Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

ME

Did I ever tell you about this flight I once took?

ROMY

No, cookie, tell me.

ME

We were on the runway and it was taxiing and I totally knew that something was wrong, the plane’s noises were completely unusual, and then I saw the stewardess in front of me mouth What’s wrong? to the stewardess at the other end of the aisle, and so obviously I decided that I had to say something, I had to stop the plane from trying to take off, because it would only burst apart in flames, and so I called to the stewardess and explained, I advised her that the safest thing to do would be to return to the airport and have the plane thoroughly examined, to which she replied that of course she could do this, but first she would get me a glass of water and when she came back I could tell her if I still wanted her to inform all these people in the plane that I’d been so worried by what I considered to be the unusual buzzing noise of the air-conditioning nozzle that the plane would have to miss its take-off slot and be examined for what might be a period of four or five hours.

ROMY

So what did you do?

ME

I kept quiet.

ROMY

Is not so bad.

ME

But what I don’t know, do you get this? — was if my silence was due to an inner knowledge that I was in fact being hysterical, and that there was nothing there to worry about, or whether I was so imbued with vanity and the wish not to make a scene that I preferred to risk my own death and the death of 453 other people rather than subject myself to the possible humiliation of the stewardess’s announcement.

For, aware as I was that I wanted Romy to love me, and also aware that the reason why I was so in love with her was the fact that she had such cool, still I could not stop myself encouraging her to laugh at me. It was the only way I ever knew to charm, and so I could not help it. To live impossibly is no pleasure and yet it seemed to be the fate for which I was created. I knew of course that I needed to make decisions and renunciations. My life with Candy was impossible, but then, so was my life with Romy. Each option had no future. And yet in me was this extra wish to create some crisis, nevertheless, knowing there was no hope. Perhaps that’s just an effect of my character because I do have a drive to the future. I am always searching for a better me. But in particular I think there was one specific cause for this sudden concern for acceleration. I think I blame the new-found thrill which is created by any scene of violence with a replica pistolet.

in its new-found machismo

Not that Hiro and I had come back with a sea chest spilling with doubloons but still, it was something. To have money of my own was very pleasant. Qat, I suppose, would have been one option now open to us, we could have sat outside the grocer’s with those fronds protruding from our mouths like the red-eyed geeks who sat on garden chairs and looked into their inner space on the high street, counting cars. But my wildness was more different and more sweet. Now, for instance, it was possible for me to take Candy out for dinner, or buy her small treats at the African delicatessen, and to be able to do such things, which I had not been able to do for some time now, made me feel at least slightly if privately enlarged. Sure, naturally it’s very sad when violence occurs, in no way does anyone want to be doing violence, but at the same time these things do end, finally, nothing continues always, and there you are on Geranium Avenue or some such boulevard, and really things couldn’t be prettier. And then of course there are still restaurants in interesting parts of town, and little theatre openings that people tell you about. You can’t let the memory of violence overshadow everything, or at least that was how I liked to think. And also, I had to admit that there was even something pleasant, in talking to someone when making them look down the barrel of a gun, just a fleeting delicious moment of knowing you have absolutely gone too far. And the memory of that sensation allowed me this lazy largesse in my general demeanour. We sat there in the pomegranate pubs and in the small-size newspapers read about the fascists taking over everything, their triumphal marches in the TV studios and the giant slums. Then in the bigger newspapers we read about our friends. Because what happens if you’re hypereducated is that in the newspapers you recognise many people from your childhood or early youth, which is a problem if you want to preserve a sense of universal respect and public optimism because it does reduce your sense of gravitas a little — that there is the parliamentary secretary who once bored you over dinner, there is the cinema critic in the sadsack figure of Nelson. It tends to lower your estimation of the social world.

that may require more violence to continue

Even if very quickly the issue of the social world did start to impose itself, in the need for making more money. For largesse cannot continue, not indefinitely.

— Still, we do need more, said Hiro.

— I don’t have any, I said.

— That’s why we need to make more, he said.

— Oh, I said.

— How much money you got? said Hiro.

— I don’t have money, I said.

— Doesn’t Candy make money? said Hiro.

— That’s not why I married her, I said.

— I never said that, said Hiro.

— I don’t have any money, I said.

And while to make someone stare down the barrel of a gun has its definite temptations, my preference certainly would nevertheless have been for less violent schemes, if they could also be pursued without exertion. One method for getting rich quick in comfortable surroundings seemed to be online gambling, and especially the online poker competitions, but this was not, we soon discovered, where our particular gifts lay. We did not have the temperament. Then for a moment I considered if the general global vibe could be our friend, given how many products there are in the world and how many disparities in their pricing, and wondered about turning my parents’ house into some Internet depot or warehouse where we would buy up special editions of chocolate or magazines, or rare forms of sneaker, then sell them to foreign buyers for enormous profit. But the obvious problems of capital and distribution, of market knowledge and know-how soon defeated this idle dream. It seemed that at this moment the considered small intrusion on legality might be our very best option, or this was how Hiro tried to argue. It had a neatness to it. And I always wanted to see the best in Hiro’s reasoning. Always it seemed very impressive. This manner of entering the world that Hiro offered seemed valuable to me precisely because it was so piquant and unusual. I saw no need for any other classroom — just Hiro and his arguments. Perhaps in addition I think I did feel altruistic, like in the creation of this troupe that was always my ideal, I wanted very much to assist Hiro in his effort to live well. If he needed a student or laboratory assistant, I could fulfil that role with ease.

this opaque mood

Definitely this was a time of many fiestas, but the scene I am trying to describe is much longer than any one fiesta: it is the whole time frame of my need to live in truth and perform grand theatrical confessions. For of course, it was also difficult explaining the source of my money to Candy. She worried that I must be once again borrowing from my parents, and did not like it, for if money was a problem why couldn’t I just be content with borrowing money from her, if it in no way upset her? And I had no obvious way of telling her she was not right, because sadly it’s difficult to be clear about the sources of one’s wealth, and it made me sad to be doing violence to her wish only to be generous and considerate. I thought about confessing everything to her, but then, I further thought, she might be in some way worried or upset about my behaviour, and I did not want to be pressed on what I was doing, because I knew that in some way it would be difficult to explain, and yet at the same time I was very sure that at the moment this was the right way to act, if only because it was making things so free. Perhaps this was all that had been the problem, perhaps with this new sense of freedom we could use our marriage as the enfants terribles might use a playground? It did at least seem so. Because to be able to pay with money that I had come by, if not by my own efforts precisely, but at least through my own innovation, was a surprisingly emboldening situation. Even if the means were arguably very wrong, now that I had achieved the goal of some small largesse it turned out that I wanted to enjoy the benefits of that goal — I felt that I deserved it. In the night-times, I would reason with myself in this kind of way: why else achieve a goal if not to enjoy its fruits? Not to enjoy the fruits would be to deny that the goal had meaning, and I did not want to admit this of our complicated adventure with a pistolet. It could not surely be true that all that planning and anxiety had been for nothing? Not to mention the possible hurt we may have caused to various people who happened to be in that nail salon on that particular afternoon. No, I could not allow that possibility. And also, the fruits this event had opened out for me were the fruits of ardour and sangfroid, beautifully outside my normal thinking — like the way you might try to imagine something a little larger than the universe, not massively bigger, just a little. When that happens, when you have access to such things, it seems only magnanimity on your part to continue them to the end, and investigate the paraphernalia that are now at your disposal.