Will Self - Shark

I’ve only myself to blame for . Zack had picked him up one night when he’d been at Finch’s, roughing it. Lesley, he realised later, must’ve been smoothing it — because he was wearing a clean shirt and his hair had been washed within the week. He’d looked sharp and was drinking modest halfs of Double Diamond. — But, again, with clear hindsight Zack saw a tachycardic blur: Lesley had been propped up against the bar by pills, as he dropped the Shrimp, Terry, Stanley and Antonioni with a sort of aplomb, then spoke of his own photography and film-making — largely amateur, of course — and told of wildcat recording sessions: planting microphones in the soft palate of Esalen primal-screaming sessions, or insinuating them into Keith Richards’s guitar case — You can ’ear ’im shooting up back stage, ma-an. . There’d also been the noise-activated devices that, fairy-like, he had pushed under Beat pillows, so that, come daylight, Alex, William and Allen could listen back to their own freewheeling sleep talk. — Emboldened. . no, drunk . . Zack had traced his own counter-cultural map on to Lesley’s: they’d coincided at the Congress for the Dialectics of Liberation, where Lesley had been minding Stokely Carmichael. . a gone spade, ma-an . . and Zack had breached the analytic confessional by bragging that he’d had at least one of the Angries on his couch. — Still smarting from a row with Miriam during which she’d characteristically belittled me , Zack had so enjoyed reinventing a louche and possibly dangerous persona for himself that he’d invited Lesley home to Willesden on the spot — only to end up with. . this : he and Radio Gourevitch in cahoots, nuzzling up with the hapless Kid under the Bodhi trees bellying and the lotuses looping. . in the veggie light — the three of them participants in. . a perpetual bed-in timed by a broken floral clock . At least Zack could now acknowledge this harsh truth about himself: I was charmed by him, just as I was charmed four years ago by Roger. They both made me feel I was accepted — a younger boy invited to play the big ones’ game. — Another Bakerloo Line train has passed, offloading its freight of silence — and it’s on to this vacuous heap that Busner drops his bombshell: What’s in that plastic bag? The three buddysattvas look up at him brazenly, and Lesley conjures the ear of the bag back out of his pocket. . then the whole white rabbit . S’blotters, man, he lisps, I made ’em up with my little dropper —. Yeah, yeah, Radio Gourevitch says, you go from place to place, man — you’re Johnny Acidseed. Oh, I see, LSD, Busner says, and, revolted by his own prefectural tone, he lifts one foot nonchalantly from the itchy coconut matting to scratch it with the big toenail of the other. It’s a super-strong batch, Lesley says, super-strong and super-pure — I got it from this gone spade down at the Hippy Hotel —. I wish, Busner remarks facetiously, that all these gone spades really would be. . gone. At this Gourevitch levitates from the mattress. Upright, he assumes all of his asinine hipster pomposity: he’s fully dressed in a caramel-coloured leather jacket, cavalry twill trousers, cowboy boots with Cuban heels and a thin nylon jumper the obscene colour of crêpe bandages, from the rollneck of which his Adam’s apple. . prolapses while he blathers, Yeah, beautiful day, Zack, totally peachy. We — my good friends here and myself, that is — thought we’d go on a journey to celebrate the vernal return, a sea cruise, maybe — or a plane flight —. He means, the Kid is emboldened to interrupt, we’re gonna take a trip. Radio Gourevitch’s face. . is right in mine . Zack stares deep into the emptiness of Roger’s demonic eyes, while he hears muffled enthusiasm coming from the kitchen: This has been Johnnie Walker playing down the Radio 1 chart for this week, and that was Norman Greenbaum in at num—. I’m numb, Busner thinks, that’s what I am: numb — and powerless to resist all these Johnnies. . — He’s certain Gourevitch has had sex with Podge — he’s a hunch Lesley has too. He wouldn’t be surprised if they’d interfered . . with Irene and Eileen as well —. We need, Gourevitch pleads, to have some kind of a showdown round here, kick out the jams, shake up the snow globe — there’re circles within circles, my friend, and it follows, counter-clockwise, there’re repressions within repressions. Y’know how it goes, Zack: Jack and Jill, up that goddamn hill — but what if she don’t wanna get a pail of water, man? What if she feels he’s pressuring her to get it — he makes like it’s a. . a. . mutual decision, but has she ever been given a real choice, maybe she doesn’t dig water? Busner says testily, Yes, yes, I know all this — it’s classic double-bind stuff, so what? Gourevitch rolls his shoulders and yawns eggily in Zack’s face: So what, Zack? So what? You slay me with your so whats — your so whats explode in my face, man, poof! Poofs of indifference, that’s what they are, a poisonous, radioactive indifference that, like, goes off whenever you get too close. . Throughout this speech Busner stares, paralysed, at the radome of Gourevitch’s forehead, even as this loudhailing alerts him that: The predator is already inside — what defences I had are long since breached! . . f’rinstance —. For instance, what? Zack says, and Radio Gourevitch, running both his hands through his igneous locks, turns up his volume: Yesterday, man! In the park — I shoulda never gone after Claude like that, but you made me do it! I coulda majorly freaked him out — traumatised him! He coulda thought he’d been checked back into the goddamn Graybar Hotel! But Rodge, Zack says, Claude was about to. . to pounce on those girls on the pedalo, you must appreciate that we’re already on thin ice here as it is. The Meehans over the road — they’re just itching to call the police on us. Zack says this, and he gives his freshly shaven chin a Socratic stroke before continuing: Are you sure under the circumstances that it’s wise for us —. Yes, Gourevitch spittles, yes! It’s the acme of wisdom, Zack — the antagonism between us is tearing this community to pieces. You and me, you and I. . we gotta stop playing the alpha-male game — we need har-mo-ny, we need to dissolve our fragile egos into a group mind, and we gotta get everyone on the same plane —. Everyone? — Busner doesn’t feel humiliated, standing there in his towel — the Evo-Stik on my balls happened a long time since. He moves to where the window is hidden by still more Bodhisattvas, all of them on the same plane , and, pulling them apart, he opens the catch. Out there, on the broken concrete, Oscar is coincidentally licking his balls. . faithful yet with beast . Busner takes a deep breath and turns back to the trio in the room: When you say everyone, Roger, who exactly has had one of these, um, blotters? Gourevitch looks shifty — and shifts from heel to heel. Well, obviously it ain’t just me ’n’ you, Zack, the bad vibes are ricocheting all round the saloon — the chicks’ve all got it in for Claude, they’d murder him if we — he waves a leafy hand in the bulb-light. . and it spirals down — weren’t here to keep the peace. Ah, yes! Zack thinks, it always circles back to the Creep, whatever else he may be he remains Roger’s baby. — The tale of their meeting was Radio Gourevitch’s foundational myth: the fledgling yogibod was doing his part of the research that led to On Feigning Insanity in Mental Institutions. Zack had of course read the paper — it’d been a cause célèbre — but the list of co-authors’ names took up an entire page in Science, Roger being just one among scores of pseudo-patients. .Читать дальше