Jake's Thing

by Kingsley Amis

  "The what? Look, if you think I'm going to .... expose my genitals to a whole crowd of God knows—"

  "There'll be no crowd, I promise you. The number is eight, and one of those is doubtful."

  "All medical students," said Thatch. "Think of them as doctors, like us."

  "They won't get in anybody's way," said Rosenberg. "They've been carefully briefed on being as unobtrusive as possible and things are so arranged that you'll hardly know they're there."

  Jake reflected: there were six of them here; another seven or eight wouldn't make much odds, true, but it was a bit thick to be treated as mid-Victorian for not favouring a come-one-come-all admissions policy at the impending show. When he signified that on consideration this could go ahead they switched to treating him like a child just bravely out of its mopes or dumps. So, as the party trooped along a corridor that had the look of being identical to several hundred others in the place, he was not best pleased when Rosenberg moved him a little apart from the others and said,

  "I found your attitude just now quite interesting."

  "Oh you did, did you?"

  "You reacted somewhat violently to the notion of a large number of persons witnessing our investigations."

  "Mm.,

  "Why?"

  "Well, to start with, it's not inconceivable I might be recognised."

  "Would that be so disastrous?"

  "Most things people object to aren't so disastrous or even disastrous, doctor. I object to somebody who knows me seeing me having this done, whatever it may be."

  "You mean the exposure itself?"

  "Well-needing treatment for sexual .... inadequacy."

  "Really now? You wouldn't object to being known to need treatment for, er, diabetes, which arises from insulin inadequacy?"

  "Of course not. That's different."

  "Would you call that a mature attitude?"

  "Perhaps I wouldn't and then again perhaps I would, and either way it's my attitude. Like my genitals."

  "We'll discuss this again, Mr Richardson," said Rosenberg as they approached an unluxurious lift in which the others already stood.

  The lecture-theatre was of a type familiar to Jake chiefly from American films: semi-circular tiers of seats rising up from a level space on the other side of which were blackboards and a projection-screen attached to the wall. Near the middle of the space there stood a metal framework mounted on struts and castors and with electric cables attached to several of its components; Jake assumed that what he saw was the back of the apparatus, which as he soon gathered bore dials or other measuring devices on its front. He found himself sitting on an ugly and expensive-looking straight-backed chair without his trousers and underpants. Otherwise he was neatly, almost formally dressed on the clean-linen-for-the-scaffold principle: dark-grey suit jacket, cream shirt, well-knotted regimental tie, grey socks and much-polished black shoes. The promise of immunity from spotlights given him a little earlier had been kept in the letter but not so much in the spirit: though there were several sources of light, all of them overhead or somewhere near it, their illumination was concentrated on him and the couple of dozen square yards round him; the one exception shone on the faces of Thatch and his bald colleague as they peered at their machine and clicked a switch here and there. Professor Trefusis stood near Jake at a metal table taking folders, typewritten sheets and a hard backed file-cover of some kind out of a briefcase and arranging them on the table. Her expression was serious almost to the point of grimness, like that of an official about to announce a threat to the security of the kingdom. What was her husband like? What did he photograph? Did she do this instead of sex or was she so barmy about it that she had to spend her whole working day on this sort of substitute or semblance, keeping herself quiet, so to speak, until she could scuttle off for several uninterrupted hours of the real thing? Could anyone really tell? What about the visitor from Ghana, the only other person in plain sight? Which raised a question.

  "Are your students here, Professor Trefusis?"

  "Yes, all eight of them."

  "So the doubtful one made it after all; I'm so glad. Tell me, how can they see to take notes?"

  "They don't have to. All the technical information and a full account of the procedure have been circulated to them already. From—their point of view, this session provides an opportunity to watch the work actually being carried out under field conditions."

  "Oh I see."

  "I think we're about ready. Miss Newman?"

  Miss Newman came into the light carrying a length of flex that ended in what looked to Jake like a classier version of the plastic hoop on the old nocturnal mensurator. Without looking him in the eye she hung it on him and withdrew. Was that all she did?

  "Bill?"

  "Okay."

  "Now Mr Richardson, I want you to try and concentrate entirely on me, on what I tell you and on what I show you. Forget about everybody else. If there's anything you don't like for any reason you're to say so immediately, and you can stop the whole session at any time simply by saying Stop. Right? Now. Shut your eyes. Have a sexual fantasy. Think of something that really turns you on."

  What Jake wanted to say immediately was that nothing really did that and if anything within reason really did then he wouldn't be there and hadn't Rosenberg told her so, but he followed doctor's orders and thought away like mad. Or tried to. Girl. Beautiful girl. Fantastically beautiful girl with an unbelievable..... No. 'Girl.' Girl with slinky dress which she slowly draws up over her head. Underclothes and stockings. No, tights these days. Bugger these days. She slowly takes off one stocking. But he'd never been one for that kind of thing: off with the lot in short order had been his way. Off with the lot, then. Kiss. And so forth. He was well, or as well as he could manage, into the so forth when Professor Trefusis said,

  "All right, Mr Richardson, hold it and relax for a moment. Bill?"

  "Point-nine and thirty-three point-nine."

  Perhaps these figures displeased or disquieted the boss; anyway, she went over and joined the two at the apparatus, behind whom Jake could now make out two or three or more dim shapes. He could tell there was at least one other person to his left rear but didn't look round. Only the Ghanaian observer was now in full view; he had got in a lot of observing when Miss Newman did her bit and even now was still at it on and off. Jake wanted to tell him to pull up a prayer mat or whatever he fancied and be his guest. He yawned and stretched. It could hardly be that he had broken the machine by overloading it—no, no, here came Professor Trefusis with a satisfied expression.

  "Sorry about that." She picked up the file he had noticed and passed it to him. "Would you read aloud what it says on the first page? I should explain that the object is to make sure you're turned off after each stimulus."

  "Ah." He found that the thing was actually a loose-leaf book containing sheets of typescript." Clear enough. He read aloud,

  "Apart from the peculiar tenets of individual thinkers, there is also in the world at large an increasing inclination to stretch unduly the powers of society over the individual, both by the force of opinion and even by that of legislation; and as the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society and diminish the power of the individual, this encroachment is not one of the evils which tend spontaneously to disappear, but, on the contrary to grow more and more formidable. The disposition of mankind, whether as rulers or as fellow-citizens, to impose their own opinions and inclinations as a rule of conduct on others, is so energetically supported by some of the best and by some of the worst feelings incident to human nature that it is hardly ever kept under restraint by anything but want of power; and as the power is not declining, but growing, unless a strong barrier of moral conviction can be raised against the mischief, we must expect, in the present circumstances of the world, to see it increase."

  He shut the book and handed it back, aware as he did so that no more observing was going on in his immediate neighbourhood. Whatever was next came
out of one of the folders and was held up so that the group near the machine could see it. A moment later the professor was showing him a magazine photograph of one of the business-head-Carter-face sisterhood displaying her giraffe's ear.

  "I don't like that," he said.

  It was out of sight in an instant. "What don't you like about it?"

  "It's ugly."

  "You find the model ugly?"

  "No, not at all. I mean her .... parts."

  "They repel you?"

  "Yes. What I see there repels me."

  She hesitated and glanced momentarily to his left. That must be Rosenberg standing there, perhaps among others, and were those questions his, put on his behalf instead of directly out of what, etiquette? Never mind: with no more said the second exhibit was exhibited after the same fashion as the first. It was much more up Jake's street, a nice-looking girl who also looked nice, possible too in the sense that you met girls like her, and arranged or shown in what might be called 'neo-Zoom' style-advantage taken of some of the freedoms of the last few years without the surrender of decency.

  "Better?"

  "Fine."

  "Concentrate on it." Trefusis leaned towards him, lowered her voice and said kindly, "And remember this: by now nobody's thinking of you as an individual or a person. You're just an object."

  "Thank you."

  He concentrated and quite soon it started being rather a success, nothing to cause any wild surmising at the instrument panel, but still. This part went on for some minutes. Then he was told to forget about that and given the book open at a different page. He read aloud,

  "If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind. Were an opinion a personal possession of no value except to the owner; if to be obstructed in the enjoyment of it were simply a private injury, it would make some difference whether the injury was inflicted only on a few persons or on many. But the peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth; if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error."

  The third offering showed two girls being familiar with each other, no more than that, on a piece of very dean and neat garden furniture. That went down reasonably well too. Before his third bout of reading Jake said,

  "May I ask a question?"

  "Certainly."

  "I'd just like to make it clear"—he resisted the temptation to look over his shoulder—"that what, well, appealed to me there wasn't what they were getting up to really, it was just the fair one, the look of her face and her breasts."

  "I'm sorry, what's your question?"

  "Oh. Oh well I haven't really got one, I just wanted to say that."

  There was no reply apart from an undecided nod of the head, which he felt was quite as much as his non-question had deserved. Why had he bothered? Perhaps the same problem was exercising others: he heard whispers from the far side of the apparatus and a murmur behind him. But in a short time he was reading aloud,

  "We take care that, when there is a change, it shall be for change's sake, and not from any idea of beauty or convenience; for the same idea of beauty or convenience would not strike all the world at the same moment, and be simultaneously thrown aside by all at another moment. But we are progressive as well as changeable: we continually make new inventions in mechanical things, and keep them until they are again superseded by better; we are eager for improvement in politics, in education, even in morals, though in this last our idea of improvement chiefly consists in persuading or forcing other people to be as good as ourselves. It is not progress that we object to; on the contrary, we flatter ourselves that we are the most progressive people who ever lived. It is individuality that we war against: we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike; forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type, and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either. We have a warning example in China."

  The next thing was that the lovely Rowena was showing him a photograph of a girl doing what he didn't want to see any girl doing ever except to him—school of 'Kensington,' in fact.

  "I don't like that," he said. "And what I don't like about it isn't the activity itself, far from it, but being shown it going on between other people. It's not that I disapprove. Well yes actually come to think of it I do disapprove rather. Of that photograph being published I mean."

  "Fair enough," she said, but spent the next minute or so looking through her folders, presumably in search of material that wouldn't offend his susceptibilities. At last she handed him a sheaf of seven or eight pictures and asked him to pick the two he liked best. That was easy: he chose one girl who, by the look of her, could have had no idea in the world why those men had asked her to lean against a tree wearing just a straw hat, and one with a faintly intellectual expression who reminded him of a 'Zoom' favourite of his. The procedure had an end-of-session feel to it and some nuance of the professorial manner, he thought, suggested the same thing. So he was surprised and a little fed up to be told, after both girls had been disposed of, that he could take a short rest.

  He put on a smile. "Before what?"

  "Before the second part of the programme. Do smoke if you want to, Mr Richardson."

  "No thanks, I've given it up." The same thing only live? "What happens in the second part?"

  "We stimulate you artificially."

  "As opposed to—"

  "With an artificial stimulator," explained the professor.

  "Oh I see."

  She went across and seemed to confer with the group by the machine. Although they were so near he couldn't hear a word of what they were saying. Rosenberg came strolling out of the shadows, followed by the Ghanaian.

  "Well now, and how's it going?"

  "I thought you were supposed to tell me that."

  "I meant your personal reaction in mental and emotional terms."

  "How I feel, you mean. Well, I suppose one can get used to anything. Look here, what's this stimulator?"

  "Ah, there's a cunning little gadget if you like."

  "No doubt, but what is it?"

  "Let's see, it's metal, and it's powered by electricity, and it .... revolves rapidly."

  "You brave man," interposed the observer.

  Jake gave up Rosenberg and nodded appreciatively, hoping to be told what for this fellow said him brave man.

  "Your ego has been subjected to a massive onslaught. Of the events in detail inducing you to set your foot on the path that has brought you here this afternoon, I know nothing; but of this I am quite sure, that they were of a sort to injure your pride most severely. So it must have gone with all the intervening events. Today, given among other factors your age and class, was the supreme test. I confess to having done a little to aggravate it; I apologise, and can plead only the excuse of scientific curiosity. I salute you, sir, and would ask you to do me the honour of allowing me to shake your hand."

  They shook; Jake had been about to get up from his chair to do so but remembered the state of his clothing, which indeed had seldom been far from his thoughts over the past half-hour and which now, for some reason, decided him against getting up. He was still most interested in the question of the artificial stimulator and was satisfied soon enough. Professor Trefusis, with Miss Newman at her side, again stood before him. She was holding up an object of yellowish metal about the size of a pepper pot with a small protuberance at the top.

  "This," she said,
"is the artificial stimulator."

  With a neat movement she tripped a switch on the device and a thin high-pitched whine started up. To Jake it sounded like a dentist's high-speed drill and some of his reaction to the thought must have shown in his face, because Trefusis smiled and spoke reassuringly, took his hand and laid the metal protuberance, which he now saw was spinning rapidly, against it.

  He felt an agreeable stroking sensation, not intense, as if something between a fingertip and a feather were being applied with superhuman regularity. He nodded appreciatively again.

  Part II now went ahead with businesslike dispatch. Artificial stimulator in hand, Miss Newman knelt before him. Professor Trefusis looked quickly through the contents of one of her folders and said,

  "You'll now be subjected to the same stimuli as before while also being stimulated genitally. No doubt you'll appreciate that should your response come to climax the programme would have to be discontinued."

  "Yes," said Jake, thinking this was a bit mealy-mouthed of her in the circumstances.

  "So if you raise your hand the genital, stimulation will cease at once."

  "Fine."

  What followed was physical pleasure in its purest form, unaccompanied, in other words, by any of the range of feelings from tenderness to triumph normally embodied with it. Even the desire for its continuance was missing, so that every minute, every dozen seconds he had to strive not to send the damned contraption 'flying' and run for the door, no trousers or no no trousers. How can she do it? lie kept asking himself, not rhetorically: what sort of woman does it take to measure what happens to chaps" willies for a living? What does your mummy do? And how can her husband cope? The she he meant was entirely the fair professor; Miss Newman never entered his thoughts. It was that, he saw afterwards, that made the whole shooting-match bearable: by luck or amazing judgement they had passed over for the artificial-stimulator-wielding spot all the impossible kinds of person, to wit males, attractive females and unattractive females, and come up with somebody as near nobody as anybody could be, somebody totally unmemorable, somebody who did nothing at all except as ordered. Or perhaps her behaviour, or absence of behaviour, was the result of her having been carefully briefed in the interests of relaxation of atmosphere and total informality.