Spicehandler he had never had a homosexual trauma. Ziggy, possibly, was a bad example, if only because he would have had a homosexual experience, he had had all the advantages, famous public school,etc., etc. But Ziggy … Ziggy had tasted and rejected homosexual experience. Not Mortimer, however. Why, he thought, I find the very thought of a physical relationship with another man vomit-making. A dead giveaway, that.
Queers were an abomination to Mortimer. Waiting for Joyce in a pub unnerved him, especially West End pubs, which were thick with them. Naturally he always took a newspaper or magazine with him (if it was the New Statesman , he never had it open at the book pages) and made a point of glancing meaningfully at his watch again and again, so that no unattached man in the pub could possibly get the wrong idea and embarrass himself. Even so, single men had occasionally smiled at Mortimer or even tried to start up a conversation. Once, in the Yorkminster, a man standing beside him had said, the ploy pathetic, “Got a light, mate?”
“Now you stay away from me or I’ll hit you,” he said.
“What in the hell are you –”
“I’m a married man with a child,” Mortimer protested, gulping down his drink and choosing to wait for Joyce outside.
And then, if Mortimer was going to be absolutely honest with himself about suppressed tendencies, he also had to own up to the barber bit. Mortimer was very, very choosy about barbers. He always had his hair cut in a shop where there were lots of them, so that he could select his chair circumspectly. Even so, he didn’t trust himself to be shampooed any more and had to wash his hair at home now. What had happened was a couple of years back, at Simpson’s, in Piccadilly, he had agreed to a shampoo with a scalp massage, was enjoying it hugely, until he discovered himself with an erection. Fortunately it wilted before the barber, a fatherly type, removed the protective sheet from him.
Mortimer had to admit to even another quasi-homosexual experience. When he and Joyce were still living in Canada, he used to make a habit of watching the hockey games on TV on Saturday nights, and thereafter, unaccountably, he always felt horny, which was not in itselfsuspect, but – but – but once in bed with Joyce, fiercely determined not to ejaculate too soon, he used to hold himself back, so to speak, by reliving the hockey game, eventually coming to his climax, eyes squeezed shut and mind closed to his thrusting, moaning partner, with the clear and exciting image of Gordie Howe bearing down on the nets to score; his ultimate joy synchronized – inadvertently, perhaps, with Joyce reaching her sexual summit, but consciously with Gordie Howe whipping the puck into the nets.
Am I a faggot? he thought.
Even the most bullish hetero, he’d read somewhere, had a smidgin of homosexuality in him. Yes, Yes, but how much was too much? Mortimer had devised a trial for himself, a trial he had never dared to take in waking life though he had had nightmares about it from time to time.
In his dream Mortimer lies nude except for a scented blindfold, he is tied to the sheets, roused by a probing tongue and adoring mouth, forced to submit to the test, rather like those endured by housewives on TV who are offered a fiver if they can tell Stork margarine from butter. Like them, he fails. He can’t tell a man’s mouth from a woman’s. Furthermore, in his dreams he enjoyed being sucked immensely and was only disgusted after the fact if it turned out that it was a man who had been doing it.
And yet – and yet – something in Mortimer refused to accept that he was a homosexual. A more sensible inner voice assured him that it was a slight tendency, no more, a containable drive magnified in his mind, because he unconsciously appreciated how dull he was, a placid WASP with a regular job, and only craved depravity in the hope it would make him more interesting to such as Ziggy Spicehandler.
Or Polly
Queers were an abomination to Mortimer. Waiting for Joyce in a pub unnerved him, especially West End pubs, which were thick with them. Naturally he always took a newspaper or magazine with him (if it was the New Statesman , he never had it open at the book pages) and made a point of glancing meaningfully at his watch again and again, so that no unattached man in the pub could possibly get the wrong idea and embarrass himself. Even so, single men had occasionally smiled at Mortimer or even tried to start up a conversation. Once, in the Yorkminster, a man standing beside him had said, the ploy pathetic, “Got a light, mate?”
“Now you stay away from me or I’ll hit you,” he said.
“What in the hell are you –”
“I’m a married man with a child,” Mortimer protested, gulping down his drink and choosing to wait for Joyce outside.
And then, if Mortimer was going to be absolutely honest with himself about suppressed tendencies, he also had to own up to the barber bit. Mortimer was very, very choosy about barbers. He always had his hair cut in a shop where there were lots of them, so that he could select his chair circumspectly. Even so, he didn’t trust himself to be shampooed any more and had to wash his hair at home now. What had happened was a couple of years back, at Simpson’s, in Piccadilly, he had agreed to a shampoo with a scalp massage, was enjoying it hugely, until he discovered himself with an erection. Fortunately it wilted before the barber, a fatherly type, removed the protective sheet from him.
Mortimer had to admit to even another quasi-homosexual experience. When he and Joyce were still living in Canada, he used to make a habit of watching the hockey games on TV on Saturday nights, and thereafter, unaccountably, he always felt horny, which was not in itselfsuspect, but – but – but once in bed with Joyce, fiercely determined not to ejaculate too soon, he used to hold himself back, so to speak, by reliving the hockey game, eventually coming to his climax, eyes squeezed shut and mind closed to his thrusting, moaning partner, with the clear and exciting image of Gordie Howe bearing down on the nets to score; his ultimate joy synchronized – inadvertently, perhaps, with Joyce reaching her sexual summit, but consciously with Gordie Howe whipping the puck into the nets.
Am I a faggot? he thought.
Even the most bullish hetero, he’d read somewhere, had a smidgin of homosexuality in him. Yes, Yes, but how much was too much? Mortimer had devised a trial for himself, a trial he had never dared to take in waking life though he had had nightmares about it from time to time.
In his dream Mortimer lies nude except for a scented blindfold, he is tied to the sheets, roused by a probing tongue and adoring mouth, forced to submit to the test, rather like those endured by housewives on TV who are offered a fiver if they can tell Stork margarine from butter. Like them, he fails. He can’t tell a man’s mouth from a woman’s. Furthermore, in his dreams he enjoyed being sucked immensely and was only disgusted after the fact if it turned out that it was a man who had been doing it.
And yet – and yet – something in Mortimer refused to accept that he was a homosexual. A more sensible inner voice assured him that it was a slight tendency, no more, a containable drive magnified in his mind, because he unconsciously appreciated how dull he was, a placid WASP with a regular job, and only craved depravity in the hope it would make him more interesting to such as Ziggy Spicehandler.
Or Polly
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