infuriated Carol! Never before, not even in his cups, had Dan disgusted her as he disgusted her now. He was such a turn-off. And now he was giving in to his mother, accepting her estimation of him and seeking her help. This was weakness run rampant.
That afternoon Carol went to the pet-shop at the Quadrant. They had had a fresh delivery of cuttlefish. Carol brought back two pieces, one for the mynah and one for the cockateel. The cuttlefish was white, dry and light in her hand, like a bleached bone. She pushed it through the wire bars. The birds looked at her with their solo-eyed, insectoid stares. Dan came up behind her, she could feel his forelocked head nuzzling between her shoulderblades. She shrugged him off. In the kitchen, while she waited for the kettle to boil, she could hear Dan in the living-room, still blubbing.
4
Dave 2
DAVE 2’s REAL SURNAME was Hobbes, and his parents still lived in Shepton Mallet. Had Dave 2 not had the great good fortune to be an alcoholic, one feels that he might well have struggled for some time to find his true vocation, that of religious whipper-in; spiritual barker; moral double-glazing salesman. For that was Dave 2. He was the man on the door with a ready grin and a quip for the wavering punter. He was a universal type. One could imagine him in all times and at all places: wearing a toga and explaining the fish symbol, or resplendent in a round-collared tunic, Marxist catechism in hand, drumming home the simplified fallacies of Dialectical Materialism.
But given the particular historical moment within which he found himself, Dave 2’s chronic alcoholism had provided him with a passport to Alcoholics Anonymous. The AA dogma was loosely based on Christian principles, but there was a residual zeal for low church liturgy and ritual that, in the hands of types like Dave 2, all too quickly fanned up into a witch-burning Salemite passion. For, as William James so justlyremarked, the only known cure for dipsomania
is
religiomania.
And, at this juncture, the poofy old don paused again. He got out from his inside pocket one of those Mahawat cigarillos that were popular in the mid-seventies. He put it in his pink little mouth and lit it with a rolled-gold Dunhill lighter.
The props and the deft blocking that made up the whole performance were so in keeping with his soft countenance and the faggy invective that laced his tale that I became slightly uneasy …This sardonic, effete don with his amusing if mordant story …Damn it all, he had to be too good to be true.
The lights had gone out in the carriage, and we had ground to a halt again, while an Inter-City 125 whooshed past on the main line. The tip of the cigarillo glowed and dimmed in the close darkness. He cleared his throat with a click of firm sputum on palate, and continued.
Dave 2 was of that opinion himself. ‘I’m fortunate to be what I call—and I hope you’ll pardon my French, ladies —a pisshead. Yeah, I’m fortunate to be a pisshead. You want’er know why? Because it’s brought me to a spiritual life: a life of the spirit. Oh, and why pisshead? Because sometimes I would get so drunk that I would piss all over myself. I was completely incontinent, totally, completely. So that’s what I was—literally a pisshead.’
But being a pisshead had really been the least of it.Indeed, given Dave 2’s accounts of some of his more extreme intoxicated behaviour one might almost have said that had he
confined
himself to pissing on his own head, he would have been almost socially acceptable.
For, compared to Dave 2’s lapses in memory and consequent losses of identity, Dan’s escapades were mere awaydays. With Dave 2 we can see the compass of the whole Grand Tour.
Dave 2 had once had an alcoholic blackout that was so long that during it he had joined the army, gone through basic training and been dishonourably discharged, for, guess what, drunkenness.
And if you don’t believe that this is possible, then spend an evening
That afternoon Carol went to the pet-shop at the Quadrant. They had had a fresh delivery of cuttlefish. Carol brought back two pieces, one for the mynah and one for the cockateel. The cuttlefish was white, dry and light in her hand, like a bleached bone. She pushed it through the wire bars. The birds looked at her with their solo-eyed, insectoid stares. Dan came up behind her, she could feel his forelocked head nuzzling between her shoulderblades. She shrugged him off. In the kitchen, while she waited for the kettle to boil, she could hear Dan in the living-room, still blubbing.
4
Dave 2
DAVE 2’s REAL SURNAME was Hobbes, and his parents still lived in Shepton Mallet. Had Dave 2 not had the great good fortune to be an alcoholic, one feels that he might well have struggled for some time to find his true vocation, that of religious whipper-in; spiritual barker; moral double-glazing salesman. For that was Dave 2. He was the man on the door with a ready grin and a quip for the wavering punter. He was a universal type. One could imagine him in all times and at all places: wearing a toga and explaining the fish symbol, or resplendent in a round-collared tunic, Marxist catechism in hand, drumming home the simplified fallacies of Dialectical Materialism.
But given the particular historical moment within which he found himself, Dave 2’s chronic alcoholism had provided him with a passport to Alcoholics Anonymous. The AA dogma was loosely based on Christian principles, but there was a residual zeal for low church liturgy and ritual that, in the hands of types like Dave 2, all too quickly fanned up into a witch-burning Salemite passion. For, as William James so justlyremarked, the only known cure for dipsomania
is
religiomania.
And, at this juncture, the poofy old don paused again. He got out from his inside pocket one of those Mahawat cigarillos that were popular in the mid-seventies. He put it in his pink little mouth and lit it with a rolled-gold Dunhill lighter.
The props and the deft blocking that made up the whole performance were so in keeping with his soft countenance and the faggy invective that laced his tale that I became slightly uneasy …This sardonic, effete don with his amusing if mordant story …Damn it all, he had to be too good to be true.
The lights had gone out in the carriage, and we had ground to a halt again, while an Inter-City 125 whooshed past on the main line. The tip of the cigarillo glowed and dimmed in the close darkness. He cleared his throat with a click of firm sputum on palate, and continued.
Dave 2 was of that opinion himself. ‘I’m fortunate to be what I call—and I hope you’ll pardon my French, ladies —a pisshead. Yeah, I’m fortunate to be a pisshead. You want’er know why? Because it’s brought me to a spiritual life: a life of the spirit. Oh, and why pisshead? Because sometimes I would get so drunk that I would piss all over myself. I was completely incontinent, totally, completely. So that’s what I was—literally a pisshead.’
But being a pisshead had really been the least of it.Indeed, given Dave 2’s accounts of some of his more extreme intoxicated behaviour one might almost have said that had he
confined
himself to pissing on his own head, he would have been almost socially acceptable.
For, compared to Dave 2’s lapses in memory and consequent losses of identity, Dan’s escapades were mere awaydays. With Dave 2 we can see the compass of the whole Grand Tour.
Dave 2 had once had an alcoholic blackout that was so long that during it he had joined the army, gone through basic training and been dishonourably discharged, for, guess what, drunkenness.
And if you don’t believe that this is possible, then spend an evening
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