Martin Amis by Money

Author:Money [Money]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2012-05-31T14:12:12+00:00

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Mr Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, I read, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes… I still don’t know what pop-holes are. I’ve asked around. Fielding doesn’t know. Felix doesn’t know. The dictionary doesn’t know. Do you?

‘Hi,’ said a voice behind me.

I turned. ‘Ah fuck off,’ I said, and turned again.

I quit reading and looked round about me. This was no kind of place to be caught reading in: a macho gay bar in a five-fathom basement somewhere beneath the charred East Twenties. We were down so deep here, it felt like an inverted skyscraper. Maybe Manhattan would get like that one day — crustscrapers, corescrapers, a hundred storeys underground. Already certain less-than-fashionable New Yorkers have taken up residence in the sewers and subway shafts. They have. They’ve got little socks down there, with beds and chests-of-drawers. Money has driven them deeper into the planet, money has brought them down in the world … Round about me there was womanlessness, jawlines, crewcuts, hunks leathered up like frogmen, Adam in full stubble and muscle and sweat. All you needed in here among the shadows and sawdust was your maleness, your sour testosterone.

‘Hi,’ said a voice behind me.

I turned. ‘Ah fuck off,’ I said, and turned again.

Now this wasn’t one of the heavy hangouts. I suppose your standard Manhattan faggot might look in here for a final white wine en route to a dungeon appointment or death-pact rendezvous at the Water Closet or the Mother Load. But this was a dark place of gropes and whispers, of black silhouettes. Their shapes gave off no tremor or threat, more a priestly absorption in the radar of the appetites that had brought them there.

‘Hi,’ said a voice behind me.

‘Ah fuck off,’ I said, and turned. ‘Oh hi! Sorry about that. How are you doing?’

‘Good. You like this place? Look at you, you’re terrified. Okay. What do you want to talk to me about?’

I took a deep breath — and heard the tiny tide of protest from the enemies in my lungs. He sat on the stool beside me. T-shirt, veined, tendoned biceps. He ordered a glass of water. Tap water, not designer water. He wasn’t going to tangle with those bubbles, not Spunk.

Now I had to remember that this was a complicated young guy. He didn’t drink. He didn’t smoke. He didn’t sniff. He didn’t eat. He didn’t gamble. He didn’t swear. He didn’t screw. He didn’t even do handjobs. He did handstands. He did push-ups. He did meditation and mind control. Born again, a true believer, he did charity work: he cared about the poor and the disadvantaged … Yes, all my man-management skills would be needed here. I looked into his clenched face and said, ‘Spunk? It’s about your name.’

‘Yeah? What about it?’

‘You’re probably going to hate me for this.’

‘I hate you already.’

‘The thing is, Spunk,’ I said, ‘in England —’

‘I know what you’re going to say. I know what you’re going to say.

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