Read Dorian for Free Online

weren’t in the process of being righteously busted, so flagrant were their activities, but through the tinted windows, surrounding drivers could be seen, stalled in every sense, eyes front, sitting mindlessly, eating a late lunch out of their noses.
    ‘Hnghf – oof! That stings.’ Dorian passed the capsule back.
    ‘But you’re not losing your nasal virginity?’
    ‘What?’ Dorian near shouted, frantically rubbing his nose.
    Wotton killed the Dead Kennedys. ‘You’ve done gear before?’
    ‘Gear?’
    ‘Horse, scag, smack, H, he-ro-in .’
    ‘Oh, I thought that was charlie.’
    ‘I always add the merest whisper of smack to take the edge off. The merest.’
    Dorian changed tack. He pulled down the sunshade to reveal a vanity mirror, and spoke while observing his own pupils. It was as if he’d been snorting vanity mixed with cocaine and heroin. ‘I thought you liked Baz.’
    ‘I love him. He’s a fucking genius.’
    ‘But back there?’
    ‘I love him, but he’s becoming sentimental – that’s bad. That means he isn’t simpatico – and that’s worse. That I can’t abide. Worse still, he repeats himself – all that avant-garde bullshit, the hamster wheel of the Manhattan art world, how he scored with Burroughs on Avenue B, and “ William ” threatened the spade with a sword-stick – you’ve heard all that, yuh?’
    ‘Well, yes.’
    ‘That was me.’ Wotton flashed an unexpected smile. ‘With the fucking sword-stick, you fool – although it wasn’t New York, it was Marseille. I don’t do America.’
    Wotton parked the Jag in Savile Row and they walked around the corner into Piccadilly. The afternoon heat was fierce, so Dorian took off his jacket, but Wotton ploughed on in his overcoat regardless. Dorian resolved to be measured for a three-piece suit as soon as possible.
    The charity reception for the Youth Homeless Project was being held in the restaurant of a cavernous hotel which had grown seedy and unprofitable in the recession. Its grey flanks were pitted, its reception rooms smelly and its staff surlier than ever. ‘Naturally we’re extremely late,’ Wotton declaimed, leaving his coat in the cloakroom, ‘but then punctuality is the fucking thief of time, burgling precious seconds which we could’ve spent getting higher.’ The woman behind the counter scowled at him, and he smiled back while handing her a pound note.
    The interior of the restaurant was vernal in the extreme: great tubs full of blooms stood about, connected by troughs full of shrubbery. The carpet was floral-patterned, the drapes the same, the lighting in this painforest was noonday equatorial. From between two pointy-shouldered PR girls – their dumpling bodies unsuitable for such sharp suiting, their blonde sausage curls and retroussé noses making them altogether spaniel-like – came Phyllis Hawtree. She set off gamely towards Dorian and her son across the trackless waste of carpeting, but the distance was so great they had plenty of time to appreciate quite how mad and ethereal she appeared, with her coiffure so stiff it vibrated with each arthritic step, and her knee and arm both surgically braced. As she drew nearer they could see that her creviced cheek was so powdered that a careless air kisser might find themselves tumbling into her face.
    ‘My mother,’ Wotton whispered, ‘is an intelligent woman who views the distressing of the social fabric with the very real emotion she withholds from all those around her. Like Schopenhauer, the more she loves mankind, the less she loves men.’ Dorian was going to say he thought this was unfair, but it was too late, he was caught in her bony talons.
    ‘Oh Dorian,’ she fluted, ‘I’m so glad you’re here, there are so many people who want to meet you.’ She ignored her son and he took this as his familial due, merely following in her wake as she led Dorian into the throng of superannuated debs, professional faggots and off-the-peg suits – a flat company