intellectual.”
“And so . . . what?” asked Marvin. “What was the deal, Tandem? Was joy sown before pain was reaped?”
Alex fiddled with the fly of his pajama bottoms. From here his penis looked smaller than it had ever looked ever. It was curled in on itself like a mollusk—but where was the hard shell that would protect it? Where was its home? Its shield against life?
“Were you . . . like, dancing or chilling or? I know some people,” considered Marvin, “and they get on a
living-room
trip. The TV sucks them in. They commune with the TV, right? And they take their trip through the channels.
Suburban
style-ee.”
Alex had been in his bed for around three days, that much he had a grip on. In which time he had survived on the bright spangles of Christmas chocolate coins sitting on his night table. He remembered a lucid hour in which he had plumped some pillows behind himself, picked up the phone and called a radio talk show during a conversation about early menopause. He remembered the sleep. Deep, padded. But the night before this, the night in question, this was a shut door with its wood warping from some unseen fire, smoke squeezing through. He could not open it. He didn’t dare.
“Marvin,” he said finally, “I have no recollection. On the past week, I am drawing a . . .”
Marvin nodded and made the sign for a big empty circle of nothing in the air. Through it Alex could see the embroidered lettering MARVIN KEPPS, MOUNTJOY MILK OPERATIVE and, beyond that, a tiny blanching gap in his buttons, where the tight corkscrew of his chest hair was suggesting something scary to Alex, some untapped velocity in the coil.
“That will happen,” said Marvin, and placed his hands softly on Alex’s shoulders. “Tandem,” he said, “let me lay it out for you: in the pros column we have heightened sensory perception, visionary experience and the rest. I don’t have to tell
you.
Every note of music, every blade of grass, et cetera. But here on the cons we have short-term memory
collapse.
Back in the day, they called them Goldfish. For the reason stated above.”
For the second time this morning, Alex felt tears rising. The specter of
permanent neurological damage,
number four on Alex’s Big Five List—
1.
Cancer
2.
AIDS
3.
Poisoned Water System/London Underground Gas Attack
4.
Permanent Neurological Damage
(
in youth, through misadventure
)
5.
Degenerative Brain Disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Etc.
(
in old age
)
—grabbed at his gag reflex and he swerved towards a bush by the fence. Marvin caught him by the elbow, hugged him to his body and straightened him up.
“None of that,
please,
” said Marvin fondly, massaging his knuckle into the top of Alex’s head. “It’s just the problem with those things, and what I’ve learnt is this: they’re meant to be a shortcut to the ultimate . . . thing, the plane, or whatever you want to say it like, yeah? It’s meant to be: here’s your thirty quid or whatever, take me to higher consciousness, please. And it don’t work that way, bro. You don’t get the full benefit. You’ve got to work your way up that tree, meaning that that is an allegory which is saying: you can’t just fly up to the branches. You get me?”
“Right.”
“I know I’m right. So, Mr. My Bed Is My Office. Going out today?”
“Considering it, Marvin.”
“Consider hard.”
“Will do.”
“Will do,” echoed Marvin in the effeminate voice he often used to impersonate Alex. In the past this has made Alex wonder whether he seems effeminate to black men or just to Marvin in particular. A couple of months ago, in Mountjoy Swimming Pool, Alex-Li Tandem did a passable backflip and then, rising out of the water, put the matter to his friend Adam, who took off his nasal clip and said:
“No . . .
no
—I don’t see that, I don’t find you particularly effeminate. You’re too bulky, for one. And hairy. And he does that to me too, anyway. And I’m the black
“And so . . . what?” asked Marvin. “What was the deal, Tandem? Was joy sown before pain was reaped?”
Alex fiddled with the fly of his pajama bottoms. From here his penis looked smaller than it had ever looked ever. It was curled in on itself like a mollusk—but where was the hard shell that would protect it? Where was its home? Its shield against life?
“Were you . . . like, dancing or chilling or? I know some people,” considered Marvin, “and they get on a
living-room
trip. The TV sucks them in. They commune with the TV, right? And they take their trip through the channels.
Suburban
style-ee.”
Alex had been in his bed for around three days, that much he had a grip on. In which time he had survived on the bright spangles of Christmas chocolate coins sitting on his night table. He remembered a lucid hour in which he had plumped some pillows behind himself, picked up the phone and called a radio talk show during a conversation about early menopause. He remembered the sleep. Deep, padded. But the night before this, the night in question, this was a shut door with its wood warping from some unseen fire, smoke squeezing through. He could not open it. He didn’t dare.
“Marvin,” he said finally, “I have no recollection. On the past week, I am drawing a . . .”
Marvin nodded and made the sign for a big empty circle of nothing in the air. Through it Alex could see the embroidered lettering MARVIN KEPPS, MOUNTJOY MILK OPERATIVE and, beyond that, a tiny blanching gap in his buttons, where the tight corkscrew of his chest hair was suggesting something scary to Alex, some untapped velocity in the coil.
“That will happen,” said Marvin, and placed his hands softly on Alex’s shoulders. “Tandem,” he said, “let me lay it out for you: in the pros column we have heightened sensory perception, visionary experience and the rest. I don’t have to tell
you.
Every note of music, every blade of grass, et cetera. But here on the cons we have short-term memory
collapse.
Back in the day, they called them Goldfish. For the reason stated above.”
For the second time this morning, Alex felt tears rising. The specter of
permanent neurological damage,
number four on Alex’s Big Five List—
1.
Cancer
2.
AIDS
3.
Poisoned Water System/London Underground Gas Attack
4.
Permanent Neurological Damage
(
in youth, through misadventure
)
5.
Degenerative Brain Disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, Etc.
(
in old age
)
—grabbed at his gag reflex and he swerved towards a bush by the fence. Marvin caught him by the elbow, hugged him to his body and straightened him up.
“None of that,
please,
” said Marvin fondly, massaging his knuckle into the top of Alex’s head. “It’s just the problem with those things, and what I’ve learnt is this: they’re meant to be a shortcut to the ultimate . . . thing, the plane, or whatever you want to say it like, yeah? It’s meant to be: here’s your thirty quid or whatever, take me to higher consciousness, please. And it don’t work that way, bro. You don’t get the full benefit. You’ve got to work your way up that tree, meaning that that is an allegory which is saying: you can’t just fly up to the branches. You get me?”
“Right.”
“I know I’m right. So, Mr. My Bed Is My Office. Going out today?”
“Considering it, Marvin.”
“Consider hard.”
“Will do.”
“Will do,” echoed Marvin in the effeminate voice he often used to impersonate Alex. In the past this has made Alex wonder whether he seems effeminate to black men or just to Marvin in particular. A couple of months ago, in Mountjoy Swimming Pool, Alex-Li Tandem did a passable backflip and then, rising out of the water, put the matter to his friend Adam, who took off his nasal clip and said:
“No . . .
no
—I don’t see that, I don’t find you particularly effeminate. You’re too bulky, for one. And hairy. And he does that to me too, anyway. And I’m the black
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