Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

— You’re such a perfectionist, said Hiro, making his coffee very heavy with much sugar, then swallowing some pills. — Chill out a little.

Or I would come downstairs and encounter strange vignettes and conversations, things like:

HIRO

I mean, what about when you’ve just had the worst haircut in the world before you meet someone for possibly the first and only time and you very much want to explain that this is not your usual look although of course you can’t? You are resigned to the real you being absent from the picture. You do not think the real you is the haircut but you cannot explain this –

CANDY

You OK?

HIRO

Well, sure.

MY MOTHER

That’s excellent.

HIRO

I mean, I don’t know how I’d know.

While before each party Hiro would arrive from one of his outings with a selection pack for everyone, and it’s very possible the narcotics were primarily to blame for this whole sense I was having of entanglement and Fate. Like I keep forgetting to mention one strange message. Is this Danger Mouse? a stranger wrote to me, from an unusual country code. Am I talking with SuperTed? But then, you get a lot of mixups in this time with much available technology so I tried to think no more about it. Instead I made sandwiches consisting mainly of Kewpie mayo and around me happened the great arguments of the day.

MY MOTHER

He needs a job.

MY FATHER

Absolutely.

MY MOTHER

Why don’t you go back to your work and ask?

ME

I did ask.

MY MOTHER

And?

ME

You know this.

MY FATHER

He needs a job.

For if you are very much not importing lapis lazuli to be sold in an airport concession, or supplying mini pretzels and other snacks to a hotel chain on the Pacific coast, then the time you would have spent in such activities will need to pass in other ways. Time was clumped and thick, like time was congee. It was a pocket or pause and when that’s the scenario it’s hard not to start experimenting with what’s most available, like how long you can drink a coffee, or how many gore movies you can watch in a row. And while I know I said I gave up work for this dream of art, I suppose I should also admit that I had so many doubts in that regard — doubts as to whether this was in fact too late, that this was the end of youth, the end of stories, the end of art, doubts which will enter this account, but not just yet — that such a method of occupying time was only the slightest tremor on the edges of my thinking. I preferred the idea that a life might be a work of art instead. For my new leisure, it turned out, permitted also the invention of new categories of phenomena — dark possibilities of fantasy and deceit.

which allows our hero to develop new desires

No wonder that the principal way I spent my time when I was not with Hiro was therefore in pursuing my adventure with Romy. As a way of spending time it was definitely one of the most intensive, involving as it did so much composition of email and other messages, and framing of photos, and then the timing of how or when to send them. And then waiting for all the various replies. Or if there was in fact no reply, then obsessive consideration of the reasons for this absence. I understand, this way of spending time, in at least the language of the Churches or any other orthodox synagogue and ashram, does make me a no-good person. But show me the soul that is not a trash vortex, gathering its plastic in the otherwise bright blue sea. For the deep temptation of massive leisure time that is perhaps not obvious to you as you read this on the metro, is that leisure time gives you all the means you need to deceive other people: it is you who are commuting and hard-pressed with deadlines who are going to be luckily limited in your interior life, and therefore unavailable to temptation. Whereas the unemployed have so much time at their disposal. When a person needs a secret phone call or long meeting it is always possible to arrange. Not that I don’t understand the potential priestly disapproval of such lies and infidelity. But once you discover how pleasant are the acts which hurt another person without them knowing, and how easy it is to do, then it’s difficult to resist, for the knowledge is then forced on you against your will that the terms of this world are much softer than you ever assumed. I think that Romy knew this, too. She liked Candy and did not want to hurt her either, but why, we used to discuss with each other, should anyone ever be hurt? The ideal was just pure lightness.

shielded by the alibi of his sadness

Such purity in a boy! You generalissimos and judges who deplore this state of affairs, that I enjoyed myself in this rainbow bubble while my wife worried about me very much, and encouraged me to enjoy myself in any way I wanted, thus making her an accessory in her own cuckoldry, or whatever old-fashioned word is necessary for such actions — can you not see that we had no other choice? It was our general rule. If Candy ever showed she was worried about my domestic state, then it would show she did not believe me and my confession that I was sad, and since she had to show she believed me, that she was convinced that my sadness was so great that it led to me leaving parties and sitting alone as nighthawk or madman in the diners and cafes of this city, she therefore also had to be now all compassion and disquiet. She encouraged me to spend any time I wanted in nocturnal excursions, since she wanted me to be happy, and she did this with so much tenderness that I started to believe her, and imagined myself heavy sad. But then, perhaps this is not so insane. I mean, how ill is ill? If you imagine something afflicts you that is in fact not afflicting you, how can you ever tell the difference? Inside the thought balloon it is absolutely as bad as the medical textbook thinks. Just as when we try to itemise our feelings the problem is that, given how many feelings can be inserted between our thinking and our worst motivations, is it really dishonesty in a person when they do not acknowledge their obscene and gorgeous urges? In such an impasse I would stand there in the kitchen making doughnuts or other treats, while Candy stood there in her suits, trying to understand my difficult emotions.

CANDY

How’s things, baby?

ME

Not so good.

CANDY

You think?

ME

I do.

CANDY

Well, you don’t rush yourself, OK?

Such power does lying have! It really can do anything. And maybe this word power is not untrue. I think it might be true that in this world I am blessed with an entirely unmerited power.

but which creates upsetting nocturnal fantasies

But while I did enjoy myself very much, exploring my conversations with Romy which were now heavy with the talk of apertures and openings, or if not direct talk then the intimation that such talk was on the brink of substitution, it was also true that there was this darkness I could not ignore, among the brightness, like the black circle left in your eyes if you’ve been suddenly just dazzled. To be thinking about two people at once was very difficult, and its effects could be seen in my secret nocturnal thinking. For at this time as well as picturing Romy in various undressed postures, I also sometimes pictured her dead or at least just gently disappeared. It happened not only in my dreams but also very consciously. Or instead I imagined it the other way round and it was Candy who was dead, thus leaving me alone with Romy, which was in some ways good and in some ways not so good. Although of course I have never really known any aloneness of any kind, nor ever experienced in any form what it feels like for the people you love to be dead; there is no major death in my family or among my friends or lovers or really acquaintances — until the events I am describing, my life had been marked by an absolute absence of blood — and I think that’s also true for many of the people around me, like Wyman or Nelson and their cartoon families. It makes me comical and innocent, absolutely, but perhaps it also offers a perspective on the death of other people that usefully has no emotion in it. For although ever since I was young I was taught by my mother that you should never wish anyone dead, still, surely it must be usual to consider the death of someone else — it must happen even if you are a woodsman or bond trader? A death can be a definite solution for some otherwise impossible situations, and one such situation was this scenario where I pursued multiple lives when really you are meant to pursue no more than one at a time. I could not see how the various lies would be resolved and it upset me, and so I was often given to conversations with Romy in my head, where I would say: Romy, qué pasa? And she was tearfully saying to me goodbye, as I softly poisoned her. At the time I did feel guilty about this and thought that such thoughts were shameful, but I wonder now if the fault was really mine or instead belonged much more widely and to society, for should it really be true that such a multiplication of one’s affections must be always circumscribed? All I was trying to do was solve an infinite conundrum.