Some Trick: Thirteen Stories

I never show my story to Simon. I show my story to Nick [not his real name], who says:

‘Is this about you? Who’s X, one of your boyfriends?’

‘Of course not,’ I say. ‘It’s a variable.’

‘It’s a natural thing to think.’

‘It is not a natural thing to think,’ I say. ‘The whole point is that it could be anybody. It works like a pronoun, only it gives less information, we don’t even know if the character’s M or F.’

‘Of course he’s a guy,’ says Nick. ‘It says so.’

‘It does not say so,’ I say. ‘It says X.’

‘But he’s obviously a guy. All that talk about politics.’

‘Exactly,’ I say. ‘So we see how far the reader goes beyond what’s actually there, you know how much is constructed, so that specifying corporeal properties seems to tell us something we already know.’ It occurs to me that this is a trick with all the conceptual sophistication and avant-gardist chic of The Mysterious Affair at Styles.

‘I still maintain he’s a guy,’ says Nick. ‘And how come he changes from a capital X to a small x at the end? You have to admit that’s deliberately obscure.’

‘It’s not obscure, it’s a totally different variable,’ I say. ‘You might as well say it was confusing to have a character named David and another one called Dave. And you see we never do know what little x is. The dark blue trousers are just trousers — what a great line. And so true.’

‘Hmmm,’ says Nick.