Diary


Diary The Libertine’s life It’s the way you tell ’em


George Mikes famously said, “Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot- water bottles.” Te Libertine has always disputed this slur on the national libido, but aſter seeing the recent revival of Terry Johnson’s brilliant 1994 play Dead Funny, she’s not so sure. Tere are few better definitions of painful humour than chortling at a drama about a married couple who no longer have sex. In this case, because the husband is so obsessed with Benny Hill, Sid James, Frankie Howerd and other titans of British comedic innuendo that he only has time for running his fan club: Te Dead Funny Society. Te structure of Johnson’s farce is magnificent, reaching a nails-down-blackboard pitch of comedic horror when Katherine Parkinson’s neglected, boozy wife decides to tell the only joke she knows to the diehard comedy geeks in her sitting room. She recites the following gag in a voice so deadpan you want to take her pulse: “A man takes his ill wife to the doctor and says, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with her.’ Te doctor gives his wife a thorough examination and concludes, ‘Something is very wrong. It’s either Alzheimer’s or Aids.’ Te husband says, ‘How can I find out?’ Te doctor replies, ‘Easy. Drive her to the middle of a forest and dump her. If she doesn’t find her way home it’s Alzheimer’s. If she does – don’t fuck her.’” Tere was an appalled silence, then


06 The Amorist May 2017


the loudest burst of nervous laughter I’ve ever heard. If there’s a better example of masochism on the London stage at the minute, I’d like to know about it.


That thing of beauty


Te Libertine believes in romance and mutual, blissful seduction, so it’s an understatement to say that she’s gutted that the leader of the free world is a man who thinks it’s fine to ‘grab pussy’. Worse still that Trump’s vocabulary is so impoverished he uses a lame porn term for the thing of beauty between a woman’s legs. Surely it’s more properly her vulva, quim or cunt? Some readers may find “the c-word” a little offensive, but if it’s good enough for DH Lawrence and the Earl of Rochester (“Her hand, her foot, her very look’s a cunt”) it’s good enough for me.


Art is a tart Teledildos and don’ts


We’re big fans of the swaggering Mexican artist Victor Hugo Zayas and his Picasso-like zest for cigars and the female form. It’s a rare day when you don’t find a beautiful naked woman, or two, hanging out on his artist’s couch. Painter and self-described


‘retired playboy’ Ed Moses once came to one of Zayas’s legendary


studio parties. Walking through the thronged rooms and observing the canvases and many female


Te Libertine has a lover in every port, but she’s not woman enough to satisfy all of the people, all of the time. For that purpose she turns to Nora, Max or Lush. She may even turn to the matt black Hush – which reminds her a little of the Vermicious Knids in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Confused? Ten your level of technical expertise is probably limited to tinkering with your Roberts radio, rather than the thrilling new world of teledildonics. Yes, Tomorrow’s World is upon us, although I don’t remember Judith Hann showing viewers how


guests, he turned and said to Zayas, “Te only things that matter in life are paint and pussy. You’ll be fine.” Why don’t they teach that at art school?


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