Free Various Flavors of Coffee by Anthony Capella Page B

animal on. Eventually the stallion was done, and slid off the mare of his own volition, the battered brougham returning to the level with a crash.The horse’s pizzle was still dripping onto the cobbles when the owner finally succeeded in trotting him away, to an ironic cheer from the watchers.
    A couple of doxies, meanwhile, had hit on the idea of going round the crowd touting for business. One brushed by me, with a muttered “Are we feeling gay, sir?”—“gay” being London slang in those days for a prostitute. She glanced back at me: a pretty enough girl, more common than I usually liked, no more than sixteen or so. I shook my head. She said,“My sister’s here.” I must have looked interested then, because she beckoned to another girl to join her. Sure enough, they did resemble each other, brown-eyed and brown-haired, both with cheeky round faces. It was a novelty; I had never had sisters before, and my blood was up from
    watching the stallion.“Quick,” she said, sensing she’d made a sale. “In here.”
    There was a note in the tobacconist’s window behind us, Rooms for rent. I followed them into the shop and up some stairs: when I had given them half a crown each and another for the shopkeeper, I unbuttoned and had them both, one after the other in quick succession, without even pausing to take my trousers off.

    Ah, that’s the thrill!
    First drink the stars, then grunt amid the mire,
    as Richard Le Gallienne puts it.

    I suppose I should explain something about myself here. I have not, in this account, made any attempt to paint myself in an attractive light—rather the opposite.When I think back to what an affected, vainglorious young poseur I must have been in those days, I am quite astounded that any girl could have fallen in love with me: if I make myself sound ludicrous, it is because I think I probably was. On that, I am happy to be judged. But I am aware that you will be judging me now on a quite different account, for my morals.
    I would only remind you that things were different then.Yes, I went with prostitutes—good ones, when I could afford it: ugly ones when I could not. I was a healthy young man, and what was the alternative? Abstinence was believed to be injurious to the health, while self-abuse was thought even more dangerous, causing weakness, lassitude and foul temper. Prostitution was not illegal, although the Contagious Diseases Acts, which allowed the police to apprehend any woman and have her examined for signs of vene-real disease, had caused a great outcry amongst respectable ladies, who felt slighted by association. Nor was sleeping with a prostitute grounds for divorce (although a woman’s adultery, conversely, would be grounds for the husband to instantly divorce her ).
    Whoring was not something one discussed in polite society—but there were many things that were not discussed, or at least not un-til the ladies had risen from the table.Then, amongst one’s own, it might be murmured: one did not necessarily have need of such creatures oneself, but it was scarcely startling that there were those who did. It was one of the great benefits of living in a society in which the poor were so very poor: servants, workers and women were all cheap and plentiful—a circumstance which made most men instinctively resistant to social reform, just as most women were instinctively supportive of it.

    Many of my lunchtime conversations with Emily were about this very subject—reform, that is: for her, modernity was synonymous with a social conscience, and she took it for granted that, as a poet, I was as keen to change the world as she. Was it not Shelley who had said that poets were the unacknowledged legislators of the world? Had not Byron taken on the armies of the Turk?
    I dared not tell her that, whilst I might admire Byron’s haircut and Shelley’s flowing shirts, their political consciences were something alien to me. Mine was a generation of frippery and baubles: we sought only