by Joe Stretch
‘Well, Dave, I’m nineteen, I’m 34-24-36, I’m wearing a black lacy bra and matching knickers and suspenders. I’m fingering myself.’
Johnny begins massaging the root of his penis with his left hand. This is romance, too; it slows down the process, improves the conversation. The girl stops talking; Johnny knows this silence well. He must describe himself to the sex-worker.
‘OK. I’m tall with brown hair. I’m wearing jeans and a mustard polo shirt and . . . er . . . I’ve got my cock out.’
‘How big’s that, then, Dave?’
‘It’s, it’s about seven inches.’
‘Oooh nice, do you wanna give it a rub for me?’
‘Yes, I do.’
The love that doesn’t know its name. A fuck-awful bedroom in Manchester. A winter. A vital act. The absolute need to put a knitting needle into your brain. Johnny can’t afford to gently caress, so he rubs vigorously. Friction. Pleasure. Onwards. Thoughts crash like cymbals in his head. Rebecca sucks his cock. The Asian shopkeeper probes his anus. Certain girls glimpsed in streets push their tits into his eyes. Thank God for this, for the heavenly humanity of the wank. The lovely speed of his hands and the feeling of his elbow on the bed sheet. His breath held. The colourful pornography. The years he will spend alive. Quick, civilisation, quick.
‘I’ll lick your balls slowly.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll wrap my tits around your cock.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll dip my cunt on your tongue.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’ll scream like a baby.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fuck me, Dave.’
‘OK.’
‘Put your length up my twat.’
‘Your twat?’
‘Yeah, now my arse.’
‘OK.’
‘Harder.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Harder!’
‘OK.’
‘Fucking harder, you prick!’
‘Yes.’
‘Harder!’
‘Yeah, yeah?’
‘Now spray it in my face.’
There is a light groan. Love is loveless. Sex is sexless. The line goes dead. Exhale.
20
The Glass Coffee Table
YOU GROW WEAK. I sense it. I grow weak. My pen is snapped. I need a replacement. I want to get out of here. No, let me rephrase that: I have to stay. Though I’d dearly love to snort a line of dog dirt from my desk, start sniffing like a villain. But I don’t. No, the story must go on. The facts gather around me like guests at a party. They rest their hands on my back and duck down to see what I’m up to. And you, you’re still with me, right? I’ll continue. Hesitation is for pricks. I am not a prick. I always carry a spare pen. Remember Steve?
Steve made a decision to sacrifice himself to the mainstream. He offered himself to everything that is simple and inane. He is a goat. A lamb. A toast to boring failure, champagne, cheers. The story is this: a boy who was political and motivated makes a decision to be a lifter of weights, a dyer of hair, a getter of girls, a small nothing like the rest of us. That is the story, certainly, entirely believable and important. He made the decision. His mind is fucked.
Steve is standing with his father in a pub car park in Southport. Dusk is everywhere. The air is paper and the light is sandstone. You remember that he went to visit his parents for the weekend, leaving Carly in the flat alone? Well here we are. His father is tall and was born in 1947. He wears a large, billowing suede jacket. It’s brown and covered in zips. Yes, he’s middle-aged. Awful trousers. Glasses. Shoes with solid soles.
‘I’m very proud of you, Steve,’ says Steve’s dad, fiddling with one his jacket’s many zips.
His father is called Michael. Michael seems suddenly overcome by a massive and belated desire to be alive. To be a human. His arm fires out of his body, his hand comes to rest on Steve’s shoulder. Like an Olympic swimmer with a perfected front crawl, Steve leans left and brings his right arm arching over his father’s shoulder and around his back. Embrace. Tighter. OK, enough, let each other go now, and speak, speak . . .
‘Son, you’re making money and Carly is a lovely girl; beautiful and kind. You’ve made me and your mother so proud. You’ve made us happy.’
The two men exchange an odd look. They hold each other’s blue eyes. Steve’s gelled, bleached hair remains still and unmoving as a strong breeze wreaks havoc on his father’s scalp. Michael pulls his large suede jacket around his body and looks at his son. Can you really be my son? he wonders.
Steve is dressed in distressed denim, ripped at the knees. He reeks of perfume. Stiff styled hair, coloured at considerable expense. He’s of a different generation; represents a totally different way of being alive. Can you really be my son? wonders Michael again.
‘Are you gay, Steve?’ Michael asks, after a short silence. Because he recognises nothing in his son’s appearance and behaviour, he simply can’t relate to any of it. Sure, thinks Michael, my son makes money. But look what he does with it. All this style. He asks again: ‘Are you gay, Steve?’
Steve chooses not to reply. They stand in silence. Michael eyeing his son, entirely perplexed by his appearance. What happened, and when did it happen? Why does my son look so fancy and incredible? Is he famous? I don’t think so. Is he a style icon? A designer? No, he is not. What is this, high capitalism? A purchased look? A purchased personality? Michael is bewildered by change.
Steve isn’t bewildered. He knows. He remembers deciding to become this. He abandoned his brains and signed up for a shit and delicious life. Now he’s standing in a car park saying goodbye to his father.
‘No, Dad, I’m not gay. Goodbye.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. Goodbye, son.’
Steve turns on his heels and strides in the direction of his Audi TT. It’s five o’clock. His strides are long. He reaches the car in good time, keys in hand. The atmosphere in the car is tense. The air is plastic and scented with petrol and vanilla. Steve is thinking about Carly, about the choices he’s made regarding his future. Lies are told: I love you. Questions are asked: how are you? Sooner or later you’re on the wire, twisting and flinching, unified; the sum of all those things you said that were untrue. An anthology of lazy, navy blue lies.
When the car gets on to the motorway, it accelerates. Steve puts his foot down. What is this like? Oh, I don’t know. No doubt you’ve been in a fast car before, just remember what that was like. Steve puts on the radio. There is music. Concentrate.
It’s ten past six by the time Steve drives the car into the basement of his apartment block. It’s a short skip though the black trappings of winter to the entrance of his apartment block. As he arrives at the door, he can already hear, faintly, the sound of a woman screaming.
‘Aaaaaahhiiaahiiiaiaiiaiaiaiaiaiagggh.’
He swipes his access card and pushes at the door. As he enters the building, the screaming is instantly louder, as if some cosy act of domestic genocide is unfolding in one of the apartments above. A door on the ground floor opens and a middle-aged man comes out into the foyer. His chin is coated in shaving foam. He peers up the stairwell at the screams, annoyed and disturbed.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhiiiiiiiiaiaiaggh.’
The screams are constant. The sound is so incredibly sharp and long. Steve begins to climb the stairs, above him he can hear doors opening and slamming, footsteps running up stairs and along corridors. Someone is being murdered, surely. This must be one of those unfortunate moments when a group of people are indiscriminately murdered by a madman acting mad.
‘What’s happening?’
‘She sounds like she’s in pain.’
‘What number is it, who is it?’
‘Break the door down!’
Around fifteen residents are gathered outside Steve’s apartment on the second floor. Steve arrives and joins the back of the crowd. He can’t see his front door because it’s entirely surrounded by people. A tall man with a thick, black be
ard and round, black eyes sends a beady gaze over the congregation. The man pauses and waits for the latest high-pitched scream to subside. Then speaks: ‘Could everyone acknowledge that the door is locked? I think the woman is in danger. I’m going to break the door down. OK?’
A wave of approval breaks within the crowd. Steve looks down at his door key, then places it inside his pocket. He stands aside to give the bearded man a sufficient run-up; these doors are new and difficult to break down.
This is my life, Steve confirms in his mind. No doubt about it. I’m assisting in the break-in to my own home. Why is Carly screaming? Why is she making these large and antisocial sounds? What will I do if she’s being killed? he wonders.
Steve closes his right eye and rubs it with his right hand. His head bows and he briefly examines his outfit of distressed denim and expensive white brogues. He breathes in his affluent aroma and runs his finger though the exposed wires of his designer haircut. Please stop screaming, Carly. Steve’s mouth opens. It says: ‘Mate, use a fire extinguisher.’
‘Good idea, mate. Give me a hand,’ says the bearded guy.
Within moments, Steve and the bearded guy are exchanging reassuring glances and preparing to bring a fire extinguisher smashing into the front door of Steve’s apartment. There’s another terrible scream, like a pin into the wrist, an injection into the eye. Steve bends his knees and his trousers pull tight; the shape of the house key in his pocket is briefly outlined. Then smash. Again. Smash. Again. Smash. The lock is beginning to break.
‘Aaaaaaaaiiiiiiigghhhhhh.’
‘Keep going,’ says a supportive onlooker, desperate to know the source of the screaming. Steve ought to be laughing; he’s laughing inside. How has it come to this? Were my choices really so bad? Is breaking into my own flat while the key is in my pocket really the logical extension of everything I’ve done? This is a key moment in my life, I suppose, hahaha – a key moment, ha, is this madness? Why is Carly still screaming? She can surely hear the banging. It must be murder, oh dear, I shall need a new lover. I should use the keys, this is manslaughter. Guilty. I’m a liar.
There is one final bang as the man with the small black eyes kicks in the remainder of the door. The crowd spills into the apartment, led by Steve.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiigggggghhhh.’
You’d think it would be quiet now, but it isn’t. Carly screams still. It’s louder than ever. Steve watches the crowd: jaws drop. He watches the shock register on their faces. Their eyeballs suck smoke. He follows their burning gaze across the room, to Carly, who may or may not be about to die.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiggggghh.’
Carly is lying naked in broken glass, squirming about in the splintered remains of a lovely coffee table. Why won’t she stop? She’s cutting herself to ribbons. There is dark red blood, ripped skin. There is white light, she continues to scream. She’s entirely naked, apart from a strange contraption that binds her body. Seat-belt-like straps. Strange pads. There is a loud buzzing coming from Carly. How bad is this?
The bearded man pushes Steve to one side and strides purposefully across the room. He passes Carly, who screams. He walks over to a socket and pulls out a plug. Carly’s body goes limp. Her head drops down on to the carpet of glass. Her knees bend and the soft sound of her weeping is faded gently into this dreadful occasion.
‘Call an ambulance,’ says Beardy. He bears a striking resemblance to Che Guevara. With the plug in one hand, he lifts Carly and her contraption and carries them into the bedroom. Steve follows him in.
‘She’s OK, I think. The cuts aren’t too bad.’
The man removes the contraption so quickly, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he spends his life dealing with complex sex machines from the Far East. Steve comes over to the bed and begins to pick shards of glass from Carly’s body. She’s coated in cuts. Leaking blood like a sieve. Skin falling off her everywhere, flapping and ripping.
‘What were you doing, baby?’ says Steve, removing a fingernail of glass from Carly’s collarbone.
‘Steve?’ says Carly, her voice scratched and paper thin.
The beardy guy shoots a stern glance at Steve. There’s a chance he thought he and Carly might have a future together, after his act of bravery, after the wounds heal. When he realises she’s already Steve’s, he gets up and leaves the bedroom, muttering something about an ambulance. So Steve and Carly are alone. Young love.
‘It’s Frank’s machine, isn’t it? A sex machine from Japan. Jesus, Carly, you stupid, stupid bitch. What were you thinking?’
Carly says nothing, her eyes float in blood and her lacerated back is disposing of it at either side of her body. The sheets are drenched. Steve stamps his right foot on the soft carpet, barely making a sound. ‘Am I not enough for you, Carly?’
She croaks then replies, gurgling unnatural concoctions of fluid in her throat as she speaks. ‘You used to be,’ she says. ‘But things have changed now.’ Though weak, her voice remains charged with the steely resolve that powers her incredible, metallic life. So she’s covered in blood, half dead, yet in some significant way, she really doesn’t give a shit.
‘How did you get it working? Why did you open my mail?’ demands Steve, still stamping inaudibly on to the carpet.
‘I . . . ouch . . . I bought a Japanese plug adapter from Dixons.’
‘Right, OK, a Japanese adapter. Good. Dixons. Where’s the fucking ambulance?’
Steve goes to the door. In the living room the beardy guy is whispering to a red-faced brunette of about thirty. They’re probably discussing why Steve didn’t have a key. Why he helped to break down his own front door.
‘The ambulance is on its way, mate. It’ll be a couple more minutes.’
Steve turns to the bedroom again, to Carly drowning in red. Jesus. He goes over to the Sex Machine, which is slumped in the corner, spattered in tiny crimson tears. Suddenly, Steve’s heart slows down to crawling pace. He watches as the Sex Machine becomes alive and stares back at him with a fixed grin. It props itself up against the bedroom wall. Wow.
‘How do you do?’ says the Sex Machine.
‘You speak English?’ asks Steve, edging backwards away from the machine, until he’s leaning against the bed.
‘Yes, yes indeed I do, I have a basic grasp,’ exclaims the Sex Machine, his voice plump with pride. The Sex Machine has a suave demeanour which is rather intimidating.
Steve sighs.
‘What did you do to Carly, my girlfriend?’ he asks.
At this, the Sex Machine appears to blush. No, no it can’t possibly blush. It muddles its straps for a moment, as if deep in awkward thought. It taps at the skirting board with one of its white pleasure pads. It’s slightly ashamed.
‘Yes, yes I’m sorry about that,’ says the machine, finally, turning to face Steve. ‘She’s a lovely girl, my first love. My first love, indeed. Oooh, my goodness, that must sound too far-fetched, me a machine and whatnot. That must sound sick to someone who is indeed alive. Of course, I’m a machine.’ The Sex Machine jangles its various components for a second, as if confirming to itself that it is, indeed, a machine.
‘Why is she bleeding?’
‘She’s bleeding because, when we were making love, we fell into the coffee table. Do you realise that your coffee table is made entirely of glass? It’s rather tasteless.’
The machine corrects its posture properly now. It rearranges its straps and its pleasure pads so its appearance becomes much more refined. Steve sits cross-legged and stares down at his red palms, ignoring the groans and whimpering coming from Carly’s bloody mouth. He cups his hands around his mouth and nose then points his eyeballs at the Sex Machine. Which smiles.
‘Do you have any questions?’ says the Sex Machine, striding about now, jauntily swinging its pads and straps. It walks like a 1930s homosexual: reserved but with great rhythm. It’s self-assured. Worse: the Sex Machine is cool. Steve can’t bear to watch. Questions, he thinks, what can I ask a Sex Machine?
&nbs
p; ‘Well, what did you do to her?’ he says at last, causing the Sex Machine to pivot on the tips of its pleasure pad and walk in his direction.
‘I electrocuted her mildly in a number of key areas, her nipples and . . . er . . . downstairs, if you get my meaning, haha.’
The machine chuckles. Oh God. It’s overexcited, dancing like a chorus girl. All it needs is a cane or a large pink feather. ‘In addition,’ continues the machine, ‘I vibrate. Very powerfully. Small spheres in these pads of mine vibrate so intensely you can’t actually tell they’re moving at all. The human eye is too lazy and slow, but your skin and your sexual zones, well, they are perfect for me. Don’t thank me.’
‘I wasn’t going to.’
‘So be it, my friend,’ says the machine, turning once more and prancing wistfully along the skirting board towards the wardrobe. Steve uncrosses his legs and crawls panther-like to where the Sex Machine is admiring itself in the wardrobe’s mirror. The machine catches Steve’s reflection coming towards it, and sighs.
‘You raped my girlfriend, you bloodied her,’ whispers Steve, holding the machine’s gaze in the mirror.
‘Haha!’ the machine guffaws, turning to face the crouching Steve.
‘Do not laugh, you machine,’ whimpers Steve, recoiling from the machine’s manic grin.
‘Your girlfriend strapped me to her body and switched me on. She loved me. She loves me still.’
Steve’s handsome features shape as if to burst with rage, but then they relax into an expression of sad surprise. Like an arresting officer has just tapped him on the shoulder. The game’s up. The Sex Machine registers Steve’s melancholy. It moves cautiously towards him and gently strokes his knee with one of its pleasure pads. There there, man, thinks the machine, there there. Steve removes the machine’s pad from his knee and gets to his feet.
‘Please, could you just fuck off?’ says Steve.
‘Yes, yes, I suppose I could,’ says the Sex Machine.