Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

like the silence of Candy’s conversations

And at this particular staging post of the story I was conscious of one particular opaque problem, the absence of one scene, which was the scene where Candy talked to me about what she had witnessed that night at the fiesta, the privacy she had encroached on between Romy and me. From Candy I now expected possible shouting and other events: spaghetti and its red sauce splurged against the walls. And perhaps I did want that, very secretly. But as always we said nothing. Which meant that from then on Candy had this silent power, if knowledge not deployed is a kind of power, which I think it is. The image I had of her was of a person enthroned: there she sat, holding the sceptre of her private knowledge, and I had no way of knowing what to do. Whenever Candy paused in any conversation I would wonder if what she was really contemplating was this image of Romy and Dolores, of Romy somehow talking about me in this manner that was rightfully only a manner that Candy possessed. It had only been a moment, like a sudden flicker of light — but a flicker is enough for setting your terrors into motion, for understanding that two people may be in more direct communication than you previously suspected or imagined. I mean, two people will seem all the more familiarly linked if that link or association is seen to be unconscious. And to those of you who are saying So tell her! Tell Candy everything! You are a monster! She does not deserve you! — like we are at a pantomime and I am the villainous creature — then I would say, I understand this argument, but still — is it really not possible to mean two things at once? At no point was anything I did insincere, with her or with other people. Perhaps to you this is already crazed, because what is more insincere than to lie or deceive but me I am not so sure, I mean, I am not so sure that deception is so wrong, if the alternative is to make a definitive end to something. For why shouldn’t things happen simultaneously? While also, if I had to lie, could it be that Candy was to blame — for the fact that my small transgressions would be punished so mercilessly? If I imagined telling Candy everything, I mean about Romy and my infidelity, I felt that surely she would leave me and be angry and depleted — and therefore naturally I could not tell her. Surely her potential lack of forgiveness or understanding was part of the same problem? And it was meaning that, despite my best intentions, I just had this nagging feeling that I was losing the power to be absorbed — the way you might look at a portrait of a courtesan in some provincial museum just before that museum closes, when you are tired and you want to get out of there to find a beer or milkshake and so the beauty of this courtesan is powerless, because it is irrelevant to your current needs. And so I would lie awake in the night and list other things that had lost their one-time lustre: the old Coney Island, the old Soho, the old Kreuzberg, the old Belleville, and so on…

impasses of desire

For our dialogue was listless and happy, at the same time, in the manner of –

CANDY

You OK, cookie?

ME

Me? Oh fine, I’m fine.

CANDY

Because you seem –

ME

No really.

CANDY

Really?

That’s basically a composite summary of our nocturnal interactions, like one of those puzzle pictures that the police dream up to catch the roaming killer. Whenever the real approached, I was very careful to remove it very gently from the area, the way you remove a child from dangerous machinery. To borrow from an old authority, we no more said anything specific than we let the hound off the leash on a busy road: for you had no idea what mazy craziness the hound of a conversation would lead to if something specific were ever said. I let her words just disintegrate into the open suburban air, out there among the hangars and the water parks in the distances, in this amphibian space, with its roofs and grass, pavements and furrows, shops and miniature sky. And maybe, sure, there are just some things desire cannot do and one of them is last, or last for ever, or in the same way. It’s maybe as unlikely as the B-movies where the killer pursues his prey for at least three hours of screen time. It just seems improbable, I mean, to so continuously care. But still, it made me resolved to do better. Perhaps once I might have tried to explain this account of the powers ranged against our marriage with talk of angels and cherubs and cupids, I mean that might have been the vocabulary of previous gentler eras, but I think if I had to describe the new sensation I could say with more accuracy that the bedroom rarely now had that heavy clouding stink about it, the lovely sourness that is the proof that liquids of every kind are being produced underneath your duvet. We would kiss and kiss, Candy and I, and it was like one of those cable shows you come to late one night where you don’t know what’s going on, you just keep watching because it’s late and you’re tired and you are hoping that soon some minor plot moment will arrive and illuminate the whole perspective. And yet of course it doesn’t. But I wanted to carry on because I did not want her to be sad, and so I would lick at Candy between the legs and sometimes look expectantly up, but her face was turned away and then it was me who felt sad, in my turn. I would stay there looking at her, just gazing between her legs and wondering what had happened to me, and wondering if even the way she tasted had changed, even though that must be impossible, like whereas before it had this penumbra that was mineral and soiled, now it was just the taste of itself, and therefore not dirty enough.

& other problems of ghostly communication

When I tried to explain this to Wyman, he blamed it on the ghosts. For Wyman believes in ghosts, it is one of his many outmoded charms that I appreciate, and I was starting to agree with him. Or at least, I was starting to understand how opposing forces might exist and once you admit that it’s hard not to make them human in some way. According to Wyman the ghosts existed in every means of communication ever invented — including the carrier pigeon and gramophone — and perhaps Wyman was right. There were ghosts against me in particular in the telephone lines and in the wireless connections humming in every room. For the problem is that no one really exists when you write messages or emails to them, or talk to them very briefly on the phone. I’m sure in some way we do know this, which is why we think it is important to build fast cars, giant hovercraft, and all the other systems to bring people alone together in the same room, but at the same time you have to remember the far greater power of computer screens, miniature phones, and all their small developments. There are so many toys for making people disappear, and for making yourself disappear, too. My correspondences! Maybe it’s possible that modern times are a perfect paradise of communication, but still, it comes with other problems, especially if you have a nervous disposition — like the various ways in which someone’s privacy can be observed. And for me this centred on Romy and her mania for instant messaging — for I had never had this before, this love of messaging, and in particular I had not therefore known this particular form of anxiety about another person, where you could see whether or not they were there, or could see that recently they had been there and therefore seen your messages, and yet not replied, or even in Romy’s case I would wake up and then be able to see that until four in the morning she had been messaging, but not to me, and that was a horrible worry, to be thinking who it was she had been writing to, and why she had been awake so late and never told me she was going out. Just as in particular if we were then arguing I felt so helpless, being able to see whether or not she was typing a reply, or waiting — and so time would stall there, just coagulate in pools — and these new forms of communication only made me realise how jealous I was of her, how avidly I needed her attention and yet had no right to this attention. Because it really is not a good feeling, to realise how jealous you can be, when you yourself have invented the situation. And so I demanded she do impossible things, like that she entirely stop having sex with Epstein, or only have sex in the most boring possible way ( How can I do that? she said. You know I like sex ), like I was the movie mogul who wanted to sign off the final edit. But I could not help it. The jealousy kept on working inside me, the way water keeps on rocking inside a bucket when you set it down.