Excerpt from a novel – Decadence

4.35am The May Fair Hotel.

…and I am trying to work out why there is a painting, an old master, a facsimile, stuck to ceiling above the bed. It is out of sorts with the minimalist white sheets and blinds; the frosted glass and dark wood of the bathroom. And then he knocks on the door, telling us to keep the noise down.

            I’m wearing a white robe with a heavily embroidered ‘M’ monogram over my right pectoral. There is a metallic taste in my mouth and I wonder if I’ve tasted blood or if someone has spiked me. I can’t recall either happening but you never know. Valentine, who is trussed to a bed with black masking tape, turns and shouts for me to open the door. He’s naked, but for a pair of carpet slippers. I turn and stare at him, spacing out, focussing on the tattoo across his back, which is of the word ‘Honour’ written in gothic script. A dark haired girl, one of the girls from earlier, stands over him, dressed only in high-waisted knickers, decorated at the front with diamante. The other two girls sit on a white leather sofa, wearing 3D glasses, watching pornography on a fifty-inch television. They are smoking cigarettes. The dark-haired girl strikes Valentine on the backside with a short leather paddle with air-holes. A red cloud appears on his buttocks and then darkens, sharpening in focus until it resembles a conventional welt.

            ‘Answer the door will you?’ he says, his mouth contorted with pain.

            ‘Do you think this is a good time?’ I say.

            The girl hits him against.

            ‘Answer it and get rid of whoever it is!’

             I move past him and open the door.

           ‘Can I help?’ I ask. The guy out in the hall is handsome with short-cropped hair, and a diamante stud in one ear. He is wearing only a pair of indigo jeans, For All Mankind I think, with a white studded belt. I must be spacing out again, but I find myself fascinated with his torso. Abdominals firmly indented, like when one claws through wet sand on the beach, leaving deep ridges.

            ‘What’s going on in there, man? You guys having a party or some shit? I gotta get some sleep man – you know it’s nearly five in the morning?’

            ‘I’m sorry we’ve disturbed you….’

            He looks at me and then a light of recognition flicks on in his eyes.

            ‘No way! You’re that cheesy-assed bastard off the TV. What’s that show? Man – Jared’s World!’ His eyes are now bulging like miniature pods of newly risen bread. He laughs. ‘That show is some weirded-out shit!’

            ‘Thank you,’ I say. I’m dizzy. My stomach is tight, as though someone is pouring cups of water directly into it. ‘Sorry about the noise. If there’s anything I can do…’

            ‘I’m Zucker Flailing. Premier League prima donna. Transfer deal demon. Mid-field marauder. Tabloid scourge. Ten-jags-and-a-pop-starlet scandal in Miami. All that shit. Now what the hell is this shit?’ he says, looking past me into the suite at Valentine strapped to the bed. ‘Man, I’ve gotta get me some of this.’ He pushes past me.

            There is a dull ache in my head and this has for some reason become indexed to the scent of Zucker Flailing, the citreous and musk of his aftershave serving to clarify and heighten my awareness of pain. I walk in after him.

            ‘This is Jamie Valentine’ I say. Jamie, whose knuckles are white holding on to the bed-frame, strains to face us, his face raw, thousands of little blood explosions under the skin, wiry black stubble slick with sweat.

            I’m hoping the girls will introduce themselves.

            ‘My man!’ says Zucker. ‘Are you having a good time!’ He steps around the bed to get where Jamie can see him comfortably. ‘Shit, and I thought you was all clean cut, Jared!’

            A blonde girl emerges from the bathroom. She is wearing red fishnet hold-ups, a pair of complicated-looking knickers and is smoking a cigarette at the end of an eight inch holder. She walks three steps to the end of the bed and then, clutching her head, falls into a seated position. ‘I thought we agreed only two?’

            Another girl follows, similarly dressed. So there are five of them in here. I move back into the room, and see a laptop open, the Supreme69 Escorts website onscreen.

            ‘Woo-weee!’ says Zucker, clapping his hands then rubbing them as if in anticipation of what’s to come. ‘You guys have got quite a party going on in here – quite a party! I like the way you operate. Ladies – my name is Zucker Flailing: form yourselves an orderly queue.’

            ‘For Christ’s sake Jared, why the hell did you let him in here?’ says Valentine, husky, low. ‘Get over here and untie me will you.’ His hands strain against the black tape but he can’t shift it. I get up and walk towards the bed, then Zucker puts out a hand to stop me.

            ‘Hold on, hold on – no need to slow things down on my account. Now, I’m sorry I’ve barged in on you in the middle of all your fun – well, his fun anyway,’ he says, pointing at Valentine, ‘Looks like the only thing my man Jared here is ready to hit is the sack. But I’m sure we can all come to some arrangement. Sure, I’ve crashed the party. But you guys woke me up – and I’ve got a game tomorrow. So I guess that kind of makes us even, doesn’t it? Now, Zucker’s a generous man – and he’s not afraid to put his hand in his pocket to subsidise a good time. And I reckon there’s more than enough fun around here to stretch around five – what do you guys reckon? Are we playing?’

            Valentine appears to be taking the offer seriously.

            ‘The only thing is, we’re kind of out of supplies here.’ He nods at a low Japanese black oak table in front of the two girls on the sofa. There are remains, a light dusting.

           (I don’t remember doing any.)

            ‘Not a problem, my man – not a problem,’ says Zucker. He smiles, revealing a diamond-capped front tooth which glints, a sharp pinprick of light. He takes a platinum mobile phone from his pocket. He raises is to his ear, his bicep tightening, causing a cross tattooed on the muscle to undulate. He pushes a button and speaks softly into the device. As he does so, one of the girls, the one who had been beating Valentine, moves towards him, and puts a hand on his neck, caressing him and then allowing it to trail gently down his pectoral and abdominal muscles, before placing it over his crotch.

            I’m watching all of this but I’m really not feeling well. Have to get a grip, Jared, have to pull it together. I pick up a champagne flute from the bedside table. I take a drink; the bubbling fizzy liquid is warm and then hot dry hot ash falls into the back of my throat, parching it once more. Someone must have put a cigarette out in the glass.

            Zucker put his phone back in his pocket, and pulls the woman’s head towards him. He kisses her hard on the lips and then shoves her away from him onto the bed, so her head hits Valentines’ bound legs. He pulls of his belt; it rattles as it come loose.

            ‘Shit! Now let Zucker see who’s boss round here!’

Novel extract – Paul

I looked at him, at his sensible walking shoes, his concerned broadsheet newspaper, his neat haircut, his too-clear complexion – the results, no doubt, of hours spent in men’s grooming salons and the application of expensive products – and I felt something approaching pity, which is of course only a paper-thin wall away from hatred. I imagined his sickeningly pleasant North London get-togethers with his husband and their friends. Goat’s cheese from Borough Market and organic Chianti (‘You really must try some.’) Their chatter about the evils of war, Bergman at the Renoir, books half-read, documentaries half-watched, while all the while they were buckling under the weight of an assumed liberality, or reasonableness, which none of them really believed in, but worked hard to fake, copying those fictional North London liberals they had seen portrayed at the theatre and on television. I felt a surge of true hate, and also of superiority. At least I had never tried to pretend. I had been true to myself, to my apathy, and I lived with the consequences, which were poverty and low status. But at least I hadn’t lied, pretended to give a shit in order to climb up the greasy ladder to nowhere – a waste land of coffee shops on Sunday afternoons, poetry readings in bohemian wine bars, subtitled Eurasian cinema at the South Bank, Mark Rothko at the Tate Modern. I could see conflict seared into his face, and it was a conflict born of falsehood, of years of pretending.

Excerpt from a novel – New York

When I stepped out of the hotel on the newly-gentrified Bowery and out into the street, I felt as though I had been plucked from the safety of my bed and deposited somewhere in the middle of a raging sea. Size and geometrical precision threatened. It was as though the city were a neatly arranged pinball machine in which the players had been allowed to go insane, substituting balls for motorcars and wave after wave of people, exhausting in their multiplicity. The great avenues were like strips cleaved from marble. The overwhelming impression was of heat, great clouds of hot smoke belching out from the great subway that snaked beneath the sidewalks. Hot dog stands, Walk / Don’t Walk signs, fortune tellers’ stalls in tower blocks, delis selling steaming coffee with pyramidically-piled fruit outside. Harried traders pushing glass doors out of apartments with expensive views of the Hudson. Personal assistants having drinks and complaining about their bosses on rooftop bar areas. Then the still-chaotic sweep of downtown. Dollar stores opposite million-dollar condominiums in Alphabet city. An old woman, alcoholic, crawls the pavement by lamplight outside Tompkins Square Park. Soho, its streets glittering with polished paving stones and vintage iron, with only the very richest artists still in residence, having been forced out by Prada, Comme, Versace.

            One night in a bar above Gansevoorst Street, I stood on the terrace and looked out over the river. A blond girl in ripped jeans and a biker jacket with diamante epaulettes came over and kissed me and I started to cry. The girl walked away and was replaced by a young man, with my haircut, who told me how much he enjoyed my outfit. The young man was with a group of friends who came over one by one and high-fived me. I didn’t know where Angela was. They recognised Jared from Jared’s World, and I didn’t know where Angela was and so I got in a cab downtown with them and we shot through traffic like mercury into the city’s bloodstream through a hypodermic and we arrived a while later at a nightclub, Labial, that one of the guys owned, and I was photographed by paparazzi on the way in, and we went to a private booth at the back. In the private booth the most beautiful young Asian girl I have ever seen was sitting with her legs splayed, open, across the seats touching herself intimately, shivering with each movement of her porcelain fingers, and when I had sat down next to her she unzipped my trousers and took me in her mouth, her head moving in exact syncopation with the movements of her hand. As this was going on one of the guys, Brad or Duane, or Penn, Blake Lively’s boyfriend, ordered Grey Goose and glasses and champagne. The music they were playing was European electro but when they brought the drink over they played the Star Wars theme, and Duane or Spencer from The Hills who was in Manhattan to do MTV with Heidi his girlfriend high-fived me and said way to go for escaping from the jungle. Apparently it had been all over twenty-four hour news, interrupted only for reports on the death of Nigel Serious, the British rock singer who had been found asphyxiated in his cellar that morning. I pulled out the iphone that was in my pocket and tried to call Angela but then realised I didn’t have her number. The DJ was playing Meet Murder My Angel by Soft Cell, and a young boy with piercings was trying to sit on my lap.

            At the second club we hit, Glitterati, on Avenue A, I was again photographed by paparazzi, but more significantly, the Jared’s World film crew also arrived. They’d been trailing me, but had been unable to get on the same flight with us.

            ‘Roger’s really mad,’ said the guy with the camera. ‘I’ve got him on the phone. He wants to talk to you.’ He handed me an iphone and I put it to my ear but all I could hear was a thin, strangulated dialling tone.

            Glitterati was like Labial but more so. I said to Spencer from The Hills ‘This place is like Labial but more so,’ and he laughed and high-fived me and he called over table-service and ordered a bottle of Grey Goose. While Duane was chopping out a line of cocaine on the low Japanese-style table in front of us, Mischa Barton from the O.C. came over to talk to Penn, and she congratulated me on the show, saying she had seen it in London. I offered her a drink, then asked her how many actresses had played her but she seemed not to understand me and walked away, texting a friend. The DJ was playing Duran Duran. A seventeen year old girl in a leather miniskirt with metal studs on it asked me to go to the bathroom with her. Table-service bought over a pile of sushi rolls and sashimi but no one ate.

            At 00.21 I checked my phone again for Angela’s number, or to see whether she had called me, but she hadn’t. I thought about Googling Jared Montague to work out what I was meant to say next. The girl in the booth next to me was talking about Roland Bathes and Michel Hollouebecque and her thesis at NYU but I didn’t understand her. A model was arguing with Penn about the Prada menswear show. It looked as though it might get physical. Candles were lit above the dancefloor and they started playing classical music. I was given a shot of Sambucca and I went to the bathroom to do another line of coke with a guy from the Jared’s World production team, a geek in a Breton shirt who would never have got in here without me, who joked that he wasn’t filming anything even though he kept his camera running the whole time.

            Peter Doherty came over to our booth and we discussed Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, and he tried to kiss me but only in a jokey sort of way. The DJ put on House of the Jealous Lovers.

            Someone said they knew about this S&M party going on at this banker’s place over by the river, so we jumped a cab outside the laundromat on Fourteenth Street. On the way I wanted to talk to someone about how great Saul Bellow’s Seize The Day was, but no-one had heard of him and anyway it was out of character and I had to be careful. Then I thought about Jared and I wanted to talk to him and so I called UK directory enquiries long distance and asked if they had his phone number and the woman on the other end laughed and said even if I did, do you think I would give it to you, and so I hung up and Spencer and Penn and Blake Lively all laughed at me for calling up to find out my own telephone number.

            The apartment was a loft somewhere in Tribaca, an eighties-throwback piece of gentrified ‘raw space’ straight out of Jay McInerney or Brett Easton Ellis. The place was open-plan, and about forty people were milling around drinking cocktails. There was a DJ playing Welcome To The Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes To Hollywood from an iPad. In a corner with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the mirror, a naked guy in his mid-forties with a paunch had his wrists shackled to his ankles, and was being hit with a riding crop by a hard-faced young girl in expensive lingerie. The DJ played a remix of Master and Servant by Depeche Mode. Aside from the one couple there was little actual S&M going on, but people were dressed in leather and rubber and PVC and a couple of guys had military uniforms on. Blake and Penn had left, but Duane and Dirk and Damon were still there and we all looked conspicuous wearing jeans and blazers and Ed Hardy t-shirts and caps, but it didn’t matter because a young Ukrainian woman who claimed to be the girlfriend of the owner of the building recognised Jared from the show and welcomed us all in anyway. Behind me, the camera crew high-fived with Duane and Dirk and Damon. The DJ played Poker Face by Lady Gaga, and I heard someone saying that she was going to be huge, even bigger than Madonna, and someone else say she had been overexposed. Someone asked me what I thought, and I found it difficult momentarily to speak, but then I managed to say that I wondered which incarnation of Lady Gaga would get the most famous, and everyone was silent for a moment and then they started laughing and slapping me on the back and high-fiving again.

            At 3.05am I felt very sick and went out onto the roof terrace, and vomited over the side down sixty floors. I watched as the vomit disintegrated into the air, and discrete parts fell in slow motion like stars. I felt a hand on my leather jacket and I was pulled upright and I recognised Zucker Flailing, the footballer, standing behind me. I greeted him and asked him where was Jared? was he OK? but Zucker just shook his head and walked away, back into the penthouse.

            At 4.21am I found myself in deep conversation with two market analysts about the state of the US media industry with specific regard to the future of the New York Times. Having little to usefully add, I went over and stared meaningfully at a Yucca plant in the corner by the door, wondering whether its owner was being ironic or if he really meant it.

            At 4.45 a group of models from Woman showed up with their booker, a screamingly camp guy called Darren who hit on me in the toilets. When I came out, the girl with the riding crop came over and asked if I’d like to be spanked. Then Lily Allen and Lindsay Lohan came and told Duane they knew about a great party which was happening in a club over at the Meatpacking district, and so twelve of us left and got into Lindsay’s stretch limo and shot across town. Lindsay told me she liked the show but otherwise didn’t say much and seemed constantly to be on the phone. Duane started to make out with Heidi Montaug who had come back without Spencer. A guy from Philadelphia threatened to punch me. I looked down at my hands and they were covered thickly with ash. I had no idea how. I felt like crying again or going back to the hotel but I had no memory of where I was staying and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone.

            When we got to the club, which was accessible via a lift in the hotel of which it was a part, the film crew told me they were going for Guinness in an Irish pub round the corner and would join me again in five. ‘Call Roger,’ said one, ‘He really needs to speak to you,’ so I call him from my iPhone but I must be out of range as the line is dead. 

            The party was full of fashionistas and must have had a Death theme as everyone was wearing skulls or was dressed as skeletons. Lilly Allen did an impromptu PA, singing Ghost Town by the Specials. After that the DJ played The More You ignore Me the Closer I Get by Morrissey. Daisy Lowe and Alexa Chung came over to say hello and introduced me to a fashion editor from NyLon magazine who claimed to have slept with me and then started an argument about Stendhal. I told her I preferred Zola anyway, then realised this was out of character and I’d have to be careful.

            At 5.10am the DJ played Stuart Price’s remix of the Jared’s World theme tune, and Amelia Ford walked in with a group of five girls, saw me and walked straight out again. I got up and followed them out, shouting for her to stop, I needed to find Jared, but she kept on walking and when she reached her limo she spoke to her security guy and he came at me with a tyre iron so I had to go back inside.

            When I got back inside the club I went to the bathroom I saw that my Dsquared t-shirt was ripped and covered in blood stains. I had no idea how.

            The DJ was playing You Never Give Me Your Money by the Beatles.

            At 6.15am Duane, Dirk, Lauren from The Hills, Mischa Barton, three guys from Queens and a young college professor from Yale and I were at the  ******* diner on Gansevoorst. Mischa and Lauren were talking about Deathcab for Cutie, while one of the guys from Queens arm-wrestled Duane. I said, ‘I don’t know who any of you people are,’ but they all ignored me and carried on talking, and the Yale professor tried to interest me in an article he was writing about Baudrillard and would I like to be interviewed. Dirk said the kippers here were great and so I ordered the watermelon and coffee, and my iPhone buzzed and there was a missed call from a withheld number. Lauren and Mischa played with my hair and said maybe I would look good with a Mohawk and they put eyeliner on me. My throat was burning so I took a drink of water but then my head was buzzing and the water didn’t help and I needed more cocaine but no-one had any, and Dirk said he had a contact in a project in the East Village but it was a tough neighbourhood and maybe I could wait until later.

            The DJ was playing Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley. I could smell fresh bread baking in the kitchen. I felt sick and I wanted to vomit. Outside the diner I could see three photographers with their lenses trained on me. The Jared’s World production team, who appeared to have drunk through their hangovers, were sitting at the next table down.

            Anabel, Duane’s girlfriend showed up straight from an all-nighter at the Skewer club wearing a baby-doll nightie, and holding a teddy bear.

            I remembered the name of the hotel, so I got up and, before anyone could stop me, I walked out into the street and hailed a cab. The sun made everything look as though it had sharp edges, even the clouds. The cab driver was a Palestinian. He listened to loud disco on the radio all the way back to the hotel and I was too tired to tell him to turn it off. My Aviators were broken but I put them on anyway.

            When I got back to the suite it was empty; Angela had gone. I sat down on the bed and put on a U2 live DVD from the hotel’s collection and wept. When I finished I checked the answering machine. There were three messages from Roger which I skipped over. There was a message from Blake Lively inviting me out to Fire Island, and a guy from Interview Magazine had heard I was in town and wanted to profile me. I deleted all of them.

            On the bed, there was a note.

Dear Jared,

Well, I guess this is goodbye. My management company have caught up with me and ordered me back to London.

I can say honestly it was a pleasure meeting you.

Yours affectionately,

            Angela.

P.S. If you want to know where he is, I can tell you: they took him back to your old flat.

I reached for the phone again and dialled my old telephone number, but it had been cut off. I checked the iPhone but something I must have crushed the screen as it looked as though it had been flooded with ink.

I took all my clothes off and went for a shower. I didn’t feel better. I felt worse. I went to the minibar and took out the bottle of Grey Goose and poured a glass, which I drank while calling British Airways and booking a flight to London. Then I called reception and told them to have a car ready. The hotel bill would go to Jared’s World.

The production guys helped me pack and promised to give the room a quick once-over after I had left.

In the car on the way to JFK I read Page Six, which carried a report about me called Jared Montague: Out of the jungle and into the wild.

My head hit the window. I slept.

Excerpt from a novel – Ibiza

4.45pm Sunday. Ibiza. I guess some people are just built to let others down. Somewhere in the middle of the swimming pool, insufficient buoyancy means that, every couple of minutes, cold chlorinated water seeps past the back of my head. It’s not altogether unpleasant. I can see surfaces and they are all white, except for the floor-to-ceiling windows that form the south aspect of the villa. All are smooth, all are angular. In front of me, fir trees guard the perimeter of the property, giving way to heat-parched fields where tiny dust storms kick up. Up in the hills, this is the only building in the near vicinity, although in the distance there are boxy yellow low-rise rectangles reaching right down to the sea.

My sunglasses are heavy as I angle my head so I can see Zucker Flailing and Jamie Valentine throwing a ball around with two Spanish chicas, over to my right.  The dull ache is still there but the panic attack I had earlier has subsided, after a couple of Jack n’Valiums on the plane. The girls are laughing, splashing around. I glance at my watch, and the realisation that it is Sunday afternoon and that, instead of lunching with my father and my girlfriend, I am instead at a private villa in the Balearics, stings when it hits.

            ‘Learn to throw’ says Zucker, pausing to drink from a glass of vodka. ‘Jeez, even Jared could do better than that! Only joking, Jar’

            The girl glances at me, and then slaps Zucker playfully on the upper arm. She picks up her glass and moves towards me through the water, and then pauses, looking at me, her head on one side. I watch her brown torso and feel a prick of sexual excitement which is fortunately not followed up by an erection, given the brief pair of zebra-print D&G swimming trunks I have been lent by Jamie Valentine, whose place this is.

            ‘Ah, but Mr Jared is so cute. You may have the brawn, Zucker, but he is most certainly the most beautiful.’

‘Pretty boy Montague does it again’, shouts Valentine, although he appears to be doing quite well himself, the other girl, topless, gloriously contorted around him.

            I wonder if the girls are hookers and decide that they probably are. I manoeuvre my inflatable to the side of the pool where I take a drink from the bottle of vodka I have left there. The thought that none of this, the drugs, the prostitutes, the blackouts, the waste of money, is likely to make me any more popular with the public crosses my mind for a second, but the enormity of trying to process it seems so tiring that I push it from my mind. I also dismiss all thoughts of the ‘what if they could see you now Jared?’ type. Instead, I call out to Valentine and ask if he has another ecstasy tablet. He does; I pop it in my mouth and lay back, enjoying the heat on my face, and the mellow house music which is playing quietly from discreet speakers: soft, rounded, like pieces of tasteful furniture.

            I sleep. Time passes, and when I open my eyes again, the inflatable has drifted to the side of the pool, and the sun is stained across the sky weak red like blood spilled in water. It’s cooler now, and my legs are pricked with goose pimples. I shiver, enjoying the feeling. Zucker Flailing is sitting next to me on another inflatable, and they bump into one another occasionally like boats moored in a marina.

            ‘So how you finding it, Jared?’ says Zucker. He’s smoking a long spliff, perfectly rolled like a miniature ice-cream cone.

            ‘It’s great here – I come out a few times a year. We film the show here sometimes and…’

            Zucker laughs. ‘I don’t mean here – I mean your life. You’ve done pretty well. A TV show. A nightclub. Women. How is it?’

            I stare out across the pool and into the distance, where I can see Es Vedra tear up out of the water like a shark’s fin.

            ‘Forget about me – next to you, I don’t even exist!’

            He laughs and pushes the water back out of his eyes. His hair is a tight afro. I follow little trails of light around the curls. He has a heavy silver diver’s watch on, three rings, and a chunky bracelet. His physique is hard like wood. His tattoos speak of destiny, unity and purpose. A breeze hovers over the pool and I shiver again.

            ‘Can I ask you something Zucker? Do you ever get scared? All the attention you get. Does it ever, you know, bother you?’

            ‘Bother Zucker?’ He laughs again, the chest rising, an almost hydraulic demonstration of strength. ‘Are you even weirder than you come out on that weirded out show? Man, I love it.  The fans, the girls, the clubs – man, I’m gonna come and check out your place soon too. See what kind of pussy you guys have got hiding down there!’

            ‘But don’t you ever feel watched? All the time? It never gets you down? You never think why me? Do I deserve this?’

            ‘Now you’re starting to freak me! I do what I love – as simple as that. I’ve been kicking a ball around since I was a kid tearing up the streets in Clapton. I like to be watched. Of course I deserve this. Man, what are you talking about?’ He pauses and takes a drink of beer. ‘Dude, stop questioning everything. There’s two sides, and you’re on the right side. That’s all you have to remember.’

            I nod, nausea bubbling up in my throat, which I swallow. Now is not the time for sickness – I know from experience. Now is the time to be strong. Just one more onslaught. Nearly there. There is more night but soon you will finish. Soon lights dim around the villa and the smell of pine and Eucalyptus coalesces with the tang of Vodka, the chary smoke of duty-free cigarettes and the waft of cannabis. Oh to have smelled the sea – I wasn’t myself. I wasn’t. Instead the laughter, about what I forget, tinkling, silly. Instead the SUV, its outsized wheels crushing dust and sand, taking us to the black worm of motorway which winds across the island, passing infrequent lights, her mouth on my mouth, my hand on her bare leg, passing infrequent towns, until we reach the starry port. Yachts plumped up proud like gulls. Floating motorcades, naked parties, skinny-dipping. And now the club, the line of losers queuing, and they see me and they start calling my name, Jar-ed, Jar-ed, emphasis on the second syllable, like a voodoo chant in a dream. I can’t believe they exist, their slogan t-shirts, their straightened hair, their happy talk. And we reach the door and my back is slapped, my hand is shaken, and I am walked through into a glittering box of sound, and I forget everything else, except one minute when I open my eyes and look at myself in a mirror in the bathroom, and I’m not there.