After a while Suzy and Jill were drawn into our conversation. Chitchat mainly about films and books but somehow the talk became serious. Jill said that Lynne Tillman was the best living writer she’d read. Alan observed that ‘best’ wasn’t an appropriate term to apply to literature. Then he began talking about Angus Wilson’s endless and unintentional deconstruction of literary form. According to Alan, by reproducing an apparently banal set of values Wilson was able to illustrate what he was unable to declare – that there were no foundations to knowledge. The gap between what Wilson set out to do, and what he actually did, exposed literary discourse for what it was – a fable without beginning or end that presupposed its own origins in a mythological superiority to other textual forms. Angus Wilson and William McGonagal were the only two writers Alan would recommend without hesitation to anyone who solicited his opinion about what they should read.
I went to the toilet with Jill. She’d overheard Alan telling me earlier that he’d like to get off with her. Jill dared me to undo Alan’s flies and take his cock out, so that she could see it. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We sat back down at the table. Alan was snogging Suzy. He had his hand inside her knickers. I put my hands on his crotch, undid the button fly on his jeans, took his prick out. It was soft and squidgy but quickly hardened in my hand. Jill stroked Alan’s erect tool and it sprang up out of my palm. We giggled, then put the phallus away, I was worried someone outside our little circle might notice I’d taken it out. Jill suggested we go back to her place. We all agreed so Alan bought some carry-out beers and we split.
Jill shared a flat with a girl called Karen. Jill’s flatmate was asleep. We were drunk, still drinking from the carry-out cans. Alan ordered Suzy to have sex with me on the carpet. As I undressed, I told Jill to take Alan’s pants down and give him a blow job. I lay naked on a rug in front of a gas fire, clasped Suzy against my chest. I ran my hands down Suzy’s back. Looked over to the sofa. Alan still had his shirt on but he was naked below the waist. Jill was running her tongue up and down his length. Alan was swigging from a can of lager and looking at me looking at him. I put my hands between Suzy’s legs, she was wet. I fingered her clit, then slid a digit into her cunt. It was warm, it felt familiar, like an old friend. Suzy had an orgasm, then wriggled off my hand and went down on me.
I looked at Alan. He was excited. He removed his cock from Jill’s mouth. He walked over to the fireplace and pulled Suzy’s legs apart. She lifted her head and gasped with pleasure as he entered her. Then she lowered her head and licked my bits. Jill dropped her pants and hitched up her skirt. She walked over to me and sat on my face. I parted her beef curtains with my tongue. She was warm, moist and tasted of hyacinths. An orgasm exploded in the centre of my brain and rippled through my body. I was helpless, happy, falling. I was washing my face in Jill’s moisture. Jill stood up. Alan was still fucking Suzy. Jill pulled Alan from his mount, pushed him face down on the floor, rolled him over. Guided Alan’s erection between her moist lips, then started gyrating.
Karen came through from the bedroom, drowsy with sleep. She’d pulled on a dressing gown but was naked underneath. I told her to sit on Alan’s face. She hesitated. I repeated the command, she did as I said. Suzy was still licking me and I had another orgasm as I watched Karen squat over Alan and then sink down. I was staring at the ceiling, drifting on a sea of words, the pattern in the carpet was reflected in the white paint glistening eight miles above my head. I was half-awake, the alcohol, the sex. I snoozed, woke up. Alan was leaving. I told him to wait until I was dressed. I wanted to go with him.
We walked to the seafront. White foam, gulls whirling above our heads. Down on the beach we couldn’t see the cafés or the esplanade that ran from them to the western edge of the sea defences. The smell of salt. Seaweed that was salt-encrusted. The ocean vast, heaving, amorphous. The white surf, lights of ships bobbing on the waves. White spray, surf, the roar of water forever rising and falling. I pressed a palm against my forehead. I felt all at sea. No longer knew who I was, whether anything separated me from that great mass of work. The ocean, the desert, inside outside, all around. What was I doing? I had to get away from the water. My mind spinning. I was in danger of falling. I mumbled something to Alan. We turned around, climbed up onto the esplanade. Saw that cars were still cruising up and down the strip. The Karens and Garys behind the windscreens were simulating a simulation, out-mything a myth. I found them more seductive than their elusive model, the film American Graffiti.
We trudged towards Union Street. Alan was talking about Erich Fromm again. He’d read through several Fromm books the previous night. They offended him. He’d sell them as soon as he could. Alan ridiculed the treatment of the futurist movement in The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Jibed that Fromm falls behind his own premises. If one is going to use historical methods, then the influence of Bergson’s vitalism must be traced through Sorel to the futurists. Even on his own terms Fromm was mistaken to equate futurism with death. Alan stumbled, resumed his speech, but he’d forgotten about Fromm. He was angrily dismissing what Louis J. Halle had to say in The Ideological Imagination. A terrible book. I couldn’t follow the thread of his argument.
We hit the square at the bottom of Union Street but swung right. I was on automatic pilot as we ambled down King Street. I just wanted to get home, go to sleep. Alan was still with me, was now part of me. I fumbled with the keys. My room needed cleaning. I lay down on the bed. Alan picked up my copy of The Traveller Gypsies by Judith Okely. He read a few pages, snorted derisively, picked up another book. Threw down the novel after reading the first paragraph. Retrieved Okely. Cambridge 1983. I closed my eyes, not sure if I was awake or asleep. Alan spent several hours examining my books.
That night I dreamt I journeyed from London up the A12. Then I was driving through Suffolk along really narrow country roads. Alan had sent me to stay with Dudley, his ventriloquist’s dummy. Dudley made our tea with the things I’d brought from a bakery in Golders Green – begels with cream cheese, then chokla with jam. It reminded me of childhood holidays with my grandparents in London. I’d get to eat chokla as a treat at the weekend, after being made to eat black bread all week. I liked my grandparents and I liked London but I missed the South Coast. Dudley liked coffee, so we drank espresso with the bagels, but I insisted on making a pot of tea to wash down the chokla.
In my dream Dudley was an emaciated version of Alan. I found him very attractive. We hit it off right from the start. We talked about all sorts of things: music, films, books. Later on we went down to the beach. We could see the Sizewell nuclear power station at the end of it. We sat down and watched the waves rolling in as the sun set. We had the beach all to ourselves and although it was warm, I pressed myself against Dudley. Soon we were in each other’s arms, rolling around on the pebbles. It wasn’t long before my jeans were around my ankles and Dudley had his face buried in my cunt. It was incredible lying there, the sound of the ocean pounding in my ears and a vast expanse of thin cloud undulating in a darkening sky.
My cries disturbed some sea birds that had nested down for the night and many screeched angrily as they wheeled up towards the blackening horizon. Dudley was sucking my clit and working two fingers in and out of my hole. I wanted to feel the weight of his body pressing down against me, so I grabbed his ears and yanked hard. Dudley buried himself inside me. I could taste my love juice on his lips as they pressed against mine. Both Dudley and I were going crazy, shattering the peace of the night with our cries. Somehow I managed to tell Dudley not to come inside me. He kept fucking me, slowing down every now and then, until eventually he had to withdraw. I pushed Dudley onto his back, his jeans were still around his ankles, so I knelt to one side of him and ran my tongue up and down his dick. I’d enjoyed gazing up at the clouds, but I could see Dudley was staring at my arse, which was sticking up in the air.
Holding the base of Dudley’s erection with my index finger and thumb, I took his fuck stick in my mouth. Having lubricated him with my saliva, I got a tad cruel. I clenched my teeth and ran them up and down his meat. Dudley squirmed beneath me, unsure about where to draw the dividing line between pleasure and pain. I repeated this trick several times, until the ventriloquist’s dummy began screaming