Dorian (Will Self)

He thought it was going to make him famous. Baz was looking at his latest work, nine monitors displaying his Cathode Narcissus, the most beautiful man he had ever seen, the most shameless one he had ever met. His heart was pounding. He was thinking of the actor in the installation, his head was visualizing the nine Dorians in different art galleries (and the real one in his bed). That was going to be a proper beginning of his career. The art galleries, he meant.
But it never got there. It stayed private.
As private as Dorian could be, anyway.

Dorian turns the pages of the typescript Wotton gave him. He did not know Wotton could write. The content is disgusting, really, but somehow he can’t stop reading. It is nothing but a libel. Dorian could have never done those things... Wotton must have got mad before he died.
As he finishes reading, he wants to burn the book. Never look at it again. Forget it. Live the life he knows and remembers. But the story continues when he meets a person from Wotton’s book who obviously knows him and there’s no book to close, no pages to rip.

“You’ve made it into a shrine.”
Dorian distinguished pain and amazement in Baz’s voice.
They looked at the nine monitors. The nine naked Dorians were as beautiful as ever, maybe even more than before, dancing slowly and seducing the viewer. A huge bed stood in front of Cathode Narcissus.
“I thought you wanted the whole world to see it. Anyway, it grows... I grow more beautiful every time I use it.”
“Use it! This,” Baz pointed a finger at the monitors, appalled, “is art! Not a thing to be used and certainly not to be fucked in front of.”

“There is no key to art. It is locked in a room, or a garden, which ordinary people aren’t allowed to enter. All they can do is to peep through the keyhole if they are lucky. Artists are like locksmiths, carefully playing with... pins and sticks and all those tools they have until the door clicks and sighs and all the beauty spreads itself before them...”
“Shut up, Basil, will you?” Wotton drank up his glass and was about to leave. “Don’t you see that your work of art here,” he gestured towards Dorian, “needs his locksmith, too?”

The jiggling man is jiggling, a huge human metronome. At the beginning of his movement there was a mad mind, then he evolved into a whim of fate. He has always been there, cutting out the future, drawing the hell in, all that for me, Henry Wotton.
The dying man is dying, a tiny breathing corpse. At the beginning of his writing there was a caprice, then it changed into a loving calculation. He is not going to be here for long, so now he is cutting in the past, drawing the hell out, all that for you, Dorian Gray.

It was meant to be a vernissage for Baz’s work of art, Cathode Narcissus. It turned out to be a vernissage for Dorian’s black Narcissus instead. Before we switched those nine monitors on and stared at those nine naked Dorians, hoping Dorian was going to let us touch the original sooner and not later, he presented us with his latest object of infatuation. I didn’t like the flash of jealousy in Herman’s eyes when he saw us. Dorian must have. I introduced him to injecting. He didn’t say Herman wasn’t clear. Or he just didn’t care.

“There is no key to art. It is locked in a room, or a garden, which ordinary people aren’t allowed to enter. All they can do is to peep through the keyhole if they are lucky. Artists are like locksmiths, carefully playing with... pins and sticks and all those tools they have until the door clicks and sighs and all the beauty spreads itself before them...”
“Shut up, Basil, will you?” Wotton drank up his glass and was about to leave. “Don’t you see that your work of art here,” he gestured towards Dorian, “needs his locksmith, too?”

At day Dorian is busy managing his company, helping Lady Di, smiling at photographers.
At night he crawls into the attic room and opens Henry’s book. He has grown to love it, made several copies of it, bound it in different colours. It’s a tribute to the gay life. It’s the hazy world when he’s on drugs. The black one is a memento of the plague.
At midday his hair is golden, his eyes shining blue, his smile genuine.
At midnight his hair becomes lank, his eyes fill with tears and he curls his lips in pain.