Loving Monsters by James

Author:James [Hamilton-Paterson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2015-11-17T05:00:00+00:00

Why are you telling me these things?

- I thought you’d be interested. They’re part of my life. -

Just sexual exploits, surely. We’ve all had them, even those of us who haven’t.

He is a little aggrieved and falls silent, gazing fiercely at a nearby lavender bush. But so am I aggrieved, feeling that his life is after all turning out to be nothing but a succession of conquests in ever more bizarre locations. I want to hear what has hurt him, what has made him weep in the night. I want to hear what he did when the magic of being young began to bore even him. I want to know if self-proclaimed impostors are like a fennel root, whose successive layers can be shucked off to leave nothing beyond a stunted green shoot at the centre. And why might a person claim to be an impostor, anyway? Isn’t it like the Cretan in the famous paradox who says all Cretans are liars? There is no way in logic to know which of his claims is true and which false. So why do it? Offhand, I could think of three possible motives. One was to reassure himself that he had had an interesting life; another was to convince other people that he had; the third was in order to conceal something. In any of these cases it was dissembling, hence tedious. So why had I initially been seduced by it? I supposed because we actually do expect people to be honest about themselves. If their confessions seem not greatly to their credit, their degree of honesty intrigues us and we assume other revelations will follow. In Jayjay’s case I was right.

- They’re part of my life. -

So you said. Of course they are, Jayjay. I had no business interrupting you. I’m sorry.

- You’ve put me off my stroke now. Though to be honest I no longer know what to talk about where my years in Egypt are concerned. It all seems so much of a piece I can’t separate out some of the vividest memories or much of the chronology. Everything from this period seems to be sliding gradually towards the war. But I did say I would give you another example of myself in the guise of a lover, and it’s a bit disgraceful so I’d better tell you or else you will think I’m presenting you with too rosy a view of my former self. -

No I shan’t, Jayjay. You’re an impostor, remember?

- Ah, but I’m a truthful impostor, you must never forget that. You’ll hear no lies from me. Just versions and the occasional omission. Anyway, looking back to that period now, the sheer weirdness of the life I was leading does strike me. For some of the time I was social climbing and being taken to parties or dinners or on excursions. Another part of the time I was successfully peddling very high-class pornography to a rather different set, although there was some overlapping. Then there were

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