James Kelman - A Disaffection

And it wouldnt have been difficult for him to play with her there, something very different from playing ‘for’ her. The distinction was keen, and once discovered self-evidently true. And it probably shed a fair amount of light on the whole subject of the performing player. Or rather, the player who also performs in public. That Dostoievski story again: taking the pipes round to that bloke’s house and playing them for all the relatives and well-wishers. It actually made you feel like hiding your face to even think about it it was so bloody horrendous. That brink yet again. He would be as well trying it inside the gas oven. That was what you called a brink. No nonsense about it. Just stick in the head and good-night folks, sorry about the mess on the kitchen floor, putting my big clumsy foot in your basin of fucking jelly. O god and the chest is going going going, the pulse pumping in the temple and the ticking wrists the ticking wrists. That’s the recognition of it. That’s the recognition, the existential flash; revelation; being and not being; fucking oblivion. Stick in the head and turn on the tap. Just play them in public, play them in public. Like unveiling a new painting. Here is my latest masterpiece. I shall be at such and such a place at such and such a time, just pay your admission fee and I’ll be turning up to perform. I shall be blowing the notes; the thing of such timbre, you will not recover, you cannot recover, it shall not be possible to recover. Then there’s the set of the eyebrows.

Patrick had his mug of tea and he sat close to the fire, sipping steadily, with a fair degree of contentment. And it might well have been one of these moments of luxurious absorption; so total that reflection was not the thing at all, not at all.

He was tired, a sudden event. It was as if he spent whole days doing natural chores and the build-up from it was so unobtrusively exhausting that eventually there had to come the collapse. Perhaps if he closed his eyes for a wee while he would awaken refreshed. Also, having had the couple of drinks during the day, this helped engender the lurch into dreamland. One further motive for the resignation from booze, the amount of time he gave over to sleep. So much so the term ‘sleep’ had to be examined, was there something more apposite, what about opiate. Opiation. The brain lulled into opiation through the ravages of alcohol and deep-fried food. That build up of grease and alcohol hardening all the outlets roundabout the heart which has to result in a blockage, the blood not pumping as well up to the brain as it should, thus brain damage, the death of the brain. If the truth be told and looked at unsentimentally then it has to be said that the fish and the chips were not of the best. The Rossis were an okay family but they really should have been throwing the fish overboard far sooner than they did. And here; this is odd; Patrick had a very strange dream about fish some night or other very recently for fuck sake, catching one and trying to dash out its brains on the bottom of the rowing boat because he didni know the ordinary scientific method of death-dealing. He had the poor old fish by the tail but it kept on fighting and slip-sliding its way out his hand and him trying to grip it and then dashing its head on the bottom of the boat until that dirty stuff came oozing out and it was sickening and in that shudder he sent it overboard.

Masturbatory. The ‘ordinary scientific’ must be the ordinary act of sexual intercourse and so on. Although it hadnt been a wet dream. Nowhere near it in fact. More like a dry nightmare if anything. Best not to analyse such things — especially since it sounded a bit sado-masochistic.

There was a letter to be written to Eric right enough. That was something to be done, if he was really desperate. It was good to keep in touch with folk and apart from Eric he didni really have anyone to keep in touch with. Maybe he should get a pen-pal, a pen-chum, a pen-mate, a friend of the pen, one whose existence

Eric was the only person he remained in contact with from university and probably that was because they had gone on to teachers’ trainers together. He was okay, in some ways quite a good guy in other ways a bit of a pest. He taught in a further education college down in East Anglia and was very involved in a club for sailing boats. He was born an Englishman. His maw and da were Scottish. And he had married an English lassie a couple of years back whom Pat had yet to meet. Eric had sent three invitations to go down and visit. Maybe it was now time to accept — if Eric sent a fourth. But Pat owed two letters. He just couldni get down to writing to him. What would he actually talk about! But if he did go down and visit they could maybe sail a boat across to France. That would be good and exciting. Patrick had never sailed on a boat before but it looked great from what you saw at the pictures. And Eric’s missis probably had pals she could bring to make up a foursome.

Another mug of tea.

Two or three days, that’s all he would have been able to take of Eric. No more. Then they’d be at each other’s throat. At least Pat would. Eric would just be slightly taken aback then conciliatory. They were all like that, these middle-class bastards, lying fuckers, so absolutely hypocritical it was a way of being, they never even bothered reflecting on it, all these lecturers and students, so smugly satisfied and content to let you say what you wanted to say and do what you wanted to do, just so long as it didnt threaten what they possessed, and what did they possess why fucking everything, the best of health and the best of fucking everything else. It was a joke, just a joke. But it was pointless being bitter. It was pointless being bitter. Being bitter was fucking silly. Patrick had stopped being bitter. What it did was just fucking stopped you from doing things. At uni it stopped him from doing things. If he had stopped being bitter he might have done things. What might he have done? He might have done things. Obviously he canni be expected to say what exactly these things are. But there are things he would definitely have done and that means he would not right at this fucking moment be a fucking damn bloody bastarn schoolteacher, one who does fuck all in the world bar christ almighty nothing at all. It was them wanted him to go to uni and no him, his parents and his fucking big brother. It was all so stupit. Really, so stupid. He had not wanted to go. And even once he was there it was something else he was after. Something else altogether. But how do you explain that to your family. What — explain what? Explain what you had wanted to do. Patrick had wanted to do something. That was fucking definite. But what had it been? What actually had that thing been, the thing he wanted to do. Something massive, that’s all, something massive.

There was no tea left in the mug. He needed another mug, mugful. Or did he? Did he need more? No. What did he need? Nothing.

8 o’clock on a Friday evening. Surely he needed something! No, he didnt need a thing, he did not need an anything, the thing that he did not need was an anything, there was not that anything that he needed in this world, that anything was not there, it was not here.

Alison and the others would still be chatting the night away at the arts centre. Let them.

He could go and get Gavin out for a pint. They had been going through a less than friendly stage this past while but so what. Go and get Gavin out for a pint. But Nicola isni too keen on Gavin going out for pints. Then go and offer to babysit so they can go out for a pint. Or to the pictures or something. Too late. But maybe he could get a couple of cans and a bottle of wine and just go and visit, have a yap — maybe even have a quiet word with Nicola about the certain Mirs Houston because if you canni speak to your sister-in-law who in the name of the holies etcetera.