Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame (26 page)

You were charming, darling, because you slotted into a little niche in the cliché centre of the brain. You impish rogue, you. You dangerous firebrand, you. You profound sage, you consumptive aesthete, you holy fool. You silly ponce.
Get out of my cab
.

¹
Years later I turned a corner in a friend’s house and accidentally stepped on a newly completed stained-glass window which had been laid on the floor for a moment just prior to installation. It had taken a year to make. Why am I telling you this?

‘I’m all in favour of free expression provided it’s kept rigidly under control.’ Alan Bennett

I could start with the reading at Yale in the 1970s, where I was met by two affable undergraduates, explaining to me that the tutor who had asked me there was so busy running for political office that he had deputized the task of meeting me to them. Unfortunately he had not remembered to advertise the reading itself, so when I gave it later, in the corner of a library, there were only three to the audience. But they were the two sturdy undergraduates joined by somebody I recognized at once must be Holly Stevens, from her similarity to the famous picture of her father on the cover of his
Collected Poems
. That compensated for my mortification, and my vanity kept up very well.

Everybody has had such an experience, or worse. (I know one poet who flew all the way from San Francisco to the Mid-West to give a reading where
nobody
turned up.)

Fast-forward to Chicago, October, 1995. I had been unwise enough to write a sequence of songs to be sung, in a hypothetical opera, by Jeffrey Dahmer. He was the famous mass-murderer who sodomized his victims and then ate them. I thought that if Shakespeare could undertake an examination of such a man in
Macbeth,
then I could try to do it with Dahmer.

Even more unwisely, I started the reading with all five poems. As soon as I had finished them, a number of old ladies sitting together in the front row simultaneously rose and started to leave. I thought I ought to address their backs as they climbed the steps out of the auditorium. ‘I am sorry I upset you ladies,’ I said, ‘but if I had written a poem to be spoken by Napoleon or Julius Caesar you wouldn’t have thought anything of it. They killed millions more people, and at least Jeffrey Dahmer enjoyed
his
victims.’ (I said this, or I think I said it. It is on tape somewhere.) They continued to climb the steps, and none so much as looked around before leaving. I remember each of them as identical, rather like Baudelaire’s hallucinatory old men, each of them the same age. (They were probably not as old as I was, already in my sixties.) A multitude of thoughts hit me: had they foreseen that I might read the distasteful poems, which they already knew from my book three years earlier, and thus sat in the front row with the intention of walking out, so as to teach me a lesson? Was it spontaneous, Matrons of Chicago? Probably my remark about his enjoyment didn’t help at all. Perhaps, after all, it was not mortifying but rather splendid that I had finally succeeded in offending people after having tried unsuccessfully to do so all my life.

Or on the other hand, perhaps they were just bored.

‘Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the-reason why.’ James Joyce

Some time back we had just moved to a new district in a city. The unfamiliar intercom buzzed. Our next-door neighbours had called round with a package which the postie had been unable to deliver. Middle-aged, busy, pleasant, our neighbours were quick to tell us they were renting ‘between homes’. I liked them but was a little surprised when both came round with what was a small parcel.

To my horror the gentleman said, ‘We hear you’re a writer!?’

‘Exciting!’ the lady added.

Our shared landlord had blabbed. I’d had to confess the truth of my dark trade to him in the course of proving I was vaguely creditworthy.

For ten days or so, there were polite words at the wheely bin, the odd wave as the neighbours drove off in their car.

One evening the intercom buzzed again. I leaped up. I’d been relaxing with a few beers. After a hard day in the pub having a few beers. Our neighbours were at the door again, clutching another delivery: the immediately familiar cardboard packaging of Amazon.com. My stomach sank but I invited them into the hallway. They would come no further.

‘You must be SO busy. We’ve got a little something we hoped you’d just quickly
autograph
for us.’

I immediately blustered that they
shouldn’t
have. I had copies of my books inside, a whole box of them! If they had said they were interested …!

The ‘You shouldn’t have’ bit wasn’t false humility. It was also because my latest novel contained a long, detailed scene of a man urinating into a willing young woman’s mouth. I imagined our friendly exchanges at the wheely bin becoming a little more terse in future weeks. The battle lines of decency were being drawn up on our lane, I thought to myself smugly.

And perhaps as I look back on it, this is the reason for the mistake I made next.

I got my trusty pen at the ready.

The uninitiated always turn to the inside of the front cover whereas a book should really be autographed just below the author’s name, under the ‘Alan Warner’ and above the title of my novel, on the right hand, second page. Our neighbour produced the book with a flourish, smiling. By
Alan Warner,
the title of the book was,
Blues Guitar Solos Made Easy
. Dear Reader, this was not a work which emanated from my own pen.

Despite not really feeling involved, I still experienced that despicable little twinge of wounded pride, the same flush of anger you try to suppress and shrug off good-humouredly, each time none of your novels is stocked in the airport shop. I also felt an unjustified distaste for my unfortunate namesake. I had actually heard of Alan Warner (II) before. Friends ordering my books off the internet had come across him and his works. As someone who had been ejected from various teenage bands for my incompetence as a guitarist, I was quickly mocked with the great irony of it all. So here I was with Alan Warner (II)’s book in my hand. I should just have laughed and told my neighbours the truth. Yet if I told them I hadn’t written this book it meant they had gone to all this effort and already spent money. Now they had the wrong book they would have to go through the inscrutable means of returning it. I also felt they were kind of cute; they weren’t judging me on whether I wrote this or that, they were just quite thrilled that I’d written anything at all. Did it really make any difference? Then there was the added bonus, as long as my neighbours believed I was the author of a guitar manual, they wouldn’t have to stumble through scenes of vivid scatology, inventive curse words and various sexual rampages as their willow pattern teacups flew across their quaint parlour. Also, I claimed a sort of ironic and strange biographical justification. I had published a novel based on the very theme of false authorship! It was my Raskolnikov moment.

I signed the book with a confident flourish beneath another man’s name. Sort of. As soon as I did it, I had the horrible thought that maybe there was an author photograph lurking somewhere in the book! The neighbours were expressing no interest at all in what I’d signed, and were in fact charting on about recycling collections, so I feigned interest and casually turned the pages towards the back cover. Judging by Alan Warner’s field of expertise, I was fearful. I expected a photo of a tubercular man with a ponytail, perhaps a tilted fedora sprouting rare bird feathers. A man ennobled with many face piercings. I began to think I too would now have to adopt such a look to live along with my lie, but hurrah! There was no author photo! Mr Warner was also the author of
Learn To Play Rock Chord Riffs,
for any neighbour, the ominously titled,
Heavy Metal Guitar Styles,
the catchy,
100 Lead Licks for Guitar
and the solid,
Beatles Guitar Intros
. I wondered if the neighbours were actually just working up to a polite request that I keep my amplifier turned down? But they chatted on amiably. I was thinking it was certainly no shame to be mistaken for Mr Warner, clearly one hell of a guitarist.

As I nodded, the husband was lifting out another book from the Amazon.com folder. It was the novel:
Change and the Bottom Line
. And it was by Alan Warner. But this book was not by me either! Unbelievably, it was an Alan Warner (III)!

What I’d previously taken for quaintness, I now began to marvel at as fantastic incompetence. Two books by two different authors neither of which was your next-door neighbour was quite an achievement! I mean how did these people cope at Christmas? What I’d regretted before I now was enthusiastic about. I took
Change and the Bottom Line
by Alan Warner and signed it without hesitation.

Sober morning reflection and the full enormity of my crime was clear to me. Especially when I got on the internet myself and found out what I’d put my name to. Mr Warner had produced, by all accounts, a good read of a novel.
Change and the Bottom Line
is, I quote, ‘a case study, fictionally treated which addresses the business management of organizational change. Alan Warner takes the characters already established in his two earlier books
The Bottom Line
and
Beyond the Bottom Line
and sets them in a new context. Phil Morley has become CEO of a family firm in the north of England, where his main task is to change its culture so it can meet the challenges ahead. Once again he enlists the services of Training Consultant Christine Goodheart!’

A Mr Kamesh of Hyderabad thought highly of it.

I had a strange surge of empathy that the sober-seeming Mr Alan Warner (III) once may have been, or may yet be asked to autograph one of my dubious works, by an over-enthusiastic neighbour, hopeful my words will improve his organizational business skills.

The paranoia began. I knew it would be a few days before the first note came through our letter box. By that stage I wouldn’t answer the intercom any more. It would be a request from our neighbours’ nephew for guitar lessons. I knew it would be a matter of weeks after that when I was asked to advise on some changes being planned at my neighbours’ office. Asked to come along and give a talk to the staff perhaps!

A few days later I actually had a nightmare. I was at a gruesome formal cocktail party. On my left side stood two middle-aged men in suits, grilling me on firm business practice while on my right, a youth tugged at my trousers asking for advice on heavy-metal guitar riffs. Knowing nothing about either topic I was bluffing hopelessly and they were becoming more angry at my lack of knowledge. Unable to decide what to wear for the party, when I glimpsed myself in a prominently placed dream mirror, I was dressed in an insane conglomeration of pinstripe suit, cowboy boots and a Stetson with coloured feathers.

I was saved. Before there was any reaction to the books I’d claimed authorship of, my wife broke joyous news. Our neighbours had bought a new house and were moving out in days! They had apologized. It was such a hectic time for them they had not read my books yet but they were looking forward to them. I realized even if I’d given over signed copies of my own novels, my neighbours were not readers, and those books also would have remained unopened on the shelves forever. Just goes to show: nobody reads anything any more. Thank God!

‘Let us stay at home: there we are decent. Let us not go out: our defects wait for us at the door, like flies.’ Jules Renard

The room was long and narrow. I looked out the window and saw the tracks right below me, four straight lines of them. I had a look at the bathroom. One towel, hanging over the toilet bowl. I sat back on the bed, but it wasn’t easy. I kept sliding on the nylon bedspread. The television was a small thing at the far end of the room. I looked for the remote control. There wasn’t one. A train passed. I got off the bed and walked to the telly. A train passed. I turned it on. A train passed.

I was in Bremen. I think I was in Bremen. I was definitely in Germany.

I’d been away from home for five or six days – a city a day, a train a day, a hotel a day – and there were five or six more days to go.

The night before it had been Hamburg. The good-looking city, but the taxi kept going for five or six miles and dropped us at the Hotel Nylon, a big terraced house near nowhere. Nylon bedspread, and sheets. A grey towel in the bathroom. There were three interviews arranged for the afternoon. But only one journalist turned up, and he brought two pals with him, including one who, I found out later, had just written a bad review of the book I was talking about. The journalist took no notes and whispered a lot to his friends. They laughed softly and, now and again, they smiled at me.

The reading that night was fine, a nice, friendly crowd. Then a tour of St Pauli and the red-light district. Women in windows, teenage girls on corners, their skin grey from the cold. In a bar, on a screen above my escort’s head, the same penis penetrated the same vagina for the time it took me to drink two beers, very slowly – it must have been the director’s cut – while my escort knocked back Scotch and stuffed the receipts into his pocket. Then back to the Hotel Nylon, and Bremen the next day and another Hotel Nylon, and another night between nylon sheets.

A train passed. Every ten minutes. This was Germany. Coal, steel, cars, beer. All night.