Fools for Lust (14 page)

Dear Alison,

Last fall, two CD tributes to Kris Kristofferson were released at almost the same time on different small labels. Both featured a motley assortment of country and Americana artists with their interpretations of, mostly, the same classic songs. It reminded me that I first came across Kristofferson as an actor in a much underrated film called
Cisco Pike
, which also featured his music, if my memory serves me right. And all these years later, I'm no longer even sure of that. Suffice to say, I loved the man and his music and, notwithstanding the fact than I am a junkie music consumer, naturally had to buy both the CDs.

The opening track on
Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down
is a version of a rather obscure KK song called
The Hawk
by Tom Verlaine. Tom Verlaine used to be the voice and main guitar player (Richard Lloyd was the other) in neo-punk group Television, whose
Marquee Moon
has ruled many of my air guitar daydreams ever since. Sadly one hears very little of Verlaine these days (and the same goes for Kris Kristofferson too).

I'm just recovering from a serious bout of gastric flu and had been laid low by the bug for almost a week, losing a stone or so along with my appetite and much of my energy. Not that I'm using this as an excuse for not having submitted the ‘erotic fruit' story I had promised you a month ago. To cut a long story short, my mood had been so low I had barely been able to listen to music during my illness, let alone write, work or concentrate much on anything bar reading entertainment magazines or feeling nauseous at the sheer thought of food.

Tom Verlaine's mournful voice is an acquired taste, even for me such a fan of melancholy notes in Leonard Cohen and other singers but his guitar playing is something else. And listening to this song which opens the tribute CD awakened me to life again. Such is the power of music. The barely there, hesitant vocals underpinned by crystal-like, ever-so-slow guitar arpeggios with a beauty and an economy I just cannot describe but that went right through to my still cramping gut and somehow gave me hope again that one day, in a story or a future book, I could attain just such beauty, such epiphany. Verlaine's guitar, Carla Torgerson of the Walkabouts' voice, sometimes Springsteen at his saddest. Oh yes, Alison, there is redemption in this world. Bliss.

But no story about fruit, I fear.

I had an idea when I wrote you last, but somehow it didn't gel. Did I ever warn you that I'm actually not that good writing on a particular theme, even if I've edited quite a few books of the kind myself (but the eager literary detective will quickly establish the fact those are usually the ones in which I don't force feed a story of my own)? Oh, I know the reason well, mind you. On the one hand, I'm not that disciplined enough; on the other, it's just that I don't have much imagination actually. For years now, much of my fiction has been about myself, under various guises, costumes, incarnations, alter egos and assorted subterfuges which I'm deeply convinced so many people can see right through and when I completed my last novel (blandly lying to questions and interviews that it was in fact my least autobiographical when in fact it was anything but; ah, aren't postmodernism and metafiction wonderful alibis?). I firmly decided that it would represent the end of that era and that my next book would be a total work of the imagination. After all, what with my imperfect life and the risks I've been taking for too many years now, surely one day my wife and others would begin to read through the lines better and realise there was no smoke without fire and all that.

And, having resolved to change my bad pseudo-confessional habits, I promptly conjured up a great title for the new book which I pitched to my publisher and now he has it scheduled, and I still have no idea whatsoever what the novel is going to be about (but, yes, it is going to be different from my previous ones; has to be) and I sit here paralysed and unable to settle on an opening line. I'd hoped writing this little story you'd asked for would unblock me. I really did. But, fruit? As unoriginal as I usually am, I just can't descend to the obvious level of bananas and cucumbers, surely? Although I'm sure many of your other contributors will (and no doubt admirably transcend the innate vulgarity of the fruit in question). You see, I've only used fruit in a sexual context once. And, for a damn change, I'm now reluctant to tell the story. In a way, I've betrayed so many women I've been with, had sex with, fucked, used, whatever terminology you prefer to use, in my writing already that you'd reckon one final indiscretion now would make no difference. But something in me wants to turn a new leaf. I really do.

KC, when she read the stories in which I featured her, sent me a sad note accusing me of describing her, her sublime white body, her face, her cunt, her slightly out-of-kilter teeth, her heartbreaking small smile, like meat. I was shocked. All I had been trying to do at the time was evoke the sheer beauty of her, of my love for her, even if it was adulterous (and maybe engineer her return through the magic of my feelings transmuted into words; little did I know that the randomness of the alphabet just has no power to awaken feelings anew).

I should have learnt my lesson there and then.

But did I ever say I was wise? In fact, I sometimes feel that I grow more foolish as I grow older.

I'm drawn to risk, to other women, to sex. They're just there, you see. Sometimes just out of reach of course but at other times I somehow do find the right repartee, wry smile and I plunge headlong into yet another affair. Sometimes at night, I rationalise that maybe what I am really seeking is the blinding nova that was KC in my life, but I'm kidding myself. They have all been so different from her. Dark-haired, auburn, ash-blonde, every colour under the sun that she was not. Every shape and taste other than hers. Maybe I don't even remember the name of every woman I've been with since then, but I do recall the varied hotel rooms and the mechanics, the ballet of sex, the moans, the fears, the sighs and breaths taken. And ... oh, the eyes when she peers in your soul as she comes, your cock still embedded inside her or your tongue or teeth on her clitoral jewel ...

New York: Algonquin, Iroquois, Gershwin, Washington Square hotels. Paris: St Thomas d' Aquin, Bersolys, de l'Odeon, des Ecoles. Sète: Grand Hotel. New Orleans: Burgundy, St Pierre, Sheraton. Seattle: Stouffer, In on Pike. San Diego: Handlery. Amsterdam: Krasnapolsky, Singel. Los Angeles: Figueroa, Pasadena Hilton. Chicago: Hilton Towers, Drake, Inn on Grant Park. The list goes on. Which I bequeath to future divorce lawyers.

I have been a serial lover. By habit and conviction. Guilty to the last degree. Sometimes I was even juggling several affairs. But somehow I never got the names mixed up in moments of passion or my itineraries confused. Even now, as my long-distance relationship with CC in Germany moves into its second year and to unheard-of levels of intimacy (we've progressed beyond hotel rooms and I've actually spent nights in her actual bed, in the apartment which she shares with her teenage son who sleeps in the room down the corridor), I am still hopeful of reviving the embers of the great sex I had with AK (who, for a change, really got a thrill from featuring in a story and a book of mine; although her erstwhile boyfriend didn't appreciate it the same way but then he was a fool for allowing her to stray) and am even curiously flirting with JR, who works in marketing just around the corner from my office and has a nice smile and a spark in her eyes, or maybe I'm misinterpreting the vibrations. Somehow I'm always open to suggestions, my eye roving liberally around the myriad possibilities (I even allowed my wickedness to wonderingly admire your own photo on the back of your last book cover and briefly checked your bio) and my mind weaving absurd but so enjoyable webs of seduction, even if my body is these days unlikely to follow suit (weakened by the bug, in bed the other morning, my penis had never looked so shrivelled ...).

So why am I now all so suddenly shy to tell you my raspberry story, or any rate couch it in fictional guise? Yes, that was the fruit involved. It was an affair that only lasted a few days in New York and then we parted ways by common agreement, she back to Australia, me back to London; talk about the safety of distance. She was a writer there who had submitted a story to me which I'd liked, published and we'd begun to correspond and one thing had slowly led to another. But enough of the story of my rather brief involvement with CF.

The thought occurred while writing you this long letter of apology for the non-appearance of my story that, even if I had a better imagination than the muse provided me with, I'm no longer sure that fruit is truly inspiring or even erotic (similarly I declined last year to contribute to Greg Wharton's
Meat
anthology). Now, food would have been another kettle of fish altogether! I love food. No reservations whatsoever. There was a section in a newspaper colour supplement here recently about sex and food which just made my lips wet, text and illustrations all. Did you know there is a restaurant in Tokyo, which has now opened a branch in Manchester in which you can dine off a naked woman's body? The recumbent naked woman is clothed only in strategically placed scallop shells and whatever you've ordered for supper. Not a new idea I know; the surrealists used it. However, the sensual quality of the UK version is restricted somewhat by the use of clingfilm (do you call that saran wrap in America, I think?) as a hygienic barrier between skin and the diner. But you can replicate the Tokyo experience at home: take one naked woman (men aren't appropriate, since food items can be lost in chest hair). Adorn with sushi, sashimi or other cold foodstuff. Do not try this with, say, sausage, potato mash and a rich onion gravy. You'll make a hell of a mess, and the gravy could be a scalding liability. Offer to wash up that night though.

Of course, beyond the parameters of taste, we all know since Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger in
9 ½ Weeks
(or do you recall Tom Jones' gastronomy-plus highlights?) that food and sex form an exquisite galaxy of erotic possibilities. Spaghetti dangling precariously between plate and mouth, cherries slowly penetrating the barrier of lips in a symphony of red and scarlet (oh, a fruit; hadn't somehow occurred to me until right now ...), asparagus, the stiletto of the legume world, ice cream, chocolate of all kinds. Now, if you want to one day put together an anthology of sex and food, Alison, count me in and I will not fail you again. Oysters and New Orleans; yes, that's what I'd write about and let your fertile imagination improvise on that one, you wicked woman ... There are some who say libertines don't mix sex and food; they reason that before sex, libertines concentrate on one thing. At that moment, sex is their only obsession. Also they need to keep their bodies light. I beg to disagree. Tell that to the Romans who were partial to some vestal virgins or even common whores feeding grapes into open throats before the traditional orgy. Tut, tut, grapes, another fruit I'd hitherto neglected!

With food involved, I'd be in fine form. From the wonderful excesses of Marco Ferreri's excesses in his movie
La Grande Bouffe
to the pornographic delights of sashimi slices against pale flesh, yellow-tail tuna shades contrasting with the rainbow of variations a nipple can move through in the throes of passion, let alone arousal, I just wouldn't know where to stop, you know. Actually, CF's nipples in New York were delightfully dark, as were her labia. The Gershwin Hotel, corner of 27th and 5th, it was, a Picasso sketch drawn across the far wall overseeing our frolics or was it Matisse? Sorry for my confusion, I also took a Cincinnati bank female executive to that particular hotel some years later, so the precise details are a touch unclear.

OK, so I'll tell you what actually happened. Satisfied?

It's not enough of a story to make a story, you'll surely agree.

We'd agreed to meet up in New York. A suitably halfway place as any, I suppose. I think that from the moment we lay eyes on each other at Newark Airport, we both realised that the attraction that had undeniably existed over letters, telephone and a perfunctory exchange of photographs, hers nude, mine clothed, was not going to translate that well into the arena of the bed. But we had committed to the escapade and we couldn't afford to get an extra hotel room. The sex had been poor the first couple of days. Lack of conviction and fire from both of us, no doubt. It was mechanical. As if we'd been married for years already. She was one of my first extracurricular women since KC and she was still in recovery from the break-up of her first affair since her husband had left her for another man. You could say we were still beginners in the subtle art of the zipless fuck. Somehow, she didn't mind me fucking her, touching her everywhere, my fingers entering all her holes but she refused to take my cock in her mouth. I've never felt that fellatio was obligatory or necessarily pleasurable to receive but the simple fact she denied me this annoyed me intensely (reminded of Maryann, an American blonde I had known in my early 20s in Paris, who would allow me to do absolutely anything to her, including fucking her mouth, but would scream if I even touched her nipples by accident; you always yearn for what is denied you ...).

Between fucks, we'd explore Manhattan and the Village together and our lively conversation would conjure up in daring scenarios which might spice up our times together. She wanted me to pick up another girl and invite her to join us (a fantasy that, unlike many other men, had never turned me on) but I failed abysmally in my feeble attempts to connect with another woman in the bars I trawled that afternoon while CF did some shopping. Possibly the inner knowledge that I was disappointing to CF, sexually, intellectually, detracted from my attraction to others, let alone identifying or convincing one who was also bisexual. It was winter and I was surprised to see a Korean 24-hour deli on University Place selling small raspberry punnets at that time of year and decided to treat myself and brought a couple. They were even reasonably priced.