Lurid & Cute

by Adam Thirlwell

  whom our hero accompanies to a sauna

  There was a changing room which was like the changing rooms in the swimming pools where I had learned to swim, and that I suppose is no surprise because presumably the capacity for variation in a changing room is very small. The atmosphere was strangely sports aquatic, with each of us bearing on our wrist a key on a plastic bracelet. And this was where Hiro and I had settled into our white spa gowns with plastic sandals – a uniform that I think is only ever humiliating, especially for the gutbucket male, not to mention the gutbucket miniature male, which was possibly its purpose, to emphasise the ugliness of the men in the presence of the women. Maybe it was a small humiliation to set against the greater humiliation of the women. Even if I am not so sure that the women are humiliated, in fact I am almost certain that there is no shame for them at all in such a place. It was more like those myths where nymphs hang out beside a pool and I now understood why these myths should end with the macho getting punished. I think punishment is only right for such a situation – to be in a salon, on a sofa, with a complimentary non-alcoholic beverage, regarding this tableau that was slightly reminiscent of the refreshment area at the bowling but only if you also admit that it had this glowing kind of extra that was the fact that every woman was naked, or almost. It was just another of the examples I was collecting of the replica that is not quite a replica, because it was so much like the portrait of a normal bar but the difference that the girls were almost naked was a total new discovery of what is possible in this world. I suppose I don’t think ever before I’ve understood what money was able to do. I don’t think I knew that this is what was possible. I had previously thought that just the greatest treats that money could buy were drugs or holidays. I didn’t realise it could totally go anywhere. And I know the argument that there are so many ways of coercion and entrapment in this world and money is just one of them, but the business of show was also very convincing. I was considering something Romy once told me she’d had to say to a boyfriend, along the lines of –

  ROMY

  It’s like you just do things because of porn. Like take coming on my face. I do not like it. I am not interested. I do not want your come all over my mouth.

  And I understood her but we still argued because in my opinion there was nothing intrinsically wrong with making things all Coney Island, the way they kept on adding attractions in the old days: the Roller Coaster, the Shoot-the-Chutes. I still think Manhattan is not Manhattan enough: it could do more with the artificial man-made illuminations. To which Romy said something like, but her point was, had he ever asked her? Actually sat down and thought: what does this cartoon character with steam coming out of her ears really think about this? I did see what she meant by that. The problem with the greater ideals is that you must achieve them with other people, and that can lead to confusing situations. Like here everyone did seem very happy, just having their conversations. If I imagined anything more, it would have only been massages with bikini girls, or maybe some oriental soapland where the emphasis was on scrubbing. So it was only when Hiro explained that you could go into a room with any of them that the real mystery of this place began to unfurl. And I knew that according to the usual terms of Wyman I should leave right away, but my worry was how excited I was feeling. It seemed to indicate that there could be a different way of understanding the situation. Just somewhere in the corner of my vision like one of those cartoon fairies I think I had a vision of Candy but it faded, it was like the brief exposure when you’re in the metro and it goes past another metro and for a moment you are staring at another person’s face instead of your reflection, but it still in the end does fade – for perhaps whatever sadness I might feel would be worth it for the new sensations I would have achieved, and especially when I thought that it was very unlikely this would happen to me again, never again would I find my way back to such a location, and that to do nothing here was something I would only ever regret. If utopia could be achieved in multiple perspectives among your friends, as Candy had observed, then why not also here, with strangers? Also I worried that now I was here it might seem haughty or even cold if I only sat and watched. I tried to think about the future, like perhaps two hours’ time. I think I thought that the worst I might feel would be that kind of sick hollow feeling the morning after you’ve drunk too much rye and smoked too much hashish. It was about as bad as that how I imagined it, the feeling afterwards. And after all, it’s easy to think that something has happened when in fact nothing has. There’s no reason everything has to be followed by a dark, bad sadness that would detach itself and stalk you like some mushy fetish with its matchstick hands and terrible toes. I think the brief occurs to us more than we sometimes think, as minute as the soft tearing sound the bubbles of washing-up foam make in the bowl in the sink. But I never quite managed to finish my moral calculations, because I was interrupted by Hiro smiling at a beautiful girl who was almost naked but not quite, who therefore sat down beside me and smiled. And as she did so my mind just went blank – like the way the wheels on a suitcase go suddenly softly silent when they move from the sidewalk’s tarmac onto lavish hotel carpet.

  where he finds himself ascending

  I’m usually bad at smiling but I tried to smile for her. I wanted her to see how polite I could be, and wanted to put her at her ease. Also I am vulnerable to female beauty, and sure, if you saw her at a party you might not have been amazed – but there she would have been in the ordinary modern clothes whereas here she was dressed in just some sort of fabric around her waist and I do not see this so often. In fact I do not think I have ever sat and talked to a topless stranger. I think there is something totally sexy about a girl who is topless only, I say sexy but maybe there’s also something sad. Let’s say it can be sad or sexy, depending on the situation. For instance I love it when Candy is only in her jeans when she is half dressing or undressing, but there the toplessness can sometimes seem maybe also vulnerable, as if something is simply incomplete, whereas here it was only alluring. And it occurred to me to compliment this girl and so I said something like:

  — You’re really pretty.

  I’m not so good with words in social situations. As I said, I suffer from shyness. But she looked at me with affection, and told me her name. And I know that this name was almost definitely made up but still, like everything, a person needs a name, even if that name isn’t real.

  — I’m Caycee, said Caycee.

  And we sat there. Hiro was now looking away, like he was a calm philosopher or mystic saint. I sort of understood. I think that he was nervous, and definitely it was awkward, this sitting with a girl whom you don’t know and is almost naked, beside your friend, with both of you in towelling robes. It was definitely a new form of human interaction. But also I approved of this, because I am thinking that the future will more and more be all about these kinds of interaction, where everything usual is blurred. I was definitely excited. Her eyes were blue and her hair was blonde and her breasts were small, but I didn’t care about her eyes or her hair or her breasts, I was beyond the entire physical, because I was in the pure cartoon, in the seventh sphere, like that man who dreamed he was looking down on the very tiny earth – I do have a gift for separating or levitating like that. I was feeling very separate and also like I wanted very much to make this moment happy, like it would prove my expanding ideals not by having sex or something like that but just by being able to maintain a gentle conversation. And because I think it’s always odd to be without conversation when a woman is naked in front of you, or almost, because I may not be suave but I know the proprieties, I tried to keep talking.

  — You’re lovely, I said.

  I really do have no vocabulary.

  — You are how old? asked Caycee.

  — Oh kind of thirty, I gravely replied.

  And as I said this it seemed a sad age. It just seemed very old and very young together. Then Caycee asked if I was married, or had a girlfriend, and for a moment I worried that I had lef
t my wedding ring on, but most of all it was the innocent directness of this question which troubled me. It surprised me in the way I suppose a fledgling roué might be surprised if his mistress asks after his wife. I didn’t have the courage to say I was married. I wanted her to like me. And yet also I didn’t want to seem like one of those sad people who come into a place like this because they are without anyone who loves them, and so I settled on a compromise and told her that I had a girlfriend. But this then led to an inquisition from Caycee, something polite like –

  — Do you live together?

  Then if we did live together, because I told her the truth and said that we did, other questions followed, according to Caycee’s reasoning.

  — So when are you getting married? she asked.

  She thought marriage was very important. It was a very difficult conversation, not only in the dialogue itself but also in the fact that one of us was essentially naked and the other one was not. I looked at the soft nipples on her breasts. She looked at me looking. She pinched them into pertness like that was what I wanted. And when I replied that it was such a strange question, whether I would marry my girlfriend, I also wanted to add that I didn’t mean she shouldn’t ask such a question, and that in fact I was grateful for her proposition that if one of us was naked then a new honesty might be possible – even if I wasn’t being honest, although in a way perhaps I was, and even if also it might be argued that this was not in fact her idea, the nakedness, that in fact there were rules, and commercial expectations, but I really did think that these commercial considerations were, as they might say in commerce, only secondary.

  — You should marry her, said Caycee. — If you love her, then you should marry her.

  And she was right, of course, and in fact I so agreed with this argument that I had already taken her advice long ago and married Candy, but overlapping with this feeling was another feeling that I think was closer to regret that I was almost definitely the only man to have ever discovered inside a sauna a spirit of established order. But this was itself overlapping with another feeling, maybe a lostness or lustness. I scented coconut oil. Or whatever scent it was on Caycee’s body, I enjoyed it. I didn’t want to. But I did want. I also wanted to give an answer to her reasonable question. I wanted her to like me very much and approve of me. My mother always brought me up to think that it’s what you think that is important, and most especially in your dealings with women. I have a rich and sympathetic inner life! Isn’t that something after all? And so I think that it was important to me that this girl might think of me as dainty, that I was swashbuckle, definitely, but also my friends all think I am very kind and I wanted her to know this too.

  — We do have a dog, I said.

  I do not know, however, what she thought of this – because she didn’t continue the conversation on the subject of my hound, she only replied by asking me if I wanted to go somewhere more private. And it felt sad, this business turn, but also I understood. It was a business, after all. And in a way – I don’t mean every way – I would have liked my mother to have seen this, the suavity with which I did this talk. My mother is always – in the hair salons and the floral outlets – questioning my relationship to money, like money is this cloud in which I rest like some putto with my trumpet, and I was proud that I could now rebut her, had I been ever able to tell her about this moment, which I possibly couldn’t. I had reached the limits of my privacy. I asked the price. The money was calculated, Caycee said, in half-hour sections. I was paying her for half an hour alone in a room. OK, I said. We could do whatever I liked, she said. And then I paused. I asked if I could just think about it, just for a moment, and I think I might have been possibly doing something that reminded me of flirting, although I think perhaps it wasn’t flirting, but only fear. I looked to Hiro for help but Hiro was now sitting at the bar, enjoying a second guava juice. My saint had abandoned me just when I did really need him. Then Caycee took my hand and it was very hot, her hand, and I felt very moved by her hand, the fact that it was real and hers and there. And perhaps I should have tried to think more clearly about what she was thinking, I’m very much aware that very few men, like, for instance, my father, ever tried to understand the thoughts of a woman, but also I had this idea that in the end these thoughts are basically the same as mine. Which meant that I did just trust her to see that I was overwhelmed with something that was perhaps not gratitude exactly but certainly close to gratitude. I mean it felt like this was some beneficence or other-worldliness, like those pictures of the Assumption, as if the world had been converted into a fine and golden light.

  discovering urges of self-description

  The reason I am telling you this is that this moment marked an important stage in my vocation. As we walked along a corridor, and Caycee took a key from a row on the wall, then entered a room and locked the door from inside, I was suddenly struck by a small fissure or split. It was definitely not easy, I reflected, to keep liking the things I did. If for instance things end up happening inside some casa of ill repute, well, the whole fluorescent question of likeability does impose itself. There is only so long, to choose an example from the life of my friend Kayvon, when your wife has happened on you being dildoed by another woman on your bathroom floor, that a person can convincingly keep on saying it wasn’t me. And I’m aware that the entire history of the theory of art is about removing the issue of the likeable from the picture, it’s only the philistine spectators like Nelson who say: Jeez, there was no one in the movie you’d want to like hang out with, but maybe sadly Nelson is on to something. I mean, why should anyone give you any attention? That’s a good question. And if they do, why should you be an asshole? It goes way beyond the moral, this whole problem. It goes into the deep dark mania to please. There were many things, I had to admit, that my mother would not admire about her child, if she knew the total truth. Confidante she was, but not entirely. Like for instance, and I am aware that still this is maybe small, but in fact I am not so sure that it’s really possible to differentiate between the small and massive in these matters, I used to watch gang bangs on the Internet. They turned me on. It’s true that very sweetly once Candy tried to tell me that there was nothing wrong with this entertainment. But Candy was always very kind. In one of the tapes a lovely girl whose given name was Chastity was being interviewed before her gang bang got under way. Chastity was wearing a grey vest with grey marl shorts. And then the man who was filming asked her if she wanted to say hi to anyone, like Hi, Dad. — Oh that would be so awful, she said with a serious smile. She was thinking about this seriously. She said awful really sweetly, like offal. — I’ve got three younger brothers too, so that’d be so offal as well, I just hope they haven’t found out yet … And I was full of righteous fury. How could this man behind the camera make her feel ashamed? What right did he have? She was a nice person, a sweet person, this was surely obvious to even the most deranged viewer. In porn I mostly see tender feats of endurance on the part of these beautiful women. For what she was about to do was essentially altruistic for all her infinite spectators. I wanted to take her in my arms and let her rest. But I couldn’t, obviously, so I took my penis and concentrated on that instead, while watching her be sodomised – for if I had to say what I most liked I would have to probably sadly say it was when fucking a girl’s arsehole, how suddenly the tightness which had been the defining characteristic suddenly disappears: not that it loosens entirely, but it does. What I mean is that although the old-school problems of description are all about how well something matches the real world, maybe the future way of putting this will be all about the problems of getting over the nice and likeable. Maybe I’m exaggerating. I don’t know. I’m just saying, as I walked along that corridor, an old joke was occurring to me: This man looks like a corrupt idiot and acts like one, but don’t let that deceive you. He is a corrupt idiot. That’s basically the situation, I was thinking, of every talker in the universe. And I think it was then that I felt this sudden urge to write these th
ings down. I missed the tearful saints and the curtained confessionals! Had I had my phone or other writing implement with me, a Dictaphone or felt-tip pen, I would have used them right away. I had a sudden mania for making diary entries and sportive sketches. Listen to me, it was like I was crying, on my banjo! I was so much larger, it turned out, than I had thought.

  like his behaviour in this bedroom

  Inside the room, Caycee turned to me and released her girdle and motioned that I should undress too. So I took off my dressing gown, which was in fact not difficult since I have always found those towelling dressing gowns difficult, so that in fact I had been shuffling with it held together in my hand along the heavy carpets. And I felt quite feminine and odd. I wonder if this is what women have to often feel, this denuding and unsureness. I was still in my plastic sandals. I wanted to take them off but also I was a little unsure about the carpet in this room and the general hygiene. Caycee was in transparent perspex platform heels and was remaining in them. The inequality upset or perplexed me but I wasn’t concentrating on my perplexity, I was thinking instead about her legs or rather between her legs, where there was a perfect smoothness. It was like the beauty of one of those drawings where in just four lines the genius artist has drawn a face. In the same way when she lay down there was only a smooth curve between her legs. So I lay down too, with my feet still resting on the floor, since while I didn’t want to remove my plastic sandals I also felt it was wrong to have sandals on a bed. It was dark and the air was heavy with her perfumes and also cleaning chemicals. And I now think that I should have been amazed but I wasn’t. I was only suddenly happy and it was like it always was when you are naked with a girl, except it was slightly not. She lay down and made various suggestions, and I realised that in fact I hadn’t thought at all about what we might actually do, which meant that until this point I had in no way thought about the possible dangers of disease. And I think maybe I hadn’t wanted to think this because the thought seemed to me to be shameful. But now that the thought was occurring I also really didn’t want this moment to have consequences that would haunt me for ever. But then, maybe that ancient fear was part of the whole experience. Also I am nervous in these kinds of performances. In a new environment, I can get perturbed. Sure, she was beautiful, but I was definitely thinking that in fact she in no way wanted me, and in that kind of situation I don’t think it’s unreasonable to find it difficult to be aroused. Even if a girl just seems ever so faintly bored or tired I want to stop and this was very much worse. Because I was also compelled to admit that while I was probably younger and perhaps with smoother skin than the usual customer or patron, I was not uniformly attractive, like I remember Romy saying that it was strange to be with me because in general she preferred a more muscular physique and although I said it didn’t upset me, still, I found it difficult to forget. So yes I was worried about the mechanics of my penis, and worried about disease, and worried that Caycee was really not wanting this to happen at all, and mostly I was now wanting to be finished so I could give her all the money I possessed and the transaction would be over. But on the other hand, I understand this, I could have therefore done nothing, I could have absolutely done nothing and just paid her anyway, and I suppose if I didn’t it was just that I have this constant curiosity. Always I will keep looking. So I said that maybe just a blow job and then she looked at me with what I hoped was a smile that understood that I was somewhere in my heart an honest man, I would only demand the most minimal things, and then she asked me if I wanted it with a condom or without. And I said something which I think now in retrospect sounds a little too innocent –