Dorian Read Free Page A

laughed.
    ‘I like bodies better than minds, Baz, and I like bodies with no mind at all better than anything else in the world.’
    ‘If all I’d wanted was flesh, Wotton, I’d’ve gone to a butcher or a meat rack –’
    ‘Yes, well, whatever other things you can accuse my mother of being, a pimp isn’t one of them.’
    But it was Baz who was agitated now, who paced about from screen to screen, before heading over to where Wotton stood by the windowsill. ‘Your mother remains incredibly helpful, and very understanding… and as for him, he’s interested in my work, he wants to help. He’s unashamed – not like us. He belongs to a totally new generation, the first gay generation to come out of the shadows. That’s what I’ve wanted to get with this –’ he gestured towards the monitors – ‘that would be perfect.’
    ‘Unashamed? Gay? What the fuck’re you talking about?’
    ‘Of being a faggot, Wotton. A queer, a bum boy, an iron-bloody-hoof. Of that. And in your case, as a result, of being married to a Duke’s daughter who you treat like a convenience store. That.’
    Wotton, despite his snobbery and his affectation, liked nothing better than a proper joust. ‘Baz, Baz,’ he cooed, ‘our proximity makes it essential that we be strangers to each other, Batface and I.’
    ‘Whatever. Perhaps you can’t see the hypocrisy you’re mired in, but don’t you have some responsibility for your wife’s feelings?’
    ‘Don’t be absurd, I’ve never misled Batface for an instant concerning my sexual inclinations.’
    ‘Maybe not – so I s’pose she just goes along with the fraud because she finds it perfectly natural. But I want a different kind of relationship. I want truth and beauty and honesty, but the world wants to destroy that kind of love between men. I think Dorian could be these things for me – but he’d probably mean nothing to you.’
    ‘That’s too many buts,’ Wotton sneered. ‘Better stick to buns – Dorian’s buns. What is this, Baz – in love with Dorian , are we?’
    To Wotton’s surprise Baz shovelled up this facetiousness with great seriousness. ‘I dunno. Y’know what I’m like, Henry, always getting hurt, and Dorian already seems to sense this. He’s sweet and charming and naïve on the surface, but I expect he’ll turn out to be a vicious little bitch like all the others.’
    ‘He’s here now, isn’t he? Not that I give a shit, it’s just that if he’s making you into this much of a bore I’d better leave – it must be serious.’
    ‘Yeah, well, serious enough for the work, at any rate.’ Baz waved at the televisions. ‘It’s called Cathode Narcissus , and it’ll be the last video installation I make. The whole fucking medium is dead. Fuck, it was born decadent, like all the rest of conceptual art. First it was Nauman, then Viola and me, now it’s finished. From now on, conceptual art will degenerate to the level of crude autobiography, a global village sale of shoddy, personal memorabilia for which video installations like this will be the TV adverts.’
    Wotton, grinning, stoked up his friend’s little furnace of ire. ‘What, with special offers on bottled piss, canned shit and vacuum-packed blood –?’
    ‘That’s all been done already!’ Baz expostulated. ‘When I was with Warhol –’
    ‘When I was working at the Factory with Drella – with And ee …’ Wotton was a superb mimic, a master of the accented caricature, and his Baz was a whining, preening, mid-Atlantic hipster. ‘Well, maan , and Billy Name and Edie and – oh gosh! Doc-tor Robert – well, we all did speed , you know… It was part of the scene, maan .’
    More unexpectedly, Basil Hallward could do Henry Wotton just as well, exaggerating the lisp, turning up the affectation as if it were the contrast knob on one of his television monitors. ‘We ate at Harry’s Bar and then wepaired to the Gwitti Palace, where I quaffed quails’ eggs from her carefully coifed cunt