‘That’s terrible.’
‘Look, I mean crying is not that easy. It’s not something that comes naturally. You have to work at it like everything else. What’s so special about crying anyway?’
‘There’s nothing special about crying. It’s just that men are conditioned to repress their feelings. Do you ever touch your male friends?’
‘Well we touch each other for a drink now and again. .’
‘Now you’re just being sarcastic.’
‘No I’m not and no I don’t touch my friends that much. But what’s so special about touching? I hate this facile equation of tactility with intimacy.’
‘Men are incapable of expressing affection for one another.’
‘Listen,’ I said, dimly aware that I was using the bigot’s prefixes, ‘look’ and ‘listen’, as if I were issuing instructions on kerb drill. ‘Look, women are always accusing men of reducing affection to sex, yes?’
‘It’s true — they do.’
‘But in arguing that men can’t express affection for each other because they’re frightened of touching each other you duplicate exactly that reduction of the expression of affection to the physical.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘Look. .’
‘There’s no need to shout. .’ (A purely rhetorical ploy, this, designed to make me shout.)
‘I’m not shouting,’ I said, bait taken, voice raised.
‘All men — or most men — it seems to me, are constantly competing, just like you’ve turned this conversation into a competition.’
‘No I haven’t.’
‘Men are always bullying, either bullying women or trying to prove they’ve got a bigger dick than the next man. .’
‘These are just clichés,’ I interrupted rudely. ‘You think in clichés — more recent ones than those you oppose but they’re clichés all the same.’
‘You’re the one that’s coming out with clichés. And you’re being rude. .’
‘No I’m not.’
‘Anyway I’m bored with this conversation. Let’s talk about something else.’ For the next couple of minutes we weaned ourselves off rhetoric and back on to pleasantries. We talked about what we’d been doing and stuff like that and then Mary went off to get another drink.
I crossed the room to where Freddie was talking energetically to someone about writing. You had to hand it to him: he really looked the part. He was wearing a corduroy jacket, suede shoes and a tie. Every now and then he took his glasses out of his jacket pocket, put them on and took them off again. (‘My new affectation,’ he’d once described it as, ‘one part Morrissey to one part George Steiner.’)
‘I always wanted to be a writer,’ he was saying. ‘Now that is the tense of great fiction. Only really great writers get a chance to come out with that kind of thing.’
‘Did you always want to be a writer?’ said the woman he was talking to.
‘I got forced into it. I mean I got fed up doing nothing. Now most days I still do nothing but at least I feel I’m meant to be doing something. As an incentive I pay myself psychological overtime: time-and-a-half after seven o’clock, double-time after midnight, triple-time at weekends. So if I put in a good four or five hours on a Sunday I can take the rest of the week off,’ said Freddie, pausing to swallow a mouthful of beer and then tossing away the empty can. ‘And that’s the really great thing about writing: you can take a whole week off and nobody is going to give a shit: that’s the kind of powers writers wield. They can withdraw their labour at any moment — no need to ballot — and that’s fine by everybody. Nobody’s going to dock your wages, nobody’s going to get shit-face if you turn up at your desk hungover or late and knock off at four o’clock after a two-hour lunch-break. A toss is exactly what no one will give about anything you do.’
At the end of this little speech — I’d heard earlier drafts at other parties — Freddie looked as if he would have appreciated a round of applause. I handed him a can of lager instead.
‘You ought to read the book he’s writing,’ said Steranko to the woman they were talking to. ‘It’s a work of Tolstoyan banality. One of the few truly dispensable works of our time.’
‘What’s it about, your book?’ the woman asked.
‘It’s a memoir of life at the eastern end of the Central line. I’m calling it “Look Back in Ongar”.’ At the very least I had heard Freddie make this joke ten times in the last two years. It was what he called one of his ‘Classic Standards’ and he showed no signs of ever getting fed up hearing himself say it.
‘And what do you do?’ the woman asked Steranko.
‘I’m an artist,’ he said.
‘The only thing he’s got in common with an artist,’ said Freddie, ‘is he gets cramp in the same wrist.’
Foomie came over, smiling, pouring wine and putting her arm around the woman Freddie and Steranko were speaking to.
‘So you’ve met the beer boys Caroline?’ she said, much less formal with us once she could mediate her comments through a friend. Steranko, Freddie and I stumbled over each other trying to make jokes.
‘D’you three live together?’ Caroline asked during a pause in all this verbal jockeying for position.
‘We ride together,’ said Freddie before going off to get some food.
Foomie talked to Steranko and me but however hard she tried to share what she said evenly between us it was obvious that the conversation was taking place on a slope, tilting away from me towards Steranko. If Steranko was talking to Caroline I could tell that Foomie was half listening to what they were saying. Her eyes lingered on Steranko when he spoke.
Someone tapped Caroline on the shoulder. I moved over to the drinks table where someone handed me another joint. The centipede rhythms of salsa snaked out from the room next door. Laughing loudly Belinda came through the door, followed by Carlton who was wearing the same dark suit he’d had on earlier. Picking up another can of warm beer I went over and kissed Belinda. As I shook hands with Carlton someone kicked me lightly on the back of the leg.
‘Go on: give him a big kiss,’ Mary said, winking and then walking off again.
Foomie came over and kissed Belinda and Carlton. Freddie came back, holding a plateful of chicken something.
‘Look at Steranko,’ Belinda said. ‘In a suit he always looks like he’s just got out of prison or the army.’
‘What bollocks,’ said Carlton. ‘He looks like he’s just got out of art school.’
‘I tell you, I’d hate to live in a time when men didn’t wear suits,’ said Freddie who wasn’t actually wearing one.
‘I’d hate to live in a time when women didn’t wear dresses,’ said Foomie.
‘Me too,’ said Belinda. ‘But I’d also hate to live in a time when you had to wear one.’
‘Suits and dresses,’ said Freddie. ‘When I’m wearing a suit I always wish I was wearing a shoulder-holster too.’
‘I even like the words connected with suits,’ I said. ‘Lapel, vent, turn-up. .’
‘You feel good in a suit,’ Carlton said.
‘Not as good as you feel in a dress on a boiling hot day,’ said Foomie.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a suit that’s quite fitted properly,’ I said.
‘A suit shouldn’t fit properly,’ said Freddie, a sudden gleam of illumination in his eyes. ‘If it fits properly it doesn’t fit properly.’
‘What shit you talk Freddie.’
‘Let’s face it though,’ said Carlton, buttoning up his jacket for emphasis. ‘Suits always look better on black people.’
‘What about Lee Marvin in “Point Blank”? That’s a great suit.’
‘Not as good as Sidney Poitier’s in “In the Heat of the Night”.’
I went to the bathroom for a piss, leafing through a couple of pamphlets on cystitis and thrush while I was at it. When I came back Freddie was giving everyone a lecture about Hemingway and the lost generation, leaning against a wall as though he needed to.