Adam Thirlwell - Lurid & Cute

ME

I don’t want to control you.

ROMY

You just mean you don’t want me to control you.

ME

I don’t know. I mean, maybe. How should I know?

ROMY

It’s like we’re in some long-distance relationship. I never wanted that.

ME

But I’m here.

ROMY

But not really.

ME

There are some moments when I don’t feel separate at all. Just moments when I hear your voice.

ROMY

We’ve never been separate. Not really.

I guess it’s possible for there to be a happiness that is also an absolute sadness. For it was only with lying and secrecy that such wonders had even been allowed me in the first place — but at the same time it was this very secrecy which was now warping all the feelings, and not allowing them the usual relaxation of tempo. You could only have such feelings with secrecy, but the secrecy then changed them — it made them emerge slightly melted, like a plastic spatula you leave too long in the squelching pot of cholent. But still, the feelings were there — and what are you meant to do with feelings? They’re very controlling, feelings: they make life very difficult and painful. To not include dark jealousy in my thoughts! How could I have been so careless? I had never thought in maintaining these relations how often I would think about Romy and imagine or know that she was in bed with Epstein or nearly. It was a tribulation. When I thought about Romy and how I would maybe never sleep with her again, that never would I be the one to push her mouth further over my red penis, or watch her come while she sprawled in front of me with her hand draped over her, as if in modesty or privacy, these things made me as sad as the ancestral pedlar on the boat across the Atlantic, never to see the shtetl again.

from which our hero tries to find erotic solace

I think it was to avoid such thoughts that at this time I also abandoned all restraint. Or possibly it would be kinder to me to say that restraint abandoned me and I could not get it back. I had this terrible weakness that I was still amazed by sex. For this I possibly blame the way there had been this whole new violence when I was in bed with Candy. It seemed to allow new depredations in my thinking. Because I so much thought of women as distant and in control, that every time I realised they were as much a mess as I was, and in the grip of some fantasy or confusion, I felt this mixture of tenderness and desire and the wish to see what happens next. It’s a complicated position to be in because in general also I find it difficult, to know how to want to sleep with a girl without it being scary or very wrong, like I am the person skinning a woman alive and displaying her hide. I am the primeval swamp and all its swampiness. But still, I found it very easy to talk to people and to ask them about themselves, and when you do that after a while you can ask them to do anything, and mostly I think they will. To Wyman I explained it in cruder terms.

ME

Because I have this problem.

WYMAN

What?

ME

That I am really good in bed.

WYMAN

Oh sure –

ME

Is an affliction, or a curse.

WYMAN

Huh –

ME

I’m just saying. It makes life very difficult. It must be easier for the men who just lie on top of women and are heavy. I do think so.

Not that every scene was perfect, not at all, like for instance there was Shannon who due to a strange quirk of our timetabling was on her period both times we were in bed together, and while personally I adored this, I adored the viscous stickiness inside her and the way my penis emerged with its small tidemark of brown blood, it seemed to upset her, nevertheless; or there was Cassity who turned out to be a virgin and when I held her in my arms she trembled, but still I carried on; or Timeka with whom I did nothing but talk about our childhoods, and she haunted me perhaps the most of all — but nevertheless I was glad of all these experiences, however imperfect, I really was, I would not have given up this knowledge for anything. For when you are in that bar with the girl who has the ponytail and biker jacket and is very tall and gaunt and pale and therefore something you desire –

— Keep going, said Wyman –

— then it is much more of a temptation to sleep with her than not to sleep with her because you know in your heart that this will be a very interesting experience, and that in fact that experience is very close and possible, whereas the dweeb who has no such confidence will be experiencing in this bar many feelings of anxiety and worry that in the end the whole experience may not be so hot, for him or her, and then will be able to convert these anxieties into marble moral towers, columns of reasoning, such that when he leaves that bar without her he will in fact have really not experienced any choice at all, even if to him it feels like he has become the noblest stoic in the world. Me, I have no such luxury. I cannot help myself make her happy and eventually say something like:

ME

Maybe we should just go to bed and do crazy things. Like maybe we should just go back to my room and I can spend all night licking you wherever you want — like anywhere –

HER

Including for instance my asshole?

ME

I did say anywhere.

Perhaps many people know this situation often and are not moved by it, but for me the rush was overwhelming and delicious — that I could say such things and the object of your desire would not turn away. She did not turn away. She stared at me.

ME

And you?

HER

Me?

ME

What would you want us to do?

HER

Then, after you had licked me, I would want you to bend me over a chair.

ME

Say that again! Whisper it!

She came very close and her breath was a vast temptation inside my ear.

HER

I want you to bend me over a chair and fuck me very hard.

Always, I thought, I will remember this. It will be like this memento I have buried with me in my pyramid with my million pottery slaves. That’s how exciting the world can be and I worry that my friends do not understand this. Wyman, I wanted to say: do you really not know about this? Have you never felt this mania for detail? I do not know if you have. Or when you hear a girl swallow your come, does it sound sort of breathy or is it quiet? I know one girl who went very quiet but also I know others who kept on sucking and made a slurping gurgling noise which, Wyman, I can still hear. The gusto and the joyfulness! And am I to abandon this for the pleasures of kindness and loyalty? Is that really how the argument is concluded? For surely happiness is a moral virtue, too? Surely, the true sin is ennui? Or so I tried to argue, with my friends and confidants. In my life I always want as much ludicrous intimacy as possible, when everything noble and normal gets melted. I felt such pity for the large heavy men, with their hair cut too short, in their pinstriped shirts and slip-on shoes. No pleasure has ever touched them! Whereas me, in the park I go walking and meet a girl selling antiquarian books and very soon she has invited me to her apartment. Or then there was the girl who worked in the children’s puppet theatre, serving chocolate egg creams and limeade ice-cream floats… When things happen that naturally and inadvertently, I don’t see how it’s possible to use a language of blame at all.

— Inadvertent ? said my mother.

which he tries to justify

I don’t know why I always liked to confide in my mother, like I was the twelve-year-old bride and she was my aged nurse, but I did seem to have this need. Perhaps I wanted to be told that everything I was doing was correct, and of my many confidants my mother just might have fulfilled this role. But in this I was forgetting one important thing, which is that my mother loves me and to be loved is a place of many dispensations, but also she does not want to lie. It means that without in any way meaning to she is therefore the arbiter of the limits of my wishes, and that can make her difficult in conversation. Did I mention the shiny turquoise tracksuit my mother bought me when I was ten? I am not sure I have mentioned it enough — this tracksuit I had asked for, had begged for, with tears in my eyes, a shell suit that would make me look as gangland as possible, only for my mother to find a thing of turquoise satin, with flared trousers… What’s a child to do with such a mother? She loves him so much and yet she will not overspend. Obviously it’s in fact an excellent form of parenting but it still creates difficult dramas when really all I want is for all my wishes to come true.