She said, “Someone’s looking at you.”
“What?”
“Over there.” I assumed it was Wolf, the hellhound on my trail, clearly getting madder. It wouldn’t be long before the police picked him up, and then we’d both be done for. The Goddess said, “There she is.”
It was one of my patients, hurrying away. She was very paranoid, often telling me she’d seen me in different parts of the country, places I’d never visited. Now that she’d actually seen me, and coming out of a sex shop too, what would it do to her?
I took the Goddess for a drink, and she asked me what I did. I told her we both sold our time for money and were in the “intimacy with strangers” business. In fact, I said, I had never counted the number of times I had been compared, by my patients, to a prostitute. “Perhaps we are both rubbish dumps. People put into us what they don’t want to understand. We’re supposed to carry it for them.”
She was fascinated and horrified by what I did. “Who wants to know what’s in there?” she said, tapping her head. “If you start poking about, who knows what you’ll find?”
“It comes out anyway,” I replied. “You live it out, in your body, in your actions, in your choice…of career. What we all need, as my friend Henry says, are more words and less action.”
She seemed horrified. But when we parted, the Goddess gave me a plastic bag. “Open it,” she said.
It contained a half-mask with gold eye sockets, made of turquoise, blue and purple feathers, with silver and blue stars sewn into it.
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“Yes, good luck!” She kissed me on the nose.
Having got the gear together, on the appointed night I went over to Henry’s with the stuff in a bag. Miriam would get changed at home; Bushy would bring her over and then drive us all to the Caramel Sootie.
It took me ten minutes to get ready and another two minutes to fight hopelessly with my hair, while wondering that if everything that gives pleasure is unhealthy, immoral or forbidden, would the evening be enough of each?
Henry was in his boxers, having shaved his genitals, flinging things down and stamping drunkenly around in front of a mirror while listening to Don Giovanni.
I was happy sitting in his chair, drinking, and smoking one of the joints Miriam had made for him. But the joint tired me, and I went to the bathroom for a little dab of speed to keep me going for the night. I was soon unaware of what I was wearing, but whenever Henry looked at me, he giggled.
“If only your patients could see you,” he said. “You look too good to have got that together yourself. Who helped you?”
“A friend.”
He was looking at me. “How come I tell you everything and you tell me nothing?”
We might have a long evening ahead of us, but at least Henry and I could have a conversation before Bushy arrived. Henry philosophising about his desire always entertained me. I said to him, “This orgy idea-”
“Yes, what about it? Hey-d’you think I should wear lipstick?”
“Only a little.” I went on: “Isn’t it a dream of merging? Of there being no differences between people? No one is left out. Sexually, it’s a totalitarian idea. Isn’t the orgy where people lose their individuality rather than find it?”
“I’m telling you this. You might feel a fool in those clothes, but who gives a fuck? This is an important and radical freedom.”
“At a time of harsh controls-indeed of terror-this represents liberation, man?”
“I am aware of your amusement, but all this bullshit about the conflict between civilisations, Islam and the West, is only another version of the same conflict between puritans and liberals, between those who hate the imagination and those who love it. It’s the oldest conflict of all, between repression and freedom.” He was standing in front of me. “How am I looking?”
“I can’t begin to describe it.”
“A couple of generous words, my friend?”
“Only to confirm that make-up and facial hair don’t go together.”
“They do now.” He went on, “I like London being one of the great Muslim cities. It’s the price of colonialism and its only virtue. At the same time, London is full of people with their heads covered-either in hoods, like your son, or Muslim women. I have to say I hate that and even glare at the women, no doubt adding to their sense of persecution.”
I said, “It shows that we are fascinated and disturbed by our bodies-covering, uncovering, the whole thing. We can never get it right, never be finished with this body business. Tattoos, weight, clothes…”
“You want to know why I’m listening to this opera? I’m trying to find something subversive and lubricious, a work that might speak to our condition. Want a Viagra?”
“Yeah, okay. Thanks.” He handed me the blue pill, and I swallowed it with vodka. “You’re going to stage Don Giovanni?”
“It’s too puritanical for me. He goes to hell in the end.”
“Doesn’t he refuse to recant? His is an ethical position, at least.”
I was aware of how powerful Henry’s connection with his work still was when he tapped his watch and said, “It’s seven-fifteen. Every day at this time it occurs to me that all over this city, throughout the country in fact, there are actors preparing for a show tonight, sitting in dressing rooms, putting on their slap, doing warm-ups and vocal exercises, terrified and exhilarated. Performers. The people I have spent my life with-those who can do difficult things in front of people who have travelled to see them.”
A couple of weekends before, Miriam and Henry, accompanied by one of her own kids, had driven down to a pop festival in a borrowed caravan, with Bushy driving. Henry had insisted on accompanying them, not wanting to be alone. But he had become restless, hating the caravan and, after a couple of hours, hating the music. It was “just white” and not as “authentic” as the hip-hop he liked to discuss with Rafi. Miriam and the others had started to call him Grandad.
I was surprised, therefore, when not long after, they started out on another short jaunt, this time to Paris, where Henry had been invited to a conference on culture. Naturally Henry despised “official” culture, but saw the trip as an excuse to see his friends-gallery directors, producers, writers, actors.
While he and Miriam were eating well with Marianne Faithfull, Bushy’s contacts in the Cross Keys had put him onto some Africans who hung around the Gare du Nord. Bushy also picked up some hot hip-hop in various African lingos for Rafi. On the way back, they filled up the car with booze and fags to sell to neighbours and in the Cross Keys. If there was anything left over, Wolf could offload it “up West.”
Henry had told me he’d been “offered something” at the Comédie-Française, but had turned it down. He seemed both flattered and tempted. I wondered when he’d go back to work and how Miriam would react to not having him around.
He said, “You say to me, why don’t I think about working again? What have I accomplished anyway? I have staged the work of others, but I am not the originator. What value do I have? The actors I respect. What they do is dangerous. Have I achieved anything original or worthwhile myself? One time someone called me a facilitator, and I nearly killed myself.”
“Aren’t you just tormenting yourself?”
“Chekhov’s characters are always going on about work. We must work, they repeat. I’ve never understood why he would consider work such a virtue.”
“Work is the price of guilt.”
He looked at me. “Come on, we’d better go.”
Bushy had rung. He and Miriam were nearby, waiting in the car.
Watching Henry prepare for the evening, and envying his commitment to the far-out-“To know sex,” he had said, “you have to risk being destroyed by it”-I’d decided not to be so uptight. Along with the gear the Goddess had arranged for me, I was wearing lipstick, slap, a blond wig belonging to one of Sam’s girlfriends-I hoped it was the Mule Woman-a black hat and dark glasses.