Grow Up

by Ben Brooks

  Funkytown is beautiful. There is music as grateful as school hymns ringing off the discoball. The discoball is beautiful. It is like what one of God’s eyes must look like. The wallpaper is a scrolling collage of bright colour and the floor is a wooden mirror. Pairs of people are dancing and smiling. They are happy. I am happy for them. There are people in flocks at the bar and in twos around the room. Sipping drinks and being humans. I want to tell them ‘Congratulations!’

  ‘Congratulations!’ I say. Jonah hugs me.

  ‘Let’s get drinks,’ he says. ‘Let’s get drinks for ourselves and also for these VERY PRETTY WOMEN.’

  He says it very loud so they can hear. They need to hear because they are beautiful. They should be told. We are going to tell them. Tell them and buy them drinks and make sure that they are as happy as monks in a strip bar. Everyone is a human being!

  There are two women. Both in their late thirties, maybe. They are beautiful shards of sun. One has blonde hair, as straight as my dick while I stare at her. She is wearing a tight polka dot dress and a polished scarlet belt to cinch-in her waist. She must watch Gok Wan. There are lines around her eyes like picture frames. She is beautiful. The other one has short chestnut hair and is wearing a white summer dress. She is beautiful.

  ‘What is it you’re drinking then, ladies?’ Jonah says. They tell him what they’re drinking and he orders them drinks. I am totally occupied feeling brilliant and loving, so I do not notice really. He pushes a beer into my hand and ruffles my hair. ‘How’s your night going then, girls?’

  The blonde one grins. ‘Lovely, thanks, and you boys?’

  ‘Oh, it was okay. Just got a whole lot better, though,’ Jonah says.

  The brunette one laughs. ‘Want to dance, cutie?’ she says, stretching out her hand. He takes it and they saunter off to the dance floor. I am very happy for them.

  Now it is just me and the blonde one. She is beautiful. In films she could play Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Keira Knightly or Reese Witherspoon. She smells of concentrated flowers and clouds. Her head is a marble bust of the sun.

  ‘Not a dancer, then?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, me? What? No, we can dance if you like. We can do whatever you like. What would make you happy? Let’s do what would make you happy.’

  ‘Awwh,’ she makes a noise like she’s looking at baby photos. ‘You’re so sweet.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘People aren’t nice enough. People only care about money and, uh, and boats and castles and stuff. I don’t care about that. Are you happy?’

  ‘Yes.’ She is nodding her head.

  ‘Do you want to dance?’

  ‘I’m happy here. We can dance if you want to.’

  ‘No way,’ I say. ‘Finish that drink, I’ll get us more.’

  I order more drinks from the barman. He is wearing a cowboy shirt and looks vaguely Mexican. I am delighted to meet him. I tip him five pounds. When I give it to him, I say ‘Share the wealth’ and he laughs.

  ‘So,’ the blonde one says, ‘what do you do?’

  As propelled by ‘plant fertiliser’ as I am, I recognise that in this situation honesty will only lead me down a cul-de-sac where I do not end up having sex.

  ‘I am a police officer,’ I say. ‘And Jonah is a porn baron.’ I think he will enjoy being that. ‘We are both twenty-two but I am by far the more mature.’

  The blonde one laughs. She has teeth like pieces of chewing gum pressed together in their packet. Her lips are the colour of watermelon guts.

  ‘And what do you do?’ I say.

  ‘I’m a receptionist for an insurance firm, and Susie over there’s a waitress, and don’t try to ask my age.’ She winks.

  It’s like we’re characters in a happy film. I am chatting up a beautiful woman in a bar and she will fall in love with me and our love will blossom like a sunflower in an eternal summer. Thank you, Jesus.

  When his legs get tired, Jonah comes over and nudges me into accompanying him to the toilet.

  ‘Why do you need to go to the bog together?’ the brunette one says.

  ‘I need a wingman,’ Jonah tells her. ‘Never shit alone.’

  Really we go to the toilet so we can fill our noses/throats/heads with more mephedrone. There is a lot left. No danger of tumbling down any hills yet.

  ‘We are definitely going to pork those gash,’ Jonah says. ‘Fuck, they are so wonderful. This is perfect.’

  ‘Fucking beautiful,’ I say.

  We leave the toilet.

  At the bar, our catches have re-constructed the Great Wall of China using shots of black sambuca. Black sambuca is beautiful.

  Jonah wraps his arms around the brunette one from behind and kisses her cheek. She grins. I grin at the blonde one.

  ‘Ready?’ she says.

  ‘Four each,’ the brunette one says. ‘Last one has to make out with the barman.’

  Everyone laughs. I am happy. We are all existing and interacting. Well done, us.

  Jonah is the first to finish. The blonde one is the last to finish. We all have black stains around our lips and down our necks and fronts. Everyone is smiling. I am smiling. The blonde one licks the sambuca stains off my neck. Her tongue feels like Abby Hall’s face.

  ‘Oi!’ the brunette one says. ‘You’re supposed to be getting on the barman, loser!’

  The blonde one laughs. Jonah does the type of whistling where you put a finger into each corner of your mouth. Is it called a wolf whistle? He is good at it. I am happy.

  The barman comes over because of Jonah’s wolf whistle. The blonde one grabs his cowboy shirt in her thin hand, pulls him towards her and throws her face against him. Everyone is laughing. Jackson 5 is playing. I can hear people singing. Jonah sings. We all go to dance.

 

  Funkytown shuts.

  I have reached second base with the blonde one and have good reason to believe that Jonah reached third base with the brunette one. The good reason is that he held his fingers under my nose and said, ‘Smell those babies, mate.’ Then we hugged. I am happy.

  We all move outside, where it is cold and the wind is enthusiastic. A girl in sequinned hotpants is being sick into a bin and a boy with heavily gelled hair is holding her extensions out of her face. Jonah laughs. I give the blonde one my coat and she kisses me. She says ‘So sweet’ when I do this.

  ‘Right, back to ours then?’ the brunette one says. We all agree and start walking.

  Their house turns out to be a semi-detached slice of suburbia. Is the mephedrone wearing off? I say this to Jonah. He nods. When we get inside, we turn to go to the toilet but the brunette one says, ‘Whatever it is, you can just do it off the kitchen side.’ And the blonde one adds, ‘Just let us have some.’

  We let them have some. Jonah scratches out eight lines and we all suck them up. One of the girls puts on some music. I don’t recognise it.

  ‘It’s Etta James,’ the brunette one says. We all hug.

  ‘This is beautiful,’ I say.

  ‘So beautiful,’ Jonah says. ‘You two are amazing.’

  ‘No, you two are amazing,’ the brunette one says.

  We all hug.

  The blonde one pulls me onto a sofa that smells of cheap wine. Behind it there is an upright piano. A dog idles into the room like a child who has wandered onto the stage of a play.

  ‘This is Peter,’ the blonde one says.

  ‘Hi, Peter.’

  ‘Hi, Peter.’

  Jonah and the brunette one disappear. The blonde one is kissing me on the sofa. She leans back and tugs at my collar until I am laid flat on top of her. I have never laid on top of breasts so experienced before. She guides my hand up her thigh. I guide it around the edge of her lace pants. Her vagina feels like a Brillo pad.

  ‘Lets go upstairs,’
she says.

  She takes my hand in hers and pulls me up the stairs. I stare at her beautiful ass the whole time, thinking about how happy I am.

  I am going to have sex with her. It will be practice. I want to be as good as possible for Georgia in Devon. I must work on my stamina.

  Her bedroom is . . . I don’t notice. We collapse under the duvet. My t-shirt falls off quickly, and my trousers, and my socks. We join forces when attempting to remove her dress but we are both unwilling to disentangle our lips so this proves difficult. Difficult but not impossible. I consider myself an expert at the removal of bras, that part is not a problem. Then we are both near-naked. I am laid between her legs like a dot in Pacman’s mouth. We are kissing. Her left hand blindly spanks the bedside table in search of a condom. A condom is found. She dresses me in it. I enter. Sighing. Moaning. I am a yo-yo. Turning her over. Slapping her ass and rocking backwards and forwards. Sighing. Moaning. Sleeping.

  13

  The comedown from mephedrone is my least favourite type of skiing. You begin to hate everyone around you. Like a paedophile in a nursing home. You want to be alone. Then you realise that you don’t really want to be alone, you just want to stop existing. You want to keep folding in on yourself until you aren’t there any more. Which is how I feel now.

  I can’t find the time anywhere. It is still dark. I don’t know where my phone is. I feel anxious when I don’t know what the time is. My throat is an Arizona highway. I am lying next to the woman, staring at the back of her cheaply dyed hair and ballooning with regret. I really despise this woman, and this house. I despise Jonah, too, but I should find him.

  Fuck, she probably has kids.

  I’m totally naked. I can’t find my boxer shorts but I do find my jeans. The denim is a cheese grater against my testicles. Fuck. Jesus, my head. Okay, Jasper J. Wolf, pull yourself together. Now is not the time for an existential 9/11. You must keep moving. Find clothes. Find Jonah. Leave.

  The carpet annoys my toes. I walk out of the bedroom and across the landing into the bathroom. Jonah is in there, stood in the bath, with the shower raining over his head. His Virgin Mary tattoo is staring at me like a disabled person. Jonah is mumbling a prayer.

  ‘Can you stop with that shit so we can leave?’ I say.

  He turns around. ‘Fuck off, how would you know anything about any God? You’ll go to Hell.’

  I can still feel the residue of the mephedrone like a sea of India ink through my head. I hate Jonah. I want to disappear. Why are we walking, talking or moving?

  ‘Please let’s fucking get out of here,’ I say.

  He turns off the shower and climbs out. ‘My head fucking kills.’

  I make sure to kick Peter in the ribs on the way out.

  When we get back to the hostel, everyone else is happier than us. Or at least less ill. Ping and Ana are curled around each other, whispering, and Tenaya is reading on her bed.

  ‘Where the fuck have you been?’ Ping says.

  Jonah falls onto his bed.

  ‘Me and Jasper have made a pact never ever to talk about anything that happened last night ever again. As my friends, I will trust you will respect that pact and not attempt to elicit any information from us.’

  Tenaya laughs. ‘Ugly girls?’

  ‘Worse,’ I say.

  ‘Shut up!’ Jonah wraps a pillow around his head and groans.

  On the coach back home I fall asleep on Tenaya’s shoulder while rain kisses the windows and Mrs Norton reads out loud from her Bible.

  Part 2

  Exhumation and Fires

  14

  Mum and Keith are putting together an IKEA bookcase in the living room. It looks like a boat at the moment. Keith swears. Mum sighs. In the event of an apocalypse, they would both be fucked because they lack the practical skills that are required for survival in our dystopian future. A man capable of killing lions with his bare hands will probably shoot and skin them both. He will fashion their skins into a Mackintosh.

  I am sat in the kitchen with a German textbook, not revising. It is more exciting watching the two of them. Open-plan living is cheap cinema.

  ‘Keith, where’s 4C?’ Mum says.

  ‘There isn’t a 4C, darling.’

  ‘But look.’

  She holds the instructions up to Keith’s face. My Mum dislikes instructions. She calls them destructions. This is a joke. People tell jokes when they do not know what else to do. A lot of jokes are told in hospitals. Usually, these type of jokes are not very good.

  ‘It’s wrong,’ Keith says. ‘The instructions are wrong.’

  Mum is appalled. ‘I’ll phone IKEA,’ she says. ‘I’ll complain.’

  Keith grins. ‘I don’t fore see you getting much help.’

  They both laugh. Keith can’t even do puns well. I have no idea what Mum sees in him. Maybe he has a penis the size of a toddler.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘Hello. I’m Jasper. I’m your only son, and I’m trying to revise.’

  ‘Ooh,’ Mum says.

  ‘We’ve been sent to the naughty step, love.’

  They kiss. It is disgusting. I go up to my room.

  My phone is on my bed upstairs. It is vibrating. It is spinning itself in circles on my pillow like a Catherine wheel. Tenaya is calling.

  ‘Jasper?’ she says.

  ‘My parents are trying to make furniture,’ I say. ‘Keith made a pun and they kissed. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘I’m thinking about Tom.’

  ‘Still?’

  ‘He was a big part of things for a long time, Jasper. No matter what you thought of him.’

  I breathe hard into my phone. ‘He was not a good boyfriend. He is an irritating human being.’

  ‘Jasper, you aren’t helping.’

  ‘What is there to help with?’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘I’ve got like a half-gram. I’ll bring it over if you want.’

  ‘Argh.’

  Tenaya hangs up.

  I do not know what I have done wrong. I did my best. I try. You have to try to understand other people, Jasper. Imagine you are them.

  Tom was my boyfriend and now he is not. I loved Tom very much. Tom cheated on me. Tom left me. Tom has such nice cheekbones. Tom will probably become a rich art dealer. I don’t know what to do now. Tom. I don’t know what to do now. I loved him.

  Julia: empathy

  Tenaya: nicks on her arms

  Radio: the mental state of self-harming adolescents may deteriorate if they do not get the help they so clearly ask for by harming themselves

  Oh.

  OH.

  I run downstairs and hurl my body out of the front door. I shout a goodbye to Mum. I pelt down the streets. I am an advert for Nike footwear.

  Up along our road, then a left at the Hungry Horse, past school, past a woman with a Monroe and an empty pram, past two men sipping cheap lager on a low wall, past the Baptist church and Happy Shopper and Ben McKay’s house.

  Tenaya’s.

  I throw my body over the fence at the end of her garden. Her parents are keeping chickens in case of an apocalypse. Tenaya’s stood with her back to me on the other side of her kitchen’s French doors. She’s probably got a palmful of paracetamol. I have to stop her.

  Things I can see near the French doors:

  Spade

  Pot plant

  Bench

  Plastic bucket

  Plastic bucket is the only option. Not a dumbbell, not a feather. I pick it up and swing open the French doors. I bring the bucket down as hard as I can on her head. She screams. She whips round to face me. It didn’t work. Should I try again?

  ‘JASPERWHATTHEFUCK?’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘What t
he fuck are you doing?’

  I grab her wrists and squeeze them. Her hands open like flowers. She is not holding paracetamol.

  ‘You said you were going to do suiciding,’ I say.

  Tenaya blushes. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You were thinking about it.’

  ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘I know you were. I’ve learned how to empathise.’

  ‘Shut up, Jasper.’

  She sits down on one of the kitchen stools. I stay standing.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says.

  ‘I was scared,’ I say. ‘Jonah’s disgusting and Ping has Ana.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ she says. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I don’t either. But I told you to text when it happens. I’ll buy that two-for-five-pounds wine from Imran’s and we can watch Labyrinth in your bed and I’ll let you pluck my eyebrows.’

  ‘I called.’

  ‘You didn’t make it clear enough.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I’m going to boil the kettle now,’ I say. This is something people say when they want to let someone know that everything’s okay but they don’t know how.

  There is a stain on Tenaya’s kitchen wall in the shape of a rabbit’s head. It was born when Tenaya’s mum threw a cup of coffee at Tenaya’s dad. Nobody washed it off. They have stopped working on renovating the house.

  ‘You said you were going to boil the kettle,’ Tenaya says.

  ‘I just said that to – ’ She didn’t understand. ‘Okay.’

  We take the tea up to her bedroom and watch old episodes of Sex and the City from beneath a duvet. Big does not deserve Carrie.

  ‘Are we going to Twelve Cats tomorrow?’ I say.

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘They’re getting better.’

  ‘Will you go to Asda with me afterwards?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to get food. Mum won’t buy any. She just gets drunk and orders takeaway.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Thanks.’