"Tulips"

"Another Way of Being"

Chapter 30, Tulips

This wizened length of gristle, I reflect, does not lend itself to sculpture. At least, not in its comatose state, as now. It suggests a withered snail, shrunken and withdrawn. An erect penis is something else. But erect penises are rare in sculpture. At least, I cannot right now remember having seen one.

I had to modify this conclusion after my first visit to Greece. After I had seen giant phalloi in temples and on altars. But an oversize phallus, huge and detached, standing apart like a pillar, is not part of a human body. It is something abstract, symbolic. Why, I wonder, are there so few erect penises on sculptures of boys? Or, if there are such sculptures, why haven’t I seen them?

I have been studying Adam. We are lying on the same bed, but at opposite ends, head-to-toe. My eyes are below the level of his waste. A few moments ago I was studying his hand and wrist. I was thinking how much his wrist narrowed as it approached his hand, and how this suggested refinement, delicacy. His hands altogether, despite the physical work he does, are delicate, beautiful. In some ways our hands reflect our sensibility even more than our faces. Perhaps it’s because we don’t use our hands to disguise ourselves in the way that we use our facial expressions. We don’t use our hands to conceal our feelings.

But he has shifted his hand. It is now his penis that is directly in front of my eyes. I reach out gently and touch it with my forefinger. I hook my finger under it and lift it away from the balls. It rolls away languidly and it begins to straighten. It is not a single smooth movement. It throbs gently with the pulse, the heartbeat. It raises its head in tiny jumps, quivering like a heavy blossom on a stalk. It makes me think of fuchsias. Finally it stretches out along the line of his tummy. I see it in profile. I see how it rises from the delicate wisps of hair below, and how it arches away from his body in a long regular curve. A parabola, I suppose. It is quivering gently still, and the tip of the glans is nodding – almost in touch with the tummy, but not quite in touch.

The foreskin has not fully drawn back from the glans. The glans is half-hooded by the foreskin. It suggests a head swathed in a shawl. I ease my finger beneath the shaft of the penis and I pull gently on the slack of the foreskin. It tautens, but it doesn’t roll back. I try once more, and then for a third time, gently pulling the skin away from the glans. Finally the glans slithers out with an eager ‘nosing’ movement that makes me think of a hamster or some other tiny rodent. It is a liquid, sinuous movement. I want to re-play it. But the foreskin has puckered behind the glans like a collar. I can’t ease it forward again – at least, not without waking him.

Instead, I pull the foreskin back along the shaft. I expose the neck of the shaft, just behind the ruff or collar of the glans. The shaft tapers here, exactly as the wrist tapers before it meets the hand. The skin is taut and shiny at this point. It has the appearance of raw silk.

It seems to disturb Adam, this exposure, even though he is asleep. His hand descends again and takes hold of his penis. His fingers roll the foreskin back over the tip and adjust it till the glans is half-peeping out once more. All this in a single, practised, unconscious movement, all this in sleep.

But I have seen what I wanted to see – the joint of the glans with the shaft of the penis. This is the technical problem. If I can get this right all the rest will fall into place as if by nature.

.....

I got to the name ‘The Pink Acorn’ because I needed a name that would work with a business card, and it had to be a business card I could make for myself.

I was smugly pleased with the result. It was simple. It was a two-tone block print on a rectangle of handmade paper. A pale pink and a paler pink with a curving line between them on a background of cream. At one end it suggested the cup of an acorn. But it wasn’t an acorn that was peeping out of the cup. It was very simply drawn, but there was no doubt what it was. Nobody ever had to ask what it was.

I started making penises because my scarab beetles didn’t work out. There was a fashion for Egyptian jewellery at the time. It was the influence of the Tutankhamun exhibition at the British Museum the previous year. Everybody was asking for Egyptian rings and Egyptian pendants so I tried to make silver scarab beetles.

I actually cast them in lead first time, and then in white metal. Afterwards I plated them. It was easy enough. I made the original in wax and then made a cast around the wax and heated it till the wax melted and drained away, leaving a negative mould of the original. It’s called ‘cire perdue’ - the ‘lost wax’ process. The fun part is the centrifuge. You have to force the molten metal into the mould. The best way to do it is a centrifuge. I used a home-made bucket and chain apparatus. The ‘bucket’ was actually a small bowl with clasps to hold the mould and a tapering funnel above it where you pour the metal. You begin by swinging it from side to side – a bit like an incense censer. Then you whirl it up and over and round and round as fast as you can. The centrifugal movement forces the metal down the funnel and into the mould, expelling the air in the process. I got quite good results, except that they didn’t look much like scarab beetles. They looked much more like the heads of penises.

After my fifth unsuccessful attempt at scarab beetles I gave in. I started making penises instead.

.....

I read in my Grandfather’s manuscript:

“Adolf Hitler once remarked that if you are going to tell lies you had better tell big lies, because people are more likely be believe big lies than small ones.

I am sorry to find myself in agreement with Adolf Hitler. I cannot think of any human soul whose opinions and beliefs – whose very nature – is more abhorrent to me. But in this single instance I think Hitler was right. It is the big lies that shape cultures and re-write history. The big lies become part of the fabric of the world.

One big lie is race. Another big lie is religion.

The Hellenic mind had no time for race but it was happy to discuss religion. Hellenists were happy to discuss religion alongside all the other arts.

During his stay in Athens in the winter of 128 Hadrian tried to re-create the Athens that had vanished six hundred years earlier – the Athens of Plato and Socrates, the Athens of The Symposium. There was a weekly round of symposia - dinners and drinking parties to which Hadrian invited artists and philosophers and where he discussed philosophy and art and religion and every other issue of the day. Antinous will have attended the symposia. Indeed, Hadrian probably planned these symposia largely for Antinous’ sake. It was here, listening to the talk of philosophers and teachers and poets, that a boy learnt to think and to engage in the subtlest and profoundest of all the arts: the art of conversation. We can imagine Antinous listening awestruck
to the fine talk. At first he doesn’t dare to contribute. Except when one of the guests fires a question at him to draw him out and he is forced to respond. He replies hesitantly at first. But he picks up the rhythms of conversation quickly. He realizes that this is not a discourse: it is a dance. It is a dance of the mind. And Antinous is a natural dancer.

It was at a symposium in the winter of 128 that Hadrian first debated the petitions of the Christians. A deputation of Christians requested an audience with the Emperor. They claimed they were being persecuted. If the Empire guaranteed religious freedom, why was that freedom not extended to the Christians?

But who were these ‘Christians’?

A modern Christian believes in the Trinity and that Christ was simultaneously god and man. This definition only came into being with the Nicene Creed at the end of the fourth century. The Christians who came to petition Hadrian in 128 had never heard of the Trinity. They called themselves ‘Christians’ but what did it mean to be a ‘Christian’ at this time?

They could have belonged to any one of dozens of sects who worshipped a god by the name of Xristos. Some regarded the Xristos as an entirely spiritual being who had never taken human form. Some worshipped a Xristos who was wholly human. Some Jews worshipped a Jesus Xristos whom they regarded as a messiah, a priest king whom the Romans had executed for insurrection but who had promised to come again and to liberate the Jews from Roman rule.
Then there were the plebeian Mithraists who followed Saul of Tarsus (alias Saint Paul of the New Testament). Saul had re-invented Mithraism. He had decided that the historical Jesus of Nazareth was an incarnation of Mithras. Saul’s Jesus had turned the myths of Hellenic mystery religions into historical fact.

Modern Christians would condemn all of these sects as heretics – but historians describe them collectively as the ‘Early Church’. The Church encourages its followers to believe that it can trace its descent in an unbroken line to the life of a certain Jesus of Nazareth and his Apostles. This is nonsense. The Church knows there was no such thing as the ‘Early Church’. The Church knows that it was invented much later by the Roman state and purely for political reasons.

Hadrian listened with sympathy to the pleas of this particular sect of ‘Christians’ on that occasion. He probably recognised in their strange creed a popular version of a Hellenic mystery religion – a mystery religion for the plebeian masses. He couldn’t see any harm in it, so he issued a decree that forbade persecution of the sect.”

.....

The moulding apparatus that I had was fine for making small things like rings and pendants – and the heads of penises. But it didn’t work with larger items. I could make heads of penises, but I couldn’t make complete penises. So I soldered the heads onto stalks of various kinds. I tried all sorts of things to make the stalks.

I used 7mm diameter aluminium tubing and 10mm tubing. I used bundles of thick wire. I plated some of them and some of them I sprayed with silver paint from a can. The penises were long and thin and elegant like steel tulips. My Mother was surprised to find a dozen of them one day amongst the daffodils and irises in the vase on the kitchen table. She admitted they were elegant. They were, in their way, beautiful. She was just rather surprised to find them amongst her flowers.

They were elegant, but sculpturally they were rather limited. The shaft of the penis was excessively long and it was of uniform profile and thickness. This made the penises look abstract and mournful. They reminded me of asparagus. They looked like something you might encounter in a painting by El Greco. They were symbols of penises rather than penises. And there was no way of indicating a foreskin. I wasn’t aiming at naturalism, but the omission of a foreskin seemed to me to be a serious flaw.

.....

I read in my Grandfather’s manuscript:

“Christian propaganda has persuaded the world that the ‘Jews’ of the early centuries of the present era were a distinct group of people united by race, and by a uniform religion and culture. This is untrue.

There were Jews whose religion followed the Law, but whose outlook was entirely Hellenized. Saul of Tarsus- alias Saint Paul – claimed to have been born a Jew, but he was entirely Hellenic in outlook. Like other Hellenized Jews he was uncircumcised, and he abhorred circumcision.
Peter – alias Saint Peter – was another Jew and another worshipper of a Xristos figure. Peter was circumcised and denied salvation to anyone who wasn’t.

Hadrian’s decree of 131 in which he banned circumcision finally resolved the definition of Jewishness. Henceforth Jewishness was no longer a state of belief or a state of mind. Jewishness was reduced to a state of penis.

It is such absurd issues that determine the course of human history.”

.....

Bill, from Sussex Finecast, is a little surprised by my wax originals. There are seven of them. They are all superficially similar, but there are differences in size and in orientation. There are also subtle differences in what you might call attitude.

I have brought them in order to have vulcanised moulds made. With vulcanised moulds I will be able to cast them in a vertical centrifuge, a centrifuge driven by an electric motor. I shall be able to go into serial production.

Bill remarks that it’s not his usual thing. Sussex Finecast specialises in white metal locomotive kits for model train enthusiasts. He mostly makes OO gauge boilers and fireboxes and tender tops. I point out that pistons and cylinders are not so very different from what I am asking him to make for me. What is a penis but an organic piston? He chuckles at this. The comparison evidently appeals to him. He remarks that there’s no harm in it from what he can see. So he accepts the order. Minimum run of 100 pieces, which means 700 pieces, as there are seven originals. Fifty percent advance up front. Balance on delivery. It’s a big investment for me, but I agree to the terms.

I return for the appointment the following week, to check the pilot casting. I am disappointed. There is too much ‘flash’. There are slacks and dimples in the wrong places. Bill is unhappy too. He blames it on the mix and on shrinkage. He won’t charge me for the pilot run. He is sure he can fix the problem.

I return after three days. This time I am delighted. There is almost no flash. There is almost no finishing to be done – just a final buffing here and there. They are ready for plating, spraying, oxidizing. They are perfect. They are magnificent.

Of course, they would be so much better in bronze...

And regrettably, there is still no hint of a foreskin...

.....

I read in my Grandfather’s manuscript:

“In Athens Hadrian had listened to the petitions of various Xristos worshippers. In Judaea he listened to various groups of Jews. Hadrian seems to have been trying to create a dialogue between two cultures – Hellenism and Judaism – which had been rivals for centuries. In the Roman Empire it was Hellenism that had gained the upper hand. Hellenic culture resembled a gentleman’s club in which all were welcome regardless of race or religious affinity. This sorted well with the needs of the Empire, for the Empire’s main motive was to unite its various minorities in a common loyalty to Rome. Unfortunately, the Jews – the traditional Judaists – could not be persuaded to join the club.

Jews thought of themselves as a separate people. They refused to accept military conscription to defend the Empire, and they refused to accept the Emperor as a god. Rome generally acquiesced to Jewish sensibilities and they exempted them from rules they could not reconcile with their religious conscience. But there was widespread resentment at the special position of Jews within the Empire. Jews were also resented for their success.

Hellenists thought of their culture as democratic and intellectually superior, yet it was normal practice for Hellenists to keep slaves and to limit education to the privileged classes. Jews, in contrast, generally did not own slaves and in Jewish society education was universal. Even Jewish servants and shepherds were literate.

Hadrian engaged in a dialogue in Judea, but he was attacked by the same crude means that had been used to attack him in Antioch. Behind Hadrian’s back Judaists now mockingly referred to Antinous as ‘Ganymede’, the mythical boy-lover of Zeus.

Judaea belonged to a different world from the Hellenic world that Hadrian loved. And Egypt was one more world, a world he had not yet visited. In the Summer of 130 Hadrian and the imperial court moved on to Alexandria, the great metropolis of Egypt.

But in Egypt there was more bad news waiting. For two years the Nile had failed to flood and it was promising to fail again. All the food production of Egypt depended on the flooding of the Nile, and Rome itself depended on the plentiful grain exports of Egypt. If the Nile failed to flood for a third year in succession the Empire would be facing catastrophe.

And in Alexandria there was annoyance of another kind. Alexandria was the richest and most populous city of the Empire and in some ways it was the most Hellenistic – but it was also the most hostile to Rome. Other cities enjoyed a degree of self-rule within the Empire, but Alexandria was too important to be granted independence. In order to keep Alexandria – and also the rest of Egypt – firmly under Roman rule it was reserved as a private possession of the Emperor.

Alexandria seethed with resentment at its lack of self-governance. Its mixed population of Greeks and Egyptians and Jews were intellectually far more sophisticated than the population of Rome. Against the great antiquity of Egyptian culture Rome looked like a modern upstart.

Alexandria gave Hadrian a tumultuous welcome but behind his back the populace responded to him in much the same way as the Jews of Judea. They ridiculed him in vicious satires – and they singled out his relationship with Antinous for particular attention.

It was perhaps to escape this offensive gossip that Hadrian decided to make an excursion to the West – into the land of Libya.

The story of Hadrian’s lion hunt in Libya in the year 129 reads like a myth or the script of a Hollywood movie rather than a piece of Roman history. But we have sober historic accounts of it, and we also have Pancrates’ flowery version of the events in verse.

The region was threatened by a man-eating lion, a savage lion of enormous proportions. All efforts to kill the beast had failed. It was the kind of opportunity Hadrian loved. It was a chance for the Emperor to display his prowess and to perform his role of protector of his people. It was also a chance for a challenging lion-hunt.

Hadrian took his boys with him for the hunt as always, and Antinous as always rode beside him.
The factual account of what followed is clear. Hadrian and Antinous rode ahead of the group and attacked the lion. The lion was wounded and it grew more savage as it grew desperate. Eventually it turned on them. Hadrian deliberately drew back and left Antinous to face the lion alone. According to Pancrates Hadrian wanted to show his confidence in Antinous’ skill, and he wanted to give Antinous the honour of dealing the death blow to the lion.

In the event the lion charged at Antinous. But Antinous botched it. Either his spear missed the mark, or he did not throw his spear at all. He was helpless, and Hadrian was forced to intervene to rescue him.

But there are clearly levels in the story that Pancrates does not address.

Hadrian left Antinous alone to face the lion. It was a symbolic act. It was a recognition of Antinous’ independence, his maturity. In Hadrian’s eyes Antinous was no longer a boy.
And Antinous read Hadrian’s intentions correctly. But he declined to deliver the necessary spear thrust – or perhaps he threw his spear wide of the mark on purpose. He wanted to be rescued by Hadrian, even if it meant risking his life. Antinous forced Hadrian’s hand. Hadrian intervened and rescued Antinous. But afterwards, when Antinous reflected on that moment, the significance of it could not escape him. He had manoeuvred Hadrian into saving him – and this meant that he was still Hadrian’s ‘boy’ for the time being. But it could not be for long. It was time for something to change.

But what change was possible? What could Antinous do? Should he apply to Hadrian for a state pension and retire to Bithynion and open a flower shop? Should he apply for employment as a teacher in the paedagogium at Rome to groom younger boys for the imperial harem? Should he remain in Hadrian’s entourage as an ageing companion and stand by while younger favourites replaced him? An ordinary boy might consider such a bathetic exit. But Antinous was no ordinary boy. There was no move available to him that was compatible with Hadrian’s vision of him or with his idea of himself. There was no available move that was not demeaning and humiliating. Antinous was in a trap from which there was no way out.

The Greek myth tells the tale of the beautiful youth Narcissus, who caught sight of his reflection in a pool and fell in love with it. Antinous was also acquainted with pools and with mirrors. Perhaps he admired his reflection. But perhaps he one day caught sight of something else. He gazed in the pool and saw a monstrous fish staring back at him. He had seen his face after five or ten or twenty years, when the bloom of youth had vanished and there remained the image of an ageing man.

Even if Antinous retained Hadrian’s love time could only bring him ruin. In Ancient Greece a man who conceived a love for boys was considered to have received a wonderful gift from the gods. It wasn’t every man who was singled out for such a distinction. Most men considered themselves unworthy of it.

But the Greeks took a very different view of the type of men whom we would nowadays describe as mature homosexuals. An adult male who desired a sexual relationship with another adult male was an object of scorn. Such men were called pathetikoi – ‘pathetics’.”

.....

“Why is it so important?” Adam asks.

The question surprises me. I have been showing Adam my latest products for The Pink Acorn. I now have a range of penis tulips (for floral decoration), a range of penis brooches, penis rings and penis bracelets (an ordinary bracelet with an interlocked pair of penises as the clasp). I am also working on a pair of penis salt and pepper shakers. These consist of elegant salt and pepper containers in moulded glass. They have a beautiful shape. They are thick at the base and they taper to the top in a long smooth curve. I buy the shakers ready-made and discard the unimaginative chromed screw-tops with which they come equipped. I replace them with solid cast penile tops that I have drilled for salt and for pepper. It’s the perfect ‘his&his’ combination. There is a single hole for salt exactly where you would expect it and there is a row of holes for the pepper. The holes run in a line from the main opening to the duct where the ‘V’ form of the glans meets the shaft. This isn’t an original idea. I once met a boy who had a slot opening in his penis just like this, except that it was a slot rather than a row of holes of course. The shakers will be ready as soon as I find a way of soldering the heads to a thread so that they can be screwed to the shakers.

I have just been lamenting the fact that I cannot find a way of showing a foreskin on the castings.

“Why is it so important?” asks Adam again.

Actually, it isn’t important. It’s really just my odd sense of humour. I pretend to be much more obsessed than I am. The whole thing is a joke. But people are taking it seriously. I have taken the Pink Acorn collection to five weekend craft markets and three antiques markets. And Penny has bought fifty to sell on her new stall in Petticoat Lane. I am selling them faster than I can make them. From week to week I double the prices just to see how much people will pay. But the cheque-books keep coming out. I have discovered a ‘niche’ market.

.....

I told Adam that I was exaggerating my annoyance that I couldn’t put foreskins on my tulips. I told him it was only a joke.

But actually, when I think of it later, I see that it is more important than I admitted.
It doesn’t disturb me that my tulips do not have foreskins, or that some boys don’t have foreskins. It is the idea of circumcision that I find weird.

The first circumcised penis I saw at really close quarters was Laurie’s. He wasn’t Jewish. There had been a fashion for circumcision in the British NHS in the 1950’s. State-sponsored circumcision in the name of health and hygiene. Laurie was circumcised at the age of twelve. There were scars on his penis to prove it. The scars looked like the scars left by a burn. They were ugly and obscene.

I find it sinister. Whether they do it in the name of religion or to mark the passage from childhood to youth, I don’t understand why anyone would want to do this to a boy.

.....

At breakfast one morning my Mother tells me she has received a letter from Simon. Simon would like to know whether I have any plans for my birthday.

She means, of course, whether I want to have a special celebration for my eighteenth birthday. It has become the fashion recently to celebrate your eighteenth birthday as a coming-of-age instead of your twenty-first birthday.

I tell her that I haven’t any plans. I haven’t thought about it. My birthday seems a long way off, though in fact it’s only a couple of months. I shall go travelling with Chris before then, and planning for the trip has taken all my attention. Besides, my eighteenth birthday is something I don’t want to think about. Whenever I remember it I think of my father. I avoid thinking of him these days as much as I can.

Then I realise I am being selfish. Simon obviously wants to know if I am planning a party because he is thinking of coming to London. Maybe he is even looking for an excuse to come. I tell my Mother that I don’t want a big party, but I would be happy to invite a few friends. I would be happy to invite a few special friends – like Simon.

But it seems to me a strange idea to mark a certain day as the transition from one phase of your life to another, as if a particular day makes the difference between being a boy and a man. When I think about it, it seems strange to divide your life into phases at all. How many phases do you have to complete, I wonder, before you can say that you have lived completely?

And meanwhile the sand runs through the hourglass.

.....

I read in my Grandfather’s manuscript:

“It was my privilege to be befriended with the English philosopher R G Collingwood for many years. Collingwood once asked the curious question: How long does it take a human being to exist?

The question seems absurd. But it is in fact a profound and original question. Collingwood illustrates what he means by the example of a molecule of water. Water is a combination of atoms of hydrogen and oxygen. The atom of each element has its own period or rate of vibration. An atom of oxygen takes longer to exist than an atom of hydrogen. When the atoms are combined in a molecule of water their periods of vibration are superimposed one upon the other: a molecule of water takes longer to exist than either of the elements that compose it. But in this brief period it exists to the full.

What is the case with a human being? Can one say that a human being has lived a human life if he dies at the stage of a foetus? Or a baby? Or an infant? How long does a human being have to live before we can say that he has existed fully as a human being? How many ‘periods’ of life must be combined to make a complete human existence? Does he have to live beyond sexual maturity? Does he have to live till the middle of the span of an average human life? Does he have to survive into old age?

Is there a point at which we can say that we fully exist as a human being? Is our life beyond this point a kind of epilogue, a period of decline?

And what was in Antinous’ mind in the autumn of 130, when he was in the eighteenth or nineteenth year of his life and he chose to walk into the waters of the Nile?”


Sion