When I inquired of her, “Why do I have two accounts?”

  She said, “I think you need an accountant.”

  I left the bank none the wiser and told the whole sad story to a Mr. Engel, a sculptor who at the time was making me immortal in bronze. He said, “Have my accountant.”

  So, I did. I went to his accountant who was like a vast hamster living in a nest of shredded paper. I’ve never seen him take unpaid income tax demands and put them into his cheeks, but I’m convinced that’s what he must do. The other day he said to me, “I recognize now that you’re a hopeless case.”

  He told me I have to pay two lots of income tax, four times a year. I could never do it without his help. I wouldn’t know what to send where on what day or anything. He arranges it all for me.

  I’ve no idea what happens to my money when I put it in the bank. I assume they keep it in a pile somewhere. Occasionally I receive a note saying that I’m overdrawn. Upon receiving this I run all the way to the bank, fling myself into a chair opposite the bank manager’s desk, weep and pray for death. This is apparently unnecessary.

  The bank manager simply says, “Oh, don’t worry. It can be readjusted.” This I find extraordinary. In England, if you become overdrawn, your name is mud. You become an outcast from everything. So, I never understand it, but I float along nonetheless and I seem to be doing alright. Financial prowess is definitely not key to living a long life.

  The trouble with banks is however, as I think I’ve explained before, that the people who work in banks are like nuns. Nuns are moved from nunnery to nunnery, or from post to post, so that they don’t form a relationship with someone more important and binding than their relationship with You-Know-Who. It seems to me that banks do the same thing. Just as you think you’re getting to know your bank manager, they whisk him or her off somewhere else so that he or she doesn’t get too attached to you and lend you more money than they otherwise should. In my eighteen years of dealing with banks I think I have had a different bank manager every year.

  Every time I get a new bank manager I have to explain myself all over again, which is not easy when you have a story like mine to tell. They’re worse than dealing with doctors and I’ve had five of those during my time in New York.

  The other day I received a letter from my bank containing a check of mine, which had the word ‘void’ stamped across it. I couldn’t understand it. The check was for $255 or something and I had $60,000 in my checking account. Anyway, I’ve torn it up. If whomever the check was payable to wants the money I’m sure they’ll contact me again.

  I don’t have any credit cards because I would hate to run into debt. I was once given a Visa card by my agent, but I never used it because I couldn’t fathom how on earth I would. I know people have them. What are they for? I have noticed however, that when I go into shops and, say, spend more than twenty dollars, the shop assistant seems to get very worried nowadays when they realize I’m paying in cash. Perhaps they think they will be robbed if they keep too much cash in the till.

  The only time my Visa card was any use was when I was due to catch a plane to go to Washington and I lost my ticket. The airline representative said she couldn’t issue me a replacement ticket and that I would have to buy another one instead. Of course, I wasn’t carrying enough cash with me to pay for a ticket. So I took the Visa card out of my pocket and asked her, “Will this do?”

  And she smiled and said, “Yes.”

  Then she put it in a funny thing that started blinking and making some odd noises and then she gave it back to me along with a new ticket. I don’t entirely know what happened, but I made my flight, which was a good thing.

  I’m aware however that people seem to run up large debts through using credit cards. The television is full of advertisements at the moment for people who will take over your credit card debts and combine them all together. That way you end up owing one person a large sum of money instead of owing smaller sums to lots of companies. I don’t see why that’s an advantage, but as you might imagine money is a complete mystery to me.

  Every year I ask the authorities in England if I owe them any tax. I do this when they send me an account of how my old age pension has accumulated in London. They never reply so it seems to be free money. I love money. Probably because I’ve never had much of it. If I had my way the money I have would be stored in the form of great gold coins the size of dinner plates, all lying side by side in a bank vault somewhere. I don’t want my money invested. ‘Invest’ seems to me to be another word for ‘gamble’ and that is yet another thing that I wouldn’t do since ‘gamble’ is another name for ‘lose’.

  Now, of course, everybody is dead. My agent is dead. My accountant is dead. Mr. Marvell46 wrote a poem that begins, “They are all gone into a world of light and I alone sit grieving here.” Ms. Clausen47 once said, “Writing is rewriting.” She should know. I do not think of her often. I thought of her when everyone was so angry when I said a woman could abort her fetus if she knew it was gay. She would have understood what I meant.

  The kinky papers for which I worked have both folded. I worked for both The New York Native48 and for Christopher Street49. They were both part of an empire built up by a very resourceful man called Mr. Steele50. Both publications came to an end when kinkiness became mainstream. Nowadays, nobody has to read the shocking things that the Native or Christopher Street printed, they can read them in the Wall Street Journal or the Sunday Times. That put an end to Mr. Steele’s kingdom, which I thought was sad. He started both of those newspapers when he was barely thirty and to be a kinky version of Mr. Murdoch51 is no small achievement, so it is a pity that it all came to nothing.

  Asked if I feel like a cat with nine lives, I say that I feel I’ve been very lucky. Really however, I am more akin to a dog than a cat because I have given myself over to the whims of other people time and again. I used to joke that when I signed on to be part of Mr. Lago’s Authors on Tour, I sold myself into slavery. I didn’t mean for it to sound unkind, but he took offence at my saying it.

  People have said to me, “Don’t you mind being taken to places and told to sit and perform as though you were a dog?” To me it is an absurd question. It means I am never to blame for whatever I am doing or wherever I am. That’s the situation I like. No one can ever sue me.

  Suing is a very American occupation. Everyone sues everyone in America. One of the late Mr. Hudson’s52 ex-lovers sued his estate claiming he had not been informed when Mr. Hudson knew he had AIDS. The man in question53 was later tested and found to be HIV negative. Nevertheless he was still awarded a sum of twenty-two million dollars. Of course, the lawyers probably ended up taking half of it and the IRS probably took the other half, but the whole thing was still extraordinary.

  I have never sued anyone. I don’t really understand the law. For instance, that woman54 who cut off her husband’s55 penis was acquitted. I mean, I regard that as one of the most terrible crimes I have ever heard of. Yet people stood outside the court and cheered when she was acquitted. She was said to be insane. This seems odd to me. Mr. Dahmer56 was said to be sane, but he cut up small boys while they were still alive and stuffed them in the refrigerator. I think even he made soup out of them. Does that seem to be the action of a sane person? I don’t think so.

  When I am asked about my life’s legacy, I have to admit I don’t think I’m really leaving anything behind for anyone. I have tried to do right by the people I’ve met, but of course you seldom really know what is good for people. If you are not careful you give people what you think they deserve and that’s a bad idea. I think my legacy is principally nothing. As Keats57 said, when I have gone “My name will be written in water”. Very few people do such good deeds that they really leave people with something tangible. Someone like Edison58 really did do something for the world. He changed it for the better. I mean we have cities which are lit by electricity from end to end and that would have been inconceivable without him. When he died, they say he held more than a thousand patents. The nice thing about his achievements, I suppose, was that he could see the difference he made in his own lifetime.

  I’ve certainly noticed the world changing during my lifetime, though it’s not because of anything that I have done or said. People have grown more open. They feel they can say more about themselves than previous generations could. I don’t know if that’s a good thing, but they probably benefit by having said it rather than keeping everything a secret. When I was young, people had so many secrets. Secrets about their family. Secrets about themselves. Secrets about their marriage. Now there are almost no secrets. Everybody knows everything about everyone and they don’t seem to judge you as much. In the past people feared they would never be able to show their face in public again. Yes, I can definitely say that over the course of my lifetime, though the world may have gotten worse, the people have gotten better.

  Yes, people are still impatient, but to my mind they are more civic-minded rather than less these days, contrary to what the newspapers say. I think they actually care more about a neighborhood than they used to. Nowadays we are forced to take other people into consideration because there are so many of us and we all live such revealed lives that you cannot help but take notice of other people.

  At the same time however, we seem to be entering a new era. An era of neuroses, self-diagnosed or otherwise. This means that everyone nowadays has their own shrink. At least, everyone in America does.

  To me though, psychoanalysis is just another form of self-indulgence. You see, it used to be the case that your troubles made you at one with other people. Now, it seems to be that your troubles separate you from other people. So although the world has gotten more crowded it has actually become a lonelier place.

  I have never seen a psychiatrist and regard psychoanalysis as absolute rubbish. Why can’t you work out your own problems? It’s much better than involving someone who has never met you. I mean, you go into their room and they say, “Ah. And then? Mmm. And how did you feel about that?” You pay them for the privilege of hearing your own words repeated back at you. You might as well go and share your problems with a cave.

  Personally, I don’t believe in help from other people unless it’s technical. When you’re ill, I think you can go to a doctor and he can say, “Your liver doesn’t work.” You wouldn’t have thought of that and the medicine he or she prescribes for you works and does you good. But ordinary human problems can be answered by anybody, foremost amongst them, yourself.

  I suppose my legacy, if I have one, is the same as that of all others who have lived longer than the average person around him or her. It is the commentary I can provide that bears witness to the great changes that sweep through society. I can remind others of where society came from and the direction in which we are heading. Observing others has been the preoccupation of my long and otherwise unproductive life. I was twenty-two years old when Edison died.

  * * *

  44 Given to begging

  45 Quentin had over $1.25m in savings and investments at the time of his death

  46 Andrew Marvell, English poet and satirist, 1621-1678

  47 Connie Clausen, Quentin’s literary agent, 1923-1997

  48 A biweekly gay newspaper published in New York City from 1980-1997.

  49 A gay-oriented magazine published from 1976-1995.

  50 Thomas Steele

  51 Rupert Murdoch, Australian-born media magnate, b. 1931

  52 Rock Hudson, American leading man and actor, 1925-1985

  53 Marc Christian (born Marc Christian MacGinnis)

  54 Lorena Bobbitt, b. 1970

  55 John Wayne Bobbitt, b. 1967

  56 Jeffrey Dahmer, American serial killer and sex offender, 1960-1994

  57 John Keats, English romantic poet, 1795-1821

  58 Thomas Edison, American inventor of the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the practical electric light bulb, 1847-1931

  CHAPTER 8

  The Twenty-First Century

  If I had a vision of the twenty-first century, and I assure you that I do not, I would have to say that I think things will generally get worse. That seems to me to be the trend that time is taking.

  Everything in my lifetime has got louder, cheaper, faster, nastier and sexier, and I don’t think it will suddenly reverse itself and go in the opposite direction. Of course, the world becoming louder, cheaper, faster, nastier and sexier is not a good thing, but I shan’t be around. So long as the world doesn’t become sufficiently loud that it wakes me from the long sleep that lies ahead of me, I shan’t care.

  Generally, I would think that the twenty-first century will be much like the century that is now passing. As I write this, everyone is worried about planes falling from the sky when the clocks tick over to January 1, 2000. It would certainly be a novel way of ringing in the new year. We shall all be at New Year’s parties when the Times Square ball falls, whereupon perhaps we shall all be plunged into darkness with all the machines around us exploding and showering us with debris. If I am at a party, I think I will make a point of heading home and going to bed early. If I am to be crushed by a falling Boeing 747, I would rather be tucked up in bed when it happens.

  In addition to worrying about the ‘millennium bug’59, everyone appears to be coming down with what has been described as ‘millennium fever’. My understanding of ‘millennium fever’ is that people are even more anxious than usual to celebrate the dawning of a new year since it also represents a new millennium. This, of course, is nonsense. The year 2000 does not represent the passing of another thousand years. The third millennium won’t actually start until January 1, 2001. Moreover, the point from which we are counting seems to me to be entirely arbitrary. In effect we’re celebrating two thousand years since the entirely undocumented date of birth of some half-starved fanatic from the Middle East. I don’t know why it’s so significant.

  It’s been explained to me that ‘the millennium’ is just an excuse for having a huge party. This I accept, although it can only lead to disappointment. More likely than not, I shall not attend any kind of party this New Year’s Eve. I know people like them though. They go out into the street and set off fireworks and then everybody embraces everybody. I’m lucky enough that I can embrace everybody without the need for a party. Nevertheless, assuming we are not all bitten by the ‘millennium bug’, revelers will doubtless wake up on January 1, 2000, with the same hangover they had last year and the same feeling of anticlimax and disappointment. New Year’s celebrations are always the same. This year however, I suppose it will just make a bigger dent in people’s bank balances.

  With luck, I will die before the millennium. I haven’t made any plans to celebrate my ninety-first birthday in December. Presumably if I do make it to my birthday, any celebrations will be smaller than the ones for my ninetieth. I hope I do not live to be one hundred. Ten more years of this would be unbearable.

  As someone that has seen, first hand, most of the twentieth century, I would have to say that the atom bomb was the greatest invention of the hundred years from 1900 to 2000. Now, we all live in Terrorland because fissionable material exists and will, at some stage, fall into the wrong hands. In fact, I know a man whose job is to fly about the world buying up fissionable material so that it doesn’t fall into the clutches of wicked people. ‘Wicked people’ are always the people who would use such technology and devices against us. We are never ‘wicked people’. Ours are never the wrong hands.

  I don’t have a clear memory of the date when the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima60, but I do remember reading Mr. Hersey’s61 article in The New Yorker, which took up the magazine. The second bomb somehow never took off the same way the first one did. I don’t know why. Maybe because the second one was a sin because the Japanese had sued for peace before the second bomb was dropped. These days no one ever remembers Nagasaki or ever refers to it. History rarely offers prizes for those who come second.

  When I say that the atom bomb was the greatest invention of the twentieth century, I obviously don’t mean to say that those who died in Japan deserved death or that their deaths are any cause for celebration. I merely mean to say that no other invention in recent times has had such an effect on our way of living. The cold war was all about mutually assured destruction and none of that would have taken place if it wasn’t for the atom bomb. World War II would not have ended in the manner it did. So really, the invention of the atom bomb shaped the entire second half of the twentieth century and continues to influence us to this day.

  The computer is, of course, another great invention of the twentieth century, though at the moment I wouldn’t say that its effect has been as far-reaching as the atom bomb. Maybe in time, that will change.

  Hand in hand with the computer, of course, came the Internet. In theory, the fact that we can now all know one another and communicate with one another is a wonderful thing. In practice however, it all seems to be getting very nasty. The Internet seems to be being used to facilitate people’s sexual desires, desires that previously were muted by the effort needed to find like-minded people to share in such exploits. The Internet seems to have made it easier for perverts to find each other and for pornography of every shape, color and persuasion to be just a click away. Perhaps, once everyone has gotten their kicks, people will find more constructive ways to use the Internet.

  When the computer was invented, they must have thought how wonderful it would be that everyone could be in touch with everybody else. Were someone to shout, “Help.” thousands of people would hear. If someone were to shout, “I’m lonely.” millions of like-minded people would be able to reply and new friendships would be made. But, of course, what has happened is that people are using it for purely sexual purposes and now everyone worries because they think our children will end up being corrupted as a result.

  The inventors of the Internet seemed to think that their invention would help build a sort of global community, but being connected to the Internet is not the same as living in a town. Towns are typically fairly small, which gives you a sense of identity. The Internet is so large and contains so many people that I think it’s hard for people to feel anything other than lost and insignificant when interacting with it. For the Internet to help people I think it needs to somehow be made smaller and more relevant to people’s lives.