Bretécher - Pure

To respect the privacy of the people mentioned in this book I have changed the names and identifying characteristics of some individuals and locations.

I have had no medical training. The information in this book is based on my personal experiences and understanding, and should not be used as a substitute for qualified medical advice.

Call the world if you please The vale of Soul-making. There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions, but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. Intelligences are atoms of perception they know and they see and they are pure.

John Keats, 1819

We all have the good thoughts and the bad thoughts. Nobody ever expresses the bad thoughts. But the bad thoughts are funny.

Larry David, 2005

Part One

I walked down Oxford Street on a hot, hot day in July. Nymph-like girls filed into American Apparel, drawn to the window display of wicker hats and hotpants like wasps to spilt jam. Teenagers, fey with sunshine, smoked outside HMV boasting hard-earned CDs and snogging. I saw a large pair of tits in a lingerie shop window, and winced.

On Wardour Street I met my film producer friend, Erik. I never know whether to kiss twice or not, having grazed many an elderly manboob in the bumbled continental greetings of my half-French childhood, but this was Soho, WeAreSoho, so we kissed on each cheek with obligatory affectation before blinking into the pub. Standing rigid at the bar I watched the white froth in the glasses as the barman gripped the shiny-round tip of the beer tap. Behind us, London s media darlings buzzed with self-conscious chatter.

We cheersed drinks and I did the polite one-sip-and-smile before heading to the bathroom. I didn t need to go, but I had those big, be-lingeried breasts to mull over, and my arousal levels to check. I closed the toilet lid and sat down, and picked at a patch of flaky paint on the door frame. Did noticing those tits mean I liked them?Like, REALLY liked them? Did the wince-y feeling mean I was INTO them? I tossed about the yeas and nays for as long as I thought I could get away with, before taking a deep breath and heading back outside. No it meant nothing, I whispered, as I blinked into the sunlight.

I downed my pint with characteristic speed. I was happy to let my friends assume that my gusto for booze was born of an irrepressible party spirit, when really I was medicating alcohol made the thoughts less intense. Having long ago noticed this proclivity, my oldest friend Jack had taken to calling me Vodderz in an ironic doff of the hat to the LAD culture which was rearing its pimpled face in every corner of the UK, though how it was ironic neither of us were entirely sure, because when we were pissed together, we were as lairy and objectionable as any Boyz-On-Tour.

Erik and I walked down through Chinatown, where candy-coloured lanterns tinselled the streets and strippers smoked in baking doorways. Kids cast guilty glances into sex shop windows while their parents fumbled nervously with oversized maps on street corners. I looked at the ground when we passed them.

As we wandered down Charing Cross Road, Erik started talking about a new project he had on the horizon a travel doc about driving across the world. He talked over my wow as we entered Trafalgar Square, where loose-tied workers lazed on the steps and children played in the fountains, fanning the sunset into waterspray rainbows.

Against one fountain s edge, a tourist in a pink velour tracksuit bent to tie her lace, and as I walked behind her, glancing at her giant, cartoon arse, I saw the image of her vagina flash through her trousers, and I flinched, violently, breaking eye contact with Erik and looking at the ground. There it flashed again in a strong, single pulse of photographic clarity, pink and folded and velveteen, and big, as big as the flagstones.

I put on my sunglasses as we walked towards the Strand, scared that someone would see it in my eyes, and clenched my jaw to try to lock it out. But through his words it came, more forcefully this time, flickering more quickly and seeming to distend and darken. In front of us a cloud of pigeons flapped up, clapping into the sky, and in their shivering grey swell I saw it again. The flesh thickened around my throat. No. No. No, I said silently, over and over, trying to create a thought-wall to stop the image getting in, but already the screaming had started in the back of my head.

Why did I see that?

Did I like it?

Did I really, REALLY like it?

Now I had to find out. I had to check. I didn t want to but I had to, I was utterly compelled. So I looked behind me, back onto Trafalgar Square, and tried to pick out the pink tourist amid the crowds, discreetly, not wanting to arouse suspicion, yet thoroughly unable to resist this huge, compulsive urgency to see that woman again and determine how, exactly, Id felt when that image had burned through her pants, and what, exactly, itd meant. But she was gone.

It meant nothing, I said again to myself, and so enflamed the image further, making it heave and become stronger still. When I closed my eyes or looked at the fag-flecked tarmac, I saw it again, fifty times, one hundred times, burning bigger by the second, pulsing quicker with each breath I took, becoming a watermark on my vision, violating this beautiful summers day with its huge, grisly imprint. Now Erik was saying stuff about the Middle East, about India, about amazing adventures, and I tried to focus as he chatted on, but the giant insect in my chest was closing its legs around my lungs and his voice was getting further and further away. He grinned about something I hadnt heard, and on his lips the image flashed again.