Jake's Thing

by Kingsley Amis

  Jake was between Didcot and Reading in the earliest of the three usual return Flying Dodgers (the choice was less confined than on the outward journey) when it came to him that the plastic phallus was still in his desk drawer. Unless somebody else had already taken it out, of course.

  14—Sexual Act

  "What exactly is it?" asked Brenda.

  "It's like what we did before, only this time it's 'genital' sensate focusing, so down below is all right, in fact the whole point so to speak."

  "I see. There is a thing called a feel-up, isn't there? I mean of course there is, but that is an expression, feel-up?"

  "It certainly used to be. I expect it still carries on."

  "Okay. Now: how is this genital what-name different from a feel-up?"

  "It's a feel-up by numbers," said Jake in a sneering tone.

  "Don't sound like that about it. What's by numbers? No, I see, so many minutes each, sort of like a drill."

  "Exactly like a drill. They must think that takes the anxiety out of it, everything being predictable, no decisions to take."

  "That seems quite sensible to me, as far as it goes."

  "I don't know, perhaps it is. Well...."

  "And we're allowed to have sexual intercourse but not required to."

  "Yes. There goes predictability. I must have muddled it up, that part."

  Jake and Brenda got up from their seats in the sitting-room at Burgess Avenue and clasped hands with an air little different from that of a couple shaking them before going off to face some minor social ordeal like boss to dinner or speech to local society. Upstairs they put the patchwork quilt on one side, she went out to the bathroom and he started undressing. At first he tried not to think of what was in store; then he decided that was silly and thought. Thinking passed quickly and imperceptibly into feeling. What feeling? Reluctance? Yes. Revulsion? No. Fear? No. Embarrassment? No. Boredom? Er, no. Dejection? Yes, but still not the right section of the thesaurus. Disfavour? Yes, but not much further forward. 'Dismay'—of a peculiar kind, one not encountered before in any of his admittedly unhabitual attempts to analyse his emotions: it was profound .... and .... unalloyed .... and .... absorbing .... and .... (Christ) .... very very mild, like so much else. Well, what did he know about that?

  He finished undressing and got into bed with his back towards the door. Brenda pattered in and joined him. "Ooh ! Let's get warm first, shall we?"

  "Sure."

  "I've lost another five ounces. Mostly going without potatoes last night, that must be."

  "Good for you."

  "I am trying, you know."

  "Of course you are. I said good for you."

  "Will you remember the programme all right, do you think?"

  "I won't have to, I've got it here."

  "Oh marvellous." After a silence, Brenda said, "Well, shall we start?"

  "Okay," said Jake cheerfully. "Now the first thing is five minutes each of sensate focusing, that's the non-alcoholic sort. Who's going to go first?"

  "Me. Remember you're to say if I'm doing it right and what I'm not doing that you'd like me to."

  "Check."

  Brenda did it right rather than wrong and he couldn't think of anything she wasn't doing that he'd have liked her to, except for falling asleep, going to answer the telephone etc. Then he called time and took his turn. He put in a solid, conscientious performance that must have gone down quite well, because she evidently couldn't think of anything he wasn't doing that she'd have liked him to do.

  "Right," he said at last, still cheerfully, reached for the xeroxed sheet on the bedside table and put his glasses on. "Yes—now you stimulate my nipples and breasts by stroking, tickling or gentle pinching, or the whole breast area may be gently rubbed. Off you go."

  And off she went. After a couple of minutes he said,

  "Let's scrub this. It says fifty per cent of males respond sexually to such stimulation. That probably means up to fifty per cent. Anyway, I must be one of the other fifty per cent. Now it's my turn or your turn. I'd better just...." He put his glasses on again. "Female breast area, here we are. Yes, you're supposed to explain to me just how you like it done."

  This proved to be unnecessary. Brenda plainly liked it done how he was doing it, responded perceptibly more than last time. He was glad about that: he felt pleased, though without feeling pleasure. That was to be expected: if he had been getting pleasure out of what he was at there would be no need for him to be at it, or alternatively he would have been at it anyway without ever having heard of genital sensate focusing or been near bloody Rosenberg. But to have not the slightest expectation of any pleasure whatsoever undoubtedly eased the strain. Grating a carrot or polishing a spoon would be far more tedious if you had to keep on the alert waiting for it to "turn you on", as he had gathered it was called. Somehow, too, not talking helped. It made the whole business more serious, more like the Army. When he did say something it was out of the book.

  "End of Phase I. Now with Phase II either partner can begin, so shall we swap around? It seems more...."

  "If you like."

  "Okay. That means I sit with my back against the head of the bed with my legs spread out and you sit between them with your back to me. Then I"—glasses—"I used gentle tickling, stroking or kneading movements in long, even, rhythmic strokes and you, well what it boils down to is you guide me and after a bit I .... yes, I conduct a gentle but persistent invasion .... and mustn't be afraid to stop for rests. That sounds pretty straightforward. Shall we go?"

  The first part of Phase II was completed according to instructions. At its conclusion the partners changed their positions as follows: the woman sat with her back against the head of the bed with her legs spread out and the man faced her, put his legs on either side of her and lay back with his genital region accessible to her. After a period of stimulation, beginning with gentle tickling, stroking, pinching and scratching, the man showed signs of arousal and excitement. In due course an act of intercourse took place, in the course of which both partners achieved climax and evinced various signs of relaxation in course of time.

  Afterwards the male partner lay on his side in a reposeful posture, his facial area in close proximity to the facial area of the female partner and his right upper limb partially surrounding her trunk. Well, he thought to himself, that (the taking place of the act of intercourse) ought to prove something. The question was what. That he could if he would, at any rate. What more? That there was nothing organically wrong with him. But he already had Dr Curnow's word for that.

  As if she sensed that he was in a questioning frame of mind, Brenda kissed him warmly on the cheek. That was nice.

  "You see?" she murmured. "All just worry and tension."

  "Was it all right for you?"

  "Yes." After a pause she added, "Like old times."

  That was nice too, but the male partner didn't think much of it as a statement of fact, or at least of how he felt, he himself speaking personally as of then and there. What had finished a minute earlier had been pretty much like old times, physically at least and as far as he could remember—the remembering trouble having less to do with the oldness of the times than the inherent difficulty of remembering a lot about any such experiences or series of them; so at least plenty of people would say. But over the last minute, now extending itself to two or three more of the same, he could find in himself rather little, hardly enough to be worth mentioning, of the old-time mixture of peace and animation. That might be round the corner; early days yet, long way to go, walk before we can run etc.

  "Would you like a cup of tea? he asked.

  "Ooh, yes."

  "And a slice of toast?"

  "Oh 'darling,'" she said as if he had added a gold chain or something to his original offer of a diamond necklace, which was agreeably far from taking things for granted but also rather convicted him of having done bugger-all for the preceding decade. Then she added immediately, "I daren't. Guzzlers Anonymous would kill me."


  "I won't tell them."

  "I know, but

  He tossed a coin in his mind and said sternly, "I didn't think, I shouldn't have suggested it. Of course you mustn't have toast."

  "All right." She put her face under the bedclothes.

  The post-coital cup of tea was very much an old-time institution, with assorted origins or purposes. It satisfied Jake's need at this stage to be up and doing instead of going on lying about; its making and fetching gave Brenda the chance for a short nap; it was a small token of his appreciation; drinking it together brought a pleasant cosiness. Or rather all these things had once been the case; at a more primeval period, the interval that ended with the laying down of cups had turned out to be just right for his thoughts to start returning whither they had started turning half an hour before. No surprise was expressed or felt when that didn't happen this afternoon, or more precisely early evening. After the tea was drunk Jake went and had a bath, as usual leaving the water for Brenda so as to save fuel. Then he dressed himself with a certain care in clean pale-pink shirt, mildly vivid tie, the Marks and Spencer suit he betted would fool anyone he had much chance of running into, and the grey suede half-boots that had been all the rage in some relatively recent era like that of Hitler's rise to power. He hadn't a lot of hair left on his head but he tidied what there was with the touch of complacency this exercise always tended to arouse in him: better bald as a badger than train it over from side or back and be afraid to sneeze. That done, he went downstairs and watched Crossroads. Just as it was finishing Brenda came into the room.

  "Ready," she said in exactly the same way, eager and yet nervous, as he remembered from when he had taken her out to dinner in Oxford for the first time after they were married, at the Dollymores' house in St Margaret's Road; she had worn a sort of coppery-coloured dress of some shiny stuff and bright green slippers with gold clasps and pointed toes. Jake felt more than one kind of pang, at how time had gone by, what quantity and in what way, and at how long it had been since anything much about Brenda had struck him. He got up quickly.

  "You look beautiful."

  She smiled delightedly and without reserve. "That's good. You look all right yourself."

  "It's the tie. Brings out the blue in my eyes."

  "Off?"

  "Yes"

  They were indeed off that night, not however to anyone's house but to a fairly classy Chinese restaurant called the Bamboo Bothy and situated almost round the corner from them in Vassall Crescent, easy walking distance anyway so no trouble or expense over transport. The idea—in general: the choice of premises had been left entirely open—was Rosenberg's, indeed his instruction. Weekly until further notice, the Richardsons were to engage in interpersonal recreative sociality, in other words to "go out together". It had been and would remain Jake's part to initiate the enterprise, though Brenda had an equal voice in determining its nature. Since what he would have liked best, granted he had to leave the house at all, was a straight-there-and-back attendance at the most violent and/or horrific film on show in Greater London while what she would have liked best was drinks at the Ritz followed by dinner at the Connaught, things might seem to have gone her way of the two, if not by much, but he had really scored by vetoing the below-subsistence-level man's, the famine-relief-beneficiary's version of the Connaught that was all they could afford: cooling bad quasi-continental food served tardily and rudely in hot dark noisy smelly dirty crowded surroundings. "We won't go 'there' again," Brenda would say, but they did in all but name, admittedly less often in the last year or so.

  The Bothy was almost empty, to Jake's knowledge its invariable state: turning up at eight or nine o'clock, walking past at eleven showed the same three unpeopled files of immaculate white tablecloths. It must be just the lid of an arsenal for use when. The proprietor's grandson or father greeted them pleasantly and showed them to a booth or berth at one side of the room. The composition covers on the benches or banquettes made your bottom give awful snarling, farting noises as you squirmed it along, forced so to squirm it by the overhang of the lowish table. Would they like a drink? No, they would like to order, though having done so they, in the person of Jake, also ordered a bottle of stuff called Wan Fu which they had tried and liked before. Among the welter of what must be Chinese on the label it said, in English, that this wine was specially selected to accompany Chinese dishes, and added reassuring references in French to negotiants, Bordeaux and cellars. Jake pictured a negotiant, or the appointee of one, walking round a cellar in Bordeaux with his mind bent hard on spare ribs, sweet and sour prawn, fried crispy noodle and chicken with bamboo shoots and every so often suddenly and infallibly selecting. Well worth the mark-up.

  "Ooh, I was going to say, the garden's in a bit of a state I thought today," said Brenda.

  "There's always rather a lot to do at the beginning of a term." It was true that he had a little more to do then than at some other times. "Anyway I've finished pruning the roses and I'll do the chrysanthemum fertiliser over the week-end. Weather hasn't been very inviting you must admit. Ah, thank you very much, that looks delicious." As soon as the waiter had gone Jake said, "Well, darling, we've got something to celebrate."

  "Something, yes."

  "Oh I agree it isn't very much, but...."

  "No it isn't. Well, it's just something."

  He groaned to himself. "It's only supposed to be a start."

  "What is? What's 'it' exactly?"

  "Well, a .... successful .... what Rosenberg would call act of intercourse."

  "What's that? What's a successful one of those?"

  "Just .... one where the man gets it up and eventually comes, and the woman comes too."

  "How important is that, the woman coming too?"

  "Very important, I mean it wouldn't..."

  "It wouldn't be Grade A without that, would it? Not strictly kosher. Not quite all present and correct. It might mean you weren't able to hold back for the number of minutes and seconds laid down in Screwing Regulations for Mature Males section fourteen sub-section D."

  "You know it's more than that," said Jake a little absently. He was going over in his mind what he had said since leaving the house, because it must have been since then.

  "Nobody would have known it from the way you asked me just afterwards if it had been all right for me. You should have heard yourself. Talk about any-complaints-carry-on." Brenda had been looking down at the food through her spectacles, sorting out for herself the less calorie-crammed items; now her eyes met his. She had spoken and continued to speak in the same unheated tone she had used in Rosenberg's consulting-room when making similar points more generally. "I've taken in quite a lot of that Army stuff of yours. It might have been the best time of your life."

  "If we're going to get on to that level we might as well—"

  "That's not on a level, you think about it, not now, and you see if it wasn't. Anyway if it's of any interest, sorry no I know it's of interest, it was all right for me, just, what you might call technically."

  "You said it was like old times."

  "So it was. I meant it."

  Jake's spirits fell sharply. "Gee thanks," he said.

  "Don't misunderstand me, that's better than nothing, and I wasn't thinking of the real old times, when we started together. They were—"

  "But you didn't sound as if you meant it, well, disappointedly then. You sounded friendly and affectionate then."

  "That was then. Even after your any—complaints thing I wanted to make you feel as good as I could...."

  "Which you're losing no time in duly reversing."

  ".... so that you might start showing a bit of physical affection to me, instead of which you shot out of bed and started getting some tea going."

  "You didn't sound as if you minded the tea idea, quite the contrary, and surely you remember we always used to have tea afterwards, it isn't that long ago good God, and what do you think I'd been doing before but showing you physical affection—putting you in your place soc
ially? I think you might—"

  "I was making the best of a not frightfully good job, and I fancied a cup anyway, though a large gin would have been more like it just then quite frankly,"—Brenda was warming to her theme a little now—"and of course I remember how we used to have tea once, but that was different, and .... what was the other thing?"

  "Er. ..." Jake looked away diagonally across the aisle of the restaurant and saw that the three youngish men he had vaguely noticed a couple of minutes earlier, men whom by their open necked shirts and pullovers or leather jackets he had vaguely taken for a group of gasmen or dustmen on emergency call, were peering at menus. One of them was in the middle of a tremendous unshielded yawn. 'Really', the way they..... "Er .... Christ .... physical affection."

  "Oh yes. Well I don't count a poke as physical affection, I'm thinking of before that, the non-genital stimulation or whatever it's called. That's part of what that's meant to be, you realise, it's meant to be partly affectionate, or rather you don't realise, not like grooming a horse or more like pumping up a bicycle-tyre. You were like—I've never heard anybody gritting their teeth so loudly in my life, when you were doing it to me 'and' when I was doing it to you. And not saying a bloody word."

  "I thought that would help us concentrate. And you didn't say anything yourself either."

  "I took my time from you to start with and then I just hung on out of curiosity to see how long you were going to keep your mouth shut."

  Jake started to speak with resentment and defiance, then checked himself. "Now look. I know I've said it before, I'm merely reminding you, this is all me or, all right, mostly me, largely me, it starts with me, not you. I'd be the same with anybody."

  "I don't care about anybody. I'm meant to be special as far as you're concerned."

  "You are, and that's bound to make a difference but it's not going to happen all at once, we must accept that. And we have made a start. After all, biologically we've—"