Shame - a memoir

This post is a fictionalized account of a true event. Many details, large and small, have been altered for the sake of artistic effect.

Newark, De - March 1978. Sir Angus Wilson, author of A Bit Off The Map, Kipling, Anglo Saxon Attitudes, Death Dance and, most recently, As If By Magic is a visiting professor of English literature
at the University of Delaware's Newark Campus. - Wilmington News Journal, 3 March 1978.

Sir Angus gave a reading one Thurday night. Craig and I decided to go and invited the smitten Scotty to join us. " He sucks with absorbent lips", Craig had nicknamed him after a middle-of-the-night nude tussle in the flash of a dying fire. " My dear, it's utterly Women in Love." We were friends again, taking turns playing Anthony Blanche and Lottie Crump and our other favorite literary characters.

The visiting novelist cut a Victorian figure with his red face and luxurious hair. He commented during the reading that no reviewer had seen fit to mention Wilson's homages - quotes, really - from Beardsley's Under The Hill and Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. " Mr. Wilson, I haven't read de Sade but I did read Under The Hill and I didn't catch the .."
Wilson gave us a meaningful look and said " It's a chapter heading. ' ... how they tousled them and mousled them ...the rorty little darlings."
"Our little friend has never been mousled," Craig said, indicating Scotty, who was helping himself to yet another glass of bad sauterne.
This conversation occurred, not in some den of iniquity, but in a hastily decorated "social room" across the street from the auditorium where Sir Angus read. Everyone seemed half tanked except Craig, Sir Angus, his tough looking companion Joe and your humble correspondent. I don't know if Sir Angus was a reformed drunkard or the victim of some dreadful malady whose treatment required abstinence from alcohol. There had to be some good reason for him drinking Fresca.
"Well, someone should teach him the mechanics of mousling."
Craig nodded. "Have you ever been to Rehoboth Beach?"
" Oh dear. No, I haven't. Joe, what was the place with the lads who had a shop?"
" Lads? Them old queens? Llhooze, there's a ferry to New Jersey."
" Lew-es. It's a nice historical town but all the action is in Rehoboth. You should come back home with us. My wife went to visit her sick mother. We'll have casa Craig all to ourselves."
"Ah, well.."
"Craig."
"Yes, er, Craig, that's a very exciting invitation. What do you think, Joe?"
"Angie, if it suits you, I'm all for it. Are there clubs, Craig?"
" There's a dance pick up club that's busy on weekends and there's a place called the Nomad. The fishermen drink there all day and after they're gone, it transforms itself into a gay bar."
The half quaalude Craig had given me must have kicked in because there's a deep ravine of forgetfulness until I wake up, fully clothed, in bed with Craig.
"What happened?"
" I'm not sure but judging from the noise Scotty got mousled last night."


Sir Angus and Joe spent the weekend with us. You won't find any references to this impromptu orgy in Margaret Drabble's exhaustively researched biography. You can learn more about Sir Angus' dirty weekend but only if I get enough comments.