Francis Bacon in Your Blood Read Online Free Page B

fantasies, which are really interesting – often the most interesting things about them if you ever get them to tell you what they are. Dan is very strange in that way, because he really doesn’t look what’s called queer at all but he’s queer through and through. You never know with people. They say Hemingway was probably queer, but that he didn’t realize it or didn’t want to accept it. It doesn’t really matter what he was. What difference does it make? But what I did hate about him was the way he wanted to
appear
so masculine. It’s the same with Norman Mailer. I’ve always thought that the way Mailer wears hair on his chest is just like a woman wearing pearls. I mean why is he so keen to convince everyone he’s so masculine? Why, I wonder, does he feel he has to go to those lengths? After all, there’s very little difference between the sexes if you really think about it. There it is. People try to emphasize the differences, I don’t know why. Now I myself have always known I’m queer. There was never any question about it, right from the beginning I used to trail after my father’s grooms. I was also attracted to my father, even though we never got on, but that’s another story. Of course most people don’t know what they are. They’re just waiting for something to happen to them . . .’
    Francis’s face goes in and out of focus. As I start to sway, all the drink of the day seems to freeze in my body. Everything freezes, the talking mouths, the heavily made-up pale faces, the bottle on the way to the glass, all is in stasis. Panic rises up inme again and I know this time I must leave. Guinea-a-lash is looking at me fixedly, meaningfully, from the bar. Francis seems to be talking still, but the words flatten back against his face, distorting it. Everything static and distorted. Must get out now. Butt in and blurt out thanks, how wonderful it’s been but have to get back now and perhaps get together again to take interview further.
    â€˜We can take it further whenever you like, Michael,’ says Bacon, suddenly focused and sober and completely present. ‘After all, what is more fascinating than what’s called talking about oneself? It’s a long story, and of course it all depends how you tell it. I should think one could go on talking for ever – at least until the other person couldn’t bear it any longer and simply did you in! Call me any time you like, Knightsbridge 2925, the earlier in the morning the better.’
    I stumble out into the night and eventually find my way from the Isle of Dogs to the more familiar solitude of King’s Cross Station, relieved to be alone with my thoughts but also with Francis’s telephone number etched into my mind, and exhilarated by all the new possibilities opened up by one chance meeting . . .

2
    Under the Spell
    After that first memorable encounter with Bacon, I had at least the wit to get hold of the catalogue to his retrospective, which had taken place exactly a year before at the Tate, primarily because I needed a more developed notion of what his work was like before interviewing him about it. Leafing through that historic little document without any preconception of what I was going to see, I was taken aback and deeply disturbed by the brutal ugliness of the imagery. Although the reproductions were small, the shock waves coming off them were palpable, and I was almost relieved not to have had to confront them head on during their relatively brief showing. They reminded me of a sort of horror show, exposed to the public for a moment, then hurried like a collection of freaks out of view. Where paintings like that ended up I had no idea, because the thought of having to live with them was unbearable – a deliberate, constant reminder of things better left unseen and unsaid.
    There was nothing in my admittedly limited visual vocabulary to