Free Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes

should be trouble here in Napoli – I, the sharp kid, the pal of the whole wide world. Were those really my principles, or was it all on top? And although I knew it was the wrong thing to say, and knew it positively at the very moment, I found myself saying to Cool, ‘Tell me, Cool, you’re not short of anything, are you? I mean, I couldn’t help you out with any loot?’
    He just shook his head, which was quite awful, and I was really relieved that Big Jill hooted up the stairs – much louder, this time, was only two floors away – ‘STUD! Are you coming down to me?’
    ‘Coming, doll,’ I shouted and, with a wave to Cool, went down to Jill in her nether regions.
    It needs a bit of an effort of imagination to see what the little Les. butterflies see in Jill because she is, to say the very least of it, so massive, and though I know she’s blatant and masterful and all the rest of it, and wears slacks, of course, and even would do to a wedding at St. Paul’s, I’m sure, she isn’t beautiful in any way that I can see, or even glamorous . In fact, if it wasn’t she’s a city girl, you’d somehow imagine her handling horses – and perhaps, come to think of it, that is the appeal to the young chicks.
    ‘You’re late,’ she said, ‘you horrid little studlet.’
    ‘What do you mean, “late”, Big Jill? Did you and me have any sort of an appointment?’
    She grabbed me abruptly like an ourang-outang, lifted me two feet off the floor, and banged me down again. ‘If you were a chick,’ she said, ‘I’d eat you.’
    ‘EASY, lady-killer,’ I cried. ‘You’ll get me entangled in your cactuses.’ Because it’s true Jill is a great collector of indoor plants, in fact they sprout and dangle all over her basement rooms, and in the area as well.
    She pushed a cup of coffee in my hands and said, ‘Well, how’s your sex life, junior, since the last time we met?’
    ‘We met two days ago, Big Jill. It hasn’t changed since then.’
    ‘No? Nothing to report?’
    Big Jill was standing looking at me, legs apart, with that sort of kindly, ‘understanding’ look that irritatesyou when the person just doesn’t dig anything whatever about your inner character and pursuits.
    ‘You don’t understand as much as you think, Big Jill,’ I said, voicing my thoughts to her.
    ‘Oh!’ she said huffily. ‘Please pardon me for existing.’
    ‘All that I mean, dear,’ I said, to soften up the absurd old cow, ‘is that your attitude to all those kicks is much too expert. You know so damn much, you know so damn little.’
    Big Jill now dropped the wise old elder sister thing, and said, ‘Clue me then, teenager. My big ears are flapping.’
    ‘All I mean, Big Jill, is that you can’t say, “How’s your sex life?” just like you say, “How’s the weather?”’
    She sat down wrong way round on the chair, with her arms resting on the back of it, and her big tits resting on her arms. ‘Obviously,’ she said.
    ‘The whole thing about sex,’ I said to her, ‘is that it’s all very easy, and all very difficult indeed.’
    ‘Ah …’ said Big Jill, looking tolerant and amused, as if I was putting on a show for her.
    ‘I mean, anyone can have a bash, that’s obvious, there’s nothing to it, but is there any pleasure?’
    ‘Well, isn’t there, big boy?’ she asked me, giving a great, fat smile.
    ‘Oh, of course there is, in that way, yes, but there isn’t really, because you can’t have it just like that without messing something else that matters up, and this brings you badly down.’
    ‘Even if you like the party of the second part, it bringsyou down?’ said Jill, getting interested, as I could see.
    ‘If you like the other number, I mean like the looks of them, really dig them sexually – and I mean really – then it isn’t quite so bad, because at least you’re only acting like a pair of animals, which isn’t a bad thing to do … But even then, you’re still wrought badly