Distortion

by Gautam Malkani

  Tube driver says we gotta “wait here a few minutes” – you clock her exact words cos she’s a she. You check the time on your Dillon handset: eighteen minutes. Double-check it on your Dylan handset: eighteen minutes. Should probly check yourself even. Use your fone as a mirror even though none of your handsets frown or smile or smell like your mum’s face. You sit your butt down and switch off. Shield your flowers from the droplets of coughs, colds and flu.

  After lowering your phoney fever, your mum combed your wet fringe. Kisses rubbed in like hair wax. “I know what, Dhilan, let’s watch a DVD tonight instead. Just like we did when I was sick. It’ll be fun, darling – we’ll take your duvet down to the sofa. We’ll snuggle up tight and warm together.”

  You told her that, boom, you were cured. That your warp-speed full recovery must’ve been down to the miracle of milk and turmeric.

  During something called the “support act”, she took you to this place called the Upper Circle Bar, clutching a dealer’s ounce of turmeric powder in a plastic Ziploc bag. She’d even scored a single-serve sachet of formula milk.

  As I leg it through the ticket barriers and outta the Tube station, I for serious still reckon I might actually make it. Dillon handset says 19:55. No point hailing no taxi or hopping a bus – ain’t even one stop. But as soon as straight away, I can tell from the sound of the place that most probly I’m too late. My flowers like they been in some nuclear hurricane. Still, I run up the stairs – to go through the motions at least; at least just to say I came. And, sure as shedding eyebrows, when I knock at the door, they won’t even think about letting me in. When I wave the flowers through small square window, they still won’t. Finally, I convince them to give her a note from me, but the only lame crap I can come up with is: “I’m here. I’m right outside.” They read the note, change their minds, let my ass in.

  Hand her what’s left of the flowers then sit down beside her. The seat comfortably uncomfortable – like as if even the furniture’s been waiting for me. “I knew you’d come,” she whispers as she leans in close. “I knew you’d be back.” As she looks back towards the stage, Ramona slips me a copy of some booklet/programme thing and slowly uncurls her toes. Cos fuck what the doctors say, there’s always tomorrow. I’ll go say bye to Mummy tomorrow.

  2

  AIN’T MY FAULT that being Mama’s carer has been sweet for my career. Kept me off streets, made me school up for my GCSEs, got me into this big boss uni. Today’s lecture about some BS I already taught myself – bossed the whole reading list the last time she was rotting in hospital. My brain like a Tampax for textbooks and the side effects of her Tamoxifen tablets. Cos whatever it takes, okay? Whatever grades I needed to attain for her to carry on smiling and fighting and live-blogging parents’ evening. My positive exam results = her negative test results = forget fucking chemo, just intravenously administer my academic accomplishments. Well, good for me, yeh. Guess all this shit’s been good for me.

  Sermon going on up front is just some seminar, not a full-on lecture. Minor, modular, mid-term summary. Still, I told my family weren’t no way I could skip it, that it was critical like sitting the final paper of my final-year finals. Good luck, Dhilan. Good for you and good, good luck. Do whatever you bloody want. To them all my bullshit’s just academic. The lecturer reciting her twenty-page checklist to the beat of us typing it up.

  Ain’t never told Mum this, but I even tried getting my dumb ass into Cambridge – figured that’d be one way to justify going to uni outside London. One way to justify going to dorms and draft-dodge having to hold her tighter than Spandex every morning-sickness morning. And, check this: I even got accepted by Cambridge. But then Ramona decides to do her degree right here, at the London School of Economics.

  Proper sleepstipated today. Chasing back Pro-Plus tablets with Red Bull. Ain’t nothing wrong with planting them little candy love hearts inside her pillbox.

  Ten minutes in, the trolling starts. All my tinkling and twinkling touchscreens laid out in line formation like they waiting to get whupped. Kicks off with just gentle, early-morning bants. For instance: “Go suck shit out of a drainpipe.” For instance: “You’ve got blowjob-vomit in your brain.” For instance: “You dirty stinking shitlump of a boy, how you could do like this?” Only this time, the trolls are on some kinda different vibe – instead of stepping up the abuse, they start getting anal:

  “There’s a split infinitive in your Facebook profile.”

  “Would it kill you to iron your T-shirt?”

  “Stop slouching like a sack of liposuction.”

  “I hope you’ve at least steam-ironed your scrotum.”

  I sit up and type: “wait – who is this? how the hell you know I’m slouching?”

  “Much better,” the troll comes back. “Now try to keep your vertebrae straight.”

  “thanks v much for the ergonomic advice but I’ll sit however I want.”

  “But why are you sitting here in the first place, kid? Why are you even in this lecture?”

  “get myself educated. who is this?”

  “Good for you. After all, to be ignorant is to bend over and spread your ass cheeks for the forces of darkness.”

  “er. ok. who is this?”

  “Which is why the first thing the forces of darkness attack is the educated. The experts, the complex explanations, all those cumbersome facts and inconvenient truths. So it’s good you’re here to get educated.”

  “well then educate me by telling me who the fuck you are.”

  “Only that isn’t really the reason you’re here, is it kid?”

  Start scoping the whole lecture hall to see which of these dipshits is fucking with me. All the posh boys with their posture and opinions; all us state-school kids sitting like we on a train without a ticket. Don’t take no time to clock them – two random geriatric dudes geeking it up in the front row. We’re talking aged out and played out, sticking out like skin tags. And, yeh, I know it ain’t right to generaltype – not every old white dude is a dirty-assed evil-doer. But even from nine rows behind, can tell that this troll action is coming from them. Banging the crap outta their keypads and slap-swiping their touchscreens. Soon as I spot them, both men turn around, stare dead-eyed in my direction like we on some psychic sixth-sense type shit. Mama calls it “animal magnetism”. More like electromagnets with these dudes – eyes like MRI scanners. Kinda eyes that distract you from what someone actually looks like. Only shit I register proper is wardrobe-related: one of the old men is on some classic double-breasted biker jacket look; the other one’s rocking a grey off-the-peg suit. But it’s the biker jacket dude looks more dapper.

  Get enough openings to back off. Best way to deal with trolls is to just click the fuck away. Lecturer now giving it some serious data visualisation action – her laptop linked up to three separate projectors. Guy sat beside me highlighting the whole fucking everything – shoulda just printed the handout on day-glo yellow paper. Auditorium radiators randomly bleeding and sniffling – and so I message home to check that she’s okay.

  Some girl to my left starts crying on the quiet.

  And so I message home to check she’s okay.

  After all, ain’t in primary school no more: no one’s gonna confiscate my fones. Now an ad for pre-bereavement bereavement counselling. Story about a miracle mud cure. Twenty-four-hour flash sale on post-surgical lingerie. My fones hit me up with different ads depending on whether I’m logged on as Dillon or Dylan or Dhilan. Different ads, different Facebook stories, Google results and YouTube videos, different solutions for dealing with different kinds of bodily fluid. You know how all the ads, stories and search results are custom-tailorised according to your own individual search history and click history and personal info? Well, trust me, yeh, you got no idea how proper fucked this can get – not unless you constantly compare your Facebook feed and your most top-secret Google results with an identical search or scroll by someone else. I do this on the regular for Dillon, Dylan and Dhilan to help
me school up on the differences between them.

  Actually, scrap that – ain’t just simply schooling up on each of them. More like stepping up to some next-level version of them.

  One time when I grabbed my Dylan handset and googled with franticness the words “Female, Body, Unresponsive”, I got hit with ads and articles about erectile dysfunction. As for when I log on as Dhilan – well, that shit’s between me and Google.

  Don’t even ask what happens when I google what gift to get Mummy for Christmas. Or more like what gift not to get in case it’s once again her last-ever Christmas. Or her latest last-ever birthday. Or her last Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day – or Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday. Got me a different gift, game plan and Topman T-shirt for each different prognosis. Mum trusting Google and Facebook more than she trusts the doctors and specialists and experts. Me trusting Google more than I trust my mum. And, yeh, I do know that probly means we just end up confirming our own shit – our fears and prejudgements and shit. I know it means our most deep-down secret thoughts get reinforced. I know the apps and websites try and keep our eyeballs locked on by showing us more of the stories, videos and info we wanna be shown and by telling us more of what we wanna hear. I know that’s how shit with Mum and me got so messed up. Now an ad for a memory foam bed wedge. A story about conjoined urns. Special offer on long-sleeved latex gloves.

  Those two old ancientquated dudes are still checking me. Fuck knows whether to show them my finger or the most photogenic side of my face. One of Mum’s most lame-ass excuses when I’ve caught her staring at me is to claim she thought we was playing a game of that goofball blink-and-you-lose bullshit. Even when my eyes are closed on account of me being asleep and her staring had woken me up. Try returning the two men’s exact same gawkward gaze but it’s like trying to stare out a fish. A dead fish. Corpse of a fish that died of shock. Swipe back to my Dhilan handset. An ad for an all-night pharmacy. Lymphatic drainage massage techniques. YouTube videos for teaching myself advanced paramedic driving skills. But the two old men keep carjacking my attention. Man in the suit’s on some neck-length has-been hairstyle; dude in the biker jacket, some crew-cut combover combo. You’d think a guy in his seventies or eighties would look dickish rocking a biker jacket, but this coffin-dodger carries it off like it’s some second-skin cashmere cardigan. Deffo ain’t ever seen them before, but clearly they reckon they know me. Ten minutes later, they still shooting me evils. I lay down my Dhilan fone, duck my head down and give them the back of my laptop – with this ‘I ♥ Mom’ sticker across it to block all that ambient advertising for Apple.

  Soon as I type the words “my late beloved mother”, I bang on the backspace.

  Even though I know “late” is the technical term for it. Know that if you don’t use the word “late”, it’ll imply she’s alive.

  Still though – “late” sounds proper ridickulous. Like she got held up in traffic on her way to heaven. Like her organs were so corrupted they had to get rerouted over even broader-band bandwidth.

  Like I been waiting for her to hurry the fuck up and check out.

  Anyway, allow that shit – people who use the word “late” are the same ponces who call the crapper a “water closet” and then still need to abbreviate it. Saps who use words like “splendid”.

  Late. (But then what if some thickshit idiot thinks it means she was pregnant?)

  When I’m done with the website I’ve set up in Mum’s memory, I answer another email of condolence then upload the funeral service playlist. We’re talking Bono. We’re talking John Lennon. We’re talking every single track from her bi-monthly funeral service prep talks. Her horrible-adorable angstipating about whether I’d need copyright-holder permissions to play them. Next, I upload fotos, videos, sound clips. Metadata for the message forum. The digital version of the guestbook that got passed round like a spliff at the crematorium. Cos digital content ain’t dead, doesn’t die, etc. Been keeping Mum’s Facebook page alive ever since she first got sick. And I been downloading every available Ouija board app but I’m staying the fuck away from actual Ouija boards, actual séances, actual psychics. Anyshit that might actually work. When bereavement fatigue kicks in, I click on other tabs, open other windows. Ramona wants to know if I’m up for going bowling this evening. Anjali wants to know if I’m scattering Mum’s ashes in the Ganges. Two girls whose real names I don’t know ask if I’ll meet them after so they can copy my lecture notes. Sonya asks me if I’m happy now then carries on walking past me.

  Okay, allow this gimpness. Hold up my fone now and snap a selfie to see if there’s a reason why those two old dudes keep scoping me. Bruises on my face, vomit stains; anything that might pass for a male equivalent of a woman’s messed-up mascara. Ain’t nothing out of place, though – not a hair, not some standing-ovation lapel. Flip from front lens to back lens and then pinch-to-zoom on the two old men. Seems they on some proper dopple-twin shit – stick them in the same haircut and stubble and they’d pass for identikit clones. Too age-gapped to be twins, too alike to be just brothers, too brother-like to be father and son. It’s more as if they in a before-and-after ad for some backstreet Botox clinic. When the before-Botox dude leans in to chat to the after-Botox dude, it’s like a mashup of a man and his younger self.

  Take a foto of them on the sly. This is when my fone starts randomly swiping all on its own. With a quickness – like as if train carriages covered in ads are dashing across my home screens. Special offers on Kleenex, discounts on disinfectant, Horlicks, ear plugs, some hand-carved prayer for hanging on the wall above my bed. Apparently Google’s stock exchange filings state that ads are basically answers. But I ain’t even asked any questions.

  Power off my fone, switch back to my laptop.

  Now my cursor’s moving by itself. Typing up random comebacks to all the trolling I been ignoring. Clicking open tabs and windows – like when you allow remote access to someone from tech support. The cursor flying up to the task bar, starts opening up my search history. The young carers’ networks and online support forums, an eBay listing for a hazard button and baby monitor, fishnets, body fresh, nasal cannula, the chemical composition of the scent of her night sweats. Should probly hide my screen from the guy sat beside me, but allow it – dude seems busy enough eating up the lecturer’s latest pie charts. Anycase, fuck knows why I ain’t ever just wiped my browsing and search histories. Takes a couple minutes to clean out your shit and then it’s laters to embarrassing ads. That’s like travelling back in time and fixing up the past but with no need to bust out a time machine. And fuck it, maybe that time-travel shit works the other way round? Maybe I can fix what went down in the past by straightening out stuff in the present?

  Now an app for checking Mama’s oxygen levels. One-click replacement cylinders. An online virtual confession booth. An interactive karma calculator.

  Ain’t no big mystery what dumbfuckness is going on here – must’ve accidentally clicked open some malware sent by those two doddery old men. Look up to sneak a peek and sure as shitfits all my windows are synced up on their own laptop screen. One laptop, two old codgers, four shaky hands fighting over the keyboard like they playing some geriatric mobility scooter version of Grand Theft Auto.

  Next come all the scare stories. Or the scary headlines that don’t reflect the actual stories. Articles about side effects, step-by-step instructions for cleaning radioactive secretions, silicone prosthetics that won’t harm the environment when they finally cremated.

  Try clicking back to an article about mammary scar tissue. A manual for deep-tissue massaging. Wait, what? Now all my fones flickering back to backlit – start vomiting up post-surgical image searches directly onto my laptop. We’re talking pictures from all four corners of the worldwide world cos this kinda porn, it ain’t mono-racial. Oh, and diversity of textures as well as skin colours: bumps, lumps, abscesses, scarring, inversions, nodules, bombed-out and burnt out, respectfully blurred out. From outside the lecture theatre, ambulance sirens sou
nd like some maniac life-support machine. Accelerating then silent.

  Thing is, though, I didn’t feel much in control back when I actually clicked on all this shit in the first place. Not even for those first drafts of my search history.

  Couple minutes later, I finally think to run an anti-malware program so I can kick the old men outta my laptop, retake control of my cursor.

  Done and done.

  Still, though: the fuck don’t I just delete my search history?

  This time, allow all that clicking and weeping and whining and dying on my mummy’s memorial website. This time, I log on as Dylan, click open my side-hustle. Spreadsheet stretches out across my screen with rows of client billings and columns of net margins before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation. We’re talking entrepreneurial windows, not bereavement windows. Business shit, not gormless doormat degree shit. I call my start-up ‘Company A’ cos that’s what we call companies in our Business Studies module – i.e. it ain’t the name of my company, it’s just what I call the thing while I think of a name. Technically, it’s just a data-entry business – I’m a jumped-up freelance data temp. Figured this’d be how I’d put food on the table so Mama wouldn’t have to work and die and struggle. Figured this’d keep me so busy I wouldn’t have to sit at the table with her. My corporate bank account is basically the mother–son joint account for doing the housekeeping finance and admin. Well, good for me, yeh. Told you all this young carer shit’s been good for me. Now an ad for a brand-new brand of lavender massage oil. Special non-sticky formula can also be used as lubricant – ideal for seamless transitioning between massage and intimate play.