by Will Self
‘Of course,’ the Ferret continued in the face of his listeners’ slightly stunned silence, ‘the treatment was not a success in my case. Far from associating homosexuality with pain and rejecting the former, I came instead to enthusiastically embrace the latter and regard it as an indispensable part of homosexual love.’
There was another silence at their end of the table. A tall, gaunt man in his early thirties, short greasy hair plastered down on his spotty brow, detached himself from the drunken baying around the sculptor and came to join them. Wotton noted that he was wearing a once good Armani suit over an open-necked Thomas Pink shirt. ‘I couldn’t ’elp over’ earin’ ya,’ the man drawled in fluent Mockney, ‘but surely homosexuality – as in the “gay lifestyle” – is a sorta category error?’ He paused and sniff-snuffled the cocaine juice around his muzzle. ‘If I were in gaol, doubtless I’d become a sodomite, but as it stands I prefer invagination –’
‘Hey, look!’ On cue, a supremely vaginal young woman – shadow-filled cleavage, swollen red lips, minuscule dress more slits than silk – came and draped herself around the Mockney’s neck. ‘Are we fucking off, Cal, or what?’ she gasped with exasperation.
‘D’you know one another?’ Ignoring the intervention, Gavin connected the three men with a diagram fingered in the air. ‘Henry Wotton, Fergus Rokeby, this is Cal Devenish, the novelist.’
Wotton inclined his head half a degree. ‘I’ve heard of you… vaguely.’
‘And I of you.’ Devenish took a great pull on a tumblerful of whisky. ‘You’re a pal of Dorian Gray’s, aren’t you?’
‘D’you know him?’
‘I was at Oxford with him. Different set to me, of course – ex-public-schoolboy dining-club wankers. Laughably crass. He hadn’t even come out then, but I believe that’s changed.’
There was another interruption, this one far more intrusive. The sculptor – like a statue of Stalin surplus to requirements – toppled across the table. ‘Yairsh!’ he slurred. ‘We’re gonna Chinaman’s – you gonna Chinaman’s, y’fuckin’ poofs, eh?’ A couple of his fabricators – who knew which side of the genocide memorial had butter on it – winched him upright and hauled him off. ‘I wonder,’ Cal Devenish said when they’d gone, ‘if you three would like to come back to my house?’ He slid a nicotine-stained hand up the dress of the girl and continued, ‘I can offer you fine wines, enough MDMA powder for you to put it under your foreskins –’
‘Cocaine?’ Wotton entered a bid.
‘Some, certainly – and believe me, anything not immediately available can be readily obtained. I have a source very close to hand.’
‘In that case…’ Wotton tipped his eye patch as if it were a small black hat ‘… who’s a pretty boy, then?’
On the eastern fringes of that metropolitan prairie Wormwood Scrubs, Cal Devenish inhabited a small house which burrowed into the embankment of a railway line. In the dead of night, wired out of his head on cocaine, or smacked out, or sloppily drunk, or funky with skunk, Devenish would lie, wonkily tiger-striped by orange streetlights strained through Venetian blinds, and feel the shake, rattle and roll of passing trains bearing nuclear waste, while praying fervently that one would divert into his sweaty masonry pit. In the cold light of another morning, wincing from the pain of toxic bile corroding his ulcerated throat, he would clutch the sides of the bathroom sink and peer distantly into his own Chernobyl eyes, as if the disaster he could see happening in them was in a country a long way off, of which he knew very little.
Devenish had had a fair success with his third novel, Limp Harvest. It had gained him a major prize and reasonable sales. The kudos was sufficient to garner advances for a further five years of dissolution, but as his behaviour grew wilder and the next manuscript became more elusive, so he moved from being a young writer with promise towards the fulfilment of middle-aged failure.
In the railway house Devenish did drugs and fucked young women. Occasionally he’d invite clever people back and make himself feel tougher by drugging them under the table (there was one), and cleverer by talking them into the ground.
He and Wotton were made for each other. Wotton strode in through the front door, which opened directly into a room dominated by a great hayrick of papers. It was fully four feet cubed, and contained many thousands of pages of miscellaneous writings. Whenever a publisher sent Devenish a pre-publication proof for an encomium, or an article by him or about him appeared in a newspaper, or he received a flyer for an art exhibition, or he even completed a piece of work himself, the paper was added to this mound of pulp-in-waiting. Every couple of months, Devenish would go hunting for the manuscript of his as yet unwritten novel in this paper chase, hoping that as in a grandiose biological experiment, an alternative world might have been spontaneously generated out of these fictive enzymes. ‘Haven’t you heard of the paperless office?’ Wotton sneered, aiming straight for the most salient chair in the room, a bizarre thing which looked like a Belle Époque throne. Gavin and the Ferret disported themselves on a sofa that had been beaten into submission.
‘Drinks?’ the host asked, and picking at his crusty forehead he stomped to the kitchenette at the back of the house to slop out tumblers of whisky, vodka and wine. The girl, whose moniker was Zippy (short for Zuleika, she vouchsafed, although no one could care less), brought them through and handed them round. When he re-entered the room, Devenish picked up the thread of their conversation as if seconds – rather than almost an hour – had elapsed; while filleting powdery white fish on a willow-patterned plate, he continued, ‘It’s been the misfortune of people who prefer sex with their own gender to be forced to regard this as some essential part of themselves. After all, homosexuality was only defined as a pathology in response to the alleged healthiness of heterosexuality. It’s the great mistake of you… erm… you gays to mistake a mere attribute for an essence.’
‘Do I look gay?’ Wotton expostulated, taking the plate and honking up a line.
‘I’m not gay,’ the Ferret chimed in.
‘Nor me,’ Gavin added, and the Ferret gave his hand a little squeeze; it was so nice to see the dear boy again.
‘When you have a terminal pathology like mine, Devenish’ – Wotton spoke with the full authority born of a lifetime’s anomie – ‘the question of whether your predilections are innate or merely assumed becomes more rarefied than any academic dispute. Call me self-obsessed, but since I’ve been unable to have anal sex myself, other people’s arseholes seem like hell.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Devenish finished up the coke and squeegeed the plate with his finger. ‘I’m being tactless.’
‘No, merely a plagiarist; not everyone knows fuck all about Foucault.’
‘You could try shooting up testosterone – I’ve heard that can have remarkable results.’
‘It’s too late for that, I fear.’ Wotton lit a Sullivan’s Export with a long kitchen match, which he waved in the air a couple of times and then threw down on the mound of paper. ‘This medication I’m on puts paid not simply to the inclination, but even to the inclination to the inclination.’
‘Are you on the Delta trial?’
‘That’s the thing.’
‘I’ve heard’ – Devenish took a gulp of his drink and began building a monumental joint – ‘that it’s a drug combination that significantly cuts mortality rates.’
‘You seem to know rather more about it than I do…’ Wotton sneered. ‘Where’s your loo?’
After he’d stomped off upstairs, those remaining sat goggling at the conflagration beginning at their feet, as match lit phone bill, phone bill ignited postcard, postcard flared up in the face of a photograph of Devenish looking younger and even spottier. At this point Gavin intervened by pouring half of his wine on the blaze. ‘Thanks,’ Devenish muttered, not even looking up from his craftwork.
Upstairs, Wotton had an odd encounter. As he limped out of the bathroom, trousering his sad prick, he ran into a plump, middle-aged man, bald save for a patch of ginger
furze between his ears, who was exiting the room opposite with a kitbag over one shoulder. He was dressed in proletarian subfusc – jeans, trainers, sweatshirt – and had a furtive air about him. The two men stood on the gloomy scrap of landing staring at each other for some seconds, before Wotton introduced himself, saying, ‘I’m Henry Wotton. I’m visiting… Col?’
‘It’s Cal,’ said the ginger man, ‘and,’ he continued, spurting venom up into Wotton’s uncovered eye from his ulterior position, ‘I know you.’
‘Really?’ Wotton didn’t do surprise any more than he did America. ‘Where have we had the pleasure?’
‘We ’aven’t,’ the other hissed, ‘but about fifteen years ago I was mates with a bloke called Herman. There was this rich queer – nasty piece of work – who took a shine to ’im. This was all in Soho. Herm was a grievous fucking junky –’
‘Moi aussi –
‘An’ this geezer was supplying him an’ fucking him – because Herm was a renter too. Is any of this jogging your memory, Mister Wotton?’
‘A little… maybe.’
‘This rich queer took Herm to a party. I dunno what went down there – probably the usual fucking daisy-chain shit that kind got up to then – but the thing is…’ and the man’s voice, muted until now, choked and swelled ‘… the thing is, he wound up fucking dead. Fucking dead! I’ve been tracking the cunt who took him there for years now, fucking years. I know his scene, I know the other scum he hangs out with. I even know his name – Dorian-bloody-Gray – and don’t forget I know your name, too.’ Ginger stopped and huffed and puffed – but if he’d expected Wotton to be blown away by these revelations he was to be disappointed.
‘Mm, yes: Herman – of course I remember him. Utterly charming. I knew him – but only carnally – in the days when I was an active homosexual rather than a passive host. It’s interesting that you should blame Dorian Gray for Herman’s death – and incidentally, he’s told me about your homicidal designs on him – because if you won’t accept that your friend committed suicide, then I am the person you should blame for his demise…’ Wotton, with a gesture that summed up all the fearless condescension that had characterised his life, now took Ginger’s arm and, supported by the pudgy former skinhead (is it possible to call a skinhead a skinhead once he has become naturally rather than intentionally bald? Is ‘being a skinhead’ – like being a homosexual – a question of attribution or essence?), turned and made his way downstairs. As the two of them came in sight of the denizens of the pays bas, Wotton was saying, ‘… I gave him the smack that did for him… Still – not that it constitutes any kind of retrospective justification – Herman has had his revenge from beyond the grave…’ He paused for effect and summoned up a ravaged sob. ‘Erha! It was Herman who gave me AIDS.’
‘I see you’ve met Ginger,’ Cal Devenish said, squinting up at them through the skunk smoke billowing around his long face, ‘he’s my house dealer.’
‘What on earth d’you mean?’ the Ferret asked.
‘Precisely what I say. I let Ginger stay in the spare bedroom and in return he gives me and my friends priority service in his drug-dealing capacity. Are you doing some deliveries now, Ginge?’
‘Maybe,’ Ginger said, but the way he clutched the strap of his kitbag confirmed that he was.
‘Well, if so, would ya serve up this lot before you go? Does anybody want anything? I can vouch for the gear and the coke; I’ve plenty of E, anyway…’
Wotton, who had been standing looking out at the empty night-time street through a gap in the blinds, chose this moment dramatically to resume his exchange with Ginger. ‘I’ll give him to you, if you like,’ he said, his voice devoid of emotion. ‘Dorian Gray, that is.’
There was silence, and the open bourse in drugs ceased trading.
‘Whaddya mean?’ Ginger asked.
‘I’ll tell you where to find him and when. Should you wish to take your time, here’s his address.’ He passed over a visiting card. ‘I think’ – Wotton savoured the sentence – ‘it would probably be quite a good idea if you were to kill him, Ginger.’ A train bearing spent fuel rods chose this moment to shake the house like a terrier at a bone. Everything vibrated; the paper mound rustled. Gavin and the Ferret looked as if they thought the rumble and crash were the fury of a deity who had finally decided to punish Wotton, but he himself appeared unaffected. When it was gone, he resumed, ‘He’s at a crack house in Limehouse right now. I know because I spoke to him earlier this evening.’ He turned to Devenish. ‘Have you an A–Z?’
‘How do I get in?’ Ginger asked, packing his unsold stock away in his kitbag.
‘Simple. Tell the truth – say you’ve come to meet Dorian Gray. He’s such an habitué of the place you’ll get in. Here.’ He pointed out the location in the gazetteer. ‘Happy hunting.’
The quondam skinhead let himself out of the front door without farewells. ‘He has a key,’ Devenish muttered, as if Ginger were his teenage son heading out for an evening with mates, and these peculiar men disported about the place were really family friends enquiring after arrangements. ‘I dunno why we have to have him here at all,’ Zippy bleated, as she swung her tightly girded loins loosely in time to the music that infiltrated the room from covert speakers; ‘it’s not as if he’s remotely amusing, or sexy.’ She was trying to be provocative, but no one paid her any mind. Devenish was lost inside his stubble-burning; the others were in assorted states of shocked stupefaction. The evening, like a car recklessly driven by drunken youths over winter roads, had hit a patch of black ice. Its wheels spun, its engine screamed, the wind rushed past the darkened, rain-flecked windows. Inside, the five passengers, knees jammed against their ribs, waited in agonised silence for the inevitable impact.
‘Do you imagine’ – the Ferret spoke at last, in the absence of a crash barrier – ‘that he actually will murder Dorian?’
‘No,’ Wotton sighed, ‘I don’t think so. Not tonight, at any rate. He isn’t a fool, is he?’
‘Ginger?’ Devenish ground out his spliff. ‘No, he’s no fool. He’s upwardly mobile in a curious way: he’s putting one of his kids – he’s estranged from the mother; she lives up the road in Kensal Green – through prep school on the proceeds of his drug-dealing.’
‘Too many witnesses.’ Wotton ignored this blether. ‘I imagine Ginger’s gone for a recce. He’s bided his time this long; I don’t think he’ll want to screw things up through undue haste.’
‘May I ask,’ Gavin enunciated very clearly, if squeakily – the atmosphere in the room was so highly pressurised that it seemed to him as if he were breathing helium – ‘why it is you’ve decided that Dorian should die?’
Wotton took his time in answering. He gathered the skirts of his Crombie around his thighs and circumvented Devenish’s slag heap of words. He assumed his position on the curious Belle Époque throne, accepted the plate his host passed him, snuffled up the line that was upon it, took a glass of wine from Zippy and drank from it. He began to kill a Kurd. It was clear to everyone present that a speech was about to be made, as clear as if a toastmaster in a tartan waistcoat had stepped forward from the filthy kitchenette, tapped a small mallet and announced, ‘My sleepy lord, slutty lady and dopey gentlemen, pray silence for the moribund Mr Henry Wotton, self-hating homosexual, drug addict and AIDS sufferer, who will now rant and rave.’
‘I think we all know why Dorian must die. De Quincey didn’t have it right at all. Murder shouldn’t be considered one of the fine arts; rather it’s one of the wilder forms of popular entertainment. In view of that I think we can agree that Dorian is becoming a comedy hoofer; he must be stopped. True, we have no definite proof that he’s responsible for Baz’s or Alan’s death, while Octavia and Herman could be described as casualties of war. If we were to take our evidence to stupid squad they’d probably say we were suffering delusions, provoked either by drugs and disease or merely by the hissy fits of three ageing queers dumped by this Adonis.
‘We know better. It isn’
t so much retribution we’re after in seeking to get Dorian killed, and only you, Fergus, are aroused by punishment. No, it’s a kind of symmetry we seek, a rounding off of events. Baz discovered Dorian over a decade ago, when he was a gauche little thing down from Oxford. Baz thought that he embodied the dawning age of “gay liberation”, and that his video installation of Dorian would become an icon of all that was beautiful and true and important about the inverted “lifestyle”. In fact, what has happened is quite the reverse: instead of this cathode portrait’s going on show and attracting praise, it has languished somewhere in a darkened room. Meanwhile, it’s the portrait’s subject who has become a kind of sadistic genius, exhibiting an infinite capacity for causing pain.
‘As this scourge of a retrovirus has flayed the backs of the in and the out, the queer and the queen, the faggot and the poof, this narcissistic nematode has wormed his way through the world, hollowing it out from within, while himself appearing completely unaffected. It moves me to speculate that he is a magus of some unknown kind, and that Baz’s portrait of him must be a voodoo doll, which Dorian has adapted so that it usefully malfunctions, absorbing – rather than transmitting – all the marks of age, pain and disease that should, by rights, be inscribed on his oddly blank face.’
At this, Gavin made as if to interrupt, but Wotton shushed him and continued.
‘I could video a portrait of him better than Basil Hallward ever did. I could capture him for you right now, as if there were a CCTV system that took in the Chinaman’s den. See Dorian Gray in one of the myriad rooms of this tumbledown mansion of Morpheus. Not for him, tonight, the darkened crack den, where dwarfish figures are lit intermittently by the flare of their equipment; nor does he wish to recline in the opium-smoking parlour, where Iranian businessmen repose on carpeted divans beneath the Peacock Throne rendered in purple tinfoil. No, Dorian has brought a brace of posh, leggy, arty chicks with him this evening. He’s force-fed these goslings with liver-busting pharmaceutical foie gras, while he himself has put a wad of MDMA powder under his foreskin, as a hillbilly might insert a chaw of tobacco in his cheek. See Dorian, then, his hands running over their silken armatures, as he and Chloë and Angela subside giggling behind dusty velveteen hangings; their six pupils large and flat and black and shiny, like a half-set of chinaware for some decadent’s dinner party.