ATDTDA (18): Desolate sighs, 489-490

[Paul Nightingale]

A chapter that begins to explore the two Ns' relationship/obsession with
Yashmeen succeeds one in which Lake's relationship with two men
(Deuce/Sloat) is revisited. The Ns are commentators, filling in the story
("... it's rumoured she's taken up with ..."), just as Tace was a
commentator in Ch34: "It's that harem mentality ..." etc. Similarly, at the
end of this first section, the Ns' pursuit of "enough drugs to get them
through term" (490) echoes the quack solutions sought by Lake and Deuce on
485.

Yashmeen is an object of desire, capable of "[e]liciting a range of remarks"
(490): so again the emphasis is on writing, how one chooses to represent
one's desire, from "catchphrases of the day" to "all-night rhapsodising" or
"sonnets written down later when the madness had receded", or even
"paralysed dummyishness". In turn, she is apparently taken with "this
Latewood person", dismissed as a social climber: his status (ie 'new money')
threatens the 'natural order' of things, just as his seemingly ambiguous
sexuality makes his identity elusive. The two Ns are also keen to nail down
Yashmeen as "some sort of Eastern wog" (489), thereby 'understanding' her
relationship with Cyprian as "being sweet on the eunuchs sort of thing".
However, on the following page, he is "assumed to be a sod and, less
explicably, the object of Yashmeen's interest" (490). In different ways,
then, Yashmeen and Cyprian problematise representation, by adopting the form
of inscrutable Others.

In the baths the Ns "each [regard] the other's penis with lethargic
annoyance" (489): competitive, each measures himself against the other, just
as, up the page, "taking it personally" is juxtaposed to "taking it
publicly". At the top of the page, the discussion of Yashmeen's breasts
("stage left or audience left?") is a dispute over 'ownership': apparently
they cannot claim the same breast. Each N regards the other as a reliable
standard: their "lethargic annoyance" possibly refers to the inability of
each to satisfactorily regard the other as inferior. As characters they are
difficult to distinguish on the page; they mirror each other, and will go on
doing so endlessly. Here, the only way to separate them is by reference to
Neville's gauche attempt to buy Yashmeen a gift, one quite inappropriate.
For each other the Ns are anything but 'the Other' (new money, women).