Mortification: Writers’ Stories of Their Public Shame Read Online Free

fumble through the pages of my book, muttering that I don’t know quite what to read. Peter Levi suggests I re-read the last poem from my set. Since I haven’t the faintest idea what it was, he helps me find it, despite having trouble with his glasses which, I notice now, are badly bent and sitting askew on his nose. The poem he finds for me is the longest poem in the book. I assume this to be an act of sabotage, but can’t find it in me to blame him.
    I read it. I sit. James stands. I stand, too, not in error, but because it has suddenly been borne in upon me that I am about to be sick. Pretty soon. Any minute. In fact, about now. I come out from behind the trestle table as James begins to read, and plunge through the audience (all on the floor, all in semi-darkness) raising a small chorus of screams and yelps as I tread on fingers and kick shins. The lavatory is a little beyond the last row. I go in, I kneel, I experience that fractional pause, then I throw up.
    There can, I know, be discreet upchucks of the cough-and-gob variety, or even the girlish whisper-and-slip. This is not either of those, nor is it the twenty-gauge-shuck-and-reload or even the storm-drain-rib-racker. No. This is
volcanic
. This is a fully-orchestrated, bass-pedal-active, hog-hollerin’, bootsoles-to-bogbowl, ten-gallon tsunami.
    I emerge, pale, shaky and still drunk, with (I’ve no doubt) all sorts of evidence of my recent activity on display. The imprint of the lavatory seat lugs on my forehead, for instance. Detritus.
Smearing
. That sort of thing. The lights in the shop are up. The poets are mingling with the audience. Drinks are on offer. I wonder vaguely whether my whimpering might have raised, in some blonde, slim, young, pretty member of the audience feelings of protectiveness and lust in equal measure. Or brunette, slim, young; or more or less any shade of reddish-brown, etc., etc. Steadied by the possibility, I accept a drink.
    Later, we go to Alan’s house for the promised party. I am destined to remember little of this, though I am aware of accepting several drinks and dancing with someone who seems slim, young and pretty and definitely has hair.
    I wake next morning in the attic. I must have started out on that camp bed over there, but now I’m over here and feeling … well … okay, as it happens. Happy and confident, you might say. This lasts for several blissful seconds, before someone enters the room, stealthily, creeps up behind me, clubs me to the floor and stamps repeatedly on my head. It’s my hangover saying ‘Good morning’.
    I have always thought it fair and reasonable that a hangover should be proportionate to the previous night’s intake of booze to its behavioural excesses. It’s a sin thing. You cut a deal with a vengeful God. This hangover, it seems to me, is way out of line. In fact, if it takes one more step towards lethality (being only a step-and-a-half away) it will probably be ordered to retreat and reform. Surely I can’t deserve … Then grimy little scraps of last night’s doings start to come together in my mind; tawdry sense-impressions; mucky images; an acrid smell. And I realise I must have earned the lot. In fact, I’m probably lucky to be standing upright. (Am I standing upright?) The only hope is that what I’ve so far remembered will be all memory serves up. Except I know it won’t. That smell isn’t mice in the wainscot or rot in the beams; it’s the low, cloacal stench of humiliation and guilt.
    I dress (which act poses certain questions) and go downstairs. No one’s up. I make myself a cup of tea. I find the bathroom and throw up, not quite the whisper-and-slip I hope for, but not much more than a whoop-and-splatter. A little later, Alan appears, wearing a wide smile and takes me to breakfast at George’s in the market, where I consume the full English morning-after cure and manage, against some odds, to hang on to it. Alan seems worryingly cheery, to say nothing of chatty and