A Single Man

The Starboard Side has been here since the earliest days of the colony. Its bar, formerly a lunch-counter, served the neighbours with their first post-prohibition beers; and the mirror behind it was sometimes honoured by the reflection of Tom Mix. But its finest hours came later. That summer of 1945! The War as good as over. The blackout no more than an excuse for keeping the lights out at a gangbang. A sign over the bar said, ‘In case of a direct hit, we close immediately’. Which was meant to be funny, of course. And yet, out across the bay, in deep water under the cliffs of Palos Verdes, lay a real Japanese submarine full of real dead Japanese, depth-bombed after they had sunk two of three ships in sight of the Californian coast.

You pushed aside the blackout curtain and elbowed your way through a jam-packed bar-crowd, scarcely able to breathe or see for smoke. Here, in the complete privacy of the din and the crowd, you and your pick-up yelled the preliminary sex-advances at each other. You could flirt but you couldn’t fight; there wasn’t even room to smack someone’s face. For that, you had to step outside. Oh, the bloody battles and the side-walk vomitings! The punches flying wide, the heads crashing backwards against the fenders of parked cars! Huge diesel-dikes slugging it out, grimmer far than the men. The siren-wailing arrival of the police; the sudden swoopings of the shore patrol. Girls dashing down from their apartments to drag some gorgeous endangered young drunk upstairs to safety and breakfast served next morning in bed like a miracle of joy. Hitch-hiking servicemen delayed at this corner for hours, nights, days; proceeding at last on their journeys with black eyes, crablice, clap, and only the dimmest memory of their hostess or host.

And then the War’s end and the mad spree of driving up and down the highway on the instantly derationed gas, shedding great black chunks of your recaps all the way to Malibu. And then the beach-months of 1946. The magic squalor of those hot nights, when the whole shore was alive with tongues of flame, the watch-fires of a vast naked barbarian tribe – each group or pair to itself and bothering no one, yet all a part of the life of the tribal encampment – swimming in the darkness, cooking fish, dancing to the radio, coupling without shame on the sand. George and Jim (who had just met) were out there among them evening after evening, yet not often enough to satisfy the sad fierce appetite of memory, as it looks back hungrily on that glorious Indian summer of lust.

The hitch-hiking servicemen are few now and mostly domesticated; going back and forth between the rocket-base and their homes and wives. Beach-fires are forbidden, except in designated picnic-areas where you must eat sitting up on benches at communal tables, and mustn’t screw at all. But, though so much of the glory has faded, nevertheless – thanks to the persecuted yet undying old gods of disorder – this last block of Las Ondas is still a bad neighbourhood. Respectable people avoid it instinctively. Realtors deplore it. Property values are low, here. The motels are new but cheaply stuck together and already slum-sordid; they cater to one-night stands. And, though the charcoal remnants of those barbarian orgy-fires have long since been ground into the sand, this stretch of the shore is still filthy with trash; high-school gangs still daub huge scandalous words on its beach-wall, and seashells are still less easy to find here than discarded rubbers.

The glory has faded, too, from The Starboard Side; only a true devotee like George can still detect even a last faint gleam of it. The place has been stripped of its dusty marine trophies and yellow group-photographs. Right after the New Year it’s to be what they dare to call redecorated; that’s to say, desecrated in readiness for next summer’s mob of blank-faced strangers. Already there is a new juke-box, and a new television fixed high up on the wall; so you can turn half right, rest your elbows on the bar and go into a cow-daze, watching it. This is what most of the customers are doing as George enters.

He makes unsteadily but purposefully for his favourite little table in the corner, from which the TV screen is invisible. At the table next to him, two other unhypnotized nonconformists, an elderly couple who belong to the last handful of surviving colonists, are practising their way of love; a mild quarrelsome alcoholism which makes it possible for them to live in a play-relationship, like children. You old bag, you old prick, you old bitch, you old bastard; rage without resentment, abuse without venom. This is how it will be for them, till the end. Let’s hope they will never be parted, but die in the same hour of the same night, in their beer-stained bed.

And now George’s eyes move along the bar; stop on a figure seated alone, at the end nearest the door. The young man isn’t watching the TV; indeed he is quite intent upon something he is writing on the back of an envelope. As he writes, he smiles to himself and rubs the side of his large nose with his forefinger. It is Kenny Potter.

At first, George doesn’t move; seems hardly to react at all. But then a slow intent smile parts his lips. He leans forward, watching Kenny with the delight of a naturalist who has identified a rosy finch out of the high sierras on a tree in a city park. After a minute he rises, crosses almost stealthily to the bar and slips on to the stool beside Kenny.

‘Hello, there,’ he says.

Kenny turns quickly, sees who it is, laughs loudly, crumples the envelope and tosses it over the bar into a trash container. ‘Hello, Sir.’

‘What did you do that for?’

‘Oh. Nothing.’

‘I disturbed you. You were writing.’

‘It was nothing. Only a poem.’

‘And now it’s lost to the world!’

‘I’ll remember it. Now I’ve written it down.’

‘Would you say it for me?’

This sends Kenny into convulsions of laughter. ‘It’s crazy. It’s —’ he gulps down his giggles. ‘It’s a – a haiku!’

‘Well, what’s so crazy about a haiku?’

‘I’d have to count the syllables first.’

But Kenny obviously isn’t going to count them now. So George says, ‘I didn’t expect to see you in this neck of the woods. Don’t you live over on the other side of town, near campus?’

‘That’s right. Only sometimes I like to get way away from there.’

‘But imagine your happening to pick on this particular bar!’

‘Oh, that was because one of the kids told me you’re in here a lot.’

‘You mean, you came out here to see me?’ Perhaps George says this a little too eagerly. Anyhow, Kenny shrugs it off with a teasing smile: ‘I thought I’d see what kind of a joint it was.’

‘It’s nothing, now. It used to be quite something, though. And I’ve gotten accustomed to coming here. You see, I live very close.’

‘Camphor Tree Lane?’

‘How in the world did you know that?’

‘Is it supposed to be a secret?’

‘Why no – of course not! I have students come over to see me, now and then. I mean, about their work —’ George is immediately aware that this sounds defensive and guilty as hell. Has Kenny noticed? He is grinning; but then he has been grinning all the time. George adds, rather feebly, ‘You seem to know an awful lot about me and my habits. A lot more than I know about any of you —’

‘There isn’t much to know about us, I guess!’ Kenny gives him a teasing challenging look. ‘What would you like to know about us, Sir?’

‘Oh, I’ll think of something. Give me time. . . . Say, what are you drinking?’

‘Nothing!’ Kenny giggles. ‘He hasn’t even noticed-me yet.’ And, indeed, the bartender is absorbed in a TV wrestling-match.

‘Well, what’ll you have?’

‘What are you having, Sir?’

‘Scotch.’

‘Okay,’ Kenny says, in a tone which suggests that he would have agreed just as readily to buttermilk. George calls the bartender – very loudly, so he can’t pretend not to have heard – and orders. The bartender, always a bit of a bitch, demands to see Kenny’s I.D. So they go through all of that. George says stuffily to the bartender, ‘You ought to know me by this time; do you really think I’d be such an idiot as to try to buy drinks for a minor?’

‘We have to check,’ says the bartender, through a skin inches thick. He turns his back on them and moves away. George feels a brief spurt of powerless rage. He has been made to look like an ass; and in front of Kenny, too.

While they are waiting for the drinks, he asks, ‘How did you get here? In your car?’

‘I don’t have one. Lois drove me.’

‘Where is she now, then?’

‘Gone home, I guess.’

George senses something not quite in order. But, whatever it is, Kenny doesn’t seem worried about it. He adds vaguely, ‘I thought I’d walk around for a while.’

‘But how’ll you get back?’

‘Oh, I’ll manage.’

(A voice inside George says, You could invite him to stay the night at your place. Tell him you’ll drive him back in the morning.

What in hell do you think I am? George asks it.

It was merely a suggestion, says the voice.)

The drinks arrive. George says to Kenny, ‘Look, why don’t we sit over there, at the table in the corner? That damned television keeps catching my eye.’

‘All right.’

It would be fun, George thinks, if the Young were just a little less passive. But that’s too much to ask. You have to play it their way, or not at all. As they take their chairs, facing each other, George says, ‘I’ve still got my pencil sharpener’, and, bringing it out of his pocket, he tosses it down on the table, as though shooting craps.

Kenny laughs, ‘I already lost mine!’

And now an hour, maybe, has passed. And they are both drunk; Kenny fairly, George very. But George is drunk in a good way, and one that he seldom achieves. He tries to describe to himself what this kind of drunkenness is like. Well – to put it very crudely – it’s like Plato; it’s a Dialogue. A dialogue between two people. Yes, but not a Platonic dialogue in the hair-splitting, word-twisting, one-up-to-me sense; not a mock-humble bitching-match; not a debate on some dreary set theme. You can talk about anything and change the subject as often as you like. In fact, what really matters is not what you talk about, but the being together in this particular relationship. George can’t imagine having a dialogue of this kind with a woman, because women can only talk in terms of the personal. A man of his own age would do, if there was some sort of polarity; for instance, if he was a Negro. You and your dialogue-partner have to be somehow opposites. Why? Because you have to be symbolic figures – like, in this case, Youth and Age. Why do you have to be symbolic? Because the dialogue is by its nature impersonal. It’s a symbolic encounter. It doesn’t involve either party personally. That’s why, in a dialogue, you can say absolutely anything. Even the closest confidence, the deadliest secret, comes out objectively as a mere metaphor or illustration, which could never be used against you.

George would like to explain all of this to Kenny. But it is so complicated; and he doesn’t want to run the risk of finding that Kenny can’t understand him. More than anything, he wants Kenny to understand; wants to be able to believe that Kenny knows what this dialogue is all about. And really, at this moment, it seems possible that Kenny does know. George can almost feel the electric field of the dialogue surrounding and irradiating them. He certainly feels irradiated. As for Kenny, he looks quite beautiful. Radiant with rapport is the phrase which George finds to describe him. For what shines out of Kenny isn’t mere intelligence or any kind of switched-on charm. There the two of them sit, smiling at each other – oh, far more than that – fairly beaming with mutual insight.

‘Say something,’ he commands Kenny.

‘Do I have to?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’ll I say?’

‘Anything. Anything that seems to be important, right now.’

‘That’s the trouble. I don’t know what is important and what isn’t. I feel like my head is stopped up with stuff that doesn’t matter – I mean, matter to me.’

‘Such as —’

‘Look, I don’t mean to be personal, Sir – but – well, the stuff our classes are about —’

‘That doesn’t matter to you?’

‘Jesus Christ, Sir – I said I wasn’t being personal! Yours are a whole lot better than most; we all think that. And you do try to make these books fit in with what’s going on, nowadays – only, it’s not your fault, but – we always seem to end up getting bogged down in the Past; like this morning, with Tithonus. Look, I don’t want to pan the Past; maybe it’ll mean a whole lot to me when I’m older. All I’m saying is, the Past doesn’t really matter to most kids my age. When we talk like it does, we’re just being polite. I guess that’s because we don’t have any pasts of our own – except stuff we want to forget, like things in high school, and times we acted like idiots —’

‘Well, fine! I can understand that. You don’t need the Past, yet. You’ve got the Present.’

‘Oh, but the Present’s a real drag! I just despise the Present – I mean, the way it is right now – I mean, tonight’s an exception, of course – What are you laughing at, Sir?’

‘Tonight sí! The Present – no!’ George is getting noisy. Some people at the bar turn their heads. ‘Drink to Tonight!’ He drinks, with a flourish.

‘Tonight – sí!’ Kenny laughs and drinks.

‘Okay,’ says George. ‘The Past – no help! The Present – no good! Granted! But there’s one thing you can’t deny: you’re stuck with the Future. You can’t just sneeze that off.’

‘I guess we are. What’s left of it. There may not be much, with all these rockets —’

‘Death.’

‘Death?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘Come again, Sir. I don’t get you.’

‘I said Death. I said, do you think about Death a lot?’

‘Why, no. Hardly at all. Why?’

‘The Future – that’s where Death is.’

‘Oh – yeah. Yeah – maybe you’ve got a point there.’ Kenny grins. ‘You know something? Maybe the other generations before us used to think about Death a lot more than we do. What I mean is, kids must have gotten mad, thinking how they’d be sent out to some corny war and killed, while their folks stayed home and acted patriotic. But it won’t be like that, any more. We’d all be in this thing together.’

‘You could still get mad at the older people. Because of all those extra years they’ll have had, before they get blown up.’

‘Yes, that’s right, I could, couldn’t I? Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll get mad at you, Sir.’

‘Kenneth —’

‘Sir?’

‘Just as a matter of the purest sociological interest, why do you persist in calling me Sir?’

Kenny grins teasingly. ‘I’ll stop if you want me to.’

‘I didn’t ask you to stop. I asked you why.’

‘Why don’t you like it? None of you do, though, I guess.’

‘You mean, none of us old folks?’ George smiles a no-hard-feelings smile. Nevertheless, he feels that the symbolic relationship is starting to get out of hand. ‘Well, the usual explanation is that we don’t like being reminded —’

Kenny shakes his head decisively. ‘No.’

‘What do you mean, No?’

‘You’re not like that.’

‘Is that supposed to be a compliment?’

‘Maybe. . . . The point is, I like calling you Sir.’

‘You do?’

‘What’s so phoney nowadays is all this familiarity. Pretending there isn’t any difference between people – well, like you were saying about minorities, this morning. If you and I are no different, what do we have to give each other? How can we ever be friends?’

He does understand, George thinks, delighted. ‘But two young people can be friends, surely?’

‘That’s something else again. They can, yes, after a fashion. But there’s always this thing of competition, getting in the way. All young people are kind of competing with each other, do you know that?’

‘Yes, I suppose – unless they’re in love.’

‘Maybe they are, even then. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with —’ Kenny breaks off abruptly. George watches him, expecting to hear some confidence about Lois. But it doesn’t come. For Kenny is obviously following some quite different train of thought. He sits smiling in silence for a few moments and – yes, actually – he is blushing! ‘This sounds as corny as hell, but —’

‘Never mind. Go ahead.’

‘I sometimes wish – I mean, when you read those Victorian novels – I’d have hated living in those days, all except for one thing – Oh, hell – I can’t say it!’ He breaks off, blushing and laughing.

‘Don’t be silly!’

‘When I say it, it’s so corny, it’s the end! But – I’d have liked living when you could call your father Sir.’

‘Is your father alive?’

‘Oh, sure.’

‘Why don’t you call him Sir, then? Some sons do, even nowadays.’

‘Not my father. He isn’t the type. Besides, he isn’t around. He ran out on us, a couple of years ago. . . . Hell!’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘What made me tell you all that? Am I drunk or something?’

‘No more drunk than I am.’

‘I must be stoned.’

‘Look – if it bothers you – let’s forget you told me.’

‘I won’t forget.’

‘Oh yes, you will. You’ll forget if I tell you to forget.’

‘Will I?’

‘You bet you will!’

‘Well, if you say so – okay.’

‘Okay, Sir.’

‘Okay, Sir!’ Kenny suddenly beams. He is really pleased; so pleased that his own pleasure embarrasses him. ‘Say, you know – when I came over here – I mean, when I thought I might just happen to run into you this evening – there was something I wanted to ask you. I just remembered what it was —’ He downs the rest of his drink in one long swallow. ‘It’s about experience. They keep telling you, when you’re older, you’ll have experience – and that’s supposed to be so great. What would you say about that, Sir? Is it really any use, would you say?’

‘What kind of experience?’

‘Well – places you’ve been to, people you’ve met. Situations you’ve been through already, so you know how to handle them when they come up again. All that stuff that’s supposed to make you wise, in your later years.’

‘Let me tell you something, Kenny. For other people, I can’t speak – but, personally, I haven’t gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I’ve been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, here it is again. But that doesn’t seem to help me. In my opinion, I personally have gotten steadily sillier and sillier and sillier – and that’s a fact.’

‘No kidding, Sir? You can’t mean that! You mean, sillier than when you were young?’

‘Much, much sillier.’

‘I’ll be darned. . . . Then experience is no use at all? You’re saying it might just as well not have happened?’

‘No. I’m not saying that. I only mean, you can’t use it. But if you don’t try to – if you just realise it’s there and you’ve got it – then it can be kind of marvellous —’

‘Let’s go swimming,’ says Kenny abruptly, as if bored by the whole conversation.

‘All right.’

Kenny throws his head right back and laughs wildly. ‘Oh – that’s terrific!’

‘What’s terrific?’

‘It was a test. I thought you were bluffing, about being silly. So I said to myself, I’ll suggest doing something wild, and if he objects – if he even hesitates – then I’ll know it was all a bluff. . . . You don’t mind my telling you that, do you, Sir?’

‘Why should I?’

‘Oh, that’s terrific!’

‘Well, I’m not bluffing – so what are we waiting for? You weren’t bluffing, were you?’

‘Hell, no!’

They jump up, pay, run out of the bar and across the highway and Kenny vaults the railing and drops down, about eight feet, on to the beach. George, meanwhile, is clambering over the rail, a bit stiffly. Kenny looks up, his face still lit by the boardwalk lamps: ‘Put your feet on my shoulders, Sir.’ George does so, drunk-trustful, and Kenny, with the deftness of a ballet-dancer, supports him by ankles and calves, lowering him almost instantly to the sand. During the descent, their bodies rub against each other, briefly but roughly. The electric field of the dialogue is broken. Their relationship, whatever it now is, is no longer symbolic. They turn and begin to run toward the ocean.

Already, the lights seem far, far behind. They are bright but they cast no beams; perhaps they are shining on a layer of high fog. The waves ahead are barely visible. Their blackness is immensely cold and wet. Kenny is tearing off his clothes with wild whooping cries. The last remaining minim of George’s caution is aware of the lights and the possibility of cruise-cars and cops, but he doesn’t hesitate, he is no longer able to; this dash from the bar can only end in the water. He strips himself clumsily, tripping over his pants. Kenny, stark naked now, has plunged and is wading straight in, like a fearless native warrior, to attack the waves. The undertow is very strong. George flounders for a while in a surge of stones. As he finally struggles through and feels sand under his feet, Kenny comes body-surfing out of the night and shoots past him without a glance; a water-creature absorbed in its element.

As for George, these waves are much too big for him. They seem truly tremendous, towering up, blackness unrolling itself out of blackness, mysteriously and awfully sparkling, then curling over in a thundering slap of foam which is sparked with phosphorus. George has sparks of it all over his body, and he laughs with delight to find himself bejewelled. Laughing, gasping, choking, he is too drunk to be afraid; the salt water he swallows seems as intoxicating as whisky. From time to time, he catches tremendous glimpses of Kenny, arrowing down some toppling foam-precipice. Then, intent upon his own rites of purification, George staggers out once more, wide-open-armed, to receive the stunning baptism of the surf. Giving himself to it utterly, he washes away thought, speech, mood, desire, whole selves, entire lifetimes; again and again he returns, becoming always cleaner, freer, less. He is perfectly happy by himself; it’s enough to know that Kenny and he are the sole sharers of the element. The waves and the night and the noise exist only for their play. Meanwhile, no more than two hundred yards distant, the lights shine from the shore and the cars flick past up and down the highway, flashing their long beams. On the dark hillsides you can see lamps in the windows of dry homes, where the dry are going dryly to their dry beds. But George and Kenny are refugees from dryness; they have escaped across the border into the water-world, leaving their clothes behind them for a customs fee.

And now, suddenly, here is a great, an apocalyptically great wave, and George is way out, almost out of his depth, standing naked and tiny before its presence, under the lip of its roaring upheaval and the towering menace of its fall. He tries to dive through it – even now he feels no real fear – but instead he is caught and picked up, turned over and over and over, flapping and kicking toward a surface which may be either up or down or sideways, he no longer knows.

And now Kenny is dragging him out, groggy-legged. Kenny’s hands are under George’s armpits and he is laughing and saying like a Nanny, ‘That’s enough for now!’ And George, still water-drunk, gasps, ‘I’m all right,’ and wants to go straight back into the water. But Kenny says, ‘Well, I’m not – I’m cold,’ and Nanny-like he towels George, with his own shirt, not George’s, until George stops him because his back is sore. The Nanny-relationship is so convincing, at this moment, that George feels he could curl up and fall immediately asleep right here, shrunk to child-size within the safety of Kenny’s bigness. Kenny’s body seems to have grown gigantic since they left the water. Everything about him is larger than life; the white teeth of his grin, the wide dripping shoulders, the tall slim torso with its heavy-hung sex, and the long legs, now beginning to shiver.

‘Can we go back to your place, Sir?’ he asks.

‘Sure. Where else?’

‘Where else?’ Kenny repeats, seeming to find this very amusing. He picks up his clothes and turns, still naked, toward the highway and the lights.

‘Are you crazy?’ George shouts after him.

‘What’s the matter?’ Kenny looks back, grinning.

‘You’re going to walk home like that? Are you crazy? They’d call the cops!’

Kenny shrugs his shoulders good-humouredly. ‘Nobody would have seen us. We’re invisible – didn’t you know?’

But he gets into his clothes, now, and George does likewise. As they start up the beach again, Kenny puts his arm around George’s shoulder. ‘You know something, Sir? They ought not to let you out on your own, ever. You’re liable to get into real trouble.’

Their walk home sobers George quite a lot. By the time they reach the house, he no longer sees the two of them as wild water-creatures but as an elderly professor with wet hair bringing home an exceedingly wet student in the middle of the night. George becomes self-conscious and almost curt. ‘The bathroom’s upstairs. I’ll get you some towels —’

Kenny reacts to the formality at once. ‘Aren’t you taking a shower too, Sir?’ he asks, in a deferential, slightly disappointed tone.

‘I can do that later. . . . I wish I had some clothes your size to lend you. You’ll have to wrap up in a blanket, while we dry your things on the heater. It’s rather a slow process, I’m afraid, but that’s the best we can do —’

‘Look, Sir – I don’t want to be a nuisance. Why don’t I go now?’

‘Don’t be an idiot. You’d get pneumonia.’

‘My clothes’ll dry on me. I’ll be all right.’

‘Nonsense! Come on up and I’ll show you where everything is.’

George’s refusal to let him leave appears to have pleased Kenny. At any rate, he makes a terrific noise in the shower, not so much singing as a series of shouts. He is probably waking up the neighbours, George thinks, but who cares? George’s spirits are up again; he feels excited, amused, alive. In his bedroom, he undresses quickly, gets into his thick white terrycloth bathrobe, hurries downstairs again, puts on the kettle and fixes some tuna fish and tomato sandwiches on rye. They are all ready set out on a tray in the living-room when Kenny comes down, wearing the blanket awkwardly, saved-from-shipwreck style.

Kenny doesn’t want coffee or tea; he would rather have beer, he says. So George gets him a can from the icebox, and unwisely pours himself a biggish Scotch. He returns to find Kenny looking around the room as though it fascinates him.

‘You live here all by yourself, Sir?’

‘Yes,’ says George; and adds with a shade of irony, ‘Does that surprise you?’

‘No. One of the kids said he thought you did.’

‘As a matter of fact, I used to share this place with a friend.’

But Kenny shows no curiosity about the friend. ‘You don’t even have a cat or a dog or anything?’

‘You think I should?’ George asks, a bit aggressive. The poor old guy doesn’t have anything to love, he thinks Kenny is thinking.

‘Hell, no! Didn’t Baudelaire say they’re liable to turn into demons and take over your life?’

‘Something like that. . . . This friend of mine had lots of animals, though, and they didn’t seem to take us over. . . . Of course, it’s different when there’s two of you. We often used to agree that neither one of, us would want to keep on the animals if the other wasn’t there —’

No. Kenny is absolutely not curious about any of this. Indeed, he is concentrating on taking a huge bite out of his sandwich. So George asks him, ‘Is it all right?’

‘I’ll say!’ He grins at George with his mouth full, then swallows and adds, ‘You know something, Sir? I believe you’ve discovered the secret of the perfect life!’

‘I have?’ George has just gulped nearly a quarter of his Scotch, to drown out a spasm which started when he talked about Jim and the animals. Now he feels the alcohol coming back on him with a rush. It is exhilarating, but it is coming much too fast.

‘You don’t realise how many kids my age just dream about the kind of set-up you’ve got here. I mean, what more can you want? I mean, you don’t have to take orders from anybody. You can do any crazy thing that comes into your head.’

‘And that’s your idea of the perfect life?’

‘Sure it is!’

‘Honestly?’

‘What’s the matter, Sir? Don’t you believe me?’

‘What I don’t quite understand is, if you’re so keen on living alone – how does Lois fit in?’

‘Lois? What’s she got to do with it?’

‘Now, look, Kenny – I don’t mean to be nosey – but, rightly or wrongly, I got the idea that you and she might be, well, considering —’

‘Getting married? No. That’s out.’

‘Oh —?’

‘She says she won’t marry a Caucasian. She says she can’t take people in this country seriously. She doesn’t feel anything we do here means anything. She wants to go back to Japan and teach.’

‘She’s an American citizen, isn’t she?’

‘Oh, sure. She’s a Nisei. But, just the same, she and her whole family got shipped up to one of those internment camps in the sierras, right after the War began. Her father had to sell his business for peanuts, give it away practically, to some sharks who were grabbing all the Japanese property, and talking big about avenging Pearl Harbor! Lois was only a small kid, then, but you can’t expect anyone to forget a thing like that. She says they were all treated as enemy aliens; no one even gave a damn which side they were on. She says the Negroes were the only ones who acted decently to them. And a few pacifists. Christ, she certainly has the right to hate our guts! Not that she does, actually. She always seems to be able to see the funny side of things —’

‘And how do you feel about her?’

‘Oh, I like her a lot.’

‘And she likes you, doesn’t she?’

‘I guess so. Yes, she does. A lot.’

‘But don’t you want to marry her?’

‘Oh sure. I guess so. If she were to change her attitude. But I doubt if she will. And, anyhow, I’m in no rush about marrying anyone. There’s a lot of things I want to do, first —’ Kenny pauses, regarding George with his most teasing, penetrating grin. ‘You know what I think, Sir?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I don’t believe you’re that much interested, whether I marry Lois or not. I think you want to ask me something different. Only you’re not sure how I’ll take it —’

‘What do I want to ask you?’

This is getting positively flirty, on both sides. Kenny’s blanket, under the relaxing influence of the talk and beer, has slipped, baring an arm and a shoulder and turning itself into a classical Greek garment, the chlamys worn by a young disciple – the favourite, surely – of some philosopher. At this moment, he is utterly, dangerously charming.

‘You want to know if Lois and I – if we make out together.’

‘Well, do you?’

Kenny laughs triumphantly. ‘So I was right!’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. . . . Do you?’

‘We did, once.’

‘Why only once?’

‘It wasn’t so long ago. We went to a motel. It’s down the beach, as a matter of fact, quite near here.’

‘Is that why you drove out here tonight?’

‘Yes – partly. I was trying to talk her into going there again.’

‘And that’s what the argument was about?’

‘Who says we had an argument?’

‘You left her to drive home alone, didn’t you?’

‘Oh well, that was because. . . . No, you’re right – she didn’t want to – she hated that motel the first time, and I don’t blame her. The office and the desk-clerk and the register; all that stuff they put you through. And of course they know damn well what the score is. . . . It all makes the thing much too important, and corny, like some big sin or something. And the way they look at you! Girls mind all that much more than we do —’

‘So now she’s called the whole thing off?’

‘Hell, no, it’s not that bad! It’s not that she’s against it, you understand. Not on principle. In fact, she’s definitely – well, anyhow. . . . I guess we can work something out. We’ll have to see —’

‘You mean, maybe you can find some place that isn’t so public and embarrassing?’

‘That’d be a big help, certainly —’ Kenny grins, yawns, stretches himself. The chlamys slips off his other shoulder. He pulls it back over both shoulders as he rises, turning it into a blanket again and himself into a gawky twentieth-century American boy comically stranded without his clothes. ‘Look, Sir, it’s getting as late as all hell. I have to be going.’

‘Where, may I ask?’

‘Why, back across town.’

‘In what?’

‘I can get a bus, can’t I?’

‘They won’t start running for another two hours, at least.’

‘Just the same —’

‘Why don’t you stay here? Tomorrow I’ll drive you.’

‘I don’t think I —’

‘If you start wandering around this neighbourhood in the dark, now the bars are shut, the police will stop you and ask what you’re doing. And you aren’t exactly sober, if you don’t mind my saying so. They might even take you in.’

‘Honestly, Sir, I’ll be all right.’

‘I think you’re out of your mind. However, we’ll discuss that in a minute. . . . First – sit down. I’ve got something I want to tell you.’

Kenny sits down obediently, without further protest. Perhaps he is curious to know what George’s next move will be.

‘Now listen to this very carefully. I am about to make a simple statement of fact. Or facts. No comment is required from you. If you like, you can decide that this doesn’t concern you at all. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘There’s a woman I know who lives here; a very close friend of mine. We have supper together at least one day a week; often more than that. Matter of fact, we had supper tonight. Now – it never makes any difference to her, which day I pick. So what I’ve decided is this – and, mind, it has nothing whatsoever to do with you, necessarily – from now on, I shall go to her place for supper each week on the same night. Invariably, on the same night. Tonight, that is. . . . Is that much clear? No, don’t answer. Go right on listening, because I’m just coming to the point. . . . These nights, when I have supper with my friend, I shall never, under any circumstances, return here before midnight. Is that clear? No – listen! This house is never locked, because anyone could get into it, anyway, just by breaking a panel in the glass door. Upstairs, in my study, you must have noticed that there’s a couch bed? I keep it made up with clean sheets on it, just on the once-in-a-blue-moon chance that I’ll get an unexpected guest – such as you are going to be tonight, for instance. . . . No – listen carefully! If that bed were ever used while I was out, and straightened up afterwards, I’d never be any the wiser. And if my cleaning-woman were to notice anything, she’d merely put the sheets out to go to the laundry; she’d suppose I’d had a guest and forgotten to tell her. . . . All right! I’ve made a decision and now I’ve told you about it. Just as I might tell you I’d decided to water the garden on a certain day of the week. I have also told you a few facts about this house. You can make a note of them. Or you can forget them. That’s all—’

George looks straight at Kenny. Kenny smiles back at him faintly. But he is – yes, just a little bit – embarrassed.

‘And now get me another drink.’

‘Okay, Sir.’ Kenny rises from his chair with noticeable eagerness, as if glad of this breaking of tension. He picks up George’s glass and goes into the kitchen. George calls after him, ‘And get yourself one, too!’

Kenny puts his head around the corner, grinning. ‘Is that an order, Sir?’

‘You’re damn right it is!’

‘I suppose you’ve decided I’m a dirty old man?’

While Kenny was getting the drinks from the kitchen, George has felt himself entering a new phase. Now, as Kenny takes his seat again, he is, though he cannot have realised it yet, in the presence of a George transformed; a formidable George, who articulates thickly but clearly, with a menace behind his words. An inquisitorial George, seated in judgment and perhaps about to pronounce sentence. An oracular George, who may shortly begin to speak with tongues.

This isn’t at all like their drunkenness at The Starboard Side. Kenny and he are no longer in the symbolic dialogue-relationship; this new phase of communication is very much person-to-person. Yet, paradoxically, Kenny seems farther away, not closer; he has receded far beyond the possible limits of an electric field. Indeed, it is only now and then that George can see him clearly, for the room has become dazzlingly bright and Kenny’s face keeps fading into the brightness. Also, there is a loud buzzing in George’s ears; so loud that he can’t be certain if Kenny answered his question or not.

‘You needn’t say anything,’ George tells Kenny (thus dealing with either possibility), ‘because I admit it – Oh, hell, yes – of course I admit it – I am a dirty old man. Ninety-nine per cent of all old men are dirty. That is, if you want to talk that language. If you insist on that kind of dreariness. I’m not protesting against what you choose to call me or don’t. I’m protesting against an attitude – and I’m only doing that for your sake, not mine —

‘Look – things are quite bad enough anyhow, nowadays – we’re in quite enough of a mess, semantically and every other way – without getting ourselves entangled in these dreary categories. I mean, what is this life of ours supposed to be for? Are we to spend it identifying each other with catalogues, like tourists in an art gallery? Or are we to try to exchange some kind of a signal, however garbled, before it’s too late? You answer me that —!

‘It’s all very fine and easy for you young things to come to me on campus and tell me I’m cagey. Merciful Christ – cagey! Don’t you even know better than that? Don’t you have a glimmering of how I must feel – longing to speak?

‘You asked me about experience. So I told you. Experience isn’t any use. And yet, in quite another way, it might be. If only we weren’t all such miserable fools and prudes and cowards. Yes, you too, my boy. And don’t you dare deny it! What I said just now, about the bed in the study – that shocked you. Because you were determined to be shocked. You utterly refused to understand my motives. Oh God, don’t you see? That bed – what that bed means – that’s what experience is —!

‘Oh well, I’m not blaming you. It’d be a miracle if you did understand. Never mind. Forget it. Here am I. Here are you – in that damned blanket; why don’t you take it right off, for Christ’s sake? What made me say that? I suppose you’re going to misunderstand that, too? Well, if you do, I don’t give a damn. The point is – here am I and here are you – and for once there’s no one to disturb us. This may never happen again. I mean that literally! And the time is desperately short. All right, let’s put the cards on the table. Why are you here in this room at this moment? Because you want me to tell you something! That’s the true reason you came all the way across town tonight. You may have honestly believed it was to get Lois in bed with you. Mind you, I’m not saying one word against her. She’s a truly beautiful angel. But you can’t fool a dirty old man; he isn’t sentimental about Young Love; he knows just how much it’s worth – a great deal, but not everything. No, my dear Kenneth – you came here this evening to see me; whether you realised it or not. Some part of you knew quite well that Lois would refuse to go to that motel again; and that that would give you an excuse to send her home and get yourself stranded out here. I expect that poor girl is feeling terrible about it all, right now, and crying into her pillow. You must be very sweet to her when you see her again —

‘But I’m getting off the point. The point is, you came to ask me about something that really is important. So why be ashamed and deny it? You see, I know you through and through. I know exactly what you want. You want me to tell you what I know —

‘Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, believe me – there’s nothing I’d rather do! I want like hell to tell you. But I can’t. I quite literally can’t. Because, don’t you see, what I know is what I am? And I can’t tell you that. You have to find it out for yourself. I’m like a book you have to read. A book can’t read itself to you. It doesn’t even know what it’s about. I don’t know what I’m about —

‘You could know what I’m about. You could. But you can’t be bothered to. Look – you’re the only boy I ever met on that campus I really believe could. That’s what makes it so tragically futile. Instead of trying to know, you commit the inexcusable triviality of saying he’s a dirty old man, and turning this evening, which might be the most precious and unforgettable of your young life, into a flirtation! You don’t like that word, do you? But it’s the word. It’s the enormous tragedy of everything nowadays. Flirtation. Flirtation instead of fucking, if you’ll pardon my coarseness. All any of you ever do is flirt, and wear your blankets off one shoulder, and complain about motels. And miss the one thing that might really – and, Kenneth, I do not say this casually – transform your entire life —

For a moment, Kenny’s face is quite distinct. It grins, dazzlingly. Then his grin breaks up, is refracted, or whatever you call it, into rainbows of light. The rainbows blaze. George is blinded by them. He shuts his eyes. And now the buzzing in his ears is the roar of Niagara.

Half an hour – an hour, later – not long, anyway – George blinks and is awake.

Night, still. Dark. Warm. Bed. Am in bed! He jerks up, propped on his elbow. Clicks on the bedside lamp. His hand does this; arm in sleeve; pyjama sleeve. Am in pyjamas! Why? How?

Where is he?

George staggers out of bed, dizzy, a bit sickish, startled wide awake. Ready to lurch into the front room. No – wait. Here’s paper propped against lamp:

George sits on the bed, reading this. Then, with slight impatience, like a general who has just glanced through an unimportant dispatch, he lets the paper slide to the floor, stands up, goes into the bathroom, empties his bladder, doesn’t glance in the mirror, doesn’t even turn on the light, returns to bed, gets in, switches off bed-lamp.

Little teaser, his mind says, but without the least resentment. Just as well he didn’t stay.

But, as he lies on his back in the dark, there is something that keeps him from sleep; a tickle in the blood and the nerves of the groin. The alcohol itches in him, down there.

Lying in the dark, he conjures up Kenny and Lois in their car, makes them drive into Camphor Tree Lane, park further down the street, in case a neighbour should be watching – hurry discreetly across the bridge, get the door open – it sticks, she giggles – bump against the living-room furniture – a tiny Japanese cry of alarm – tiptoe upstairs without turning on the lights —

No – it won’t work. George tries several times, but he just cannot make Lois go up those stairs. Each time he starts her up them, she dematerialises, as it were. (And now he knows, with absolute certainty, that Kenny will never be able to persuade her even to enter this house.)

But the play has begun, now, and George isn’t about to stop it. Kenny must be provided with a partner. So George turns Lois into the sexy little gold cat, the Mexican tennis player. No trouble about getting him upstairs! He and Kenny are together in the front room, now. George hears a belt drop to the floor. They are stripping themselves naked.

The blood throbs deep down in George’s groin. The flesh stirs and swells up, suddenly hard hot. The pyjamas are pulled off, tossed out of bed.

George hears Kenny whisper to the Mexican, Come on, kid!Making himself invisible, he enters the front room. He finds the two of them just about to lie down together —

No. That won’t work, either. George doesn’t like Kenny’s attitude. He isn’t taking his lust seriously; in fact, he seems to be on the verge of giggles. Quick – we need a substitute! George hastily turns Kenny into the big blond boy from the tennis court. Oh, much better! Perfect! Now they can embrace. Now the fierce hot animal play can begin. George hovers, above them, watching; then he begins passing in and out of their writhing, panting bodies. He is either. He is both at once. Ah – it is so good! Ah – ah —!

You old idiot, George’s mind says. But he is not ashamed of himself. He speaks to the now slack and sweating body with tolerant good humour, as if to an old greedy dog which has just gobbled down a chunk of meat far bigger than it really wanted. Well, maybe you’ll let us sleep, now? His hand feels for a handkerchief from under the pillow, wipes his belly dry.

As sleep begins to wash lightly over him, he asks himself: Shall I mind meeting Kenny’s eye in class on Monday?

No. Not a bit. Even if he has told Lois (which I doubt): I undressed him, I put him to bed, he was drunk as a skunk. For then he will have told her about the swimming, too. You should have seen him in that water – as crazy as a kid! They ought not to let you out on your own, I said to him.

George smiles to himself, with entire self-satisfaction. Yes, I am crazy, he thinks. That is my secret; my strength.

And I’m about to get much crazier, he announces. Just watch me, all of you! Do you know what – I’m flying to Mexico for Christmas! You dare me to? I’ll make reservations first thing in the morning!

He falls asleep, still smiling.

Partial surfacings, after this. Partial emergings, just barely breaking the sheeted calm of the water. Most of George remaining submerged in sleep.

Just barely awash, the brain inside its skull on the pillow cognises darkly; not in its daytime manner. It is incapable of decision, now. But, perhaps for this very reason, it can become aware, in this state, of certain decisions apparently not yet made. Decisions that are like codicils which have been secretly signed and witnessed and put away in a most private place, to await the hour of their execution.

Daytime George may even question the maker of these decisions; but he will not be allowed to remember its answers in the morning.

What if Kenny has been scared off? What if he doesn’t come back?

Let him stay away. George doesn’t need him, or any of these kids. He isn’t looking for a son.

What if Charlotte goes back to England?

He can do without her, if he must. He doesn’t need a sister.

Will George go back to England?

No. He will stay here.

Because of Jim?

No. Jim is in the Past, now. He is of no use to George, any more.

But George remembers him so faithfully.

George makes himself remember. He is afraid of forgetting. Jim is my life, he says. But he will have to forget, if he wants to go on living. Jim is Death.

Then why will George stay here?

This is where he found Jim. He believes he will find another Jim here. He doesn’t know it, but he has started looking already.

Why does George believe he will find him?

He only knows that he must find him. He believes he will because he must.

But George is getting old. Won’t it very soon be too late?

Never use those words to George. He won’t listen. He daren’t listen. Damn the Future. Let Kenny and the kids have it. Let Charley keep the Past. George clings only to Now. It is Now that he must find another Jim. Now that he must love. Now that he must live —

Meanwhile, here we have this body known as George’s body, asleep on this bed and snoring quite loud. The dampness of the ocean air affects its sinuses; and anyhow it snores extra loud after drinking. Jim used to kick it awake, turn it over on its side, sometimes get out of bed in a fury and go to sleep in the front room.

But is all of George altogether present here?

Up the coast a few miles north, in a lava reef under the cliffs, there are a lot of rock pools. You can visit them when the tide is out. Each pool is separate and different, and you can, if you are fanciful, give them names – such as George, Charlotte, Kenny, Mrs Strunk. Just as George and the others are thought of, for convenience, as individual entities, so you may think of a rock pool as an entity; though, of course, it is not. The waters of its consciousness – so to speak – are swarming with hunted anxieties, grim-jawed greeds, dartingly vivid intuitions, old crusty-shelled rock-gripping obstinacies, deep-down sparkling undiscovered secrets, ominous protean organisms motioning mysteriously, perhaps warningly, toward the surface light. How can such a variety of creatures coexist at all? Because they have to. The rocks of the pool hold their world together. And, throughout the day of the ebb tide, they know no other.

But that long day ends at last; yields to the night-time of the flood. And, just as the waters of the ocean come flooding, darkening over the pools, so over George and the others in sleep come the waters of that other ocean; that consciousness which is no one in particular but which contains everyone and everything, past, present and future, and extends unbroken beyond the uttermost stars. We may surely suppose that, in the darkness of the full flood, some of these creatures are lifted from their pools to drift far out over the deep waters. But do they ever bring back, when the daytime of the ebb returns, any kind of catch with them? Can they tell us, in any manner, about their journey? Is there, indeed, anything for them to tell – except that the waters of the ocean are not really other than the waters of the pool?

Within this body on the bed, the great pump works on and on, needing no rest. All over this quietly pulsating vehicle, the skeleton crew make their tiny adjustments. As for what goes on topside, they know nothing of this but danger-signals, false alarms mostly; red lights flashed from the panicky brain-stem, curtly contradicted by green all-clears from the level-headed cortex. But now the controls are on automatic. The cortex is drowsing; the brain-stem registers only an occasional nightmare. Everything seems set for a routine run, from here to morning. The odds are enormously against any kind of accident. The safety-record of this vehicle is outstanding.

Just let us suppose, however —

Let us take the particular instant, years ago, when George walked into The Starboard Side and set eyes for the first time on Jim, not yet demobilised and looking stunning beyond words in his Navy uniform. Let us then suppose that, at that same instant, deep down in one of the major branches of George’s coronary artery, an unimaginably gradual process began. Somehow – no doctor can tell us exactly why – the inner lining begins to become roughened. And, one by one, on the roughened surface of the smooth endothelium, ions of calcium, carried by the bloodstream, begin to be deposited. . . . Thus, slowly, invisibly, with the utmost discretion and without the slightest hint to those old fussers in the brain, an almost indecently melodramatic situation is contrived: the formation of the atheromatous plaque.

Let us suppose this, merely. (The body on the bed is still snoring.) This thing is wildly improbable. You could bet thousands of dollars against its happening, tonight or any night. And yet it could, quite possibly, be about to happen – within the next five minutes.

Very well – let us suppose that this is the night, and the hour, and the appointed minute.

Now —

The body on the bed stirs slightly, perhaps; but it does not cry out, does not wake. It shows no outward sign of the instant, annihilating shock. Cortex and brain-stem are murdered in the blackout with the speed of an Indian strangler. Throttled out of its oxygen, the heart clenches and stops. The lungs go dead, their power-line cut. All over the body, the arterials contract. Had this blockage not been absolute, had the occlusion occurred in one of the smaller branches of the artery, the skeleton crew could have dealt with it; they are capable of engineering miracles. Given time, they could have rigged up bypasses, channelled out new collateral communications, sealed off the damaged area with a scar. But there is no time at all. They die without warning at their posts.

For a few minutes, maybe, life lingers in the tissues of some outlying regions of the body. Then, one by one, the lights go out and there is total blackness. And if some part of the non-entity we called George has indeed been absent at this moment of terminal shock, away out there on the deep waters, then it will return to find itself homeless. For it can associate no longer with what lies here, unsnoring, on the bed. This is now cousin to the garbage in the container on the back porch. Both will have to be carted away and disposed of, before too long.