Midge gave Basil a dose of gonorrhea and Basil was very rough with her whenever they met. He was rude and sarcastic and it upset me because she was such a lovely girl. He could not have sex any more. It was temporary but it hurt. He was something of a sex fundamentalist and it seemed to him as if his umbilical chord to life was severed. He was on antibiotics and a yellow discharge oozed from his penis.
He asked her nastily how many chaps she had contaminated that day and she looked at him wistfully, never answering. She had taken her penicillin injections and was well. It was Basil who had complications and the symptoms persisted.
She was the daughter of the caretakers of the London rooming house where Andy and Basil lived in Queensgate, off the Old Brompton Road in South Ken. She was not beautiful or glamorous. She was prettily English, working class and approachable. She was the type of girl cut to your size in all respects. Attractive, fresh and shapely, somebody you would be able to take out to a cinema and a cheap snack afterwards and then to bed without false modesty on her part. If she accepted to go to the cinema with you, you knew she had already consented to go to bed. But then it was the gonorrheas you had to reckon with. To be cautious about. For Midge was easygoing and sex to her was like breakfast, lunch and dinner. She was the first girl in London I yearned for. I could not understand how Basil could treat her so unkindly, regardless of what happened. He, too, was careless. He could have used a prophylactic.
I was on my way to MIT. A star. Well, OK, if not a star a conjurer. With a sleight-of-hand I had wangled an acceptance to the most prestigious technological institution in the US. I was on top of the world. Little did I know that life is more complicated than that. That success is a serious and arduous process. I was in London for a few days of fun. To see my friends, to walk in the city of my dreams, to feel the thrill of English spoken all around you, the novelty, the foreignness. Basil was sulking. He was nursing his gonorrhea and was hardly ever with us. With Andy and me, that is. But that first magic night, we three friends of Orient took the tube, not the underground mind you, the tube, to Piccadilly Circus and we found ourselves in the swirling crowds of people out for a good time. Young people in the main, walking, laughing, running, kissing erotically, for an eternity, uninhibited, right there, in public view with the statue of Eros approving, dressed normally but also in the most outlandish styles, boys and girls with short hair, long hair, no hair, yellow, red and blue hair, with depressing accents from the Midlands in tune with their depressing cities, la-di-dahs from Mayfair, cockneys from Lambeth, Scots with their superlative Rs. Not exotic, quixotic. New, strange, wild, fascinating. And then, the plunge into Soho, the narrow streets with restaurants and dancing clubs, night clubs and gaming joints, theme coffee bars where your table was a coffin, your neighbour a skeleton and your address, Le Macabre, with record shops and smut bookshops with the pornography you were dying to look at and read but feigned indifference, with strip joints you were dying to enter but were intimidated by the toughs lounging at the 21
entrance. And out of Soho, to have a look at the theatres, not knowing, just then, how great the English stage was, how accomplished its actors, which was a little naïve given the Bard and a tradition of centuries. A walk to Leicester Square and Trafalgar Square with Nelson on his column, the National Gallery and all the beautiful, old, massive buildings around it exuding a sense of history, an identity, a center of gravity for the nation and its citizens.
We entered the Prince of Wales theatre to see a musical revue-cum-comedy with the young Shirley Bassey that never really thrilled me but remained in the limelight of British show business for nearly a lifetime. A revue with comedians and unknown singers and funny sketches and lovely leggy showgirls. A lot of fun; nothing special. Out at eleven thirty, the crowds thinning out, ant-like streaming down, burrowing underground for the last trains home. Joining the drift, emerging at South Kensington, spaghetti at Barino's on the double as they were shutting down and then to bed on the extra sofa at Andy's room to ruminate in the dark. To try and digest the sights and sounds of a wondrous, vibrant London, already feeling the energy, the fermentation and effervescence that would explode in the early sixties in the blooming of a new style of living. A new non-conformism, or rather a conformism to the bizarre, the anything-goes, the do-your-thing. In fashion with the minis, the mods and the rockers, in music with the Beatles and Rolling Stones, in the theatre with the new crop of young, brilliant playwrights starting with Osborne and his Look Back in Anger, in the arts, sometimes with unbelievable trivialities and perversions, to the point, one would think, that in a lack of inspiration and a surfeit of desperation, the artists were trying, but not succeeding, to make a fool of you.
Next morning, a lovely, warm, sunny day, a visit to the parks with Andy. But first a solid English breakfast at lowbrow Lyon's, of kippered herring, toast, butter and marmalade, strong, blue-collar tea and then an easy stroll to Kensington Gardens. Oh, those heavenly parks of London with their rolling greens and trees, ponds, statues and monuments. They really are an ornament to the serious, austere, largely identical Victorian architecture of the city. Jewels to be treasured. We walked and talked and sat on the grass. We enjoyed watching the ducks and swans on the pond and the pretty girls passing by, Andy throwing them a comment, now and then, getting back a smile.
And on to Hyde Park, which is joined to the Kensington Gardens and, both together, cover a huge area of central London. Sat on a bench by the Serpentine, looking at the loafing rowers in the skiffs, warmed by the sun which is rare and precious in the north and once it is out, you feel the mood of the city lighten and the parks fill up.
Secretaries and young employees come out there for their lunch break with their sandwiches and further down a bunch of girls removed their shirts and sunbathed in their bras, their skirts drawn up to their panties. I could not believe my eyes. It was 1958.
Then, from Marble Arch a walk along Oxford Street and down the gently curving Regent Street, the shopping heart of London, marvelling at the grandiose department stores, where the legend is that, there, you can buy anything from a pin to an elephant. Looking at shop windows and at the elegant English clothing styles even though clothes and fashion did not interest me and my acquisitive instincts were definitely deficient. With one exception: books. Passing by cinemas that had already started, timidly, to show "naturist" films. Nakedness with the genitals discreetly hidden with a towel or a bag or crossed legs but plenty of breasts and bums and everyone in them having terrific, wholesome fun, swimming, playing games, sunbathing. Not a thought about sex!!
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Having a snack at Piccadilly and then by tube back home to rest our much abused and suffering feet. To talk and talk with Andy and Basil and in the evening in elegant style, spic and span, Andy in a sober, double breasted suit, to go back to Soho to the Whisky-a-go-go, a dancing club, pay a five-shilling yearly membership to get your pass and enter a world of loud stereo music, swirling coloured lights, tightly packed dancing couples and the unceasing, milling movement of people coming in and going out of the club. I just stood around and watched, being timid and an indifferent dancer, still too dazzled by the late teen and post-teenage glamour of the crowd, too uncomfortable to make a move. Feeling out of place. I watched Andy in action, dancing with different girls, taking out his small notebook, now and then, to jot down names and phone numbers of the girls he had hooked and would contact later on. Had a beer at the bar and felt some relief when Andy decided to leave a couple of hours later. Still early enough to return to South Ken, to the Star of India for an Indian meal of spicy, tasty meat curry with boiled rice, a chapatti, mango chutney and a lager. Departing for home, feeling heavy, overfed, satisfied with my four-day dolce vita, which was drawing to an end.
On Sunday, a must. Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, just next to Marble Arch.
With crowds bunched up around different speakers, standing on wooden boxes, talking on the most diverse and unlikely subjects. With hecklers shouting at them, putting them off, sometimes boorishly and sometimes aptly with lots of humour.
Speakers on religion, party politics, Esperanto, others simply telling worn out jokes which the hecklers completed before the jester, or recited with him in unison, having heard them so many times before. The Israeli lobby pleading its case forcefully, eloquently, fanatically and the Arab opposition in the audience shouting, “What about Deir Yassine?” The hatred on both sides palpable and distressing. In the afternoon, the National Gallery, for it opened late on Sundays, for a little culture. Rushing to the Van Goghs, an early, constant, and continuing love. And the moderns, pre and post-impressionists, the English masterpieces of precise Constables and superb, haunting, misty Turners and the less serious but wonderfully lively and engaging work of Toulouse Lautrec's paintings and posters. Oh, how we do forget these wonders in our everyday life, in our fight for survival!
On Monday, at noon, on a bus at the West London Air Terminal waving from my window good-bye to Andy and Basil. Heartbroken, heading for another heartbreak. Failure at MIT. Which is another story. It has been told. It shall be repeated again, no doubt, some other time. It was a dream with no substance, without foundations. A dream that still haunts my dreams. What did I get out of it? Not much for myself except the awareness that when you give nothing of yourself, you receive nothing in return and the knowledge of what a great institution is all about. The great brains that serve it with dedication and a love for learning and wisdom, the students that are brilliant and determined to work hard to succeed and finally, yes, together with the inevitable narrow self-interest, an idealism of purpose, a search for the truth, for the scientific foundations of our existence, for an explanation of the mysteries of our life in this inconceivable universe.
And, then, the fall.
From MIT to Stafford House Tutorial College. The contrast titanic and depressing. On my way to Cairo I stopped in London to see my friends for a few days.
Not just Basil and Andy, others as well. In Cairo I intended to enroll at the American University. The boys tried to persuade me to stay on in London and when my father 23
called me on the telephone and said the choice was mine but that it was also his opinion that I would be better off in London, I decided to stay. I rented a comfortable furnished bed-sitter, in Drayton Gardens SW7, with a hot and cold water sink inside the room and a gas ring and heater fired by shillings slipped in the slot of the gas meter. Next to my house a tiny cinema, the Paris Pullman, that played quality films and many a time kept me away from my boring afternoon classes. So did a regular, classic cinema at the end of our street, not a hundred paces away, the ABC Fulham.
Chelsea was a five-minute walk away and it distracted me with the coffee bars, picturesque pubs and tiny restaurants. It was itself a very charming, expensive and well built up residential district and, in those days it was just starting to get fashionable and trendy with innumerable small clothing stores opening up, catering to the most unconventional and avant-garde tastes.
I enrolled at Stafford House to prepare for the Advanced Level General Certificate of Education, the minimum requirement for entrance to British universities. After my abject failure at the sciences, I felt a need for a complete change of orientation in my studies. A sort of fresh start. I decided to go for Economics. So my three A-Level subjects were Economic Theory, The British Constitution and Economic History. The college reeked of mediocrity. Of students and, with rare exceptions, of the calibre of tutoring. But then, why was I dissatisfied?
Did I deserve any better? Was I not, myself, mediocrity personified? I accepted my fate and settled in a life of sub-standard instruction, erratic attendance and private catching up on the material I missed while reading novels and guiltily attending the Paris Pullman. Micro-economic theory was a bore. Macro, slightly better. The British Constitution was good, the teacher being young, bright, upper class and enthusiastic.
Teaching us the nitty-gritty of a successful democracy. Economic history, sometimes interesting, requiring the classical swotting and consigning of facts to memory.
I slipped easily into my new life, my new routine. A sort of student dolce vita with enough money for a nice room, regular meals, cinema, theatre, and most of the pocket books I wanted to buy. With enough friends not to feel lonely, with enough free time to see them all. With enough newly acquired good sense and discretion to apportion time for studies though the inclination tended to companionship and entertainment. With enough good health to ignore the weather and not to have fallen ill one single time in five years. More than anything else it was a time for growing up.
But what does that mean?
Growing up?
A difficult question.
The growing up I am talking about has not got to do with time gone by, with physical growth. It is a mental process which rarely begins before the late teens and early twenties. It is the opening of the mind. Not of all minds. Some never open, never develop. Some never have the chance. It involves the minds of the lucky ones, who are not necessarily a minority, nor even necessarily of a certain uniform level and high intelligence. It involves the inquiring minds of those who can absorb the lessons of life, the fact of life itself. Who can observe the world around them with awe and compassion; who are able to appreciate its gifts, its amazing variety, its faults, its tragedies. Growing up is the start of this process of grappling with the mystery of our existence and our place and prospects in this world and the universe. It is the start of a process that never ends. That has no end. That only ends with death.
What else?
Definitely, the discipline of education and study is part of it though I have met in my life uneducated philosophers. Always admirable but necessarily limited.
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Learning and the thirst for knowledge is the essence of this process. Formal learning, yes, but also reading for information and for pleasure, going to the theatre, the cinema, to concerts, museums, art galleries. Absorbing art and culture, the essence of humanity. When the Homo Sapiens crossed the line, stepping out of their animal ancestry, they manifested their nascent humanity by their intuitive engagement with the arts. Something in their soul, in their oversize brain demanded expression. A need to create an image of themselves and the world around them, to affirm their existence through inanimate representation. To become a creator, a mini God of a world of images. Of a world of the mind. Also, a need for rhythm which led to drums and primitive instruments for music and, of course, dance, this panacea of tensions and emotions and exorcising evil spirits. This liberating, poignant expression of movement and music that inspires and fascinates, builds up emotion, feeling and cohesion and ultimately satisfies a deep and mysterious human need. And from the inanimate drawings to the animate representation of life, the theatre. Our wide-awake dreaming. The playing out, the reiteration of the tragic, funny or significant phases of our life which move us, trouble us, amuse us and ultimately constitute a catharsis which eases our angst and makes our life tolerable.
Five years, I lived in London. I loved and hated the city, I loved and hated the English, I loved and hated its climate. Loved more than hated. Just like I loved and hated myself sometimes. Like I loved and hated most things in my life. And it is only in retrospect, years later, that feelings finally crystallize and one feels very fortunate to have spent a good part of his formative years, a good part of his growing up in an undoubtedly cosmopolitan city, on his own, comfortably, with friends, doing what he enjoyed most. And in the final analysis, what remained of my so-called education was this thing I call growing up. Gone and forgotten are the economic theories, the political philosophies, the statistical equations on which I spent many, many hours of study, sometimes in boredom, sometimes, believe it or not, in obvious excitement. I never used them in my life and if they still exist at all in my memory, they are figures in a mist.
So, what does remain?
An impossible amalgam of memories.
It really is impossible to enumerate all the things that moved you. The friendships that have survived the test of time and of misunderstandings and quarrels.
That even when all contact was lost, tender memories remained. The books you read, that kept you up all night. That fired your imagination and filled your soul with passion. The films, old and new that stirred you to tears or made you feel a hero. The hundreds of plays of inspired playwrights, superbly produced, directed and acted. The wonderful English actors and actresses. The paintings in the art galleries. The music, operas, and ballet at Covent Garden and the Royal Festival Hall. The heavenly parks.
The happiness one felt when the sun was out. The nighttime stroll at Picadilly Circus.
The restaurants and clubs. The lowly fish-and-chips shops. The awakening of London of the early sixties with a burst of new music. The new crazy fashions. Always, the lovely girls you met. And the not so lovely. The infinite variety. Your first love affair.
And every other one as well. The girls you kissed. The girls you did not kiss. Your missed opportunities. Missed and gone forever. Lovely trips and holidays to the beautiful English countryside. Lovely reunions and invitations to dinner with friends of both sexes. To talk and laugh and laugh and talk. Because, after all, that too is an 25
art and a particularly precious trait for students to acquire while flexing their budding intellectual muscles in the process of growing up. Of spreading their wings.
30 / 9 / 2001