My dipping into the experience of politicians has resulted in some discoveries you probably wouldn’t credit, considering the general view of these individuals I overhear. They are stalwart, convinced of their moral right to take power, determined to bring peace, prosperity and justice to all, if you are of those who support their ideas of how a government should run your lives; they are ruthless, power-hungry, wily, will stop at no infamy to impose their kind of regime, if you are in opposition to their ideas of governing you. In the being of one — a politician — once in a while (there are so many buzzing around among you, how could I avoid the temptation or the curiosity) I have known the raw surface of weakness (yes) to any failure, however small, any setback to high self-esteem, however temporary, they conceal from public sight. While they are declaring themselves satisfied with the support they are gaining among the collective electorate — You — the loss of a few votes is to them a slow bleeding from some secret organ they have, the loss of a seat in the palace of government is a lopping-off of a limb of the creature they have to make of themselves — for You, for your sake. You know that? Power is needed, there’s a need to be intact for good, as well as for evil. I have some notion of those two concepts — come to me, in my way; how could I have even the most fleeting contacts with your experience without finding out that they actually do exist.
Perhaps I would have been one of those, a politician. Because I can’t keep away from them, they attract me with the strong sense with which they wrestle life, the secrecy of the holds they use, under the public surface; their kind of survival tactics among the different ones I see practised among you, from withdrawals to the ashram to the total exposure of the pop star. Why shouldn’t I try them all, since I don’t have the angst of going through the whole way with any! But no. If I imagine a corporeal life for myself — what Denis might be — maybe I would have been a writer; fiction, of course, because that’s the closest a corporeal being can get to my knack of living other lives; multiple existences that are not the poor little opportunities of a single existence.
When she dies — the one who precociously stole my life, I’d like to know how much value she’s added to it on your stock market — I wonder whether my non-existent existence will stop, too: still-born to stop-dead. I doubt it. I’m curious, nevertheless. So one of the favourite diversions of my eternity is to board a plane in the being of a passenger. Because I find the nearest you who are not religious — can’t rely on an after-life — may get to experience the eternal is up at around thirty thousand feet on the way to the heaven of those who believe they’re going to go all the way. In a layer of the atmosphere outside the earth, between time-zones defined by your earthly existence: you don’t know precisely, up above the earth’s cloud-shroud, its cosy blanket, whether you are X hours behind or X hours ahead of the earthly destination you have headed yourself for. So you are out of both time and place — precariously? No — you inhabit both at the same time, clouds, space, and the interior box of the aircraft, which is like a hospital ward, you are designated to yours (First, Business, Tourist class), your bed (seat number) and you are dependent on the ministrations of the nurse (cabin attendant). Freedom is just beyond the window; as always with you, you can see it but can’t touch it. And it is fearful …
So I am everybody’s twin? — oh no, no, not at all! Don’t mistake me. Not in anything I’ve said. I’m not an alter ego, doppelgänger, clone — nobody’s alternate. I am not stopping up your ears with a homily on universality, living human beings are part of one another, must love one another etcetera, with my winetastings of your experience here-and-there as the high-minded symbolic lesson. In my condition I have no moral responsibility. Now do you get it? How could I when I don’t have to provide: don’t have to eat, to have a roof over me, don’t have to look over my shoulder at anyone who’s a rival in acquisitions? It’s easy for me …
I suppose, in the end, you have to be disembodied, like me, to need no morals. All that I have in common with you is all you are not—I am. Pity me. Or envy me.
‘It turns out that something that never was and never will be is all that we have.’
For so long — well, the ten years we’ve been together — we’ve had everything we wanted. Not some gift from the gods or nice middle-class family inheritance, but in the independent making of our own lives. Karen is overseas investment advisor of the most successful group of brokers in the city. I had a history of having been an activist. That cliché means I was part of actions against the old regime, now put away mummified if not exactly returned to dust, that got me tear-gassed and beaten-up and once detained — another cliché, this one for a spell inside without trial. But I am a lawyer who nevertheless managed to get herself accepted, in a renewed country, as fresh blood and a woman, by one of the most prestigious old legal practices. So that’s the career side of it.
As women who’ve wanted and had only women lovers since youthful attempts with men, we know we were lucky — extraordinarily blessed — to find one another. Even straight people (as they think of themselves) prove how rare the right relationship is: divorces, remarriages, quarrels over child custody — anyway, that’s the mess we’ve freed ourselves of, in what’s called our sexual preference. Which has been and is open, since the law now accepts its existence as legitimate and we both have the confidence of our recognised career capabilities and loving sexual partnership (the straight couples enviously see how fulfilling it is) to ignore any relics of old prejudice that turn up in long-faced disapproval. We find the society of our own kind naturally compatible, with the usual rivalries, of course, haphazard sexual attractions that complicate and trouble, not too seriously, everyone’s social life, golf club or gay bar. But we also have heterosexual friendships, particularly those coming about through our different professional connections, and we don’t mind obliging as the female dinner-partners of visiting overseas businessmen or other dignitaries who have arrived without spouses. Karen is something of a beauty with the added advantage or disadvantage of being younger than I am, and she sometimes is pursued by one of these men-of-passage after the occasion, and I suppose I must admit that it pleases, rouses me to know that my lover appeals to someone who can’t have her, whom she would reject. With the funny little pursed-up, half-derisive, half-flattered face she makes as we look the man over in retrospect.
We bought a house two years after we met, and one of ours, an architect friend, renovated it to create exactly what we think our place ought to be. The mixed-media paintings and the one or two sculptures (we like wood and can’t stand the pretension of objets trouvés) are the work of other artist friends. Our collection and our travels together are what we enjoy spending our money on. We’ve seen a good part of the world (four eyes better than two), the Great Wall, the Barrier Reef, New York-Chicago-West Coast, Kyoto, Scottish Highlands, Florence-Rome-Paris — and there’ll be a lot more to come, but it’s always with an emotional dissolve of pleasure, arms going about each other, that we find our two selves back — home. I’ve had the impression that straights don’t believe such a concept should exist, with us. Because we don’t deserve it, eh.