So, tumultuous, inventive, heart-rending. Both pre– and postmodern. A conventional narrative gussied up as an experimental work of fiction, which is at the same time a deeply experimental work hiding a little novella in the pleats of its skirt. A series of sadomasochistic fantasies, that reach their climax with the still, small voice of God. A landmark work for newly emergent Scots literature, and in my view one of the finest post-war novels in English. It is definitely one of the books I would choose to take to my desert island – and I already have. The name of the island is Britain.
Alasdair Gray, your friend in the south salutes you.
Will Self
London 2002
1 Public interview with Kathy Acker at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, 1986. Reprinted in Alasdair Gray: Critical Appreciations and a Bibliography, ed. Phil Moores, The British Library, 2002.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 ‘1994 Janine’ in Moores (Ibid.)
5 ‘Politics, Scotland and Prefaces’ in Moores (Ibid.)
6 The Book of Prefaces, Bloomsbury, 2000.
7 Ibid.
1:
THIS IS A GOOD ROOM.
It could be in Belgium, the U.S.A., Russia perhaps, Australia certainly, any land where a room can have wallpaper, carpet and curtains patterned with three different sorts of flower. Brown furniture covers most of the flowers. There isn’t much space between the wardrobe, the 1930s dressing-table, the chair with the tumbler of whisky on it, the double bed where I lie (not undressed yet) between a big carved Victorian headboard and footboard. There is also a modern washbasin, a nice bit of plumbing, the pipes sunk in the plaster instead of wriggling over it like in some rooms I’ve been. But there is no bible. All American hotel bedrooms have bibles so I am definitely not in the States. A pity. I hate feeling limited. I could be hundreds of men just now, a commercial traveller in wool or tweed, a farmer, an auctioneer, a tourist, one of those lecturers who appear in obscure halls to tell six middle-aged housewives and a retired police sergeant about the Impact of Van Gogh upon the Spotted Thrush during the Last Days of Pompeii. It does not matter how I earn my bread. The topic has ceased to sicken me, I don’t think about it. I am not being mysterious. Behind the bluebells on these curtains is the main street of a town that was fairly prosperous when these bedknobs were carved – Nairn, Kirkcaldy, Dumfries, Peebles. It is actually Peebles or Selkirk. If it is Selkirk, this is Wednesday. If it is Peebles I will be in Selkirk tomorrow night, Janine.
2 SOMEBODY PONDERS IN PEEBLES OR SELKIRK
Janine is worried and trying not to show it but she’s been trying not to show it for a long time, so though she wants her voice to sound casual it comes out husky when she says,
“How long till we get there?”
“About ten minutes,” says the driver, a fat well-dressed man who stop. Stop. I should undress first.
My problem is sex, not alcohol. I am certainly alcoholic, but not a drunkard. I never stagger or stammer, self-control is perfect, the work is not affected. It’s well-paid work, I needed an education to get it, but now I can do what is needed and even answer questions without thinking. Most work today can be done like that. If you lobotomised half the nation it would carry on as usual. The politicians do our thinking for us. No they don’t.
“But Prime Minister, for the last twenty years the interest rate/inflation/unemployment/ homelessness/strikes/drunkenness/breakdown of social services/crime/death in police custody have been steadily increasing, how will you tackle this?”
“I’m glad you asked me that, Michael. We can’t change things overnight of course.”
No, the only people who need to think nowadays are in stock exchanges and the central committees of some eastern communist parties. Nobody lasts long in those organisations without a bit of active cunning. The rest of us do what we’re told and follow our leaders and so we should. What would happen if most people tried to act intelligently on their own behalf? Anarchy. Some trade unions try it. Read what the newspapers say about them. In Russia trade unions aren’t allowed. So what can we do with this intelligence we don’t need and can’t use? Stupefy it. Valium for housewives, glue-sniffing for schoolkids, hash for adolescents, rotgut South African wine for the unemployed, beer for the workers, spirits for me and the crowd I left downstairs fifteen minutes ago. But when I try to remember that crowd several loungebars come to mind, all with some wood-panelling, fake warmingpans, a door leading to a lobby leading to a street in Dundee or Perth or Peebles and all with people who say:
3 MEN IN LOUNGE BARS AND WORRIED JANINE
“And every month we have this searching approach to formal review.”
“Formal review?”
“Yes. Formal review.”
“You know the sort of man I am. I get an idea in the morning, I think it out in the afternoon. Next day I order the materials and the job’s done by the end of the week. And if someone gets in the way I push past them. I push right past them.”
“But you’re straight. You’re straight. People respect you for that.”
“I don’t care what their religion is as long as they’re on the pill.”
“HAHAHAHAHA. HAHAHAHAHA.”
People who talk give themselves away all the time. I don’t talk. I stand listening until their voices become a cheerful noise and then I want privacy. I want my bed, and Janine.
Janine is worried and trying not to show it but she’s been trying not to show it for a long time so her voice is husky when she asks, “How long till we get there?”
“About ten minutes,” says the driver, a fat well-dressed man called Max who looks happier with every minute that passes. He takes a hand from the wheel and pats her thigh reassuringly. She winces, then after a moment says, “You told me that in the office before we left.”
“I’ve no idea of time, that’s my trouble. But don’t worry about me, worry about Hollis.”
“Why? Why should I worry about Hollis?”
“Hollis is the recreation officer and you want the job, yes? But don’t worry, you’ll get it all right. You’re dressed just right for Hollis.”
“My agent told me to dress this way.”
“Your agent reads Hollis like a book.”
But Janine is not happy about the white silk blouse shaped by the way it hangs from her I must not think about clothes before I’ve imagined Janine herself. But clothes keep trying to come first. Do I like women’s clothes more than their bodies? Oh no, but I prefer their clothes to their minds. Their minds keep telling me, no thankyou, don’t touch, go away. Their clothes say, look at me, want me, I am exciting. It would be perverse not to prefer their clothes to their minds. A woman in the loungebar downstairs, not young but good-looking, had buttoned flaps on her breasts and thighs and buttocks which seemed to be inviting my hands to fumble and undo her all over. I like the clothes women wear nowadays. When I was young most girls wore bright skirts and frocks which, along with their size and hair and breasts and voices, made them seem like superior, more delicate animals. I prefer them dressing like cowboys and carpenters and soldiers. Jeans, dungarees, boots and combat trousers don’t look practical on them, but suggest they are ready to get down into the dirt with us men. I find that exciting. Some men, the unsuccessful lecherous kind (but we’re all that kind) get angry with women who dress excitingly and say they deserve whatever happens to them. Meaning rape, of course. I don’t agree though I know why they feel that way. They hate being excited by women they can’t possess. But real women don’t frustrate me because I have this dirty imagination. I have Janine, Superb, Big Momma and Helga. I also have a sense of justice. Yes, I need justice on my side. If Janine is going to deserve what happens to her she must do more than wear a silk shirt shaped by the way it hangs from her etcetera. Start earlier.
4 THE CLOTHES OF WOMEN
Janine, barefoot, is slightly smaller than most women but in her shoes she is slightly taller than most men and can be read sexually from a great distance
: slender waist, knees and wrists, plump hips and shoulders, big etcetera and dark, copious hair expensively disarranged. She is clever in a fragmentary way, bad at judging people but good at judging her effect on them. With make-up she can look like almost any female stereotype from the dumb adolescent to the cool aristocrat. Just now she looks like Jane Russell in a forties film, The Outlaw: eyes dark and accusing, lips heavy and sullen. She looks sullenly across a desk at her agent who says “Janine, you are wonderful when you keep your mouth shut. You are great in parts where you don’t need to talk. But you will never, never, never be an actress.”
5 SOME SEXUAL BLACKMAIL
She stares at him a little while longer then says in a low voice, “Last week you told me something different.”
“Last week my judgment was upset by your … obvious charms. I’m sorry.”
He shrugs his shoulders but doesn’t look very sorry. He offers a cigarette. She takes it but ignores his offered lighter, using instead a match from her handbag. She inhales carefully then says, “Yes we’ve done a lot of things together in the last few days. Your wife can’t have seen much of you, Charlie. How is she?”
“Janine, I have tried to get you work, you know I have. But who wants a talking actress whose voice has only one note?”
“I’m asking about your wife Charlie. The one you married three months ago, remember? Your second wife. How much alimony are you paying the first?”
“Listen, Janine, I’m your friend–”
“I’m glad, Charlie,” she says, and names a sum of money. And adds, “Give me a cheque now so I can cash it before the banks shut. That will stop me phoning your wife for exactly one month. And if you don’t get me work that pays good money by the end of the month I’ll want another cheque for the same amount. Regard it as insurance against fresh alimony.”
She leaves his office with the cheque in her handbag. At the door he says heavily, “Janine, let me see you tonight.”
“Why Charlie, you’re still interested in me, how sweet. But if you want call-girl service you’ll have to pay extra now, and you can’t afford it. So just you go home to your wife.” She is triumphant, this bad wee girl who certainly deserves a spanking. So does the agent, but he doesn’t interest me, he’s only there to make Janine believable. I was wrong when I said I needed justice on my side, all I need is revenge. On a woman. Revenge for what? The answer to that question has nothing to do with the pleasurable expansion of the penis. I refuse to remember my marriage. I will pour into the mouth of this head another dram of stupidity. The questioning part of this brain is too active tonight.
6 BALLS IMPACT ON FANTASY
My problem is sex, or if it isn’t, sex hides the problem so completely that I don’t know what it is. I want revenge on a woman who is not real. I know several real women and if they got near my lovely, punishable Janine they would shame me into rescuing her. When I was a boy I rescued her all the time, she mainly existed for that. When I had freed her from the Roman arena, the pirates or the Gestapo, she vanished. I couldn’t believe in her any more. She was a decent girl in those days, like the girls in my class at school, and I was decent too. But the balls sank into my scrotum, the wet dreams began, I gained a crude notion of what to put where, and now Janine has only one thing in common with the attractive women I know, she never stays long with me if she can leave. Apart from that she is fantastic: completely sexy and calculating and sure of herself. Real women can be sexy and calculating with a man, if they don’t love him, but they are never sure of themselves. Inside they are like me, terrified, which is why they need to grab things. When women or men give away affection or money, and give easily without an eye on the future, these people (who can be quite plain and unsexy) are for that moment completely sure of themselves. The fools probably feel they will never die. But I am making a world where Janine’s agent phones a day later and says in a bright, urgent voice,
“Would you like to meet a millionaire?”
“Tell me more, Charlie.”
“There’s a country-club just outside town, men-only membership, but respectable. And exclusive. Only big lawyers and property men can join, the kind who like to get away from the wife and kids now and then for a round of golf etcetera.”
“What does etcetera mean?”
“Sauna, massage and good meal.”
“Any women on the staff of this respectable men-only club?”
“That’s why I’m calling you. Their recreation officer has signed up these broads to put on sexy floor shows. But they’re amateurs and nobody in the place understands real showbusiness so the manager has contacted me. I’ve told him I’ll find a professional to rehearse these girls for five or six weeks and get them performing some real smooth routines.”
7 WHY I NEED AMERICA
“What’s he paying?”
Charlie tells her. She says, “But … I mean, for money like that they can get anybody! Somebody famous, I mean.”
“Honey, they want someone efficient who won’t draw attention to them. Remember those wives and kids; I have told them I might get them the director of Caught in Barbed Wire, and that she’s a very discreet lady.”
“But I never directed –”
“Of course you never directed it but they don’t know that. The director’s name didn’t appear on the credits because there are no credits. Come to the office at three this afternoon and meet the club manager. If he likes you he’ll take you to look the place over.”
“Hm … How should I dress for him?”
He tells her. She says, “No professional director dresses like that!”
“Honey, I told you, these guys know nothing about showbiz. Dress like that and they’ll be too busy looking to ask questions.”
“The set-up stinks, Charlie.”
“Don’t worry, Janine, I’ll find someone else,” and he hangs up.
Broads. Real smooth routines. Honey. This set-up stinks. These people are American. Years out of date, perhaps, but American. I can’t help it. Seen from Selkirk America is a land of endless pornographic possibility. Is that because it’s the world’s richest nation? No. There is less poverty and more sexual freedom in Scandinavia and Holland. It’s because my most precious fantasies have been American, from Cowboys and Indians and Tarzan till … The Dirty Dozen? Apocalypse Now? I forget when I stopped needing new ones.
“Don’t worry, Janine, I’ll find someone else,” and he hangs up. She dials back at once but the line is engaged. She dials repeatedly for three minutes and gets him at last. She says, “Charlie, I said the set-up stinks, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested. For money like that of course I’m interested!”
“Glad to hear it. You’re in luck. I’ve been trying to get Wanda Neuman but she’s out. All right, be here at eleven.”
8 CLOTHES THAT ARE BONDAGE
“Charlie, you mentioned a millionaire.”
“That’s right. The club has a couple of them, so dress like I said.”
“What do they call this club?”
But again he has hung up.
Four hours later Janine is worried and trying not to show it but her voice is husky when she says, “My agent told me to dress this way.”
“Your agent reads Hollis like a book.”
But Janine is not (here come the clothes) happy with the white silk shirt shaped by the way it hangs from her etcetera I mean BREASTS, silk shirt not quite reaching the thick harness-leather belt which is not holding up the miniskirt but hangs in the loops round the waistband of the white suede miniskirt supported by her hips and unbuttoned as high as the top of the black fishnet stockings whose mesh is wide enough to insert three fingers I HATED clothes when I was young. My mother made me wear far too many of them, mostly jackets and coats. When I complained that I was too hot she said the weather could change any moment and she wasn’t going to have me off school with a bad cold. I had three classes of suit. The best suit, the newest, was for Sunday and for visiting relations. The second-best suit was for g
oing to school. The third was for “playing rough games”. Yes, she expected me to play games, but I had to come home and change into my oldest suit first, and that was often too small to run about in comfortably. Of course when you’re a child most games happen on the way home from school or in the playground, so this clothing programme reduced my social opportunities. We lived in a mining town where a lot of boys wore dungarees to school and could play when they liked. I envied them. In summertime some of them didn’t even go home after school but rambled in gangs through the surrounding country, fishing and tree climbing, getting into trouble with farmers and coming home at sunset to grab their own supper of bread and cheese. Their mothers (my mother thought) didn’t look after them properly. When the evening meal was finished and my father had gone out to a union meeting (he was a timekeeper at the pithead, a strong union man) I would start changing into my oldest suit and my mother would say,
9 HOME MOTHER JANE RUSSELL
“Have you done your homework yet?”
“No. I’ll do it when I get back.”
“Why not do it now, while you’re still fresh?”
1982 Janine Page 2