of sooty newsprint, its uneven edges spanning away into another world, a world of degradation and hate, of panic and the smell of roused animals. I thought of the sparkling astronomy that
my
life had up until that moment formed: the scrubbed angularities of nursery and bedroom, the busy friendship I enjoyed with the garden’s vast precincts, my fairy-tale sister, the congruent rake and perspective of every doorway and stair-well — only three places a certain toy might be if abducted from its rightful nook, the time the leather ball needed to jump back from theribbed garage door, the creak of joists a hidden code of distance and identity: the thousand certainties on which childhood leans to catch its breath were all reshuffled in blurred travesty, as blurred as the picture of Terence’s face on that smudged news-sheet now slipping from my father’s thigh.
Terence arrived one brilliant autumn morning, while the Ridings were having one of their halcyon breakfasts in the raised East Wing conservatory. Imagine a circular white table on a checker-board stone floor, deep troughs of fabulous greenery, a receding backdrop of pink and purple blooms, and four decorative seated figures glimpsed through the echoic, yellowy light: Henry Riding, a tall, shaggy, ‘artistic’ patriarch in white jacket and collarless shirt; his handsome wife Marigold, silver-haired, grey-suited; the delicious, vague, sleepy-eyed Ursula — still in her nightie, the minx: and Gregory, who, having recently celebrated his tenth birthday, is already a tall and athletic figure, with driven-back raven hair, a thin, perhaps rather brutal mouth, and a vivid, evaluating stare … I remember I had just dispatched Cook with some rather sharp words about the consistency of my soft-boiled egg and, while waiting the required 285 seconds for its successor to be prepared, I leaned back on my chair, teasing my palate with a sliver of toast and Gentlemen’s Relish. Then I heard a sudden flurry from the maids in the hall — and there was our housekeeper, good Mrs Daltrey, bustling into the light and guiding on an invisible leash a small wondering boy in grey shirt and khaki shorts, Terence, my foster-brother, who turned and gazed at me with stolen eyes.)
3: March
(i) I’m no good at all this any more. I’ve
got to lock myself away until I’m
fit to live — TERRY
You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.
Mouth-fuck, bum-fuck, fist-fuck, prick-fuck. Ear-fuck, hair-fuck, nose-fuck, toe-fuck. It’s all I think about when I’m in my room. Bed-fuck, floor-fuck, desk-fuck, sill-fuck, rug-fuck.
And in the streets. Tarmac-fuck, lamppost-fuck, shop-front-fuck. Bike-fuck, car-fuck, bus-fuck. Rampart-fuck, railing-fuck, rubbish-fuck.
Pen-fuck, clip-fuck, paper-fuck. (I’m at the office now.) Char-fuck, sec-fuck, temp-fuck. Salessheet-fuck, invoice-fuck, phone-fuck.
And everywhere else. Land-fuck, sea-fuck, air-fuck, cloud-fuck, sky-fuck. In all kinds of moods. Hate-fuck, rage-fuck, fun-fuck, sick-fuck, sad-fuck. In all kinds of contexts. Friend-fuck, kid-fuck, niece-fuck, aunt-fuck, gran-fuck, sis-fuck. Fuck-fuck. I want to
scream
, much of the time, or quiver like a damaged animal. I sit about the place here fizzing with rabies.
No, they still don’t want to. I’m not at all certain
I
want to any more. I mean, what happens when they … you know. I’m clear on the mechanical side of it (I hear about that in books, and I’m also buying quite a lot of those magazines, the ones in which girls show the insides of their vaginas and anuses to the world for money. Do thepolice know about those magazines, incidentally, the ones you can get anywhere? I don’t think they can do), but it all must seem rather awkward and embarrassing. Do you do it much? How often? Less often than you want or more often than you want? I used to do it as much as I possibly could, and I liked it a lot. Then I stopped. No one would do it with me (and doing it with people is half the fun).
my
life had up until that moment formed: the scrubbed angularities of nursery and bedroom, the busy friendship I enjoyed with the garden’s vast precincts, my fairy-tale sister, the congruent rake and perspective of every doorway and stair-well — only three places a certain toy might be if abducted from its rightful nook, the time the leather ball needed to jump back from theribbed garage door, the creak of joists a hidden code of distance and identity: the thousand certainties on which childhood leans to catch its breath were all reshuffled in blurred travesty, as blurred as the picture of Terence’s face on that smudged news-sheet now slipping from my father’s thigh.
Terence arrived one brilliant autumn morning, while the Ridings were having one of their halcyon breakfasts in the raised East Wing conservatory. Imagine a circular white table on a checker-board stone floor, deep troughs of fabulous greenery, a receding backdrop of pink and purple blooms, and four decorative seated figures glimpsed through the echoic, yellowy light: Henry Riding, a tall, shaggy, ‘artistic’ patriarch in white jacket and collarless shirt; his handsome wife Marigold, silver-haired, grey-suited; the delicious, vague, sleepy-eyed Ursula — still in her nightie, the minx: and Gregory, who, having recently celebrated his tenth birthday, is already a tall and athletic figure, with driven-back raven hair, a thin, perhaps rather brutal mouth, and a vivid, evaluating stare … I remember I had just dispatched Cook with some rather sharp words about the consistency of my soft-boiled egg and, while waiting the required 285 seconds for its successor to be prepared, I leaned back on my chair, teasing my palate with a sliver of toast and Gentlemen’s Relish. Then I heard a sudden flurry from the maids in the hall — and there was our housekeeper, good Mrs Daltrey, bustling into the light and guiding on an invisible leash a small wondering boy in grey shirt and khaki shorts, Terence, my foster-brother, who turned and gazed at me with stolen eyes.)
3: March
(i) I’m no good at all this any more. I’ve
got to lock myself away until I’m
fit to live — TERRY
You’ll have to excuse me for a moment.
Mouth-fuck, bum-fuck, fist-fuck, prick-fuck. Ear-fuck, hair-fuck, nose-fuck, toe-fuck. It’s all I think about when I’m in my room. Bed-fuck, floor-fuck, desk-fuck, sill-fuck, rug-fuck.
And in the streets. Tarmac-fuck, lamppost-fuck, shop-front-fuck. Bike-fuck, car-fuck, bus-fuck. Rampart-fuck, railing-fuck, rubbish-fuck.
Pen-fuck, clip-fuck, paper-fuck. (I’m at the office now.) Char-fuck, sec-fuck, temp-fuck. Salessheet-fuck, invoice-fuck, phone-fuck.
And everywhere else. Land-fuck, sea-fuck, air-fuck, cloud-fuck, sky-fuck. In all kinds of moods. Hate-fuck, rage-fuck, fun-fuck, sick-fuck, sad-fuck. In all kinds of contexts. Friend-fuck, kid-fuck, niece-fuck, aunt-fuck, gran-fuck, sis-fuck. Fuck-fuck. I want to
scream
, much of the time, or quiver like a damaged animal. I sit about the place here fizzing with rabies.
No, they still don’t want to. I’m not at all certain
I
want to any more. I mean, what happens when they … you know. I’m clear on the mechanical side of it (I hear about that in books, and I’m also buying quite a lot of those magazines, the ones in which girls show the insides of their vaginas and anuses to the world for money. Do thepolice know about those magazines, incidentally, the ones you can get anywhere? I don’t think they can do), but it all must seem rather awkward and embarrassing. Do you do it much? How often? Less often than you want or more often than you want? I used to do it as much as I possibly could, and I liked it a lot. Then I stopped. No one would do it with me (and doing it with people is half the fun).
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