The Americans, Baby

by Frank Moorhouse

  But enough of me. Let’s talk about you.

  I read an item in the newspaper about you making a film with the Beatles. I oppose this. I oppose it because I feel you should lead your own life in your own right and not merge yourself with others. I see you as a single beacon – alone and complete. Furthermore one of my students informs me that the Beatles are finished. (I made some discreet inquiries.) I hope Justin forgives me for offering this advice – of course he knows far more about ‘show business’ than I. A further point, the Beatles have associated themselves with mysticism and meditation (both alien to Western culture – and just a fancy name for introspection which James and McDougall showed us was of little use).

  Since we have become correspondents I have been taking a greater interest in ‘popular culture’ and I have on a couple of occasions asked my students their opinions on one or two matters. I have also begun including the odd reference to popular idols in my lectures. I fancy that I’ll be gaining a reputation soon of a ‘with-it’ lecturer. Are you proud? I can imagine the undergraduates’ dumbfounded amazement when they hear about you and me!

  I feel, though, that I should know something of your milieu. If I become ‘stuffy’ or ‘dry’ please don’t hesitate to complain. You’ll do that, won’t you?

  Sincerely,

  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

  Dear Twiggy,

  There has been some mistake. I received another photograph and a note reading, ‘Twiggy thanks you for your interest in her career and wishes you all happiness in life.’ It was again signed by you – or possibly someone using your signature. I literally tore the envelope apart looking for a reply to my letters – even just a note.

  I have carefully compared the signatures on the first note and second and they are cunningly alike.

  I have marked this letter ‘Personal and Confidential’ which I should have done at first. I now suspect that de Villeneuve is intercepting the letters. Does he read all your mail? Does he have some strange ‘hold’ over you? In case he has completely withheld from you the first two letters I have enclosed a short curriculum vitae and a photograph of me taken in the quadrangle of the University in my academic robes holding my Master of Arts degree. Of course it was taken a couple of years ago. In an earlier letter I sent a more recent photograph of me holding a fish but de Villeneuve must have destroyed it.

  The whole business with de Villeneuve – alias Nigel Davies – worries me. Why should a man change his name from Davies to de Villeneuve? Surely for no innocent reason.

  I would be much happier if you kept our correspondence private. I’d rather he had nothing to do with your relationship with me. Do you mind awfully?

  The pain of it all has led me to write a sonnet to you. I hope you like it.

  A Celebration of Thargelia

  – for Twiggy

  As the twig grows so grows the tree,

  And as you unfold so am I revealed.

  For you joined beauty’s garden at your budding,

  Your shape, a snow splendid season,

  Sunnily yielding man’s forbidden crop.

  For permissive Nature seductively mocks man

  His itchy attempts at self restriction.

  Nature temptingly adorns her growing fruit

  Makes beautiful the tree in bud.

  Only for the timorous is the ripening fruit tart

  Others, who dare free passion, seek its acid bite.

  And, as some admire trunk and flowers

  So some kneel with ecstasy before twig and bud

  For all is mature to fancy in Eros’s fifth season.

  As you can see, I’m no poet. But it came out of me without thought or revision. Still, as an undergraduate I had a reasonable facility for verse.

  There is something I hesitate to tell you lest you think me crazy. I’ll tell you, though, as evidence of my ardour and devotion. There are many girls at present here in the city dressing like you, cutting their hair – and yes, even being taken up by newspapers as your ‘ambassador’ and double (without your permission, no doubt. I should write to the newspapers about it). Far from being attracted to these girls (don’t worry!) I am repelled by them. I have found myself saying ‘for godsake stop trying to look like Twiggy – there’ll only ever be one Twiggy’ (to myself, of course). Naturally you should be pleased by it all – imitation is the highest form of praise. But the poor girls don’t realise they can never succeed as long as they try to be someone else. Originality succeeds because it is beyond comparison.

  But on with the story … this is my real admission. I eventually grew so furious that last week I grabbed hold of one of these imitators in the street and shook her! Really shook her.

  I shouted, ‘Stop it, stop it – you’ll never look like Twiggy, you silly girl,’ shaking her all the time.

  She managed to say, ‘Get your dirty hands off of me!’ Her eyes were wide as globes with surprise. Then she kicked me in the shins and said something like ‘You old perve’ (‘perve’ being short for pervert – she completely misunderstood what I was about).

  ‘Be yourself,’ I told her, letting go and hopping around holding my shin. People had begun to gather.

  ‘You’re bonkers,’ she said, ‘you’re stark raving.’

  My friends tell me I took a grave risk – grabbing her like that. I shall never do it again of course, but I was furious at her – for your sake.

  I hope the story amused you.

  Well, enough of that.

  I must tell you about my mother. I thought you should know something of her before you meet her. My mother and I are very close – nothing unhealthy – she lives in her home unit and I live in mine. We are just around the corner from each other. We very much lead our own lives although I often eat there. She very much likes you. Don’t be shocked – I only raised your name casually. She thinks, good humouredly of course, that you should eat more for a growing girl. But isn’t that just like a mother! She says you’re a refreshing change – a move away from those terribly false women you find in modelling. She does, however, feel you should continue your education. She had it in her head that modelling is an unstable business. I haven’t told her yet that we’re corresponding – I’m sure she’ll be surprised.

  Oh Twiggy, please write. I’m at least reasonably sure you’ll get this letter. I may as well say that I suspect de Villeneuve of jealousy.

  What does he mean when he tells newspapers that you and he are ‘engaged’? Surely this is some trick to compromise you.

  In my most desperate moments I think it is a snide euphemism and that he has somehow abused his position as manager to take advantage of you. But I want you to know that no matter what has happened in the past between you and Davies, it in no way alters my feelings towards you. I have not myself worn the white flower of virtue.

  I have not been seeing Donna (I mentioned my relationship with her in an earlier letter). She has rung me once or twice and I have been cool. How paltry her and my relationship was beside what we have.

  Next day.

  Please, Twiggy, disregard my jealous remarks about you and Justin. It was not meant to be offensive to you. I know that your engagement is all ‘newspaper talk’.

  I await your letter.

  Yours adoringly,

  Dear Twiggy,

  My last letter evidently did not reach you either – despite the fact that it was marked ‘Personal and Confidential’.

  Why? Who is reading our letters?

  I hope this time it is you, Twiggy, reading the letter. (I am sending it Registered Mail, which I should have done on the earlier occasions.) What I hope is that you will be able to retrieve the earlier letters from whoever it was that intercepted them. Included in one is a sonnet. I have no copy of it.

  I have now received three photographs of you with three identical notes reading, ‘Twiggy thanks you for your interest in her career and wishes you all happiness in life.’ Whoever intercepts our letters – and I suspect it’s de Villeneuve – ali
as Davies – and that he is making fun of me by sending these form notes.

  Assuming that you have not received or been able to retrieve my earlier letters I have attached a short curriculum vitae and a photograph of myself. It was taken at the graduation ball – I am somewhat younger then and obviously a little drunk. I am holding a bunch of spinach. It is a rather ridiculous photograph but I sent the only other two I had in the earlier letters.

  If de Villeneuve-Davies is intercepting them I will contact Scotland Yard. He has no right by law to dispose of letters addressed to you.

  I don’t care if you are under contract to him – or whatever way you’re under him – I am sure that the contract couldn’t prevent you from carrying on a perfectly innocent correspondence with whom you please.

  I suspect de Villeneuve of hypnosis – a photograph of him in an American magazine shows that his eyes are strangely piercing. If only I were in England!

  Have you a solicitor? Have him search your contract to ensure that you are free to carry on correspondence. Then again, de Villeneuve probably has chosen your solicitor. Find one in the telephone book and ask him for advice. But of course if you are under hypnosis you’ll be unable to do this. I must not think like this. If you are under hypnosis you couldn’t correspond with me and the whole venture is lost. If only I could be with you to snap my fingers.

  I’m being driven frantic. I don’t even know if you’re reading this letter. If I receive no answer to this letter I intend to have a colleague of mine at the London School of Economics call on you personally to inquire into the whole smelly business.

  If you are reading this de Villeneuve cum-Davies take a warning from me – I will not be stopped. I am a man of some standing both academically and outside of History. I will not tolerate you coming between Twiggy and me. Have I made myself clear?

  The same applies to any other unauthorised person who may be reading this letter. If you are a girl who is working for Twiggy and consumed by jealousy at her success and envious of the letters she receives – desist – see what a dreadfully destructive thing you are doing. My advice to you is to make your own life – have your own expectations – and stop burning yourself up with bitter envy.

  I am also consulting the Council for Civil Liberties and I feel that this could be an important case for them.

  If this letter did reach you, Twiggy, then I am sure the difficulty of it all has made a bond between us. In the surmounting of the problems together we come to know each other.

  Yours adoringly,

  Dear Leslie Hornby,

  Please see the attached curriculum vitae. I have been writing to you for some weeks now but my letters have been intercepted by someone in your office. I was fortunate to find your home address in a teenage magazine.

  Together with the curriculum vitae you will find a photograph of me taken in a photographic booth on the railway station. I am holding up a photograph of my home unit (I thought you’d be interested).

  Calling you Leslie Hornby makes me feel as though I am writing to another person and not the girl I have become passionately involved with during the past six months.

  In an earlier letter I told you I would approach the Council for Civil Liberties about the whole matter. They told me that it was a personal matter between me and de Villeneuve-Davies. That we could take police action against anyone found stealing your mail. But they were rather flippant and seemed to be ‘humouring’ me. But how can one expect the legalistic and pedestrian mind to appreciate something sublime, unique and bold? I’d go to the family solicitor but I expect I would receive a similar reaction.

  Take the step, Leslie – Twiggy – and break with de Villeneuve – Nigel Davies – and throw him out. I know nothing about ‘show business’ but I feel I would devotedly and intelligently manage you. I will come to England if I hear one word from you.

  I await your cable.

  Devoted and troubled,

  Yours,

  P.S. I received yet another photograph of you and a note reading ‘Twiggy thanks you for your interest in her career and wishes you all happiness in life.’

  Dear Twatty,

  I have decided that you’re nothing more than a penis teaser – a magazine nymphomaniac. A lascivious little boy-girl with a mouth like a cunt. Your cunt is obviously too small for fucking so you use your mouth – probably have since you were eleven. Your mouth is always specially parted and shaped so as to suggest that you’re ready to suck any man. Hundreds of men must have had their pricks in your mouth – you’ve probably sucked off every photographer in England and America.

  I’m coming across to England and will drag you off to a motel and rip your beautiful Proctor and Babbs Carnaby Street clothes off and your little silk panties, tie your hands and legs to the bed and ram my prick up your little girl’s twat until you scream with pain. You’ll like it so much that you’ll beg me to let you suck me off. Then I’ll push my prick down your throat and make you suck me for hours and then fill your mouth and throat brimming full with hot sperm. Then I’ll come all over your little girl’s body and make you rub it into yourself.

  Actually I’ve heard that you’re not really a girl but in fact a young queen and have a prick and that you use your mouth as a cunt for any man who wants it. So much the better. I’ll pull you off and then fuck you up your arse on your own sperm. I’ll make you come again and again until your prick is aching and broken. You’ll never fuck another man again except me. And every two hours for the rest of your life I’ll be there pulling you off or sucking you off. And every time I do I’ll make you suck me and lick up your own sperm. Your little silk panties will always be wet with sperm from your prick and mine.

  signed: you know who

  BY SPECIAL MESSENGER

  Dear Twiggy,

  How did you find out it was me?! Or wasn’t it you who sent the photograph and note reading ‘Twiggy thanks you for your interest in her career and wishes you all happiness in life’? Of course I can’t be sure who sent the note and photograph. Perhaps you don’t even know what this letter is all about.

  The short and tall of it is that I sent you an offensive anonymous letter (as far as I remember, it’s all very hazy) and I received back this photograph and note. But the anonymous letter wasn’t the first letter I sent you. I sent you a number of others which evidently didn’t reach you. Someone has been intercepting them.

  I believe now that the person who is intercepting them (I suspect de Villain – as I call him) is either having a joke with me; or didn’t read the letter; or wishes to infuriate me even further and force me to go to foolish lengths and so destroy myself.

  If you didn’t see the anonymous letter please don’t open it if you managed to retrieve it from whoever has been intercepting the mail. Simply destroy it. The memory of it fills me with shame and humiliation. I don’t know what came over me. I am of high standing both here at the University and in the Historical Society and among those with whom I mix. If you have by some chance already seen it, then please, I humbly beg, forgive me.

  Balance that one lapse against the sonnet (which I suppose you haven’t seen either). The sonnet was written with so much love. I suppose it is likely that you don’t know what I’m talking about. But please, don’t think I’m crazy – it has all been a dreadful confusion.

  I have enclosed a short curriculum vitae and a photograph of myself taken in a railway photographic booth.

  This letter will be delivered to you by a special messenger service. I had written to a friend and colleague at the London School of Economics but he chose to treat the matter as a joke.

  I suppose I should assume that you will not recover the earlier letters and begin this as though it is my first … Here goes …

  I guess you receive thousands of letters from men who start their letters ‘I guess you receive thousands of letters …’ You might even receive some from men who begin their letters ‘I guess you receive thousands of letters from men who start their letters …’
r />   I have been writing to you for some months now since seeing your photograph on Newsweek April 10, 1967.

  We have so few rare chances to reach out and pursue boldly the perfect mate …

  Notes

  For readers who would like to know more of Cindy, the girl in ‘The Story of Nature’, I refer them to ‘The Second Story of Nature’ and ‘The Third Story of Nature’, published in my book Futility and Other Animals (Sydney, 1969).

  Louise, in the story ‘Five Incidents Concerning the Flesh and the Blood’, appears in the story ‘No Birds Were Flying Overhead’, also in Futility.

  The drunken man in ‘Becker on the Moon’ quotes a stanza from a poem ‘Does Grass Grow on the Moon?’ by the late Elsie Carew.

  The italicised narrative in ‘The Machine Gun’ is a loose adaption of parts of ‘Che Guevara’s Diary’, published in Ramparts magazine, July 1968.

  The story ‘Becker on the Moon’ is dedicated to the brave members of the Moses E. Herzog Gliding Club.

  ‘The Story of Nature’ first appeared in Balcony, ‘The American Poet’s Visit’ and ‘Becker on the Moon’ in Southerly, ‘The Coca-Cola Kid’ and ‘The Girl Who Met Simone de Beauvoir in Paris’ in Chance International, ‘The Machine Gun’ and ‘The St Louis Rotary Convention 1923, Recalled’ in the Bulletin, ‘Anti-bureaucratisation and the Apparatchiki’ in Thorunka, ‘Jesus Said to Watch for 28 Signs’ in Thor, ‘The Letters to Twiggy’ in Tharunka, ‘The Girl from The Family of Man’ in Westerly, and ‘Dell Goes into Politics’ in the anthology We Took Their Orders and Are Dead (Ure Smith Pty Ltd).