My mother, a librarian, was fat and couldn’t walk far. Movement disturbed her. Her clothes were voluminous. She had no dealings with diets, except once, when she decided to go on a fast. She eschewed breakfast. By lunchtime she had a headache and dizziness; she was ‘starving’ and had a cream bun to cheer herself up.
Mother was always hungry, but I guess she didn’t know what she was hungry for. She replied, when I asked her why she consumed so much rubbish, ‘You never know where your next meal is coming from, do you?’ Things can seem like that to some people, as if there is only scarcity and you should get as much down you as you can, though it never satisfies you.
Mother never let me see her body or sleep beside her; she didn’t like to touch me. She didn’t want anyone’s hands on her, saying it was ‘unnecessary’. Perhaps she made herself fat to discourage temptation.
As you get older, you are instructed that you can’t touch just anyone, nor can they touch you. Although parents encourage their children in generosity, they don’t usually share their genitals, or those of their partner, with you. Sometimes you are not even allowed to touch parts of your own body, as if they don’t quite belong to you. There are feelings your body is forbidden to generate, feelings the elders don’t like anyone having. We consider ourselves to be liberals; it is the others who have inexplicable customs. Yet the etiquette of touching bodies is strict everywhere.
Every body is different, but all are identical in their uncontrollability: bodies do various involuntary things, like crying, sneezing, urinating, growing or becoming sexually excited. You soon find that bodies can get very attracted and repelled by other bodies, even — or particularly — when they don’t want to be.
I grew up after the major European wars, playing soldier games on my father’s farm. My mind was possessed by images of millions of upright male bodies in identical clothes and poses. The world these men made was mayhem and disorder, but at least, as my father used to say, they were ‘well turned out’ for it. At school, it seemed that each teacher had a particular disability — one ear, one leg or testicle, or some war-wound — which fascinated us. None of us thought we’d ever be down to just one of anything where there was supposed to be two, but we couldn’t stop thinking about it. This was the misunderstanding of education: the teachers were interested in minds, and we were interested in bodies. It was the bodies I wanted when I grew up.
I became aware of the reality of my own death at the same time I became aware of the possibility of having real sex with others. Each made the other possible. You might die, but you could say ‘hello’ before you went.
In the countryside, there are fewer bodies and more distance between them. I came to the city because the bodies are closer; there is heat and magnetism. The bodies jostle; is that for space, or for touching? The tables in the restaurants and pubs are more adjacent. On the trains and in the tubes, of course, the bodies seem to breathe one another in, which must be why people go to work. The bodies seem anonymous, but sometimes any body will do. Why would anyone want this, particularly a semi-claustrophobic like me?
If other people’s bodies get too much for you, you can stop them by stabbing or crucifixion. You can shoot or burn them to make them keep still or to prevent them saying words which displease you. If your own body gets too much — and whose doesn’t? — you might meditate yourself into desirelessness, enter a monastery or find an addiction which channels desire. Some bodies are such a nuisance to their owners — they can seem as unpredictable as untamed animals, or the feeling can overheat and there’s no thermostat — that they not only starve or attempt to shape them, but they flagellate or punish them.
As a young man, I wanted to get inside bodies, not just with a portion of my frame, but to burrow inside them, to live in there. If this seems impractical, you can at least get acquainted with a body by sleeping next to it. Then you can put bits of your body into the holes in other bodies. This is awful fun. Before I met my present wife, I spent a while putting sensitive areas of my body as close to the sensitive areas of other bodies as I could, learning all I could about what bodies wanted. I never lost my fearful fascination with women’s bodies. The women seemed to understand this: that the force of our desire made us crazy and terrified. You could kill a woman for wanting her too much.
The older and sicker you get, the less your body is a fashion item, the less people want to touch you. You will have to pay. Masseurs and prostitutes will caress you, if you give them money. How many therapies these days happen to involve the ‘laying-on of hands’? Nurses will handle the sick. Doctors spend their lives touching bodies, which is why young people go to medical school. Dentists and gynaecologists love the dark inside. Some workers, as in shoe shops, can get to hold body parts without having had to attend anatomy lectures. Priests and politicians tell people what to do with their bodies. People always choose their work according to their preferences about bodies. Careers advisers should bear this in mind. Behind every vocation there is a fetish.
Around puberty, people begin to worry — some say women do this more than men, but I’m not convinced — about the shape and size of their bodies. They think about it a lot, though the sensible know their bodies will never provide the satisfaction they desire because it is their appetite rather than their frame that bothers them. Having an appetite, of course, alters the shape of your body and how others see it. Starvation; fasting; dieting. These can seem like decent solutions to the problem of appetite or of desire.
The appetite of my new body seemed to be reviving, too. I was coming round because I was aware of a blaze of need. But my form felt like a building I’d never before been in. Where exactly was this feeling coming from? What did I want? At least I knew that my stomach must have been empty. First, I would wake up properly; then I could eat.
My watch was on the bedside table. I could see the numbers with perfect vision, but the strap wouldn’t fit round my thick new wrist. At least I knew it was morning and I’d slept through the night. It was time for breakfast. I could not walk out of the room in my new body without preparation.
I continued to examine myself in the mirror, stepping forwards and backwards, examining my hairy arms and legs, turning my head here and there, opening and closing my mouth, looking at my good teeth and wide, clean tongue, smiling and frowning, trying different expressions. I wasn’t just handsome, with my features in felicitous proportion. The nurse had asked me to examine my eyes. I saw what she meant. There was a softness in me, a wistfulness; I detected a yearning, or even something tragic, in the eyes.
I was falling in love with myself. Not that beauty, or life itself, means much if you’re in a room on your own. Heaven is other people.
The door opened and the surgeon came in.
‘You look splendid.’ He walked around me. ‘Michelangelo has made David!’
‘I was going to say Frankenstein has just —’
‘No joins or bumps either. Do you feel well?’
‘I think so.’
But my voice sounded unfamiliar to me. It was lighter in tone, but had more force and volume than before.