Ship of Fools

by Sophia Soames

  I think I consented. I hope. I may have fallen over too, because my jeans are ripped on the left leg, and my right leg is still hurting. I remember Saturday morning with a pang of shame, because I have started to realise Charlie is right. I am right there with him, sailing the ship of bloody fools into the waterfall of doom, or whatever he was on about.

  I don’t know when I stopped enjoying myself on our nights out, and when I went from being a party guy to a party pooper. I remember being called that, and I also remember being sick in the gutter at some point. Perhaps I was waiting for a ride. Perhaps not. It’s suddenly frightening how much I don’t remember, and how I seem to struggle to piece the weekend together. It’s almost like a large puzzle, with some of the pieces mysteriously missing.

  There are patchy memories of arriving home on Sunday morning, and showering until my skin bled. I just felt dirty and out of it, and not at all in a good place. The bruises staring me in the face through the steamed-up mirror used to make me smile with pride. Now? Now I just feel disgusting. Saturday had ended in some kind of badly thought out threesome, with Charlie and a man who called himself Jazz, and whilst I liked the idea at the start... later, I found myself feeling out of control. Scared for my safety and my sanity, as the guy had Charlie tied up to the bedposts, and I realised I had drunk too much. Again. We had also shared some pills at some point and the whole thing was making my head feel too fuzzy for my liking. I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t make decisions, and my mouth was full of foam as the guy was pushing me down onto the bed, trying to make me suck Charlie’s dick. I didn’t want to. I still did it, I think, and then I did some other things, and I woke up with my heart racing out of my chest, and a condom still dangling from my limp penis.

  It was what other people would have called a wake-up call. At least, it should have been, but instead, I felt disgusted and confused and angry. I felt mostly angry at Charlie for some unbelievable reason. Then I felt angry at myself, for not having said stop, and not having had the guts and strength to walk out and say no.

  I was out of control. Or maybe not. I was depressed, and bored and done. Done with my life.

  I just couldn’t figure it out. I had a great job, good money, a nice one-bed studio flat with a comfortable bed. What else did I need? If I wanted a hookup? They were all out there, lines of willing men to come and entertain me at a tap of a finger on an app. Or I could go out dancing. Flirt to my heart's content and have a bit of fun.

  Fun. What a useless imbecilic word. Nothing was fun. Everything was simply hard work and effort, for nothing but pain and guilt, and bruises at the end of the day.

  I told the people at work I had crashed out on my rollerblades, to explain the limp in my walk. I do actually own a pair, still in the box with the labels attached. Another lame attempt at finding a hobby. I liked cooking. I read books. I was damn good at playing Fortnite.

  I still hobbled around the office with a fake smile on my face, only to burst into stupid tears when I took my clothes off at the end of the day. Black and yellow colours down my legs. Thumbprints on my hips. A slowly dulling ache on the inside where someone had been too rough with my body. I might have enjoyed it, had I remembered. Instead, I was riddled with nightmares, not at night, but in my head, trying not to think of what could have happened.

  I was a grown-up, and this? This was the life of a reckless teenager, not of a young adult on the cusp of a midlife crisis. Because that was what this was. Wasn’t it?

  If my sister had seen me, she would have dragged me off home and screamed at me. She might have suggested I report it all to the police. But I had nothing to tell. Nothing to show apart from a few fading bruises. I wasn’t assaulted. Well... and I had swallowed those pills myself, happily and willingly.

  Maybe I brought it on myself. Maybe, just maybe, someone else could have said it for me. Just said, “Stop.”

  I didn’t trust anyone anymore. Mostly? I raged on the inside. I raged at Charlie for not keeping his promise. We looked after each other, didn’t we? It had been mostly lip service, I knew that. How many times had I not even bothered to check in with him after a night out? How many times had I gone off with someone else, and left him to fend for himself? He owed me nothing. I owed him… nothing either.

  Friends. We had never been friends, and now?

  It was all me. Up to me. Me. Alone. It was coming up to Christmas and all I could think of was getting drunk. Just drunk home alone, so I could sleep myself right into the New Year. Because that was the adult thing to do, wasn’t it?

  A few days later I had picked myself up. I felt better. Empty on the inside, but the bruises had faded away. The festive music in the showroom made me want to throw up. I even contemplated crashing my parents’ annual dinner party in Spain, but the thought of the journey to the airport and throwing myself on a packed easyJet plane, almost made me have a panic attack.

  I would stay right here. On my own. Get a hobby. A life. Grow up a little and block Charlie on my phone.

  You can see where this is going, can’t you? I didn’t block Charlie. He texted about a night out, some event at a private club in another town. I was rather proud of myself when I said no, lying about some family event I had to attend. Instead, I bought myself a 1000-piece puzzle and spent the weekend watching TV and sleeping. I was rather proud of myself, even though I never even opened the bloody puzzle.

  The following week had flown by in a haze of people spending insane amount of money on last-minute new cars. Cars that would never in a million years be delivered before Christmas. I printed out expensive-looking gift cards for customers, on handmade festive paper. Sighed alongside the suppliers over deliveries we all knew were pushing the limits of what we could achieve.

  People with money demand same day delivery on everything. It might work with Amazon, but it doesn’t work like that in the automobile industry. We have cars on file ready to go, but they are never anywhere near where the customer wants them. No, Sir, we cannot ship a brand new Volvo from Sweden, have it customised to your wife's favourite colour and have the latest sound system and satnav installed, and have it with you within the week before Christmas.

  Not that I say that to our customers. I smile and I lie, then I shout down the phone to someone else and get it arranged. Then I pray.

  I’ve prayed a lot this last week, the stress making my skin break out in spots, and my lips crack. There’s a cold sore brewing on my bottom lip, and most evenings I come home and fall asleep still wearing my work shirt.

  I can’t even bring myself to wank. That’s how low I have fallen. How pathetic my life as an adult has become! At least I am trying. I am going to grow up. Find a real meaningful relationship, and—for once—I am going to do it on my own.

  I don’t even believe myself when I say it out loud.

  Luca

  The front door to my parents’ house is wide open, with an acrid smell of burning wafting strongly in the air. You would think that things like that would make my dad run inside, shouting for my mother with the emergency services on the phone, but instead, he just laughs and slaps my shoulder and lets out a deep sigh. This is part and parcel of why I love my family. We are definitely not what you would call a normal family, or maybe perhaps we are just that. Normal.

  I haven’t seen my parents in days, which is unusual, since I usually turn up here, to my childhood home, every single day for dinner, or just whenever I forget that I’m a grown up with my own kitchen and pots and pans a mere ten minutes’ walk away. I just prefer hanging out at home, getting fed and pampered, and reminded that in the midst of this shit life, I am loved to bits. “It’s important,” my mum says, kissing my cheeks and fixing some invisible stray hair on my forehead. It’s important to remember how lucky I am, and how loved my family are in return.

  My dad met my mother in the school playground. Him, the arrogant, immigrant kid who barely spoke English, and my mum, a shy English rose who barely said a word. My dad said she was the cutest thing he had ever
seen. He gave her a kiss on the cheek, and they were a thing before either of them knew it. Mum adored Dad, and Dad adored Mum. They still do, and they got married and bought the tiny house that we still call home. Dad cooks, works, and sorts out whatever needs sorting out, whilst Mum? Bless her, she is still the cutest thing, as she stands in the kitchen wearing just an open shirt, bra and knickers, wafting a tea towel over something that is still smoking on the top of the stove.

  “What... were you trying to make, honey?” Dad says softly, with tears of laughter in his eyes, as Mum swats the tea towel at him. “And what happened to your... trousers?”

  He’s still laughing, and Mum? Well, she’s half angry, half in hysterics, shouting that her trousers are covered in some kind of sauce, and that they were making this pasta thing on TV, and she thought it looked so simple that she couldn’t go wrong.

  She obviously could, and I try not to cough as she comes over and hugs me.

  My mum. Okay, she is still the cutest thing, with a mop of dark curls that she ties into a messy bun on the top of her head. She could almost pass for an Italian Mama, if it wasn’t for her large collection of pyjama pants and threadbare shirts that make up her entire wardrobe. And she can’t cook, either, to the despair of our entire Italian side of the family. “Nobody ever taught me how to be a Mum.” She usually shouts at us. “There’s no bloody manual for you lot, so don’t blame me for all your mistakes.”

  So what, if we made mistakes? She always forgave them. And, if my mum can’t cook? She never behaved like all the other mums at school, anyway. She was never part of the coffee morning cliques, or the cake sales, or the Parents Association. Instead she was shunned and mocked in the playground, as she dropped us off in her dressing gown, with curlers in her hair. Or just wearing a silly hat. We loved it, loved her quiet reassurance as she ushered us into school, smiling sweetly as if nothing was wrong.

  Everything was wrong, but we thrived on it. Our lunchboxes were filled with all the wrong things, our sandwiches never looked like the other children’s, and we hid the home-made cakes she tried to make, more often or not they were inedible anyway. If my dad had to work late, she would serve us instant chocolate pudding for dinner, but she would make out like it was a five-course gourmet meal served on our best china with napkins on our laps.

  What Mum lacked in parenting skills, she made up for in imagination. Our garden was a constant adventure of projects she never finished. Our rooms were mostly a catastrophic mess, and our school uniforms and clothes were picked up from local car boot sales, a mish mash of styles and embarrassing outfits, that would make Mum laugh and Dad shake his head. He never once complained, and us kids? We loved our mum too much to rebel. Until my oldest sister grew up and got a job and bought her own clothes, and my little sister screamed blue murder over her hand-me downs. Mum took them shopping after that. Me? I couldn’t care less. I still don’t.

  My parents loved us. We travelled, we ate, we discovered, and we adventured, but most of all? We laughed, and we were loved. There was never any pressure to succeed academically. Yet, I did well at school, went to college, and, well, I always knew I would work with my dad, and that is what I did. Apart from branching out on the side of the business, where my dad didn’t have the right up-to-date skills. We now have fully trained multiskilled staff to cover any side of car mechanics and electronic systems, and whilst the business will never make us millionaires, we pay the bills, and we weather the storms.

  Our customers are fiercely loyal, and we have the fact that our racers are superstitious to thank for that. Dad knows their cars, and the drivers trust him. Taking a car on the track that hasn’t been worked over by Don Germano? Well, I know for a fact there are drivers who would refuse to race. That’s my dad though. He can talk the talk, walk the walk, and he loves his family, blood or not.

  He loves me too, as he pats me on the back, and sends Mum up to have a shower. I haven’t seen him for days, as I have been up at Lambert and Gloss every day, working away on that rust bucket of a vintage car. The buyer is an idiot, and the car? It needed scrapping, not turning into a monster. Because that is truly what we are doing. The specs have changed four times already, and now the immaculate white leather interiors are being dyed a horrific lilac, and my perfectly cut replacement dashboard is being spray-painted into something I can’t even put words to. But in the end? I am just there to follow the spec, and deliver what the customer wants. I am not there to ogle Andreas Mitchell, whatever it is that goes on in my head every time I park my car outside Lambert and Gloss.

  I haven't seen him, and not for the lack of trying. I take the long way around to the workshop at the back, hoping to catch a glimpse of him in the showroom. He’s never there. He never comes down and checks on the progress of our work either, despite my best efforts of asking the head mechanic to get him down to ensure we are following the brief. Still, Andreas Mitchell has been nowhere to be found.

  I suppose that is a relief, because my messed-up fantasies do not need any more feeding with ridiculous images of that man. He already monopolises my thoughts as soon as I close my eyes at night, with all kinds of messed-up scenarios where I usually end up fucking him until he screams. Or I scream. There is usually screaming involved, of the real variety too as I ejaculate into my bedcovers.

  I have done a ridiculous amount of laundry over the last couple of weeks.

  So, apparently, has my Dad, as he loads up another batch into our rust bucket of a washing machine, as he hands me a rag and a bottle of kitchen cleaner.

  “I don’t know what has gotten into your mother. She has this strange thing going on about cooking for Christmas this year. It’s... she should just stick to what she knows, because the… I don’t know. There’s a tray of aubergine bake in the fridge. I just need to make space to…” He’s moving plates and cutlery around the kitchen worktop, no doubts the remains of breakfasts, and lunches over the last couple of days.

  Mum? She’s not a domestic goddess in any shape or form, but you will probably be surprised to hear that she runs an extremely successful cleaning business from our kitchen table. Not that she cleans herself, but she employs a little army of staff, who clean like goddesses and provide care services to the elderly neighbours. Because things like that, is what my mum does well. She cares for her clients, she adores her staff, and overpays them to the point that she barely breaks even at self-assessment day, but everyone loves her back, despite her dirty teacups and stained joggers.

  She also cares for us, because she’s our mum, and she loves us.

  “So, have you got yourself a nice man yet?” Mum teases, as she swans into the kitchen in her dressing gown, her hair wrapped in a towel.

  “Mum.” I warn.

  “He’s got his eyes set on someone.” Dad gossips, because yeah. I tell my dad stuff, and then I regret it for the rest of my life. “He thinks the boss man up at Lambert and Gloss is the cutest thing ever.” Dad sniggers.

  “Albert Lambert?” Mum howls.

  “Nooo!” I shout, throwing a scrunched-up rag at my dad. I miss. Of course.

  “What’s the other dude? Billy? Bob? B…?”

  “Boris Gloss. He’s at least a hundred years old, Mum. Seriously guys,” I laugh.

  “I thought Boris Gloss was dead.”

  “He must be, haven’t seen him in years.”

  “His wife died, I think he retired, did he retire? Don?”

  “Boris Gloss was down the pub last week, so I doubt he’s dead.”

  “Who burned the house down? Mum? What did you do this time?”

  That’s Bea, my little sister. Or not-so-little sister. She’s nineteen, heavily pregnant with a boy child and we have no idea who the father is. Talk about scandalous and shameful. Well, not in our family. My mum cried tears of happiness when she found out Bea was up the duff, and Dad just laughed out loud when she told us she was quitting university and moving back home. Bea is amazing, she’s a free spirit like my mum, with Dad’s brain and my stubbornnes
s, and in a way, it surprised nobody when she announced she was four-months pregnant and not having an abortion. She is also due on Christmas Eve, which of course is the butt of endless family jokes.

  “How’s my baby Jesus?” Mum coos, and wraps herself around Bea, dressing gown and all.

  “I’m not naming him Jesus, Mum.” Bea sighs, mouthing some choice words to me behind her back. I just giggle.

  “But he will be a Christmas kid!” Mum declares. “What about Noel. I quite like that.”

  “He needs a nice strong Italian name.” Dad booms, his hands covered in soapsuds.

  “Something like Matteo, or Elia. Strong, good names. Nonna suggested Elio, I quite liked that too.”

  “Dad, that’s from that film, the one with all the sex. The guy was called Elio, remember?”

  “Has Nonna seen that?” Dad laughs to himself. It wouldn’t surprise me, my Italian Nonna watches everything. She has Netflix, Amazon Prime and some dodgy pirated SKY subscription as well, so she can catch up with all the English language films now she has moved back to Italy.

  “Bea should decide, it’s her baby,” I say, earning myself a smile from my little sister. She’s bloomingly beautiful, despite her hair needing a wash, and the dark circles under her eyes.

  “Okay, yes, true…” Dad mutters. “Can’t you just... if it’s still a boy, can’t you name it Don? I like the sound of that. Don Senior and Don Junior. I can teach him everything I know.”

  That makes my mum burst into tears, another normal occurrence in our house. Someone says something soppy and ridiculous, and Mum cries. She may not be Italian by blood, but she’s definitely all-Italian Mama when she turns on the waterworks.

  Our family. Always full of drama. My mum cried when I told her I was gay too. She kissed me and hugged me and told me I could be just as cool as Harry Styles. I’m still confused as to why I would be anything like Harry Styles, since last time I checked he was into older women, but then, Mum might be right. Or confused. Does it matter? Nope.