‘It’s okay to be unfaithful,’ he said. ‘It isn’t you doing it.’
We talked for a bit, but I felt restless and kept bouncing on my toes. I said I wanted to get out and walk, shake my new arse, and show off. Ralph said he had done the same. He would let me go my own way as soon as he could. First, we had to do some shopping. Ralph had brought a suit, shirt, underwear and shoes to the hospital, but I would need more.
‘My son only seems to possess jeans, T-shirts and sunglasses,’ I said. ‘Otherwise I have no idea what twenty-five-year-olds wear.’
‘I will help you,’ he said. ‘I only know twenty-five-year-olds.’
I was photographed for my new passport, and then Ralph took me to a chain-store. Each time I saw myself in the changing-room mirror I thought a stranger was standing in front of me. My feet were an unnecessary distance from my waist. Recently, I’d found it difficult to get my socks on, but I’d never been unfamiliar with the dimensions of my own body before. I’d always known where to find my own balls.
I dressed in black trousers, white shirt and raincoat, nothing fashionable or ostentatious. I had no desire to express myself. Which self would I be expressing? The only thing I did buy, which I’d always wanted but never owned before, was a pair of tight leather trousers. My wife and children would have had hysterics.
Ralph left to go to a rehearsal. He was busy. He was pleased with me and with himself, but his job was done. He wanted to get on with his own new life.
Staring at myself in the mirror again, attempting to get used to my new body, I realised my hair was a little long. Whichever ‘me’ I was, it didn’t suit me. I would customise myself.
There was a hairdresser’s near my house, which I had walked past most days for years, lacking the courage to go in. The people were young, the women with bare pierced bellies, and the noise horrendous. Now, as the girl chopped at my thick hair and chattered, my mind teemed with numerous excitements, wonderments and questions. I had quickly agreed to become a Newbody in order not to vacillate. Since the operation, I had felt euphoric; this second chance, this reprieve, had made me feel well and glad to be alive. Age and illness drain you, but you’re never aware of how much energy you’ve lost, how much mental preparation goes into death.
What I didn’t know, and would soon find out, was what it was like to be young again in a new body. I enjoyed trying out my new persona on the hairdresser, making myself up. I told her I was single, had been brought up in west London and had been a philosophy and psychology student; I had worked in restaurants and bars, and now I was deciding what to do.
‘What do you have in mind?’ she asked.
I told her I was intending to go away; I’d had enough of London and wanted to travel. I would be in the city for only a few more days, before setting off. As I spoke, I felt a surge or great push within, but towards what I had no idea, except that I knew they were pleasures.
Walking out of the hairdresser’s, I saw my wife across the road pulling her shopping trolley on wheels. She looked more tired and frailer than my mental picture of her. Or perhaps I was reverting to the view of the young, that the old are like a race all of whom look the same. Possibly I needed to be reminded that age in itself was not an illness.
I recalled talking in bed with her last week, semi-asleep, with one eye open. I could see only part of her throat and neck and shoulder, and I had stared at her flesh thinking I had never seen anything more beautiful or important.
She glanced across the street. I froze. Of course her eyes moved over me without recognition. She walked on.
Being, in a sense, invisible, and therefore omniscient, I could spy on those I loved, or even use and mock them. It was an unpleasant loneliness I had condemned myself to. Still, six months was a small proportion of a life. What would be the purpose of my new youth? I had led a perplexed and unnecessarily pained inner life, but unlike Ralph, I had not felt unfulfilled, or wished to be a violinist, pioneering explorer or to learn the tango. I’d had projects galore.
My bewilderment was, I guessed, the experience of young people who’d recently left home and school. When I taught young people ‘creative’ writing, their excessive concern about ‘structure’ puzzled me. It was only when I saw that they were referring to their lives as well as to their work that I began to understand them. Looking for ‘structure’ was like asking the question: what do you want to do? Who would you like to be? They could only take the time to find out. Such an experiment wasn’t something I’d allowed myself to experience at twenty-five. At that age I moved between hyperactivity and enervating depression — one the remedy, I hoped, for the other.
If my desire pointed in a particular direction this time around, I would have to discover what it was — if there was, in fact, something to find. Perhaps in my last life I’d been overconstrained by ambition. Hadn’t my needs been too narrow, too concentrated? Maybe it was not, this time, a question of finding one big thing, but of liking lots of little ones. I would do it differently, but why believe I’d do it better?
That evening I changed hotels, wanting somewhere smaller and less busy. I ate three times and went to bed early, still a little groggy from the operation.
The next day was a fine one, and I awoke in an excellent mood. If I lacked Ralph’s sense of purpose, I didn’t lack enthusiasm. Whatever I was going to do, I was up for it.
There I was, walking in the street, shopping for the trip I had finally decided to take, when two gay men in their thirties started waving and shouting from across the road.
‘Mark, Mark!’ they called, straight at me. ‘It’s you! How are you! We’ve missed you!’
I was looking about. There was no one else they could have been motioning to. Perhaps my leather trousers were already having an effect on the general public. But it was more than that: the couple were moving through the traffic, their arms extended. I considered running away — I thought I might pretend to be jogging — but they were almost on me. I could only face them as they greeted me warmly. In fact, they both embraced me.
Luckily, their talk was relentless and almost entirely about themselves. When I managed to inform them that I was about to go on holiday, they told me they were going away, too, with friends, an artist and a couple of dancers.
‘Your accent’s changed, too,’ they said. ‘Very British.’
‘It’s London, dear. I’m a new man now,’ I explained. ‘A reinvention.’
‘We’re so pleased.’
I understood that the last time we met, in New York, my mental state hadn’t been good, which was why they were pleased to see me out shopping in London. They and their circle of friends had been worried about me.
I survived this, and soon we were saying our farewells. The two men kissed and hugged me.
‘And you’re looking good,’ they added. ‘You’re not modelling any more, are you?’
‘Not at the moment,’ I said.
One of them said, ‘But you’re not doing the other thing, are you, for money?’
‘Oh, not right now.’
‘It was driving you crazy.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘I believe it was.’
‘Shame the boy band idea didn’t work out. Particularly after you got through the audition with that weird song.’
‘Too unstable, I guess.’
‘Would you like to join us for a drink — of orange juice, of course? Why not?’
‘Yes, yes,’ said the other. ‘Let’s go and talk somewhere.’
‘I’m sorry, but I must go,’ I said, moving away. ‘I’m already late for my psychiatrist! He tells me there’s much to be done!’
‘Enjoy!’