Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

The Second Most Important Thing in Life

I’m rather tired of people who can only be clever, and am beginning to deplore my own attempts to be clever. My interactions with other human beings leave me feeling frustrated and, well, actually, sometimes quite furious. There’s a line from a Morrissey song that goes, “You fight with your right hand/ And caress with your left hand/ Everyone I know is sick to death of you.” Well, I do feel very much as if I blow hot and cold, so to speak, fight with my right hand and caress with my left hand. And I do tend to hate myself for it and feel that other people must hate me for it, too. But, you know, I’m dying of loneliness. That’s all.


Some years ago, a friend of mine told me a quote that he claimed was from Oscar Wilde. I’ve never actually come across the quote in any other context, so I can’t be certain of the truth. However, the quote has stayed with me, and has actually come to haunt me more and more in recent times. The quote goes like this: “There are only two important things in life. The first is that everyone must act as superficially as possible. No one has yet discovered the second.”




It seems to me that the implications of this quote are clear. The second most important thing is clearly the reason why we are all here, and the reason no one has ever discovered it is because they are all too busy following the first ‘most important thing in life’. But I have always, always, always been one of those shameful, embarrassing, annoying, selfish, unwelcome, deluded people who burn to discover the second ‘most important thing in life’. And because of this desire I have frequently got into trouble with people. I reach out, and I am disappointed.


It seems to me that people don’t really want to know each other. It is important to be independent, to stand on your own two feet, not to bother anyone. And if you show signs of actually needing other people, of not standing on your own two feet, people find this a dreadful nuisance. Somehow they have learnt to be entirely self-contained. It is a terrible crime to be any other way. In fact, just as human beings wear clothes to cover up the crime of their naked bodies, they adopt social superficiality to cover up a nakedness of the soul which is considered to be a thousand times more obscene than that of the body. Why? What is obscene about the human soul? I would say that, if there is something obscene about it, it is that we have already lived for generations and generations upon lies. We clothe ourselves in lies. We eat lies. We build and shelter in lies. We sleep in lies. We bathe in lies. We buy and sell lies. Anything that reminds us of these lies is ugly in the extreme.


And so to heterosexuality. Of course, people cannot maintain this condition of being self-contained forever. So what do they do? The only release that is possible in this society is through sex or ‘romantic love’. One thing I hate about heterosexuality is that it makes love something exclusive. Once someone finds themselves in a relationship it’s, “I’m all right, Jack!” There is one person that is important in their life, one person only. To hell with the rest of them! “When I am with you I can be myself!” they say. Once they leave the presence of that person they enter the wasteland where by law everyone must act in the most superficial way possible. Under such pressure to contain the entire meaning of life, when no meaning is to be found elsewhere because people are afraid of investing meaning in anything else, such relationships very often fall to pieces and end in heartbreak.


And for people like me? Sad people, yes. People who should ‘get a life’, yes. Since we do not have that one special person, we demand meaning from other areas of our life, such as friendships. And in so doing we annoy people. And in so doing we become frustrated and angry and bitter.


But what if, what if that second ‘most important thing in life’ were actually discovered? What it would require would be that people stopped being so self-contained and actually decided to take an interest in people APART FROM THEIR SEXUAL PARTNERS. We might find that in valuing other people we were able to build a world where there was no want. I realise that people tend to recoil from such ‘peace and love’ Utopianism these days. But we’re at a point in history where, if we don’t have Utopia, what we will have very soon is Hell or extinction.


I’m not claiming to know everything. I myself don’t know exactly how to discover that second ‘most important thing’. I try, and I meet with no co-operation, and in fear I retreat again. Perhaps I’m sacred too, that in the end I would find that there was no second ‘most important thing’ and that we’re all nothing but empty shells. On that subject, I can’t help thinking of a song by The Cure, based on a short story by Charles Baudelaire. The lyrics are as follows:



How Beautiful You Are!



You want to know why I hate you?

Well I'll try and explain...

You remember that day in Paris

When we wandered through the rain

And promised to each other

That we'd always think the same

And dreamed that dream

To be two souls as one

And stopped just as the sun set

And waited for the night

Outside a glittering building

Of glittering glass and burning light...


And in the road before us

Stood a weary greyish man

Who held a child upon his back

A small boy by the hand

The three of them were dressed in rags

And thinner than the air

And all six eyes stared fixedly on you


The father's eyes said "Beautiful!

How beautiful you are!"

The boy's eyes said

"How beautiful!

She shimmers like a star!"

The child’s eyes uttered nothing

But a mute and utter joy

And filled my heart with shame for us

At the way we are


I turned to look at you

To read my thoughts upon your face

And gazed so deep into your eyes

So beautiful and strange

Until you spoke

And showed me understanding is a dream

"I hate these people staring

Make them go away from me!"


The father’s eyes said "Beautiful!

How beautiful you are!"

The boy’s eyes said

"How beautiful! She glitters like a star!"

The child's eyes uttered joy

And stilled my heart with sadness

For the way we are


And this is why I hate you

And how I understand

That no-one ever knows or loves another

Or loves another




Perhaps it is impossible actually even to meet another person. God knows I feel as if I’ve never met anyone even for a single moment. I have tried. I really have tried. And now I am reminded of a poem by Mervyn Peake:


Is There no Love Can Link Us?


Is there no thread to bind us-I and he

Who is dying now, this instant as I write

And may be cold before this line's complete?


And is there no power to link us-I and she

Across whose body the loud roof is falling?


Or the child, whose blackening skin

Blossoms with hideous roses in the smoke?


Is there no love can link us -I and they?

Only this hectic moment? This fierce instant

Striking now

Its universal, its uneven blow?


There is no other link. Only this sliding

Second we share: this desperate edge of now.


I have tried. Do other people try? I sometimes wonder. Is there anybody out there? Will I ever actually meet another human being? Will we discover what that second ‘most important thing’ is before our superficiality drowns and chokes the whole planet with the pollution of lies?