Jake's Thing

by Kingsley Amis

  Later he said out loud, "And that's only the beginning. No. It's a start."

  6—Focusing Session

  "What does it mean?" asked Brenda.

  "Well, sensate ought to mean endowed with sense or senses, as dentate if it occurs must mean endowed with teeth, but I don't see how any sort of focusing can be endowed with any sort of sense. I think they wanted an adjective from sense and noticed or someone told them sensuous and sensual were used up and they noticed or someone told them a lot of words ended in -ate. Makes it sound scientific too. Like nitrate. And focusing, well. Homing in on? No? Concentrating? Something like that."

  "I see. But what does it mean?"

  "Christ, love, I don't know. Getting you, getting one interested in the other person physically, something like that I should think. Anyway, we know what we're supposed to do."

  "Yes. Darling, you're not to be cross but I must ring Elspeth before we start. She said she'd ring me today or tomorrow and 'I know' it'll be while we're doing our focusing if I don't get in first. You know."

  "Check." As just disclosed, Elspeth was of the Alcestis-Mrs Sharp sorority though, living as she did on the far side of London at Roehampton, less to be feared. "You take as long as you have to. I'll be in the study."

  Jake finished putting the lunch plates in the rack on the metal draining board and went where he had said. The study had been made out of what had been not much more than a spacious box-room and the kneehole desk, the celebrated red leather armchair and a pair of Queen Anne bookcases left little space for anything else, but even he could see that the turquoise carpet was a pretty shade and went well with the wallpaper and Madras cotton curtains.

  With the intention not so much of getting in the mood as of keeping up the good work he glanced at a couple of papers that lay on the desk, had been lying there in perfect security since the previous Thursday, even though it was now Monday and Mrs Sharp had by standing arrangement attended the house on the Friday and that very morning. For both times Brenda had been at home and, as in many a (or many another) case of hyper normal powers, Mrs Sharp's were severely curtailed or even curbed altogether by the presence of a third party. Jake picked up one of the papers.

  'M27' (he read) I find the thought of sexual intercourse with a willing female somewhat under the age of consent, say 14-15 yrs

  1 very pleasant

  2 fairly pleasant

  3 a little unpleasant

  4 very unpleasant

  In so far as he could make himself address his mind to the problem, he found he thought all four. The age thing didn't come into it: the attractiveness of any willing female past puberty depended for him on her attractiveness, though as far as he knew he had in practice confined himself to those of 16 yrs and over. What counted was the immediacy or lack of it. Some time or other in Hawaii or somewhere, very pleasant; on his next trip to Italy, fairly pleasant; by the end of next month in Orris Park, a little unpleasant; here and now, very unpleasant. Even that wasn't quite right because of the difference between the thought of sexual intercourse and the thought of the thought of it. If he could snap his fingers and boof, there he was in mid-job, very pleasant; if she were really actually in fact standing a yard away on the precise point of starting to show how willing she was, very unpleasant. Not unpleasant, either, just as much as his old man needed to set it trying to haul itself up into his abdomen. But he couldn't write all this down, especially since the question was obviously nothing to do with any of it. Like the good examinee he had always been (best classical scholarship of his year at Charterhouse, First in Mods, best First of his year in Greats) he asked himself what was expected here, what was being looked for. A means of sorting out the child-molesters from the gerontophiles, why yes, and no doubt of making the finer distinction between the inhibited who welcomed any accepted restriction and the robust sturdy husky hardy hearty etc. He ticked 2 and picked up the other paper.

  A fantastically beautiful girl with an unbelievable figure wearing a skin-tight dress cut as low as it possibly could be is looking at me with eyes blazing with uncontrollable passion (he read). With lazy languorous movements she peels off the dress and reveals herself as completely stark naked and utterly nude. Her breasts are so enormous that there is hardly room for them on her thorax. They are rising and falling with irresistible desire as with her shapely hips swaying lazily she glides over and stands insolently before me with her hands on her curving hips and her colossal breasts jutting 100 words out at me. I tear off all my clothes and she gives a tremendous gasp of astonishment and admiration and awe. She lies down on a bed which is there.

  There was more, but he was still 73 words short of the 600 minimum set by Rosenberg and had already been compelled to introduce two additional girls, the first with immense breasts, the second with gigantic ones, for the sake of variety. He felt that this must violate some important canon of the genre but could find no other alternative to direct repetition. It was not that he had been idle; this was the fourth draft. The first, which had said all he really wanted to say on the matter, had consisted only of nouns, verbs, prepositions, pronouns and articles and been 113 words long; gamma minus at best. Well, he had to find those 73 somewhere before setting off for Harley Street the next morning. What about a black girl? With Brobdingnagian breasts? No no, with gleaming ebony skin. Mm..... The trouble was that being white himself he tended to think about white girls when he thought about girls at all.

  Brenda tapped softly at the open door. "All right?"

  "Right."

  He followed her across the small landing, where a Bengal rug lay, and into their bedroom. Here, in a drill they had been through many times together, they lifted off, folded and laid down on an ottoman the patchwork quilt she had expertly made. Again by tradition, lapsed in this case, she slipped off to the bathroom and he quickly undressed and got into bed. He felt calm and yet uneasy, quite resolved to carry out orders but unable not to wish that something harmless in itself would prevent what was in prospect. After a minute he turned over so that he would have his back to Brenda when she reappeared. She had treated with exemplary seriousness Rosenberg's letter about her need to lose weight, had joined the local group of Guzzlers Anonymous at the first opportunity and had already taken off six ounces, but that wasn't going to be enough to make her feel all right about being seen naked, which she had avoided for the past year or more, he supposed.

  There was a patter of arrival behind him (she moved lightly for so large a woman) and she got in and snuggled up to him with wincing and puffing noises.

  "Ooh! It's freezing. It's supposed to be the middle of April and it's like January."

  "Would you like to turn the other way?"

  "No, this is fine for me. Had you heard of comfort eating before?"

  "What?"

  "Comfort eating. What Dr Thing said I'd been going in for because of feeling sexually inadequate. Had you heard of it?"

  "I think so, anyway it's dear enough what it's supposed to mean, which is all balls. If there's anybody who feels sexually inadequate it's me and I haven't started eating my head off. Just another example of thinking that if you name something you've explained it. Like .... like permissive society."

  "I don't think you're always meant to go in for comfort eating when you feel sexually inadequate. And in any case what makes you think you're the one who feels it so terrifically you leave everybody else standing, how adequate do you think I feel when I think about things and look back, that's what I'd like to ...."

  Brenda, who had started talking at some speed, stopped altogether because a jet was passing and even at this range she would have to shout rather and she was bad at shouting. A part of the window-frame buzzed for a short time as it always did on these occasions. Eventually Jake said,

  "My fault. I just got fed up and guilty and ashamed. Of course you must feel inadequate if we have to use the word, but I can tell you there's no need for you to, it's all me, we went into that."

  "I know we went into it
, but we decided it must be me as well as you."

  "You may have thought so, but it wasn't what we decided."

  "Well I think it was. And of course it is, it's obvious. Anyway I'm warm enough now. Hadn't we better get on with it?"

  "All right." Grunting, Jake turned over so as to face his wife.

  They intertwined their legs in a friendly way.

  "Tell me again what we're meant to do."

  "We take it in turns to stroke and massage each other anywhere but what you used to call down below."

  "Did I? Anyway I bags you start."

  "Okay. Lift up..... Put your arm..... That's right."

  He started stroking the back of her neck and her left shoulder and upper arm. She sighed and settled herself more comfortably, moving her head about on the pillow. A minute or so went by. "Is that nice?" he asked.

  "Yes. Are we meant to talk?"

  "He didn't say we weren't to, the doctor, so I suppose it's all right."

  "Good."

  But neither did any more talking for the moment. With his glasses off, Brenda's face was a bit of a blur to Jake but he could see her 'eyes' were shut. By his reckoning, the second minute was just about up when she said.

  "Did the doctor say we weren't to have a kiss?"

  "No.,

  "Let's have one then."

  He couldn't have said how long it had been since they had kissed each other on the mouth, probably less than twenty-four hours, but it was longer since he had noticed them doing that. Their mouths stayed together for a time, again showing friendliness, this time roughly of the sort that, on his side, he would have shown an amiable acquaintance in public at a New Year's party. He thought Brenda was putting about the same into it. The kiss ended by common agreement.

  "Well, that was all right ..."he said.

  " .. as far as it went. We'll get better, darling. Lots of ground to be made up."

  "Yes—your turn now."

  "To what?"

  "Stroke me the way I was stroking you."

  "Oh yes. Will the same sort of place suit you? Round here?"

  "Fine."

  "I'm sorry I'm so fat," said Brenda after a moment.

  "That's all right, I mean you couldn't help it and you've started doing something about it."

  "Yes. Do you think I ought to do something about my hair?"

  "What's the matter with it"

  "Matter with it? It's all grey, or hadn't you noticed?"

  "Of course I'd noticed. It's a very nice grey. A, an interesting sort of grey."

  "Wow, you make it sound terrific. I could have it dyed back to something like what it used to be. They do jolly good dyes these days."

  "Oh but you can always tell."

  "Not if it's done properly. And supposing you can tell, what about it, what's wrong with that?"

  "Well, it looks a bit...."

  "A bit what? A bit off? A bit bad taste? A bit not quite the thing? A bit mutton dressed up as lamb?"

  "Of course not. Well yes, a bit, but that's not really what I .... I just think it looks ugly. Because it's unnatural."

  "So's make-up unnatural. So's shaving armpits. So's you shaving."

  "All right, just ugly then."

  "I wasn't going to have it bright red or bright yellow or bright purple, just something like what it used to be like, which was brownish mouse if you remember. No I think you think it's sort of out of place."

  "I doubt if we're supposed to talk as much as this."

  "Not that you care."

  Jake looked mildly startled. "What do you mean?"

  "You're not enjoying this are you, me stroking you? Your face went all resigned when I started. Are you?"

  "I'm not disenjoying it."

  "Thanks a 'lot,'" said Brenda, stopping stroking.

  "No don't. What else could I have said? You knew anyway.

  And it isn't you. With this it really isn't you. You said we'd got a lot of ground to make up. We've only just started."

  "All right, but I reckon it's your turn again now."

  "Fair enough."

  "Did the doctor say you weren't to stroke my tits?"

  "No."

  "Well, you can stroke them then, can't you?"

  "I suppose so."

  "Only suppose so? They aren't down below are they?"

  "No, but they're sort of on the way there. Put it like this, if down bellow's red and your arm's green, that makes your tits amber."

  "Yes, I see. Perhaps we'd better be on the safe side and not."

  "On the other hand of course, it's be a natural mistake to make, so if it is, if it would be a mistake you'd think he'd have made sure of saying so, you know, oh and by the way nongenital includes tot's, excludes them rather, I should say breasts. No, mammary areas."

  "You mean we can?"

  "I don't see what harm it could do, do you?"

  "Fire away."

  He fired away for a full two minutes. She stayed quite passive, eyes again shut, breathing slowly and steadily, giving an occasional contented groan. No doubt what he was doing, or how he was doing it, bore a close resemblance to its counterpart of a couple of years before, but there was no means of comparison because he had felt so different then, in particular felt more. What he felt now was an increasing but still never more than mild desire to stop doing what he was doing. In itself each motion he made was unequivocally if only by a little on the pleasant side of the pleasant/unpleasant borderline; the snag was there were so many of them. Patting a favourite child on the head or indeed stroking a beloved animal (to single out two activities he had never felt much drawn to) became unnatural if continued beyond a certain short time, however willing child or animal might be to let things go on. My God, another twenty-five minutes of this?—it was a good job he was such a faithful doer of what doctors told him to do. Hadn't Rosenberg told him to carry on with this bleeding sensate-focusing carry-on for up to half an hour? Twenty minutes was that, wasn't it? So was ten. And five. But to argue so was to use advertiser's mathematics. Amazing reductions at Poofter's, up to twenty per cent on all furnishings. Daily brushing with Bullshitter's fleweridated toothpaste reduces cavities by up to thirty per cent, in the case you happen to be looking at by only point-noughtone of one per cent but what of it, and also of course helps fight (not helps to fight) tooth decay, alongside drinking things and not eating toffee all day long. Daily brushing with candle wax or boot-polish would also reduce cavities by up to something or other and help fight tooth decay. There were enough laws already but surely there ought to be one about up to, restricting it to, oh, between the figure given and half of it. Helping fight things would be rather more of a—

  "Isn't it about time for my turn?" asked Brenda.

  "Oh, er .... yes I suppose it is. I sort of lost count of time."

  "Carried away. No I don't mean that darling, forget I said it, I was just being frightfully silly. Now on this round I think we might...."

  "Hey ! "

  "What's the matter?"

  "Supposed to be non-genital."

  "That's non, isn't it, there?"

  "Well yes, but only—"

  "Genitals genital and non's non."

  "But the spirit of the—"

  "Sod the spirit. And even the spirit doesn't say you're not supposed to enjoy it."

  "I don't think we ought to—"

  "Shut up."

  After a little while, Jake began to breathe more deeply, then to flex and unflex his muscles. Forgotten feelings, located in some mysterious region that seemed neither body nor mind, likewise began to possess him. Brenda sighed shakily. He pressed himself against her and at once, try as he would, the more irresistibly for his trying, which was like the efforts of a man with no arms to pick up a pound note off the pavement, the flow reversed itself. In a few more seconds he relaxed.

  "Oh well, that's that," he said.

  "No it isn't. Only for now. It shows there's something. What do you expect at this stage?"

  "What I expect at 't
his' stage, and what I shall no doubt get, is about twenty more minutes of an experience I wasn't looking forward to and which has turned out to justify such .... mild forebodings. It isn't you, it's me."

  "Don't think you're the only one, mate. It isn't you, it's me cuts both ways, you know. You're not blaming me, that's how you mean it, but you're not taking me into consideration either. What about that?"

  "Yes. Yes, you're right."

  "If you had—been considering me, you might have wondered what I was doing telephoning Elspeth when all I needed to do to make sure we weren't interrupted was take the receiver off. That's right. Putting off the evil hour. Giving way to mild what names. It wasn't you, it was me. Now you'd better start stroking again, uncongenial as it may be. The doctor said you were to."

  "It's not 'uncongenial,' it's just—"

  "No, not there. Do my back."

  He started doing her back. "You said it was nice before, when I was on your shoulder and arm. Was it? Is this?"

  "Oh yes. Not tremendous, but nice."

  "Sexy?"

  "No," she said as if he had asked her whether she had said yes or no. "Nice all the same. I like all that sort of thing, massages and sauna baths and whatnot. You don't, do you?"

  "Never been able to see the point of it."

  "I suppose it's just how you're made. I suggest what we do now is go on for however long it is and not mind too much how we get there, talk or recite or sing as long as we put in the time."

  "Yes. The idea must be to get us used to touching each other again."

  "Start to get us used."

  7—Are You Disturbed?

  That was on the Monday. On the Tuesday Jake went down to see Rosenberg again, taking his homework with him: the completed questionnaire, the sixth and final draft of his fantasy and the paper discs that recorded the doings of the nocturnal mensurator. These troubled him slightly. Each disc bore a faintly pencilled arc with, at intervals, a thicker line or perhaps a pair of contiguous ordinary lines in a radial position. They were no more than a millimetre or two long and must represent movements of the metal arm on the breaking and making of the electrical circuit. But by this time Jake had forgotten which way the thing was supposed to go when, so he didn't know whether he had had a series of virtually continuous erections, broken only by breathing-spaces in a continuous-performance dreamland orgy, or half a dozen flickers of mild interest per night.