Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

ROMY

It’s like you just do things because of porn. Like take coming on my face. I do not like it. I am not interested. I do not want your come all over my mouth.

And I understood her but we still argued because in my opinion there was nothing intrinsically wrong with making things all Coney Island, the way they kept on adding attractions in the old days: the Roller Coaster, the Shoot-the-Chutes. I still think Manhattan is not Manhattan enough: it could do more with the artificial man-made illuminations. To which Romy said something like, but her point was, had he ever asked her? Actually sat down and thought: what does this cartoon character with steam coming out of her ears really think about this? I did see what she meant by that. The problem with the greater ideals is that you must achieve them with other people, and that can lead to confusing situations. Like here everyone did seem very happy, just having their conversations. If I imagined anything more, it would have only been massages with bikini girls, or maybe some oriental soapland where the emphasis was on scrubbing. So it was only when Hiro explained that you could go into a room with any of them that the real mystery of this place began to unfurl. And I knew that according to the usual terms of Wyman I should leave right away, but my worry was how excited I was feeling. It seemed to indicate that there could be a different way of understanding the situation. Just somewhere in the corner of my vision like one of those cartoon fairies I think I had a vision of Candy but it faded, it was like the brief exposure when you’re in the metro and it goes past another metro and for a moment you are staring at another person’s face instead of your reflection, but it still in the end does fade — for perhaps whatever sadness I might feel would be worth it for the new sensations I would have achieved, and especially when I thought that it was very unlikely this would happen to me again, never again would I find my way back to such a location, and that to do nothing here was something I would only ever regret. If utopia could be achieved in multiple perspectives among your friends, as Candy had observed, then why not also here, with strangers? Also I worried that now I was here it might seem haughty or even cold if I only sat and watched. I tried to think about the future, like perhaps two hours’ time. I think I thought that the worst I might feel would be that kind of sick hollow feeling the morning after you’ve drunk too much rye and smoked too much hashish. It was about as bad as that how I imagined it, the feeling afterwards. And after all, it’s easy to think that something has happened when in fact nothing has. There’s no reason everything has to be followed by a dark bad sadness, that would detach itself and stalk you like some mushy fetish with its matchstick hands and terrible toes. I think the brief occurs to us more than we sometimes think, as minute as the soft tearing sound the bubbles of washing-up foam make in the bowl in the sink. But I never quite managed to finish my moral calculations, because I was interrupted by Hiro smiling at a beautiful girl who was almost naked but not quite, who therefore sat down beside me and smiled. And as she did so my mind just went blank — like the way the wheels on a suitcase go suddenly softly silent when they move from the sidewalk’s tarmac onto lavish hotel carpet.

where he finds himself ascending

I’m usually bad at smiling but I tried to smile for her. I wanted her to see how polite I could be, and wanted to put her at her ease. Also I am vulnerable to female beauty, and sure, if you saw her at a party you might not have been amazed — but there she would have been in the ordinary modern clothes whereas here she was dressed in just some sort of fabric around her waist and I do not see this so often. In fact I do not think I have ever sat and talked to a topless stranger. I think there is something totally sexy about a girl who is topless only, I say sexy but maybe there’s also something sad. Let’s say it can be sad or sexy, depending on the situation. For instance I love it when Candy is only in her jeans when she is half dressing or undressing, but there the toplessness can sometimes seem maybe also vulnerable, as if something is simply incomplete, whereas here it was only alluring. And it occurred to me to compliment this girl and so I said something like:

— You’re really pretty.

I’m not so good with words in social situations. As I said, I suffer from shyness. But she looked at me with affection, and told me her name. And I know that this name was almost definitely made up but still, like everything, a person needs a name, even if that name isn’t real.

— I’m Caycee, said Caycee.

And we sat there. Hiro was now looking away, like he was a calm philosopher or mystic saint. I sort of understood. I think that he was nervous, and definitely it was awkward, this sitting with a girl whom you don’t know and is almost naked, beside your friend, with both of you in towelling robes. It was definitely a new form of human interaction. But also I approved of this, because I am thinking that the future will more and more be all about these kinds of interaction, where everything usual is blurred. I was definitely excited. Her eyes were blue and her hair was blonde and her breasts were small, but I didn’t care about her eyes or her hair or her breasts, I was beyond the entire physical, because I was in the pure cartoon, in the seventh sphere, like that man who dreamed he was looking down on the very tiny earth — I do have a gift for separating or levitating like that. I was feeling very separate and also like I wanted very much to make this moment happy, like it would prove my expanding ideals not by having sex or something like that but just by being able to maintain a gentle conversation. And because I think it’s always odd to be without conversation when a woman is naked in front of you, or almost, because I may not be suave but I know the proprieties, I tried to keep talking.

— You’re lovely, I said.

I really do have no vocabulary.

— You are how old? asked Caycee.

— Oh kind of thirty, I gravely replied.

And as I said this it seemed a sad age. It just seemed very old and very young together. Then Caycee asked if I was married, or had a girlfriend, and for a moment I worried that I had left my wedding ring on, but most of all it was the innocent directness of this question which troubled me. It surprised me in the way I suppose a fledgling roué might be surprised if his mistress asks after his wife. I didn’t have the courage to say I was married. I wanted her to like me. And yet also I didn’t want to seem like one of those sad people who come into a place like this because they are without anyone who loves them, and so I settled on a compromise and told her that I had a girlfriend. But this then led to an inquisition from Caycee, something polite like –

— Do you live together?

Then if we did live together, because I told her the truth and said that we did, other questions followed, according to Caycee’s reasoning.

— So when are you getting married? she asked.

She thought marriage was very important. It was a very difficult conversation, not only in the dialogue itself but also in the fact that one of us was essentially naked and the other one was not. I looked at the soft nipples on her breasts. She looked at me looking. She pinched them into pertness like that was what I wanted. And when I replied that it was such a strange question, whether I would marry my girlfriend, I also wanted to add that I didn’t mean she shouldn’t ask such a question, and that in fact I was grateful for her proposition that if one of us was naked then a new honesty might be possible — even if I wasn’t being honest, although in a way perhaps I was, and even if also it might be argued that this was not in fact her idea, the nakedness, that in fact there were rules, and commercial expectations, but I really did think that these commercial considerations were, as they might say in commerce, only secondary .