Steve Toltz - Quicksand

How did that go down?

My most resonating indiscretions had all been financial. I came offering love and asking forgiveness, but in the end they just wanted their money back.

So then it was April twentieth and you went to the hosp—

NOT YET. First I had to write the perfect goodbye to pin to my body and take to the final curtain. I remember the night of the nineteenth sitting at the window in my shitty apartment like a fixed idea, thinking how what I could have been I never was, and what I used to be I wasn’t really anyway. It was dark outside; there was only a small and puny moon, just an overblown star really, that gave no light to speak of. I could just make out the silent trees moving in the night and the empty kindergarten below which had gotten me arrested one summer morning for standing naked in my own kitchen. I opened the sliding doors and stepped onto the balcony. At one end of the street a young man was breaking into a car. At the other, a kid throwing a brick through a phone booth. What an unfriendly society, I thought, even our criminals —

Are too antisocial to form gangs.

Are we finishing each other’s confessions now?

Is that what this is? A confession?

The moon looked mean now, full of cold rage. I went back inside and opened the fridge and stared at the food rotting in shopping bags before returning to the desk, to the note. ‘Dear World,’ I wrote, ‘I am not one of those people whose greatest fear in life is being chased down a long corridor by their unrealised potential; rather, mine is of an intruder breaking into the apartment while I am in the shower.’

That’s the dumbest suicide note I ever heard.

No shit. I was way off point. I tried again and wrote, ‘To all of you who stand poised halfway up the so-called back stairs to liberty but cannot move up nor retreat, I dedicate this suicide note, which, if you are reading it, means I have been murdered — if I have any self-respect — by my own hand.’

Pretentious.

Agreed. I couldn’t get it right. The neighbours above were doing their nightly dragging of furniture across the floor while twisting a cat’s ears, or something like that, making noises so sudden and random you couldn’t brace yourself against them, but so regular you anticipated them at all the wrong moments. I switched off all the lights, turned off the clocks, the TV, the stereo, unplugged the microwave and the fridge — anything with an electric hum or a blinking red light. Still, true darkness and total silence were impossible to achieve. The sound of moaning came through the walls. I rubbed my bruised chin that still ached from the previous week when I’d discovered firsthand the perils of asking the neighbours to keep their porn down. I wrote, ‘There’s nothing I would do again the same, and if given the opportunity, I would decline the opportunity.’

Not great.

But not terrible.

So THEN you went to the hospital and —

Not quite. Before my final breath, there was one essential task I had to attend to.

Jesus Christ. What was that?

Liam, I don’t know about you, but I am just plain furious that I never ever grew out of the adolescent male mindset. You know, that if your only tool is a penis, every problem looks like a vagina.

Desire that feels like starvation, I know.

And even when getting it, I was fed up by the act itself: irritated by the unfalsifiable nature of women’s orgasms, sick of the logistical nightmare of craving personal space during intercourse, frustrated at needing fellatio to be silent but too timid to ask the girl to keep the sucking noises down.

So you went out to get lucky?

The Bat & Ball & Chain.

Where’s that?

Near Central. It’s just your standard carcass of an old hotel. A dozen poker machines, a squalid chamber of doorless toilets, an undersized pool table beside a dancefloor, dozens of small tables and chairs filled by men watching women watching men watching television. Normally I go an hour before closing, as prey. Timing is crucial: too early and the predators still have plenty of time to find someone better-looking than you; too late, they aren’t in the mood anymore. I drank the first beer quickly, contemplating the unusual paradox. How do you sell yourself when you’re the salesman and the product?

Tricky.

For medicinal purposes I try to sleep with one woman a fortnight. This never feels excessive when one takes into consideration the other thirteen nights alone in bed — that’s three hundred and thirty-nine lonely nights a year — but frankly, it adds up, and in the years since Stella left me I’ve found, to my own surprise, that I’ve slept with nearly ninety-eight women, at least a third of whom are furious at me for not having been ‘The One’.

On the night in question, did you find someone?

Usually I fear that my character flaws are diagnosable at first sight. From the way I cut up the dancefloor, I sometimes wonder, can you tell that I’m resistant to change? This time maybe the stench of death was mingled in with my usual odour of desperation and violent sorrow.

So no luck.

Just one last measly fuck before gravetime! That’s all I wanted. Is it too much to ask? But I failed to excrete irresistibility. I swaggered unbuttoned from one sweaty drunken lady to another but none sustained eye contact. I felt myself without a human face. I kicked the speaker for its general lack of magic. Then I spotted on the dancefloor a large-bottomed woman, pale as a cow’s stomach lining, shaky on her feet. I lingered on her periphery until we locked eyes and I gyrated towards her and we kissed, but when she pulled away I suddenly thought that I’d rather die painfully than have another verbal exchange that did not cut a straight path to the heart of human truth, so when she asked my name I said, ‘No names,’ and she said, ‘I’m Tracy,’ and so I said, ‘Oh, forget it then,’ and stormed outside into the cold quiet and stamped my feet on the empty street. Nobody was around. The moon looked so low and close you could reach out and stick your finger in its eye. Then it hit me: who gives a shit about her name? I went back inside. She was in the arms of someone swifter who knew well enough to eat what was on his plate. I’d blown it, and I was tired, tired of moving, tired of the body’s needs. It was late. I was hungry. Almost everything would be shut. That’s what counts for a last meal in the valley of the shadow of death. A fucking kebab.

So after that you went and waited at the hospital?

No. This is only one-thirty a.m. I went to the Yellow Pages attached to the bar’s old payphone and flicked through and found The Enigma Variations.

The brothel that services the Railway Hotel.

The ad featured a photograph of a scantily clad bosomy blonde lying on her side. I thought: That’s the one. When I get to the place, I’ll ask for the girl in the photo. I don’t want any surprises. After all, I already know what she looks like lying on her side.

Seems logical.

Thank God for brothels. Otherwise I don’t like to think what I’d do.

What would you do?

If I didn’t find consent such a turn-on.

What?

On the subject of prostitution, if a man acts like a man, who are you to moralise or demoralise him? Who are you to judge a species for its inherent characteristics? Do you hate the cat for licking its paws? Do you hate the dog for licking its balls, and then your face? Deep down you know that to personalise these things is low and just ignorant, and if you want sex and you’re not getting it elsewhere, and you’re not in a relationship and not betraying anyone, and if we agree you can’t exploit anyone who charges you two hundred bucks an hour, then where’s the harm? It isn’t dangerous — sex with a prostitute is the safest sex you’ll ever have — people grow careless with new girlfriends and one-night stands but who the hell’s going to be careless with a prostitute? Who’s going to say, We got caught up in the heat of passion and forgot to wear protection? No one, that’s who. Sex with people you like, or are infatuated with, or love, average citizens, that’s where the real danger is.