A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Author:Christopher Isherwood
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781446419281
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2012-02-27T23:00:00+00:00

As George drives down the boulevard, the big unwieldy Christmas decorations – reindeer and jingle-bells slung across the street on cables secured to metal Christmas trees – are swinging in a chill wind. But they are merely advertisements for Christmas, paid for by the local merchants. Shoppers crowd the stores and the sidewalks, their faces somewhat bewildered, their eyes reflecting, like polished buttons, the cynical sparkle of the Yuletide. Hardly more than a month ago, before Khrushchev agreed to pull his rockets out of Cuba, they were cramming the markets, buying the shelves bare of beans, rice and other foodstuffs, utterly useless, most of them, for air-raid-shelter-cookery because they can’t be prepared without pints of water. Well, the shoppers were spared – this time. Do they rejoice? They are too dull for that, poor dears; they never knew what didn’t hit them. No doubt, because of that panic buying, they have less money now for gifts. But they have enough. It will be quite a good Christmas, the merchants predict. Everyone can afford to spend at least something – except, maybe, some of the young hustlers (recognisable at once to experienced eyes like George’s) who stand scowling on the street corners or staring into shops with the maximum of peripheral vision.

George is very far, right now, from sneering at any of these fellow-creatures. They may be crude and mercenary and dull and low, but he is proud, is glad, is almost indecently gleeful to be able to stand up and be counted in their ranks – the ranks of that marvellous minority, The Living. They don’t know their luck, these people on the sidewalk; but George knows his – for a little while at least – because he is freshly returned from the icy presence of The Majority, which Doris is about to join.

I am alive, he says to himself, I am alive! And life-energy surges hotly through him, and delight, and appetite. How good to be in a body – even this old beat-up carcase – that still has warm blood and live semen and rich marrow and wholesome flesh! The scowling youths on the corners see him as a dodderer, no doubt, or at best as a potential score. Yet he still claims a distant kinship with the strength of their young arms and shoulders and loins. For a few bucks, he could get any one of them to climb into the car, ride back with him to his house, strip off butch leather jacket, skin–tight Levis, shirt and cowboy boots and take part, a naked sullen young athlete, in the wrestling–bout of his pleasure. But George doesn’t want the bought unwilling bodies of these boys. He wants to rejoice in his own body; the tough triumphant old body of a survivor. The body that has outlived Jim and is going to outlive Doris.

He decides to stop by the gym – although this isn’t one of his regular days – on his way home.

In the locker-room, George takes off his clothes, gets into his sweat–socks, jockstrap and shorts.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.