Read Online Wild Abandon by Joe Dunthorne - Free Book Online
Authors: Joe Dunthorne
Tags: Contemporary
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thing.
He began to harbor a strong belief that people talked about him behind his back. You could always hear people talking somewhere, and he often heard double plosives that sounded like his name and, depending on that day’s psychological lean, he would provide the context. In a good frame of mind: “Patrick seriously delivered with the kedgeree this a.m.” In a bad one: “Is it me or was Patrick’s kedgeree pre-chewed?”
When he felt this way, he turned to music and art for comfort, and this presented another problem. It was not possible to hang art in the dome, all the walls being curved and omnitriangulate. When Patrick had moved out of the big house all those years ago, he had donated to baby Kate, in her new bedroom, a smoggy, oil-acrylic seascape and eight wildly imprecise line drawings:
Studies for Any Female Nude I
–
VIII
by Marcel Le Lionnais. On the day before Kate’s third birthday, Don returned them to Patrick, carrying them under both arms to the dome, saying they were “a bit much, for Kate, at this stage in her development.”
Since Patrick couldn’t hang the art, he had decided tomake use of one of the awkward spaces that existed behind every piece of non-dome-specific furniture. Rectangular sofas, rectangular bookcases, rectangular wardrobes: anything not designed to back onto a spherical wall created dead space. So Patrick, in a fit of innovation, took the pictures out of their frames and put them into cardboard-backed plastic sleeves. He then stood the images on a cradle-style print browser that he’d bought from an art shop in Mumbles. It fitted behind the futon-sofa, thus utilizing, albeit awkwardly, the dead space. If he knelt on the sofa, facing the wall, he could then peruse the images at his leisure. This soon became one thing that made Patrick feel truly wretched and alone: the eight line-drawings now a kind of flick-book, creating the impression of a naked woman exploding, limbs distending, tearing at herself, followed by the undeniably bleak and featureless gray-black-blue seascape. This final image captured Patrick’s feelings whenever he tried to enjoy his modest collection of original art.
The only wall decorations were Patrick’s string instruments. When they had built the dome, Don installed wall-mounted brackets for Patrick’s guitar and banjo. It was a small act of genuine thoughtfulness. Over the years, the community had bought Patrick a number of stringed instruments, each one smaller,
quieter
, than the last. Two Christmases ago it was the samisen, a three-stringed Japanese guitar.
The acoustics in the dome were unsettling. If Patrick sat on a stool in the middle of the room with his Spanish guitar, it added an unwanted 1980s-type reverb to his fingerpicking, making his compositions sound like restaurant music. He could never achieve a lo-fi, stripped-back sound. Also, muchof his record collection became unlistenable and overproduced within these walls, which Patrick blamed Don for as well.
Through Kate’s mid-teens, Patrick had happily transcribed and played her favorite emotional indie rock so she could practice singing. He was one of the only people she would allow to hear her voice, plus she actually preferred how she sounded with the dome’s built-in reverb. The other advantage was that Patrick had no neighbors who could overhear them. He felt privileged to be, as far as he knew, the only person she talked to about her new boyfriend.
Now, as Patrick stared up at the raised, recessed bed at the top of the dome, he found himself thinking about the night that he and Janet had spent there. Not long after Albert’s birth there had been a party; Janet had gifted her own bed to two friends who were visiting, and the schoolroom floor was dominoed with people sleeping, so Patrick—in an honest-to-goodness unsleazy way—said there was spare room in the dome. It was freezing and raining when they ran across the yard, still drunk. They set the wood burner going, and
He began to harbor a strong belief that people talked about him behind his back. You could always hear people talking somewhere, and he often heard double plosives that sounded like his name and, depending on that day’s psychological lean, he would provide the context. In a good frame of mind: “Patrick seriously delivered with the kedgeree this a.m.” In a bad one: “Is it me or was Patrick’s kedgeree pre-chewed?”
When he felt this way, he turned to music and art for comfort, and this presented another problem. It was not possible to hang art in the dome, all the walls being curved and omnitriangulate. When Patrick had moved out of the big house all those years ago, he had donated to baby Kate, in her new bedroom, a smoggy, oil-acrylic seascape and eight wildly imprecise line drawings:
Studies for Any Female Nude I
–
VIII
by Marcel Le Lionnais. On the day before Kate’s third birthday, Don returned them to Patrick, carrying them under both arms to the dome, saying they were “a bit much, for Kate, at this stage in her development.”
Since Patrick couldn’t hang the art, he had decided tomake use of one of the awkward spaces that existed behind every piece of non-dome-specific furniture. Rectangular sofas, rectangular bookcases, rectangular wardrobes: anything not designed to back onto a spherical wall created dead space. So Patrick, in a fit of innovation, took the pictures out of their frames and put them into cardboard-backed plastic sleeves. He then stood the images on a cradle-style print browser that he’d bought from an art shop in Mumbles. It fitted behind the futon-sofa, thus utilizing, albeit awkwardly, the dead space. If he knelt on the sofa, facing the wall, he could then peruse the images at his leisure. This soon became one thing that made Patrick feel truly wretched and alone: the eight line-drawings now a kind of flick-book, creating the impression of a naked woman exploding, limbs distending, tearing at herself, followed by the undeniably bleak and featureless gray-black-blue seascape. This final image captured Patrick’s feelings whenever he tried to enjoy his modest collection of original art.
The only wall decorations were Patrick’s string instruments. When they had built the dome, Don installed wall-mounted brackets for Patrick’s guitar and banjo. It was a small act of genuine thoughtfulness. Over the years, the community had bought Patrick a number of stringed instruments, each one smaller,
quieter
, than the last. Two Christmases ago it was the samisen, a three-stringed Japanese guitar.
The acoustics in the dome were unsettling. If Patrick sat on a stool in the middle of the room with his Spanish guitar, it added an unwanted 1980s-type reverb to his fingerpicking, making his compositions sound like restaurant music. He could never achieve a lo-fi, stripped-back sound. Also, muchof his record collection became unlistenable and overproduced within these walls, which Patrick blamed Don for as well.
Through Kate’s mid-teens, Patrick had happily transcribed and played her favorite emotional indie rock so she could practice singing. He was one of the only people she would allow to hear her voice, plus she actually preferred how she sounded with the dome’s built-in reverb. The other advantage was that Patrick had no neighbors who could overhear them. He felt privileged to be, as far as he knew, the only person she talked to about her new boyfriend.
Now, as Patrick stared up at the raised, recessed bed at the top of the dome, he found himself thinking about the night that he and Janet had spent there. Not long after Albert’s birth there had been a party; Janet had gifted her own bed to two friends who were visiting, and the schoolroom floor was dominoed with people sleeping, so Patrick—in an honest-to-goodness unsleazy way—said there was spare room in the dome. It was freezing and raining when they ran across the yard, still drunk. They set the wood burner going, and
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