by Colin Wilson
Which explained my relative indifference to Helga the morning after. She had already laid herself bare to me; her defeat, her laziness, her longing for attention and reassurance. There was only one more thing to find out: was she wearing tights or pants? That first time of entering her was natural sex, the kind of sex that animals must have when they couple. After that, our minds were back to dilute it. . . .
She has written to me twice since then: the first time to describe her involvement with a middle-aged company director, the second to announce her engagement to a student at San Francisco State. I hadn’t replied to her second letter when I heard of her death.
And the news of her death brought a shock of reality. I realised that the fatigue of this lecture tour is false. It is the result of the same lack of contact with reality that led to her suicide. The last time I saw her—I left San Francisco on the night plane the same day—was at Jim Smyth’s apartment. He had put a record on his gramophone and lowered the needle on to it. Nothing happened—silence. He checked the loudspeakers by putting his ear against them, and peered at the needle to see if it was coated with fluff. He lowered the pick-up arm again. Nothing. Then I noticed that the arm was lowered by a pneumatic device designed to prevent scratching, and I suggested that it wasn’t lowering the needle completely on to the record. He got down on all fours and peered at it; no, he said, the needle was touching the record all right. Nevertheless, he made some adjustment to the pneumatic device; immediately, the room filled with music. It had lowered the needle to within a hundredth of an inch of the record—so close that the gap could not be seen with the naked eye. Yet the gap was enough to make the difference between silence and music.
What fascinates me is the gap between the mind and reality. Extreme boredom widens the gap; so does fatigue. But the gap can be so slight that to all intents and purposes we are in contact with reality. Then a sudden shock fills the inner-being with music, and you know that there was no contact. You were deceived. You were in your private vacuum, slowly suffocating to death.
Later—en route New York
I owe a debt of gratitude to Helga: her death has snapped me out of the state of will-lessness I was letting myself drift into. Human beings are like car tyres; to get the best results, you need to keep them inflated. If your tyre is flat, and you drive it a couple of miles, you’ve destroyed it. The same when the will is flat. I’ve been allowing my will to get steadily flatter over the past week or so, and wondering why I get so exhausted.
De Sade argues that all men are sadists, because even the most virtuous get a certain odd satisfaction from contemplating the misfortunes of others. He’s right, but it’s nothing to do with sadism. For some strange reason, boredom makes us lose all sense of reality. You might think, for example, that a man who has been rescued from a tent at the South Pole would be incapable of boredom for the rest of his life, because every time he began to take things for granted, he’d simply recall how close he’d been to death, and see his present circumstances as entirely delightful, no matter how dull they are. In fact, such a man would be as easily bored as a man who has spent his whole life working on the same farm; perhaps more so. The misfortune of others sometimes awakens us from our strange sleep.
I am fascinated by this flaw in human nature—implied by the existence of boredom. Eradicate it, and you would have the superman.
Saturday, April 12, Great Neck, Long Island
Fatigue makes good resolutions difficult to keep. I arrived at Kennedy late last night, and was met by Howard Fleisher—small, Italianate, full of bounce and enthusiasm, who drove me out to this place—fine house on a cliff-top, which he says he bought from the widow of a famous Mafioso who was killed by Murder Incorporated. Fleisher is one of these people whose manner implies that you’ve got to like him, because you and he have so much in common. . . . I kept expecting him to put one arm round my shoulders and call me ‘kid’. He’s obviously in a great many businesses besides publishing—in fact, I suspect Linden Press is a sideline acquired for tax purposes. As we drove back, he told me solemnly that he knew immediately that the Sex Diary wasn’t straight pornography, that I’m a sincere person with ideas I want to express . . . I cringed. We got back to his place at 11.30, and the door was opened by a strikingly beautiful negress whom he introduced as his secretary. There was also a younger girl, Beverley, who seemed dowdy by comparison; she shares a flat with Sarah (the secretary) and is studying at secretarial school. The girls had laid on an excellent cold supper, including crab and lobster. By the time I’d eaten, and drunk two beers, I was feeling less hostile to my host, but so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open. But Howard (he insisted on Christian names immediately) actually got bouncier and more enthusiastic after midnight. He talked about the new freedom in literature, the revolt on the campuses, and said there was a new generation to cater for, a generation hungering for ideas, for freedom of expression, for straight, honest talking. I tried to find out what he meant by ideas and freedom of expression, but as far as I could discover, he meant freedom to express aggressive impulses without restraint and uninhibited pornography.
He described the play he means to finance in an off-Broadway production. A young girl brings home a drunken football player after a college game, and he forces her on the bed and rapes her. The rape is supposed to go on throughout the play, and this is symbolised by projecting her face, as she lies on her back, on to a screen at the back of the stage. She imagines all the men she would have preferred to take her virginity, beginning with her father, and the play is a series of fantasy scenes in which she becomes increasingly abandoned. As each seduction scene comes to an end, the face on the screen convulses with ecstasy. Each scene begins with the seducer as he is in real life—polite, repressed, etc—and then her imagination transforms the situation until it ends in bed. At the end of the play, the football player staggers off her, gasping, and says: ‘Sorry, I just can’t go on’, and she gets up, smooths down her underskirt, and says: ‘Weakling.’
The two girls thought it a marvellous plot, and I had to pretend to be enthusiastic too. Finally, at about 3 a.m., he showed me to my room and, as he left, winked and pointed to the room next door. ‘Beverley’s in there, if you want her.’ I muttered something about it being very kind of him, and fell into a comatose slumber. Just before I fell asleep I remembered that I’d forgotten to call Diana in New Haven.
This morning, Beverley woke me up at about nine with breakfast, and asked me if I slept well. I thought I caught a satirical inflection, and wondered if she’s as demure as she looks. I was feeling depressed. Listening to Howard for three hours last night had got me into a state where all I wanted to do was get out. I wanted to shout: ‘Let me alone. I hate every damn thing you stand for.’ I don’t think he’d have been offended. He’d have said: ‘No you don’t. You only think you do. . . .’, and talked faster than ever.
He came in while I was eating my breakfast—an English breakfast of eggs, bacon and marmalade—and handed me the manuscript of Donelly’s book. It was only about sixty typescript pages long. I asked what had happened to the rest, and he said: ‘Yes. Well . . . er . . . that’s the problem.’ After another half-hour of voluble explanations and assurances that he always stands by his friends, I began to gather what I should have realised last night. He’s jealous of Grove Press for publishing de Sade and My Secret Life before anyone else thought of it. But he doesn’t see why he shouldn’t go one better and produce every volume mentioned in Ashbee’s Bibliography of Prohibited Books. He is starting with a translation of the confessions of Brother Achazius of Düren, a Capuchin monk who ran a society in which he flagellated and screwed his female followers. Howard lent me the typescript—it was definitely one of those ‘books you read with one hand’. He has also commissioned a book called Scandalous Priests, although he did not explain where he got the material.
Finally, we got to the point. He will pay me $5,000 to do research
around Moycullen and Ballycahane (Donelly’s birthplace), which will cover the cost of an Introduction. If I can produce more ‘material’ for the book itself—i.e. if I can unearth more manuscript by Donelly, or forge it myself—he will pay me a further $10,000. He obviously doesn’t really mind whether I find more of Donelly or write it myself. He points out that Alex Trocchi wrote most of the fifth volume of Frank Harris’s My Life and Loves, and has since published it under his own name. The main thing is that I should be prepared to take the blame, if any arises.
The prospect of that much money is tempting. We shall be lucky if we have $500 left of the money I’ve made on this tour. I told Fleisher I’d think about it, and he left me with the typescript.
I spent the rest of the morning in bed, getting increasingly depressed as I read Donelly. I don’t understand how he managed to keep the friendship of people like Sheridan and Rousseau. He seems to be just a dirty-minded ruffian. Worse still, I suspect he is simply a liar. The women he seduces—starting with his sister and the maidservant—all sound like versions of the same wish-fulfilment fantasy. They all begin by resisting virtuously and saying: ‘Fie, for shame.’ Then, when he gets his finger into the ‘coral slit’, they gasp, and their thighs ‘part as if involuntarily’. From then on, it’s straightforward progress until they moan with ecstasy in bed. Either Fleisher is a bigger fool than he looks, or he knows damn well he’s been swindled and doesn’t care.
He came in and told me we were expecting guests to lunch. This was about the last straw—I felt anything but sociable. I went into the bathroom, and turned on the shower. Suddenly, I felt dizzy, and had to cling on to the curtain rail. I sat down on the lavatory seat and stared at the flowered bath-mat, feeling the waves of depression trickling over me. I thought of Helga—that last morning, as she had sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on her stockings. She said: ‘I’m glad we slept together. We may as well take what pleasure we can get.’ She said no more, but I understood her. She meant that life is meaningless. We had climbed into bed together, fucked like two animals, slept and got up again; but we were strangers, too honest to have illusions about love or tenderness—alienated from one another and the universe. And suddenly I wanted to explain to her. I wanted to tell her that the world seems meaningless because her subconscious has gone to sleep. When we’re happy, bubbles of pleasure keep rising up from the subconscious—memories, smells, places. When you’re exhausted, the subconscious goes off duty, and the result is the state Sartre calls ‘nausea’. You see things without the penumbra of meaning supplied by the lower depths of the mind. St Augustine says: ‘What is time? When I do not ask myself the question, I know the answer.’ Quite. Isolating a thing in consciousness robs it of its meaning. The fact that consciousness sees the world as meaningless is neither here nor there. Consciousness isn’t supposed to perceive meaning; it’s supposed to perceive objects. But how could I explain this to a girl who is firmly jammed in a state of total nervous exhaustion? To get her out of it, she would have to be persuaded to make an effort. And she won’t make an effort because she says all effort is pointless. She’s trapped in a vicious circle.
I was determined that I wouldn’t make the same mistake. I snapped myself out of it, stepped into the hot shower, and thought about seeing Diana tomorrow and flying home in ten days’ time. . . .
But lunch was as bad as I’d thought it would be. The guests were obviously rich neighbours, and Fleisher had invited them solely because they were rich neighbours. It came to me how much of this kind of thing goes on in America—people drinking and talking together when they have nothing in common—and I plunged back into a state of irritable depression. I felt that Fleisher had no right to inflict these damn bores on me—fat businessmen and their silly wives, and their chatter about the holiday villa they’ve just bought in Florida or on the Carmel peninsula. Beverley was on the far side of the room with a fat young executive type whose wife was away for the weekend, and this irritated me more than ever because I felt she was there to entertain me—even if I didn’t want to sleep with her. I wanted it to be my choice.
I went out on to the terrace, by the heated swimming pool, and looked across the sound to Connecticut. The air was warm and mild. Suddenly I decided I’d tell Fleisher I didn’t want anything to do with his damn book. I couldn’t even undertake the Introduction without dishonesty, because Donelly struck me as a vicious bore. I’d leave right after lunch and catch the afternoon bus to New Haven. . . .
I was just about to go in and tell Fleisher when Beverley came out bringing me a plate of smoked salmon and a beer. She said: ‘You look bored.’ And I said—rather angrily, as if I blamed her—‘I am. I’m sick of this whole bloody thing.’ I said I intended to leave immediately after lunch. Her concern surprised me. She said: ‘No, you don’t have to do that. Wait until after the others have gone.’ Her attention flattered me, and I promised. Five minutes later, Howard came out and asked me how I felt. I said I was fine but that I was thinking of leaving later in the day. He also got very concerned, and hurried off into the house.
I ate the salmon and some cold meat, and went up to my room. I was sitting on the bed reading the Donelly typescript when Beverley came in. She looked very unsure of herself. ‘I’ve brought you some cranberry pie.’ I said thank you, and she sat on the bed. She said: ‘Howard says I’m to persuade you not to go.’ ‘Why?’ She hesitated, then said: ‘It means a lot to me. I want you to stay.’ I said ‘Why?’, more surprised than ever. She rambled on vaguely about only having another year of study before she could take a well-paid job, and it gradually dawned on me that Fleisher was paying for her studies, and that, in return, she was expected to ‘entertain’ guests like myself. I suppose it all fitted in. Sarah was Fleisher’s secretary and his mistress; Beverley shared a flat with Sarah. . . . Then I gathered that Fleisher had been angry with her for not spending the night with me. I said: ‘But didn’t you explain that I was fast asleep?’ She said: ‘Yes, I know you were. I came in to see.’
I was eating my cranberries—although I didn’t want them—out of embarrassment. It was one of those awkward, stupid situations. I couldn’t say: ‘All right, take off your clothes, and we’ll make up for lost time.’ I said: ‘But I explained to Howard that my wife and daughter are waiting for me in New Haven.’ She said miserably: ‘Yes, I know.’ I said: ‘But what difference does it make whether I spent the night with you or not?’ But in fact, I could guess. Fleisher was one of those men who are determined to have their own way. He had read my book and decided that I was the person he needed to supply his Donelly book with a respectable image. And if I’d spent the weekend in his house, with a girl he’d imported for me, then I’d be under some sort of obligation to him.
I said: ‘Look, I don’t think I can accept this commission. This book is just a stupid piece of pornography. It’s not even well-written pornography. It doesn’t convince.’ I read her the scene where he gets into bed with his sister when she is menstruating, and she allows him to take her virginity. ‘An Irish girl in the 1780s wouldn’t even have allowed her brother to know she was menstruating.’ I found nevertheless that reading it aloud produced a stirring of the loins that made walking uncomfortable, so I sat down on the window-sill—a deep one. She objected that manners were more free in the eighteenth century, and that perhaps Donelly was simply a careless writer who left out important steps in the seduction. I said: ‘All right. How about this, then.’ I turned to the scene where he describes seducing his sister’s schoolfriend. Beverley moved to my shoulder, and let her breast press against it. The scene describes how she is standing with him, watching a parade go past; he unlaces her bodice and sucks her nipples, then inserts his finger in the ‘coral slit’. They end by having intercourse with her sitting down on him, her legs astride his. I said I thought it was preposterous, but I was aware that my voice sounded strained. The combination of the pornography, and her breast leaning hard against my shoulder, had
me in a state of tension that would have been obvious if I hadn’t been holding the typescript in my lap. She was wearing an off-the-shoulder blouse of fluffy pink wool that went well with her golden skin. As I finished reading, she wet her right index finger, reached around my head, and placed it gently in my ear. I don’t know where she learned the trick, but the effect was shattering. Suddenly, this was her situation, and she knew it; the awkwardness had gone. I reached up and pulled the blouse right off the shoulders, then pulled down the cups of her brassière, a small thing that was little more than a band of lacy material. Both her nipples were erect and very pink; I took them in my mouth in turn, and worried them with my tongue. She slid on to my knee, pushed the manuscript on to the floor, and unzipped my trousers. We sat there in that position, both breathing very heavily. I wondered whether she wanted to move over to the bed, but her fingers caressed with a sort of skill that made me want to sit quite still, letting her go on. I could see past her shoulder, out of the window, the black outlines of trees against the sea, their branches only just covered with green shoots. They looked magnificently hard, as if they were made of some black and silver metal. Then my climax came, and the trees lurched, and something inside me went very hard, so that everything I looked at was hard, hard and very beautiful, beautiful as only the hard and clean can be. She bent over me, and inserted her tongue in my mouth, holding it there until I gradually subsided in her hand. I gave her my handkerchief, and she wiped her fingers. She pulled my hand, and we moved to the bed, and simply lay there, fully clothed. I was beginning to fall asleep when some slight sound made me look up. In the mirror, I saw the reflection of the door opening. Fleisher peeped in, saw us, and instantly withdrew again. Beverley was asleep, her lips open. I suddenly felt pity, and an upsurge of a feeling that was basically love. Fleisher had told her to come and give herself. She had done her best; she had set out to give me pleasure without thinking about her own, and my handkerchief held the result. I kissed her parted lips; then, when she stirred, her forehead.