Are you experienced?
By William Sutcliffe
1997
à Plot
à Characters
à Personal comment
à An Extract from the book
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The plot of the story
From the point of view of a young, adolescent growing up like me, I would describe the plot as a typical communication problem between man and woman. Dave, our “hero” and narrator of the book, has fallen in love with his travelling companion Liz. They have already had some “almost” sex as well. (You will find out the explanation yourself when you read the “extract” J) But there is one big problem: Liz is James’ girlfriend, the girlfriend of Dave’s best mate.
But let’s go back to the beginning: Dave is an English student who’s enjoying himself during a one year break in his studies. The first half of his free year, he worked in a sock shop in England and also a few weeks in Switzerland, as a kitchen staff member. Those jobs have allowed him to save up some money, for which he now has a wide range of use. As it is fashionable in students' circles to go travelling in the summer holiday’s, none of Dave’s friends were around when he came back from Switzerland. The only one who is around is Liz. Her boyfriend James has gone travelling as well; that’s why Dave and Liz get stuck with each other and plan to go travelling together like everyone.
Quickly, they agree to explore India together; in fact, Liz wants to explore India, whereas Dave rather wants to explore Liz’s body. That’s why he travels with a box of two hundred condoms!
But shortly before our couple go to India, strictly speaking some days before, they have some kind of sex together. This experience means a lot to Dave, because he thinks that this has brought him closer to Liz and they must be a real couple after all. But Liz doesn’t show her feelings at all. That makes Dave really upset and he wants to discuss the situation with Liz and he asks her why she refuses to kiss him in return. But her view of the whole “couple-or-not” question is pretty obvious. She censures Dave for having such feelings! She insists on her point saying that she really loves James and Dave should be ashamed to get off with a mate’s girlfriend. That ruins the good vibes between them and makes their trip to India horrible.
Arriving in India, they meet Jeremy, a spoilt tourist, who is travelling at Mummy’s and Daddy’s expense, but always insists on being a cool ass guy who knows everything about travelling. Liz likes him from the beginning and starts to copy his way of travelling, e.g. she doesn’t give any money to beggars any more and so on. Dave logically doesn’t like Jeremy at all; that’s why he always has fights with Liz. This alienates them more and more from each other and when Liz accidentally bumps into two of her long-standing colleagues, Caz and Fiona, she abandons Dave for the rest of the journey.
From then on, Dave has to travel on his own and he learns a lot about himself. Even though he hates travelling to a Third World country, because he can’t stand the sight of poverty and so on, he has a pretty good time and gets over Liz’s escape, until he returns to England…
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Description of the characters
The hero of the book is obviously and indisputably Dave. He is the narrator and the main character of the story. All that happens is described in Dave’s words, which gives us the chance to live and suffer with him and we also get to know more about his inner life. Dave is a simple man who doesn’t like travelling to unknown countries, because of his fear of diseases and impurity. (“I wanted to have one of those big trips behind me, but I’d never get around putting myself through it. Suffering, danger and poverty are all fine by me, but dirt and disease are two things I happen to hate. I just didn’t want to go!” – Page 33) Of course he’s also a typical male, he likes women and always wants to shag Liz. For me, he is quite a likeable and cool guy and I like his way of life (or: the way he sees life.)
On the other hand there is Liz. She is absolutely gullible but at the same time also stubborn, a little hypocritical and irresolute. She is the one who plays James off against Dave: At the end, when Liz and Dave comes back from India, they meet James in a restaurant. They have promised to say nothing to James about what happened, but at the end, everything comes out. That means, both of them have to wriggle out of this awkward situation and James has to decide whom he wants to believe. Liz is still saying that Dave forced her to have sex with him, and Dave insists that it was of her own free will. You can read what really happened at the end of this review!
Nevertheless, there isn’t much to find out about James. There are more characters, e.g. Ranji, Fiona and Caz, Igor Boog, Jonah Belle, Brian and so on, but they’re all travellers who get in touch with our couple while travelling in India. Worth mentioning are only Ranji, Fiona and Caz. Ranji is British-Indian. He lives in England with his Indian parents, powerful Indians, whose name is known by everyone in India. He ran away from his parents while staying in India, dragged there by his parents to meet some family members. After the flight of Liz, when Dave is on his own, he has a marvellous time with Ranji and they have a lot of fun together doing men’s stuff.
Fiona and Caz are some old friends of Liz´s, but they lost sight of each other a long time ago. As you know from the summery of the plot, Liz deserted Dave because of these two girls. About their personality you can say that they are unstable and gullible. They get easily influenced by Indian Tantra teachers and Indian cults. They seem pretty annoying to me!
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Personal comment
After reading “Are You Experienced”, I recommend you to surf on some websites about India, e.g. www.travelinindia.com. In my eyes, it is very important to learn more about India than what is written in Sutcliffe’s work. Having read “Are You Experienced” I really had some prejudices against Indians. It seemed to me that India was full of persistent beggars and you couldn’t eat Indian food at all without getting diarrhea. That’s why you have to obtain some more information, to prove you wrong.
Besides those side effects, the book brought me a big laugh. It made me continue reading for a long time and I had never finished a book that quickly so far. Some of you, I’m pretty sure, will say after having read the book that the language which Sutcliffe uses is vulgar and obscene, but on the other hand I think the reader also learns a lot of colloquial and juvenile language. So please don’t be shocked, if this book surprises you with recurrent vulgar expressions, it will make you laugh and you will go into fits! It is a good, entertaining book and quite easy to read!
My rating: recommendable!
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An Extract from the book
To give you another incentive for reading the book, I will quote an extract from the book. It’s the scene I have already mentioned in the summery, where Dave and Liz “almost” have sex before travelling to India. That’s the scene, which ruins their relationship:
“Liz? Why won’t you kiss me?” [..]
“Isn’t it obvious?” she mumbled.
“In the circumstances, nothing seems very obvious at all.”
“I don’t love you” […] “I love James. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Not much. Look – It’s ridiculous that you keep on about him while you’re doing all this stuff with me. I don’t see why you can’t acknowledge what’s going on – then, when he gets back, we can all return to normal.”
“Is that what you really want?”
“Of course.”
[…]
“If you feel that just because you have clawed away at me, preying on the fact that you know I miss James… and now that you have finally got some pathetic piece of gratification for your efforts – if you think that means you have taken James’ place, then you’ve got a lot to learn.”
[…]
“Oh right. I see. I’m superficial because I think that having sex means something. At last I understand. It’s all my fault for making the… the naïve assumption that because you are now having sex with me instead of James…”
“I am not having sex with you instead of James. Look – you’ve been groping me for long enough, and you’ve finally got your way, and I hope you’re satisfied, but now it’s going to stop.”
[…]
“Look, even if you stop doing it we both know that you want it. We both know that we’ve done it.”
“I don’t want it.”
“Yeah right. I forced you!”
“You did.”
“WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?”
“You did. You forced me. Over a matter of weeks, you have gradually forced yourself on me.”
“That’s bollocks.”
“It’s true. I don’t know how you can deny it.”
“I didn’t force it to happen. It just happened. And I didn’t notice you’re resisting.”
[…]
“Anyway – we haven’t had sex. There is a big difference between wanking on to someone’s belly and making love.”
“It was your hand.”
“My hand was limp. You were moving it for me, if you don’t remember.”
“And you’ve forgotten what happened before that, have you?”
“Oh yeah – you dabbed your weenie at me for about ten seconds. Wow. That’s what I call passion. I’ve never had it so good.”
[…]
“Oh fuck off.”
“And I hope I’ve answered your question. That’s why I won’t kiss you. Because you’re a fucking prick.”
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