Gareth cries.

Our first response to Colin's death was a race of adrenaline (somewhat buffered in my case by a glass of O), but by lunch Gareth and I were tired and weepy. There have been times, in experiential workshops and seminars, where Gareth and I have played the game, and hugged each other. There was always a tension in his back, and neck, as he entered the huge, albeit artificial generosity of my embrace. But today, alone, we rose to our vocation and hugged with neither intention, nor history, and it was good.

Later, I rang Colin's clients. Aside from the couple he was counselling, they all wanted to come to his funeral. Of course, my first instinct was to push them away saying, actually, you don't know anything about him. And yet, for all our talk, it's in the gaps we learn. They may not know the details, but very probably his clients know him as well as anyone. I shall let someone else decide.

Goodbye Colin.

I have news.

On this, a warm and rainy day where even on my skin, I can feel the fecundity. And so, alone with my toast, seemingly happy, I fled to work.

It was there, opening the door with a relish, that Gareth informed me Colin, that most contemporary of men, had passed away.

You mean dead? Like many people, Gareth preferred the notion that, like a piece of furniture, one simply moved on. He turned and, accepting my rebuke, headed toward the kitchen. Clearly, this was serious. Gareth and I have known Colin for over fourteen years. We have shared this kitchen, our coffee, our spoons. We have pressed our bodies to the wall, allowing him to pass, and now this. He was dead.

Helen is away. She is in Africa for the quarter. God, we needed her today. How we needed someone to administer the situation. Gareth flapped, I attended to the kettle, and the day passed, but god, we needed Helen.

I walked home, leaving my car, and all my intention, in the centre of town. He was only a little older than me.

I shall frig myself to sleep.

My weekend? A delight, yes, yes. Well, have I ever been lonelier?

It may, possibly, be a little early to use Thom in lieu of a social life, but there we are. Who wants me and my anger? But after all, anger does work, it does the job, it keeps people away. Certainly, it has served me. Nevertheless, Thom is almost adolescent and has taken to ringing me at all hours for no obvious reason (aside from spying for his mother, of course) so I felt it appropriate for another of our adventures. So, with lusty chambermaids in mind, I booked us a flight to Liverpool with two nights at the Hilton, all with the express purpose of gazing, forlornly, at Edgar Degas Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.

I am, of course, a keen advocate for all Degas' women, fiddling at their toilette, arses in the air. I love them all. However, his girl dancer simply made me wince. To my surprise, Thom took out a sketchpad. He mumbled something and began to draw. I tend to barge in and fuss all over his solitude, except when fishing. And this was another moment he chose to own. Quietly, I took myself off to find relief with Bonnard's wife, the rather depressed Martha.

For all my training, I cannot explain why, or even how I felt. Certainly, there was the pleasure in his company. Yet a well of loneliness fell between us, which neither of us could articulate, or separate from the other. That evening, after pizza, we called his mother. Thom wants to try some of my brandy, what do you think? As if I have ever asked anyone's approval over anything. No, he can't. And with that, the answer we both wanted, we headed for the hotel.

Later, while he slept, I found his picture of the dancer. It was exquisitely detailed, both the skirt, and the strain of thigh muscle and yet, as if it were altogether too much, he had drawn no face. I went to bed, thinking of my own mother, dead when I was his age.

I went to bed, remembering that I believe in ghosts, and wondering, too, what my son, the artist, was trying to tell the world.

Client Y cancelled.

I spent the hour alone in my room. I could hear nothing but the fury of me, my mentalese, and very likely Y picked up on my despair. The force of my misanthropy was probably seeping under the door, out the house and across the fields. You think with words we communicate? I was positively shooing him away. We always know everything, all of us, try as we do to pretend we don't.

I can hear Gareth's chair.

It always scrapes, just as he moves in for the killer comment.

Christ, what a life.

A letter from my friend, Jacobson.

Opening it, I warmed to the idea of a slower world, a place where letters, thought, good manners and the timbre of one's voice, actually matter. As a novelist, however, Jacobson has a tendency to bang on about women and sex, as if he invented the whole thing. Sometimes I'll quote him a little Sophocles, or Shakespeare, or, if I'm really pissed off, then the Book of Job, just to let him know he is not alone, and there is nothing new. And yet this morning, taking a shit to the classical fashionista, Einaudi, I opened the letter to find a brief note plus an invite to accompany him to the memorial of Harold Pinter. Deceased, clearly.

Well, apparently he died christmas eve (as I was sojourning in the Alps, trying to avoid Axel's orgy in Bavaria). Yet I was gratified that Jacobson was thinking of me for, indeed, I have history with Pinter. I first met him in the 80's when, as a student, I was member of an anarchist group called the Fuckwits. Once we were ensconsed outside the Turkish embassy where we advoated the torture of every Turkish poet and short story writer. As the afternoon paled a drunken man (evidently Pinter) rolled out of a black cab and gave us all the most furious bollocking I have ever known. Even then, as a student therapist, I was aware of the homosexual component of his rage.

The next time we met was at a crush at the bar of Hammersmith theatre. I was aware of a seething presence at my side. I turned and saw it was Harold, angry at the world, or whatever. It must be very hard being Harold Pinter all the time, but this synthetic rage was rather irritating so I took a breath and decided to play. Already aware of his predilection for the camp, I simply turned and asked if he would hold my cigarette. Without a word, he took it, as if relieved. I then removed myself to the back of the bar, lit a new cigarette, and watched as the greatest playwright of the twentieth century stood at the bar, holding my fag, waiting to be served.

Oh, Harold.

The times we had.

Surely I'm done with all that, all that shame.

Is it that not for teenagers, or children?

I put on a favoured Nocturne, and went to the bathroom. What is it anyway? A sudden exposure. A contagion, too. Nothing spreads like shame. It can enter a home, a village. It can even cross borders and fields of discourse. Surely I'm done with all that? God knows, haven't I spent days, even weeks, at Axel's orgies?

And yet my warm, nervous hand, reaching out for Pauline's breast. What has this, this grope done but regressed me forty years? What, the fear of a security man? The fear of some uniformed youth with buttocks as thin as his lips, flapping away at me? Did I fear, or even seek, punishment? Certainly, my hand quivered. What game was I playing with the gods? And to be left here, today, with the slow stink of shame. Surely I've done enough, bucked and fucked and sucked enough, haven't I? For this?

God knows, I could do with some supervision.

I fired Buckley. Who wouldn't? Aside from his moronic adherence to Freud, I couldn't bare his bald, stubbly head. Very likely he would have demurred, pointing out it's genital likeness. However, he failed to hide his surprise when I told him we were finished, flinching, somewhat pleasurably, then muttering something about my grieving process.

Oh Dad, when will I ever get round to you?

Is it time to talk?

How our moments escalate.

But Buckley was wrong. My father's death is reorientating my entire existence, but it has nothing to do with this irritable and destructive desire to be alone, utterly alone, aside from periodic acts of intercourse, of course. And so it is, I fired Buckley because I hoped never to see him again, ever. I could ruin my entire career in the space of a few weeks, but I am in the grip of thanatos and cannot help but wonder, was I ever as good a fuck as now? I doubt it. But if there were a moment, a moment in time where the flame of my end were lit, it was last summer. It was Rome, in August, when I groped, in seeming magnificence, the bare breast of Canova's Pauline. It ruined me.

So, there we are.

A glass of O, and sleep.

Oh, please.

Is there nowhere else for me?

I am sorry. Yes, yes

I am. I wish I had somewhere better to be. Only, this is the less lonely place, oh please god.

There is nothing but this, and a glass of O (indeed I renounced the pipe), so help me reader, save my soul from the world, my life, from the power of the dog. What what else is there? I've ran screaming my head off in English forests, I've whored my way round the taverns of post-war Europe, and confessed everything at the grave of my master, in Montparnasse. And so it goes, with some regret, considerable bullshit, and not a little lust, I beseech you.

Listen, please.

For where I lie, I honour.

God, my dick hurts.

No, really. I've been frigging for months, for years. But really, these last few months I've frigged like nothing else. I wonder if they are not, as I reach the middle of my middle years, the dying strain of all my wanks, past and present, as if, like any common or garden drug addict, I was furiously aching, doubled over, for the memory of that first ever, ever, frig. God only knows, but my dick hurts.

Have we met?