawkings slung sideways over the only bed, snoring like a dragon.

John never told me about writing your initials. You can take your finger and write your initials on the top of the foam on a glass of Guinness, and the letters just stay there all the while. While you drink it down. Real Guinness, that is to say, that you can only get here. Good thing I don’t live here, I’d weigh 100 kg. by now. Jeff was a little silly about all the stout I consumed. In America, heroic beer consumption is a male preserve. Ha! Who’s awake, Jeffrey? Score one for the slits.

Must watch the language. These Irish are wonderful friendly people but they expect ladies, lie-dees, to be sort of polite and nice. Maybe I shouldn’t have sung the one about the jolly tinker. Most of them knew it, though.

Girl, you are drunk. Will take a hangover pill and leave the bottle in easy reach. Push Jeff on the floor. No, just lie crossways over him. I could sleep on a fence.

2 January…. after the basic tour, Jeff went off to visit the headquarters of Interpol, the European equivalent of the FBI (combined with the CIB, I guess). Violet speaks some French, so I stuck with her.

Going from Dublin to Paris is almost as big a jolt as going from the Worlds to the Earth. Not even considering the language difference. Ireland is much like New New, as John had said, in its pace of life, the automatically expected friendliness and sharing. France, or at least Paris, seems even more tense and fast-moving than New York City. (I understand this quality is a modern one, of which old folks disapprove.)