John and John

By Toby Litt

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING TEXT CONTAINS STRONG AND OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE

..allowing your eyes gently to close, said the soft voice in John’s head, and then now starting to bring your awareness into this present moment, the voice which was coming into his head through the white bud-earphones, because we’re going to centre this first meditation upon the breath, a male voice, Californian, he thought, probably Californian, a slightly gay, droopy, insinuating voice, but only mildly gay and only vaguely insinuating, after all, the voice telling him what to do was telling him what to do for his own good, he had chosen to listen to it, and the pillows and cushions under his bum weren’t giving quite enough support, his double-backed legs tucked to either side weren’t getting enough blood and there was the spot on his back that needed squeezing. John began to wonder how some men ended up with gay voices – even men who weren’t gay, or, quite often, who didn’t think themselves gay even though everybody but their mothers knew they were gay as gay could be. His left knee was going to start to ache and then to stab – he knew that, he knew it for certain. The instructor or meditation guide or guru had already counselled his listeners, both present at the original recording session and anticipated through tape and compact disc and podcast – had already advised them to find some comfortable and stable position in which to sit, either cross-legged or squatting down, on a cushion (as John was, on a pile of cushions on a bed) or on a chair (as John might have found more comfortable, though more humiliating, with his going-to-be-arthritic-one-day going-to-be-really-painful-today knee). The easy, relaxed, trademark competence of the calm gay voice annoyed John, and made him want to open his eyes, twirl his finger around the off-white donut-shape of the iPod click wheel and then push the central select button for ACDC or The Ramones or Napalm Death – anything to fuck up this false striving for a calm he would probably never achieve and did he really want it anyway? Calm was uncreative. Writers who went zen all went gooey and rubbish – look at Christopher Isherwood – so why did he think calm was something he needed? The calm gay meditation voice was bringing him back, reminding him not to let himself be distracted by stray or irrelevant thoughts. The breath – stay with the breath. He always thought of the owner of the calm gay voice as Christopher – partly because of Christopher Isherwood and partly because of Christopher Street in New York. He tried to stay simply with the breath, but whenever he started a meditation, he always envisaged one after the other several things: the Edinburgh Book Festival, the white tents in which the Edinburgh Book Festival was held, the square within which the tents were pitched, Henri Bergson, Henri Bergson’s concept of duration (which he had been reading the last time he attended the Edinburgh Book Festival) and the hotel room in which he had sat on the bed, during that last Edinburgh Book Festival, not quite as he was kneeling on this hotel bed now, and had first listened to the newly bought compact disc of A Beginner’s Introduction to Meditation. These thoughtforms always broke up his first few moments of strived-for-serenity, even though he shouldn’t be striving. And then always followed the image of the young woman he’d almost not slept with after his event that year at the Edinburgh Book Festival – how close he’d come to missing out on that dip in the back above the bum, those shifting-lifting haunches, that sweet introductory blow-job, those droop-free breasts – after which, until his second climax, all the sex had been anti-climax. The whole passage of these images – from tents to breasts – took only a few seconds, and then John was back in the ambience of the faraway recording session, listening to Christopher’s voice of gay calm. Back because this was one of his favourite bits, if he could be said to have favourite bits – when Christopher referred to thoughts and memories and plans going on in the mind, and then said, matter-of-fact, gay or not gay, this is the stuff of your life. John liked that phrase so much that he always intended to remember it so that he could write it down after finishing meditating. But he always forgot, distracted by his subsequent distractions – of which there were always many. He wanted to steal that phrase, the stuff of your life, use it as a title for a story or a chapter. Stuff suggested stuffing, of sofas, of chickens, of women. There was something satisfactory and true in the dismissiveness of the phrase. Your life – Christopher seemed to be saying – is not the stuff in it but your life is largely comprised of stuff. And stuff can be dealt with – taped up in cardboard boxes and sent off for storage. John was aware of his thoughts as being thoughts, and of them being intrusive to the point of ruining the meditation. But he was vain of them, too. There was a conceit of intellect, like the stylistic conceit of leaving a Latinate word in a written sentence even though the Anglo-Saxon is more direct and more subtle. But John preferred his prose a little conceited. Flaubert, James, Joyce, Nabokov. Self-admirers. Fingernail-gazers. Christopher the Californian now told John to become aware of what is going on all around you, particularly the sounds. He said to accept them with attention, patience and lovingkindness – not to attempt to challenge or oppose them, but merely to let them figure in your consciousness until your consciousness becomes bored of them and lets them drop. Which it will. And suddenly there was a white woman, a redhead, on her knees, sucking a long black cock – it was an image from the interracial pornfilm he had watched on the hotel television, half an hour ago, after checking in, before showering. He had masturbated for the five minutes it took until ejaculation. As always, he had swallowed his come. It was a trick he’d learnt in boarding school, after lights out, when gentle slappings and squishings could be heard from many of the surrounding beds. Catch the spunk in the foreskin – a bit might go on the sheets if you weren’t quick enough, but that didn’t matter, it wasn’t their mothers who were going to be washing them. Then, ease the off-white goo into the cleft between thumb and clenched forefinger. Hope there wasn’t too much, or it wasn’t too runny with pre-come. Knock it back as, years later, he would swallow his first raw oyster – and realise the sensation was entirely bizarrely familiar. A very big black cock, uncircumcised, with a pink bell-end that – when exposed – looked the colour black flesh does when third-degree-burned or napalmed. As the porn actress mock-lovingly tugged the foreskin along the shaft, the pink appeared and disappeared – then it disappeared into her by-contrast dully pink-grey mouth, only to reappear and disappear, slippery, slimy. John came long before the black porn actor – in fact, he’d turned the television off before that moment of no doubt humiliatingly extravagant gush. As if the size of the black cock itself hadn’t been humiliating enough. The black cock must have been eight or nine inches long, and wide, too – although slightly flaccid-looking at times. An entirely stereotypical, racist version of a black cock – long, thick. John was not meditating. He was failing comprehensively to meditate. He was not planning or thinking, but instead he was remembering a thick black cock being fellated. He listened to the next words of Christopher’s calm gay voice, which were letting the awareness gently rest on the breath. Always the breath, always the fucking breath. But now another thing happened which always happened when John was meditating, or trying to meditate, or trying and failing to meditate: the mention of the breath made him realise he was breathing – that he had a body, with lungs and other squishy internal organs – organs that could be damaged or become cancerous – and that his breathing-body would, one day, perhaps today, perhaps right now this moment, die and be dead not stop being dead. Breath meant death, like any boy or master at his school with halitosis: death-breath. John felt his heart start to beat more intensely, and this reminder of the fact that one of his internal organs was something as fragile and long-suffering long-serving as a meaty muscular heart was added to the breath-of-death thought. Far from calming him, the injunction to rest gently on the breath was making him believe he was about to start having a heart attack – he couldn’t rest on the breath, the breath wouldn’t support him, it was breath, he wasn’t a feather, he would fall not float, and land hard, spilling his internal organs sideways, and die, and be and remain dead. If he stopped breathing, he would die. And if he lived, he would grow old and get arthritis, especially in his left knee – probably first of all in his left knee, because that’s what was starting to really hurt now, ignore it as he tried. And although Buddhism wasn’t mentioned any more than passingly on this tape, John now thought the words The Buddha The Buddha. This was a non-denominational, secular meditation tape – probably so as not to offend, or so as to be purchasable by American Christians, stressed ones, stressed about Jesus sending them to hell on judgement day because they’d done something evil that no-one had ever flagged up to them as evil. The Buddha The Buddha – and John thought about the Buddha himself, and the Buddha was two Buddhas simultaneously: the thin youngish Buddha achieving enlightenment beneath a tree in Northern India or Southern Nepal and also the fat laughing Buddha that a friend of John’s had once had, when they were ten years old, the Buddha as garden statuary, a little green with lichen, brought inside and established on an altar on a bedside cabinet from MFI. The Buddha knew that minds were full of obscene crap, and that the way to discipline them was to meditate, by staying with the breath-that-meant-death but death wasn’t so bad for the Buddha because, fat and thin, he realised that there’s no such thing as actual death, although hearts stop and lungs turn black and hard and stop working, and John – who hadn’t smoked for five years, apart from occasionally, when in pursuit of a woman – suddenly thought of a cigarette in his mouth, cushioned against his top and bottom lip, and how perfect it would feel, the smoke tubing out of it, far better than this attempt at being a Buddha in a hotel room. What had reminded him of cigarettes was cancer and the idea of death through the lungs. And again John panicked because what if every time he meditated from now on he not only thought of the Edinburgh Book Festival and tents and Natalie-the-girl-he’d-almost-missed-fucking and Henri Bergson’s concept of duration but also thought of wanting a cigarette? He would never be able to meditated again. This was becoming his worst meditation, ever. It couldn’t go any worse than it was. He shouldn’t have watched the porn. He shouldn’t have watched the television. Watching television always fragmented his mind, ruined his concentration. And had he said yes to a coffee on the plane on the way over? No, he hadn’t. But he had thought about sex with the air-hostess who had served him. Which reminded John of the receptionist downstairs. And his wife. He was married. He reminded himself he was married. He remembered the wedding and the church and his father’s smile and the tits of the receptionist downstairs. He wanted to fuck the receptionist downstairs, to bring the receptionist downstairs upstairs, in the lift, and fuck her, just as he’d wanted to fuck the air-hostess who had served him, although her calves had been rather solid from so many hours standing, just as the receptionist downstairs probably had solid calves. He imagined her, the air-hostess who had served him, with her skirt up in the toilet cubicle, riding the length of his cock – which wasn’t his cock any more but a long thick black cock, the long thick black cock. And the air-hostess who had served him became the receptionist downstairs, whose uniform was navy blue and of a horribly ridgy corporate fabric. John thought of his wife, and of his many unfaithfulnesses, and the receptionist downstairs riding his long thick black cock, and lying on top of him on the covers of this bed, the pillows around him, her on top because his left knee – the bastard – would give him so much pain if he tried the missionary position, after this meditation, even in his fantasies. Why hadn’t he sat in the chair rather than knelt on the bed with all the hotel room’s pillows and cushions beneath his arse? Now, he would have to ask receptionist downstairs to go on top when he brought her upstairs, in the lift, to fuck her as he’d imagined fucking the air-hostess who’d served him and as he’d once fucked Natalie in the hotel after his event at the Edinburgh Book Festival. He needed to return to the breath. His wife was the reason he had watched the interracial porn on the hotel television – because if he did that, and wanked, he was less likely to troll downstairs later on, after the minibar, in search of the receptionist downstairs, who would probably have gone off shift by then anyway, but who had definitely held eye-contact longer than necessary whilst he was checking in, and if he didn’t check downstairs soon she would almost certainly have gone off shift by the time he did check, and he was only in this hotel for one night. John went back to the breath, for a series of breaths – forcing himself to listen to it as it went in and out, in and out, although he knew that having to force himself to listen was entirely counter to the spirit of this meditation. He should simply be letting his thoughts come and go, watching them with kindness and loving attention, but they didn’t come and go, they came and didn’t go. He thought about how rarely he thought about his wife. In the past half hour, he’d thought much more about the receptionist downstairs. She was brunette and had a tan that suggested she’d just come back from holiday – which in turn suggested a boyfriend. Perhaps a black boyfriend with a long thick black cock, so she wouldn’t be interested in white-guy guests who, from the computer screen in front of her, she could probably tell had paid for the porn-channel only to turn his television off after watching and wanking for only five minutes. But if he left it another half an hour, although she might have gone off shift, he would know he was definitely ready to go again, should sex occur, with the receptionist downstairs upstairs on top. The pain in his left knee reminded him he was supposed to be meditating, and not thinking about sex or cigarettes. John became aware of the calm gay voice – aware of it because it wasn’t speaking and hadn’t been speaking for some time. He was in the middle of one of the gaps left for the listener just to get on with meditating. But he could hardly be said to be doing that, could he? He was just pinballing from sexual fantasy to sexual fantasy, as usual. It was useless – he should open his eyes and give up. Turn the television back on. Go and see if he could get chatting to the receptionist downstairs on reception. Ask her if there were any decent restaurants nearby, money no object – and whether she might be free to accompany him, seeing how he was at a loose end, new in town, unmarried. At the Edinburgh Festival, it had rained the whole time he was there – it had rained the whole time he was fucking Natalie on the same bedcover where, two hours earlier, he had listened to the gay Californian meditation voice for the first time. And in two hours’ time, he could be pounding his long thick black cock into the receptionist. The Buddha. An aeroplane came into earshot somewhere overhead, bringing back an image of the now-partly-imaginary-air-hostess who had served him being fucked by him in the tight efficient toilet cubicle, with a whine as the wheels came out of the bottom of her plane and the fast air rushed around them, beginning her descent to orgasm, but not too loudly in case the other passengers were to hear, though it was hard to keep quiet with the pounding of his long thick black cock, and he heard the hiss of her breath far up over his hotel-room as the whine of her pleasure lowered its note as she headed down towards the runway with her wheels now out and his long thick black cock that slurped in and out of her, like the toilet flushing behind her when it came to the end of its cycle, after the terrifying prolapse-causing suck when he flushed sitting down and it took his cock out as a bloody slug and his bowels as a brown rope through the side of the plane and out into the fast clear air over Edinburgh as the plane flew down in-between the raised high buttocks of the imaginary air-hostess who had served him and who was now bent over the sink of the cubicle as the airplane now whistled out of earshot or below the height where its climax could be heard from his hotel room where he had a knee and the knee was telling him not to kneel on his knee any longer or he would feel more and more pain in his knee, and where Christopher wasn’t speaking now but only a memory of what Christopher would say were he to be addressing this issue, which he did in another of his five meditations, by saying that you should give the pain in your meditating body your full, compassionate, lovingkindness-feeling attention for as long as it took for your mind to lose interest in it. But the knee was a knee, and wasn’t listening to Christopher – or letting John listen to Christopher, who was now really speaking in his recording into John’s head about letting the breath find its own pace, not trying to control it in any way. And Christopher’s calm gay voice continued, as if in reply, whenever you find yourself distracted by thoughts, just gently bring yourself back to the breath (of death, thought John) and let your awareness rest gently upon it (I can’t rest, thought John), examining it closely, the sound of it, the feel of it, the swirls around your nose, the coolness, the itching, the tingling. He made it sound so easy, so possible. Had Christopher killed his desires with breathing? Or was Christopher fallible as anyone, going off into fantasties of long hard black cock in the locker room, gang-rape in the prison showers. And now John was the one being fucked. First by the receptionist downstairs, who came unexpectedly but delightfully equipped with a strap-on, and then by the black porn actor with the long thick black cock. Fucked up the arse, that was what would be on the hotel television right now. Anal. Hard anal. The breath. The Buddha The Buddha. But now the long thick black cock was pounding into Christopher, who had given up to it without resistance among the meditation cushions on the floor in California, surrounded by the devotees present at the recording session for this tape, and the fat garden Buddha was looking on and laughing, alongside the air-stewardess who had served him, whose hand was reaching over into the Buddha’s lap, finding something there to palp amid the flab, and the Buddha seemed to be enjoying it, because it meant nothing. And then, from nowhere, from somewhere, Natalie joined in with Christopher and the black porn actor – taking Christopher’s dangling long thin white cock in her smooth-backed hand, much as she had taken John’s smaller cock in her hand in the hotel room in Edinburgh, after his event in the Festival, which, in his head, she was doing now simultaneously – her hand was in both places, fantasy and memory, her smooth knuckles clasped around Christopher’s made up long thin white cock and his own present-but-in-the-past cock. This was, literally, a headfuck. Especially as Natalie was simultaneously herself, John’s wife, his ex-wife, his ex-girlfriends, and every woman who had ever touched his cock – and his cock was the long thick black cock of the black porn actor, and Christopher’s long thick white cock, the Buddha’s flesh-buried cock, and every cock that had ever been. See if you can feel every breath for one minute more. The meditation had almost finished, but he hadn’t been able to hold to the breath for more than – what? – two, three breaths in a row. But to try was to fail. To try was to exert oneself, and one shouldn’t have a self to be conscious of to exert. John imagined the calm gay voice telling him, calmly, that with meditation there was no such thing as success or failure. But John knew there was, because he’d already failed to stay with the breath for the first ten seconds of this last minute. And then an image came to him, not porn: his breath was a flannel-like creature, underwater, a strange fish from the depths which swam by going from roughly concave to roughly convex. As he breathed in, the thing-fish covered his face and as he breathed out it flanged away – though adhering still to his mouth, where it did not stop but helped with his breathing. The image of the flap-fish made it easier to concentrate on his breath, though he knew the vivid visuality of it was a distraction from the pure no-mind that is the ultimate end point of meditation. But fuck that. John stayed with the breath for three, four, five breaths. The fish was now less a fish and more a cloth of muslin, underwater, shaping one way and the other, without texture. And then a light bell rang three times in his head to signal the end of the twelve minutes of the first meditation of A Beginner’s Introduction to Meditation. John had forgotten his knee, and the long thick black cock. Pure mind. It was possible.