Collected Stories (48 page)

‘I want to play Hamlet,’ said the penis. ‘No one has quite understood the relationship with Ophelia. You could be my assistant. You could carry my script and keep the fans away.’

Doug said, ‘You mean, we won’t be physically attached ever again?’

The penis said, ‘I would be prepared to come back under your management, as I quite like you. But if I do, the arrangement would have to be different. I would have to be attached to your face.’

Doug said, ‘Where on my face exactly would you like to be attached? Behind my ear?’

‘Where your nose is now. I want to be recognised, like other stars.’

‘You’ll get sick of it,’ warned Doug. ‘They all do, and go crazy.’

‘That’s up to me,’ said Long Dong. ‘There will be cures I can take.’

The penis took a sausage from the plate in front of him and held it in the middle of Doug’s face.

‘It would be like that, only bigger. Cosmetic surgery is developing. In the future there’ll be all kinds of novel arrangements. What do you say to being a trendsetter?’

‘What of my scrotum? It would … ahem … hang over my mouth.’

‘I’d do the talking. I’ll give you an hour to decide,’ said the penis, haughtily. ‘I’m expecting other offers from agents and producers.’

Doug could see that Long Dong was beginning to shrink back into himself. It had been a fatiguing day. When at last his eyes closed, Doug picked the penis up, popped it into his pocket and buttoned it down.

Doug rushed across town to see a cosmetic surgeon he knew, a greedy man with a face as smooth as a plastic ball. He had remade many of Doug’s colleagues, inserting extensions into the men’s penises, and enlarging the breasts, lips and buttocks of his female colleagues. Few of these actors would even be recognised by their parents.

The surgeon was at dinner with several former clients. Doug interrupted him and they walked in the surgeon’s beautiful garden. Doug laid the sleeping penis in the surgeon’s hand.

He explained what had happened and said, ‘It’s got to be sewn on tonight.’

The surgeon passed it back.

He said, ‘I’ve extended dicks and clits. I’ve implanted diamonds in guys’ balls and put lights in people’s heads. I’ve never sewn a penis back on. You could die on the table. You might sue me. I’d have to be recompensed.’

As the objections continued, Doug begged the man to restore him. At last, the surgeon named a sum. That was almost the worst blow of the day. Doug had been well paid over the years, but sex money, like drug money, tended to melt like snow.

‘Bring me the money tonight,’ ordered the surgeon, ‘otherwise it will be too late – your penis will become used to its freedom and will never serve you again.’

The only person Doug knew with such a large sum of cash was the producer of
Huge Big Women
who was, that night, entertaining a few hookers in his suite. The women knew Doug and soon made him aware that news of his misfortune had got round. He blushed and smarted now when the women called him ‘big boy’.

To Doug’s relief, the producer agreed to give him the cash. Handing it over, he mentioned the interest. It was a massive sum, which would rise daily, as Doug’s penis would have to. The man made Doug sign a contract, pledging to make films for what seemed like the rest of his life.

Travelling back to the surgeon, Doug considered what life might be like without his penis. Perhaps he had been mercifully untied from an idiot and they could go their separate ways. But without his penis how could he earn his living? He was too old to start a new career.

The surgeon worked all night.

Next morning, when Doug woke up, the first thing he did was look down. Like a nervous snake charmer, he whistled an aria from
Don Giovanni
. At last, his penis started to stir, enlarge and grow. Soon it was pointing towards the sun. It was up, but not running. He and his love were rejoined.

A few hours later Doug was on the set. His penis swung between his legs, slapping against each thigh with a satisfying smack.

Doug was glad to be reunited with the most important part of himself; but, when he thought of the numerous exertions ahead, he felt weary.

He said, ‘Listen: you say you can’t hear well and your back hurts. Your body won’t stop reminding you of your ailing existence. Would you like to do something about it?’

‘This half-dead old carcass?’ I said. ‘Sure. What?’

‘How about trading it in and getting something new?’

It was an invitation I couldn’t say no to, or yes, for that matter. There was certainly nothing simple or straightforward about it. When I had heard the man’s proposal, although I wanted to dismiss it as madness, I couldn’t stop considering it. All that night I was excited by an idea that was – and had been for a while, now I was forced to confront it – inevitable.

This ‘adventure’ started with a party I didn’t want to go to.

Though the late 1950s and early 1960s were supposed to be my heyday, I don’t like the assault of loud music, and I have come to appreciate silence in its many varieties. I am not crazy about half-raw barbecued food either.

Want to hear about my health? I don’t feel particularly ill, but I am in my mid-sixties; my bed is my boat across these final years. My knees and back give me a lot of pain. I have haemorrhoids, an ulcer and cataracts. When I eat, it’s not unusual for me to spit out bits of tooth as I go. My ears seem to lose focus as the day goes on and people have to yell into me. I don’t go to parties because I don’t like to stand up. If I sit down, it makes it difficult for others to speak to me. Not that I am always interested in what they have to say; and if I am bored, I don’t want to hang around, which might make me seem abrupt or arrogant.

I have friends in worse shape. If you’re lucky, you’ll be hearing about them. I do like to drink, but I can do that at home. Fortunately, I’m a cheap drunk. A few glasses and I can understand Lacan.

My wife Margot has been a counsellor for five years, training now to be a therapist. She listens to people for a living, in a room in the house. We have been fortunate; each of us has always envied the other’s profession. She has wanted to make from within; I need to hear from without.

Our children have left home, the girl training to be a doctor and the boy working as a film editor. I guess my life has had a happy ending. When my wife, Margot, walks into a room, I want to tell her what I’ve been thinking, some of which I know she will attend to. Margot, though, enjoys claiming that men start to get particularly bad-tempered, pompous and demanding in late middle age. According to her, we stop thinking that politeness matters; we forget that other people are more important than ourselves. After that, it gets worse.

I’d agree that I’m not a man who has reached some kind of Buddhist plateau. I might have some virtues, such as compassion and occasional kindness; unlike several of my friends, I’ve never stopped being interested in others, or in culture and politics – in the general traffic of mankind. I have wanted to be a good enough father. Despite their necessary hatred of me at times, I enjoyed the kids and liked their company. So far, I can say I’ve been a tolerable husband overall. Margot claims I have always written for fame, money and women’s affection. I would have to add that I love what I do, too, and it continues to fascinate me. Through my work I think about the world, about what matters to me and to others.

Beside my numerous contradictions – I am, I have been told, at least three different people – I am unstable, too, lost in myself, envious and constantly in need of reassurance. My wife says that I have crazinesses, bewildering moods and ‘internal disappearances’ I am not even aware of. I can go into the shower as one man and emerge as another, worse, one. My pupils enlarge, I move around obsessively, I yell and stamp my feet. A few words of criticism and I can bear a grudge for three days at a time, convinced she is plotting against me. None of this has diminished, despite years of self-analysis, therapy and ‘writing as healing’, as some of my students used to call the attempt to make art. Nothing has cured me of myself, of the self I cling to. If you asked me, I would probably say that my problems are myself; my life is my dilemmas. I’d better enjoy them, then.

I wouldn’t have considered attending this party if Margot hadn’t gone out to dinner with a group of women friends, and if I hadn’t envied what I saw as the intimacy and urgency of their conversation, their pleasure in one another. Men can’t be so direct, it seems to me.

But if I stay in alone now, after an hour I am walking about picking things up, putting them down and then searching everywhere for them. I no longer believe or hope that book knowledge will satisfy or even entertain me, and if I watch TV for too long I begin to feel hollow. How out of the world I already believe myself to be! I am no longer familiar with the pop stars, actors or serials on TV. I’m never certain who the pornographic boy and girl bodies belong to. It is like trying to take part in a conversation of which I can only grasp a fraction. As for the politicians, I can barely make out which side they are on. My age, education and experience seem to be no advantage. I imagine that to participate in the world with curiosity and pleasure, to see the point of what is going on, you have to be young and uninformed. Do I want to participate?

On this particular evening, with some semi-senile vacillation and nothing better to do, I showered, put on a white shirt, opened the front door, and trotted out. It was the height of summer and the streets were baking. Although I have lived in London since I was a student, when I open my front door today I am still excited by the thought of what I might see or hear, and by who I might run into and be made to think about. London seems no longer part of Britain – in my view, a dreary, narrow place full of fields, boarded-up shops and cities trying to imitate London – but has developed into a semi-independent city-state, like New York, and has begun to come to terms with the importance of gratification. On the other hand, I had been discussing with Margot the fact that it was impossible to get to the end of the street without people stopping you to ask for money. Normally, I looked so shambolic myself the beggars lost hope even as they held out their hands.

It was a theatre party, given by a friend, a director who also teaches. Some of her drama school pupils would be there, as well as the usual crowd, my friends and acquaintances, those who were still actively alive, not in hospital or away for the summer.

As my doctor had instructed me to take exercise, and still hoping I had the energy of a young man, I decided to walk from west London to the party. After about forty-five minutes I was breathless and feeble. There were no taxis around and I felt stranded on the dusty, mostly deserted streets. I wanted to sit down in a shaded park, but doubted whether I’d be able to get up again, and there was no one to help me. Many of the boozers I’d have dropped into for a pint of bitter and a read of the evening paper, full of local semi-derelicts escaping their families – alcoholics, they’d be called, now everyone has been pathologised – had become bars, bursting with hyperactive young people. I wouldn’t have attempted to get past the huge doormen. At times, London appeared to be a city occupied by cameras and security people; you couldn’t go through a door without being strip-searched or having your shoes and pockets examined, and all for your own good, though it seemed neither safer nor more dangerous than before. There was no possibility of engaging in those awful pub conversations with wretched strangers which connected you to the impressive singularity of other people’s lives. The elderly seem to have been swept from the streets; the young appear to have wires coming out of their heads, supplying either music, voices on the phone or the electricity which makes them move.

Yet I’ve always walked around London in the afternoons and evenings. These are relatively long distances, and I look at shops, obscure theatres and strange museums, otherwise my body feels clogged up after a morning’s desk work.

The party was held not in my friend’s flat, but in her rich brother’s place, which turned out to be one of those five-floor, wide stucco houses near the zoo.

When at last I got to the door, a handful of kids in their twenties turned up at the same time.

‘It’s you,’ said one, staring. ‘We’re doing you. You’re on the syllabus.’

‘I hope I’m not causing you too much discomfort,’ I replied.

‘We wondered if you might tell us what you were trying to do with –’

‘I wish I could remember,’ I said. ‘Sorry.’

‘We heard you were sour and cynical,’ murmured another, adding, ‘and you don’t look anything like your picture on the back of your books.’

My friend whose party it was came to the door, took my arm and led me through the house. Perhaps she thought I might run away. The truth is, these parties make me as anxious now as they did when I was twenty-five. What’s worse is knowing that these terrors, destructive of one’s pleasures as they are, are not only generated by one’s own mind, but are still inexplicable. As you age, the source of your convolutedly self-stymieing behaviour seems almost beyond reach in the past; why, now, would you want to untangle it?