Authors: Jonathan Kemp
“It’s like Joe Orton said,” you smirked, “you’ll only regret not having fun with your genitals.”
You promised to take me to Venezuela. I’d heard that one before. I looked at the sky. I could hear and smell the pelt of the Thames passing by us not too far below, like a beast pacing the forest floor.
“You know, you’re not at all like the other British men I’ve met.”
“Really? In what way?” I asked.
You laughed. “Well, the way you have sex, for a start. You really go for it. I like that.”
“Is that unusual?” I asked, wondering what kind of person wouldn’t really go for it with you.
“You’re very passionate. I like that. I don’t find that very often in Brits.” Although what you said made me feel good, I didn’t know what to say in response, so for something to do I lit a cigarette. Just at that moment you held out the joint and I swapped it for the cigarette.
“Shouldn’t I have said that?” you asked, a slight note of worry in your voice.
“No, it’s cool.”
“You’re a rare breed.” You reached for the ornate wooden box. “You have the most amazing aura.” From the green packet, you plucked out six skins in quick succession.
“Sorry?” I immediately remembered the night at Harry’s and that dreadful New Age book those boys were discussing. Had you been involved in their conversation before spread-eagling on the bed? Had you begun it? Read it?
Believed
it?
“Your aura. It’s the most amazing colour. I’ve never seen another like it.”
You started to lick a Rizla’s edge and begin to construct that strange configuration of papers.
“And what colour is it?” (
What colour is it?
)
In the distance, the Thames was striped in gold like a tiger. A black and gold tiger.
“It’s kinda orange. Like a flame. Really hot,” you said, with a grin on your face fresh enough to eat.
I could hear the river tiger breathing in low slow rasps. I didn’t know what to say so I didn’t say anything.
“David isn’t my real name,” I said, after a long silence, apropos of nothing and sounding far more mysterious than I had intended. Just at that moment, you shouted, “
Oh
,
shit!
” and drowned out my statement. I looked at you.
“I just dropped the dope, man.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did. It fell right down between the fuckin’ boards!”
We both looked down at the balcony floor. It was constructed of widely spaced wooden beams between which the resin had just dropped, down onto the beach below. The tide was out, luckily, the Thames revealing its bed, like a whore disrobing. A carpet of shingle stretched out beneath us, millions of dark brown lumps of rock worn smooth by the river’s suck. Each and every one of them looked just like a lump of hash.
I said, “Whoops.”
“Whoops?” you yelled. “No, ‘whoops’ is for when you’ve accidentally electrocuted your grandmother. ‘Whoops’ is for when you realize you’ve just outed your boyfriend to his parents, or when you catch your foreskin in your zipper. The only possible response to this situation is …” And you emitted a bloodcurdling scream that had us in fits of giggles, which you cut short by saying, “It’s not funny, man, that was a big fuckin’ lump.”
“Oh, well.” I took a sip of red wine in commiseration. I was already rolling from the E.
From the living room drifted the sound of Thom Yorke tearing his heart out.
“I’m gonna fuckin’ find it!” you said, standing up and disappearing inside.
“Okay,” I said, joining in the lunacy and following. We went down a flight of stairs into the bedroom, a large room with two massive vertical wooden beams. You disappeared into a cupboard and reappeared with a rope, which you tied around one of the beams as if you were Errol Flynn, testing your handiwork before trailing the rope toward the open window. I watched you thread it through and down to the beach below. “A flashlight,” you said, running past me and out of the room.
You returned holding out a bunch of five white candles like a ghost’s hand. “Couldn’t find a flashlight. Here.” You handed me one.
You went first, disappearing through the window, and I heard the wet crunch of you landing on shingle. I followed, smelling the damp brine, crystalline in the warm air. Clumps of green mush and debris were scattered about—tin cans, plastic bottles, crisp packets, a bicycle wheel—looking strangely beautiful in the faint candlelight. On our hands and knees, faces pressed close to the circle of orange light as it made its way across that impossibly homogenous landscape, we began our search for the lump of hash. There was no sound except the rustle of the tiger’s fur.
It was hard not to laugh, so we did. The tiger laughed too. Quietly.
A long and profound silence descended, until …
“This is like looking for a needle in a fuckin’ hay—” I said, the sentence broken off by the absolute beauty of the brown nugget I had just panned. “I’ve fuckin’
found
it!” I yelled, holding it up inside the candle’s halo, feeling it give as I squeezed it gently, gently squeezed it. Yes. I tested it on my teeth like a jeweller. Yes. You ran over and kissed me, leaving diamonds in my mouth. Mmm. We rooted the candles amongst the stones and you began to skin up our prize, saying, “What did I say? You’re fuckin’ amazing.” The river purred at our feet.
I looked at you and heard an echo:
you’re fuckin’ amazing
. And the river purred at our feet.
1895
Before the start of
this second trial, we were told that we’d have to give evidence, me and Charlie and Sidney. I was up first, and I was practically shitting myself with fear. My heart was banging so much that for the longest time I thought they must all be able to hear it, all those people with their beady eyes on me, and my legs wouldn’t keep still. It unnerved me, knowing his eyes were on me, and it made me think of that time at the orgy when the opposite was true, when I rejoiced in his gaze. But how different his thoughts would be now, I thought. How much he must hate the sight of me now.
I couldn’t even once bring myself to look over at him.
It was painful to have to repeat in public the things I’d said in his presence. It made me feel sick, truth be told. But it’d all gone too far and I could never now admit to the truth anyway, so I stood there and told that courtroom all about my times with him at Kettner’s and the Savoy and the Café Royal. That shocked them more, I think, than when I mentioned the orgy and the sex games—the fact that scum like me’d been to such grand places. As if that were the greater crime.
Each word I spoke was offered like a mouthful of vomit and received like a priceless jewel.
The questions were easy enough, but it shocked me to the quick when they produced the silver cigarette case he had given me with an engraved inscription. I felt my face redden as it was passed amongst the jury, for it became in my eyes a symbol for what I’d done to him. It seemed that with the appearance of that gift everyone in that room knew exactly how I felt about him and why I was betraying him this way, as if my heart were transparent and revealed itself to contain nothing but a handful of silver.
After me, Sidney took the stand. And what a sly bastard he’s turned out to be. He denied absolutely that anything untoward had ever occurred between him and Oscar. I couldn’t believe it. The prosecution was furious. You could see it on his face—this was not supposed to happen. They had paid him to ensure he collaborated, but Sidney just sat there with a determined set to his mouth and said no, nothing happened, even when they spent the night together at the Albermarle Hotel. And I know for a fact that something went on, for wasn’t I there as well?
“No impropriety has ever taken place between me and Mr Wilde,” he said, “and Mr Wilde has never given me any money. I was always glad of Mr Wilde’s friendship.”
The lying cunt.
He claimed he’d been forced to give a statement but that his statement was a pack of lies. A tense, awkward silence settled on the court, then a hissing of whispers like a whole load of snakes had just slithered in, and he was asked to step down and I slipped out of the courtroom just in time to catch him and some well-dressed fellow shaking hands before Sidney walked away, out of the Old Bailey and I thought to myself,
Well, was it that easy
? Would it have been that easy to walk away from this whole fuckin’ mess? Could I have done the same?
I don’t know.
I walked home, buying a paper on the way. I lay on my bed reading it, thinking about Oscar. He told me once, “It is best to believe almost everything one writes and almost nothing one reads, because in order to believe something completely one must have lived it, and one does not live a book one has read, only a book one has written.”
Another time he told me this story:
“There once lived a carpenter who had a piece of wood that he wanted to keep, for he valued it above all the other pieces of wood in his workshop. So he decided to build a box in which to keep this wood, for it was too precious to leave lying around. It might get chipped or dented, stained or dirty, so he looked around for a piece of wood with which to make a box fit for this precious block. It couldn’t be a box made of any old wood. ‘But all these pieces are not worthy of being made into a box in which to keep my precious block of wood!’ he cried. ‘They are all gnarled and ugly, worm-eaten and old.’ So he decided to use the only wood worthy enough of the honour of housing his wooden jewel: the precious block itself. He sawed and planed, hammered and sanded until eventually the box was complete. It was a beautiful object, the grain perfect beneath the polished varnish. The carpenter was so proud of his handiwork that he couldn’t refrain from planting a kiss on its shining surface, leaving an imprint of his lips upon its lid. Yet the box, he reflected with a stab of pain, must remain empty.
“And this is what we have done with our words,” Oscar ended. “They are beautiful but hollow.”
I shouldn’t be thinking of these things, not now, not when he’s stuck where he is. I’ve no right to feel sorry for myself.
1954
The banging was incessant.
I looked at my watch. Six a.m. I dragged myself out of bed and pulled on my bathrobe and made my way downstairs. When I opened the front door, there were two policemen standing there. A furious sense of irritation arose and I was determined not to let them in, though at the same time I was terrified lest the neighbours spotted them. No doubt it was too late. I’m sure curtains were already twitching.
“Mr Read?” the uglier of the two enquired.
“Yes.”
“We have a warrant to search these premises.”
“What for?”
“I think you know the reason.”
At that point Gore appeared in the hallway, bleary-eyed and dressed only in his underwear. My heart sank. The two policemen smirked.
“I suppose you’d better come in, then.” I stepped aside to let them enter.
They were here for hours, going through everything. All my letters and correspondence, of which there is very little. I do not possess an address book for I have no friends. I do not keep a diary for my life is without event—or at least it was until recently. They went through all my sketchbooks and drawings in the studio, seemingly fascinated by my artwork. All the while my mind was racing with fears that this was it, I was going to prison. I was practically holding out my hands for the cuffs to be slapped on me. I found myself thinking about my parents, particularly my mother. The newspapers would relish the fact that a former mayoress’s son had been arrested for immoral practices. I could see the headlines. Not that I’d done anything. I wondered if drawing the male nude was enough to get me. Was art a crime?
I asked if I could telephone a lawyer.
“That won’t be necessary, Mr Read.” There was a note of disappointment in the policeman’s voice.
“We’d suggest you take more care about the company you keep,” the other one said—the first time he’d spoken. They looked at Gore. They told him he was to report to the police station as soon as he had an address. Then they were gone. I sank into a chair and buried my face in my hands. Gore came over and put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged him off. He walked away and I burst into tears. I felt violated, exposed, shamed, intimidated. Which is just what they wanted. I was shaking with fear. I don’t know how long I sat there like that, but when I had regained myself I couldn’t find Gore anywhere. I called his name and his voice came from the bathroom. He was reclining in the bath, nonchalant as anything. I realized at that moment how far apart we were, how different our personalities. This young man had had scrapes with the law his entire life; the previous few hours hadn’t affected him at all. He’d been in prison before. It was all water off a duck’s back to him. He smiled up at me, with that angelic face of his.
“Would you scrub my back?” he said.
After a breakfast I hardly touched (but which he wolfed down), we went looking for lodgings for him. I wanted him out of the house. It suddenly seemed too dangerous, too much for me to deal with, having him here. I braced myself to greet the outside world, and as we left the house my neighbour, Mrs Wardle, a nosy old widow with a creased face, appeared from nowhere, asking if everything was all right. Feigning concern, when what she wanted was gossip. I politely told her everything was fine. She was staring at Gore, taking him in, the quiff, the clothes, the incongruity of him and me. I ignored her and we walked on, leaving her there, gawping.
We found him digs in a house in Hammersmith. I paid the first month’s rent and left him there. I needed to be alone. I boarded a bus to the West End, craving the anonymity of crowds.
I have no explanation for what I did next. Perhaps I needed further humiliation; perhaps I needed some reason to feel so shamed, needed to commit the crime for which I was being pursued. After a couple of hours aimlessly drifting through the busy streets I found myself near a toilet that Gore had told me about in the West End, where men meet for sex. I hadn’t planned to go there, certainly hadn’t the slightest flicker of desire within me, but even as my rational self screamed against such folly I found myself entering it. Nervous as hell, I slipped from the noisy bustle of Oxford Street into this silent cavern.
The place stank of stale urine, a fog of ammonia that stung as I inhaled. The drip, drip, drip of the pipes was like a metronome keeping time to the rhythm of my desire. The place was empty, and as I approached the urinal I nearly turned around and walked out, and oh, how I wish I had.
What stopped me was the sound of another man entering, and I stood there and unzipped, though I had no desire to urinate. I looked around at the other man and our eyes met momentarily. He was young and good-looking. I looked away in panic. He entered a cubicle behind me, and I stood and waited to see what would happen next. I heard noises from within the cubicle, and turned my head, my heart pounding, though of course I could see nothing but a closed door, the engaged sign staring at me like an unblinking eye in a spyhole. There was a flush, and he re-emerged and walked over to the sink and began to wash his hands. Still, I stood there, by now paralysed by fear more than curiosity, my shrunken penis in my hand. Leave, I told myself, leave now. Danger had bristled the hairs on my neck. He walked toward me, I looked around to meet his gaze, and his face, grimacing, startled me. “Are you a pervert?” he demanded.
“Sorry?” I stuttered, near to fainting.
“Are you a fucking pervert? You’ve been standing there for ages. Were you trying to peep at me?”
“No, I’m just having a piss,” I said, nonchalantly, trying to downplay the accent, trying to wrap my tongue around the vernacular so foreign to it, trying to mask my fear.
“You’re a fucking pervert,” he shouted, and I zipped myself up and stepped away from the urinal, trying to get past him, my head faint and my heart racing. He grabbed me and pushed me up against the wall. “I’ve had this problem in here before and I’m sick of it. Fucking queers!”
“I’m not qu—” I protested, but his fist hammered into my stomach and lodged the final syllable there. I doubled up in pain and he walked away. I wanted to cry, but I heard someone else entering so I darted into a cubicle and locked the door. After several unbearable minutes, I flushed and left. I was halfway down Oxford Street, walking toward the Underground, when I realized he was following me. I didn’t know what to do. I turned down back streets, trying to lose him, but he remained on my tail. I emerged into Carnaby Street.
“See this man here,” he started shouting at passers-by, “see this man here, he was peeping at me in the toilet. He’s a pervert.”
My head dizzy, my body sweating, I took another turning, other turnings, not even seeing where I was going, just walking, rapidly, down side streets, fleeing him. I re-emerged onto Oxford Street in time to see two things simultaneously: a policeman, drawn by the commotion this youth was making, and a cab pulling up and two people disembarking. I scrambled in the back of the cab and slammed the door, telling the driver to move. My pursuer was left standing on the pavement, shouting, as the cab pulled away, and I collapsed into a fit of shame and self-hatred such as I had not known for years, cursing myself for my stupidity, feeling as if I didn’t know myself at all any more.
Then I caught the cabbie’s eye in the rear-view mirror, and he gave me a wink and chuckled to himself. I don’t know which incident caused me more shame, the one in the toilet or the complicity he had offered.
“Next time, just give him some money—that usually shuts them up.”
I muttered a perplexed, “Thank you,” and closed my eyes, the terrible scene replaying in my head. I craved the sanctity of my own home, but dreaded going back there, for it offered no haven any longer.
I only now realized that today is my birthday.