A World Without Pain

We like to think that what doesn ’ t kill us makes us stronger , or more resilient , or .
.
.
something .
Deeper .
Wiser .
Enlarged .
There is “ glory in our sufferings , ” the Bible promises .
“ Suffering produces perseverance ; perseverance , character ; and character , hope.
” In this equation , no pain is too great to be good .
“ The darker the night , the brighter the stars , ” Dostoyevsky wrote .
“ The deeper the grief , the closer is God !
” We atheists @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the agony of loss elucidates the worth of love .
The hours spent staring into the dark , looping around our own personal grand prix of anxieties , are not a waste of time but a fundamental expression of our humanity .
And so on .
To be a person is to suffer .
But what if our worst feelings are just vestigial garbage ?
Hypervigilance and pricking fear were useful when survival depended on evading lions ; they are not particularly productive when the predators are Alzheimer ’ s and cancer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sadness and aching regret , may never have had a function in the evolutionary sense .
But religion , art , literature , and Oprah have convinced us that they are valuable—the bitter kick that enhances life ’ s intermittent sweetness .
Pain is what makes joy , gratitude , mercy , hilarity , and empathy so precious .
Unless it isn ’ t .
“ I know the word ‘ pain , ’ and I know people are in pain , because you can see it , ” Joanne Cameron , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the cluttered kitchen of her century-old stone cottage in the Scottish Highlands .
Cameron has never experienced the extremes of rage , dread , grief , anxiety , or fear .
She handed a cup of tea to Jim , her husband of twenty-five years , with whom she ’ s never had a fight .
“ I see stress , ” she continued , “ and I ’ ve seen pain , what it does , but I ’ m talking about an abstract thing.
” Because of a combination of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emotional range is limited to the kinds of bearable suffering one sees in a Nora Ephron movie .
If someone tells Cameron a sad story , she cries— “ easily !
Oh , I ’ m such a softie.
” When she reads about the latest transgression by Boris Johnson or Donald Trump , she feels righteous indignation .
“ But then you just go to a protest march , don ’ t you ?
And that ’ s all you can do.
” When something bad happens , Cameron ’ s brain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the situation , but it does not dwell on unhappiness .
She inadvertently follows the creed of the Stoics ( and of every twelve-step recovery program ) : Accept the things you can not change .
Cameron , who has white hair and was wearing denim overalls over a purple striped shirt , has a bouncy , elfin energy .
She described the closest she ’ d ever come to experiencing real terror : an incident when her son , Jeremy , a musician , was beaten up so badly at a gig @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ He was defending someone , ” Cameron said .
“ The lead singer was gay—we ’ re talking a good few years ago , when they weren ’ t quite as tolerated—and they started calling the gay chappie names , and then suddenly the whole lot of them came on top of Jeremy.
” “ They punched him , and kicked him , stamped his head , ” Jim , a tall , genial man , with a white beard and a thick brogue , added gravely .
When Cameron got the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I thought , Oh , God , I hope he doesn ’ t die—I felt that .
Then we got in the car .
I wasn ’ t fretting , I was just thinking , We ’ ve got to get to him , he needs me.
” They drove a hundred and thirty miles on the single-track roads that wind east from their home in Foyers , near the snaky banks of Loch Ness , to Peterhead .
“ We got to the hospital about four or five in the morning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , my handsome boy did , ” Cameron said , laughing .
“ He looked like nothing on earth !
” In addition to Jeremy , who is forty-two , Cameron has a daughter , Amy , who is thirty .
Her experience of motherhood has entailed none of the rumbling terror that most parents feel over their children ’ s safety .
“ Some time ago , someone said to me , ‘ When the baby comes , the first thing you do is count the fingers and toes.
’ I thought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Cameron said .
“ I never dreamed of there being anything wrong.
” In sharp contrast to her near-inability to feel awful , Cameron has an expansive capacity for positive emotions .
She is exceedingly loving and affectionate with her husband .
When I first came to the door , she greeted me with an embrace , crying , “ Ooh , I ’ m very huggy !
” Her seventeen years as a special-education teacher required great reserves of compassion .
“ I had a Down-syndrome girl—who was actually quite high-functioning—and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she ’ d walk up to me and spit in my face , and say , ‘ I hate you , Jo Cameron !
I hate you !
’ And I ’ d stand there and say , ‘ I don ’ t like being spat on , but I don ’ t hate you !
’ ” Cameron told me , smiling .
“ Oh , I ’ ve had some very difficult students .
I ’ ve been bitten ; I ’ ve been spat on ; I ’ ve been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Camerons have provided short-term foster care for four children .
One of them stole all their vacation money from the cookie jar .
“ She did take things for the sake of taking them , ” Cameron said pleasantly .
“ It took us years to catch up !
When eight hundred pounds is gone from your vacation kitty , it takes a long time to recoup.
” “ Think of this as intensive training for being in a can.
” Even seemingly sorrowful things , like the loss of her mother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with appreciation and pleasure .
“ My mother ’ s death was the least saddest thing ever , ” Cameron declared .
“ She used to say , ‘ I ’ ve had the most wonderful life.
’ And she died after she had an iced lolly and went to sleep.
” When the doctor arrived , Cameron recalled , “ she said , ‘ Don ’ t take this the wrong way , but that ’ s the most beautiful corpse I ’ ve ever seen.
’ Then we sat in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we toasted Mum with Tia Maria till the early morning.
” Cameron plans to leave her own corpse to science when she dies .
“ They ’ ll whisk the body away , and stick us in a drawer somewhere and chop us up , won ’ t they ?
” she said .
“ I don ’ t mind.
” She will also spend a good deal of her remaining time alive being studied by scientists , who hope that her genetics will provide a path to new treatments for anxiety and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ management and healing .
In addition to her unusual emotional composition , Cameron is entirely insensitive to physical pain .
As a child , she fell and hurt her arm while roller-skating , but had no idea she ’ d broken it until her mother noticed that it was hanging strangely .
Giving birth was no worse .
“ When I was having Jeremy , it was the height of everyone doing natural childbirths , ” she said .
“ My friends would come up to me and say , ‘ Don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you ’ re in pain , take everything they give you.
’ I went in thinking , As soon as it gets painful , I ’ ll ask for the drugs .
But it was over before I knew it.
” Remarkably , Cameron didn ’ t realize that she was any different from other people until she was sixty-five .
“ Lots of people have high pain thresholds , ” she said .
“ I didn ’ t think people were silly for crying .
I could tell people were upset or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ life and I just thought , I haven ’ t hurt myself as much as they have.
” Devjit Srivastava was an officer in the Indian Navy for a decade—an experience that taught him to stay cool under pressure .
Composure is also important in his current job , which is unpredictable and high-stakes : Srivastava is the consultant anesthetist at what he calls a “ frontier hospital ” —Raigmore , in Inverness , which serves the whole of the vast and remote Scottish Highlands .
His first day on call , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with a “ field amputation ” on a farmer who had got caught in a thresher .
When Srivastava met Jo Cameron , six years ago , she told him that she wouldn ’ t need painkillers for the surgery she was about to undergo .
He assumed that he was just dealing with a kindred imperturbable spirit .
“ The Scottish are known to be stoic people , ” Srivastava said , drinking coffee in the bustling hospital cafeteria .
“ I thought , She ’ s just trying to tell me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And , actually , it ’ s a busy list , and we have to crack on.
” Cameron was having a trapeziectomy , an operation to remove a small bone at the base of the thumb joint .
Though her hands never hurt , they ’ d become so deformed by arthritis that she couldn ’ t hold a pen properly .
She ’ d had a similar experience with her hip , which had recently been replaced ; it didn ’ t hurt , but her family noticed that she wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her local doctor about it several times , but the first question was always “ How much pain are you in ?
” And the answer was always “ None.
” ( “ The third time I was there I think they figured , ‘ We ’ ll just take an X-ray to shut this woman up , ’ ” Cameron told me .
“ Then the X-ray came in and it was really bad .
Everything was all distorted and mangled and crumbling .
He said , ‘ Wow .
This has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Srivastava told Cameron that , Scottish stoicism notwithstanding , he intended to use an anesthetic block during the operation .
After she left the hospital , he reviewed her chart : “ She had only one paracetamol ” —a Tylenol— “ immediately after the operation in the recovery area .
And that was only because the nurses give everybody a paracetamol after surgery .
I checked the full records of hip replacement the previous year : after hip surgery it was the same thing—nothing taken for pain .
That ’ s when I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ skeptical until Cameron let him perform a maneuver that anesthesiologists use on patients who are having difficulty regaining consciousness after sedation : they press hard on the inner edges of the eye sockets , and the pain shocks people awake .
Cameron , of course , felt only pressure .
Srivastava was surprised that no doctor or nurse had been curious about her pain insensitivity before .
( Cameron told me that she didn ’ t think it was particularly notable : “ They ’ ve got so many people demanding their attention @ @ @ @ @ @ @ focus on.
” ) Srivastava recognized that her case was extraordinary— “ This doesn ’ t fall into every anesthetist ’ s life , ” he said—and also that understanding it would require him to supplement his own expertise .
He developed a research protocol , and enlisted highly regarded scientists from around the world to try to figure out what caused her condition .
Cameron is beguiled by the idea that she can help alleviate others ’ suffering—she remembers the terrible migraines that tormented her mother .
Her father , however , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him take an aspirin , ” Cameron said .
“ I ’ m convinced he was the same as me , because I never heard my father complaining about any pain , ever .
He died suddenly , of a brain hemorrhage—I think other people would have had a warning.
” She continued , “ He was the kindest man you ’ ll ever meet .
Every morning he ’ d wake us with a cup of tea and a carrot from the garden and tell us a poem.
” Then he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in hand and skipping all the way .
The scientists who took on Jo Cameron ’ s case were working in a young field .
Geneticists have been studying congenital insensitivity to pain only since the nineteen-nineties .
In that time , several hundred cases have been reported ; presumably there are others , but no one knows how many .
The condition is almost always caused by neuropathy , an interruption in the transmission of painful sensation along nerve fibres .
People with severe congenital neuropathy tend to die young , because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( Without pain , children are in constant danger .
They swallow something burning hot , the esophagus ruptures , bacteria spill into the internal organs , and terminal sepsis sets in .
They break their necks roughhousing .
To protect some patients , doctors have removed all their teeth to prevent them from chewing off their tongues and bleeding to death . )
There are also people whose neurons stop working , as the result of a disease : syphilis , lupus , diabetes , rheumatoid arthritis .
In recent years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it possible to link particular variants of pain insensitivity to mutations in specific genes .
Six members of the Marsili family in Italy , for instance , share a mutation in the gene ZFHX2 ; consequently , they rarely sweat , experience pain only fleetingly , and are completely insensitive to heat .
“ We live a very normal life , perhaps better than the rest of the population , ” Letizia Marsili , the matriarch of the family , said in 2017 .
( She once broke her shoulder while skiing in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ without any pain for the rest of the afternoon , and got around to seeing a doctor only days later , when it was convenient . )
There are downsides , though , to what ’ s been named Marsili syndrome .
Letizia ’ s mother suffered multiple fractures in her youth without noticing them ; her bones were never set properly , and they healed awry .
In 2006 , Geoff Woods , a geneticist at Cambridge , published his findings on members of several families in a remote region of northern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the gene SCN9A , which renders them both pain-free and unable to process smell .
( Since then , people with the same mutation have been identified all over the world , but the Pakistani patients were an ideal group to study : they were all the products of cousin-to-cousin marriages , making their gene pool unusually easy to map . )
“ The lack of a sense of smell is really helpful , because it provides us with a simple question we can ask new patients , ” James Cox , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is now a prominent geneticist at University College London , said .
Cox has been studying Cameron ’ s DNA for five years , and has co-authored a paper with Srivastava about her case , which was published last March , in the British Journal of Anaesthesia .
“ Jo is quite unique , ” he said .
Cameron does not have neuropathy : she can feel all the sensations the rest of us do , except pain .
The most striking difference between her and everyone else is the way she processes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ brain .
Endocannabinoids mitigate our stress response , and they bind to the same receptors as the THC in the kind of cannabis you smoke .
Normally , they are broken down by an enzyme called fatty acid amide hydrolase , or FAAH .
But Cameron has a mutation on her FAAH gene that makes the enzyme less effective—so her endocannabinoids build up .
She has extraordinarily high levels of one in particular : anandamide , whose name is derived from the Sanskrit word for “ bliss.
” About a third of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gene , which provides increased levels of anandamide .
“ That phenotype—low levels of anxiety , forgetfulness , a happy-go-lucky demeanor—isn ’ t representative of how everyone responds to cannabis , but you see a lot of the prototypical changes in them that occur when people consume cannabis , ” said Matthew Hill , a biologist at the University of Calgary ’ s Hotchkiss Brain Institute , who was a co-author of the Cameron paper .
The FAAH gene , like every gene , comes in a pair .
People who have the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seem a little high ; people who have it in both even more so .
Jo Cameron is fully baked .
“ When I met Jo for the first time , I was just struck by her , ” Cox , an affable forty-year-old with a scruffy beard , told me , one afternoon in his lab at U.C.L .
“ She was very chatty .
Did you notice that ?
” ( It ’ s hard to miss . )
“ I said to her , ‘ Are you worried about what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ Because she was meeting our clinicians to have a skin biopsy and do quantitative sensory testing—pain-threshold tests .
She said , ‘ No .
In fact , I ’ m never worried about anything.
’ ” Cox told me that it was difficult to get through everything in the time they ’ d allotted , because Cameron was so friendly and loquacious with the scientists , even as they burned her , stuck her with pins , and pinched her with tweezers until she bled .
This imperviousness to pain is what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a FAAH mutation .
They , like even the most committed stoners , can still get hurt .
“ You ’ re here and you don ’ t have to be .
That tells me a lot about you.
” Cameron had the same FAAH mutation that many other people have—but there had to be something else at play .
The scientists started their inquiry by isolating DNA from her blood , and then analyzing the protein-coding subset of her genome—the part that ’ s traditionally considered to be significant .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Cox said .
“ So we decided , O.K.
, why don ’ t we look across the whole genome for bits that are deleted or duplicated ?
And , at the time , this new chip was just available , which enabled us to scan the whole genome and look for deletions ” —snippets missing from her genetic code .
“ It was a lucky strike : we found that there was this deletion .
But it was distinct from FAAH .
It was away from FAAH , just downstream.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the deletion overlapped “ a gene that was annotated as a pseudogene , ” Cox said , and frowned .
“ Which is a term I don ’ t like.
” A pseudogene is what ’ s been thought of as genetic detritus—a copy of a gene that ’ s just sitting there , not doing anything productive .
One biochemist I spoke to likened a pseudogene to a rusted-out car you stumble on in the forest—only , in Cameron ’ s case , they put a key in the ignition and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ call it a pseudogene is misleading , because this is a gene that is expressed—it makes a product , a sequence in the DNA , ” Cox said , with excitement .
“ It ’ s a real fascinating class of genes which have been severely overlooked in genetics until very recently.
” Cox and his colleagues named this particular pseudogene— “ It ’ s nicer to call it a gene , ” he insisted—FAAH OUT .
“ It was a wordplay , really , ” he said sheepishly .
“ The challenge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s doing .
Jo is the first person in the world that we know of with this.
” Cameron ’ s case is important in genetics , partly because it may supply evidence that pseudogenes are more significant than they were previously thought to be .
Moreover , if scientists can replicate her neurochemistry they might be able to develop treatments that alleviate the opioid epidemic .
They could potentially treat otherwise intractable anxiety and depression .
Perhaps we could all be a little more like Jo Cameron : joyful , compassionate , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feelings that turn us , from time to time , into goblins .
I asked Matthew Hill—a renowned expert on cannabinoids and stress—if there was any downside to Cameron ’ s biology , and he laughed out loud .
“ Yes !
From an evolutionary perspective , it would be tremendously destructive for a species to have that , ” he said .
Without fear , you drown in waves that you shouldn ’ t be swimming in ; you take late-night strolls in cities that you don ’ t know ; you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and neglect to put on a hard hat .
“ Her phenotype is only beneficial in an environment where there is no danger , ” Hill asserted .
“ If you can ’ t be concerned about a situation where you ’ d be at risk of something adverse happening to you , you are more likely to put yourself in one .
Anxiety is a highly adaptive process : that ’ s why every mammalian species exhibits some form of it.
” Unlike other pain-insensitive people , Cameron has made it into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sometimes she realizes that she ’ s burning her hand on the stove because she smells singeing ; sometimes she cuts herself in the garden and sees that she ’ s bleeding .
But none of that has been severe , and Cameron did raise two children safely into adulthood .
“ The human brain is very capable of learning , ‘ This is what ’ s appropriate to do in this situation , ’ ” Hill said .
Cameron ’ s relative cautiousness may have developed imitatively .
“ And there may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to her—she ’ s lived in a rural community in Scotland , ” he concluded .
“ Maybe she hasn ’ t had to deal with that much that would physically or emotionally harm her.
” Scotland is notorious for “ one of the vilest climates under heaven , ” Robert Louis Stevenson , who was born in Edinburgh , wrote .
“ The weather is raw and boisterous in winter , shifty and ungenial in summer , and a downright meteorological purgatory in the spring.
” But the week in autumn when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rolled under a gleaming blue sky for miles around the Camerons ’ property , green and gold and dotted with sheep .
Behind their cottage , they grow vegetables in little plastic greenhouses , and their chickens peck about in a modest orchard of pears , apples , and plums .
“ We look after the hens very well , ” Cameron said .
( She is a vegan ; her husband is a vegetarian who sometimes indulges in an egg . )
The Camerons “ do everything together , ” Jo said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weekly trips to Edinburgh to visit Amy ; they ’ re in a local theatre troupe , for which Jo is the stage manager .
( She doesn ’ t act , because she can ’ t remember the lines .
As we were walking through the garden , a pizza was burning in the oven : Cameron had forgotten that she was making one for lunch . )
“ I love Jim to bits , ” Cameron said .
“ He ’ s smashing—I ’ m so lucky .
Having had a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ She trailed off , thinking about her previous husband .
“ I mean , I loved him .
But you never knew what you were coming home to.
” Cameron ’ s first husband , Phil , died after a prolonged battle with mental illness .
“ He ’ d either be full of fun and laughter , or he ’ d be so depressed he ’ d be curled up in the corner in the fetal position , ” she said .
“ He was like this— ” She mimed a seesaw @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bipolar.
” They met when they were both university students near Birmingham , England , where Cameron grew up .
“ He was lovely , ” she said .
“ But he always had a dark side .
He would get down , and I would be the one that would bring him up again .
You know , there ’ d be a game going : ‘ Oh , it ’ s not that bad , come on.
’ ” Phil had his first major episode as the family was on its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when Jeremy was little .
“ He just cracked , ” Cameron said .
“ On the plane , all the way there , he was kicking me , pinching me.
” ( It ’ s impossible to say how hard ; it didn ’ t hurt . )
“ We got to the hotel , and I said , ‘ Can someone please come and help me ?
My husband is having a breakdown.
’ ” She recalled the difficulty of finding a flight home on short notice , of thinking of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He always had it under control , ” she said .
“ But suddenly he couldn ’ t control it.
” Phil tried a variety of medications and saw several psychiatrists over the years .
“ I always went to every session , ” Cameron said .
“ The last time he went to see somebody , the doctor said to me , ‘ This is terminal , you know .
At some point , he will .
.
.
’ And six months later , sure enough , he did.
” I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ psychiatrist said that .
( And I imagined how I would feel : desperate , heartsick , powerless , distraught . )
“ I looked at the state he was in , and I thought , Maybe it ’ s good , ” she said .
Cameron was back at work the day after the funeral .
“ It sounds cold .
But you say to people , ‘ I ’ m not being cold !
Look , horrible things happen.
’ I ’ m not in airy-fairy land .
Horrible things are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cope with it .
You have to say to yourself , ‘ I can ’ t help that person.
’ You help them as much as you can , but when you can ’ t help them anymore , then you have to help everyone else.
” Amy was a year old at the time , and Jeremy was thirteen .
“ We all went to the beach every weekend after Phil died , ” Cameron recalled .
“ I said to Jeremy , ‘ What we ’ ll do every Sunday is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ back of the car , and you get a map ’ —because he loved maps— ‘ and I won ’ t know where we ’ re going , just direct me.
’ He ’ d go , ‘ Turn left , now turn right , go along here.
’ And we ’ d turn up in all sorts of places , and we ’ d have Sunday lunch .
We had a great time doing that.
” Whenever I pressed Cameron for details about a seemingly devastating occurrence , she wasn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on a lovely memory , via a route so unforeseeable it was as if it , too , were determined by a child with a map .
Cameron began dating Jim , who was teaching science at the time , and had known her late husband from their village chapter of Roundtable , a kind of Scottish Rotary Club .
Five years later , they married , and Jim adopted Amy .
( Jeremy was already a young adult . )
Cameron said of her daughter , “ She ’ s geometrically opposite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ From an early age , Amy demonstrated talent as an artist , and her work has been exhibited across Europe .
Her portfolio includes sculpture , earthworks , and intricate , realistic drawings , often interspersed with text .
In one piece , above the image of a sleeping baby , float the words “ feeling/the sacrifice/cut through/and sectioned/kept alive by/these unfortunate animals of emotions—fear , disgust , anger , etc .
Odder still people feel nothing.
” Amy finds her mother ’ s equanimity confounding .
“ She ’ ll say , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a normal mom ?
’ ” Cameron told me .
When Cameron asked , “ What ’ s a normal mom ?
” Amy replied , “ Well , it ’ s not you .
They shout !
” Cameron shook her head at the memory .
“ I sometimes think to myself , I ’ m being horrible .
If someone is really in a rage and really upset , and you ’ re saying , ‘ It ’ s all right !
, ’ then they get angrier .
I can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a teen-ager and you don ’ t want your problems solved .
You just want someone to shout at.
” Paul Bloom , a professor of psychology at Yale and the author of the book “ Against Empathy , ” maintains that relating to suffering has little to do with the capacity to be helpful and kind .
He has published research suggesting that compassion , not empathy , drives altruistic behavior .
( Most research on the subject blurs together empathy and compassion , but Bloom argues that this is a failure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ measures suck.
” ) “ Empathy can actually get in the way—if you are in terrible pain and I feel so much empathy for you that , being with you , I feel it , too , I may decide to stay home , ” he told me .
“ The Buddhists knew this .
There ’ s all this teaching that says , ‘ Don ’ t get sentimental .
Joyously and lovingly help others , but don ’ t get in their heads.
’ ” Cameron , he told me , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : “ She ’ s my dream girl .
She doesn ’ t feel the pain of others , so she doesn ’ t feel empathy per se .
But she cares for others.
” “ It ’ s a pretty good piece of fiction .
I ’ m surprised he couldn ’ t get it published in his lifetime.
” For nearly a decade , pharmaceutical firms have tried , without success , to create medications that act on FAAH .
In 2016 , the Portuguese company Bial Pharmaceuticals abandoned one such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which six participants were hospitalized , and one died .
( Scientists believe that there may have been a dosing accident , or that the drug had “ off target ” effects—it ended up binding to a receptor other than FAAH . )
Pfizer gave up its own attempts at a FAAH inhibitor in 2012 , because the drug didn ’ t work .
Recently , though , it started research again , and Vernalis funded a study at Brigham and Women ’ s Hospital , in Boston , which is undergoing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ breakthrough is too promising to relinquish .
Opioids , besides being addictive , don ’ t always work : some kinds of chronic pain don ’ t respond to drugs that target the opioid system , or to other analgesics , such as ibuprofen and corticosteroids , which operate on the prostaglandin system .
Cameron may provide the key to a new class of drugs that operate on the endocannabinoid system .
Srivastava told me that the paper he worked on with his colleagues was just the beginning .
“ You realize that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ secret to you , ” he said , “ and you only worked on part of that secret , but if you worked on the full secret , so to say , it could be astounding.
” For half a century , scientists have accumulated evidence that pain is not simply the result of a one-way flow of sensory information from an injury to the brain .
Before the brain gets involved , “ gates ” in the spinal cord modulate the way we feel pain—whether it is fast-travelling information , as in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , slow-moving kind that characterizes chronic pain .
These spinal gates can be opened or closed by a variety of factors .
A distracting physical sensation can temporarily close them ; when you bump your head and instinctively rub that spot , you are overriding the nerves that register pain with the nerves that register rubbing .
Your emotional state , too , can have an effect .
It ’ s evolutionarily advantageous for pain gates to be wide open when you ’ re stressed : if you were anxiously evading a predator @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you know if you were stepping on something sharp that might hinder your ability to escape .
Conversely , if you are very relaxed , your gates are less apt to be open .
One of the things Srivastava and his colleagues want to explore is the extent to which Cameron ’ s pain insensitivity is the result of her peaceful state of mind—and vice versa .
The second phase of Srivastava ’ s research will include Cameron ’ s son , Jeremy , who has the FAAH mutation on one but not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who has a high tolerance for pain .
( Unlike many FAAH people , Jeremy , who declined to be interviewed , is painfully shy . )
“ But this goes much beyond genetics , ” Srivastava continued .
“ We are deconstructing pain mechanisms in Jo.
” Because she has sensation but no pain , she presents unique possibilities for research .
“ We know this nerve carries that , this is how it is done , bit by bit we have progressed—but here is a golden opportunity to do it all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or come up with new findings , ” Srivastava said .
He has been contacted by doctors and scientists in Sweden , France , England , and the United States , who want to collaborate .
Srivastava , who is fifty , is an impassive man , but he looked a little fretful as he talked about the research .
“ I feel slightly overwhelmed , ” he admitted , “ like I don ’ t have enough time in this life to properly do it.
” One complicating question is how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ really a consequence of her FAAH mutation and FAAH OUT deletion .
She has plenty of other genes , after all , and her upbringing and her early environment also played a role in making her who she is .
Since the paper was published , Matthew Hill has heard from half a dozen people with pain insensitivity , and he told me that many of them seemed nuts .
“ If you had this phenotype and weren ’ t a generally pleasant person like Jo—maybe you ’ re , like , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ process this might be entirely different .
Our whole perception of this phenotype is explicitly based on the fact that it was Jo who presented it.
” Srivastava is intent on solving the scientific riddles that Cameron poses .
But , in a wistful moment , he suggested that the work also raised profound social questions .
“ Spending time with her , you realize that if we only had more people like Jo—who are genuinely nice , pleasant , do not give in to anger .
.
.
well , ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may not be all it ’ s cracked up to be .
Paul Bloom , who is writing a book about suffering , told me , “ There ’ s a big movement in psychology to say , ‘ What doesn ’ t kill you makes you stronger.
’ People talk about ‘ post-traumatic growth.
’ I think a lot of it is bullshit .
Look at the data : bad things are bad.
” You aren ’ t healthier after you have cancer or fall down a flight of steps .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that getting hit by a bolt of lightning turns you into a superhero ; in life , it turns you into a fritter .
The entire time I spent behind the wheel in Scotland I was suffering what psychologists call an aversive experience—that is , I was afraid for my life .
The Scots drive on the left side of the road , which is already a challenge , but in the Highlands near Loch Ness there is only one lane .
When another car comes barrelling at you , you ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nonexistent ) shoulder , but this can be hard to remember when you come around a sharp curve—which happens roughly every two seconds—and find yourself in the glare of rapidly oncoming headlights .
I was pretty sure that one of these encounters would send me over a cliff , plummeting toward the dark water like Toonces the Driving Cat .
I relaxed slightly when I was back in Inverness , where my only foes were the baffling roundabouts , with their unique Scottish etiquette .
I had just navigated such a rotary and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ highway when I felt an explosion underneath me , then heard the hideous sound of metal scraping asphalt .
I ’ d hit the curb with such force that I ’ d popped my front left tire .
I felt my blood pumping and my skin prickling , and I whipped my head around to see how many people I ’ d killed .
In the process , I scratched my forehead on the sharp corner of the seat-belt mechanism , and it hurt .
There was nowhere to pull over , so @ @ @ @ @ @ @ something worse was about to happen—mind racing , pain gates open , tire rim scraping the street .
I felt panic about getting to the airport , followed by irate self-recrimination ( why am I such a bad driver ? )
, then by irate spousal recrimination ( why didn ’ t he get his stinking passport renewed in time , so he could come with me on this trip and drive ? )
.
I was a wounded , furious , frantic goblin .
Then I thought about Jo Cameron , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
She would keep going until there was a place to pull over , and she wouldn ’ t worry about how far that might be or what might happen before then , because there ’ d be nothing she could do about it .
She ’ d park , call the rental-car place , and take it from there—calmly , kindly , without losing her mind or her sense of humor .
Gradually , my heartbeat slowed , and I saw in the rearview mirror that the scratch on my forehead hadn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I remembered something that Matthew Hill had said about how a stress response is biologically designed to reallocate energy for survival—the goblin feelings are just a weird side effect .
“ Cortisol ’ s main job is to boost your blood sugar , and adrenaline ’ s main job is to jack up your blood pressure , so you have fuel and a delivery method to sustain your muscles and brain in dealing with an aversive threat , ” he ’ d explained .
“ But we have so rapidly out-evolved the requirements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an evolutionary throwback .
When we check a Facebook page and find out our partner has cheated on us , our brain still mounts that same biological response , even though it has zero value to us anymore.
” Even Hill—who told me how disastrous it would be for human beings to float through life without anxiety—conceded , “ Maybe Jo is the next evolutionary step.
” ♦

Remarkably, Cameron didn’t realize that she was any different from other people until she was sixty-five. “Lots of people have high pain thresholds,” she said. “I didn’t think people were silly for crying. I could tell people were upset or hurt and stuff. I went through life and I just thought, I haven’t hurt myself as much as they have.”
Devjit Srivastava was an officer in the Indian Navy for a decade—an experience that taught him to stay cool under pressure. Composure is also important in his current job, which is unpredictable and high-stakes: Srivastava is the consultant anesthetist at what he calls a “frontier hospital”—Raigmore, in Inverness, which serves the whole of the vast and remote Scottish Highlands. His first day on call, he was pulled into a helicopter to help with a “field amputation” on a farmer who had got caught in a thresher.
When Srivastava met Jo Cameron, six years ago, she told him that she wouldn’t need painkillers for the surgery she was about to undergo. He assumed that he was just dealing with a kindred imperturbable spirit. “The Scottish are known to be stoic people,” Srivastava said, drinking coffee in the bustling hospital cafeteria. “I thought, She’s just trying to tell me she can tolerate pain very well. And, actually, it’s a busy list, and we have to crack on.”
Cameron was having a trapeziectomy, an operation to remove a small bone at the base of the thumb joint. Though her hands never hurt, they’d become so deformed by arthritis that she couldn’t hold a pen properly. She’d had a similar experience with her hip, which had recently been replaced; it didn’t hurt, but her family noticed that she wasn’t walking normally. She saw her local doctor about it several times, but the first question was always “How much pain are you in?” And the answer was always “None.” (“The third time I was there I think they figured, ‘We’ll just take an X-ray to shut this woman up,’ ” Cameron told me. “Then the X-ray came in and it was really bad. Everything was all distorted and mangled and crumbling. He said, ‘Wow. This has got to be done.’ ”)
Srivastava told Cameron that, Scottish stoicism notwithstanding, he intended to use an anesthetic block during the operation. After she left the hospital, he reviewed her chart: “She had only one paracetamol”—a Tylenol—“immediately after the operation in the recovery area. And that was only because the nurses give everybody a paracetamol after surgery. I checked the full records of hip replacement the previous year: after hip surgery it was the same thing—nothing taken for pain. That’s when I called her in.”
He remained slightly skeptical until Cameron let him perform a maneuver that anesthesiologists use on patients who are having difficulty regaining consciousness after sedation: they press hard on the inner edges of the eye sockets, and the pain shocks people awake. Cameron, of course, felt only pressure.
Srivastava was surprised that no doctor or nurse had been curious about her pain insensitivity before. (Cameron told me that she didn’t think it was particularly notable: “They’ve got so many people demanding their attention, screaming—they’re the ones you focus on.”) Srivastava recognized that her case was extraordinary—“This doesn’t fall into every anesthetist’s life,” he said—and also that understanding it would require him to supplement his own expertise. He developed a research protocol, and enlisted highly regarded scientists from around the world to try to figure out what caused her condition.
Cameron is beguiled by the idea that she can help alleviate others’ suffering—she remembers the terrible migraines that tormented her mother. Her father, however, was pain-free. “I never saw him take an aspirin,” Cameron said. “I’m convinced he was the same as me, because I never heard my father complaining about any pain, ever. He died suddenly, of a brain hemorrhage—I think other people would have had a warning.” She continued, “He was the kindest man you’ll ever meet. Every morning he’d wake us with a cup of tea and a carrot from the garden and tell us a poem.” Then he’d accompany Cameron to school, hand in hand and skipping all the way.
The scientists who took on Jo Cameron’s case were working in a young field. Geneticists have been studying congenital insensitivity to pain only since the nineteen-nineties. In that time, several hundred cases have been reported; presumably there are others, but no one knows how many. The condition is almost always caused by neuropathy, an interruption in the transmission of painful sensation along nerve fibres. People with severe congenital neuropathy tend to die young, because they injure themselves so frequently and severely. (Without pain, children are in constant danger. They swallow something burning hot, the esophagus ruptures, bacteria spill into the internal organs, and terminal sepsis sets in. They break their necks roughhousing. To protect some patients, doctors have removed all their teeth to prevent them from chewing off their tongues and bleeding to death.) There are also people whose neurons stop working, as the result of a disease: syphilis, lupus, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis.
In recent years, advances in genetic science have made it possible to link particular variants of pain insensitivity to mutations in specific genes. Six members of the Marsili family in Italy, for instance, share a mutation in the gene ZFHX2; consequently, they rarely sweat, experience pain only fleetingly, and are completely insensitive to heat. “We live a very normal life, perhaps better than the rest of the population,” Letizia Marsili, the matriarch of the family, said in 2017. (She once broke her shoulder while skiing in the Italian alps; she continued skiing without any pain for the rest of the afternoon, and got around to seeing a doctor only days later, when it was convenient.) There are downsides, though, to what’s been named Marsili syndrome. Letizia’s mother suffered multiple fractures in her youth without noticing them; her bones were never set properly, and they healed awry.
In 2006, Geoff Woods, a geneticist at Cambridge, published his findings on members of several families in a remote region of northern Pakistan, who share a mutation in the gene SCN9A, which renders them both pain-free and unable to process smell. (Since then, people with the same mutation have been identified all over the world, but the Pakistani patients were an ideal group to study: they were all the products of cousin-to-cousin marriages, making their gene pool unusually easy to map.) “The lack of a sense of smell is really helpful, because it provides us with a simple question we can ask new patients,” James Cox, a former researcher of Woods’s who is now a prominent geneticist at University College London, said. Cox has been studying Cameron’s DNA for five years, and has co-authored a paper with Srivastava about her case, which was published last March, in the British Journal of Anaesthesia. “Jo is quite unique,” he said.
Cameron does not have neuropathy: she can feel all the sensations the rest of us do, except pain. The most striking difference between her and everyone else is the way she processes endocannabinoids—chemicals that exist naturally in every human brain. Endocannabinoids mitigate our stress response, and they bind to the same receptors as the THC in the kind of cannabis you smoke. Normally, they are broken down by an enzyme called fatty acid amide hydrolase, or FAAH. But Cameron has a mutation on her FAAH gene that makes the enzyme less effective—so her endocannabinoids build up. She has extraordinarily high levels of one in particular: anandamide, whose name is derived from the Sanskrit word for “bliss.”
About a third of the population has a mutation in the FAAH gene, which provides increased levels of anandamide. “That phenotype—low levels of anxiety, forgetfulness, a happy-go-lucky demeanor—isn’t representative of how everyone responds to cannabis, but you see a lot of the prototypical changes in them that occur when people consume cannabis,” said Matthew Hill, a biologist at the University of Calgary’s Hotchkiss Brain Institute, who was a co-author of the Cameron paper. The FAAH gene, like every gene, comes in a pair. People who have the mutation in one allele of the gene seem a little high; people who have it in both even more so. Jo Cameron is fully baked.
“When I met Jo for the first time, I was just struck by her,” Cox, an affable forty-year-old with a scruffy beard, told me, one afternoon in his lab at U.C.L. “She was very chatty. Did you notice that?” (It’s hard to miss.) “I said to her, ‘Are you worried about what’s going to happen today?’ Because she was meeting our clinicians to have a skin biopsy and do quantitative sensory testing—pain-threshold tests. She said, ‘No. In fact, I’m never worried about anything.’ ” Cox told me that it was difficult to get through everything in the time they’d allotted, because Cameron was so friendly and loquacious with the scientists, even as they burned her, stuck her with pins, and pinched her with tweezers until she bled. This imperviousness to pain is what makes her distinct from everyone else with a FAAH mutation. They, like even the most committed stoners, can still get hurt.
“You’re here and you don’t have to be. That tells me a lot about you.” Cartoon by Michael Maslin Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Cameron had the same FAAH mutation that many other people have—but there had to be something else at play. The scientists started their inquiry by isolating DNA from her blood, and then analyzing the protein-coding subset of her genome—the part that’s traditionally considered to be significant. “We didn’t really find anything,” Cox said. “So we decided, O.K., why don’t we look across the whole genome for bits that are deleted or duplicated? And, at the time, this new chip was just available, which enabled us to scan the whole genome and look for deletions”—snippets missing from her genetic code. “It was a lucky strike: we found that there was this deletion. But it was distinct from FAAH. It was away from FAAH, just downstream.”


newyorker--2020-01-06--Bruce McCall’s “A Brush With Greatness”

Bruce McCall’s “A Brush With Greatness”

Bruce McCall , now eighty-four , has been contributing comic prose and covers to The New Yorker for forty years .
Many of those covers have a retro-futuristic style , but his latest takes place in the present , with three museum painters pausing to take in the view .
McCall recently talked to us about his own favorite museum , along with some of the ways his writing differs from his illustration .
Do you have a favorite museum ?
The Victoria and Albert Museum , in London , was hit repeatedly by Luftwaffe bombers but survived with only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ profoundly moved whenever I ’ m strolling around the museum and encounter a corps of German visitors , screaming insults at Churchill and the R.A.F .
and kicking British tanks .
Much of your work depicts the future , while this cover is , quite literally , looking at the past .
Do you find inspiration in classical art ?
Good question !
Classical art is indeed an inspiration , but then , no more than Kewpie dolls , or prehistoric ironing boards .
You contribute writing and painting to the magazine .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ you search for ideas ?
They don ’ t .
I don ’ t search for ideas as if I ’ m searching for apples .
Illustration has its own style ; so does writing .
The sensibility may be “ the same , ” but the process , and , ultimately , the content , are not .
I ’ ve never produced a painting based on an idea for a piece of writing ( or the other way around ) .
Night-crew painting sounds like a tough gig .
What was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I worked at a rundown car wash when I was eighteen .
All they gave me was a thin red rag , sopping wet , cold as ice , and useless in rubbing wet steel .
It took till the next day until your hands weren ’ t numb anymore .
I quit after one day .
It was the worst workday of my life .
See below for futuristic covers by McCall :

Bruce McCall, now eighty-four, has been contributing comic prose and covers to The New Yorker for forty years. Many of those covers have a retro-futuristic style, but his latest takes place in the present, with three museum painters pausing to take in the view. McCall recently talked to us about his own favorite museum, along with some of the ways his writing differs from his illustration.
Do you have a favorite museum?
The Victoria and Albert Museum, in London, was hit repeatedly by Luftwaffe bombers but survived with only minor damage. I’m always profoundly moved whenever I’m strolling around the museum and encounter a corps of German visitors, screaming insults at Churchill and the R.A.F. and kicking British tanks.
Much of your work depicts the future, while this cover is, quite literally, looking at the past. Do you find inspiration in classical art?
Good question! Classical art is indeed an inspiration, but then, no more than Kewpie dolls, or prehistoric ironing boards.
You contribute writing and painting to the magazine. How do they complement each other when you search for ideas?
They don’t. I don’t search for ideas as if I’m searching for apples. Illustration has its own style; so does writing. The sensibility may be “the same,” but the process, and, ultimately, the content, are not. I’ve never produced a painting based on an idea for a piece of writing (or the other way around).
“Ironing Board Building, 1897,” from McCall’s book “Zany Afternoons.”
Night-crew painting sounds like a tough gig. What was the hardest job you ever had?
I worked at a rundown car wash when I was eighteen. All they gave me was a thin red rag, sopping wet, cold as ice, and useless in rubbing wet steel. It took till the next day until your hands weren’t numb anymore. I quit after one day. It was the worst workday of my life.
See below for futuristic covers by McCall:


newyorker--2020-01-06--“Found Wanting,” by Douglas Stuart

“Found Wanting,” by Douglas Stuart

I was ashamed of my glasses .
They were the cheapest of government-subsidized frames , the type that poor pensioners wore , or middle-class students , when they wanted to appear ironic .
The lenses were so thick that my green eyes looked jaundiced and only half the size they actually were .
I never wore them when I should have .
So I can ’ t quite picture the Solicitor ’ s face , but his car was black and German .
It glided through the Glasgow smirr like a starling .
I waited for him outside Central Station @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to .
It was another dreich day , and my stiff denims sucked up the damp from the pavement .
The car was so new that the rain streamed off the coat of polisher ’ s wax .
As I sat in the passenger seat , I had a peripheral sense that the man had an ordinary face , thin and forgettable .
It was edged by a fresh haircut , short on the sides , feathered on the top .
Without my glasses , everything was aura , and his aura was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Solicitor had begun writing to me a few weeks earlier .
He was among the first to respond to my lonely heart .
He was more forthright than the others .
His letters gave the impression of a man who cut across the grass , could not be bothered with the path .
In his first letter he said we had to meet .
He said he liked my description , was excited to see me .
I reread my personal ad .
Less than thirty words , the vaguest of outlines : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likes music , good books .
Yet he seemed so sure that I was the one he had been looking for .
Now here I was in his German car in the Glasgow rain .
He told me he was thirty-eight and asked if I was hungry .
Then he asked if I had told anyone where I was going .
I shook my head , rain on the tip of my nose .
I had told no one .
I had no one to tell .
I had been living in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then .
My taciturn brother called it “ that Paki woman ’ s home for lonely auld bastards.
” But I loved it .
It was the first time I had felt free to be myself .
Our mother had not been dead long .
She was never cold in the grave , because we could not afford to bury her .
Instead she was cremated at the expense of the Benefits Office , out at Daldowie Crematorium .
The sober members of her A.A. chapter stood respectfully to the side .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inebriated at ten in the morning , or still drunk from the night before—it was hard to say .
The old Catholics told me , over and over , that she was safe in the arms of God now .
But why was it that she had to go to Him ?
Where were His arms when she lay mortal and suffering on the living-room carpet ?
One of my mother ’ s drinking cronies , a needling terror of a woman , stumbled over to us .
She joked that we had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that she was such an auld soak the flame might never go out .
It ’ s hard to know the correct thing to say at a funeral .
I could feel my brother ’ s hand on the back of my scrawny neck .
He kneaded my vertebrae as if they were rosary beads .
He pinched them in his muffled rage , his long fingers threatening to paralyze me , make me a cripple in my borrowed black suit .
After her cremation , the ghouls lingered .
The news spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with an open bar—in fact , we would not have alcohol at all .
There was a disgraceful wailing amongst the worst afflicted .
We were told that it was tradition , as if it would be the shame of all Glasgow to burn our mother and not take a good drink to celebrate .
Even as a young woman my mother had always been a gallus thing : a chancer , gregarious , desirous of any shiny bauble .
She was often too proud and generous to a fault .
She trusted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ left her with the constant shame of having been used .
Toward the end she had a withered quality , somehow stuck in another time .
But she had been a handsome woman , with her pronounced Donegal bone structure , glossy black hair always shellacked into a crown of neat ebony rosettes .
She liked a fully painted face , even on the days she sat at home .
Men loved her .
Women grew to be exhausted by her .
No one who knew her could tell me when her taste @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a good time—became the actual tearing of her .
It is Glaswegian to like a good drink , to get blootered , pished , steamboats , absolutely fucking rat-arsed .
When Thatcher took all the men ’ s jobs away—steel , coal , ships—there seemed little else to do between dole checks .
Heavy drinking was hard to avoid—I watched her try—so when someone tipped over into alcoholism it was difficult to pinpoint the beginning of the end .
But everyone agreed : her drinking worsened after my father left her .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ stories they tell about him are less tender .
I had been lucky to find a room in Missus B.
’ s bedsit .
The Pakistani woman had been the only landlady willing to rent to a shook-looking boy who was still in high school .
My older brother was a tradesman , and , being practical , he thought I should give up on education , as he had , as my mother had .
He thought I would benefit from a living wage , an apprenticeship , a council flat , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But I knew I needed an education—I didn ’ t know why .
Still , I felt that if I didn ’ t move toward something then I might disintegrate .
My brother was my keeper .
But after a time he could no longer afford to house me , clothe me , feed me , just for me to see where the adventure of education went .
My quiet brother had always been my protector and harbored me when my mother was at her worst .
In his unassuming way , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ absent father when he was still a young man , far too hurt himself to care for a vulnerable boy .
Later , when I told him I was gay , he was crushed .
Living on a Glaswegian housing scheme and being gay was a death sentence .
The year before my mother died , the P.Y.T.
, the Pollok Young Team , had tried to kill me .
I was stopped in the middle of a busy street one afternoon .
Eight boys bounced up and down on my skull .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ excitedly , as if it were a fairground ride .
The old woman who intervened had thought they were torturing a stray dog .
My brother felt that he had not done enough to make me normal .
That he had not done enough to save me from myself .
I went to high school in the daytime , lost myself in Hardy , du Maurier , Donne .
In the evenings and on weekends , I worked the cavernous aisles of a home-improvement superstore , cleaning up spilled paint , carrying patio @ @ @ @ @ @ @ middle-class families .
Every Friday , I delivered a rent envelope filled with crumpled notes and loose coins .
On my knees before Missus B.
’ s letter box , I breathed in the rich smell of chicken bubbling in garam masala , listened to women gossip in a pretty language I didn ’ t understand .
Then I returned to the bedsit and locked myself in my room .
When the pubs reached barring time , and the old men who rented the rooms on either side of mine stumbled home drunk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I listened to them miss the toilet as they pissed , collide with the hallway door that always stuck on the threadbare carpet .
I felt euphoric relief .
Relief that these alkies were not mine to save .
There were personal ads in the back pages of a youth magazine , a glossy that I devoured because the nights were too quiet and I could not afford the company of a television .
Underneath the heterosexuals were the tentative notices for young gay men and women .
There was nothing seedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explicit offers I would trawl later in the free gay papers .
This was the early nineties , long before the Internet , with its miles and miles of headless torsos , all hairless and strangely similar—there was nothing sexual here .
It was a beacon for invisible youth .
I was lonely .
I had been lonely for a long time .
These boys were lonely , too .
This was why we were gathering here—beneath the straight people .
GLASGOW LAD M—17 , Discreet , Not Out Black Hair , Green @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Smiths , Michelle Pfeiffer , Thomas Hardy , Ab Fab Shy Looking for same P.O .
Box 33541 I sat cross-legged on the end of my single bed and summarized my pale , dull self in thirty words or less .
The postal order would mean I had no bus fare , that I would have to walk to and from school for a week , but I didn ’ t care .
I wrote the advert and lay back , feeling , for the first time in a long while , giddy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ replied to me came from all over the country .
Some of their letters tried too hard to be funny , and were caustic-sounding , masking awful hurt .
Some presented a thin veneer of cockiness , as though this was just a laugh to them , yet here they were , sitting cross-legged in bedrooms , reaching out to strangers—same as me .
Other letters were vulnerable , heartbreakingly tender .
There was one from a boy who was younger than I was , a crofter ’ s son who lived in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , not another soul for years and miles .
He wrote as though he assumed he was not going to receive a reply ; he asked me no questions , he didn ’ t hurry me to respond like all the others did .
It read like a message in a bottle .
I could picture him climbing the side of a munro—the type of majestic mountain they painted on tins of tourist shortbread—and calling out across the empty glen , yet to hear the echo .
All the letters were handwritten , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regional slang .
Their scrawl rushed across the page , as if the words were burning out of them .
Some letters were ten , twelve , twenty pages long , ink changing color as pens bled to excited deaths .
The boys sent photographs of themselves , innocent time-stamped supa-snaps : holiday pictures with grandparents folded to the back , or photographs of them grinning in bedrooms whose walls were plastered with posters of Kylie Minogue , Madonna , “ Cats , ” the musical .
I laid all the letters out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see the night sky from the middle of the leaden , sullen city .
My mother had taken me to Saltcoats once , to the shingled coast .
A man who was using her had rented a dented caravan so they could be farther from his wife .
He would come on the weekend , but we would have the week to ourselves .
On our first night alone , we sat outside the caravan as she smoked , and watched the stars peek through the heavy clouds .
The letters felt like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reach these boys , never touch them , but they shone , bright in the northern sky .
It was enough to know they were there .
I had shaved my face to meet the Solicitor—shaving was not something I had to do often .
The gas meter in the shared bathroom was greedy , it gobbled all my coins and gave out only a basinful of tepid water .
I slathered my face in white foam and took care not to cut myself .
I was a slow developer , and at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ My dark hair hung to my chin .
I parted it in oily curtains , and wore it tucked behind my ears because it irritated the roary acne of my cheekbones .
I felt as if I lived in black polyester trousers , only ever switching my school uniform for my work uniform .
The rest of my clothes my mother had bought , dressing me like the man she would have wanted to marry .
The Solicitor drove me to the nicest restaurant I had ever been in .
It sat in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its fieldstone walls were whitewashed and as cold as a tomb .
The starched tablecloths looked intimidatingly expensive and made me worry about the cost , but he seemed to sense this , and said almost immediately that I should eat what I wanted , that tonight our date would be on him .
It was the first real date I had been on ; the one time before , at fourteen , I had tried to take a Protestant girl to the cinema , to be part of a brood of boys @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We had barely made it past the previews when she upped and sat in the row ahead of me , next to her friend , who was having her face chewed by a boy whose mother had melted iron marks into the sleeve of his nylon shell suit .
Throughout the film she sucked on her ponytail and peered back at me in a curious way , as if she had a sense of something being wrong but could not say quite what .
It was clear the waiter thought I was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was not much older than me .
He had the refined accent of the university students who came to Glasgow and thought it a magical place , full of Gothic spires and the romance of rheumy diseases .
But it was a city he could leave whenever he liked—and eventually he would , they all did .
I didn ’ t wear my glasses to dinner , weak eyes were for old women , not young men , and I worried about squinting unattractively at the menu .
I remember trying to pretend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Solicitor stared at me , my empty eyes gliding back and forth in pantomime , and then , when the time came , I tried to appear nonchalant and ordered the exact same thing as my father , my date .
It was chicken .
I don ’ t remember everything we talked about as we ate .
I do remember the Solicitor did most of the talking , asking about high school , about my plans after school , and I was suddenly excited to realize that I didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it held something , finally , maybe .
He kept saying , “ Wow , you have your whole life ahead of you , ” in a voice that sounded a little sad , but I couldn ’ t see if he was actually sad or not .
He asked me if I wanted wine—he wouldn ’ t drink because he was driving—and although I said no ( I was fearful of alcohol ) , he took it as shyness .
He ordered a glass of something deep and red that absorbed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across the table toward me .
I drank it even though I disliked the dank and foustie taste .
I didn ’ t want to appear unsophisticated .
He ordered another glass , and as it coated the roof of my mouth and stained my buck teeth I found myself relaxing .
He said I had a funny smile , not bad , just gap-toothed and sweet .
My brother said I was always too quick to smile—I still am—hobbled by my need to have everyone around me feel at ease , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ even when I am not .
I raised my hand to cover it .
As we shared dessert , the Solicitor leaned in , asked if he could do something .
I nodded slowly , unsure of what to expect .
He came toward me in the candlelight , and one of the most enduring pictures I have of his face is of his concentration as he reached behind my left ear and caressed my earlobe , as though he were tucking my hair behind it .
I was rigid with inexperience .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and on his fingertips perched something white , like a small dove , as if he were a magician .
My eyes were wide with wonder .
But he wiped his hand on his napkin , snuffed the little dove and pressed it flat .
I blinked as he laughed .
I had sat through dinner with a glob of shaving cream on my neck , dangling just below my earlobe .
I wanted so badly to run .
To have the tapered candle topple and engulf me in its flame .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ paid the bill and stood up abruptly .
Once we were outside , my upturned hand cupped some falling rain and I smeared it on my neck—a hoor ’ s bath , my mother would have called it .
As we walked back to his car , the man must have felt my reluctance .
I started to haver , my tongue loosened with wine , and I thanked him for dinner and made excuses about school in the morning .
He walked ahead of me , whistling as though he had not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I spoke in the firmest voice I could manage .
I said I ’ d walk home .
But the German car flashed twice as he disabled the alarm , and as he turned to me he said , “ Ach , but it ’ s early yet .
Come .
Meet my friends.
” He had not mentioned friends before and I had imagined him friendless , lonely like the men and boys in all the other letters I ’ d received .
I didn ’ t want to meet these friends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were .
I wanted to walk home , back to Missus B.
’ s bedsit , and lock myself inside .
But it felt wrong to let him pay for my food and not go .
Boys like me were raised with a profound shame at feeling beholden ; we were taught that it was better to do without .
The man opened the passenger door for me .
I wiped the last of the shaving foam from my flushed neck .
I smiled a smile I did not feel as my damp @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I could count on one hand the number of times I had been out of Glasgow .
My entire universe was the housing scheme that I ’ d grown up on .
If a place could not be reached on an orange corporation bus , then I had never been .
He drove quickly , without telling me where we were going .
I wanted to appear worldly , in control of myself , so I laid my throbbing head against the glass and squinted at the motorway signs for Edinburgh .
Edinburgh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and I had never been .
I was scared , but underneath my fear I was buzzing .
The traffic moved quickly at this time of night .
The rain-dappled windscreen was a constellation of orange and red .
The car settled into fifth gear , and the Solicitor put his hand on my leg .
I liked it .
I liked the possessiveness of it , how it weighted me down .
I hadn ’ t realized how tired I was until his hand grasped me .
I felt as if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ watched the slower cars fall away .
We drove for an hour .
I was disappointed that the housing estate we ended up at looked similar to the ones in Glasgow ; boxy , brutalist buildings , thin windows that were always fogged with damp—if not outside , then inside .
But it was unmistakable , I was far from home .
There was sea salt in the air , and sleepless seagulls were birling in the darkness overhead .
The Solicitor hurried between the buildings .
It all looked the same to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an anonymous block of flats .
We climbed to the top floor and he opened a plain door without knocking .
There were eight teen-age boys in the small living room , and two girls .
They were crammed onto mismatched furniture , their long limbs so intertwined I couldn ’ t tell which limb belonged to which body .
Two of the boys were bare-chested and sat with their arms locked around each other .
Several bodies were strewn across the carpet , their heads resting on balled-up jumpers , necks bent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were drinking filmy tea , smoking hand-rolled cigarettes .
The room was littered with greasy dinner plates and empty bottles of fortified wine ; a roasting tray lay in the middle of the floor , and on it was the picked-over carcass of a small chicken .
Every set of eyes was turned to the television , a late-night broadcast where the English presenters were drunk and swore and everything descended into anarchy .
None of the young men were talking .
They barely looked up as we entered the room .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ special .
A short blond boy , no more than eighteen , stood up and kissed the man .
He stood on his tiptoes , and kissed him quickly on the mouth , already looking away , already bored .
His hair was shorn in a Caesar cut , his fringe gelled against his forehead in the most perfect horizontal line .
He studied me closely , then peered at the man , and chided him , “ Ye ’ ll get the jail for that !
” The Solicitor held his hands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guilt , to prove there was no trace of me on his palms .
He gave the blond boy a plastic bag .
It contained three bottles of Irish Baileys , which elicited a whoop of sincere delight .
The Solicitor followed him into the kitchen .
He left me standing by the door .
A skinny boy pushed himself into the far corner of the settee and beckoned me to sit down .
His shoulder blades protruded as though they were the stubs of once powerful wings that had been removed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ embarrassed by my damp clothes as their warmth swallowed me .
I tried to talk to them , introduce myself politely , but they ignored me .
There was a sameness between us , they didn ’ t find me interesting enough to talk to , wanted nothing from me .
A girl curled her tiny , dirty feet in my lap , and slowly their bodies absorbed me completely .
We sat , slack-jawed , and watched Nick Cave perform ; he looked uncomfortable to be on such an awful television show @ @ @ @ @ @ @ us mugs of instant coffee , made lukewarm and sickly with too much perfumed liqueur .
The Solicitor was grinning , and I knew in that moment they had been kissing in the kitchen—perhaps more—and I was surprised to find myself feeling spurned .
The man patted my knee , asked if I was all right , and I nodded , smiled , lied .
He sat in an armchair and a young man rose from the floor .
He was dressed in football shorts and a tracksuit top that bunched like a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ white sport socks were grimy with dirt .
He sprawled across the Solicitor ’ s lap and slurped his coffee ; his inner thigh was as creamy as condensed milk .
Several times the Solicitor bounced him , shoogled him as though they were on a country bus , father and son , but the young man only hissed , elbowed him to quit it , his heavy eyes never leaving the television .
I watched the boys .
All they seemed to want to do was watch the screen , drink their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be without the burden of their bodies .
I had a fear that I would be left there , discarded amongst these slack limbs , added to this strange collection .
When we were back in the Solicitor ’ s car , I asked him to take me home .
It was after midnight , and we had lingered so long that I ’ d become twitchy , my left leg thrumming so badly that the wingless boy put his hand on it and pressed my heel to the floor till I was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heated seats .
The sensation made me sleepy .
As he drove , he hooked his hand on my inner thigh , pulled me closer to him .
It was the first time a man had touched me sexually .
His pinkie finger stroked against my balls , and he asked if they ’ d dropped yet .
I rolled my eyes , pretended his question was juvenile , but really I didn ’ t know what he meant , where did balls drop to , why did he care ?
As he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would take me home in the morning , east coast to west coast , early enough for school .
I turned my face to the window .
He said I should stay with him tonight .
He said he had a big house .
His house faced out onto blackness .
On the distant horizon was a cluster of faint street lights , a small town hunkered on the far side of the firth .
The house was on a private road , set back from the water ’ s edge .
It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rooms were always dark , big enough that a family could choose to live only in the rear , choose to face only the sunset .
I had seen my mother sigh at houses like this from the top deck of an orange bus .
It was the first house I had ever been in that did not have wardrobes , no three-piece set of veneered chipboard , that leaned precariously as the glue loosened in the dowels .
This man kept his clothing behind a wall of sliding mirrors .
There was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and an armchair and me .
He kissed me for a time , slowed me down , sped me up , told me to cover my teeth with my lips .
I had a sense of being taught something important and it made me tense .
My mind became needle-sharp , but my body felt muffled , my limbs someone else ’ s , dislocated from me .
I was smiling as he guided me , criticized me .
I became eager to please .
And he said that was good .
Said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but Dad , like I needed driving to football practice .
After he undressed me , he left me lying on his bed while he went to the bathroom to get ready .
He was gone a long time .
Long enough that the blood drained from my cock , and I started to feel the chill of the house .
At the bay window I cupped my hands around my eyes and stared out at the black sea , but my fingers left a greasy mark that worsened when I tried to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mirrored doors and quietly slid one back in its tracks .
It was the kind of detail that would have killed my mother , and I stood there in my faded boxer shorts , wanting to tell her how each shelf was finished with fine beaded woodwork , each edge delicately carved with a Greek key .
When he returned I was sitting on the bed , my knees curled to my chest .
He apologized for taking longer than he thought , rubbed his distended belly , and laughed about how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ He kissed me again , but now he tugged at me insistently , impatiently .
He had a small dick and didn ’ t seem terribly interested in it .
He pushed my hand away when I reached for him .
He left his own flesh limp .
I was not prepared for the lonely expanse of his back ; how he twisted away from me then , left me stranded and staring at that field of white , covered with tufts of hair .
It looked like my old school shirt when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mother wrapped her hand in Sellotape and pulled the fur from the white cotton .
I watched the Solicitor ’ s taut skin expand over his rib cage and the painful-looking knuckles of his spine .
His face was cradled in his hands , and he braced himself on his elbows—it was the same way my mother cried on the carpet in the mornings after a bad blackout , penitent , pitiable .
But then the man opened his narrow hips to me , he tilted his meatless buttocks for my pleasure .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ his forgettable face .
Everything I had gleaned about gay sex was from snippets of the late-night programs that were broadcast after the government watershed : Genet ’ s prisoners , Derek Jarman ’ s “ Caravaggio , ” topless boys dancing in chat-line adverts .
I loved the men ’ s-underwear pages in my mother ’ s Littlewoods catalogue , but they taught me nothing about sex .
I had thought that two men moved in the same way a man and a woman might—like they did on “ Dynasty.
” I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ swooning in another ’ s arms , kissing as you rocked , fitting together easily .
I watched his rib cage expand with sighed impatience .
He reached back and inserted a finger inside himself—pointing the way .
I held my left elbow with my right hand , folded my arms to my chest .
I didn ’ t know what to do .
I wanted to go home .
He sighed again , houghed into his hand , and reached back toward me .
His cupped palm was a lochan of spit @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guided me into him .
I was inside him for a time , felt the mad pleasure of his tightness before I panicked and backed away .
I slid out quickly , my face must have been ashen .
Shouldn ’ t we be wearing condoms ?
I asked .
I had seen MTV .
It was in all the newspapers , even in the North .
The man addressed me over the cliff of his shoulder—talked down to me in the same condescending way Mister Hughes explained polynomials and hypotenuses .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was the one inside him .
Then he bucked , presented himself again , and said it didn ’ t matter anyway .
No one could be that unlucky their first time .
I didn ’ t cum , I didn ’ t dare , but he did .
Eventually , the charm of my inexperience lost its appeal to him .
He grew tired of my disjointed pounding ; the harder he demanded I thrust , the further I was pushed from him , as my knees kept sliding away on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ finished himself onto his own stomach .
He lay back , hairless legs splayed , his ankles on my shoulders , while I knelt over him as if I were praying .
In the morning , as the sun came over the firth , we had sex again , slower this time .
His body buckled under mine , and he held me at the wrists as though he knew I wanted to pull away .
I was muted by how little I felt for him , how much I disliked him , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he asked .
“ Why buy one in December when you can have them all for free in January ?
” Afterward I was too intimidated by his matching , fluffy towels to use them .
I showered and waited for my body to drip dry .
The glare of his white kitchen hurt my eyes .
The back wall opened onto his very own garden and as we stood at the counter I watched the bobbing birds , which he referred to as “ my birds , ” and I wondered then @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tits and chaffinches for their own pleasure .
I had my first-ever cup of freshly brewed coffee and pre-sliced fruit for breakfast .
I used the teaspoon he provided , and he immediately washed it and set it back next to my cup .
I disliked the bitter coffee , so I heaped in more sugar , and again he rose , washed the spoon , dried it , and set it back on my saucer .
I started to use the spoon to amuse myself , take sugar I didn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him wash it and return it to my saucer .
I wanted to tell my brother .
I could never tell my brother .
The coffee grew too sweet , I let it get cold .
He gently stroked the back of my hand as he drove me west .
I couldn ’ t bear it .
The bright morning sunshine was soon blanketed by the fleecy Glasgow sky .
I asked him about his “ friends ” —who were the young men we had met , how did he know them ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were “ the Chickens.
” He ’ d met them working the Leith waterfront , selling themselves .
Then he huffed in disbelief , said it was wild that they did that , considering that some of them weren ’ t even bent .
As the Solicitor stroked my hand , he explained that Wednesday nights were held sacred .
“ Family night , ” the Chickens called it , a time to gather , eat a roast dinner , rest their bodies .
I remember being stuck in traffic , certain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Solicitor played with the zipper on my blue denims .
I thought , Shouldn ’ t he be at work—wouldn ’ t he be in trouble for not punching his time card ?
But as we pulled up before Missus B.
’ s bedsit it was already midmorning and he was unhurried , unconcerned .
As he scowled up at the blackened sandstone , I finally had my chance to squint at the side of his face .
I didn ’ t know any other people lucky enough to own themselves entirely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ smelling of another man ’ s soap .
At lunchtime , I barricaded myself in the art department .
I hid among the moldering taxidermy and picked orange cheese from a floury white roll .
A charm of third-year girls were being held inside for detention—their hell was my harbor .
They were making beaded bracelets for boys they fancied , an idea they had bastardized from the American teen-agers on our televisions .
They were weaving red , white , and royal blue ; proudly sectarian , Protestant colors .
Despite the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jewelry , and no boy in Glasgow could wear it without fear of swift violence .
But the girls seemed happy and were unusually focussed .
All morning I had been listless , more than simply tired from the night before .
I tossed my half-eaten lunch in the bin .
There was a dull ache in my sharp hip bones , a pain from where I had battered myself against the man for his pleasure .
I would use this pain to excuse myself early , I thought , go back to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the evening shift .
I was sorry I had come to school—it seemed suddenly childish to cling to books .
I was a man now .
I had a pain in my hips that said so .
Someone had stabbed out the eyes of the taxidermized grouse .
The jewellers on the other side of the classroom had their heads bowed , their hushed talk was full of confession , punctuated with filthy shrieks .
They had abandoned their beads and were decorating one another ’ s arms with blue Biro ink , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their flesh .
Soon their forearms resembled those of merchant seamen .
I used my knuckle to push my glasses up my long nose , and watched them ink themselves for love .
I was jealous .
As I had climbed out of the German car , the Solicitor asked me what I would say if people asked where I had been last night and I had shrugged .
I laid my head on the desk and thought about all the unanswered lonely hearts .
The Solicitor had shoved in line , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ watched the girls blowing on their forearms , drying the ink before they rolled their shirtsleeves back in place .
I could see that they had made a mess of it .
That they had misspelled several names .
But what did it matter ?
They would lick at the names they didn ’ t want to wear .
It would all wash away .
As I watched the girls , I thought about the crofter ’ s son , the young Highlander who wrote as though he were unworthy of an answer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter .
His sadness seemed to multiply my own .
I had never been able to face it .
It was heartless of me .
I scalded with fresh shame and sat for a long time coating my left palm in layers of craft glue .
Eventually , I sat up straight at the vandalized desk .
I tore a page from my homework book and pushed the pink nib down on my multi-selector pen .
“ Hallo , Gregor , ” I wrote , without knowing what might come next .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
I ’ ll tell youse why later .
But first , tell us more about your mountain .
Can you climb over it ?
What ’ s the nicest thing you can see from the top ?
” ♦

I went to high school in the daytime, lost myself in Hardy, du Maurier, Donne. In the evenings and on weekends, I worked the cavernous aisles of a home-improvement superstore, cleaning up spilled paint, carrying patio furniture out to the long cars of middle-class families. Every Friday, I delivered a rent envelope filled with crumpled notes and loose coins. On my knees before Missus B.’s letter box, I breathed in the rich smell of chicken bubbling in garam masala, listened to women gossip in a pretty language I didn’t understand. Then I returned to the bedsit and locked myself in my room.
When the pubs reached barring time, and the old men who rented the rooms on either side of mine stumbled home drunk, I flinched awake in my bed. I listened to them miss the toilet as they pissed, collide with the hallway door that always stuck on the threadbare carpet. I felt euphoric relief. Relief that these alkies were not mine to save.
There were personal ads in the back pages of a youth magazine, a glossy that I devoured because the nights were too quiet and I could not afford the company of a television. Underneath the heterosexuals were the tentative notices for young gay men and women. There was nothing seedy about these lonely hearts—these were not the explicit offers I would trawl later in the free gay papers. This was the early nineties, long before the Internet, with its miles and miles of headless torsos, all hairless and strangely similar—there was nothing sexual here. It was a beacon for invisible youth. I was lonely. I had been lonely for a long time. These boys were lonely, too. This was why we were gathering here—beneath the straight people.
GLASGOW LAD
M—17, Discreet, Not Out
Black Hair, Green Eyes, Slim Body
Likes: The Smiths, Michelle Pfeiffer, Thomas Hardy, Ab Fab
Shy
Looking for same
P.O. Box 33541
I sat cross-legged on the end of my single bed and summarized my pale, dull self in thirty words or less. The postal order would mean I had no bus fare, that I would have to walk to and from school for a week, but I didn’t care. I wrote the advert and lay back, feeling, for the first time in a long while, giddy with hope.
The young men who replied to me came from all over the country. Some of their letters tried too hard to be funny, and were caustic-sounding, masking awful hurt. Some presented a thin veneer of cockiness, as though this was just a laugh to them, yet here they were, sitting cross-legged in bedrooms, reaching out to strangers—same as me. Other letters were vulnerable, heartbreakingly tender. There was one from a boy who was younger than I was, a crofter’s son who lived in the remotest corner of the Scottish Highlands, not another soul for years and miles. He wrote as though he assumed he was not going to receive a reply; he asked me no questions, he didn’t hurry me to respond like all the others did. It read like a message in a bottle. I could picture him climbing the side of a munro—the type of majestic mountain they painted on tins of tourist shortbread—and calling out across the empty glen, yet to hear the echo.
All the letters were handwritten, torn from notebooks, charming in their regional slang. Their scrawl rushed across the page, as if the words were burning out of them. Some letters were ten, twelve, twenty pages long, ink changing color as pens bled to excited deaths. The boys sent photographs of themselves, innocent time-stamped supa-snaps: holiday pictures with grandparents folded to the back, or photographs of them grinning in bedrooms whose walls were plastered with posters of Kylie Minogue, Madonna, “Cats,” the musical.
I laid all the letters out before me. It was hard to see the night sky from the middle of the leaden, sullen city. My mother had taken me to Saltcoats once, to the shingled coast. A man who was using her had rented a dented caravan so they could be farther from his wife. He would come on the weekend, but we would have the week to ourselves. On our first night alone, we sat outside the caravan as she smoked, and watched the stars peek through the heavy clouds. The letters felt like this to me. I would never reach these boys, never touch them, but they shone, bright in the northern sky. It was enough to know they were there.
I had shaved my face to meet the Solicitor—shaving was not something I had to do often. The gas meter in the shared bathroom was greedy, it gobbled all my coins and gave out only a basinful of tepid water. I slathered my face in white foam and took care not to cut myself. I was a slow developer, and at seventeen I was wan and skinny. My dark hair hung to my chin. I parted it in oily curtains, and wore it tucked behind my ears because it irritated the roary acne of my cheekbones. I felt as if I lived in black polyester trousers, only ever switching my school uniform for my work uniform. The rest of my clothes my mother had bought, dressing me like the man she would have wanted to marry.
The Solicitor drove me to the nicest restaurant I had ever been in. It sat in the shadow of the uplit cathedral and its fieldstone walls were whitewashed and as cold as a tomb. The starched tablecloths looked intimidatingly expensive and made me worry about the cost, but he seemed to sense this, and said almost immediately that I should eat what I wanted, that tonight our date would be on him.
It was the first real date I had been on; the one time before, at fourteen, I had tried to take a Protestant girl to the cinema, to be part of a brood of boys I was desperate to fly with. We had barely made it past the previews when she upped and sat in the row ahead of me, next to her friend, who was having her face chewed by a boy whose mother had melted iron marks into the sleeve of his nylon shell suit. Throughout the film she sucked on her ponytail and peered back at me in a curious way, as if she had a sense of something being wrong but could not say quite what.
It was clear the waiter thought I was the Solicitor’s son. The waiter was not much older than me. He had the refined accent of the university students who came to Glasgow and thought it a magical place, full of Gothic spires and the romance of rheumy diseases. But it was a city he could leave whenever he liked—and eventually he would, they all did. I didn’t wear my glasses to dinner, weak eyes were for old women, not young men, and I worried about squinting unattractively at the menu. I remember trying to pretend to read it as the waiter and the Solicitor stared at me, my empty eyes gliding back and forth in pantomime, and then, when the time came, I tried to appear nonchalant and ordered the exact same thing as my father, my date.
It was chicken. I don’t remember everything we talked about as we ate. I do remember the Solicitor did most of the talking, asking about high school, about my plans after school, and I was suddenly excited to realize that I didn’t know what my future was, only that it held something, finally, maybe. He kept saying, “Wow, you have your whole life ahead of you,” in a voice that sounded a little sad, but I couldn’t see if he was actually sad or not.
He asked me if I wanted wine—he wouldn’t drink because he was driving—and although I said no (I was fearful of alcohol), he took it as shyness. He ordered a glass of something deep and red that absorbed all the candlelight. He pushed it across the table toward me. I drank it even though I disliked the dank and foustie taste. I didn’t want to appear unsophisticated. He ordered another glass, and as it coated the roof of my mouth and stained my buck teeth I found myself relaxing. He said I had a funny smile, not bad, just gap-toothed and sweet. My brother said I was always too quick to smile—I still am—hobbled by my need to have everyone around me feel at ease, and think that I am doing O.K., even when I am not. I raised my hand to cover it.
As we shared dessert, the Solicitor leaned in, asked if he could do something. I nodded slowly, unsure of what to expect. He came toward me in the candlelight, and one of the most enduring pictures I have of his face is of his concentration as he reached behind my left ear and caressed my earlobe, as though he were tucking my hair behind it. I was rigid with inexperience. I saw him pull his hand away, and on his fingertips perched something white, like a small dove, as if he were a magician. My eyes were wide with wonder. But he wiped his hand on his napkin, snuffed the little dove and pressed it flat. I blinked as he laughed. I had sat through dinner with a glob of shaving cream on my neck, dangling just below my earlobe. I wanted so badly to run. To have the tapered candle topple and engulf me in its flame. But the man simply chuckled. He paid the bill and stood up abruptly.
Cartoon by Adam Douglas Thompson Copy link to cartoon Copy link to cartoon Shop Shop
Once we were outside, my upturned hand cupped some falling rain and I smeared it on my neck—a hoor’s bath, my mother would have called it. As we walked back to his car, the man must have felt my reluctance. I started to haver, my tongue loosened with wine, and I thanked him for dinner and made excuses about school in the morning. He walked ahead of me, whistling as though he had not heard. We reached the car and I spoke in the firmest voice I could manage. I said I’d walk home. But the German car flashed twice as he disabled the alarm, and as he turned to me he said, “Ach, but it’s early yet. Come. Meet my friends.”