1982 Janine

by Alasdair Gray

  He smiled and said, “Of course not, that was all just a joke.” And suddenly I grew terribly angry with him for making such a cruel joke. And then I awoke, unluckily.

  8:

  I AM GLAD I FELL ASLEEP BEFORE IMAGINING THE ORGASM RACE.

  If my four heroines are all together in it with the nasty Doctor, his drugs, the hosepipe, the hairdryers, Max, Stroud, Charlie, Hollis and a horde of waitresses in tight red satin slinky button-through dresses then clearly this race is an ultimate event to which every other plot inside my head tonight is converging. It must come before the last and biggest gangbang which will leave me completely exhausted and unconscious. Or so I hope. I have only once had enough self-control, enough insomnia to shepherd all my fantasies up to one point and it brought on a very bad attack of hay fever. But in those days my organisation was very small, just four poor little people and a shack in the hills.

  Cupid, Hugo and Big Momma (God only knows what brought that mob together) pulled off a department store payroll heist and headed for the hills in a sharp red convertible meaning to lie low till the heat was off. Cupid was just a kid. Hugo was a wino, a liquorhead who had somehow kept his guts and his balls. Momma, a fat woman past fifty, was the brains of the outfit. In those days that sort of language came easily to me. In those days commercial television was just a gleam in John Logie Baird’s eye. No Orchids for Miss Blandish topped the bestseller charts. But the trio were not readers so on their way to the shack they picked up Janine, a hitchhiker, to entertain them sexually. Since Big Momma was a lesbian there was not enough Janine for everybody. Cupid and Hugo ganged up on Big Momma and forced her to please them in a great many ways while Janine wandered about naked making cups of tea for people. I mean coffee. Americans don’t drink tea.

  109 AN ILLEGAL COMPANY

  But I was ambitious. Cupid and Hugo didn’t know how to work with a big organisation so I dropped them. Last I heard they were working as extras in a blue movie. Big Momma and Janine I kept and I got me a good accountant, a smart lawyer, a doctor who pushed drugs and abortions to the highest levels of society, also a crooked police chief. That was Max. Together we kidnapped the wives and daughters of rich businessmen and had orgies with them which lasted for weeks. Ah, the stamina of youth. We raised money by sending the husbands and fathers photographs of their damsels in highly distressed states, with descriptions of what more would be done to them if we were not paid. We usually got the money and did what we liked anyway. The dames were eventually released with a slightly more knowing look in their eyes and no marks which a modest little dress did not hide. They could not identify us afterward because while in our hands we blindfolded them or wore masks, stopped their ears or spoke in whispers. I was now frequenting cocktail parties thrown by beautiful people and other celebrities. Sometimes the hostess, a film star or top fashion photographer’s model whose lovely face seemed strangely remote and discontented, asked me listlessly, “Haven’t we met somewhere before?.”

  This still happens. I always reply, “Not to my knowledge.”

  Later, dancing with her, my hand caresses part of her back where I have branded my initials. She goes white and nearly swoons but I clasp her more tightly and sweep her body on through the intricacies of the tango. (You couldn’t do that, you can’t even dance.) Shut up she recovers and whispers,

  110 WE GO LEGITIMATE

  “My God it was you!”

  I smile and murmur, “Prove it.”

  Panting deeply she says, “Listen I … I must see you again soon, somewhere private, anywhere you please!”

  “Why?”

  “There is something I want to, must tell you, can you not guess what it is?”

  “Unfortunately my work fully occupies me these days. You know what kind of work it is. Call me in a month or two, perhaps I can fit you in then.”

  In the forties and fifties this reply was more than an excuse because my organisation was expanding rapidly.

  I had suddenly noticed that I was competing against my own kind. The academics/accountants/architects/advertising bosses/bankers/brokers/businessmen/congressmen/doctors/executives/factoryowners/government officials/heads of departments/impresarios/judges/journalists/key-operatives/lawyers and media people whose women and wealth I abused all had the same tastes as myself, if they were not homosexual or crazy on art or some other screwball hobby. They had made their bucks by hard work and social conformity and what had it got them? A little prestige, a few creature comforts, an occasional weekend in Acapulco was all. Their children and wives were not especially grateful, their sex lives left a lot to be desired. They needed what I need, cunt, lots of it, served to me whenever I want in exactly the state I choose. These men were my brothers. If we co-operated we could all have us a ball. We had the capital and could push through the legislation to set up a worldwide chain of completely legal pleasure parlours. Jails and mental hospitals are full of sexually desirable women confined there because they have been too greedy, too active, too eccentric, too stupid to obey or cunningly twist the rules of conventional society. My organisation culls these women and uses them in ways which Stroud will shortly demonstrate to Helga in the viewing theatre, but what it comes down to is this: the male winners have a fucking good time with the female losers. Women’s liberators accuse me of sexual chauvinism. I tell them that if women of the professional class will work along with the richer heiresses, divorcees and widows (there are more widows than widowers in this world, men die faster, even in peacetime) then they will have enough power to turn half the male jails into their very own studfarms with special lesbian annexes for those who don’t want to muck in with us men. When we consider how the winners shaft the losers, the strong shaft the weak, the rich shaft the poor, accusations of sex-discrimination are irrelevant. Most men are poor weak losers. Many women are not.

  111 STAFF CONTROL

  If the foregoing words seem a little harsh let me tell you about those tastefully designed, blankwalled buildings with skylight windows which have appeared near all of the big and some of the smaller towns, each at the heart of a wooded estate with an electrified security fence round it. The women inside are not only happier and healthier than those in normal prisons and asylums (they could hardly be otherwise) they are happier and healthier than most women in the world outside. They sleep in comfortable, spacious, beautifully decorated boudoirs, they have extravagant wardrobes and access to soft drugs, sunbeds, sauna baths and as much as they want to eat. We don’t mind them getting fat, or if we do mind we have exciting exercises which slim them down again. Since they outnumber their male visitors by ten to one, lesbian friendships are not discouraged. These friendships provoke tensions which combine with their class structure to provoke a plentiful fund of gossip. This structure is more complex than in my queen-slave Arabian harem. Here we have the favourites, the performers, the waitresses and the cyclists. The favourites wear anything they like, the performers wear what the favourites tell them to wear, the waitresses wear slinky tight red button-through satin, the cyclists wear tight coarse canvas jeans or overalls or short short shorts. The favourites draw a high weekly wage, the performers receive bonuses according to their quality of performance, the waitresses are paid in tips, the cyclists get nothing. But nobody is forced to be a cyclist for more than three weeks a year, the Doctor has forbidden it. Promotion and demotion are erratic. Some girls have been favourites for years, some frequently pass through all classes in a single month. The money earned is handed over in the form of crisp new notes. The wiser girls ask the management to bank it for them but a few get distinct reassurance from the sight and feel of firm little wads piling up through the years, so these have a safe in their boudoir whose combination-lock number is known only to themselves. The less wise girls sometimes get addicted to gambling which gives me an idea for an exciting strip-poker game shut up go back. The less wise girls sometimes get addicted to gambling, which has led to a certain amount of corruption. A secure favourite who dislikes a performe
r or waitress can make her life hell for a few weeks, and some unlucky women try to win favour by losing at cards to their tormentors. However, every room is constantly bugged, taped and monitored so the management always prevent glaring injustices from lasting very long. A little injustice stimulates conversation and communication, but too much makes a woman sloppy, despondent and unattractive. It is important for our women to know that when they reach retirement age they will have amassed enough to live upon comfortably for the rest of their lives.

  112 HAPPY COMMUNITY

  Here is another fact for our critics to bear in mind. The sex life of our women is not only more varied than in the world outside, it lasts longer. Attractive performers of sixty are not unknown. No wonder that they depart from us with tears in their eyes. What, afterall, have they suffered? Some bondage and flagellation perhaps but in every life a little rain must fall. Anyway, an astonishing number of our clients are masochists, and I predict that if middle and upper-class women get the prison studfarm of their dreams the inmates will be ordered to put on some highly aggressive performances. There is a tendency for successful people who make it at the top to want a little ritualised humiliation in the bedroom. The fact that these people usually marry each other is one of the unsung tragedies of our time. However, it is now surely obvious that I have evolved from a smalltime crook to a public benefactor. Sontag would no doubt say that from being a small crook preying on small people I got a little bigger by preying on big people, then joined the big people to prey on small people in a big way. No doubt Mister Karl Marx would agree with Sontag, but I am no Marxist. I say, so it goes.

  113 CALLING JO’BURG

  Perhaps you are now in a position to appreciate me. As chairman of the vast multinational Forensic Research Punishment and Sexual Gratification Syndicate I am worldwide and irresistible. No government will ever oppose me because all governments are on my committee. The leaders of every successful movement acquire shares in my establishments. If it was widely known that the whole network has been spun like a web out of one brain – this brain – my life would be in danger from left-wing radical extremists, but my disguise is impenetrable. People know me as a modest and discreet Lowland Scottish electrical technician who is sometimes seen at small family hotels in Tillicoultry, Grangemouth and Nairn. My closest agents know even less than that. To them I am nothing but a voice along a wire.

  TRING TRING.

  That will be the Johannesburg call.

  “Hello.”

  “Agent XPQR reporting from Johannesburg, sir.”

  “Proceed.”

  “I have a fresh cargo of black molasses in bond, sir.”

  “How much?”

  “Twenty kilos.”

  “How fresh?”

  “Four teens, four twenties, four thirties, four forties, four fifties.”

  “Four fifties, XPQR?”

  “They’re ripe, sir.”

  “O.K. Split the kilos five ways between Chicago, Sydney, Berlin, Paris and Glenrothes.”

  “Glenrothes, sir?”

  “You heard me.”

  “How will I split it freshnesswise, sir?”

  “Use your initiative. Check with the area supervisors.”

  “Certainly sir. Sir, where is Glenrothes?”

  “Look it up in an atlas. The nearest docks are at Methil.”

  “Thankyou, sir. Good night, sir.” Click.

  XPQR probably thinks I’m getting old, losing my grip.

  114 STILL SMALL VOICE

  Our Glenrothes centre does not need four fresh dames but it does need the extra colour, the extra sweetness of some soft black molasses. I am visiting Glenrothes next week, ostensibly to see what National are installing in a church there, even churches are getting security-minded these days. Hell, my mother’s folk came from Glenrothes, I can afford to be lavish, afford to indulge myself. I made my bucks the hard way and the shareholders ain’t grouching. (Stop fooling yourself.)

  Better a happy fool than a suicidal supervisor of security installations. (You are not happy.)

  Shut up you foul little still small voice.

  Sip.

  Take that, you stupid stinking turd of intelligent conscience.

  Sip. Sip.

  At this rate you will be completely washed out in less than a year.

  Sip. Sip. Sip.

  Yes sirree, as I glance backward over my early struggles, my triumphant career, my fulfilling decades of public service, I sometimes think my happiest moments were passed in that humble shack in the hills after Cupid and I ganged up on Big Momma. The place was not even wired for electricity but having some technical proficiency I turned an old bicycle frame into a simple generator. When it was ready Momma chuckled and told Janine, “Now you’re going for a nice long ride. You’ll sleep well tonight, honey.”

  I grinned and shook my head. I said, “You got it wrong, Momma. This little girl is insufficiently robust. It is you who are overweight. Get on to that saddle.”

  She gaped at me, trying to believe I was joking. I was joking, yes, but the joke was on her. I slowly removed my thick harnessleather belt then whopped her ass real good till she was begging to be allowed on to that saddle. When it got dark outside Big Momma was pedalling enough light for Janine, Cupid and I to play a long slow game of strip-poker. (Does poker not need four players?) Shut up, I make the rules around here. Janine lost heavily of course and we sure made her feel it. Next day was hot and sunny, Big Momma was too weary to move so we gave her a rest and a suntan and sweated a few more ounces out of her. We pegged her starfishwise on the ground outside, flat on her back all naked and cursing until Cupid brownsugared no, buttered her tits to get the midges tickling. She sang a different tune then. (Are there midges in America?) You dope, there are midges EVERYWHERE, they are universal and ineradicable, they cannot be eliminated without unlinking that whole ecological chain which binds bird to beast, flower to fruit, herb and moss to tree and tundra and to those who wander thither and yonder upon the waste of the waters, midges CANNOT be destroyed without destroying MAN HIMSELF, why am I raving? Where did I pick up all this pseudoscientific biblical stuff? Did I hear it on the wireless? All I want is, yes,

  115 I GRAB BIG MOMMA

  Big Momma buttersoft and CLUTCHABLE, tearwet, sweatwet, quivering and moaning while Cupid tattoos her buttocks (we have turned her over) with as rich an arabesque of obscene words and indecent notions as is printed in the fabric of this brain. As Cupid I do that to her and as Hugo I turn her over again and stop her mouth with my kisses, her cunt with my cock. I fully occupy her for a while I am the only man in her world. I wish, I have always wished I could imagine her enjoying me too. However, I ejaculated three times, completely emptying my seminal vesicles into Durex sheaths inside a nylon sock inside a wollen sock. Neither pyjamas nor bedlinen were stained so Helen never knew. She was, thank goodness, a very sound sleeper. And then I had an attack of hay fever. The snorting and gasping awoke her and she went to the kitchen without being asked and made me a glass of hot tea with lemonjuice and brown sugar in it. This gave me time to flush away the Durexes and hide the slightly dank doublesock in the laundry basket. Helen always behaved well in emergencies, doing the most sensible and helpful thing quietly and quickly. Only trivialities greatly frightened or annoyed her. I could never understand that. She was under strain, of course. Unless she too masturbated secretly she had even less real sex than I did, and I doubt if she masturbated. I once tried to talk to her about it and she covered her ears. I’m still sometimes sorry that we separated. Forget her.

  116 DENNY AND GOD

  Back to Momma pegged out etcetera but Momma is changing, the ropes fall from her wrists and ankles, she stands up looking much less massive but still pleasantly plump. She is wearing jeans that cuddle her bottom snugly but are wellworn and comfortable. Her shirt is simple and sexy, shortsleeved with thin redandwhite stripes, two big buttons. It is hard to see her face clearly although I seem to know it well. It is not a harsh or sour face
, not a very hopeful face. Good. Very hopeful faces always seem on the edge of despair. It is an ordinary face. Millions of women in their fifties look like her. She watches me in a friendly way but I am sure I have never spoken to her in my life.

  Denny would have looked like that nowadays if we had married. I hope you got pregnant, Denny.

  O DENNY PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE HAVE BORNE OUR CHILD, GOD MAKE DENNY HAVE BORNE OUR CHILD, PLEASE fucking GOD fucking EXIST and fucking well MAKE DENNY HAVE BORNE OUR CHILD, MAKE stop DENNY stop HAVE BORNE please stop A CHILD PLEASE. STOP. KNOCKING. THIS. HEAD. AGAINST. THIS. WALL. Please Denny exist and have borne me a child.

  Was I very noisy?

  Listen.

  No ringing echoes. No muttering from the next room. It is probably empty, these are quiet times for the Scottish hotel trade. No footsteps. Nobody coming, I cannot have been shouting or banging very hard. Head not very sore. Slight pink stain on wallpaper. Raw spot on brow, but no trickling blood. Small bruise or bump tomorrow perhaps. Lie down again. Drink? Better not in this state. Remember what happened in the pub last week after under the bridge. I cannot remember what happened in the pub last week after under the bridge but clearly I will do so soon. Tonight everything I want to forget is returning. I am cracking apart. Till a moment ago the thought of Denny bearing our child yes, in complete helpless loneliness was what I most feared to remember. Now the chance that a piece of Denny and me breathes and sees the light stops me fetching those pills and swallowing them with the last of the whisky, why? I do not know why. I will never know my son or daughter, though in a country as small as this a traveller like myself has almost certainly passed him/her in a street at least once. If I am a father. And I may be. Denny took no precautions. It was I who took the precautions, until the night before I went to stay in Edinburgh. I thought she was in a safe period or something. Liar. I was too drunk to think. A day or a week or a fortnight later I thought, ‘Perhaps that little bitch/whore/cheat has trapped me, made me a father.’ That became a reason for not seeing her again, a reason to forget her, until now. The possibilities were unthinkable.