Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

prevented in a kind of fold by another girl

While I waited to find Romy on her own, I roamed the dark scene. In one corner of the room there was a television, and I find it difficult to avoid a television — not because I am so intent on the game shows and confessions, but just because a moving image is very difficult to ignore. If I’m trying to read on one of those ancient planes where they silently display the film on a screen at the front, I keep looking up at it and losing my concentration, just as in the airport lounge already I will have been distracted by the silent news, and the mini frenzy of its montage. So naturally I paused and began to watch. It was one of those miniature portable televisions, placed neatly on an upturned crate. I sat down on a plastic chair and looked at the label on my beer bottle, where a pink sunset doused a surfing scene. Then a girl whose name was Dolores was beside me, a name as outmoded and international as that — and immediately I was interested because there was such a contrast between this name and the way her face was like the most modern and erotic invitation I had ever seen. She had the most open face I ever knew: it was cartoon in its immensity and lavish eyes.

— This is what I think, she said.

And I did like this way of opening she had. Barely had I looked at her but she talked to me as if we had been talking all that evening, maybe all that life.

— Sorry, she said. — But this annoys me.

— Tell me, I said. — I’m listening.

— So OK, she said. — Everything you see on screen happens like a dream although it doesn’t seem like that, it seems just entirely normal.

— OK, I said.

— Does that make sense, she said.

— Perhaps, I said.

No question, this was not the brand of conversation I was used to, I mean this abstract opening. However, if she wanted to talk television then I could do it, because in this era you spend a lot of time analysing shows. The screen is often on, in the background, as pretext or whatever for conversation, the way a castrato might have been on, in the background, in the old theatres, while everyone arranged their assignations and bedroom tricks.

ME

You said what you said?

Because as usual I was narcotic already, being as I was supplied by Hiro, and it makes you much more pliable and intriguing in conversations. On the TV screen there was one of those series that go on for ever, like without any resolution but just a system of glissando events that never reach a finale. That’s probably why TV is our most popular art form — but that will change, it always does, everything that seems unassailable and for ever descends into blizzard and desert. On this show it was either very dark inside a house, or outside and very white in the bright and desert light.

— Now look at this, she said.

& in this fold talks screens

This man, said Dolores, wishes to prevent a showdown between his friend and two dangerous dealers on a corner — but as soon as I even say that, she continued, I am already talking like a dream because the man has no way of knowing when or where this showdown will take place. He is relying only on his intuition. Because although in reality there are always many things that are possible, in a dream or on a screen everyone knows everything, their ability to predict other people is unerring.

ME

How so?

DOLORES

Just look at it. Look with all your eyes!

For in fact he does know, added Dolores, that tonight will be the night when his friend will try to kill these two men with a pistol, just as he knows the location where this stand-off will take place, at their usual corner, even if this again is not so likely since if such a stand-off was taking place you might well choose some more desolate location or at least an area which you knew better or where there was less expectation of ever being found. But instead here he is, making for the precise location and arriving at the precise time when this shoot-out is about to take place, not too early, not too late, when the guns are just being raised — because in such a situation there is no messiness but everything happens very slowly, as if waiting for the off-screen presence that is surely about to arrive.

DOLORES

You see?

I couldn’t deny it. On the screen a car emerged and rammed the two potential killers so that they were crushed underneath its wheels. Then the man got out of the car and shot one of these corpses in the head, presumably to be sure, and this was filmed from a distance so that the spurt or splashback of blood was only graceful and not disgusting or upsetting. Of course, so much violence was now much closer to me, and it made me ashamed, if also very scared, if this was the world I now inhabited, but also I slightly wanted to tell Dolores this, to describe the entire scenario I had recently undergone. I had this idea which I knew to be wrong that in some way it might impress her, but instead I just kept watching. Very definitely, she was right. I had to admit it. This was all exactly like a dream: I mean it was completely impossible, this perfect timing, and yet now that I thought about the matter, I mean the general matter of television and other stories, I couldn’t think how often I really ever questioned it — I don’t mean in some insane way of ever thinking it was real because of course you never think it’s real when it’s on a screen and yet you do, though, allow it this whole meaning or plausibility and that, I think, is what is already crazy and irrational. Never, when it matters, does anyone miss an appointment or screw up or drop something or take the wrong turning or sit in traffic, and while I think this is not the most unusual statement it also seems to me to be something worthy of more attention. Like many small things it conceals its depths.

— You think it’s true, I said, — of other things?

— Well, here we are, she said.

She had this manner of talking which sometimes seemed like teasing and sometimes seemed like it wasn’t and it wasn’t always easy to be able to tell the two apart. I liked this, very much. Suddenly I had a vision of myself and Dolores living together far away and everything was perfect. This is one illness of fiestas. They encourage these small vistas. What hilarity! Not content with two impossibilities, I liked to now imagine myself a third. I was the impresario of the impossible situation. So I just sat there, looking at her. Maybe that looked dumb but I didn’t care.

— You’re looking good, she said.

I was surprised by this, but then, appearances are deceptive. You can feel the exhaustion of a concubine in the sultan’s harem just by mini-vacuuming the car, so perhaps I could have been looking good without in any way realising this was true.

before finally pleading with Romy

Most things are much more like seeds or weeds than anyone ever thinks, a whole dandelion gossamer thing just drifting like filaments in the air. Or at least that’s something it’s possible to think when you are drinking at a party. People come and go, so that while you have been looking for Romy but talking to another girl in your own private fold of reality, suddenly that girl has gone and Romy is offering you another surf-lodge beer.

— Talk to me, chief, said Romy.

And with Romy too I wanted very much to tell her all the excitement that Hiro and I were inventing but this time for different reasons, not so much to impress her because once again I doubted Romy would be impressed by the overall crime scene, but I wanted to explain my new hepcat vibe. It seemed the only prologue to the wild things I wanted to say. But obviously I couldn’t, and for a moment I was therefore silent when I had most need to speak. This possibly happens very often. When the person to whom you desperately want to speak orders you to speak it can be paralysing and difficult, for suddenly the whole question of an opening becomes heavy and upsetting, like when at your analyst you arrive full of stories and are suddenly unable to begin. So that instead it was Romy who began to speak and I think that’s a mistake, to let the other person speak first when you have something enormous to say because it distracts you from your true purpose.