The Changing Room

I'm travelling to Cambridge today for reasons that are too complex and so unusual that I can't be bothered to explain the particulars - in other words I don't understand them myself and it seems an affront to even attempt to try.  That's my first and only lie - it's just that I'm too tired, so completely exhausted with dealing with the emotions of the last few weeks, that I feel the need to just be rather than to have to stand up and perform a slanted biography.  It's as though I've been executing the difficult and fascinating technical job of building a bridge across a gorge, as I've been trained and am qualified to do, in some far-flung exotic corner of the world; and everyone at the company extravaganza post-mortem wants to know what's happened and how did I do it and why did I choose such a course of action and oh, did I meet anyone exciting?  Etcetera, etcetera.  I just don't know.
        So I am on an excursion - or more properly - an exorcism.  Cambridge is a ghost that needs to be laid to rest.  I check myself in the car's mirror, fiddle with my ornate cowboy string tie and adjust my snakeskin jacket I'd won in a bet.  (It's how I lost my finger; the Japanese pensioner I played poker with in a smoked out Tokyo dive the next day after winning the coat - I thought I was on a roll - was pretty insistent. He was Yakuza after all.)  I give the shoulder pads a cursory brush.
        Cambridge.  Languid punting, the perfectly tuned choir in Kings, Coleridge, Brooke, Milton, Thou Shalt Not on the lawns?  For me it contains the house where I gate-crashed a party and was propositioned by a man, Anthony, whom subsequently went off with Roger; and it is the city my father and I stopped off in on our way to Duxford aerodrome when we had our final time of being close.  That's the reason I'm here.  He knew about choices.

My father flew Mosquitoes during the war, his pensionable years should have made me quite old myself, but I was a late child in my parent's marriage.  My two older twin sisters, Clare and Julianna, had left school and were at university by the time I was born and essentially I grew up as a single child in our towering ivy and honeysuckled Victorian castle on the mount of Ringham Road.  The garden was a place of childish games in the dank, spider-caverned foliage that overlooked the shops down the road - in particular the laundry that had a succession of young girl tenants in the flat above.  The best was sexy Suzy - a useful aid to our pubescent group-masturbatory games when we could see what she was doing with the boy my friends kidded looked like me.
        We were standing on the apron, looking at the sleek fuck-off-to-all--Americans-we-know-how-to-build lines of Concorde and my father and I dripped in the heat of that summer's day.  I was wearing my faded Levis, a fashion string T shirt and cotton loafers; he had his fawn pseudo safari outfit that accentuated his thinning mane of long white hair.  He was as poised as ever - Mister Ramrod - and spoke with his hint of the Oxbridge Don he'd been.
        "Did I ever tell you I hold a world record?" he asked me.
        I turned towards him, curious that he'd initiated a conversation.  He nodded at Concorde.
        "Altitude paper plane flying."
        Sweat trickled down my back and I flexed my buttocks.
        "What?" I asked, squirming.  God, to ever have been one of his students.
        "We used to launch paper planes from our cockpits," he said, "the highest release and the duration of flight won."
        I laughed.
        "Oh, I see. And you hold the record?"
        "Eight thousand feet. It took half-an-hour to reach the field."
        My father stroked his chin, and then he gestured with his hands.
        "Open the canopy, slow the speed, pull back.  Push the dart into the breeze, ease the stick forward, bank; then circle it down.  We obtained great results."
        "We?"
        "The chaps I learnt to fly with.  Before Alex and I got posted to the wooden wonders - Mosquitoes - with him as my navigator.  It was a good time."
        I was stupefied by him opening up so readily to me about his past.
        "You must have loved flying," I finally and hesitantly said.
        Apparently the wrong thing to say.  He grunted and muttered something unintelligible - I thought he was swearing under his breath - he never cursed out loud.  Then he spoke more clearly, but only for a moment.
        "I did.  Oh, yes, and there was a war on.  Gave impetus to everything.  Even growing up.  But then again, children grow up fast these days, Jerome."
        He scratched his cheek.
        "The Mosquito was a great plane.  They burnt wonderfully."
        And suddenly the conversation ended.  He looked on at the other aircraft that he never flew, the ones that I knew he'd wished he had, and he muttered a few last words that I didn't catch before looking for something to eat; before he act of sharing might mean we would have to touch.

        It was only during the trip back home that he continued - giving me his insight - as he stared out of the window.
        He played with his seat belt and told me to make the most of what life had to offer, to consider opportunities; but not to hesitate, not like he'd done.
        "Life changes us," he said, looking at the traffic ahead, at me, the speedometer and then pulling the seat belt tight across his chest, "but we can influence the direction."
        And then he said something else that I found peculiar as he inspected his clean finger-nails - his weathered hand fanned out before him as a woman does.
        "Life's a changing room," he said, "we all have to know where and when to exit and through which door.  If we get it wrong, we change a little, we die a death.  The Changing Room is a bright opportunity linked to your dreams and desires, Jerome, and there's no trick to knowing when you're there - you'll feel the need to make your choice and know that it is important. I've written it down."
        It was the most he'd ever spoken to me.
        He must have known what was happening to him.
        He's dead now.

 I try to equate my grief with other emotions I've had during my life and apart from an early lost love there's nothing that even comes close; I remember someone saying it's a roller-coaster ride, up and down, up and down, but it's nowhere near; it's a creep-city fun-fair where I'm the only one wandering around, being startled by the odd empty ride that starts up, LOUD, right next to me, frightening me so much with its suddenness and its garish laughter and its aliveness that I heave great sobs and call out for my father in a way I wished I could have as a child.
        His heart stopped after a long illness. I squatted down in front of his hospital bed and looked into his eyes.  They were still open.  What I saw is my secret.
        And I also remember other incidents.
        As I stood in the chapel of rest, well, the final version of The Changing Room that we all must enter (it was a Co-op cubicle that had the status of a side and saw, propped against the wall, the coffin lid with my father's name and death date engraved on it and thought that time was doing its wicked thing.  I turned, I looked down, I felt another wave of grief - surely he could wake up?  To one who had consistently maintained that there was a difference between a corpse and an unconscious person (that little devil called the soul?) it was disturbing for me to see that he appeared to have simply nodded off.  Then the clichés came and it was then that I realised they were clichés because they were so true; my emotions were raw, it was heart-breaking.  And the black humour persisted - would I ever be able to eat burnt meat again?  The spectre that had become the ghost of my father issued his rare short bark of a laugh and I had to bend and kiss his forehead; an alien act, not because of life touching death, but because it was hard to remember the last time we shared affection.
         Was his ghost embarrassed?
        I touched his cold hands and before I could stop myself, I wondered, if he was to be fired in the crematorium, what would happen to the brass handles of his coffin? My cynical and practical mind could imagine them being unscrewed and attached to another box and appearing on yet another bill.
        That's life, said the ghost.
        And he was right, of course, it's also the reality of death.
        As I left, a man coming through the double front doors held one open for me and I briefly noticed his quizzical and shocked stare. I was too upset to return it or wonder at its cause or even express any curiosity at his strange familiarity.
        Then later - another day, another incident.
        The smoke plumes and drifts.
        So near to town, so quiet.  The cemetery in Ipswich, in the new section where the cold ashes are interred, is a clutter-maze of oversized stones - it is a gentle dip in a well tended field; a football pitch with its belly sucked in.  The slopes of the surrounding little valley are littered with old, blurred and weathered graves that are well spaced from each other; there is room for the living to stretch and isolate themselves in sadness.  This arena, this improvement, is modern Toy Town crampness.  Still, we're here.  We wait, the birds sing and heckle, and then a freight train from Felixstowe rumbles past - out of sight over the blackthorn and willow rise that is in front of us.  The collective ghosts of all those lying there ask me to reconsider how restful it is. I have thoughts of ashes being shaken and settling, of bones tumbling and rolling, and the train passes and once again we have the myth that this is indeed a green and pleasant land fit for dead heroes.  The vicar intones, and some of the family bend their heads at his request for prayer, while the rebels at the back of his flock dare him to look into our eyes and challenge us.  Clare and Julianna hold hands and their husbands put their arms over their respective spouse's shoulders.  As the little deal box is lowered into the ground by my mother, she kneels down and kisses the wood and I can see in her eyes the conviction that all she needs is for a sudden conflagration, a fireball, a gift from heaven, to rush down and turn her to ash, so that she can drift down and dust my father and cover him with love for eternity.
        When we dither as to how and when to disperse, I believe I see my father already striding away, rubbing his hands and proclaiming that he could murder a pint.
        That's the way to remember, I think, that's the way.
        I've always ignored the potential of The Changing Room and its many doors.

It was ten days after his death that I found his personal log in his musty-age den in the top room of The Castle he called home.  His retreat seemed more than momentarily empty in the stifle-clasp of the summer afternoon - the unopened window was trapping the silence and the heat - it was still full of memories and whispers.  An oblong of dust-clarity from the window covered his Art Deco desk and chair; the latter being a resting place for his wartime leather and fur flying jacket that I had often borrowed, but which looked much better on him.  The loose-leaf hardback journal, tied together with a thin strip of olive coloured cloth onto which he had stitched his ribbons, lay in the light atop the desk.  It was the single thing there, apart from his medals (including the one made from telephone wire - acquired when flying too low over France and the tail-wheel became entangled in twenty feet of cable) and a sheet of note-paper.  My name was on it.  All the other things he had regularly kept there - fountain pen, typewriter, model plane - had been tidied away.  As I leafed through the myriad of stiff pages, I realised that I never knew he had such feelings.
        And secrets.
        The book was an eclectic assortment of old photographs - some torn up and rejoined with yellowed sellotape (who had done that?) - letters, postcards, and for some peculiar reason, numerous pages from art books showing Hieronymus Bosch's triptych Garden of Earthly Delights.  The log was written with words and in a certain copper-plate style that I never imagined my father having.  It was so intriguing.  I sat down at his desk and wandered through the collection. Some of the pages fluttered to the floor.  I bent down and picked them up.  I paused.  On the back of a photograph showing two men standing in front of the nose of their Mosquito (one man instantly recognisable as being a smooth faced version of my father), was a passage of writing, written in his strange, but neat, flowing hand.
         I loved flying. Floating on a cushion of air listening to the cacophony of wind howling with the engines.  The beat, the pulse, and life-force forever linked to the aroma - however faint - of aviation fuel.  Olympian feelings stirring in the heart, ethereal concepts heaven-kissing the mind; to lose the mill-stones of existence for a short while that lasted lifetimes, that was flying.  It was living in the outstretched arms of dreams, solidified into aerodynamic shape, that fractured the air and raised the body and spirit beyond the shackles of clay and dust.
         Actions:
         Slicing the tops of clouds with a glee that hinted at dementia.
         Diving into gaping gardens of landscape.
         A yaw at the joy of life.
         Moments of nirvana with coupled oil and blood, soaring with my brother birds, complete instants of satisfaction.  The opium of flying - the ecstasy of its art.
         I loved flying.
         Oh, I did, I did.
        I pulled the chair closer to the table and reached over to open the window - the heat was acquiring a sweat-breath stuffiness.  On the back of another faded black and white photograph (it showed a flight of Mosquitos above quilt-countryside, obviously taken from the cockpit of an accompanying aircraft) was a direct message to me.
         They don't make these sort of planes any more, do they Jerome?  Not these old planes of war.  A Boy's Own catalogue of machines for the Brylcream set and bomber crews.  All piston and exhaust.  Flying war-mechanisms designed to transport lead and flesh through the winds of destruction.  Young men strapped into classics listening to the sound of fate; and waiting.  Waiting for the take-off that would direct them - direct them where?  And to what?  Oh, I remember that sound, I remember.
        I never knew he had such emotions.
        And as I looked through the rest of the journal, with its sly references to sex accompanying his recollections of the war, I realised that his sentiments appeared to equate somehow with Hieronymus Bosch's surreal earthly paradise painting: the left panel with the creation of woman, that my father insisted was hinting at the sexual dichotomy of the canon of marriage; the large mid-section with the beginning of temptation and its inherent contradictory instruction to increase and multiply; and the famous right panel contemplating the darkness of The Fall into the pit of hell with its cracked, white egg on tree-trunk legs which makes everyone wonder what drugs Bosch was on, instead of proclaiming his natural genius.
        I stood up and slowly paced the squeaking floor.  My father and Hieronymus Bosch had given me much to think about.
        The difficult of choice, and the failure to choose.
        The warm air made my throat tight.

So I'm here in the pub in Cambridge that we made a detour to on our way to Duxford Imperial War Museum, having a pint in memory of my father and I look up and see Anthony and Roger coming into the pub with someone else.  It takes me a moment to realise.  The other man is an off-mirror replica of me.
         That man is me.
        They go to the bar - three steps away - and discuss drinks.  Roger and Anthony mention my name as they hyperbole about whose round it is.
         That man is me.
        He even has my laugh.
        Is he some long lost brother?
        No. He has lost most of his pinkie on his left hand and has a large garnet ring to emphasize it.  I find myself standing back, hiding in a corner.
         That man is me.
        The hair is dyed with touches of henna, the snakeskin coat has been cleaned, the jeans are leather, but his posture is mine; the way he smokes with his cigarette between the third and fourth fingers is the daft way I smoke, and his smile is mine.  That's the clincher - I can somehow ignore the coincidence of a lost finger-tip - the smile.  I've won too many women with that slightly wicked grin not to recognise it.  My smile was the first thing Anthony noticed at the party.
        "My, you have a lovely smile," he said.
        I was talking lager-gibberish to some kid called Roger, when Anthony loomed over the teenager's shoulder and reached out to take my hand.
        "I'm Anthony," he said, "and you are?"
        A wave of shivers excited me.  The man was obviously gay, and the way he'd started the conversation, with the inflection he gave it, left no doubt as to what his immediate desires were.  I had an urge to reciprocate.
        "Jerome," I replied, taking his hand.
        That moment was a crossroads.  I was at a party where no-one knew me, in a City a good hour's drive from where I lived.  Who'd know?  I was entering The Changing Room.
         Would I make the right move?
        I felt that exposed-neck cold-ice stroke when the universe shifts and felt my prick begin to engorge.  We all have times in our lives when we make a conscious choice.  Sometimes it takes days, sometimes it's not even seconds.  All we know is that there are two paths and that the thought of making the decision leaves a thick brain-throb between the temples.
        The Changing Room.
        When the universe shifts.
        Hieronymus Bosch.
        I let Anthony's hand drop from mine.
        The moment passed, the invitation was declined.  I drunk myself past my craving, lamely chatted again to Anthony's new friend Roger, sparred off their double entendres and left them to make my own way home.  I had passed up the instant where my life would have altered.  I would have answered that question that I'd always asked myself when I saw certain men strutting in the street; I could have been a different person, I could have responded to those dreams of naked males - images of hard men and hard cocks; of lips and embrace; of shoulders and thighs and the sheen of skin and taut muscles.  Those predator and prey roles - multitudes of nude males in a landscape of exotic creatures and sinister hybrid animal-monsters; carnal desire in an abstract demonstration of the never-ending repetition of the original sin - the Garden of Earthly Delights.  It was an opportunity to succumb to a masculinity I desired and to echo a femininity I wanted to be a vessel for - a sucking of veined penises with their liquid reward and the parting of firm buttocks with their blessed release. Those dreams when I wake up cold and frightened.
        And excited.
        Perhaps in another world I did accept.  And perhaps (how often in a realm of infinite universes according to some physicists?) the line between two different realities becomes blurred; perhaps, sometimes, we exist together.
        My father would have known.  He gave every indication of being aware of such mysterious events.  On some hotel paper in his log (when did he ever go to Madrid and visit the Museo der Prado to see Bosch's Earthly Delights?) and on the backs of postcards, from Holland in the Fifties of Eindhoven and Arnham, were my father's traumas.
        The North Sea that day was a ripple-pond of sunlight.  All I could think, as I gazed down, was of little star-diamonds that led the way in daylight.  For once, the surface of The Tea was blue and hinted less of history to be made and more of holidays to be enjoyed.  We flew low through the clear sky at four hundred miles an hour and still wished for clouds.  We were a naked speck, even our .303 machine guns and the 20mm cannons had been removed for extra speed.
        Reconnaissance.
        The flak came over Dongen as we approached the capital of North Brabant - 'sHertogenbosch - from the south-west.  We had to photograph the railroad junction for the imminent bridge-too-far assault on Holland.  In the distance we could see the splendour and French Gothic proportions of the 15th century Cathedral of St John in den Bosch standing on the sandy island south of the Maas.  Little red-black storm clouds blossomed ink drops in the water of air and rained shrapnel.  They came in clumps of guesses as to where we'd appear next.  The flak increased.  Alex screamed avoiding instructions.
        He favoured port.
        We dived.  We ducked.  We avoided.
        Then that moment.  A pause.  Which way now?  I ignored Alex's impassioned plea.  I chose my own way even though I knew it seemed - ... it was wrong.
        Changes.
        It was as though a door closed behind me.
        At least he died quickly and didn't burn.  That's the lie I told his mother anyway.
        There were three colour photographs of the small town of Dongen.  It was where they were shot down.
         The real hell of war is the memories the living have to carry, Jerome.  That and the dreams and ambitions that disappear.  I loved flying!  It was my life!  And the war took that away from me.  I spent the last seven months of my war in a prison camp before liberation.  Not a bird flew over it - Bosch's hell.  I used to sit and watch them wheel away when they came too close. Scared to be contaminated.  I used to think of them as my brothers and sisters; a flying family that understood the skies together.  The war took that love away, Jerome.  Do you understand?
         I think not.
         I came to hate the other me that made the right decision, the one that obeyed Alex.
         Now listen to me, listen carefully - follow your dreams because they will help you when you enter The Changing Room, Jerome.  You have to live your dreams and instincts, Jerome - take it from an old man who had a glimpse of what might have been.
         I had a moment of bliss.
         I just had the misfortune to have my dream at the wrong time.
         Remember this and never forget: it's the saddest thing in the world to have a dream that drifts beyond your grasp, and that ebbs to the ground like paper wings.
        On the last page was pasted an intricately cut and folded paper aeroplane together with his love letters from Alex.
        My father did know.

I'm standing at the urinal, flaccid penis in hand, trying to ignore the chemical stench of disinfectant, used beer and sodden cigarette ends, while my other hand attempts to rip the white tiles from the walls as a means of preventing me from tearing out my pumped and popped eyes instead, and still Roger is looking at me as if I'm something that shouldn't be there, and I know, fucking know alright? exactly what the young bastard is thinking.  And even as I contemplate it, even as I fear and dread it, he says the words, utters his little speech as though it's something you'd say any time.
        "Bloody hell mate - you look just like a friend of mine."
        He stares for a second longer, then turns to the porcelain and shuffles his thin, Armani clad, hips.  As he pisses he glances back at me again.
        "Bugger it all to hell," he murmurs, "Jerome Levick's got a twin."
        I scream to myself inside, scream so loud that he surely must hear.
        "I am Jerome, you fuck, I AM HIM!  I just don't understand how I'm in here and at the same time out there drinking in the pub!"
        I shake, begin to dribble, then suddenly forcefully urinate; and when Roger leaves, I somehow do up my fly, light a cigarette, snap the match in two and drop the broken pieces into the bowl.  Habit - a solid rock to stand insecurities on.  You could have fooled me - my hand jitters as I take a massive nicotine and tar hit. I hold out my arm, straight, but the wobbles only increase.  I take another big drag on my cigarette, cough, and run fingers through my cropped blond hair.  I go over to the mirror and stand, fascinated, staring at my reflection.  My rapid hot breath gradually fogs the mirror and I begin to fade.  After a while, I take yet another deep belt of Full-Strength and I trace an outline of my face with the stub of my finger - I'm Fog-Face with an aura of clear reality.
         Fuck.
        All I can think about, the only thing that makes sense, is the weird feeling I had when I first met Roger, and the sexual choice I made then regarding Anthony: the day that I entered The Changing Room and left by a different door.  Somehow, it must be connected.  I feel strange.  Even now, before I can think it all through, I believe I know the answer.  And the answer has questions.
        What if this other Jerome has seen me already?
        Shit, what if he were to speak to me?
        God, what would happen if he were to touch me?!
        I bang my head against the mirror and punch the water basin with my fist.
         I shouldn't have come back.
         I shouldn't have come back.
         I shouldn't have.
        Thump, thump, thump.
        I leave a smear of blood.
        And as I open the door to escape; he's there.

The other me doesn't say a word at first.  This identical Jerome just smiles, as he leans against the door.
        "You know dad was queer as well, don't you?" he eventually says.
        I can't say a thing.
        "Well, he swung both ways," this replica continues, "he loved mother and Alex."
         I know.
        Then he turns away, leaving the door to slowly shut.
         I can't believe that's all you can say!

I leave it a few minutes before I follow him out.  Anthony, Roger and the other me are leaving.  Roger talks quickly to them as they begin to exit through the main door and the other Jerome looks over his shoulder at me.  He holds my gaze for a moment, then saunters through the door and climbs into an open topped scarlet BMW parked outside.  Anthony starts it up, and Roger is laughing, apparently telling a joke, and this other man, this other me, closes the passenger door, clicks his seat belt into place, reaches into a pocket for his cigarettes and he lights up.  He then snaps the match in two, just as I have done, and he looks at me again.  He gives me the Jerome smile.  He knows what's happening, or what has happened.  That smile says he knows he's enjoying himself.  He doesn't care about what's happened to his father.  He has made his decisions.
        I have another life.
        That's opportunities.
        That's choices.
        Hieronymus.

I stand alone in the pub, alone in the world I have made for myself and feel weak.  Everything has become a shimmer of inexactitude and distorted voices.  There are things calling out to me.
        I don't understand.
         What's happening to me?
         Have I done anything wrong?
         If only I could -

* * * *

 

I sit in the car listening to Roger telling yet another filthy joke, but I think about the other me I've just seen.  As I contemplate what has just happened, I feel somehow convoluted, as though I'm different.  I tell Anthony to stop the car because I want to walk the rest of the way home and he does so, instantly realising something's wrong and, as usual, being cool about the whole thing.  Even Roger shuts up.  Before I get out of the car, Anthony quickly reaches across and gives me a kiss, so I stroke his cheek and tell him and Roger that I won't be too long.  Anthony gives the car a hard rev, and with a squeal of tyres, he and Roger rush down the road.
        I stand near a lamppost and have an image of the other me in the pub and I recognise that he is wilting, disappearing, evaporating; destroyed by the force of the universe I live in.  He is so frightened - existing in the same world as I.
         He's gone.
        I become conscious of the weight of my father's watch on my wrist and I glance down at it, then I look, sharply, to my left, to my right, then up into the sky and blink rapidly.  I put out my right hand to grip the street-light as a means to steady myself and I cover my eyes with my other hand.  As the noise of Anthony's car dissolves into the distance, the note altering as he negotiates corners, I begin to comprehend all that has happened with my father and how sad that other me was.
        My father understood what the Garden of Earthly Delights was all about - I am named after the artist. Hieronymus Bosch was the pseudonym of Jerome Van Aeken and he was born in 'sHertogenbosch.  That's why my father had so many copies of that picture.  Beautiful and unsettling images of sensuality; of dreams that affect the people who live in our satisfy-me-now world, from a gifted artist with forceful insight into human nature - one of the first painters to represent surreal concepts.
         Even if it is obfuscation, my father wrote, the chaotic and baffling way of the world, Jerome, is wholly represented in Hieronymus Bosh's triptych.
         Son, we are all living in a lover's paradise, but it is false and vindictive - lust and sexuality can become an end in itself - and we can descend into a nightmarish Bosch landscape of burning destruction surrounded by utter blackness.
         Choices.
         And we all must make them.
         Humanity is doomed to be a cageling of its appetites, Jerome - poetic beauty amidst a vortex of human sin.
        He understood.
        It was as I wrote on the piece of card I placed in my father's cold hands on the day I first met myself - at the Chapel of Rest - him leaving, me coming in:

 

To dance the dance of death's last kiss,
As we all in our way must turn to clay,
I must remember this,
and I must remember this,
Of old dreamers,
that they never die,
they simply sleep today.
 

I stand, momentarily alone on the street, until a sweet little wrinkled and ancient Mary Poppins smelling of rose water and fresh baked bread, in a passable imitation of my mother, stops, and asks me if I'm alright, and I finally begin to cry.
 

In memory of Peter George 1928 - 1997
My father