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circumstances I found infinite desirelessness a strain to bring on. As our souls lifted into nirvana on a collective ‘oommm’ my penis would press against my shorts as if to say, ‘Don’t forget that always I am here too!’ Sexual release is the most mysticism most people can manage.

Fuck it, I will leave everything here
    Fuck it, I will leave everything here. My sons, wandering in this forsaken room, will discover, perhaps by mistake, the treasures they need.
    After school or college, in my bedroom, I would pile up Father’s classical records on the spindle of my record player, and the symphonies would clatter down, one by one, until supper. It was rebellious inthose days to like music that didn’t sound better the louder it was played.
    Then, restless at my desk, with my father’s bookshelves around me, I would reach up and pull down a few volumes. Father, like the other neighbourhood men, spent most of his days’ energy in unsatisfying work. Time was precious and he had me fear its waste. But browsing and ruminating at my desk, I figured that doing nothing was often the best way of doing something.
    I will regret forfeiting this room. For though I have never been taught the art of solitude, but had to learn it, it has become as necessary to me as the Beatles, kisses on the back of my neck and kindness. Here I can follow the momentum of my thoughts as I read, write, sing, dance, think of the past and waste time. Here I have examined dimly felt intuitions, and captured unclear but pressing ideas. I am speaking of the pleasures of not speaking, doing or wanting, but of losing oneself.
    But it was in this room, late at night, when she and the children were asleep and I sat here listening to the street, that I saw how I yearned for contact and nourishment. I never found a way to be pleasurably idlewith Susan. She has a busy mind. One might want to admire anyone who lives with vigour and spirit. But there is desperation in her activity, as if her work is holding her together. In some ways, it is less of everything that I want.
    I know how necessary fathers are for boys. I would hang on to Dad’s hand as he toured the bookshops, climbing ladders and standing on steps to pull down rotting tomes. ‘Let’s go, let’s go …’ I’d say.
    How utterly the past suffuses us. We live in all our days at once. The writers Dad preferred are still my favourites, mostly nineteenth-century Europeans, the Russians in particular. The characters, Goriot, Vronsky, Madame Ranevskaya, Nana, Julien Sorel, feel part of me. It is Father’s copies I will give to the boys. Father took me to see war films and cricket. Whenever I appeared in his room his face would brighten. He loved kissing me. We kept one another company for years. He, more than anyone, was the person I wanted to marry. I wanted to walk, talk, laugh and dress like him. My sons are the same with me, repeating my phrases in their tiny voices, staring admiringly at me and fighting to sit beside me. But I am leaving them. What would Father think of that?
     What embarrassed Nina about me embarrassed me about him. I don’t yet read the newspapers wearing gloves, as Father did to prevent his fingers getting soiled. But I know many local shopkeepers, and I do bang on their windows as I pass, and will stop and ask them personal questions about the minutiae of their lives. Father would invite in any passing religious freak with a shopping bag full of pamphlets and engage in a ferocious debate.
    But I lack his kindness. Of all the virtues it is the sweetest, particularly since it isn’t considered a moral attribute, but as a gift. Nina always said that I am kind; she said I was the perfect man for her, and that I had everything she could want. Would she still say that?
    My younger son, his nose in my wrist as we walked in the street last week, said, ‘Daddy, you smell of you.’
    Cheerio, I must be going.
    Father, six years dead, would have been horrified by my skulking off.