by Colin Wilson
Caroline is amusingly different. She doesn’t give a damn about whether she’s dressed or not, and her attitude to sex is sometimes so Rabelaisian that it even shocks me. She said to me the other day: ‘No, you can’t have me now, there’s not time. Use your imagination when I’ve gone.’ The other day, I went with her to a fitting for a dress in the play she’s doing; she’d unexpectedly spent the night here, and wasn’t wearing an underskirt. Apparently she had to take off her skirt so they could get the measurements. I asked her who took the measurements; she said: ‘Oh, a middle-aged queer and a rather nice young boy.’ I asked her if she didn’t feel embarrassed to stand in her pants in front of two men (she admitted she didn’t know that either of them was queer). Obviously, this idea had never entered her head. Sex is something nice you do in bed with your clothes off; it never strikes her that the sight of a girl in her underwear might excite a man.
Why, under the circumstances, Caroline should want me to drop Gertrude, I don’t know. I’m certain she even takes a pleasure in feeling that we’re deceiving Gertrude. Brooding on this, and recalling various hints dropped by Caroline, I conclude that she has marriage in mind. God knows why. I suppose she has the usual female desire for security. I don’t think it’s me in particular she wants, although she thinks herself infatuated with me. She admits that there are two film actors she’s crazy about, and that she’d probably leap into bed with either of them if she got the chance. . . .
Later: I’ve been reading a paperback I picked up yesterday, The Protagonists by James Barlow, which, according to the jacket, is the story of a sex crime. It is a very good novel, but is certainly not the story of a sex crime. It is about a shifty ex-RAF type who sees a beautiful red-headed girl in a shop and goes to enormous lengths to seduce her, persuading her that he’s unmarried; he strangles her when she tells him she’s pregnant. In this case, all the sex took place before the crime, which was no more ‘sexual’ than any robbery with violence. The author has done a good job of portraying a certain type of criminal, the confidence trickster, the dishonest Romeo. This type is far more common than the real sex criminal. It’s impossible not to feel that his misdeeds come under the heading of miscalculation rather than crime. Criminality implies an acknowledgement of and a respect for society. You cannot imagine a Beethoven or Bernard Shaw committing crimes because neither cared enough about society. This means that ‘master criminals’ are rare, because when a man has enough vitality to become a master of anything he has too much sense to waste himself and his evolutionary potentialities on an anti-social act. It is amusing to imagine a man of ‘noble mind’ deliberately setting out to be a criminal; but impossible to follow the idea to serious lengths because the first characteristic of a man who has any touch of greatness is an inability to hurt anybody. This is what I never realized about Austin—until almost too late.
But reading Barlow’s book makes me aware not only of the essential stupidity of the criminal, but also of the essential silliness of the seducer. There is a girl at the tobacconist on the corner whom I’d love to screw, and the way she wears tight skirts and sweaters and smiles seductively convinces me that it would be possible. But I think of the sheer boredom of the consequences, of her proximity to this place, and drop the idea without a qualm. If I could offer her five pounds for an hour in bed, and no ‘consequences’ I’d take it like a shot. And yet I could never bear the idea of a prostitute, and am sure I’d be a total failure if I ever found myself in bed with one. . . .
Strange—the amazing amount of energy men waste on seduction. I suppose it’s one of the most basic mechanisms of the healthy male—that looking at a girl, trying to imagine what she’d be like undressed, and then the thought: ‘I must have her.’ Even if it takes ten years. Or costs a fortune in expensive meals and theatres. Or involves marrying her. This latter, I suppose, is the biological explanation for the mechanism. Otherwise, why should Barlow’s murderer go to such absurd lengths to screw a girl, just because she’s red-headed and looks innocent? Is one woman’s body any different from another? I know it’s not. I recently woke up in the middle of the night and made love to a girl I assumed to be Caroline, then went to sleep again (Caroline doesn’t mind being screwed unceremoniously at any hour). In the morning, Gertrude was reproachful because I’d had her without going through the usual ritual of endearments. Reduced to its physical bases, the sexual act is about as unexciting as driving a car to a commercial traveller. The emotions and delusions count for everything. Bill told me an amusing story from his days as an RAF policeman in Hamburg. A German photographer made his living selling dirty pictures, in which his wife was his chief model; he would photograph her in all kinds of positions with a big Greek sailor. He was also subtler than these fellows usually are; he made a fortune from a series of pictures showing the sailor hiding behind a curtain and watching the wife get undressed, and then knocking her out and raping her. But Bill told me that the partnership broke up one day when the photographer observed that the sailor was moving more than was strictly necessary for the photographs. The physical act in itself meant nothing; what mattered was that the sailor was putting his emotions into it and not treating it strictly as a matter of business. The photographer proposed Bill as the sailor’s replacement; Bill, unfortunately, was not attracted by the wife.
An interesting concept emerges from all this. For what exactly was the sailor ‘putting into’ the act? Emotion? No, too vague. Desire, lust, excitement? All too vague. What he was really putting into it was the same quality that makes an African savage die of sheer nerves when a witch-doctor puts a spell on him. Or—and this is nearer to it—what makes a good Catholic believe that the host is Christ’s body, etc. A quality of inner content, meaning. If a fly settles on my face, I try to squash it instantaneously, as a pure reflex. If someone pulls my hair, I lash out at them with a pure reflex of rage. In both these cases, the act is saturated with meaning; my interest, my desire, my vitality, fills the act as I might fill a glass with water at a tap.
On the other hand, in the days when I worked in an office, this quality of meaning was exactly what was missing from my days. Sometimes, on my way to work, I would wonder if I’d shaved, and I’d have to put my hand to my face to find out. The act was so ritualistic, so devoid of meaning, that I had no memory of it. After six months in that office, I had got so used to this ritualistic half-life that I fell into a kind of emotional paralysis, an emotional counterpart of sexual impotence; music ceased to move me; I could still think, but no real feelings or intuitions drove my thoughts. This total boredom didn’t vanish until I was on holiday at Marden, in Kent, and I suddenly thought how nice it would be to destroy Western civilization, and all the shits who can live these rotten half-lives in their meaningless offices without going insane. The hatred got me started again. . . .
I wish I could think of a word to describe that meaning-content that distinguishes a vital experience from the ritual that constitutes about ninety per cent of living. I suppose it’s sheer vitality, since to the really vital, everything is interesting.
I feel all the time that vital purpose has become muffled in modern civilization. If only we knew exactly what we were doing, exactly where we’re going. I hated the office job because I knew that the purposes to which I was devoting my day were mean and trivial; knowing the limited nature of the purposes, the vitality in me refused to respond. It is true that when I try to squash a fly on my face, I am also aware of the limited nature of the purpose; but this is an instantaneous physical response. Only sex surprises me all the time by filling the act with a vitality that seems to rise of its own accord.
Here is an example of what I mean. Carlotta rather attracts me—she has the healthy, shapely body of a German country girl. I am pretty sure she once had ideas about me. I never tried to follow this up, because I could see the hopelessness of having a mistress on the premises—especially one who can walk into my room at any time on the
pretext of cleaning it up.
About two months ago, I heard the kettle upstairs whistling, and went rushing out of the door. Carlotta was on the landing, on top of a step-ladder, attacking the cobwebs, and I cannoned into her before I could stop myself. She unbalanced and put her hands on my shoulders, and I took her weight and helped her down on to ground level again. Her skirt got caught on the top of the ladder—it was very wide—and she had to mount two of the steps to unhook it. In the meantime, I had time to admire her legs—which are by no means spoiled by the thick black stockings she wears to work—and her behind, which was visible enough (I can never understand why girls bother to wear panties that might as well be made of pink cellophane). When she got unhooked, my reaction was completely automatic; I simply pulled her to me and found myself shamelessly pressing my loins against her so that she could have no doubt whatever of the precise physical nature of my response. She looked very pink, but not at all displeased. I said, ‘God, Carlotta . . .’ and then had to stop myself saying: ‘For Christ’s sake let’s get into bed.’ She didn’t even try to disentangle herself, and I sensed that she’d probably agree—or at least promise to come back later—and I remembered that Caroline was due to come around. So I just gulped half a dozen times, kissed her, and rushed upstairs without looking back. When I came down again, I said rather lamely: ‘You shouldn’t do things like that. You’ll get raped against the banisters.’ She just laughed and said: ‘I didn’t do anything,’ which was obvious enough anyway. So I said: ‘If you intend to climb step-ladders, you ought to wear ballet-tights.’ She looked pleased at the implied compliment, and I escaped into my room. When Caroline came an hour later, I screwed the hell out of her, but my mind wasn’t on her. I wonder if these mental infidelities in the act of intercourse are frequent, and if Caroline imagines that she’s being embraced by one of her favourite film stars?
This Carlotta episode really made me feel I’m a Jekyll and Hyde. Oh, I know I’m fairly sexually excitable, and I take account of this in my conscious idea of myself and my motivation. What shattered me, as I stood upstairs in the kitchen, was the force that was making my hands tremble as I tried to lift the kettle. Hector asks Shotover how long he can think of a subject without it being branded in his brain for the rest of his life, and Shotover answers, ‘Half an hour.’ Well, I think that I shall still be able to evoke the sight of Carlotta’s legs, the area of white between the top of the stocking and the panties, the suspender stretched tight between them, the shadow of pubic hairs showing clearly through the thin nylon, to the end of my life. I felt as if an elephant had trampled over me. Above all, I found myself asking myself: ‘What is it in you that is opposing this overwhelming and simple desire to pull Carlotta into your bedroom and undress her?’ An animal would have no such self-division. I suppose this is what we call ‘the spirit of man’, the imagination, warning me that if I screw the girl, I’m going to have to leave this house within a month. And I like the place.
I am aware of certain things about myself with absolute clarity, all the time. And the most important is this: just as my body is perpetually subject to the force of gravity, so my ‘spirit’, my mind, is subject to a kind of spiritual gravitational pull. It is a depressing force, exactly as if someone had attached hooks to my clothes and hung weights on them. I can imagine an angel, someone ideally strong, as powerful as lightning. And I can imagine such a being, who could never know the meaning of weakness, failing to notice that human beings are unhappy, because after all, life surges on, in cities as well as in the jungle. And I ask: Why am I not like that? Who has attached these hooks to my spirit, to my imagination, and hung great weights on them? For what reason are we so weighted down? The Catholics say Adam sinned, but since Adam never existed, this is unlikely. Why? why? I want to know. It is not an abstract question. I feel it with all my being, for every moment of my life. Who has tied this tin-can to man’s tail?
I’m not entirely defeatist about this. I think I’m fairly strong. I’m certainly stronger than the Greenes and Huxleys and the rest. At least my intellect can get the problem into focus, which is the greatest step towards solving it. Added to which, there have been the moments of insight. . . . I suppose that I’m a ‘stranger to revelation’ if by revelation you mean something like the experience of St Paul. But there have been other moments—when my whole being seemed to overflow with power, when I could see new areas of myself, when the possibility of getting rid of the tin-can and becoming a god did not seem too distant. Hence the importance I attach to sex. I think of that scene in Wedekind where Jack the Ripper murders Lulu. The Ripper staggers out of her bedroom, his eyes bulging, his chapped red hands (with their bitten nails) dripping with her blood, panting from sheer excess of relieved sexual tension, and mutters: ‘I was always a lucky fellow . . .’ knowing that the human spirit is not confined to the flat earth of consciousness, but can also rise vertically, as if in a helicopter.
I have also known these revelations in sex, and I despair when I think of the inability of my language to fix their meanings. Yet it can be done; we can create new language, and language and sex will become allies, language clarifying and purifying the sexual impulse, sex powering language to achieve a new complexity.
Oct. 26th.
Today is one of those irritating, dull days when my brain and my feelings refuse to co-operate; I don’t know what I want to do or where I want to go. I look at all the books on my case; nothing attracts me. I stare out of the window, then look through my records; I play a Schubert quartet, but after two minutes, my attention wanders, and then the music begins to irritate me. My consciousness hedges me in. I wish I had some kind of an explosive rocket to launch against this blank wall, to smash it down and free me from this prison of boredom. There must be a way. For two days now, I have intended to go on writing in this diary, but for some reason, the thought repels me. However, I see no other solution but work. If I obeyed my boredom, I would sit down and try to read a few pages of about twenty books, make myself tea I don’t really want, try to sleep, and succeed in wasting the day completely, as I wasted yesterday.
I thought I would like to write about Mary and my first experience of sex, since it is undoubtedly true that no subsequent experience ever achieves the same importance (Caroline tells me that all women keep a corner of themselves for the man who takes their virginity, even if they subsequently sleep with a man a night). And yet I feel less than garrulous about it all. . . .
Mary, then. . . . I cannot remember her face as I write, except that it was oval, and rather pretty. She was fifteen, I was nearly nineteen at the time. It was too long to wait to lose my virginity. I remember reading somewhere that most of the great Elizabethans lost their virginity at about the age of twelve, and no one thought anything of a girl having a baby at thirteen. Maybe that is what’s wrong with modern society, and the reason for the over-emphasis on sex. I know I should have had my first sexual experience at thirteen, when I became aware of my body. The six-year wait was too long. I sometimes wonder if I shall ever be sexually healthy, or if I shall always have a slightly ‘morbid’ approach to sex because of that long wait when I sometimes wondered if I was doomed to a lifetime of frustration.
I also remember my teens as a time of a miserable shyness, when very small social embarrassments could throw me into agonies that made me writhe with self-loathing for months afterwards. Like farting once in front of a girl I rather liked, or merely stumbling in my speech and mispronouncing a word. I mention these things because they help to explain how sexual desire could become magnified until it became unhealthy.
I met Mary at the first dance I attended after my National Service. I was not particularly attracted by her; her hair had been soaked by the rain, and hung in rats’ tails, and she looked about ten years of age. At all events, I danced with her, then persuaded her to come with me into a pub, and later walked her home. She was in no way at all my ‘type’ of girl. She work
ed as a waitress in a dirty little workmen’s café near the bus station, had no kind of interest in books or ideas, and had never been to the theatre. I was even puzzled why she should be attracted to me; she admitted later that I wasn’t her type either. I should add that I had no thought of sex with her. Or rather, I had, but only in a vague, hopeful sense. And I felt guilty because I was going out with a girl I didn’t particularly like, simply because I might use her body. I felt like a murderer. That first night, I kissed her good night, in a chaste kind of way, and walked back home feeling a fool. The next day, I went to the café for lunch, and we agreed to meet the next day (she was not allowed out that evening—her family were strict with her). The following afternoon, a Sunday, we took a bus out into the country, walked for a few miles, had tea in a café, and finally lay down in a haystack. We began to kiss—rather long, frustrating kisses. And suddenly, to my astonishment, she opened my lips and darted her tongue between them. I found this interesting, but not exciting. Similarly, as we walked home, and she placed my hand on her breast, I felt that I ought to be excited, but wasn’t. But as we kissed good night that night, she could feel my sexual excitement, and raised it several degrees by rubbing herself against me in a way that suggested we were experiencing precisely the same desire.