Free Success by Martin Amis

it’s like. There’s something …’
    ‘Well, I wouldn’t know yet, would I? Cos I’m still at school. What do you think it is? More nerves?’
    ‘Yes, more of them all right. But that’s not it. Good. I’m drunk. About bloody time too. I just wonder what all the fuss was about — spend your life getting ready for
this
. No one has a good time after they’re ten just worrying about it. It’s, I think it’s just — ’
    ‘… How’s Gregory?’
    ‘How is he ever? A monster of conceit. And a hustler. And a faggot.’
    ‘Oh, come on, Ginger. Anyway, what’s a faggot?’
    ‘Look. Don’t ever call me Ginger again, okay?’
    ‘I thought you liked being called Ginger.’
    ‘Well I don’t.’
    ‘I thought you did. I’m sorry.’
    ‘What made you think that? I don’t like it at all. I don’t like it one bit.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’
    I looked round in bewilderment, at the girls, at the couples. During such moments my ugliness hangs on me like cheap heavy clothes. I looked at Ursula. What good was she to me? I didn’t even want to fuck her — I wanted to hurt her, to do her harm, to lash out at her shins with my boot, to swipe my wine glass across her face, to grind out my cigarette on her fluttering hand. Oh, what’s going on here?
    ‘Oh, what’s going on here? I’m sorry. Let’s go. I’m sorry.’
    We walked in silence to Gloucester Road Underground.‘I’ll see you home,’ I said. We took a train crowded with drunks to Sloane Square. We walked in silence down tapering, underlit streets.
    ‘This is it,’ she said. ‘I ring the bell now.’
    ‘Well, that’s sorted
you
out for life.’
    ‘Mm?’
    ‘I’m no good at all this any more. I’ve got to lock myself away until I’m fit to live.’
    We kissed, in the usual style — so that the centre of my lips rested at a slight angle on the corner of hers.
    ‘Terry,’ she said, ‘you must stop all that. You’ll make yourself just how you pretend to be.’
    ‘I know I will.’
    Then she held me closer, with a kind of girlish authority, and we kissed again, mildly but firmly, on the lips.
    ‘Thank you,’ I said.
    She put her mouth to my ear. ‘I hear voices,’ she whispered. ‘In my head.’
    ‘What sort of voices. What do you mean?’
    ‘In my head.’
    ‘What do they say?’
    ‘Never mind. But I do hear them.’
    ‘Hey look, I’ll ring you tomorrow, all right?’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘Good night. Look after yourself.’
    ‘Sweet dreams,’ she called, moving up the steps to her door.
    And it all peopled my mind along the moist avenues, during the vivid tube-journey, and in the rain and shadows of my own familiar streets. The rain, that kiss, those voices. Just think about it, boy, I tell myself — you can do it. Ursula-fuck, sister-fuck … 
foster-
fuck? No, I can’t do it — I can’t even think about it. That skein of corny decadence I leave to the suburbs of Gregory’s imagination.
He’s
always enjoyed hystericizing the few junior touch-up sessions he had with Ursula in his teens (I had a few with her too, in a sense). But I’ve been through all that, I’ve done all that and it’s all too complicated.And I’m touchy about sisters generally. I had one who died and I’m sentimental about them. Let’s forget about sisters. I’ve had enough of sisters. Fuck
sisters
.
    I stood on the landing outside our flat. There is a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling window there that creaks and bends when the air gets turbulent. It wobbles in the wind. It shivers in the cold. It hates stormy weather (it isn’t up to its job). I saw my reflection in the pane. Raindrops were dribbling down my face in lugubrious rivulets. I listened to the traffic; I thought of me, and all of you out there, laughing at my losses. I pressed my head against the glass. It gave an inch. I pressed harder. I felt at any moment I might hear it crack.
    This is the way it began.
    Whoosh
. I am six — my sister is hardly there yet, a hot wad of freckles and