Twenty Something

by Iain Hollingshead

  ‘Jack, are you listening to me?’

  ‘Sorry, I was miles away. What were you saying, Jean?’

  ‘I was asking whether you wanted to kiss me.’

  Direct, as ever. We’re standing outside a tube station. There is a Big Issue seller next to us. A bunch of teenagers walks past giggling.

  ‘Er, yes, that would be quite nice actually.’

  But it’s far from nice. I mean, I’ve had some bad snogs in my time. I remember my first one with Mel aged fourteen. We were both wearing train tracks. We didn’t come up for breath for fifty minutes. Every time I opened my eyes, hers were staring into my left eyebrow. I remember seeing Rick and Flatmate Fred jigging around behind her giving me the thumbs-up. It was like we had been waiting all our lives for this moment (I guess we had) and we were going to cling on for dear life. And I think we were both scared that stopping meant having a conversation, and that is the worst thing imaginable for a fourteen-year-old.

  But eleven years on, here is Jean pipping Mel to the post. It’s the most rancid kiss I’ve ever had in my life. And there is nothing worse than a bad kiss. I want fireworks; I’m getting a tumble-drier. I’d like some delicate nibbles; she is trying to vacuum out my oesophagus. I’d appreciate some delicate teeth work; she’s taking penalty hockey flicks at my tonsils. It’s utterly repellent. It’s about as sexy as cooking beans on toast.

  I close my eyes and try to imagine Leila, but it’s still not working. After thirty seconds, I can take no more.

  ‘Jean, this has been lovely.’

  ‘Yes, it has. And you’re an amazing kisser. Call me soon, lovely boy.’

  With all due modesty, I think I am a rather good kisser. But it takes two to tango, and I plan never to waste my talent on Jean the Dyson again.

  Tuesday 16th August

  ‘Fred, why is it that everyone we like at the moment is completely unfanciable and everyone we fancy is completely dislikable. Why do we continue with the torturous amateur dramatics of the dating game? Why do we love our friends and fancy unsuitable strangers? Why do we think like heroes and act like cads?’

  He looks up from Act II of his screenplay.

  ‘Jack, you’re in love with Leila. She’s the one girl who you adore and fancy. She seems to bring out the best in you. Why can’t you just admit it to yourself and then admit it to her? Then you’ll get closure, and then you can move on, and then you can get a bloody job and join the rest of humanity again.’

  ‘What, you think she’ll say no?’

  ‘I’ve got absolutely no idea. But you’re never going to find out if you don’t ask her.’

  Actually, he’s right. It’s piss-simple, but he’s hit the nail on the head. I always skirt cowardly around the issue, hoping somehow that she’ll pick up on my feelings through a fog of alcoholic obfuscation and subtle hints. For all our conversations and our friendship and our closeness, I have never wholeheartedly told her how I feel. Instead, I sit here at my laptop, recording my grubby little thoughts in my diary, frustrating my feelings and feeling my frustrations, refusing to set myself up for failure, unwilling to take a leap in the dark, living the cosy fantasy because I’m too scared to try the reality.

  I haven’t spoken to her properly for ages. We’ve let the closeness slide. I’ll see what she’s up to at the weekend.

  Saturday 20th August

  Leila has offered to cook for me at her house in Shepherd’s Bush.

  I spend ages getting myself ready to go out. Every hair is in place, every orifice scrubbed, deodorised and perfumed. My lucky boxer shorts are washed, pressed and sparkling.

  Eminem is helping to psych me up. I’m jigging around my bedroom using my aftershave as a microphone. The crowds are loving it. I’ve only got one shot, one opportunity, to seize everything that I ever wanted, one moment. Yo! I’ve got to capture it, not just let it slip.

  ‘Yo,’ says Flatmate Fred, coming into my bedroom and turning the music down a notch. ‘You can do anything you set your mind to, man.’

  ‘Thanks, Fred, very profound.’

  ‘Go get her, Tiger. And, Jack — one thing.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you don’t say anything to her, I’m not letting you back into the flat tonight. This nonsense has gone on long enough.’

  ‘Thanks, mate.’

  He gives me a hug.

  And so I arrive at Leila’s house just off Uxbridge Road. I’ve never been here before. Her two housemates are out.

  ‘Jack, it’s so great to see you. I’m just cooking now. We’re going to have a duck.’

  ‘A what? Oh, yes, sorry.’

  I haven’t spoken to her properly for ages — not since our ‘No, don’t be silly, of course I don’t fucking love you’ chat. We’ve got a million things to catch up about. She wanted to hear about the Windsor polo incident and the Mrs Fothergill letter in full. I told her about Rick’s wedding. I left out the bit about Katie.

  I feel myself open up to her again. We pick up from where we left off. I can talk to her like no one else in the world. She takes away my cynicism and my juvenility and my snideness. I become the idealistic person I’d like to be. And when she talks I listen because I want to, and not because I have to. She is endlessly and wholly and perfectly enchanting.

  We’re still there at midnight. I have absolutely no idea what we’re talking about by now, but I know it’s great. It’s just that right level of drunkenness where the conversation really hits its stride. We could be talking about shooting stars, eternal love and the fundamental meaningless of it all; we could equally well be discussing the perfect Pot Noodle. It doesn’t really matter; we have an inner rhythm of our own. I just want to hear her voice, swim in her eyes and lie, at mortal rest, between her golden breasts for ever.

  But my poor blue balls are in exquisite raptures of agony. I’ve had an erection for three hours and I really need to go to the loo. And that means trying to pee with an agonising stiffy. It’s an awful conundrum. Either you spend ten minutes pacing up and down the bathroom thinking about an OAP wiping his bottom or you opt for the long-distance release.

  I go for the latter. I want to get back to Leila and tell her how much I like her, that I want to grow old with her, that I would die to protect her.

  A long-distance release involves crouching on the floor at a distance of about one to two metres from the loo, according to a rapid calculus formula based on your angle of excitement and the fullness of your bladder. After many years of unrequited conversations about shooting stars and Pot Noodles, I have the technique almost flawless.

  But, just as I’m settling, one of Leila’s housemates comes home and flings open the bathroom door. In a normal situation this would have been fine. We would have had a laugh about locks and swapped a few sumptuous observations about men and loo seats. But long-distance releases are no normal situations. Crouched as I am almost two metres back from my target, the bathroom door catches me in the small of my back in the full arc of its parabola. I topple forward, membus virilis still in shocked hand as the pair collide in a searing chorus of pain on the rim of the pan.

  ‘Sorry, so sorry,’ she trills out, closing the bathroom door rapidly behind her.

  Not half as sorry as I am. The force of the door also causes my head to fling forwards, hitting the upturned loo seat and bringing it crashing down on my neck. I am left looking like the victim of a medieval torture, my neck on the block, my head down the pan, my damaged cock in my hand, my life going down the toilet.

  I struggle to my feet and make my way back to the sitting room to join Leila and her bemused friend.

  ‘Jack, this is Catherine.’

  ‘Hi, Catherine. Hi.’

  Catherine looks at me as if I’m some kind of child molester. How much did she see in the bathroom? She wipes her hand on her trousers after shaking mine.

  ‘Leila, I’ve really got to go.’

  She looks disappointed.

  ‘I’m sorry. Think I’m suddenly a bit drunk. I’ll see m
yself out.’

  Sunday 21st August

  ‘So her flatmate thought you were polishing your trumpet in the bathroom?’

  ‘Yeah, Fred, probably. Whatever.’

  The memory is almost as painful as my nether regions.

  ‘Ha ha, you and your penis injuries. When you weren’t back by midnight, I assumed you’d got lucky.’

  ‘It’s not bloody funny at all. I’ve blown it again. One shot and I was chewed up and spat out and booed off stage. Right now, Catherine will be telling Leila what a weirdo I am.’

  ‘Yep, I reckon you’ve well and truly blown it this time.’

  ‘Cheers, Fred. Look mate, I want to go travelling. The last refuge of the failure. Get away from all this crap and nonsense. My life’s going nowhere. I need to clear my head. Do you fancy coming, too?’

  ‘I’d love to, but I’m really too busy. Why don’t you go by yourself? You’re a mess at the moment. Get a round-the-world ticket. You’ll meet people on the way.’

  You know, I think I might just do that.

  Tuesday 23rd August

  Everything is in place. I have an open-ended return ticket to Lima. Jasper is moving into my room until I get back and I have managed to palm off Jean with the hundred per cent truthful excuse that I am going to be out of the country for a lengthy period.

  My bags are packed with books, mosquito nets, malaria pills and condoms. I am off to expand my mind and find the inner Jack Lancaster.

  SEPTEMBER

  Thursday 1st September

  From: Jack Lancaster [unemployed@hotmail.com]

  To: Buddy; Claire; Flatmate Fred; Jasper; Katie;

  Leila; Lucy; Mel; Miranda; Mr Cox; Rick; Rupert; Susie

  CC:

  Subject: South America — my Lonely Planet

  Hola amigos (that’s Spanish),

  Well, I’ve now been in South America for a week and I’m fluent in Spanish. It is not a linguistically advanced language, and I also have working knowledge of several local dialects, as well as a passable understanding of most indigenous languages of the region. Frankly, it’s embarrassing having to sit here and write to you in English, so do the decent thing and master it yourselves next time you have a few spare minutes. Gracias.

  A week ago (when I knew no more Spanish than the rest of you), I embarked on my epic, self-searching, life-affirming adventure at Terminal Three, Heathrow, near Slough, UK. How remote the tawdry baubles of the corrupt First World seem to me now as I sit in an internet café in the Andean foothills.

  Anyway, the trip got off to a bad start when my hand luggage was searched by security staff at Heathrow and two hundred condoms fell out of my washbag.

  ‘Are you planning on having a lot of sex?’ asked the unforgivably ugly security woman.

  ‘No, they’re in case I run out of water containers in the Peruvian rainforest,’ I explained, pointing at the appropriate page in my SAS survival handbook to illustrate my point. ‘They can hold two pints of liquid each.’

  Passed the time on the flight reading the Not-So-Lonely Planet guide about the countries I’m visiting. Paid particular attention to the ‘Dangers and annoyances’ section to check up on my statistical chances of being kidnapped, raped or robbed (low to medium).

  I only spent two days in Lima (the capital of Peru and the armpit of the earth). As soon as you venture onto the streets, nasty little hordes of ankle-biters would swarm around you saying, ‘One dollar, mister.’

  ‘Oh yes, my whaggish whimsies,’ I would reply in fluent Quechua, ‘a dollar is the native currency of the United States of America and approximately equal to 3.31 Peruvian nuevo sols. Now go and play in the traffic.’

  I avoided these unpleasant menaces by spending most of my time in the hostel — a beautiful colonial building in the city centre — watching a pirated copy of Braveheart and talking to gap-year travellers while drinking Pisco Sour (translation: ‘sour piss’) which tastes like a combination of tequila, cream and vomit. Briefly contemplated going to a nightclub called ‘Heaven or Hell, Tu Decides’, but took an executive decision to go to bed instead.

  The next day I caught a bus to Huacachina via Ica (look it up on a map) and watched an intriguing film called Death Wish VII en route. Went sandboarding in the desert dunes and swam around a stagnant lake. A couple of days later, I caught a bus to Nazca and flew over the Nazca Lines (much better in the postcards) and then carried on to Arequipa, which is a pretty town with amazing views of the mountains.

  I am now in an adorable little village above Arequipa called Chivay, which is at 3600 metres. I spent yesterday getting altitude sickness and admiring the huge condors. Today I was invited to a local wedding and bathed in the hot springs. Just off now to the only open building in the village — an Irish pub.

  Hope you’re all enjoying autumn in London. Will write soon.

  Love Jack

  PS Fred, how’s the new flatmate?

  PPS Mr and Mrs Fielding, are you back from your honeymoon yet?!

  PPPS Hi Buddy, long time, no see. Now rod off.

  PPPPS Hello Mr Cox, you crapulent piece of crap.

  Thought you’d like to hear what I’m up to.

  PPPPPS That’s it. The rest of you don’t get personal PS messages.

  Saturday 3rd September

  From: Jack Lancaster [unemployed@hotmail.com]

  To:

  CC:

  Subject: South America II — electronic errors

  Buenas días, filos de putas,

  Well, as you can see, I have learned my lesson and decided to blind-carbon-copy you all in future.

  Thank you for your ‘reply all’ email, Flatmate Fred. Now go away and shag Jasper.

  Jack

  PS Mr Cox, thank you for your request to be ‘taken off this goddamn list’. I would love to, but I don’t think I have the requisite technical skills. Sorry.

  -----Original Message-----

  From: Fred Hardy [fred.hardy@yahoo.co.uk]

  To: Buddy; Claire; Jack; Jasper; Katie; Leila; Lucy;

  Mel; Miranda; Mr Cox; Rick; Rupert; Susie

  CC:

  Subject: RE: South America — my Lonely Planet

  Hello everyone on Jack’s email list (that’s English), Here in London (that’s the capital of Great Britain), things are absolutely crazy. Today I got up at around 8.30am. Then I had a shower and ate my breakfast. I had Crunchy Nut Cornflakes with a splash of semi-skimmed milk. Then I made some fair trade coffee — we can all save the world in our own little way. And then I sat at my desk for eight hours and worked.

  Later I am going to a bar where you really get to meet the locals. It’s really authentic — it’s called Walkabout. The indigenous people here are so friendly and so much more real. So are the sunsets. These are just some of the little details which make living in London in your twenties one of the most rewarding and life-enriching things to do.

  I am slowly mastering the English language. My name is Fred. Jack refers to me as Flatmate Fred. I have one sister. She is called Beatrice. I have one hamster. My hamster is called Gnasher. I love school. My favourite subjects are Science and Sport. I would like one blackcurrant ice cream and four gallons of unleaded petrol.

  I hope you are swimming in as big pools of you/me as I am.

  Love from Fred

  PS Take me off this list.

  Monday 5th September

  From: Jack Lancaster [unemployed@hotmail.com]

  To:

  CC:

  Subject: South America III — in the bathroom

  Since I wrote to you last I have mainly being shitting for Britain.

  I think it was the ‘bacon burger’ that I had in the ‘Irish pub’ in Chivay.

  ‘Would you like it heated?’ asked the Irish barman (called José).

  ‘No, I would like it cooked,’ I replied.

  But I think he wafted it over the lukewarm coals just along enough to galvanise every dormant bacteria in Peru.

&
nbsp; Extra hamburguesa con tocino y quesa y mierda (that’s Spanish again).

  Ten minutes later I was running for the loo. It was like shitting an angry dragon. It reminded me of one of my university essays: wobbly introduction, a couple of cogent points in the middle and a loose conclusion. In the last twenty-four hours, I have gone to the loo twenty-eight times. Fifteen of these trips were poos alone. Eight were voms. And five blessed times I didn’t know whether to squat or kneel. All in all, my work in the South American bathroom leaves a great deal to be desired. When evacuation is less controlled than desirable, one requires the balance of an eastern European child gymnast to avoid pebbledashing the pants. I have the balance of a fat Englishman on holiday.

  Apologies if you’re reading this over lunch. We travellers sometimes forget that normal people at home don’t talk about their bowel movements incessantly. When/if I come home, it could be something of a reverse culture shock.

  Have to go now. The beast is awake again.

  Love Jack (half the man he used to be)

  PS Rick, delighted that you had ‘so much fun shagging on your honeymoon’. I hope Lucy enjoyed Venice too.

  Thursday 15th September

  From: Jack Lancaster [unemployed@hotmail.com]

  To:

  CC:

  Subject: South America IV — bottom-blockers

  Hola hola,

  You might be relieved to hear that I have now taken quadruple doses of bottom-blockers and have had no movement for a hundred hours.