Stuff

by Stefan Mohamed

That might be Laika talking.

  But who cares? I like how Laika talks. It’s better than how I talks.

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Lee? Is that Lee? Wow, fucking hell.’ And I did a fair old babble and hugged him awkwardly and said to Penny that this was Lee, and we’d met in Goa, and blah blah blah, and he smoked some of Penny’s spliff but I didn’t, because I didn’t like them, never have, and he offered us some acid and we said we were fine, although eventually Penny left and I stayed and I had some, and we ended up racing shopping trolleys beneath an incandescent sunrise, and sharing a brief but stimulating kiss, and swapping numbers, and I went home and decided I wanted to not be on acid any more, but unfortunately that’s not how it works, and I spent a lot of hours lying in bed watching my posters shimmer, and I had to work that evening and by the time I got there I had Lee saying ‘Throw me the trolley’ going round and round and round in my head like a slowly, steadily decaying recording, which made it hard to remember anything. I think I was working in a bar at that point. It’s hard enough keeping track of all the jobs I’ve done, without Laika’s million and one jobs rattling around in my brain as well.

  Lee doesn’t do jobs, so that’s OK.

  Anyway.

  So Lee comes into his room at a later date, having been gone a while. I’ve been amusing myself on the Internet and enjoying being in his room, with its Indian hangings and garish luminous drawings of machine elves dancing on giant mushrooms, and the low throbbing spacey music he left playing, and the naked wooden lady sculptures and the instruments, and although I’m kind of wondering how he paid for all these things, and how he continues to pay for this flat that he doesn’t share with anyone, and for the Internet and everything, I don’t really care all that much, I’m just happy to have access to it, and to him, I think.

  So Lee comes in, having been gone a while, and smiles at me. ‘Got it.’

  ‘Got what?’

  ‘The stuff.’ I thought he was just saying “the stuff” at that point.

  ‘What stuff? What is it?’

  ‘No, no, it’s called Stuff. Or STUFF, maybe.’

  ‘Oh . . . how come? Why’s it called that?’

  He shrugs, and sits next to me, cross-legged. ‘Don’t know. Maybe an acronym? The chemicals might be S-T-U-F-F . . . like . . . um . . . seretonial-tryskelion-uberwobble-flexing-fluxamine, or whatever. Who cares.’ He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a baggie of some stunningly red powder. ‘Stuff all up in this bitch.’

  ‘I don’t feel that comfortable taking some random stuff,’ I said. ‘Especially stuff that’s called Stuff.’

  ‘I have it on excellent authority that it will change everything,’ said Lee.

  That was all I needed to hear, really.

  Everything was bollocks.

  Why not change it?

  Everything was not bollocks. But it also was. I eventually stopped sending self-pitying emails to my brother because he started sending one-line responses, things like “first world problems” and “white people problems” or combinations of the two. I’d sort of been hoping he would indulge me. We’d not really got on until we’d moved out and gone our separate ways, then had discovered via Christmas reunions that there were actually things we liked about one another, and we’d maybe over-compensated for lost time by being too accepting of one another’s foibles, so he was generally sympathetic to my bullshit and I to his, but my whinging must have got really bad for him to get as irritated as he did.

  It was really bad.

  I never knew what to think.

  On the one hand, having hardly any money, and working shit jobs for awful people, and missing so many opportunities, and getting ill from the mould in my flat, and being taken for a ride by a twat of a boyfriend, all of that was bad. But moaning about it felt not allowed.

  What I’m trying to say, is why wouldn’t I try some weird mystery substance bought by someone I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure I liked?

  Because I was 22 23, and that’s basically still like being 18, that’s why.

  And because fuck you, like you’re so fucking perfect.

  LEE

  So in what ways did I not like Lee?

  The endless conspiracy theories were bit of a stumbling block, although I found them more confusing than annoying, at least at first. Chemtrails. Secret geo-engineering. The Illuminati. Bohemian Grove. Controlled demolitions. Mind-controlling chemicals in the water. The secret Zionist plot to destroy money by getting all the money. Popular conspiracies. Less-popular conspiracies. Conspiracies so arcane and bizarre that I had to wade into some of Google’s dodgier backwaters just to find references to them. He subscribed to everything. Everyone was out to deliberately and specifically fuck things up, to fuck up his life and the lives of lovely liberal hippie types, to steal their futures and their lentils and convert them into environmentally-unfriendly fuel for sky lasers that would alter the weather patterns to destroy Chinese rice paddies in order to perpetuate the dominance of the western status quo.

  ‘For someone who hates the government,’ said Laika, one tiring day, ‘all governments, you’re pretty happy to believe that they’re all mind-bogglingly clever and well-organised. Like centuries-in-the-making-supervillain-master-plan-level clever and well-organised. Also, you do know half this crap comes from batshit right-wing American libertarian nutcases hanging out in compounds sticking their dicks in their RCP-90s, or whatever, don’t you?’

  Lee absolutely loved that Laika referenced one of the best guns (the best gun?) from Goldeneye on the N64. I think that was the only bit of what she said that he actually heard.

  I could appreciate his passion, even if much of what he said seemed suspect. Not that I really knew much about it. I wasn’t much for deep research. I tended to just look for the first reference that disproved the conspiracy and take that as read – generally they were printed on better-looking websites, with less ALL CAPS Comic Sans and exclamation marks, and that was enough for me. I suspected that this approach was pretty much exactly what Lee did, but from the other side of the looking glass. We were as bad as each other.

  Laika was much better at actually arguing with him. She could remember facts. Figures. Experiments. Studies. She rigorously checked her sources, and vetted Lee’s. And she effortlessly constructed huge logic pyramids and trapped him inside them. And I loved it.

  I did love Lee too, though. Don’t get me wrong. And God, he cared. And caring is good.

  ‘At first I saw him kind of like a brother, I suppose,’ said Laika. ‘I imagine that’s what having a brother would be like, taking the piss, squabbling . . . I never really had that. Being an only child and all. Then it got kind of weird . . . ’

  Weird?

  Sister, and how.

  Not really sister, of course.

  Lee was also great at making excuses for being fucking lazy. And he was very, very smug about what he like to call his ‘optimised lifestyle’ (srsly. IKR?).

  Lee also attracted people like this:

  TO SEE THE SORTS OF PEOPLE LEE ATTRACTED, GO TO THE NEXT BIT

  COKEY GUY

  So it’s the first only time we took Stuff at a party, which I maintained from the beginning was a bad idea, as did Laika, but Lee convinced us, because he was always generally often very convincing, and it ended up with me talking to this guy who had come to talk to Lee because guys like this always came to talk to Lee, but Lee had fucked off with some girl (another fundamental betrayal of our group dynamic, Laika said, although I didn’t actually mind all that much, and neither did she after a while) and I ended up sitting and listening while this coked-up wingnut tried to explain exactly why Stuff (which he openly admitted he’d never tried, while chopsing off his gourd on cocaine, possibly the least social drug of all the drugs, well maybe not, but at least the least social one that people do socially) was bad news.

  ‘It comes from the governm
ent, you know,’ he said, chewing his lip, compulsively rolling cigarettes and racking himself up small lines, never once offering any, which I was kind of like wut about but also glad because ugh who wants to look like this derptard.

  ‘And what a derptard,’ Laika said, later, as we stumbled home wrapped in one another.

  ‘The government?’ I asked. It’s always the government. I was in super focused mode. There are many different modes with Stuff, and you can slip in and out of them with ease after a while. You can make everything go away, or you can make everything do the opposite, you can be super-duper-attenuated to what’s going on. I was staring fixedly at this guy, simultaneously not wanting anything to do with him and being fascinated by him, he had words on his face and in the air around his head, Sherlock-style, things like recently dumped and coke head and minor dealer but he bigs it up and rich parents, embarrassed by that and so on, and Laika was sitting by me with her hand on my knee, half-listening, but also just enjoying being in the room, enjoying the warmth from those around her, who were mainly on some sort of ecstasy equivalent or something trippy or both, so the vibes were generally good and she was just soaking it up, like lying on a beach and bringing in the warmth and the energy of the sea, sucking it up, wiggling her toes in it, and the colour and the music were making her buzz and turning her blood funny colours, and I was getting a nice little undertow of that, I could have had more but weirdly I wanted to listen to this guy, I felt kind of sorry for him, and every now and then Laika would have a thought, something like he’s so lonely or bedroom DJ, spends too much money on records but doesn’t play out at all, and I’d do a little smile because it was like aha, yes, makes sense, and anyway.

  ‘The government?’ I asked. ‘They made Stuff?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said, like I’m the ultimate idiot. ‘I mean, just look at the properties. The connectedness, actual real connectedness, not the fake bullshit connectedness that you get when you’re twatting about on MDMA, it’s like genuine telepathy or something, isn’t it?’ It wasn’t a question. ‘So how the hell would some amateur night chemist, which is where all the drugs worth taking come from now, how the hell would they have managed to synthesise that in their garden shed? How? Answer me that.’ So that was a question.

  ‘Can’t,’ I said. ‘But . . . the government?’

  ‘It’s an experiment,’ he said, tapping his head, chin twitching. ‘They’ve worked out that the War on Drugs is bullshit, they’ve worked out that people just want to get fucked, and that it’s not a case of “drugs equals communities collapsing” all the time, that it’s more complicated than that, and yeah, that people just want to get fucked, have done since the dawn of time, will do until the heat death of the universe, and so they’re taking advantage of it, for their own ends. A grand experiment. Stimulating a new phase of evolution. Creating psychic super soldiers, maybe. Doesn’t it allow you to connect to the Internet too, or something?’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Or maybe not psychic super soldiers, maybe they’re just trying to connect everyone, make one big huge mass, a big hive-minded neural net Akira-style gestalt, something that’s more easily manipulated, and they can just fish out whatever information they want, ‘cos that’s all they want, you know, that’s what fucking Snowden was on about, they want all the information, they want to suck it out of us by whatever means necessary, and they’ll get it from your Twitter and your fucking Facebook, and whatever else, they’ll rendition you to fucking Gitmo based on something they spot on your goddamn Pinterest board, or just use it to sell you shit, but . . . um . . . yeah, so obviously, why wouldn’t they try to suck the information directly out of your brain? Why not? Why not put this new Stuff on the street, see it spread? See what happens? Worst that can happen is you have a generation of braindead fucking vegetables. Well. Kind of already there, aren’t we?’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Maybe that was the plan from the very beginning. The powers that be fuck the economy so hard up the arse that it collapses, disenfranchising a generation, ensuring that all that potential was always going to be wasted, making them a perfect control group for this messed-up new evolutionary regime. Humanity degenerating into one huge interconnected endlessly fragmenting fleshy sub-Reddit of weird fetishes and fucking doge memes, with the government periodically digging for information they can flog to advertisers and overseas power brokers to kill time and boost the coffers between illegal wars and cumming toxic jizz into the atmosphere. Are you trying to tell me you haven’t thought about that at all?’

  That was a question, and although I opened my mouth and spoke, it was Laika who answered. Her thought. Her words. ‘Honestly,’ we said, and I heard it as us speaking in unison, although that’s not actually what happened, ‘no. Haven’t thought about that one, sparky. But riddle me this. If the government were behind Stuff, how come London’s fuckwit mayor came out in his little speech and said it was the most dangerous threat to the nation’s youth to rear its head in decades? The Mail has reported it, calling it Steve or whatever. “Known on the street as Steve”. Fucking plums. The government have made their case pretty clear. They’re going to make it a class A, when they can work out what it is. So why– ’

  ‘Because it’s a double bluff,’ said cokey guy, as if we were retarded, and we both bristled, and enjoyed feeling each other’s frustration, ‘cos the one thing that’s better than sharing love is sharing the feeling of oh shove it you asshole. ‘They make it out to be dangerous and illegal and whatnot, obviously people are going to want to take it. Legalisation would have the opposite effect. I mean, no-one smokes weed in Amsterdam.’ Um, said Laika, in my head, yeah they do. He’s definitely never been. ‘People would lose interest right fucking quick,’ cokey guy continued. ‘Obviously.’

  Standard issue response. This guy really should talk with Lee, I thought. Yeah, Laika agreed. Same old same old. If the government comes out in favour of it, they’re obviously in favour of it. If they come out against it, they’re obviously in favour of it but they’re lying about it, double bluff, that’s what they want you to think, blah blah blah.

  Cokey guy tried to make another point, but at this point Lee was getting it on with that random girl, and Laika and I could both feel it, and it made us horny, and we cuddled up and kind of drifted away from the conversation, and cokey guy got bored and also drifted away. And we baa’d like sheeple, and felt all soft.

  Other things happened.

  OTHER THINGS

  I tried to write a play. I’d started trying to write a play in my second year of university, with a view to staging it in my third, and maybe getting somebody to invite somebody who knew somebody to watch it, and by the time I’d been graduated for six months I had a cast of characters and two scenes.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Amber (20): Shy, introverted writerly type. University drop-out. Secretly in love with a teacher much older than her.

  Selena (20): Amber’s evil morally ambiguous, extroverted alter-ego.

  Gareth (54): Creative writing teacher, poet, novelist. Object of Amber’s affections.

  Mr G (54): Gareth’s Mr Hyde-esque alter-ego.

  Tiffany (21): Amber’s best friend.

  Matt (20): Tiffany’s boyfriend.

  Frankie (19): Amber’s brother. Possibly a serial killer.

  Frankie (19): Frankie’s girlfriend, real name Francesca. Also possibly a serial killer, unbeknownst to Frankie.

  Wolfgang (25): Enigma.

  THINGS I LOVE ABOUT LAIKA

  Her poetry. “Like if PJ Harvey fucked Chance the Rapper,” said Lee. I wish I’d said that.

  Her voice, which is like hot chocolate if hot chocolate were sarcastic.

  The way she shares when we take Stuff.

  Her tattoos.

  Her hair.

  Her skin.

  Her lips.

  Her . . . well generally all aspects of her physicalness.

  The way she rolls her eyes
and says ‘or whatever’.

  The way she walks, which makes me think of the phrase “badass orphan”.

  The way she holds Lee at bay.

  The way she cooks a fry-up.

  Her eyes (I said all aspects of physicalness already, didn’t I, fuck it).

  Her clothes, “like Faith from Buffy drawn by Jamie Hewlett”. Both Lee and I wish we’d said that, and we don’t know who did say it, so maybe one of us did. Who cares.

  The way she said she liked my play.

  A THING I DON’T LOVE ABOUT LAIKA

  The way she ended up writing my play.

  ANOTHER THING I LOVE ABOUT LAIKA

  The way I ended up writing her poems.

  THE FIRST TIME

  Um, so.

  The first time I took Stuff, it was just me and Lee, and it made me feel closer to him than I’d felt to anyone since Chris, before Chris maybe, and it also made the whole world turn inside out, and the walls warped, and I was completely aware of every molecule of my own body, and of Lee’s, and I could hear his thoughts, and he could hear mine, and although at that point it all wore off when the Stuff did, I definitely felt ripples for the next few weeks. I’d be doing something, checking Facebook or pouring a drink at the bar or eating cereal, or something, and I’d have a thought that definitely wasn’t mine. Lee said the same thing was happening to him, and he smiled. And I smiled.

  I’m sure it should have freaked me out more than it did.

  Shouldn’t it?

  The second time I took Stuff, Lee brought Laika along, someone he said he’d met at a squat party or maybe they knew each other from sixth form and asked to come along and join us. I’d met Laika in The Bell on Stokes Croft, and asked her if she fancied coming along and joining us. We sat and talked together, the three of us, for a long time, before we took any Stuff. We asked questions. Got to know one another. Vibed. We told embarrassing stories and said what made us irrationally angry. We told some scary secrets. We cried. And when we finally took the Stuff, it was fucking transcendent. Literally.