Etiquette and Vitriol Nicky Silver (i can read book club txt) 📖

Is it me, or does the scrotum look like you’ve been in the bathtub a long time before you even get in? Wrinkled and soggy. I know it’s not me, so don’t try to make me feel bad, I feel bad enough already. I have a terrible stomachache from fish or pork or something.

And I don’t think women have it any better! What? Is the vagina such an oil painting? Apologies to Georgia O’Keeffe, but it’s no Mona Lisa, which I realize is a mixed metaphor, I think. But they’re not pretty. Although my penis has, from time to time, been my friend. It has, more often, not. It has been my enemy. Oh hell! That may be too strong. . . . I used to love to sit on the edge of my bed, naked, holding the head of my penis between my thumb and index finger, squeezing the hole on the end so it opened and closed, while I threw my voice and carried on a conversation. . . . YOU HAVE NO BUSINESS JUDGING ME! Everyone has done that! Haven’t they? . . . Well, everyone with an imagination.

(He has a twinge of pain in his stomach) I have a sharp, twisting pain in my stomach, like I’ve eaten a lizard, or something alive, hot and thrashing around.

I thought, for a brief time—well, what’s a brief time? Everything is relative. More than an afternoon and less than a decade. Once! I thought once, that I was a homosexual, but I’ll get into the specifics of that later. Oh, don’t worry, there’ll be nothing graphic. No slides or anything. Although some of you would like that, wouldn’t you? I know what kind of people you are! You get pleasure from the pain and suffering of others! But then who doesn’t really? Isn’t it more or less human nature—or is it nurture!? I tell myself continue. I thought I was a homosexual. I was not comfortable with the image of myself as a homosexual. I was not comfortable with myself as a man. Or a woman. Or a human being. Or a plant or a tree or a doorstop or a lump of disemboweled protoplasm! Oh hell, you get my point!! I was tortured! Nature? Nurture? Or just a bad case of botulism, or trichinosis, or that parasite you get from undercooked pork—that microbe. What’s it called?

(A second pool of light comes up. He moves into it.)

Philip and Girls:

When I was thirteen years old—WHICH WAS SEVEN YEARS AGO, FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO’VE NAPPED AND LOST THE THREAD! You know who you are!— When I was thirteen, I had my first sexual experience. I don’t mean I had sex. I had my first sexual experience. I KNOW! That’s the same thing. I mean, I had an experience of a sexual nature with another person, which is more than a lot of people ever have. I didn’t penetrate or anything. I didn’t actually ejaculate at the time. Don’t get me wrong, I’d been ejaculating for some time. I mean, from time to time over a period of time, I don’t mean like one long stream of semen all afternoon. I mean—Oh you see what I mean!! I was thirteen and I was invited to a friend’s house. A girl. I’ll call this girl Cathy. I remember her last name, but I’m not going to use it. I don’t want to. Not that I think she’s here or anything, she’s probably dead by now. What a terrible thing to say. I must have a wealth of repressed hostility for this Cathy character. Anyway, I’m still not going to tell you her last name, because one of you might know her and you might tell her about this, that she’s being discussed. And then, she might come here and try to shoot me. Who knows what kind of depravity she’s lapsed into in the last seven years. I have to protect myself!! I think I’ll call her Mona. Oh, I already said her name was Cathy—HELL! She invited me to a party. There were lots of little boys and girls at this party. And Mona had, I assume, a crush on me. Or else, she was insane with a persecution complex and she was punishing herself by leading me to the bathroom, where she turned off the lights and “did things” to me.

And she was not a pretty girl. I realize that’s sexist, but fuck it. Mona had these big, buck teeth. Now everything is relative, but these teeth were big and buck compared to just about everything else on the planet today—or then. Big teeth! Like Mr. Ed, whom at thirteen, I found amusing, but not attractive, and certainly not the object of any sexual desire. NO ALAN STRANG AM I! And she had hair the color of Chinese noodles: no color. And she wore this transparent hair pulled back into a transparent ponytail. And you just knew she was five years away from a transparent bun. Am I being cruel? I think I’m being accurate. Were you there? I was! This is how it happened. She turned off the lights. I was unbelievably grateful. Once I could no longer see her, I responded to the actual, literal, physical stimulation, instead of the specific person in front of me. She kissed me. . . . I kissed her back. We didn’t actually kiss each other. It was like tennis. That’s odd. But you know what I mean, don’t you? I hope so. And then it happened.

I got this big hard-on. And Cathy—I mean Mona!—felt it against her leg, reached down to touch it and let out a yelp like I had a hermit crab down there that’d just ripped off her fingers! She burst out of the room, ran into the party, screaming and carrying on and telling everyone about my “boner” and I just wanted to die right then and there. So. I shut the door and sealed myself up