Adults

by Emma Jane Unsworth

  Two hours later. Where am I now? A flat. There is music on – ‘Blister in the Sun’ by the Violent Femmes – and most people are dancing, apart from me and one man, who is bald and talking to me by a small marble side table covered in drug detritus. I suppose I am trying my best to look very, very infertile. I feel like Frankenstein – nose stuck to my head; leg in my armpit. It is dark but – oh god is that daylight outside the window? No, it’s just reflected light, thank Christ – there is a piece of neon on the wall opposite that says CRYWANK in Tracey Emin font, bright pink. The bald man is called Konrad, I think, I think, but it doesn’t matter because his current raison d’être is telling me why this is his favourite song ever and why he has chosen to put it on. It seems there is no end to his reason but really I can’t wait for him to shut the fuck up so I can start telling him about MY favourite song, which is actually from this century. I nod, encouraging him – to finish and shut the fuck up. He goes on, and then it slips out at one point that he works as a hospital porter.

  ‘I don’t judge you for that,’ I say. Mainly to just infiltrate the monologue.

  ‘No,’ he says, ‘why would you?’

  I say: ‘Some of the most intelligent people I’ve known have worked as porters.’ Is this true? Who cares!

  ‘I’m from Poland originally,’ he says.

  ‘What’s that brilliant fucking phrase,’ I say, grasping for it, holding the conch – he looks annoyed as he tosses his head and says with me: ‘Not my circus not my monkeys.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I really fucking hate that phrase.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Yeah. Why do we not want to look after each other any more? My grandmother, who was a woman who taught me everything I know, said it’s all my circus and all my monkeys. And I think we’ve really got to band together and sort out these monkeys because man, these monkeys are everywhere. When did loving other people more than yourself start to become such a bad thing? All this “self-care” bullshit is just about buying things. It’s because society has let you down and you’re burnt out, so you’re going to throw money at the problem and reinforce the very thing destroying you.’

  I have decided I like Konrad a lot. I also feel like I am struggling to compete, and I despise him for that. Imagine meeting someone at a party who is more intelligent than you. Surefire way to ruin your whole fucking night. ‘How old are you?’ I say. ‘You’re not in your twenties, I can tell.’

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘You’re not dancing.’

  ‘Neither are you.’

  ‘I can dance. Look. Watch. You see? I’ve got moves. I’ve got shapes. I’m a motion wizard.’

  ‘You can stop now because you have proved your point.’

  ‘Thank you. I think you are younger than me.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Thirty-five.’

  ‘Wait, what? Thirty-five? I was thinking more like thirty-one or two.’

  I don’t know whether the music actually stops or just feels like it stops and suddenly there are two other people in the conversation. She’s thirty-five? Fucking hell!

  ‘Oh no,’ Konrad says. ‘Really? No way. I never would have said that.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Oh no no no no no.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You have to go home.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you have a husband? Partner? Kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want them?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘You have to go home. You can’t be doing this.’

  ‘You can’t send me home!’

  Konrad looks at me like he is truly sorry for me. I say: ‘Look, buster, you are the one who is almost completely bald. So. Who needs to go home? Not me. I think the bald person. Who votes for the bald person going home before me? Let’s have a referendum on this.’

  Everyone is looking at me, a little sadly.

  Konrad is almost my age. Is this why he gravitated to me? I don’t know whether he is bald by nature or design. It’s not the kind of thing you can ask on a first meeting. It bothers me every time I look at Prince William, the recession of his hair to almost nothing, because I do view him as a contemporary for some reason. When Prince William is fully bald I will know that I have to stop going out, for good. But then – where is my own body and hair going? We’ve lost touch. It’s doing its own thing, that’s for sure. It has plans.

  Nicolette comes over. ‘What’s going on? Are you okay?’ She bats everyone away. ‘She’s had a tough day.’

  I suddenly feel very weary – very weary indeed.

  ‘Let me get you another drink,’ Nicolette says.

  ‘You know what, I don’t think I can.’

  ‘Don’t let them send you home!’

  ‘No, it’s not that – it’s just … I am all asunder, Nicolette.’ I think of the sofa, and the faces of the people in the TV drama I’m watching, those friends waiting for me on Netflix. I think of a sandwich. I am shamefully, helplessly allured. ‘Is it terrible that I would rather go home right now, Nicolette?’

  ‘No. I mean, that’s okay, if it’s what you really want.’

  ‘I have to confess: whenever we have a night out planned, I’m relieved when you cancel. I love seeing you, but I’m so … tired at the moment. There, I said it. When you’re going out the night before we’re due to go out a little part of me always hopes you’ll get fucked up and feel dreadful so you have to cancel our night out. Or you’ll get sick. Sorry. Or you’ll realise you’re too skint. Anything really. It’s nothing personal, it’s just I can’t really do this. It doesn’t make me happy. I can do a bar or a party for like half an hour, then I’m done. Do you hate me?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  But she’s making a face over my shoulder – is she? Oh god, is that daylight, now? When it gets light that’s the really grim bit. And my mother will wonder why I’m so late, but at least she will be there in the morning and maybe she’ll boil me an egg. No, not a boiled egg, I do not like the thought of that at all. Maybe pour me a cold sparkling drink that will refresh me and exfoliate my mouth. Yes, that would be nice. I swallow. I see that I have possibly been working very hard. I have been simultaneously trying to figure out the codes and rituals of a realm, an institution, whilst also trying to present myself as appealing. I feel very, very stretched and thin, like I might almost snap. I have been connecting, and connecting, and connecting. I’m like an algorithm system with feelings.

  ‘Nicolette, I’m going to go now.’

  And I go. The failed pseudo- (antisocial) party girl.

  On the way home I eat a pizza so hard I feel each point stab the back of my throat. It is my throat again. Boy, is it. I find myself having to spit on the ground shortly after – a big cokey, tomatoey gob. A woman walking her dog stops and stares at me, disgusted.

  ‘I have cancer,’ I say.

  ‘Oh,’ she says, understanding.

  It’s not an outright lie. To be fair, I probably do, on some level. Most people do, after a certain age.

  On the bus, pizza crumbs embedded in my skirt, I see a man who looks like Art would, old. He looks like a chamois leather thrown over a marrow. He moves his bags for me as I make to get off. He has learned how to be kind – I can tell by the pride he takes in it, this acquired skill. He is a social craftsman. I think: Time will take you too, Art, eventually. It will dampen your spirits. It will mock your desires. And you will be a better man for it. And I will be a better woman.

  JUNK EMAILS

  Hi! Just really wanted to reiterate how pleased I am about you and Suzy XXXX

  I mean Suzanne

  Floozanne

  hahaha

  Like. realy pleased so pleased

  I do hope I can meet her son

  Soon! Autocorrect makes drunks of us all!

  Imagien if she had a son with you lol

  I would be fine with tho

  With it

  I woud give
i t my blessing

  The blessed child

  Speak soon! Xxxx

  JUNK TEXTS

  Hey Kel, how are you? X

  Kelly?

  Kellyyyyyyy

  Keeeeeelllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

  BURNOUT

  I go to look at Suzy’s page but instead somehow find myself looking at Kelly’s. I go through all of Kelly’s recent posts, seeing where she’s been. It strikes me, surely, somewhere deep around my solar plexus, that I have missed some major events in her life. Not just Sonny’s birthday, but her birthday. Her mum’s seventieth. A trip up north for her great-aunt’s funeral. I look at who else she has been spending time with, who she is currently seeing as a more valid and mature person than I am. I look at who has been commenting on her posts. I see a comment I left on there ages ago, months ago – the last comment I left her, I think. On a picture of her doing a jewellery class with her mum, I have written:

  HI HO SILVER!!!! WORK IT, YOU ABSOLUTE GEMS!!!! XXXXX

  It is a comment I have obviously thought about a lot. The sight of my own rabid communication, the ECG spikes of exclamation marks, of my leaping emotions, is wearying.

  Why am I looking at this now? Wearying my weary self with my own wearyingness?

  I say it out loud. I say it right out of me. This is ill behaviour. I am ill.

  THERAPY SESSION #2

  The second therapist I saw, when Art’s pictures had hit the big time – possibly because Art’s pictures had hit the big time – listened straight-faced, even when I cracked jokes, and that put me off (Is it protocol, to be dour? I wanted to say), so I gabbled to fill the silence. I told her how I was scared and jealous of Art’s success, about how I was sure he’d leave me now for someone famous and cooler. I told her how I saw women flinging themselves at him, sometimes otherwise respectable women, desperate to touch the hem, and that made me feel even sadder and more scared and I wasn’t sure whether that was for him, or them, or me. After forty-five minutes had passed, I ran out of steam and material. She nodded sagely and said, ‘I think that was very good work for today, Jenny. Same time next week?’

  ‘I’m not sure – am I … meant to feel different?’

  ‘Not yet. Give it time.’

  Time was something I knew I didn’t have much of. Time was already a fucking worry.

  ‘Okay.’

  I pulled on my coat. Picked up my handbag. As I stood, we shook hands, and she said, ‘What’s his name, by the way?’

  If she’d have asked tentatively, I might have understood. But she showed such a lack of self-awareness that my trust in her evaporated in that instant.

  ‘Whose?’

  ‘Your partner’s. The famous photographer!’

  ‘Art Wilson,’ I said, instinctively.

  ‘I’ll Google him!’ she said.

  I looked at her face, trying to ascertain whether she was joking, whether she was making an ironic reference to the exact cause of the problem. It became apparent that she wasn’t. She was … well, there’s no other word. The simplest of reductions. She was excited.

  I blinked and bade her farewell.

  I cancelled my appointment the following week, before the required forty-eight-hour notice period.

  By text.

  IN

  THE

  BIN

  (ONE WHOLE DAY)

  APP IDEA

  Gin is not my friend, I realise for the hundredth time. But more than that, I need to stop using my phone drunk. When oh when will they create a breathalyser app that disables your phone when you’re over the limit? A phone in the hands of a drunk person can do more damage than a car. I swear I’m first in the fucking queue to be liberated from this risk. There should be some kind of SAS service you can subscribe to that detects when you’re about to use your phone fucked and sends out special forces who crash through the nearest window and wrestle you to the ground and prise your phone out of your stupid drunk hand and incinerate it in a portable incinerator. Then they force-feed you a pint of water and two ibuprofen and two paracetamol and a burger and put you to bed. I would pay for this service, why does it not exist? It’s unthinkable it doesn’t. Yet another example of technology being ahead of humanity.

  Sometimes I feel like it would be safer to stay in and never go out or see anyone or communicate at all, just to be sure there’s nothing to regret.

  The day after Bin Day, I get up in the afternoon and cycle to the park. I steer my bike around a root-crinkled patch of tarmac. A teenage couple pass me. They’re holding hands and having a stilted conversation. Their hoods are up. I hear myself go Ah.

  Evening is coming. The path is banded with the shadows of trees. Sometimes I could weep, quite tenderly, for the London childhood I never had. Then I remember the pollution problem. I sit on a bench and get out my phone, which I’ve had on silent, because that will show it.

  Kelly has replied! (FINALLY.)

  Hey love thanks for your message. Bit tied up but I’ll get back to you asap x

  Don’t thanks for your message me – wtf????

  Big wait. Two minutes. Then:

  I just need a little time away. Take care x

  Kelly?????

  I look around in the park. There is nothing soothing. Everything is dead and dying and dirty. I look at Suzy Brambles’ feed. And, horrors (seek and ye shall find), there’s a new picture of Art and Suzy at a café. They are messily eating ice creams, is there anything better in life! This warrants several ice cream emojis and some starbursts. They’re really going for it now, no holds barred. Jenny knows, so let’s let rip. Fuck off. Fuck off both of you. And mostly fuck off ice cream. It’s November. Has no one any self-respect? I’ve always believed that emoji use is a pretty good gauge of mania, and right now, from where I’m standing, Suzy is on the edge.

  I leave a careful comment: Looks delish! With one emoji. A sane, simple yellow heart. Not as demanding as a red heart. Sort of more carefree.

  Suzy does not like my comment.

  I imagine them discussing my comment. Naked, post-coital, with espresso martinis. So delightfully capricious wurhahhah …

  I wait ten minutes, and then I delete it.

  I instantly regret deleting it.

  I wonder whether I can retype it quickly and put it back or whether they will have noticed and see that I typed it twice. I don’t want to look unconfident or weird.

  But maybe I do want them to talk about me. I want to be in between them as they’re walking along. I wonder whether he’s giving her a hard time for using her phone.

  I could always blame it on a bad connection. I’ve posted things twice by accident several times before. Well, once. It’s feasible. But when – when would I get my chance to explain myself? Unless I put it in an email to Art, or would that seem excessive?

  With every second that passes I feel more panicked. My mind incessantly shrieks: It’s now or never! There’s a good chance she didn’t see it before I deleted it. Not everyone checks their comments every ten seconds. And if they do then that makes them the ones with the problem, does it not? Yes! This justifies it. If Suzy notices that I posted the same comment twice with two minutes in between, then SHE is the loser. Perfect.

  I type it again.

  I post it.

  I look at it.

  Oh god, I hate it.

  I hate myself. I writhe inside. I feel uninhabitable. I need to bite something. Anything. Maybe my fist.

  I notice that someone is looking at me from the next bench. They look away quickly into their burrito.

  DRAFTS

  BURRITOFACE,

  DID YOUR MOTHER NEVER TELL YOU THAT IT IS RUDE TO STARE?

  REGARDS,

  JENNY MCLAINE BA HONS.

  LOOK NO HANDS

  Hi Jenny I just happened to notice online that Art is with that Suzy person again, I think perhaps you do have cause for concern. Mummeeeeeeeee xxx

  I’mon my bike please don’t text me a out thia

  So she’s got her fee
t under the table

  WHY DO YOU THINK IT IS IMPORTANT FOR ME TO HAVE THIS INFORMATION

  She looks like a praying mantis crossed with Wednesday Addams

  Stop

  SOMEONE JUST ALMOST KNOCKED ME OFF MY BIKE

  I’m just saying she got her claws in quick. We should probably go to the exhibition

  I ALMOOST DIED HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY

  Stop being dramatic

  STOP TEXTING ME JESUS CRHIST I AM COMMANDEERING A VEHICLE

  Can you pick up some lemons if you pass a shop?

  WHAT DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND ABOUT THIS SITUATION

  DRAFTS

  Subject: To the woman in the Fiat 500 who cut me up on the corner just now

  Dear Madam,

  Huge thanks for almost knocking me off my bike, but even more for alerting me to your precious cargo with the prominent ‘Baby on Board’ sign. This piece of information is invaluable to me as another road user. I tend to smash willy-nilly into cars containing fully grown people. However, I make sure to drive exceptionally carefully behind vehicles such as yours, knowing that you are transporting The Future rather than just another worthless adult human.

  BR,

  Jenny McLaine BA Hons.