Connect
Page 49
Naomi loved Ryan.
Ryan loved Naomi.
Naomi loved Colt.
Colt loved Naomi.
Ryan loved Colt.
Colt loved Ryan.
Colt loved Sasha.
Sasha loved Colt.
Was love good for them? Was love bad for them? Was it sometimes the wrong kind of love? Those really aren’t the right questions.
Love is a bond that connects parts of the universe together in meaningful patterns that are of use to the universe.
But yes, those parts of the universe that are connected by love . . . they are more fulfilled, complete, when they are together.
Homeostatically balanced.
Contented.
Thermodynamically stable.
Happy.
In chemical equilibrium.
In love.
Whatever you want to call it. Whatever name you give the interface.
Like particles forming atoms; atoms forming molecules.
Molecules forming you.
You and eight billion others forming me.
Sure, some bonds are unstable. Temporary. They don’t satisfy the atoms. (Ryan and Naomi, Naomi and Ryan.) But when the right elements meet . . .
When an atom of sodium finally finds an atom of chlorine, and they lock together in a fierce embrace: imagine the bliss. The fulfilment.
Two yearning atoms; incomplete, insufficient, unstable, neurotic, fucked-up, volatile, lonely; both are finally made whole.
Sodium loves chlorine.
Chlorine loves sodium.
Colt loves Sasha.
Sasha loves Colt.
148
Still kissing.
Without looking or thinking, he wipes the pizza crumbs and sea salt off his hands and onto the sheets, kissing, kissing.
He slides the palms of his hands up along the outside of her arms, across the thin, pure wool of her sweater. He feels a tingle of static, as loose electrons, gathered on the fibres and eager to push free of each other, cascade away from the wool and over to his skin, raising the hairs on the back of his electric hands as they glide now over the curves of her shoulders, and plunge into her hair, her beautiful hair, and the restless electrons shift again, spreading out along her long hair, pushing loose single strands away from each other in an unstable waving dance.
She curves an arm low around his back, lifts his T-shirt, and he breaks free, helps her to slip his T-shirt off.
He helps her to slip off her sweater.
Then her bra.
It’s just fabric that stretches, no clips. Not like his mother’s.
Her breasts come free of the soft material, and they don’t look like the ones he has imagined, on different nights.
They look like themselves.
They had to look like this.
He drops the bra to the floor, looks up, into her eyes, it’s too much. He kisses her chin, her mouth, and their tongues touch, oh, too much, he slips his lips free with a soft suck. Moves up to kiss her strong nose, on one side, then the other, it’s hard and soft at once. He moves back down, till he is level with her breasts.
‘They’re small,’ she says, surprisingly shy, apologetic.
‘They’re perfect,’ he says.
He kisses them. Teases a nipple with his lips. It’s so soft; and then, suddenly, hard.
Wow.
He sucks on the hard nipple.
He has never done this before, and yet; no, wait, of course, it is totally familiar.
The first thing he ever did.
He feels the huge change in meaning, in status; it is as though he had grown up in a single suck. Everything transformed. And yet nothing has changed at all; he sucks at a nipple as he lies on a bed, and it’s eighteen years later, and he sucks at a nipple as he lies on a bed, and his childhood falls away from him like a burned-out booster stage from a rocket. Its fuel used up. He is now in orbit around a different planet.
I’m on another world with you.
Another girl, another planet.
Songs his father sang.
He places the palm of his right hand on her left breast.
My hand . . . Wow . . .
There’s no hole any more. Just a pucker in the skin on the back of his hand, like an old piercing that’s closed up, healed.
He places his other palm on her other breast.
He looks up at Sasha.
She smiles, and slides her hand down his chest.
Inside his waistband.
Warm hand.
They remove each other’s remaining clothes, solemnly, with tremendous attention to each other’s responses, like a ritual of incredible power and importance. When his jeans get caught, bunched, on an ankle, he laughs with nervous tension, mixed with pleasure, that they are really doing this. She smiles back.
They will protect each other.
He closes his eyes and they roll over sideways on the bed, and they kiss for a long, long time.
And then Colt moves lower, and explores Sasha with his fingers, with his lips and tongue. He moves his face over the hill of a breast; descends, kissing, across the warm curved dune of her belly, which tightens, trembles at each kiss, little earthquakes. Down, now, between her legs, into that complicated valley, everything vivid, astonishing, new.
Yes, it’s like orbiting another planet, landing, exploring . . .
Wow, wow, wow . . . no, it’s like a rosebud . . .
She helps him explore.
Oh man, it opens like a rose . . .
After a long, long time, she pulls him back up, and he wipes his mouth on the sheet, and they kiss again.
She licks her hand, and reaches down. His penis leaps at her touch as she wets its head, and slides her warm, wet palm up and down the stiffening shaft.
He doesn’t quite know what to do next. He’s got an idea; but he wants to be sure.
‘It’s OK?’ he says.
‘Yes, it’s OK.’
‘You won’t . . .’
She smiles. ‘Technology and biology are both on our side today.’
‘You’re sure . . .’
‘I’m sure. Everything’s safe.’
‘I’ve never . . .’ He’s got to say it. ‘I’ve never done this.’
‘Then we are VERY safe.’
As she helps guide him inside her, he feels both the specific local sensation of his penis sliding inside her vagina, and also the overwhelming sensation throughout his whole body that some barrier surrounding him, isolating him all his life, has finally been removed and he is, for the first time, coming into contact with everything outside himself.
He holds her tight, and Sasha holds him, and he can no longer feel where he ends, and she begins.
There is nothing outside the single thing they make together: it extends out infinitely.
He begins to move.
She begins to move.
We’re all the same, when we’re doing this. We’re all the same.
A billion-year-old interface.
It still works.
I wonder what she is thinking.
I wonder what he’s thinking.
Wow.
Wow.
This is incredible, this is too much.
This is amazing, this is too much.
No, it’s not.
No, not too much.
It’s just enough.
It’s just enough.
It’s perfect.
Perfect.
We’re feeling the same thing, from opposite sides of the interface.
We’re feeling the same thing, from opposite sides, oh . . .
We’re sharing one event between the two of us.
Sharing one event between the two of us.
She’s closing his eyes.
He’s closing his eyes.
So, I can close my eyes.
So, I can close my eyes.
I’m closing my eyes.
I’m closing my eyes.
Everything is happening at once.
So this is love.
So this is love.
This is love.
This is love.
It’s an interface with the universe.
It’s an interface with the universe.
That’s all.
That’s all.
An interface.
An interface.
Love is a portal to . . .
Love is a portal to . . .
The universe.
The universe.
I am going to explode.
I am going to explode.
She is going to explode.
He is going to explode.
We are going to explode.
We are going to explode.
The universe is going to explode.
The universe is going to explode.
This is the transformation of the universe.
So this is the transformation of the universe.
Where’s time gone?
Where’s time gone?
Time’s gone.
Time’s gone.
I’m going.
I’m going.
I’m gone.
I’m gone.
So . . .
So . . .
this . . .
this . . .
moment . . .
moment . . .
is . . .
is . . .
for ever . . .
for ever . . .
149
Let’s end with the word for the interface they are using.
Let’s end at the level at which their actions make the most sense.
Let’s finish with the term which contains the least data, but gives you the most information.
That contains, compressed, everything that matters. Everything else is detail.
Because there are three ways of understanding, of describing, the force that I, that you, that they, that we, are about to use to transform the world.
At the level of the atom; at the level of the cell; at the level of the human being.
Physics, biology, and love.
And the greatest of these is love.
Edinburgh
Berlin
Las Vegas
Dublin
Limerick
Singapore.
2012–2018
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The guy who thinks he wrote this book is dimly aware, at a subconscious level, that the finished novel is, in fact, the result of a distributed process, involving thousands of nodes (of which he is but one), in a global network.
Charlie Campbell, of Kingsford Campbell, in London, went far, far beyond the usual role of an agent, and kept him alive through some hard times.
Drue Heinz provided somewhere near Edinburgh to write the rough first draft.
Two hundred and sixty-three fine people from around the world backed the Las Vegas Postcards project, on Kickstarter, to help him through the final stages.
Jennifer 8 Lee, Tony Hsieh, and Porter Haney set up a residency in downtown Las Vegas so he could finish the book there.
Neil Farrell, Shane McNally, and Julia Kingsford gave useful, informative feedback on early drafts. Ciaran Morrison and Felix Socher helped with advice on biology and physics, respectively. (All mistakes are the fault of the guy who thinks he wrote this.)
Queen provided Ryan with the fine words from ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’, in Section 94; Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds contributed some splendid lines from ‘Deep in the Woods’, ‘City of Refuge’, ‘Get Ready for Love’, and ‘Love Letter’, in Section 99; Crystal Gayle sang, and Richard Leigh wrote, the lovely ‘Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue’, misremembered by Colt in Section 99; Joni Mitchell gave the dreamy title to Section 9, from her beautiful song, ‘River’; and The Only Ones’ classic single, ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’, donated its perfect metaphor to Section 148.
Ravi Mirchandani saw the book’s potential and bought it for Picador in the UK. Nan Talese did likewise for Doubleday in New York.
(The epigraphs throughout the book pay tribute to the writers, from Ray Kurzweil to bell hooks, who inspired it.)
Ansa Khan Khattak in London, and Daniel Meyer in New York, edited the book with extraordinary care and attention. Nicholas Blake did the thoughtful, sensitive copi-editting.
The Irish Arts Council, Trinity College Dublin, University of Limerick, Singapore Arts Council, and Nanyang Technological University all helped feed him and house him at different times.
Samuel Caleb Wee fixed the Singlish dialogue.
His daughter Sophie didn’t need to do anything; her existence was enough to keep him going.
Solana Joy gave him a lot of love, food, and editing advice, and married him halfway through the book, which he took as a sign that things were going OK.
The guy who has his name under the title knows he owes an immense debt of gratitude to all these nodes in his network. He is profoundly glad his life has connected with theirs. And, now, with yours. Thank you.
JULIAN GOUGH is the author of three comic novels. He won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2007, and was shortlisted for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize in 2008 and 2012. In 2011 he wrote the ending to Minecraft, Time magazine’s ‘Computer Game of the Year’. His ‘Rabbit and Bear’ children’s books (illustrated by Jim Field) have been translated into over twenty languages.
Also by Julian Gough
Jude in London
Jude: Level 1
Juno and Juliet
For Children
with illustrator Jim Field
Rabbit and Bear: Rabbit’s Bad Habits
Rabbit and Bear: The Pest in the Nest
Rabbit and Bear: Attack of the Snack
Poetry
Free Sex Chocolate
First published 2018 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2018 by Picador
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
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ISBN 978-1-5098-0986-8
Copyright © Julian Gough 2018
Author photo: Andreas Riemenschneider
Design: Andrew Smith
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