Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

— You should marry her, said Caycee. — If you love her, then you should marry her.

And she was right, of course, and in fact I so agreed with this argument that I had already taken her advice long ago and married Candy, but overlapping with this feeling was another feeling that I think was closer to regret that I was almost definitely the only man to have ever discovered inside a sauna a spirit of established order. But this was itself overlapping with another feeling, maybe a lostness or lustness. I scented coconut oil. Or whatever scent it was on Caycee’s body, I enjoyed it. I didn’t want to. But I did want. I also wanted to give an answer to her reasonable question. I wanted her to like me very much and approve of me. My mother always brought me up to think that it’s what you think that is important, and most especially in your dealings with women. I have a rich and sympathetic inner life! Isn’t that something after all? And so I think that it was important to me that this girl might think of me as dainty, that I was swashbuckle, definitely, but also my friends all think I am very kind and I wanted her to know this too.

— We do have a dog, I said.

I do not know, however, what she thought of this — because she didn’t continue the conversation on the subject of my hound, she only replied by asking me if I wanted to go somewhere more private. And it felt sad, this business turn, but also I understood. It was a business, after all. And in a way — I don’t mean every way — I would have liked my mother to have seen this, the suavity with which I did this talk. My mother is always — in the hair salons and the floral outlets — questioning my relationship to money, like money is this cloud in which I rest like some putto with my trumpet, and I was proud that I could now rebut her, had I been ever able to tell her about this moment, which I possibly couldn’t. I had reached the limits of my privacy. I asked the price. The money was calculated, Caycee said, in half-hour sections. I was paying her for half an hour alone in a room. OK, I said. We could do whatever I liked, she said. And then I paused. I asked if I could just think about it, just for a moment, and I think I might have been possibly doing something that reminded me of flirting, although I think perhaps it wasn’t flirting, but only fear. I looked to Hiro for help but Hiro was now sitting at the bar, enjoying a second guava juice. My saint had abandoned me just when I did really need him. Then Caycee took my hand and it was very hot, her hand, and I felt very moved by her hand, the fact that it was real and hers and there. And perhaps I should have tried to think more clearly about what she was thinking, I’m very much aware that very few men, like, for instance, my father, ever tried to understand the thoughts of a woman, but also I had this idea that in the end these thoughts are basically the same as mine. Which meant that I did just trust her to see that I was overwhelmed with something that was perhaps not gratitude exactly but certainly close to gratitude. I mean it felt like this was some beneficence or other-worldliness, like those pictures of the Assumption, as if the world had been converted into a fine and golden light.

discovering urges of self-description

The reason I am telling you this is that this moment marked an important stage in my vocation. As we walked along a corridor, and Caycee took a key from a row on the wall, then entered a room and locked the door from inside, I was suddenly struck by a small fissure or split. It was definitely not easy, I reflected, to keep liking the things I did. If for instance things end up happening inside some casa of ill repute, well, the whole fluorescent question of likeability does impose itself. There is only so long, to choose an example from the life of my friend Kayvon, when your wife has happened on you being dildoed by another woman on your bathroom floor, that a person can convincingly keep on saying it wasn’t me . And I’m aware that the entire history of the theory of art is about removing the issue of the likeable from the picture, it’s only the philistine spectators like Nelson who say: Jeez, there was no one in the movie you’d want to like hang out with , but maybe sadly Nelson is on to something. I mean, why should anyone give you any attention? That’s a good question. And if they do, why should you be an asshole? It goes way beyond the moral, this whole problem. It goes into the deep dark mania to please. There were many things, I had to admit, that my mother would not admire about her child, if she knew the total truth. Confidante she was, but not entirely. Like for instance, and I am aware that still this is maybe small, but in fact I am not so sure that it’s really possible to differentiate between the small and massive in these matters, I used to watch gang bangs on the Internet. They turned me on. It’s true that very sweetly once Candy tried to tell me that there was nothing wrong with this entertainment. But Candy was always very kind. In one of the tapes a lovely girl whose given name was Chastity was being interviewed before her gang bang got under way. Chastity was wearing a grey vest with grey marl shorts. And then the man who was filming asked her if she wanted to say hi to anyone, like Hi Dad . — Oh that would be so awful, she said with a serious smile. She was thinking about this seriously. She said awful really sweetly, like offal . — I’ve got three younger brothers too, so that’d be so offal as well, I just hope they haven’t found out yet… And I was full of righteous fury. How could this man behind the camera make her feel ashamed? What right did he have? She was a nice person, a sweet person, this was surely obvious to even the most deranged viewer. In porn I mostly see tender feats of endurance on the part of these beautiful women. For what she was about to do was essentially altruistic for all her infinite spectators. I wanted to take her in my arms and let her rest. But I couldn’t, obviously, so I took my penis and concentrated on that instead, while watching her be sodomised — for if I had to say what I most liked I would have to probably sadly say it was when fucking a girl’s arsehole, how suddenly the tightness which had been the defining characteristic suddenly disappears: not that it loosens entirely, but it does. What I mean is that although the old-school problems of description are all about how well something matches the real world , maybe the future way of putting this will be all about the problems of getting over the nice and likeable. Maybe I’m exaggerating. I don’t know. I’m just saying, as I walked along that corridor, an old joke was occurring to me: This man looks like a corrupt idiot and acts like one, but don’t let that deceive you. He is a corrupt idiot . That’s basically the situation, I was thinking, of every talker in the universe. And I think it was then that I felt this sudden urge to write these things down. I missed the tearful saints and the curtained confessionals! Had I had my phone or other writing implement with me, a Dictaphone or felt-tip pen, I would have used them right away. I had a sudden mania for making diary entries and sportive sketches. Listen to me, it was like I was crying, on my banjo! I was so much larger, it turned out, than I had thought.

like his behaviour in this bedroom

Inside the room, Caycee turned to me and released her girdle and motioned that I should undress too. So I took off my dressing gown, which was in fact not difficult since I have always found those towelling dressing gowns difficult, so that in fact I had been shuffling with it held together in my hand along the heavy carpets. And I felt quite feminine and odd. I wonder if this is what women have to often feel, this denuding and unsureness. I was still in my plastic sandals. I wanted to take them off but also I was a little unsure about the carpet in this room and the general hygiene. Caycee was in transparent perspex platform heels and was remaining in them. The inequality upset or perplexed me but I wasn’t concentrating on my perplexity, I was thinking instead about her legs or rather between her legs, where there was a perfect smoothness. It was like the beauty of one of those drawings where in just four lines the genius artist has drawn a face. In the same way when she lay down there was only a smooth curve between her legs. So I lay down too, with my feet still resting on the floor, since while I didn’t want to remove my plastic sandals I also felt it was wrong to have sandals on a bed. It was dark and the air was heavy with her perfumes and also cleaning chemicals. And I now think that I should have been amazed but I wasn’t. I was only suddenly happy and it was like it always was when you are naked with a girl, except it was slightly not. She lay down and made various suggestions, and I realised that in fact I hadn’t thought at all about what we might actually do, which meant that until this point I had in no way thought about the possible dangers of disease. And I think maybe I hadn’t wanted to think this because the thought seemed to me to be shameful. But now that the thought was occurring I also really didn’t want this moment to have consequences that would haunt me for ever. But then, maybe that ancient fear was part of the whole experience. Also I am nervous in these kinds of performances. In a new environment, I can get perturbed. Sure, she was beautiful, but I was definitely thinking that in fact she in no way wanted me, and in that kind of situation I don’t think it’s unreasonable to find it difficult to be aroused. Even if a girl just seems ever so faintly bored or tired I want to stop and this was very much worse. Because I was also compelled to admit that while I was probably younger and perhaps with smoother skin than the usual customer or patron, I was not uniformly attractive, like I remember Romy saying that it was strange to be with me because in general she preferred a more muscular physique and although I said it didn’t upset me, still, I found it difficult to forget. So yes I was worried about the mechanics of my penis, and worried about disease, and worried that Caycee was really not wanting this to happen at all, and mostly I was now wanting to be finished so I could give her all the money I possessed and the transaction would be over. But on the other hand, I understand this, I could have therefore done nothing, I could have absolutely done nothing and just paid her anyway, and I suppose if I didn’t it was just that I have this constant curiosity. Always I will keep looking. So I said that maybe just a blow job and then she looked at me with what I hoped was a smile that understood that I was somewhere in my heart an honest man, I would only demand the most minimal things, and then she asked me if I wanted it with a condom or without. And I said something which I think now in retrospect sounds a little too innocent –