Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

They called each other ‘Denise’ and ‘Adrian’ without formally introducing themselves — although they were both too shy to mention the day when they showed each other their names on exercise books. There was so much to talk about — the subjects they studied at school, the sports they played, the radio programs they listened to at night, the things they did at weekends. When Denise said she liked going to the pictures when she got the chance, Adrian knew she was inviting him to ask her to the pictures in Accrington some day when they knew each other better.

Adrian got more pleasure from hearing the schoolgirl Denise talk about her likes and dislikes and hobbies than he had once got from imagining her as his wife. He chatted to her every night for nearly two months. The only bother he had was that sometimes when he stood near her in the train of an afternoon, he almost forgot himself and blurted out the story he was saving for their conversation that night.

When it was almost December, Adrian decided to speed up events so he would be deeply involved with her before they had to part for the long summer holidays. One night in bed he asked her quietly would she care to go to the pictures with him on the following Saturday night. It was much easier than he had expected. She even blushed a little as she answered, proving that this was the first time any young man had asked her out. She told him she would ask her parents, and the next day it was all arranged.

On the Saturday night Adrian and Denise sat together in one of the special buses that took crowds of young couples from outlying suburbs into Accrington to the Plaza or the Lyric.

During the first picture Adrian leaned his upper arm against Denise’s shoulder and was pleased to see she did not draw away from him. At interval he gently grasped her elbow when she was jostled by the crowds around the ice-cream counter.

The main picture had a lot of kissing and romance. Adrian was not interested in the plot. He was planning for the moment when he would reach out boldly and take Denise’s hand. It was lying naked and limp and easily within his reach, just above her knee. He couldn’t approach it where it was — Denise might see his hand coming and think for an instant he was going to touch her on the thigh. But at last she lifted it onto the armrest between them, which he had left unoccupied for that very purpose. He still had to wait until there was no kissing on the screen. (He reasoned that if he reached for her hand at a moment when a man and woman were pressed together in the film, Denise might think he was planning to court her with kisses and hugs like a man from Hollywood.)

At last, when a band was playing a song with only a suggestion of romance in its words, he rested his hand on hers. The white hand did not move. He lifted it up with all the tenderness that his five fingers could express and laid it between his palms (keeping it as far away as possible from his own thighs and lap). Still it did not even twitch or tauten. He saw from the corner of his eye that Denise was watching the film as if nothing had happened to her hand.

He knew it was only modesty that made her hand so limp. She must have suspected he was deeply in love with her, but she would have to be absolutely certain of it before she could yield any part of her body to him. He kept her hand in his and tried to convince himself that his dream really had come true at last, that he was actually sitting beside Denise McNamara and caressing her hand. And then he had a powerful erection.

It was the biggest and strongest that he had ever had in a public place — almost certainly more fierce than the monster that had appeared for no reason one morning in Form Three and lasted all through a Latin period. It made a conspicuous mound in his trousers as it tried to stand upright and flex itself.

Adrian’s first thought was that he must keep the thing hidden from Denise. He lifted her hand back onto the armrest, gave it a farewell pat, and left it there. Then he slid his left hand (the hand farther from Denise) into his trousers pocket and slowly eased the huge thing until it lay pointing along the inside edge of his thigh. It was uncomfortable and restless in its new position, but at least it no longer made a threatening lump in his trousers. He thanked God that Denise kept her eyes on the screen while all this was going on.

Adrian gave up trying to follow the film and prepared for the moment when the lights came on and he had to stand up and walk outside with Denise beside him. He concentrated on the most frightening thoughts — losing his trousers on the way back from the communion rails at mass; letting off a thunderous fart as he walked past the microphone to receive his prize on the stage of Swindon Town Hall at St Carthage’s Speech Night; vomiting all over his examination answers just before the supervisor came to collect them in the crowded Exhibition Building. But he could not make his erection go down.

When the film finally ended Adrian kept his left hand in his pocket to hold the thing down. He had to walk very slowly, but he pretended to yawn a lot so Denise would think he was tired. In the bus he had some trouble getting Denise to sit on his right side, away from the battle going on in his trousers.

Denise invited him to her house for a cup of tea. Adrian limped towards her front gate, trying to look down at himself in the light from a street lamp to see how much was visible.

He prayed that her parents would be in bed, but they were in the lounge-room listening to Geoff Carmichael’s Supper Club on the radio. Of course Adrian had to take his hand out of his pocket to be introduced to them. He was sure Mrs McNamara didn’t notice anything unusual. (She looked to be in her forties, so she probably hadn’t seen anything like it for years.) But Denise’s father looked him up and down quickly before shaking hands. Adrian was sure the father of a girl as beautiful and innocent as Denise would be always alert for signs that her purity was threatened. If Mr McNamara had noticed the least sign of movement in Adrian’s trousers he would be too polite to say anything about it with his wife and daughter in the room, but he would tell his daughter afterwards that she was forbidden to associate with that young Sherd fellow any more.

The parents soon left the young people alone in the dining room. Denise leaned forward across the table to talk to Adrian about the film. He said to himself (slowly and distinctly, so the message would travel down his nerves into his groin) that he was looking into the eyes of the most chaste and modest and beautiful girl in the world. But instead of dying of shame, the thing in his trousers reared up as if he had promised it some filthy pleasure.

For the rest of his time in the dining room, Adrian let his erection do what it liked out of sight under the table while he took a pure delight in looking at Denise’s pink ear-lobes, the white hollow at the base of her throat, and the faultless symmetry of her face.

When it was time to go, he walked behind her to the front door. Then he dodged quickly past her and said goodnight over his shoulder. He had never intended to kiss her after their first outing together. He wanted to emphasise that it was not physical gratification he was looking for when he went out with her. It was just as well — he shuddered to think what might have happened if he had stood with his body close to hers and no free hand to keep in his pocket.

By the time he had closed the McNamaras’ front gate his erection had shrivelled up and promised to cause no more trouble that night. But Adrian was already planning how to outwit it when he next went out with Denise.

After school a few days later, Adrian took a tram from Swindon into the city and went to a shop he had learned about from advertisements in the Sporting Globe. In the window he saw wheelchairs, artificial legs, bedpans, braces for injured backs, strange thick stockings, and things he supposed were trusses. He asked the man at the counter for an athletic support and hoped he looked like a footballer or bike rider who needed one for a genuine reason. The man came towards him with a tape-measure. Adrian shrank back. He couldn’t believe he had to take out his privates in the shop and have them measured. But the man only pulled the tape-measure around Adrian’s waist and went to some drawers behind the counter. Adrian would have asked for a size smaller than his fitting but he was afraid the man would think he was some kind of pervert who tortured his organ before he masturbated.