Friction

by Joe Stretch

  Johnny strides towards central Fallowfield. As the shops begin to scroll, the promoters begin to leaflet. Boys with triangular torsos and girls with the best boobs thrust pieces of card at the pedestrians. Only, not for Johnny. He watches as each outstretched hand is hastily retracted as he walks by, watches as the flyers are returned neatly to the pile until a more suitable person walks by. Johnny can only glimpse the flyers, briefly hold the airbrushed eyes that advertise nights of sexy music, sexy dancing, sexy puking and fucking.

  ‘Here you are, mate, you’ll enjoy this.’

  At the corner of Braemar Road Johnny does receive a flyer, from a boy in a pink vest with eyes like upturned beetles. He looks down at it, ‘Shag Tag at Robinskis: Everyone Will Pull’. Johnny rests the flyer on top of an overflowing bin. Everyone will pull. I wouldn’t, thinks Johnny, I couldn’t pull string. But pulling, yes, it’s vital for a good youth. Did you pull? your fellow young will ask. Who did you pull and were they absolutely as fit as fuck? Were they a lump of congealed sexiness with naked legs falling fit-as-fuckly from their arse? Did they have the muscles of a mutant and the smile of a magazine? Did they have shagging medals around their neck and was it happy screwing and was their bedroom brilliant in the morning? Did you pull? Did they fuck you stupid?

  Johnny passes Bar Revolution where the wealthy students learn to look down on those destined for little. Boys swing car keys around their fingers, flip-flops on their feet and ace haircuts all over their scalps. Girls talk shit and so do boys. The fit get whistled at and giggle, giggle because they hear the tones of fate in the whistling, hear the great youth that their perfect bodies will bring. Johnny shuffles by.

  ‘Not for me,’ he says to himself, not knowing quite what he’s referring to. ‘Not for me.’

  He turns into a supermarket, reminding himself of his talents, listing them out loud.

  ‘Shitting, getting ill, breathing, eating.’

  He gets funny looks. But something is changing. Getting broken down.

  The entrance to the supermarket is dominated not by food but by magazines. Johnny feels like shit. He’s covered in sweat and everything’s a blur since his eyes ceased to see the point in seeing. Where is it? thinks Johnny. Where is my happy life?

  Through the blur, a pair of tits leap from the magazine rack and staple both his eyes to the back of his skull. Jesus, thinks Johnny, his bowels loosening as if he might have to instantly shit. Such incredible breasts. They must belong to Lucy Something or other, she’s got her hands all over them. Her fingers are surreptitiously placed over each nipple in accordance with certain laws passed in parliament. Chances are, if you were to buy the magazine, she’d put her arms down by her sides or in her mouth or on her hips. Either way you’d be able to see her nipples.

  ‘I could buy you,’ says Johnny to the magazine. ‘Couldn’t I? I could buy you and then that would be me, happy.’

  Lads’ magazines have been popular from the 1990s onwards. Johnny has never bought one but is familiar with the content: articles on reasonably inexpensive cars, special reports about African tribes who plant trees in their arses, stuff on watches with global positioning technology, photographs and interviews with beautiful girls.

  Right now Johnny can think of nothing else but returning home, throwing a large towel into a steaming hot shower, erecting his penis and slowly making love to the hot, wet fabric. He can’t though. He’s only got one towel and he hasn’t got the guts.

  He imagines what it would be like to get hold of the tits. Imagine if he found them in the street, without Lucy. Imagine if he just found them lying on their own, no blood, of course. He could take them home, be with them, touch them and have a really good time with each boob.

  ‘I could buy you,’ he says again to the magazine, ‘that’s exactly how it works!’

  Johnny becomes aware of a figure behind him.

  ‘Are you gonna buy that, mate? It’s the last copy.’

  Johnny turns to see nothing but perfectly hairy muscles. A topless young man with his T-shirt folded and hanging out of his baggy white football shorts. It’s not for me, thinks Johnny, none of this was intended for me.

  ‘No,’ he says, putting the magazine into the young man’s hand, ‘you take it.’

  ‘Cheers.’

  Johnny watches as Lucy enters the young guy’s grip, his thumb creasing her slightly, offering a strange perspective on her breasts. As if they’re disconnected from her, and simply stand in front like a couple of painfully inflated skins.

  Quite alone, Johnny walks the aisles of the supermarket. They shine, the products, each one shines with contentment. People choose them. Student boys with calf-length shorts and three-day stubble. Girls with oversized canvas handbags and sunglasses branded in gold. Socks match trainers and lips match nails. Oh, they shine, the humans, each one shines with contentment. But not Johnny. He spots his reflection in the glass of a refrigerator and for a second hopes that he too is up for sale, priced like the ice creams and the Chicago pizzas, a look of lonely misery frozen on to his face.

  No, thinks Johnny, turning from the fridge, I am not a product. Products are perfect. They have beautifully designed labels that wrap around perfect tin. Their innards are sealed in and preserved. Wonderful people design products, people with disposable income, takeaway coffee in their hands. They sit round tables and have lengthy discussions about target markets, cross-cutting commercial cleavages, lifestyle, image, the hard sell. I was designed by a dick, thinks Johnny, a lazy dick with no knowledge of the market. There was no table, no takeaway coffees, no talk of commercial possibility or love. I’m rotting inside. Unpreserved. I was aimed at no one, designed with no one in mind, shaped to fit the hands of nothing.

  Johnny stands among the cereals, shoulders hunched with envy. Which aisle contains the tinned hearts? Under which heading has love been preserved?

  9

  The Rat

  THE SMELL OF rotting rubbish has made its way down the lane, through a closed window and into Colin’s nostrils. They flare in disgust. His bedroom is filthy; the sheets that surround him haven’t been washed in over a year. He knows he has one more minute in bed before he has to get up, before an alarm will sound and he will have to shower and go to work.

  If you were in the room, you’d find it difficult to determine the origin of the smell of rotting food and dog shit. Outside, you’d say, surely outside. But then your eyes would be drawn to the infested chest of drawers, choking on its wet, brown contents. On the floor, there are many piles of dirty plates, clothes and magazines. This is a room that a girl will never be brought back to. This is a room that only Colin will see. He is secretly, and ever so gently, breaking apart.

  The infestation starts somewhere in the recesses of his brain; if you were to try, that’s where you’d diagnose the first signs of rot and fury. How do you begin to pick apart a brain? I guess you’d try to find some idea or principle, some memory or piece of faith that suddenly went bad, turned, changed, was hollowed out by some unknown and careful bacteria. Too late now. His whole brain’s gone rotten, both milky hemispheres. Disdain and unhealth mess up his insides, stake him out, fuck about with his eyes. A light goes out. His body is weary, struggling. Colin is a boy burnt out by strange failures in his brain.

  The infestation spreads. It smokes out of his pores and into his room. Everything in here looks as if it could never be moved, as if the contents have grown naturally into these discarded and obscene shapes, have grown brittle and will never regain flexibility, or be used again. The walls rejected Colin’s posters long ago; they wilted and have since been destroyed, ripped underfoot, forgotten. He is running out of plates and cutlery; empty pizza boxes have been screwed up tight and thrown into one corner. His sheets are damp with dirt. The entire area by the window is wet to the touch.

  Summer heats the room, causes it to boil. The stench of waste cannot be avoided and the infestation will only get worse. Colin is still able to wash, sanitise himself, spare the outside worl
d for the time being, at least. But something has to give. Colin is aware that the pile of pizza boxes and at least two piles of clothes have developed communities. He’s seen the spiders, he’s seen the millipedes and the rat. He has allowed them to live. The insects are fickle – quick to feed on the fallen. They are reactionaries. Early converts to the culture of loathing. Colin hears the calling. He is the propagandist, the king of the parasites, equipped with an instinct for hurt, an unavoidable reflex to destroy.

  Colin rolls over in bed, his face restless, cheeks flinching because of the sweat. Since being chucked out of The Bar his mind has been on women. He’d spewed to think of them. He’s been thinking about his last girlfriend, Marion, who left only last year.

  He forced her away, wore her down, isolated her with quiet. On reflection, Colin has always been infested, has always had an uneasy grasp of silence and slow anger. Marion certainly saw it, was even attracted to it in the early days. Colin is the boy with the look of unease, the element of doubt. Lonely and inarticulate, he moves effortlessly with the crowd. Marion ran because she saw too much. Saw he was getting worse. First was the drinking. Then the inaudible, stationary rage.

  He hasn’t had sex since Marion. Her body gradually and almost cunningly became repulsive to him. It happened so slowly he couldn’t work out what was going on. Small nuances in her configuration subtly evolved into things that made him breathless with revulsion. His mind was constantly playing tricks on him. He remembers her attempts to turn him on: the lingerie, the words, the caresses and the look in her eye, unknowing and humiliated. He also recalls her fear and her collapsed body on the kitchen floor.

  Colin’s friends remember the day he recovered. They’d been aware that he’d been going through a tough time. Marion had told them about his strange and overwhelming moods, his inability to speak or touch. About a month after Marion left, Colin seemed fine again. Less prone to those long silences that would envelop entire rooms until you could hear a pin drop. He started phoning people again, Boy 1 and Boy 2. He went out for drinks with them, picked up kebabs on the way home, watched the football in the pub on Saturday. He had no interest in girls, but that was his right. Sure it was, not everyone has to be into girls. Gay men, for example. Yes, he was happy to just have a drink.

  Now, Colin looks like just another idle lad. Does fuck all but who gives a fuck? He works, as we know, in a departmental office at the university. Colin is disguised; Colin is private. He irons his shirts, washes thoroughly each morning, keeps up with the fashions of the high street. Colin appears normal, is normal, hurting, rotten to the core.

  Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep. Beep beep beep.

  His minute’s up. Fastest minute of my life, he thinks, as he leaves his bed and picks his way across the room to the door.

  Colin’s glad to get out of his bedroom, glad to get to the shower where there’s fresh water and a more optimistic light. He lives in Withington, south Manchester. He always pays his bills on time. He has a highly strung, rakish frame. Resting between his nipples is a thatch of black hair, the texture of dried earth.

  He gets out of the shower and dries himself with a thin yellow towel. Having sprayed each grizzly pit, he puts on those of his clothes which are already clean and ironed. Underwear, socks and a pale blue Hugo Boss shirt. He walks downstairs, erects the ironing board and turns on the TV.

  It’s morning. Morning TV is on. Currently, a man is being interviewed by two greying, playfully obese presenters. The man has written a book on body language and has a face that seems entirely comprised of pink soap. Body language is a very fashionable subject in the twenty-first century. The idea being that the way we move our bodies says a lot about who we are, why we succeed and why we fail. This guy is all hands, limbs and smile, a voice that sounds like a trumpet slurring the notes of some major arpeggio. He’s sitting forward on the soft couch, eagerly and expressively making his points, trying, no doubt, to tell us he’s a tit.

  ‘You’d be amazed by what I’ve learnt about you in the past five minutes, Jemima.’

  ‘Would I?’

  ‘Yes, you would.’

  ‘Oh goodness, I dread to think.’

  ‘You’d be amazed how naked our behaviour makes us. Your movements will always betray your mind.’

  ‘Oh, I feel so embarrassed. Am I really so transparent?’

  ‘Yes, I’m afraid you are.’

  The guy reckons he can discover what a person’s like in bed just by shaking their hands. Dominant, submissive, playful, shit. Shake my hand, thinks Colin, shake my fucking hand, you twat. Of course, the guy can’t, because he’s on TV. Too bad, thinks Colin, looking down at his hand. It’s gripping the iron, smoothly guiding it over his jeans. What does this mean?

  ‘Tits,’ says Colin to himself. The iron hisses steam and Colin coughs into his fist. ‘Nothing,’ he says, continuing to iron.

  Along with football, bird-shagging is a major national pastime; it’s odd that Colin no longer gets involved. He tries to ignore his feelings. He remembers Marion’s cellulite. How it began to shimmer and quiver on her thighs towards the end of their time together. How it reminded him of enormous blisters; the scars that the victims of fire are left with. She had tried so hard to win him back. She bought gels from Versus, toys, videos. She had pleaded, bent herself over the kitchen table and pulled up her skirt. ‘Fuck me, Colin. Teach me a lesson.’

  With every effort Marion made, Colin got colder and colder. As if he was just some debris drifting in space; an old flag or a piece from a shuttle, floating away from the world of touch and love. He’s barely been touched since Marion, even the bouncer had held him by the collar while escorting him from The Bar. Occasionally someone will brush past him in a busy place, or he’ll be forced to shake the hand of a new colleague at work. But apart from the odd social nicety, Colin remains completely untouched.

  Jeans still warm from the iron, Colin is walking down Wilmslow Road towards the bus stop. It’ll be hot today. Chesty vests, mini skirts, what is he missing? Even the most slender and beautiful of girls leave him with an inexplicable rage. Is it simply a question of hatred? Does he simply hate women because they’re stupid, weak and shallow? He’s not sure, and in truth, you can care about these mysteries too much. Fuck it. Live with it.

  Oxford Road is bathed in early morning sun. Students on voguishly battered bikes weave between the buses. Colin drifts. The Wishing Well has been on his mind since he ate there yesterday morning, with Boy 1 and Boy 2. If he looks east, out towards Upper Brook Street, he can just make out the glass structure of the hospital. But the hospital has to wait. He takes a short cut through a car park behind the Union building, avoiding the crowds of chilled idiots that slouch around the front door. He manages to get to his building without encountering youth. But the Wishing Well, yes, he’s desperate to dine there again.

  Because pregnancy is on Colin’s mind. He’s never really considered the reality of childbirth before, and in some small way, believes he couldn’t possibly have been pushed into the world from his mother’s womb. He climbs the stairs of the Arts Faculty, oblivious to the girls, thinking only of the women at the Wishing Well. Their bellies like Allied helmets of the Second World War. Their horse-head tits. The children living inside them; shouldn’t we all be a little bit more amazed by this? he thinks. Those women walk differently, they lean back in order to bear the weight of their baby. Colin likes their slippers and their moth-eaten dressing gowns. He feels, perhaps, that they possess a rare kind of honour.

  ‘Hello,’ he says, as he enters the office, making for the relative sanctuary of his desk, as if under gunfire. It is certainly summer. There’s not too much work to be done at the university, a bit of prep but nothing too strenuous. Not until the term starts again in September.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello, Colin.’

  His colleagues: a selection of dreary objects with whom he shares nothing, not even the petty ennui that the job offers them. A
job is a job, believes Colin.

  ‘Lovely weather today.’

  True enough. Colin boots up his computer and flicks through a pile of questionnaires returned to him by the boys and girls starting university in September. Fresh meat, as they’re known in the office. Today will be spent feeding this information into a spreadsheet. Names, hobbies, dates of birth, preferred course and living arrangements. Colin will fulfil his duties to the best of his ability. He never complains. His mind will not wander and his breaks will not exceed their permitted duration. He will not say a word.

  At six o’clock, just as he’s preparing to leave, a girl called Rebecca will come in to sort out a problem with the Dostoevsky module. He will watch the episode with eyes of glass. Snobby bitch, he will think. Slag.

  10

  Business and Pleasure

  STEVE IS STILL in bed, wanked off where we left him. It’s my fault. I’m letting time get the better of me. The characters are streaming off into different zones. We should have worn rollerblades, you and I, given ourselves a better chance of keeping up with these various unfortunates. Of course, as we return to Steve, Carly is being seduced by a sex machine in one of the cubicles of Versus. We know this. Steve does not. Such is life.

  It’s almost midday by the time Steve wakes up. A block of sunlight lies on the floor beside the bed; the used condoms bathe in it like a couple of nattering holiday makers. Steve looks towards his bureau, its top drawer ajar. She’s robbed me again, he quickly concludes, Carly has robbed me again.

  Steve has given the matter some thought, he’s calculated that ejaculation perpetrated by Carly results in a five-minute period during which he is drawn to her, loves her and is inclined to cherish the girl. But then it fades. It faded as he drifted inevitably back to sleep, emptied and content. Steve can imagine a time when this feeling of affection fades almost instantly. He will ejaculate, experience a fleeting moment of affection, then nothing. The flash of something close to love dissolves. A bark of romance, then suddenly nothing at all.