This semi-sleep continued. Somehow, I became aware that I was without my body. It might be better to say I was suspended between bodies: out of mine and not yet properly in another. I was assaulted by what I thought were images but which I realised were really bodily sensations, as if my life were slowly returning, as physical feeling. I had always taken it for granted that I was a person, which was a good thing to be. But now I was being reminded that first and foremost I was a body, which wanted things.
In this strange condition, I thought of how babies are close to their mother’s skin almost the whole time. A body is the child’s first playground and his first experiences are sensual. It doesn’t take long for children to learn that you can get things from other bodies: milk, kisses, bottles, caresses, slaps. People’s hands are useful for this, as they are for exploring the numerous holes bodies have, out of which leaks different stuff, whether you like it or not: sweat, shit, semen, pus, breath, blood, saliva, words. These are holes into which you can put things, too, if you feel like it.
My mother, a librarian, was fat and couldn’t walk far. Movement disturbed her. Her clothes were voluminous. She had no dealings with diets, except once, when she decided to go on a fast. She eschewed breakfast. By lunchtime she had a headache and dizziness; she was ‘starving’ and had a cream bun to cheer herself up.
Mother was always hungry, but I guess she didn’t know what she was hungry for. She replied, when I asked her why she consumed so much rubbish, ‘You never know where your next meal is coming from, do you?’ Things can seem like that to some people, as if there is only scarcity and you should get as much down you as you can, though it never satisfies you.
Mother never let me see her body or sleep beside her; she didn’t like to touch me. She didn’t want anyone’s hands on her, saying it was ‘unnecessary’. Perhaps she made herself fat to discourage temptation.
As you get older, you are instructed that you can’t touch just anyone, nor can they touch you. Although parents encourage their children in generosity, they don’t usually share their genitals, or those of their partner, with you. Sometimes you are not even allowed to touch parts of your own body, as if they don’t quite belong to you. There are feelings your body is forbidden to generate, feelings the elders don’t like anyone having. We consider ourselves to be liberals; it is the others who have inexplicable customs. Yet the etiquette of touching bodies is strict everywhere.
Every body is different, but all are identical in their uncontrollability: bodies do various involuntary things, like crying, sneezing, urinating, growing or becoming sexually excited. You soon find that bodies can get very attracted and repelled by other bodies, even – or particularly – when they don’t want to be.
I grew up after the major European wars, playing soldier games on my father’s farm. My mind was possessed by images of millions of upright male bodies in identical clothes and poses. The world these men made was mayhem and disorder, but at least, as my father used to say, they were ‘well turned out’ for it. At school, it seemed that each teacher had a particular disability – one ear, one leg or testicle, or some war-wound – which fascinated us. None of us thought we’d ever be down to just one of anything where there was supposed to be two, but we couldn’t stop thinking about it. This was the misunderstanding of education: the teachers were interested in minds, and we were interested in bodies. It was the bodies I wanted when I grew up.
I became aware of the reality of my own death at the same time I became aware of the possibility of having real sex with others. Each made the other possible. You might die, but you could say ‘hello’ before you went.
In the countryside, there are fewer bodies and more distance between them. I came to the city because the bodies are closer; there is heat and magnetism. The bodies jostle; is that for space, or for touching? The tables in the restaurants and pubs are more adjacent. On the trains and in the tubes, of course, the bodies seem to breathe one another in, which must be why people go to work. The bodies seem anonymous, but sometimes any body will do. Why would anyone want this, particularly a semi-claustrophobic like me?
If other people’s bodies get too much for you, you can stop them by stabbing or crucifixion. You can shoot or burn them to make them keep still or to prevent them saying words which displease you. If your own body gets too much – and whose doesn’t? – you might meditate yourself into desirelessness, enter a monastery or find an addiction which channels desire. Some bodies are such a nuisance to their owners – they can seem as unpredictable as untamed animals, or the feeling can overheat and there’s no thermostat – that they not only starve or attempt to shape them, but they flagellate or punish them.
As a young man, I wanted to get inside bodies, not just with a portion of my frame, but to burrow inside them, to live in there. If this seems impractical, you can at least get acquainted with a body by sleeping next to it. Then you can put bits of your body into the holes in other bodies. This is awful fun. Before I met my present wife, I spent a while putting sensitive areas of my body as close to the sensitive areas of other bodies as I could, learning all I could about what bodies wanted. I never lost my fearful fascination with women’s bodies. The women seemed to understand this: that the force of our desire made us crazy and terrified. You could kill a woman for wanting her too much.
The older and sicker you get, the less your body is a fashion item, the less people want to touch you. You will have to pay. Masseurs and prostitutes will caress you, if you give them money. How many therapies these days happen to involve the ‘laying-on of hands’? Nurses will handle the sick. Doctors spend their lives touching bodies, which is why young people go to medical school. Dentists and gynaecologists love the dark inside. Some workers, as in shoe shops, can get to hold body parts without having had to attend anatomy lectures. Priests and politicians tell people what to do with their bodies. People always choose their work according to their preferences about bodies. Careers advisers should bear this in mind. Behind every vocation there is a fetish.
Around puberty, people begin to worry – some say women do this more than men, but I’m not convinced – about the shape and size of their bodies. They think about it a lot, though the sensible know their bodies will never provide the satisfaction they desire because it is their appetite rather than their frame that bothers them. Having an appetite, of course, alters the shape of your body and how others see it. Starvation; fasting; dieting. These can seem like decent solutions to the problem of appetite or of desire.
The appetite of my new body seemed to be reviving, too. I was coming round because I was aware of a blaze of need. But my form felt like a building I’d never before been in. Where exactly was this feeling coming from? What did I want? At least I knew that my stomach must have been empty. First, I would wake up properly; then I could eat.
My watch was on the bedside table. I could see the numbers with perfect vision, but the strap wouldn’t fit round my thick new wrist. At least I knew it was morning and I’d slept through the night. It was time for breakfast. I could not walk out of the room in my new body without preparation.
I continued to examine myself in the mirror, stepping forwards and backwards, examining my hairy arms and legs, turning my head here and there, opening and closing my mouth, looking at my good teeth and wide, clean tongue, smiling and frowning, trying different expressions. I wasn’t just handsome, with my features in felicitous proportion. The nurse had asked me to examine my eyes. I saw what she meant. There was a softness in me, a wistfulness; I detected a yearning, or even something tragic, in the eyes.
I was falling in love with myself. Not that beauty, or life itself, means much if you’re in a room on your own. Heaven is other people.
The door opened and the surgeon came in.
‘You look splendid.’ He walked around me. ‘Michelangelo has made David!’
‘I was going to say Frankenstein has just –’
‘No joins or bumps either. Do you feel well?’
‘I think so.’
But my voice sounded unfamiliar to me. It was lighter in tone, but had more force and volume than before.
‘Go and have a pee,’ he said.
In the toilet, I touched my new penis and became as engrossed in it as a four-year-old. I weighed and inspected it. I raised my arms and wriggled my hips; no doubt I pouted, too. Elvis, of course, had been one of my earliest influences, along with Socrates. When I peed, the stream was full, clear and what I must describe as ‘decisive’. Putting my prick away, I gave it a final squeeze. Who wouldn’t want to see this! My, what a lot I had to look forward to! My appetite – all my appetites, I suspected – had reached another dimension.
‘Okay?’ he said.
I nodded. We went into another room where the doctor fixed various parts of me to machines, giving me, or my new body, a thorough check-up. As he did so, I babbled away in my new voice, mostly childhood memories, listening to myself in the attempt to draw myself back together again.
‘I’m through,’ he said at last. Denying me the privacy of a natural born being, he watched me clumsily put on the clothes Ralph had bought me. ‘Good. Good. This is incredible. It has worked.’
‘Why the surprise? Haven’t you done this before?’
‘Of course. But each time it seems to be a miracle. We have another success on our hands. Everything is complete now. Your mind and the body’s nervous system are in perfect co-ordination. You have your old mind in a new body. New life has been made.’
‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘Don’t I require more preparation?’
‘I expect you do,’ he said. ‘Mentally. There will be shocks ahead, adjustments to be made. It would be a good idea to discuss it with Ralph, your mentor. It goes without saying that you cannot talk freely about this. Otherwise you are free to go, sir. Your clock has been restarted, but it is still ticking. See you in six months. You know where we are.’
‘But do I know where I am?’
‘I hope you will find out. I look forward to hearing how it went.’
The nurse, in reception, handed me my wallet and the bag of things Ralph had told me I’d need for the first few hours after my ‘transformation’. She took a copy of my memoirs from under the desk and asked me to sign it.
‘I’ve long been an admirer, sir.’
Writing my old name with my new fingers I had to bend over from a different height. For the first time in years, I did so without having to adjust my posture to avoid an expected pain. I stood back and stared at my signature, which resembled a bad forgery of my own scrawl. I took another piece of paper and scribbled my name again and again. However hard I tried, I couldn’t make it come out like the old one.
The amused nurse called a cab for me.
I waited on the couch with my new long legs stuck out in front of me, taking up a lot of room, and touching my face. Watching her work in reception, it occurred to me that the desirable nurse – whose attractiveness was, really, only lack of any flaw – might be seventy or ninety years old. Like people who work at a dentist’s, and always have perfect teeth, she was bound to be a Newbody herself. But why would she be doing such a job?
A long-haired, model-like young woman approached the desk, requesting a taxi. Her hip, slightly Hispanic look was so ravishing I must have audibly sighed, because she smiled. It was difficult to tell whether she was in her late teens or early thirties. It occurred to me that we were making a society in which everyone would be the same age. I noticed that the woman was carrying an open bag in which I glimpsed what looked like the corner of a pink flannel night-gown. She sat opposite me, waiting too, nervously. In fact, she seemed to relate strangely to herself, as I must have done, moving different parts of herself experimentally, at first diffidently, and then with some internal celebration. Then she smiled in my direction with such radiant confidence I thought of suggesting we share a cab. What a perfect couple we would make!
But I wanted to be back among ordinary people, those who decayed and were afraid of death. I got up and cancelled the cab. I would enjoy walking. A marathon would be nothing. The nurse seemed to understand.
‘Good luck,’ I said to the woman.
I headed for the main road. I must have walked for five miles, taking considerable strides and loving the steady motion. My new body was taller and heavier than my last ‘vessel’, but I felt lighter and more agile than I could recall, as though I were at the wheel of a luxury car. I could see over the heads of others on the street. People had to look up to me. I’d been bullied as a kid. Now, I could punch people out. Not that a fight would be the best start to my new incarnation.
I found a cheap café and ate a meal. I ate another meal. I checked into a big anonymous hotel where a reservation had already been made. I found a good position in the bar where I could look out for people looking at me. Was that woman smiling in my direction? People did glance at me, but with no more obvious interest than they had before. My mind felt disturbingly clear. What defined edges the world had! It had been a long time since I’d had such undeviating contact with reality. After a couple of drinks, I gained even more clarity along with a touch of ecstasy, but I didn’t want to get blotto on my first day as a Newbody.
I was waiting in the crowded hotel foyer when Ralph hurried in and stood there looking about. It was disconcerting when he didn’t recognise the writer he’d worshipped, whose words he’d memorised, the one he believed deserved immortality! It took him a few distracted moments to pick my body out among the others, and he still wasn’t certain it was me.
I went over. ‘Hi, Ralph, it’s me, Adam.’
He embraced me, running his hands over my shoulders and back; he even patted my stomach.
‘Great hard body, pal. You look superb. I’m proud of you. You’ve got guts. How do you feel?’
‘Never better,’ I said. They were my words, but my voice was strong. ‘Thanks, Ralph, for doing this for me.’