Martin Amis

Would it be so unwelcome, really, if I quietly joined her on the sofa and, after some murmured compliments, took her hand, and (depending on how that went) gently smoothed my lips against the base of her neck? Would it?

would it be so strange, really, to urge her on inside and to lean into her and gather in my dropped hands the white folds of her dress? Would it? Here? Where everything was allowed?

I hadn’t had a decent thought in my head for seven or eight years

we dwelt in a land, she and I, where it amounted to an act of illicit collusion.

(I like numbers. They speak of logic, exactitude, and thrift. I’m a little uncertain, sometimes, about ‘one’ – about whether it denotes quantity, or is being used as a . . . ‘pronoun’? But consistency’s the thing. And I like numbers. Numbers, numerals, integers. Digits!)

In the sitting room Norberte Uhl

Fear, I suspect, is really incredibly brave. Fear will lead me straight through the door, will prop me up in the alley among the crates and the empties, and show me who's the boss... I might lose a tooth or two, I suppose, or he could even break my arm — or fuck up my eye! Fear might get carried away, like I've seen them do, pure damage, with nothing mattering. Maybe I'd need a crew, or a tool, or an equalizer. Now I come to think about it, maybe I'd better let fear be.

? Can money fix it? I need my whole body drilled down and repaired, replaced

Now there's a good joke, a global one, cracked by money. An Arab hikes his zipper in the sheep-pen, gazes contentedly across the stall and says, 'Hey, Basim. Let's hike oil.' Ten years later a big whiteman windmills his arms on Broadway, for all to see.

My thoughts dance. What is it? A dance of anxiety and supplication, of futile vigil. I think I must have some new cow disease that makes you wonder whether you’re real all the time, that makes your life feel like a trick, an act, a joke. I feel, I feel dead.