by Martin Amis
Cleve and Cressida were still pals. They were pen pals. At the outset he imagined a correspondence of remarkable—indeed publishable—brilliance, all about fiction. But it didn’t turn out that way. Cressida’s letters, he soon found, were irreducibly quotidian. The cooker, the clothes dryer, the conversion of the box room—should she paint it blue or pink? “I know you’re interested in home improvement,” she wrote, “but this isn’t decoration. This is nesting.” Dutifully Cleve’s football jersey quaked over the kitchen table, leaning on the pad and ballpoint, as he attempted sophisticated riffs about exactly how Fanny Price made time with Mary Crawford, exactly how Frank Churchill strapped on Mr. Knightly. And the next morning what would he get but another nine-pager on Cressida’s health insurance or plumbing bills. Such was straight life. Her letters didn’t bore him. He found himself both gripped and frazzled. It was like getting hooked on one of those British soap operas they showed on cable: proletarian ups and downs, week in week out, relentless and endless, lasting longer than a lifetime. Cressida was really big now, splay-footed and short-winded, and constantly fanning herself.
Irv. Irv looked a lot like Cleve. Harv had looked a lot like Cleve, too, as had Grove, as had Orv. But Irv and Cleve (as Irv pointed out) were like the two sides of the same ass. That first time, when they groped toward each other through the fumes of Folsom Prison, Cleve felt he was walking into a mirror—reaching out and finding the glass was warm and soft. Sometimes, now, when Irv mislaid his house keys (which Irv was always doing), Cleve buzzed him up and waited for the knock and then went to the door, feeling entirely depersonalized, wiped out, to admit his usurper, his sharer, his shadow. It was like the recurring nightmare in the novels of William Burroughs, when your dreadful ditto comes calling. Burroughs! More straight fiction … Back in the first few days of their relationship, when they still had sex, Cleve and Irv always did it missionary, face-to-face; and Cleve was Narcissus, riveted to the reflection of his own watery being.
Halfway through the eighth month, with the onset of pelvic vascular congestion, the soap from San Francisco became sharply medicalized. Gone were the bland mentions of breathing exercises and health checks. In her letters Cressida now spoke of such things as vaginal cynosis, asymmetrical uterine enlargement, and low-albumin-count urinalyses. Cleve forged on with a florid account of his recent trip—with Irv—to Kampuchea. Then came the news that the baby was breached: It seemed that the baby intended to be born feet first … Late at night (Irv was elsewhere), Cleve was in the bathroom thinking about caesarean sections. He stood and faced the mirror. Behind which his medications were arranged in ranks, like spectators. Modern hypochondriacs are not just hypochondriacs. They are also Hypochondriacs, self-conscious representatives of a Syndrome. So even when they’re in great shape, and feeling in great shape, they remain terrified by their own suggestibility; scared of their own minds. Cleve went into the bedroom and, with the phone on his lap, touched the forbidden numbers.
“… Grainge?”
“Let’s not do this, Cleve.”
“… Grainge?”
“Cleve. Really.”
“I’m going to be good,” said Cleve in a childish voice. “I just wanted to ask you about something else.”
“Let’s make this quick, Cleve.”
“Grainge? Years ago, you had a straight phase, right? In your youth. Straight encounters or episodes.”
“What?”
“You were a kid. Just out of Boy Camp. Your first job. You were a caterer at that nurses’ college?”
“Oh that. Sure. So?”
“What did that tell you, Grainge?”
“It didn’t tell me anything. Listen, they got a name for it: situational heterosexuality.”
“But what did that mean, Grainge?”
“It didn’t mean anything. It meant any port in a storm. What’s up with you, Cleve?”
“Nothing. It’s okay. I’m good … Grainge?”
“Cleve. Really.”
“Grainge. Oh, Grainge …”
“Let’s not do this, Cleve.”
Soon afterwards he returned to the bathroom and got his mustache all warm and soapy. Then he reached for Irv’s straight razor. Cleve knew: there was a girl child coming. The wrong way up.
Overnight, as usual, spring turned into summer. The sun erected itself on silver filaments above the city and started cooking it, bringing out all its aromas and flavors and humors, the trace remains of a century’s pizzas and burgers and furters.
Attired in a magenta angel top and orange sateen boxing pants and high-sider tennis shoes with yard-long laces (and no socks), Cleve stood, one gruelly afternoon, outside the Idle Hour. Facing him, in her familiar black cotton dress, stood Cressida. They both had a battered look. Cressida, of course, had undergone the internal struggle of biology. Cleve was bruised, too, but more recently and obviously and superficially. He was with Irv. The night before, they had had a fistfight about which was better: Florence or Rome.
This reunion, so far, was being completely cool. Nothing personal. They strolled west. Cleve intended to accompany her as far as Seventh Avenue; then he would retrace his steps, and proceed to Magnificent Obsession. When he walked, Cleve’s thighs jostled and sideswiped one another very noticeably, and very loudly. His upper body was holding steady; but his lower body was hugely enlarged. Those thighs: he could only find room for them by standing with his feet about a yard apart.
“Whew,” he said on the corner, swaying there in the heat. “Good to see you again.” He reached out a hand, which she didn’t take.
“Wait,” said Cressida. “I thought you might like to see the baby.”
Christopher Street was not what he had built it up to be. For instance, it wasn’t even called Christopher Street, not this bit of it anyway: a new sign had been tacked over the old one like a temporary number plate. He might have asked his companion about that, but he didn’t need to. The straight district told you all about itself. It was out. SITE OF THE STONEWALL RIOTS, JUNE 27–29, 1969, said the white lettering on the black window of some impenetrable lockup or godown: BIRTH OF THE MODERN STRAIGHT-RIGHTS LIBERATION MOVEMENT. And the TV footage slid into Cleve’s head: cops, lights, squad cars, crime-scene tapes, the chanting, bouncing ranks of straights. Cressida looked up at him (her round eyes, her characterless nose, her flat smile), and led him on down Stonewall Place.
Cleve had imagined a little world. A world of Ant-and-Bee innocuousness, of diffident striving and inch-by-inching, with heads down and faces averted and abashed. But he found it chaotic: everywhere there was poverty and prettiness and peril. On the green triangle of Sheridan Square the “Five O’Clock Club” was dispersing; minders bawled and kids rioted. As they moved west through the sidewalk gridlock of prams, pushchairs, buggies, strollers, through smells of dairy, of confectioner, of dime-store perfumier, they passed herds of men drawn to the jaws of bars and taverns, and street-corner youths, loiterers, louts, punks, drunks, assessing Cleve from an unknown vantage of violence and boredom—and he walked on, shaped like a top when it spins, quivering with centrifugal torque.
In New York, in summer, air doesn’t want to be air anymore. It wants to be liquid. Around Christopher Street, this day, it wanted to be solid: a form of food, most probably. Paddling through it, Cleve’s thighs rasped on. They turned right on Bleecker. He looked up. Beyond the lumpen foliage of the ginkgo trees an evening sky lay swathed in its girlish pinks and boyish blues. And the tenement blocks. One-way windows, and the butts of AC units like torn hi-fi speakers, playing churned heat. The smutty fire escapes going Z, Z, Z. What are these zees saying, he wondered: sleep, or just the end of the alphabet? She hurried on ahead. With momentous helplessness he followed.
Now he was standing in a basement kitchen. Cleve assumed, at any rate, that it must be a kitchen. Cressida had called it “the kitchen.” A kitchen, to Cleve, was an arena for the free play of delectation, enterprise, and wit. Not the rear end of some desperate holding operation, a field hospita
l of pots, pails, acids, carbolics, and cauldrons of boiling laundry. “This is meat and potatoes,” he whispered. “Meat and potatoes tops.” He couldn’t imagine cooking anything in here. He could imagine having his legs amputated in here. But not cooking … Cressida was in the room across the passage, consulting with another straight broad, her buddy or backup. Cleve waited, listening to the saddest sound he had ever heard. It reminded him of the call of the loons on the river trips he’d gone on, years ago, with Grainge …
And now the baby was there on the kitchen table, being unwrapped as if for his imminent inspection, its hiccupy weeping growing softer, its stained and damp cloth diaper revealing itself beneath the unclasped bodysuit, its arms waving and miming at the bare bulb overhead.
“Would you pass me the powder? And that tub of cream. And that cloth. Not that one. On the faucet. The pink one.”
As he poked warily around among the jars, the pads, the balls of cotton wool, the plastic bottles, the plastic teats, the grime, the biology, Cleve wondered if he had ever suffered so. He could feel self-pity drench his heart: his heart, so deep-encased, so far away.
“Not that one. That one.”
He wondered if he had ever suffered so.
And he wondered what on earth people were going to say.
Twenty-second Street, the apartment, the bedroom: sheets, pillows, a leg here, an arm there. The acidy tang of male love suspended itself in the failing light and alerting air of autumn. Two mustaches stirred and flexed.
The first mustache said, “I mean if it was another man. That I could understand.” This was Irv.
The second mustache said, “That you could fight. You know what you’re dealing with.” This was Orv.
“You know where you stand.”
“You know what’s what.”
“But this …”
“Another man. Okay. It happens. But this …”
“I just feel so unclean.”
“Irv,” said Orv.
“The past. It’s all defiled for me. I feel so …”
“Maybe it’s some kind of midlife thing. A rush of blood. He’ll be back.”
“I could never feel the same about him. Not after this.”
“I saw him in Jefferson Market. He looks two hundred years old. He’s lost his build. He’s even lost his tone.”
“Do you think he was always that way?”
“Cleve? Jesus. Who knows?”
“It’ll get around.”
“You’re damn right it’ll get around. Where’s my Rolodex.”
“Orv,” said Irv.
“You just think of them kissing.”
“Get this. He says it’s not her tits and ass he ‘admires.’ It’s her wrists. It’s her collarbone.”
“That really does sound straight.”
“He’s coming over for his books Saturday morning. That’s right. He’s moving into that … crèche on Bleecker.”
“Oh, wow. Cleve … of all the guys we hang with. Arn. Harv. Grove. Fraze.”
“But Cleve.”
“I mean: Cleve.”
This was Orv.
“I mean: Cleve.”
This was Irv.
Esquire, 1995
WHAT HAPPENED TO ME ON MY HOLIDAY
(for Elias Fawcett, 1978–1996)
A DERBIBLE THING HABBENED do me on my haliday. A harrible thing, and a bermanend thing. Id won’d be the zame, ever again.
Bud virzd I’d bedder zay: don’d banig! I’m nad zuvvering vram brain damage—or vram adenoids. And I gan wride bedder than thiz when I wand do. Bud I don’d wand do. Nad vor now. Led me egsblain.
I am halve English and halve Amerigan. My mum is Amerigan and my dad is English. I go do zgool in London and my bronunziation is English—glear, even vaindly Agzonian, the zame as my dad’s. Amerigans avden zeem zurbrised do hear an eleven-year-old who zbeegs as I zbeeg. Grandaddy Jag, who is Amerigan, admids thad he vinds id unganny. As iv suj an agzend requires grade ganzendration even vram grownubs, led alone jildren. Amerigans zeem to zuzbegd thad the English relags and zbeeg Amerigan behind glozed doors. Shouding oud, on their redurn, “Honey, I’m home!” My other grandvather veld divverendly: English, do him, was the more najural voize. Zo thiz zdory is vor them, doo, as well as vor Eliaz. I dell id thiz way—in zargazdig. Ameriganese—begaz I don’d wand id do be glear: do be all grizb and glear. There is thiz zdrange resizdanze. There is thiz zdrange resizdanze.
Me and my younger brother Jagob usually zbend the early bard of the zummer in Gabe Gad, with my mum, and the lader bard in Eazd Hambdon, with my dad. Bud thiz year we wend do my dad’s a liddle zooner than blanned. When the day game we gad ub ad the grag of dawn and biled indo the gar with our Ungle Desmond. Id was a vive-hour drive do New Yorg, bud the dravvig wasn’t heavy and Desmond doled uz many inderezding things—aboud dreams, aboud aldered zdades. We zeemed to be there in no dime. My dad was wading on Ninedy-zigzth Zdreed.
We grabbed zum lunj and then went oud to Lang Island in a big goach galled the Jidney. In the Jidney, you veld you were in a blane, nad a buz: vree juize or Berrier, vree beanudz, individual zbadlighds to read by, and a lavadory in the bag. We zoon zeddled indo my dad’s rended houze in the woods. Nothing fanzy: in vagd, id good have been Oglahoma, with a big-ub drug in the driveway, an old gar zeed on the borj, and the neighbors always guarreling and grying out—“Ged ub, Margared!” on one zide, and “Why, Garen, why?” on the other. Bud id did have the usual burzding revrigerador and muldible bathrooms, bluz gable DV. Zo: zum zdoo and bazda, zum “Beaviz and Buddhead,” then ub the wooden hills to Bedvordshire … My dad, doo, was very ubzed aboud Eliaz. And Isabel was alzo there, and alzo ubzed—and alzo big with jiled.
As I zed, we wend do my dad’s a liddle earlier than blanned, this year, journeying down vram the Gabe do Lang Island.
Nearly every zummer, on Gabe Gad, Mr. Marlowe Vawzedd gums to bay uz a visid. Bragdigally a grownub now, Marlowe uzed to have a zummer jab as a gounzellor ad a boys’ gamb, and zo he is an egsberd ad guezzing whad boys wand do do. He is underzdandably babular with Jagob and me. Bud, well, Marlowe had do go home early thiz year. And my mum had do go home early thiz year. Begaz of whad habbened, bag in London.
Id was a dull day when Marlowe heard the news aboud his younger brother. The news aboud Eliaz. Jagob and I wend with him ub the dird road—do where we barg the gar. Over Horzeleej Band there zwam a gloud of gray: nad mizd, nad vag, bud the gray haze of ziddies, and of zdreeds. Ub vram the band id vloaded, lingering, drabbed in the drees, and nothing was glear. Dreamily Marlowe gad indo the gar and glozed the door. He wend do Bravinzedown Airbord. Virzd the liddle blane, do Bazdon. Then the bigger blane, do London Down. And my mum zoon vallowed. Zo, as I zed, we wend do my dad’s a liddle earlier than blanned.
My younger brother Jagob is dodally obzezzed by durdles, dordoizes, vrags, doads, labzders, grabs, and all zords of zlimy and weird-shabed rebdiles, amvibians, and gruzdaceans. He knows all their Ladin names, all their baddernings, all their habidads. He’s an egsberd on these greejures. And zo am I, whether or nad I wand do be. Begaz Jagob’s giving me an earvul more or les round the glag.
Zo on many days, in Eazd Hambdon, we wend on grabbing egsbeditions. The bay zeemed do voam with grabs and with zbrads (minnows, diddlers). I used a drawl ned, vor the zbrads, and on my virzd zweeb I gad loads. With the grabs, you aggumulade them in a big bad. And ad the end of the day you have a grab raze. You draw a zirgle in the zand: the virzd grab to glear id is then broglaimed the winner. No grabs die: you jug them all bag indo the zee. Ad our vavoride bay, whij we galled Dead Man’s Landing, there was alzo a van thad showed ub every hour or zo and zold lallibabs and ize gream.
On these grabbing dribs we would avden bring along my liddle “guzzen” Bablo. Bablo is only vour years old and you have do be very garevul with him when he goes in the zee. Begaz he gan only zwim with whad he galls his “armies” or his “vloadies.” Bablo has a liddle zizder named IJ, a mere dad of vivdeen monthz, who is alzo very gude
.
One day Jagob gabjured a giand grab and game running ub the beej do drab id in the bad—the blazdig bad or medal gandainer in whij all the grabs were zdored. I was zidding on a dowel, reading my boog: Brando, by Elmore Leonard. Jagob ran bag down the zand. And then Bablo game ub do me and zed, “I’ve vound a grab, doo.”
“Yeah,” I zed. “Bud thad one’s dead, Bab.”
“Shall I drab id in the bad with the others?”
I zed, “Thad zdiv? Why would we wand thad in the bad? No, Bablo.”
And he zed, “Why nad? Is id doo big?”
“Id isn’t doo big, zdubid. Id’s dead.”
And id was dead—big dime. Halve ids baddy had radded of. A zingle binzer dangled from a length of vrayed dendon. Id didn’d even zmell: thad’s how dead thad grab was.
“Gan I drab id in the bad with the others?”
“Devinidely nad. Zdab thiz, Bablo. No.”
Juzd then Jagob gried oud vram the shore. A new dizgovery.
We wend do jeg id oud. Beyand the beer, the shallows were liddered with dozens of dead zbrads—brabably vishermen’s baid. Bablo baddled in do inzbegd them. And game bag with a dead zbrad.
Zo we had our vinal zwims—Bablo blaying with his invladable sharg, and wearing his invladable “armies.” And when the dime game vor uz do hid the road, Bablo revuzed do leave the zbrad behind. He zed he wanded to bring id home and inzdall id in a bags in his room. The zbrad would be his bed—inzded of a dag or a gad!