by Black Inc.
I felt that it would help if I clarified, ‘But it’s not as if it would ever get in the way of what might happen between us …’, to my consternation she’d now put a finger in each of her ears and was making a buzzing sound – bzzzzzz – to block anything I might say and then said, ‘Hell-low? Hell-low? I think you dropped out’, laughing.
An apt quote strolled in to my mind or what I considered apt, my sense of apt was, I felt, somewhat under challenge at this point in the date, if it were a date, and I concede that I am not too good at apt. The quote was, ‘She thrust a dimpled finger/in each ear, shut eyes and ran … we must not listen to goblin men … who knows upon what soil they’ve fed …’
She laughed, ‘Rossetti, I know that poem.’ She reached across and touched my hand, ‘I’m not like that. Don’t worry.’
Not like what? The poem had a dark ambiguity about it and so did her touch. I now regretted introducing dark ambiguity. I changed tack, feeling slightly off-balance, ‘I take it, you don’t have any trouble with our age difference or you wouldn’t be here’, I said. ‘I don’t myself have any problem with age difference, in fact, I think cross-generational affairs are enriching. To both parties. Now and then.’ And could led to severe heartache for the older person but I did not feel that was something to talk about just now.
‘Whoa – let’s keep our boundaries,’ she laughed.
‘Boundaries? I have no boundaries,’ I said, smiling, and continued, ‘In the 1970s we had no boundaries. We thought boundaries put people into emotional houses of correction. Back then, we “let it all hang out”, we put everything “up front”. I am a member of People Without Borders,‘ I said, with a big laugh.
‘Oh, it’s just that it raises privacy issues for me,’ she said, with a smile, reaching across and patting my hand and then withdrawing her hand.
I said, with a smile. ‘Privacy is another Correctional Facility, a way of separating people from people. Why should we hide away from each other in quaint nineteenth-century cupboards, or behind chintz curtains of propriety? Why should we worry what people know about our income or our health or our orgasms?’ I then rushed to add, laughing, reaching over and touching her hand, ‘Except the State and its instruments.’
She laughed, ‘I’m rather unyielding on confidentiality.’
‘But those so-called “confidentiality agreements” are a new plague’, I said, laughing, ‘They’re pushed in front of us and we are supposed to roll over and sign,’ I said, with a laugh. ‘They’re all unconstitutional. You can’t sign away your freedom of speech. Those agreements won’t stand up in court. They’re all intimidation and bluff.’
‘I hope they do stand up in court,’ she said, laughing. ‘I surely hope they do.’
‘Returning to cross-generational sex …’
‘Do I need to hear this?!’ she said, with a laugh.
I did not know if she was talking to me or herself. I decided she was asking the question to herself. I went on, ‘To me it’s like having sex with a very fat person – or a very thin person if you’re a fat person – or with a disabled person – or if you’re a disabled person with an undisabled person – it creates a tantalizingly carnal dynamic,’ I said, with a smile. ‘It’s always a courtesy to ask their identity labelling preference,’ I threw in.
She looked at me as if she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about.
‘Excuuuuse, me!’ she said, with a laugh, in that electronic, impersonal voice we now all have implanted inside us by talking machines. ‘I’m really not in the mood for this right now’, she said, with a smile, and then she made a sound like a smoke alarm, beeeeee, and said, ‘Change of Subject Alert! Change of Subject Alert!’
I sat silently for a few seconds. I had never been in a Change of Subject Alert. I guessed that we could talk safely about the event where we’d just been. ‘What did you feel about Edmund White’s chat,’ I said, with smile. ‘Didn’t you love the story about the man who was driving along with his partner who suddenly announced that the relationship was finished and that he had a new lover. The jilted lover then deliberately drove the car off the road and over a cliff. They spent six months in hospital in the same room.’
‘You’ve changed the story a little,’ she said, smiling. ‘I found White’s “chat” was way over the top,’ she said, without a smile. ‘What was he thinking! There was a whole bunch of stuff in the talk with which I was distinctly uncomfortable,’ she said, with a smile. ‘And he used a few not-out-loud words. Too much cursing, so unnecessary!’
‘But that “bunch of stuff” was his life – he was talking about his memoirs and the whole nature of candour,’ I said, with a laugh. And then I added, with a smile, ‘I suppose he could’ve talked about his pets.’
‘Hell-low!’ she said, waving a hand in front of my face, ‘if that’s what he got up to with people I don’t think I want to know what he gets up to with his pets. Pur-leese, so-do-not-want-to-know.’
After a wobbling pause, she said, smiling, ‘He could try a little indirection. Even good old-fashioned discretion.’ Smiling, she then quoted Whitman, ‘I meant that you should discover me so by faint indirections …’ At least it sounded like an invitation to know her and fortunately the rest of the Whitman quotation drifted back into my mind, at least fragments of it.
‘As I recall, Whitman when he says “meant” in “I meant that …” he seems to imply that passion did not always allow for “faint indirections”. But yes, maybe we lead lives of too much haste, although the velocity of desire has something to say for it’, I said, scrabbling to hold my position.
She studied the menu.
I took the menu up too.
I found another line or two of poetry for rebuttal, a little shop-worn by impatient lovers, well, still good:
‘But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near … dah dah … then worms shall try That long preserved virginity, And your quaint honour turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust: The grave’s a fine and private place, But none, I think, do there embrace.’
‘Well done, Mister Writer, but I think we could do without the worms at my virginity – at the dinner table …’
Then, looking back to the menu, avoiding my eyes, she said, ‘I think hombre, maybe you’re a tiny bit on the outrageous side tonight, yes?’
I treated her question as rhetorical. I ordered the oysters. She said she had an aversion to oysters. Perhaps, I thought, I should eat them with a screen around me. My conversation didn’t seem to me to be that outrageous but now my menu choice seemed lewd.
Changing the subject somewhat as, I think I’d been instructed, and at least moving away from the human species, I volunteered the information that oysters switched their sex every year or so. ‘Perhaps humans should try that,’ I said, lightly, with a laugh, pleased with what I saw as its thematic coherence with our earlier ‘conversation’.
‘Heavy, heav-ee,’ she said, with a laugh.
‘Hold on – I wasn’t talking about sex as such,’ I said, smiling, ‘I was simply observing the oyster as creature.’
‘Yeah, right!’ she said, with a smile, glancing up at me quickly and then looking back to the menu.
We lapsed into silence. I thought I could say that I believed that in life we should all study at least one small creature in some detail but that would’ve been something of a non sequitur and we surely did not need any non sequiturs.
I began again, lightly, with a smile, I said, ‘I heard that Mike and Dee-dee are in some sort of trouble,’ naming acquaintances we had in common.
‘Into the vault,’ she said, with a laugh, making a gesture with her hand and mouth as if turning a key on a lip-lock – a lock on her vault, I guess, I suppose, perhaps, ‘I hate people tattling on other people’s lives,’ she said, laughing.
‘But isn’t that how we find out about the world?’ I said, with a grin. ‘Through other people’s lives being tattled to us? It’s called community.’
‘It’s calle
d malicious gossip,’ she said, with a smile.
‘Gossip is fun,’ I said, with a laugh. ‘Gossip is good. I find that nothing brings you face-to-face with the treacherous nature of the human condition and its frailties more vividly than gossip – including the very act of telling, the betrayal in the telling.’ Then I chuckled, ‘As Hilary would say, it takes a village to raise a gossip.’
‘I never reveal the contents of any conversation I’ve had with anyone without their permission, never,’ she said, without a smile. ‘And I would hope you would respect our conversational privacy.’ She placed a finger vertically over her mouth, the don’t-tell sign. ‘Agreed? Deal, hombre?’
She then leaned across and hooked her little finger into mine and jerked it lightly to seal the confidentiality.
‘How very high school,’ I said.
I thought that because of the internet and all, there was a new position called, what-I-know-I-own. But I didn’t go into that. ‘I thought that in an intimate conversation we said “keep this to yourself”,’ I said, with a smile. ‘And then afterwards we get straight onto the telephone,’ I laughed. ‘We tell everyone. Or write about it, as the case may be.’
‘No – sor-reeey, she said, without a smile, ‘It’s the other way around now – all conversation is confidential unless it is specifically released by the other person. Sorry, mister-writer,’ she said, with a laugh.
She had a law degree, although she said she didn’t practice law, perhaps I shouldn’t be revealing that. ‘Do you mind if I ask you where you did your degree?’ I asked, moving to neutral ground.
‘Actually, I do mind. There’s a lot of snobbery about colleges – I don’t want to buy into all that. Just because I was privileged enough to go to an Ivy League university – and to have passed very well by the way – is none of anyone’s damned business. N-O-Y-B.’
‘You worked for Clinton for a while after graduating, isn’t that right?’
‘Don’t ask: don’t tell,’ she laughed.
‘Why not?’ I said, with a laugh.
‘Go figure,’ she said, smiling. ‘I just don’t think it’s appropriate to talk about former employers,’ she said, with a smile. ‘Especially that former employer.’
‘Public figure: public property. I’ve even met Clinton, although he may not remember me.’ In all likelihood. ‘I know a story you might enjoy.’ I doubted it. I went on, ‘Perhaps it’s an urban legend, perhaps not … Two women recently were at their Oxford college reunion, they went to the same college as Clinton, and one said to the other “Do you remember when …”’
‘Whoa – I so do not want to be having this conversation,’ she said, covering her ears with her hands. ‘In-a-ppro-priate.’
‘“Inappropriate” is one of those words.’
‘How do you mean, “inappropriate is one of those words”?’ she said, with a laugh.
‘One of those superior words we use to put other people in their place – and to stop a line of inquiry,’ I said, with a smile. ‘It’s a shut-up-your-mouth word.’
‘How very male,’ she said.
I tried to figure the very male part.
Seeing that I was deep in a welter of self-interrogation, she said, ‘It’s a girl thing,’ patting my hand with a smile, ‘Don’t-you-worry-your-pretty-little-head-about-it.’
Then she smiled at me and winked. Which did not in any way put me at ease, the wink.
The oysters arrived. She averted her eyes.
I offered more of my oyster knowledge.
‘Men in every country often seem to believe their oysters are the best in the world. I think it has to do with oysters and the male folklore of virility which surrounds the eating of oysters. Now that’s very male.’
‘Whoa – time to call the waiter,’ she said, with a laugh.
‘Waiter?’ I queried.
‘Oh, it’s just a New York colloquialism saying, “I’m out of here.” That does sound very men’s business to me. Not for my ears. N-F-M-E. Delete, delete.’ She made a computer-like noise – deek, deek – laughing.
To lighten things up, I introduced another literary reference. ‘In connection with our …’ I hesitated … ‘our, well, our “conversation”, so to speak, about Edmund White,’ I said, ‘and in reference to Clinton, I want to say that I’m on the side of Lytton Strachey when he remarked that good biography should pass lightly over those performances and incidents which simply illustrate vulgar greatness in someone’s life and instead the writer should lead our thoughts into domestic privacies.’
‘I’ve never warmed to Strachey,’ she said, with a laugh, ‘Sackville-West described him as “that drooping Strachey” And Virginia described him as “a well-worn leather glove”.’
She smiled, ‘A rather smelly, sweaty leather glove and we would not know where it had been.’
I excused myself, and went to the toilet and thought about the conversation. I still had ‘a whole bunch of stuff’ I wanted to share but I could see that I was perhaps a Without Boundaries Person floundering in the Sea of the New Discretion.
Was it for this that Kinsey was hounded near to death? And Lenny Bruce?
Although the meal was unfinished, I paid the bill before returning to the table and then at our table, without sitting down, I said, with a smile, ‘I have a feeling that we are done here.’ She looked up at me. ‘I think you maybe right,’ she said, smiling, and, folding her napkin with deliberation. She stood and said, ‘I agree. We are done here.’
And with a handshake, we went our separate ways. I, feeling like a well-worn leather glove, sweaty and with that smell of old leather and human propinquity. I felt as if I were Lytton, and I stood there, out in busy Spring Street, outside the Aquagrill, allowing the urgent New York people to stream and bump around me.
I decided that, yes, I was a well-worn leather glove.
That felt ok.
Not.
JULY THE FIRSTS
RYAN O’NEILL
It is July the first.
And Ernest Hemingway is cleaning his favourite shotgun, the one with the silver-edged barrel, which he will next day place in his mouth, and Charles Laughton is born and Thomas Moore is on trial for his life and I (1970 to present) am lying awake in Newcastle. On this day Vespasian was given the purple by the Egyptian legions and Napoleon captured Alexandria. The first television advertisement, for watches, was broadcast in New York City, costing the company nine dollars. It is 12.50 a.m. In 1971, in a Brisbane hospital, my wife Sarah has just been born. Four years ago at this time I lay in bed awake, listening to her stir beside me. She had wanted to make love, but I had said I was too tired. In truth I was bored of her. By then I already knew the history of her body, the provenance of every scar and blemish. I pretended I was asleep.
This year (2004) I have taken to sleeping in old piles of the Newcastle Herald which I bought from a pensioner in Charlestown. The past week I have been napping in the 1988 earthquake, but tonight I cover myself in a more recent pub brawl and the football results. For some reason, I find I enjoy most rest in December 1979. Yet just now I cannot sleep and so continue the introduction to my History of Newcastle (Newcastle University Press, 200?). One hundred and twenty notebooks filled with my handwriting are stacked on the floor around my desk, along with the dozens of history books and journals that are referenced in the ninety pages of footnotes. And still I have not arrived at the First World War. I once wrote a history of Africa that took less time and research than this history of a small Australian city. And yet still I believe I was born to be an historian, exiting from my mother backside first, in order that I might better understand where I came from. I take a new page in the introduction (p.104) and write: Abraham Lincoln once said, ‘We cannot escape history.’
Then the Beatles start singing ‘Paperback Writer’ on the radio, number one today in 1966. There are more songs and I stop writing for a time and listen to them, ‘My Foolish Heart,’ ‘Why Don’t You Love Me.’ Then I hear ‘Guess Things Happen that W
ay’ and I run barefoot to turn the music off, trailing a Lambton murder from December 14, 1983 on my heel. My feet are dirty. The floor is filthy with my dead skin and hair. Historians should not sit in ivory towers after all.
Now it is 4 a.m. on July the first and in 1993 I have just proposed to Sarah. We lay in bed together in an Edinburgh hotel. I had bought the engagement ring earlier that day at an antique shop – I wanted it to have history. She told me it was the best birthday present she had ever had. She told me of each of the men she had loved. She asked me about the women I had been with. ‘I don’t want our pasts to ever come between us,’ she said. I had a cold that night, I remember.
My medical history: measles (1975), appendicitis (1984), a fractured left arm (1992), malaria (1990, 1991), and of course, clinical depression (2001 to present). Outside the house, a red and green and yellow bird is whooping in the dawn, but I don’t know its name. It is a cool morning. I decide to go for a walk and dress in my second-hand clothes. I leave the house, cross the street, walk past the undertakers where an Australian flag is displayed against black curtains, as if the country itself is to be buried today. My house is near the harbour. The roof was destroyed by a Japanese sub-marine that fired thirty-four rounds at the city on June 8, 1942. Three drunken young men shout at me and I hurry past them and think of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. I could never fight. I have no history of violence.
I walk down to the foreshore and look out at the ocean where in the pale light I can see five identical coal ships spaced equidistant along the horizon, like a time-lapse photograph. Long ago today the French frigate Medusa sank and the survivors escaped in a raft which became stuck in the sea of the famous painting. There is a strong smell of seaweed. It is Estée Lauder’s birthday. In 1998 at this time I was still asleep in bed, but not with my wife.
I walk back and forth along the sand for a while, and then return to the road. At this early hour I am surprised to see an old man reading on his front doorstep, with a faintly astonished look on his face, as if he had just seen his own name in the book. I pass him, then charge back up San Juan Hill with Roosevelt and take my street without casualties.