The Ginger Man

by J.P. Donleavy

“Just been to visit my broker with an electric fire.”

Jesus, the only time I can forget about it is when I’m hungry. When I eat I go mad. I sat down and read every book on sex in the Widener Library to see how I could get it. Did me no damn good. I must repel women and there’s no cure for that.”

I repel women, damn it. Even this winter down in Connemara visiting the old folks, my cousin, who looked like a cow’s arse wouldn’t even come across.

I wouldn’t take her to East Jesus.

A day on which all things are born, like uncovered stars.

Sunday. Day set aside for emptiness and defeat. Dublin city closed, a great gray trap. Only churches doing business, sacred with music, red candles and crucified Christs.

“Kenneth, you lack love.” “Ass and money.”

Left my soul sitting on a wall and walked away, watching me and grew cold because souls are like hearts, sort of red and warm, all like a heart.

“Call me a bugger, I can’t stand the gentility on top of the yelling.”

Long suffering O’Keefe, bent over tomes in the National Library studying Irish and dreaming of seduction.

If Marion wants to make the barbarous accusation that I took the milk money, it’s just as well I took it.

I’m all for Christianity but insolence must be put down. With violence if necessary. People in their place, neater that way.

Me. A sun out. With Jesus for birth control.

And dear God Give me strength To put my shoulder To the wheel And push Like the rest.

I’m no writer. I’m nothing but a hungry, sexstarved son of a bitch.”

Lives punctuated with shrewd business deals, quick flashes of happiness ending in dismal abortion.

“Pissing always gives me a chance to think. It’s all the good this thing has ever done me.

Woke up this morning with an erection that almost touched the ceiling.”

“That’s what I like about Ireland, so open about hatreds. I guess all I want out of this life is a decent fire in the grate, a rug on the floor and a comfortable chair to sit in and read.

But Jesus, when you don’t have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it’s sex. When you have both it’s health, you worry about getting rupture or something. If everything is simply jake then you’re frightened of death. And look at these faces, all stuck with the first problem and will be for the rest of their days.” “And what’s mine, Kenneth?”

But I did it because I needed strength in paupery.

I put my finger, afeared, in the mouldy nose hole, for you can’t have too much luck these days.

“Shit’s shit, Marion, even on judgement day.”

Ireland a country of toys.

Even in this great Catholic country you’ve got to keep covered, you know, or they watch you undress, but mind you, the Protestants use a field glass.

“Given up the cleanliness for a life of the spirit.

She danced on the long hood of her crimson Cadillac, and watching her, I thought that God must be female. She leaped into my arms and knocked me to the ground and screamed into my mouth.

Only their animals are interesting. Thank God they have dogs.

Come down God and settle in my heart on this triangular Friday.

Dignity in debt, a personal motto. In fact a coat of arms. Bowler hat crossed

Not a spark of joy anywhere except from a few lechers I know personally. Otherwise a rogues’ gallery of Calvinists.

this fantastic poverty.

Four o’clock on this oblong Tuesday.

And why was love so round.

And I’m beginning to see that that is the way to do a lot of things in life—just to go ahead and do them.

I cannot tolerate economic cripples and I do not like those who were once rich. In it all to get away from it all.

“Good teeth a good body. God’s teeth are great teeth. Mary you must come with me for a drink.”

“Mary, I’m a big wind from East Jesus, a geek from Gaul.”

I’m all for that moment of reverie at time of crackup.

This night’s over. Means waiting for another.

I find that hunger puts one at a disadvantage when dealing with people who eat three times a day. I’m depending on you.

I have abandoned homosexuality for it has only succeeded in complicating my life further.

If I must be celibate I may as well live where celibacy is a virtue.

An aristocrat wherever I flee.

I have till now counted my friends on a hand of amputated fingers.”

There must be a lot of steps to heaven. And Ireland is closest of all. But they’re ruining Jesus with publicity.

I’m down to my accent.

“So far. This religion business will present a problem. I’m suspicious about people interested in saving other people’s souls.

“Now, Kenneth, you’re a man who speaks fluent Greek and Latin, a man of much useless knowledge, schooled in culture, who knows what Plato said to his boys, buggering them in the bushes.

There’s a world out there with people with eyes and mouths. The eyes see these things and the mouths want the things the eyes see.