by Ben Brooks
The Internet is good because you can watch niche porn for free but bad because you can buy racist clothing.
Julia moves two sheets of paper from one side of her desk to the other.
‘Ooh, look, time’s up,’ she says grinning. ‘Have a good weekend, Jasper.’
‘Thanks.’
Outside the Oaktree Centre I roll a cigarette and call Ping. He tells me to meet him in McDonald’s. An Asian boy walks past and goes through the automatic glass doors with black tree motifs on them. He is wearing short shorts and silver trainers and he is itching his hands. Long scabs like kite-tails trail up his arms. It looks painful.
When I reach McDonald’s, I find Ping reclining amongst a dystopian wasteland of burger wrappers and flaccid ketchup sachets. He is texting. I wonder who he is texting. He doesn’t see me enter, so I stand behind him and alert him to my presence by hitting his head hard and saying, ‘Coco bongo!’
‘Fuck off, gayboy,’ he says, turning to face me.
I grin.
‘Let’s go,’ I say.
4
‘Hey, man,’ Jonah says. He has just arrived in Elsmere.
We are at the 38 bus stop, collecting party-goers. There appear to be around twenty-one boys and three girls.
‘This is going to be a fucking sausagefest,’ Ping says.
‘It will be fine,’ I tell him. ‘More girls will come later. Lots and lots of girls. So many girls that it will inevitably turn into an orgy.’
Jonah laughs.
‘Yea, man, bare gash.’
Jonah wears tight girls’ jeans and his earlobes are stretched with big Perspex plugs. He says that they are fourteen millimetres wide. Tenaya says that they are disgusting and because of them he will cease to get sex after thirty. He says that she is jealous.
‘There’s a party in the valley,’ Ben McKay says. ‘A load of people went to that.’
‘Fucking brilliant,’ Ping says.
Jonah gives us both cans of beer and says that everything will definitely be okay.
It is approximately eight o’clock. I do not know the exact time because I have left my phone at home. I feel anxious when I do not know the exact time. The sky is wholly dark and the tungsten streetlights are dropping maps of orange light onto the pavements. Our beers are extremely cold, which is unfortunate because the night is also not warm.
We see two boys in tracksuits beneath one of the streetlights near the end of Ivythorne Road. They look disproportionately intimidating for their ages, around fourteen.
‘Fuck,’ Ping says.
Jonah tells him not to be a pussy.
We start to walk past the boys.
‘Nice ears, mate,’ one of them shouts to Jonah. ‘I could fit my fucking dick through those things.’
They both laugh.
‘Good for you, babydick,’ Jonah shouts back.
They stop laughing.
The one with the white tracksuit on cycles over.
‘What the fuck did you say?’
‘Babydick,’ Jonah repeats, smiling.
Ping groans.
The one with the white tracksuit on wraps his arm around Jonah’s neck, bringing him down into a headlock while the one with the navy tracksuit on cycles over. I begin to wonder what is going through their heads. There are more than twenty of us and two of them. They are mindless predators.
‘Fucking burn him,’ the one with the white tracksuit says. The one with the navy tracksuit flicks up the flame of a lighter and begins to move it towards Jonah’s peroxide hair. What are they doing?
‘What? NO, do something!’ Jonah is screaming and struggling. ‘Ping? Ben? Fucking help.’
There are twenty of us but we are just stood there. Then someone shouts ‘RUN!’ and everyone is gone, except for me and Tenaya. She is holding a lit cigarette and smiling, as though she has a foolproof plan. We both watch while Jonah begins to lose his fringe. It must be a bad time to be Jonah. I feel bad for him but I am also glad it is him and not me.
‘Why the fuck aren’t you doing something?’ he shouts.
Tenaya steps towards the one in the white tracksuit and puts her cigarette out on the inside of his ear.
I see it glow red.
The boy is screaming.
Jonah is free.
We run back to the house and fall through the door and collapse on the sofa. My chest is a coalless steam train. I am dizzy. Jonah touches his hair, shudders, and starts rolling a joint.
‘Shit,’ he says.
‘Yea,’ Tenaya agrees.
‘Thanks.’
We pass around the joint. We make use of the three-toke pass system in order to share it fairly. Relaxation ensues.
‘It’s not that bad, right?’ Jonah asks, fringe between his fingers.
‘Barely noticeable,’ Tenaya says.
I think it is noticeable but I do not say anything. I am sometimes extremely sensitive.
‘Thank fuck.’
There is a knock at the door. When I answer, I find the deserters, all drunk and smiling. Three small cars pull up and I feel momentarily worried but they turn out only to contain Sarah DiLeeso and a bunch of other kids from the year above. I am sure that everyone will treat my family home with the respect that it deserves. These are not the kind of people that steal your cutlery and urinate in your bath.
We all go inside.
An hour later and four girls are mixing vodka on the carpet. Someone is playing hip hop through the surround sound. There are two boys kissing on the sofa. The music is Wu-Tang Clan. The song is ‘Shame On A Nigga’. I can hear Sarah DiLeeso and Jonah singing.
Me and Ping go through to the kitchen to cook up ketamine. He is drunk and so attempting to engage me in philosophical conversation, which is something he is not very good at.
‘ . . . so we must have a soul because due to the, uh, sheer number of human traits that can’t be accounted for, you know, genetically or . . . ’
Ping does this a lot. He is sort of an idiot.
I nod while he slips the clear liquid from its cellophane glove, into a pan. I open a beer. We both take up seats on the marble worktops and I light a cigarette.
‘Apparently Abby Hall has a thing for you,’ Ping says.
A hairpin change of topic.
Abby Hall is a plump, blonde girl with bright trails of acne up her cheeks who insists on wearing leggings despite the width of her calves. She believes in angels and does not drink. At parties she binges on Red Bull and talks without breathing.
‘You are joking.’
‘I am not joking.’
I mentally conjure a naked line-up of the girls that are present. Abby Hall is smiling and juggling her acned breasts. The Jewish girls are all telling me to look away. Emma Howes is massive. Ana Korsakov looks nice. She would definitely get it. I omit the girls with boyfriends.
‘And don’t try Ana,’ Ping says. ‘It’s already a done deal.’
He winks. He winks to make it clear to me that he is talking about sexual things.
Ana Korsakov is poor. She gets Christmas presents from the Salvation Army.
I promise myself that I will masturbate if no other girls turn up. This will ensure that I do not plump (sorry) for a fat girl who I will later regret.
‘I’d just go with Abby,’ Ping says.
‘Right,’ I say. ‘Except you wouldn’t.’
He laughs.
‘I would if I looked like you.’
‘Yea,’ I say. ‘Great. Anyway, I will be seducing Georgia Treely in Devon. She is way fitter than Ana.’
Ping laughs. ‘Okay.’
I can hear Die Antwoord playing in the living room now. Die Antwoord are a rap band from South Africa. They say things like ‘next-level shit’. In
Careers I wanted to write that down on my ‘hopes for the future’ form. Tenaya told me that if I did, the Careers Officer would think that I had taken LSD and she would phone Mum. I nodded and wrote ‘children’s television presenter’ instead.
I go back into the living room. One of the gay boys on the sofa is giving the other a handjob. Ana Korsakov and her chubby friend are watching and laughing. The room is littered with embracing couples who think that they are happy. My bladder is a hot-air balloon. I go upstairs to use the toilet and pass Tenaya and Tom arguing, which makes me secretly optimistic but I am too sensitive to say anything. What a sensitive mood I am in today. I decide not to give him the Viagra.
Ben McKay is sleeping in the bath, in a halo of fluorescent vomit. I treat myself to a sitting-down piss, take his cigarettes and go back downstairs. I do not like Ben McKay. Ben McKay likes Coldplay.
‘It’s done, man,’ Ping says.
We tip the drugs out of the pan and into a small white heap on the turquoise marble. He takes out his debit card and we chop up two lines then hoover them through rolled-up five-pound notes. I do not feel any effects after the first line. Ping is laughing. After eight lines I feel something.
I am a wolf. Jasper James Wolf. Look at me. How beautiful I am. So sleek and slender. I have great hair. I am pretty powerful. Also, I am sinking. Perhaps I am walking over the ocean. The kitchen tiles are ice. I can overcome them with my wit. Wit surpassing Stephen Fry. Come on, girls, look at my beautiful eyes. You can stroke me if you like. This music is lemonade in my veins. Maybe I should dye my hair ginger. My fur. I don’t know my own strength. I should refrain from touching people where possible. That’s it, climbing the stairs. This is enjoyable. I am enjoying myself. I also feel nauseous and sleepy. Quite sleepy. Sleepy eight on a one-to-ten scale of sleepiness. That is beatable. Especially with such power as I have been endowed. Thank you, sun. Oh, toilet. Hello, Abby Hall. Shush, we shouldn’t speak. Yes, I am beautiful. You can tell me with your hands. Let’s lie in here. In the bath. Oh, Ben McKay is here. Vomit on your leggings? Take them off. Everything is going to be okay. I promise. I will make many promises to you. I know my claws are vicious. Your mouth is mine. Giggling. Inside of your eyes. My claws are making you sing. You sing like a haunting. Isn’t everything glowing? This is very nice. Hello, Abby Hall. Yes, around your feet. Just throw them to Ben McKay. To the lions! I am a wolf, you know. This must make you very happy. Yes, it does. You’re moaning agreement. Princess. You are my princess. I am your wolf. We are on the bathroom floor. We should dispense with the clawing, though you pull well. Let us run through flesh fields. What? Oh, no matter. I am a wolf, I can cope with wearing a little blood. I have blood, you have blood. Your blood on me. Me inside of . . . oh, this is . . . let’s move. Let’s move to bed. My parents’ bed. Super Super King Queen Size. Yes, this is velvet beneath us. Union. Duet. The flute and the French horn. Oh. Yes. This. Thank you. Your thighs are waterslides. A furry theme park. Smack the weasel. Oh. Yes. Your blood on the sheets. Turn over. I am in the arch of your neck. This is sunshine. We are alive. Hello, Abby Hall.
It is 5:16 a.m. My throat is a desert filled with pesticides. My head is a motorway. I am lying next to Abby Hall. I appear to have stolen all the duvet sometime during the last few hours. Her breasts are drooping down her chest like bags of goldfish from a fair. Her nose is blocked so that when she breathes it sounds like a cat purring.
Last night is going to follow me for weeks. Like a paedophile, or Keith, stalking their victims.
I stand up. There is blood on and in the immediate vicinity of my penis. This is the most disgusting I have felt ever in my life. Ever. The immediate future will only prove at all bearable, provided Abby Hall remains sleeping. Plump Abby Hall with her obnoxious breasts and acne.
Oh, Jesus.
You did it wrong, Jasper. Georgia Treely is the only female in the world.
Downstairs, I find Tenaya. Her eyes are all swollen up and bloodshot. She is sitting between two stacks of discarded tissues and there is an old copy of collected Sartre essays on the table.
‘Good morning,’ I say. My voice is weighed down by the bloody ghost of my past.
‘Morning,’ she replies.
She throws me a pair of jeans from the floor. I pull a full condom off them and climb in. They look like maybe they could be a girl’s. Nothing matters. No future.
‘I’ll make coffee and cigarettes, then we can sit outside and you can explain,’ I tell her.
She nods. It is a very faint nod.
I roll our cigarettes while the kettle boils. Someone has built a railway in my head. I built the railway in my head. I built it with cheap wine and horrible sex. Horrible, horrible sex. I can see the ghost of last night’s drug of choice on the marble worktop. There are several people sleeping on the kitchen tiles, which I imagine must be particularly uncomfortable but they appear not to mind. Ana Korsakov and Ping are curled up on Keith’s yellow towel underneath the kitchen table. There is a pool of blood and a steak knife in the sink. Weird.
Ping’s eyes half open as the kettle climaxes.
I don’t mind that Ping reserved Ana Korsakov for himself because she doesn’t like me anyway. This is because, when she had a party last summer, I punched her pit bull and gave it a black eye. It was exciting. She called me a ‘sukr’. She told me this was Russian for bitch.
‘Morning,’ he says, standing up.
‘Yea.’
‘I feel ill.’
‘You and Ana?’
Ping massages his eyelids. We both look down at the small, unkempt girl asleep across his legs.
‘Don’t know,’ he whispers. ‘I mean, I really like her, man, just, I can’t put my dick in, you know, her being nice and shit.’
‘You didn’t do sex?’
‘Russian Orthodox.’
‘She’ll have to give in eventually.’
‘I fucking hope so. We’re playing at the Twelve Cats next week, maybe after that.’
Ping is in a ska band who sing songs about marijuana.
‘Maybe.’
I make three teas, leave one on the side for Ping, and go back through to the living room.
‘Here,’ I say, passing Tenaya her coffee and cigarette. ‘It’s the good tobacco.’
We go outside to sit on the decking but move to the trampoline after Tenaya declares that she is uncomfortable. We lie on our backs and light the cigarettes.
Morning is making early promises from the edge of the world and the sky directly over our heads is the colour of blue Slush Puppy. It is cold but the cold feels invigorating and not murderous. My head is labelling these things and not properly acknowledging them.
‘This tea is gash, Jasper,’ she says.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Tell me what happened. It was to do with Tom.’
‘I know you didn’t like him, Jasper,’ Tenaya begins. ‘But I thought he was wonderful.’
‘I know you thought he was wonderful, Tenaya,’ I say. ‘But he was a massive dick.’
She pulls up her upper body and punches my collar bone.
‘He broke up with me.’
‘What should I do with all that Viagra?’
She punches me again.
‘Why?’ I ask.
She lies back down.
‘You heard us arguing last night?’
‘Yea.’
‘Well, that was because Rajid told me that Tom had gone down on Alice Jennings and I was confronting him about it. I felt unsure as to how true it was because Rajid didn’t seem too sure.’ Alice Jennings is one of the rich Jewish girls. She wears Ugg boots and back-combs her hair. ‘We were arguing about it and then Jonah walks past and says, “Oh, she found out then?”’
Tenaya takes a very pronounced drag on her cigarette.
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br /> ‘But you said that he broke up with you?’ I say.
‘Well . . . I was going to forgive him.’
I am unsure of what scoffing really sounds like but I make a good attempt at what I think it must entail by blowing hard out of my nose. Some snot comes out and lands on my bare chest. I wipe it off with the underside of my coffee mug.
‘Well, I didn’t think it meant anything and I really do like him. Anyway, after a while he said. “I know you are probably considering forgiving me but I could never forgive myself, so I think this is over.”’
This causes me to laugh quite uncontrollably.
Tenaya begins to cry.
Her tears wage a war on my laughter.
She wins.
They call the victory guilt.
I hold Tenaya’s hand and we both stop making emotional sounds. God has been diluting the Slush Puppy sky so that bright light is showering us.
‘Why is there blood and a steak knife in the sink?’ I say.
Tenaya smiles.
‘Some girls from the valley party came up because theirs was closed down, and one of them tried to stab Jonah because she said he was trying to rape her, except she slipped on some Irn-Bru he had spilt on the floor and cut off her own finger.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Right.’ This is both hilarious and unnerving. ‘I had been keeping the Viagra dissolved in a bottle of Irn-Bru.’
Tenaya snorts with laughter.
‘You actually had Viagra? I told you to be civil.’
‘Doesn’t matter now. Anyway, then what happened?’
She takes a while to regain her composure.
‘Then Emma Howes put the finger in a fridge pack of Fosters and drove the girl to the hospital but she didn’t make it because she was drunk and she skidded the car into a ditch. She phoned Jonah and he left, like, a half-hour ago to tow them out.’
We both sit up, facing the bottom of the garden. The rabbits are waking up and patrolling their hutch perimeters. Our rabbits are named after the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Raphael, Donatello, Michelangelo and Leonardo. I wanted to name them after the Biker Mice From Mars but there are only three of them.