Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

Those who, very patiently, put up with me

I think that one of the most fundamental emotions defining my experience of existence has been a kind of alloy of embarrassment and guilt.

This evening, I spent a very pleasant few hours in the company of Mr. Wu. Mr. Wu is the pseudonym (after all, I wouldn't want to compromise him by using his real name on this disreputable blog) of a friend of mine from university days. We're both Bowie-philes and studied Japanese together. When I stayed at Mr. Wu's digs for the first time in Kumamoto, we discovered we had a lot in common. T. Rex, for instance. I remember saying to Mr. Wu, when our friendship was yet young, "Do you think I dress like Austin Powers?" And he laughed and said, "Yes. I do." At that time I was not vegetarian. We went to a restaurant together to have basashi (raw horse meat), which I was eating just to be able to say I had eaten raw horse. As we sat in the restuarant, for some reason I felt prompted to say, "The waistcoats on these lobsters should be cerulean blue, but you've put them in Prussian blue. And where are the chocolate-covered ants?" (There were no lobsters on the table, as far as I remember.) And much to my surprise and delight, Mr. Wu recognised the obscure Alan Moore reference I was making (D.R. and Quinch, you get me?). I think our friendship must have been cemented at that point.

Anyway, Mr. Wu took me this evening to a Japanese restaurant not far from Piccadilly Circus. It was his treat. We started with Sapporo beer. I ordered tanuki soba. Mr. Wu had sushi. We were served by a very lovely waitress who picked up very quickly on the fact that we could speak Japanese, and very graciously and intelligently spoke to us in Japanese without the slightest shade of being patronising.

Afterwards we went to a pub, which was fairly packed with people enjoying themselves. Mr. Wu asked me to scout out for somewhere to sit while he got the drinks in. There were no empty tables, so I asked some people sitting at a half-empty table if it was okay to sit there. They said it was. Soon Mr. Wu arrived with our bevvies. And in a few minutes, the group who had been sitting at the same table, got up to leave. A young man amongst them turned to us and said, "It's all yours!" in an affable way.

After a while, my bladder felt full, and I went to have a piss. As I was washing my hands, the door opened and banged against my arm. The man coming in apologised fumblingly.

I was very tired, so Mr. Wu and I decided to go home early. On the escalator of Waterloo Station, a bloke passed me singing along to some music that was playing: "... how beautiful life is 'cause you're in the world..." I smiled inwardly. I did not even hate him for singing Elton John.

I feel like my misanthropy is melting away.

There are lots of things I could say here. For now I'll say a little about science. Regular readers of my blog will know that I have been very critical about science. But I'm beginning to feel that there's something self-contradictory in the position of being afraid of science. To be afraid of science is at once to disagree with it, and to suspect that it is 'right'. And that really has been my position, I think. This is not to say that I don't think I've ever made a valid point on the subject of science, because I think I have. For instance, I like reading New Scientist, but I also notice 'cultural assumptions' in the writing that I find strange. One small example - a headline that goes something like, "What a strange mind you have!" I can't remember if I read much of the actual article, but I think I've read articles like it, about how our minds play tricks on us, falsify memories, create much of our sensual experience out of nothing, or scraps of information, and so on. The thing I noticed, though, was the use of the word "you": "What a strange mind you have!", in other words, you, the lay-person, the reader. Your subjective experience is not to be trusted, but our scientific objectivity is. That's the kind of thing that tends to annoy me. However, if I think I've made a valid point about science at some time, it probably boils down to the very commonplace observation that science isn't everything. But life will demonstrate that, sure enough, without my help. Anyway, life is an experiment, and science is an essential part of that experiment. This doesn't mean that I won't vehemently oppose (verbally and perhaps even otherwise, who knows) certain things I find to be morally dubious, for instance in the area of genetic engineering.

When we were walking from the pub back to the Tube station, Mr. Wu told me that he had "rediscovered" my blog. "Do I come across like a complete arse?" I asked.

"No," he said (well he is my friend, after all) "you come across as very well-read and very balanced, which is strange, because I know how unbalanced you are."

At which point I almost fell off the pavement.

(By the way, I'm not really that well-read.)

I'm afraid that in my life I have been very, very selfish in many ways. I am sometimes afraid that I am actually insane. Embarrassment and guilt. I don't mean in any, "Hey, I'm a really wild and crazy guy!" kind of way, either, just in a sad kind of way. I think that it's actually true. Eckhart Tolle, whom I've mentioned recently, suggests that identity is a kind of madness. Sometimes it scares me how much madness there is in my life and the world, and I want the ground to swallow me.

Anyway, despite my madness, I'm really beginning to feel the support that many people have been giving me, and, if I may be allowed the self-indulgence of some sentimentality, I almost wish to weep knowing how little I deserve it.

So, well, tonight at least - who knows the future? - I feel like, actually, I like people. Tonight I feel like pessimism is over, that we don't need it any more. Who knows?