Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

— Well, what do you think would be better? I asked — like I was in a cafeteria lunch queue or massage spa deluxe.

— I think for the end it’s better with, said Caycee.

So she did it with a condom. I lay down on my back and looked away, in the familiar guise of the nineteenth-century wife. I also wasn’t sure that I had an erection at all. It was like I was in such a panic that I had lost all feeling or awareness of my penis, like the frankfurter must feel inside a corn dog. I just assumed that if she was carrying on, then some version of an erection must exist, but perhaps such an occurrence is all too common in these situations and Caycee was so civilised that she could cope with soft extremities, like the older woman in that old movie instructing a soldier in the definitions of fiasco . She was kind of crouching over me to one side and I asked her if I could touch, and she nodded yes. So I touched the skin inside her buttocks, the rougher skin and the wrinkled hole. Then I touched her where normally it would be slippery and wet but here it was very dry and very smooth. And I did feel a slight disappointment at this absolute lack of wetness. I know there is no reason she would be finding this exciting but there was a part of me that did, or hoped she might. I couldn’t help it. So I tried to think about something else. At first I was just thinking that in fact this was the first time I had ever had a blow job with a condom on, and couldn’t really work out what it was feeling like, but in so far as this was a novelty the greater novelty, obviously, was the fact that I was paying this girl to put my penis in her mouth, but before any of these thoughts could continue towards conclusions I had come. It was definitely the fastest orgasm of my life. Slightly I was relieved that therefore if I had come, presumably I had been erect. But still, I could not conceal from myself a disappointment. She tied the condom in the most lissom and minute of motions. She was very neat, and I thought that in fact there is nothing neater than coming in a girl’s mouth. People think it’s mess but that isn’t true. I came inside a condom inside her tidy mouth. How domestic can you get?

— That was quick, she said.

I wasn’t concentrating so hard on her tone but I think it sounded more like she was pleased than that she was being sarcastic or ironic. I think from her point of view I must have represented good value for money. It also added to the tone I was hoping we had developed of being friends, or in which I tried not to impose. And then I realised that while if this was real life, and it was of course, but if it was let’s say another aspect of real life where we had met as normal in a bar and afterwards found ourselves in such an intimate environment then we would have developed in this aftermath a conversation, and this is something I always like, to develop conversation, because it did feel that maybe there were things we needed to discuss, but here she was wanting me now to just get dressed. And so I did. I didn’t want to upset her at all. She was very nice and personable.

in which all moral values are revised

We walked back down the corridor and I went into the changing room while she stood outside, waiting, and I came back with all the cash I had, because I wanted to show my gratefulness. I tipped her what was possibly double the actual payment. But then I am always unhappy with tipping, because the tip is saying that the system of society has failed, that the price advertised is not equal to the service rendered, and of course, señoritas, the system has failed, of this we have no doubt, but the tip therefore becomes the place where somehow restitution will be made. Even if in doing so it struck me that I was committing another injustice, since this cash of mine that I had given to Caycee was in fact really my father’s, because all the money I had right now was given to me by my father, and it felt a little wrong that I had used it for this purpose, rather than on improving books. That felt like the greater betrayal, even, than the betrayal of my marriage vows with Candy — and so my true feeling at the moment, a little like the morning I had woken up beside Romy, was more like nostalgia, like I wanted to call Candy right there and listen to her voice. She just seemed very far away, like I wanted to be talking to her, even if of course she was the absolute person to whom I could never tell this tale. I would have to make do with my voice inside my head, and other confidants, like Hiro. And so I went back into the salon, where Hiro gazed at me.

— You totally did it? he said.

— Well, not entirely, I said.

— Me too, said Hiro.

— What do you mean? I said.

— We were talking and she said that she was tired. She said she’d been working twelve hours.

— Uh-huh, I said.

— So I gave her a massage instead.

I envied him, I really did. Somehow Hiro had managed to have a sweeter experience than I had. But that’s what happens when you hang out with someone way ditzier than Buddha. It destroys all your moral faith.

the basis of larger schemes

Already I was feeling that in the matter of world- transformation, we were maybe quite advanced, we were extending new manners of behaving in every direction, stretching out the world, like stretching out the dough to make a pizza, but in Hiro’s opinion we were losing ourselves in abstraction and inaction. We had no grander scheme.

HIRO

This could carry on for ever.

ME

You’re bored.

HIRO

I am more than bored. I am frustrated.

Our analyses of feelings, and feelings about feelings, in which we specialised, thought Hiro, were not enough, or at least, while possibly amusing in themselves, they were not the proper way to live. We needed larger activities. Or this was what he announced one dark morning in a cafe, when we discovered that we could only pay for one tea, and one elderflower doughnut, for one of Hiro’s aims was always to exist as gigantically as possible — and I had to admit that I agreed with him. When you have no resources it’s not easy to create ideal communities. And recently my father had decided to end the money he was giving me, being as it was spent on so many luxuries and lazy pursuits — not that he disapproved of those in themselves, he wanted to emphasise, he just disliked being the person who was funding them for other people. By which I guess he did mean Hiro. He tended to think you should fund your very own laziness, and while I tried to wonder if maybe the truest form of resistance to the world in its current form is to waste the money of other people, I did not have the heart for it. Possibly I agreed with my father too. For to be as dependent as I was seemed to me in no way a good profession.

MY FATHER

At your age I had already founded a business.

ME

But that’s my point.

MY FATHER

It wasn’t easy.

ME

It’s not so easy to be me.

To have it difficult in your early years, I think, is a good recipe for self-respect. Whereas to have it good — to be the one on the sunlounger beside plashing fountains exclaiming che beleza! — is definitely to have it bad. Which is just a more general way of putting the sentence: I live at home with my mother and father and wife and I feel as if in constant pain . To come from a family is unavoidable, of course, but also it’s a terrible affliction. There is no amount of white pills that can make this cloud feel better. And when life does this to you, it’s difficult to react very well. I suppose depression would be one way of describing my ongoing state, but I preferred the more romantic terms that were once in vogue, like melancholy . My therapist said no. She said I should say depression . But that was long ago. I grew up in so much comfort I was totally dependent. To the zillionaire I suppose it wasn’t much. I just knew that I could always go home, in a taxi, and there would be clean sheets on the bed, and maybe the window open slightly so that the small sounds of the city could be heard, and downstairs my mother would be making me hot chocolate. Elsewhere there were addicts to junk burgers or to malls or sleeping pills. Me I was addicted to my station in life’s bazaar. Don’t you think such comfort might not be so good for a nature like mine? I don’t mean my parents meant to do me harm but harm as we all know can emerge through so many sewer pipes and gutters that there’s no real way of keeping the harm away. Maybe other people could maintain their independence even in such conditions but I was not one of them. So although it was hard to bear, this knowledge that my father was now through with me financially, I could also see it as a bright occasion. Like I was the ball and this situation was the basketball star and now we were only waiting for one final element to arrive and slam me into the hoop.