by Will Self
‘I am going to see her – this afternoon.’
‘I thought as much.’ Dave bends back down to his breakfast, I am gifted a top view of his head, the island of grey-blond hair marooned on the apex of his skull, like a negative image of a monk's tonsure. ‘I couldn't believe that you'd just let it ride, let her go out of your life.’
‘No, it's true, but y'know, Dave, the same applies –’
‘The same applies?’
‘To her, to Velma. Even when I'm with her, and we've made love . . . Well, no, especially when we've made love, especially at that moment when I roll away from her, see her face blanched, emptied by orgasm, wrung out. Then I don't know who she is –’
‘You don't know who you are –’
‘That goes without saying, but I don't know who she is either. She . . . she could be you for all I know.’
‘Double espresso?’ says Fat Dave, putting the cup down in front of me. Out of the corner of my eye I can see Old Dave light his roll-up with a lighter so buried in his calloused, chipped, yellowing fingers, that the flame seems to issue directly from flesh. ‘Double espresso?’
‘Whassat?’
‘Double espresso?’ Fat Dave is still standing over me. Has he forgotten that it was I who placed the order, from this very seat, not three minutes ago? I scrutinise his face for traces of irony. I know that Fat Dave feels less fondness for me than he does for his namesake. But Fat Dave doesn't have the contrast control necessary to express irony – he's only looking at me.
‘Yeah – that's mine.’
Dave observes all this with a wry smile puckering up his long, equine face. His visage is really a series of crescent shapes: long, droopy earlobes; large droopy eyes; cheeks nearing jowl; and straight lines, in the form of fine wrinkles, that experience, twiddling his knobs, has Etch-A-Sketched alongside the crescents. Dave's countenance, I realise for the first time with an access of minor dread, is composed entirely of Ds, letter Ds, Ds for ‘Dave’. Dave is, in fact, initialled all over. Like some ambulatory stick of rock, he carries his ascription written on his body. Written through his body, for, I feel certain that were I to excavate, dig into one of these fleshly Ds, I would find that it was bred in the bone.
My Dave is, I like to think, a kind of Ur-Dave, a primary Dave. His Daveness, his Davidity, his Davitude, is unquestionable. In a world with so many Daves, Daves running, Daves walking, and Daves standing, desolate, crumpled betting slips at their feet, it's infinitely reassuring to feel that within my grasp is some part of the essential Dave.
But that essential Dave is now talking, wheedling his way back into my thoughts. I tune to this very Dave frequency:
‘ . . . went back with her. She went into the bedroom. To be frank I was a bit pissed. She called me after about five minutes. I'd poured myself a generous snifter. She keeps a bottle of calvados in her desk . . .’ He always speaks in these short sentences. A Moog speech synthesiser – with the ‘Hemingway’ button permanently on. ‘. . . on the bed. She's wearing a red rubber dress. The video is on. A Californian pol of some kind is giving a press conference. She was writhing. He was saying something impassioned –’
‘Dave –’
‘She said, “Come here.” But I was watching the pol, who had pulled out a gun. It was quite clear that this was real. All shot by a live-action news camera. He put the gun in his mouth. Big fucker – long-barelled Colt –’
‘Dave you –’
‘I look from the screen to the bed. She's got her hand up under the rubber dress. She's playing with herself. On screen the pol just does it. Blows –’
‘Dave, you told me this yesterday! –’
‘His brains out.’
Silence in the café. I realise I've shouted. A hiss of steam from the Gaggia, a small cloud floats over me, sends shadows racing across the sward of Dave's face. I look up to where a peg board is affixed to the pine cladding. A peg board with plastic letters, detailing the café's fare. I scan the lettering, picking out As, Vs, Es, and of course, Ds.
Why did he do that? Repeat himself like that. It undermines my whole sense of him. The fact that he could repeat himself so comprehensively, sentence for sentence. It must mean that he didn't register who he was talking to. He didn't know that he was talking to me. He does, after all, have a lot of friends, Dave. And it's often remarked upon how sympathetic he is, how warm, how caring. But it's also true that this quality has to be spread about a bit; a margarine of feeling.
‘I have to go now.’
‘But –’
‘No, really. Velma. I'm going to see her. I told you.’
‘Are you sure about . . . I mean that it's a good idea?’ He's half rising. Bobbing slightly in the awkward, rigid gap between banquette and bolted table. With his horsy head, painted-on hair and simian arms, he looks puppet-like to me. He isn't in any sense a real Dave, this Dave. How could I be so fooled? His very posture suggests thick, yet invisible, threads running up, through the ceiling tiles, to the spatulate fingers of a giant Dave, who squats above the café, trying to coax dummy Dave into a semblance of humanity. ‘Are you seeing Dr Klagfarten again today?’ His brow is corrugated with ersatz angst.
‘What's it to you?’ I'm plunking a handful of change down on the table, rising to leave.
‘Oh come on . . . I'm only concerned for you . . .’
He's concerned. Hell, I'm concerned. We're all fucking concerned. We're united in concern, wouldn't you say? United like so many Stickle-bricks, pressed together to form a model society. From the door of the café I turn. All three Daves are in the same positions, frozen. Fat Dave, his hand on the big knob of the Gaggia's handle; Old Dave nodded out over the Sporting Life; dummy Dave still deanimate, dangling. I raise an arm, and in imitation of Dr Klagfarten swivel a palm.
I walk swiftly, listening to the arguments of my conscience: pro-Dave and anti-Dave. I know I've been stressed recently. Dr Klagfarten says I shouldn't look to anyone of the several therapies we are applying for succour. Rather, I should try and apprehend them as a manifold entity, that cushions and constrains me. But even so – there just is an objective creepiness, a not-quite-rightness about Dave at the moment. Far from finding his very Daveness reassuring this morning, it has instead gravely unsettled me. I can't stand duplication. It is replication.
I'm heading back past the old administration building. It's not the most direct route to Velma's house, but I have a kind of urge to make contact again with Dr Klagfarten, if only in the most glancing way. Looking up, I see that a drape or curtain has been pulled across the window of his office. It reminds me of Dave's egg. If a fork like a prop for a Magritte painting were to be plunged through the window of Dr Klagfarten's office, a gush of yellow neurosis would undoubtedly ooze out.
My route to Velma's takes me across the park. As I enter, between cast-iron gates, the sun at last begins to seep through the clouds. I keep my speed up, concentrating on the internal dispositions of muscle, flesh and bone; feeling my shoes as flexible, overall calluses, attached at heel and toe.
By the brackish, oily carp pond, in the very centre of the park, a small wooden bridge is marooned on the impacted earth. Squirrels flow about, grey rivulets of rodent. The hacked and husbanded woodland here is filtering the lax sun, making for bad dappling. At a fence of waist-high, wooden palisades, two young men stand, feeding pigeons and crows.
If not foreign – they ought to be. They both wear expensive overcoats, of lamb's-wool, or cashmere. Their hair is too glossy, too dark, too curly. Even from some fifty yards away I can see the sideburns that snake down from hairlines to jawlines. They are both wearing gloves. I don't like birds at the best of times, and the pigeons and crows in this town are getting quite obese. We don't need types like these coming into our park and feeding them expensive peanuts.
The pigeons and crows rear up so. And they're so big. Today, their bipedalism makes them humanoid to me. In their greasy, feather capes of grey and black, they might be avine impersonators, hustling a sexual
practice founded on fluttering and paid for in peanuts.
As I draw level with the two men, one turns away from the fence, scattering peanuts and pigeons from his gloved hands, ‘See you, Dave,’ says his companion, but not with any real feeling. Dave glances at me, once, but with an unexpected acuity, as if reading me. He strides away in front, kicking up small sprays of old leaves, mould and twigs. It's clear that he is uncomfortable, that he wishes to put some distance between us. I quicken my pace.
I caught him by the octagonal, wooden gazebo, used by the park staff as a place to brew up teas, and stash their tools. He was unexpectedly heavy-set, his body fluent like a waterfall beneath his soft overcoat. There was a nasty, ungainly struggle, which reflected badly on both of us. There was no symmetry, no choreography to our bestial growls and spasmodic cuffs. He went down to his knees, hard and fast, an enthusiastic convert to nonconsciousness.
There was mush on the mattock. I hefted it. It felt so light, so buoyant. I resisted an urge to hurl it up, into the bluing sky, to watch it rise to the heavens, rotating slowly on its own axis, like the transmogrified tool in 2001.
His wallet was made from slightly furry-feeling leather. Possibly pigskin. Credit cards, business cards, driving licence, kidney-donor card, all were in the name of Jonathan D. Sczm. I wondered about the D. Did it stand for David, or was Dave merely Sczm's nickname? Did it matter now?
Velma answers the door looking very grey, very drawn. She only opens the door a fraction, just far enough for me to appreciate how very grey, how very drawn she is. ‘You look rather rough,’ she says, ‘and your jacket's all torn.’
‘What's this?’ I reply, gesturing, taking in the crack, the vee, of Velma. ‘I'm not hawking anything here, Velma, you can take the chain off.’
‘I'm – I'm not sure I can do that, I don't think I want you to come in. Dave called me from the café – he said you were in a bit of a state.’
‘Oh, for fuck's sake!’ I lean against the brickwork, and awkwardly kidney-punch the intervening air. I'm doing my best to affect a manner of complete naturalness – but I have the idea it isn't working.
‘Dave said you had an appointment with Dr Klagfarten for three this afternoon.’
‘Yeah.’
‘After Dave rang, I called Dr Klagfarten, he says it would be fine if you wanted to go back there now, have a word now. He said –’
‘What? What did he say?’
‘He said you might be a bit upset – upset about me . . .’
‘You, Velma?’ I'm looking at her now, and I can see the tears swelling in her eyes. ‘You? Velma?’ She shakes her head.
‘Not Velma, not any more, not Velma, not –’ And she's sobbing now, the sobs slotting into a cycle, an hysterical cycle which she breaks, crying, ‘D-Davina! Davina! That's my name! Davina!’
I'm quite taken aback by my own sang-froid. I straighten up, adopt a conciliatory but vaguely imposing demeanour. Davina is still sobbing, but subsiding. ‘When you say your name is Davina now, do you mean that you've changed it by deed-poll?’
‘I've applied, yes.’ She's composing herself.
‘How long will it take?’
‘About six weeks.’
‘And until then?’
‘Well, you encourage the people who know you to address you as you would prefer to be addressed.’ She's regained her composure altogether. ‘In a sense that's what it is to have a name at all. A name is, after all, simply a certain common ascription.’
‘Which in your case is –?’
‘Dave.’
‘Dave?’
‘That's right.’
Dr Klagfarten stands with his back to me, looking out over the rooftops. The yellow-tinted glass imparts a slight, bilious whine to his voice, as he says, ‘You are finding this business of the ubiquity of the name Dave unsettling, hmm?’
‘Not exactly, no.’ I am, for the first time since I left Dr Klagfarten's office two hours ago, at ease. He turns from
the window and retreats behind his desk. He smiles at me and gives the endearing, lip-twisting moue.
‘How would you feel if I told you that the blackbird which flew down your chimney last week was called Dave?’
‘Both incredulous – and curious.’
‘So, this Dave thing isn't entirely awful –’
‘I just don't see why it has to be Dave.’
‘Well, Colin Klagfarten would be patently risible, like Ronald MacDonald. Dave Klagfarten has both resonance and assonance.’
I take some time out to consider this proposition. Dave goes on smiling benignly. He likes silences, he thinks that you find yourself in the context of silence, that whether or not silence is experienced as an absence or a presence gives you a litmus test for your own identity.
‘You aren't telling me,’ I say eventually, ‘that it all begins with you?’
‘No, no, of course not. This is a non-causal singularity – of that much I'm certain, although it jibes unpleasantly with your particular brand of alienation, of depersonalisation.
‘Still, the fact that the biblical David was the individual who most completely realised the theocratic ideal of the Israelites, and that the yearning for his return became a matter of almost messianic fervour . . .’ A shrug, another moue. ‘. . . Well, it doesn't seem to stretch the analogy that far to suggest that this new pattern of emergent Daves represents something similar, a secular ultramontanism perhaps?’
‘But it is Daves, not David.’ I know I'm nit-picking, but I can't help it.
‘Oh come on, what's in an id. Look, I think you'd feel a lot better, I think we could consider easing off on the Parstelin, I think it might be a breakthrough. You know, we could even collaborate on a paper –’
‘If I was –’
‘If you were –’ He's nodding, smiling, every fibre of his body exhorting me to say it, which I do:
‘Dave too.’
CARING, SHARING
When Travis came out of the side door of the Gramercy Park Hotel – avoiding the guy who ran the concession stall, because earlier on he'd been embarrassed by his failure deftly to marshal the correct change – he felt pretty hollow. Brion was right behind him, and although Travis thought he really shouldn't need to, he couldn't help reaching back and clutching the emoto's forty-inch thigh.
Brion's response was immediate; he stooped down and grasping Travis by the generous scruff of his tweed suit, lifted him right up, drew him into his arms, and planted a series of wet kisses on Travis's face, while all the time patting his back and muttering soothing endearments.
Travis felt all the knotted tension in his neck and shoulders begin to ebb away. It was a palpable sensation, just as if the emoto had been rubbing some balm into his exposed skin. Travis sighed deeply and snuggled further into the warm-smelling gap between the brushed cotton collar of Brion's shirt and the prickly tweed of his suit collar. Travis always dressed his emoto the same as himself. He knew that some people found it intolerably gauche, like putting twins in matching sailor suits, but he loved Brion so much – the emoto wasn't just an emoto, more an aspect of Travis himself.
And Brion smelt good. He smelt of Imperial Leather soap and Ralph Lauren aftershave. He smelt of sweat and cocktail fish. He smelt of flannel and cigarette smoke. He smelt – in short – very much like Travis himself. Even Brion's kisses smelt good; Travis could feel a slick patch of the emoto’s saliva on his upper lip, but he had no urge – as he might with any other individual's secretions – to wipe it off. Instead, he gently scented the enzymic odours, while idly considering whether or not emotos had the same chemicals in their bodies as other humans. They couldn't be exactly the same, because emotos couldn't drink alcohol – or smoke for that matter; and that implied some different oils, boiling in the pullulating refineries of their massive bodies.
Travis didn't like thinking about the inside of Brion's body – it made him distinctly queasy. So he cancelled the observation and snuggled still deeper into the sheltering arms. The emoto's v
ast hands smarmed over Travis's back, over his shoulders, smoothed down his hair, so gentle, yet so firm. Travis heard Brion's voice rumble in his chest before the words reached his muffled ears, ‘Are you worried about the date tonight, Travis?’
Travis stiffened. The word ‘date – how he hated it. It put him in mind of the fruit, not two adults enjoying each other's company. ‘You don't even like the word, do you?’ The comforting hand almost completely encapsulated Travis's head, as if it were a helmet of flesh and tendon and bone. The voice was beautifully modulated, sonorous even. The emoto's words seemed to come zinging straight to ‘Travis's heart, each one with a top spin of sympathy.
‘It makes me think of the fruit . . .’ he muttered. Brion chuckled in a rumbly sort of way and hugged him still harder. Hugged Travis and lifted him high up in the early evening air, twisting the grown-up's body as he did so, gifting Travis a few seconds of Gramercy Park upside-down. Travis noted an old douche bag, clanking with jewellery, walking her miniature Schnauzer on the roof of the world. Then Brion deftly lowered him, and bestowing one, final drooly kiss on Travis's forehead, set him back neatly on his feet.
‘You shouldn't worry so much,’ Brion admonished Travis. ‘I'm sure Karin is just as anxious about the whole thing as you are. She probably thinks of the fruit too. Now come on, we better get going if we've got to head uptown.’ Brion's armchair hand descended once more and cupping Travis's back, the emoto pushed his grown-up gently in the direction of Madison Avenue. As they walked under a canopy tethering a townhouse to the sidewalk, Brion had to duck down, but then he straightened up, and the two tweed-suited figures, one about six feet tall, the other closer to fourteen, ambled away and were presently engulfed by the croaking roar of Manhattan.
Three miles to the north, in the West Seventies, Travis's date for the evening, Karin, was feeling just as uneasy. She was even on the verge of cancelling altogether. Karin had met Travis a couple of weeks ago at a wine tasting arranged by her friend Ariadne. The event was a pure snob thing – Ariadne wanted to show off her wine cellar and her new SoHo loft apartment-cum-studio; which was big enough – Karin had reflected – to enable Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore and Damien Hirst to work alongside one another, with little danger of them muddling up tools, or materials. Really, an exorbitant waste of space when you considered the further fact that Ariadne herself was a miniaturist.