Friction

by Joe Stretch

  It’s been four days since he posted the message on Justin’s site – newsex.biz. He’s yet to hear any reply. But he needs help, needs conspirators, fellow believers. Women who will agree.

  A rat is lured out from underneath the wardrobe by the smell of steamed rice and peas. It noses the corner of a pizza box for a moment before staring up at Colin through the blue light. Colin stares into the rat’s small black face. Vermin, he thinks, I’ll be happy at last.

  23

  Invisible American Footballs

  MEMORY LOSS IS a terrible thing. Particularly if it coincides with waking up in an unknown environment and being told extremely large lies. As Johnny’s eyes open there is a brief moment of calm and something vaguely akin to happiness. Memory loss does this to you. Your lack of any concrete idea of what happened the previous night somehow gives you the impression that you were happy and did something worthwhile. But this feeling quickly fades. It fades as Johnny tries to work out why there is a copy of Crime and Punishment on his bedside table, then a little more when he realises that neither it, the bed nor the table beside it actually belong to him.

  That’s when your brain notices what a state it’s in. It notices the shattered glass, the strange stains and the empty bottles that are littered all about your skull. That’s when the guilt strikes, the massive fear. What the fuck happened? Johnny rolls over and sees Justin and Rebecca sleeping in each other’s arms beside him. Oh, what? What the fuck happened?

  At this stage the memoryless brain begins to behave like a teenager who’s hosted a house party in their parents’ absence. Frantically, and still rather drunkenly, it runs about tidying and searching for clues. There must be something here that can tell me what happened. After a few minutes of careful thought, Johnny happens upon the broken vase of his memory and kneels down to pick up the pieces. The guilt, shit, the guilt. He remembers clearly buying lager and pornography from the corner shop. He remembers the phone sex and then he remembers going out to the pub and ordering vodka at the bar. But then the production values on his memory deteriorate rapidly, like a secret celebrity sex video; grainy and inconclusive. He’d gone to a few bars and then . . . his brain pulsates and he begins panting for air.

  ‘Good morning, Johnny lad,’ says Justin in a friendly voice laced with the unmistakable and sonorous sound of mocking. It was Justin’s idea to convince Johnny he’d shagged Rebecca. They had awoken in the night and he’d suggested that it might be fun. It might. Rebecca had agreed, not anticipating how convincing the two of them would be.

  ‘Morning, Johnny,’ purrs Rebecca, stirring from feigned sleep and flashing a glazed and sultry gaze at Johnny’s jumbled features. At this stage, Johnny locates a couple more shards of memory. He picks them up. He remembers the doorstep, the living room. Had he been sick? The memories cut his fingers. He sucks at the blood and succumbs to the fact that certain events from the previous night will be lost to him for ever.

  ‘Well, how do you feel? Any different? It was quite a night,’ Justin continues, looking intently at Johnny.

  ‘But who are you?’ Johnny mutters, the desire to vomit running up and down his neck pipes like a bastard. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m Justin, Johnny, you must remember. I’m talking about your virginity, and, more precisely, about your losing it in the early hours of this morning to fair, fair Rebecca.’

  The look on Johnny’s face suggests that a mysterious fourth party has just placed a knife into his back. His eyes seem to anticipate imminent death. His mouth looks as though it should dribble blood at any moment. Surely, he reasons, I couldn’t possibly have shagged Rebecca. My virginity, it can’t possibly be lost.

  ‘Surely I didn’t,’ says Johnny. ‘I can’t remember a thing.’

  ‘Well, you most certainly did,’ says Justin. ‘I viewed the proceedings from that wicker chair in the corner. It was quite a spectacle.’

  Guilt takes hold of Justin at this stage, like his throat is suddenly zipped up. But you can never back down, not when someone is being so comprehensively fooled. Rebecca, too, is suddenly slapped about the cheeks by shame and regret. Poor Johnny, she thinks, and how wonderfully convincing Justin is. Johnny waits patiently for the effects of the knife in the back to kill him. Where’s the blood? Where are the white lights? Heaven’s gates? He sits up in bed and begins fidgeting about, trying to slow the tides of vomit rising from his gut.

  ‘Rebecca . . . I’m so sorry . . . I can’t remember a thing. I rarely drink at all and, I suppose . . . shit, forgive me.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, Johnny. I enjoyed it.’

  Rebecca gets out of bed and goes for a shower, a laughter bomb preparing to explode in her mouth. By the time she returns Johnny has left. She enters the bedroom with a towel around her waist. Justin lies on the bed, his lips arranged in a ludicrous smile. She goes to him.

  But, Jesus, it gets worse for Johnny. He leaves Rebecca’s house and walks back to Fallowfield through Hulme and Moss Side. It takes an hour and a half. He is thinking desperately. But you can only rack a brain so much. In the end it begins to resent being overworked and refuses to give out any information at all. By the time he arrives home he can barely remember his name. He throws up then watches TV.

  By mid-afternoon and still having no better purchase on the events of the previous night, he just resigns himself to it. I fucked her, he concludes, as the children’s programmes begin. He vaguely remembers a girl pulling off his trousers, Rebecca, he supposes, it must be true. Virginity; another loss.

  Not surprisingly, several hours later Johnny finds himself sitting alone on a scarlet sofa in Fallowfield’s leading massage parlour. Waiting for sex. His virginity having been lost, Johnny finds what all boys find at some stage; an insatiable appetite for more. It doesn’t matter that he has no recollection of the sex itself. The gate has been opened, never mind that he was guarding it drunk. He gets a sense of power, progress and victory. Like a nineteenth-century imperialist preparing to scramble for Africa. More countries, more pillage, more sex.

  So at around half past twelve that night he goes along to the brothel. It’s only a short walk. He pays the cash and is watching football highlights on a small television when the parlour door opens and a familiar-sounding voice begins negotiating sex.

  ‘Yeah, I just want it straight, no messin’, a quick fugg, that’s all.’

  At this precise moment, Johnny remembers how much he likes life deep down, and why. Because life is perfectly hilarious. Zakir ghosts into the waiting room, pausing by the doorway when he clocks Johnny on the sofa. He doesn’t seem to recognise him at first. It’s as if he’s trying to identify him from thousands of metres away, through squinted eyes. Finally, the penny drops. Zakir remembers.

  ‘Fuggin hell . . . Johnny.’

  ‘Zakir. How are you?’

  ‘Oh, fugg.’

  ‘It’s OK, mate. Look, there’s football on TV!’

  Oh, thank every single god ever, thinks Johnny, as coincidence erupts in his favour. He imagines earth from space, all the countries moving about and forming an enormous grinning face. Thank God for global failure, for the irresistible attacks of Western sex. Civilisation shivers, as if cold. Then a noise: a death rattle.

  Zakir takes a seat next to Johnny on the sofa, the smell of whisky smoking from his lips. What had happened? Maybe the brief glimpse at the porno under the pillow had been enough: the gates of shit burst open and his brain got swamped. Or maybe this is how Zakir has always coped. Maybe there were no conferences on British democracy and all along he’d been emptying his ballsacks into Mancunian prostitutes. No, thinks Johnny, looking at Zakir’s wasted face, this is a fall, this is classic human collapse. Eventually Johnny speaks.

  ‘Is this my fault, Zakir? It’s just that you never seemed like the sort.’

  Zakir turns to Johnny, his features spoiled, muddled by the booze.

  ‘Ha . . . whose fuggin’ fault? No, not yours, not yours, but the girls at the university .
. . yes, Miss fuggin’ India . . . Whose fuggin fault? Oh mine . . . mine.’

  Just as Johnny realises quite how hammered Zakir is, a young brunette dressed in red underwear appears above them and speaks Johnny’s name.

  ‘Johnny? Oh hello, Zakir, you back again? We must be doing something right. I’ll be with you in a minute.’

  And she is, in a sense. Johnny doesn’t take long to process. He enters a dark red room where the air is talcum powder and the walls warp inwards towards a low ceiling. It is nothing. He reaches for a small breast. He marvels at the economy of the girl’s actions: not a muscle or a movement wasted. She rocks on top of him for around forty-five seconds, working her hips vigorously when she detects the puny pulsations in Johnny’s cock. The sex reminds Johnny of one of those primary school rhythm orchestras. It reminds him of figuring out the use of some strange percussive instrument, then failing to play in time.

  He passes Zakir on the way out and nods farewell. They will never meet again, but at least they have shared something. End of story.

  Yes, I digress. All this happened days ago, last week perhaps. It was just too good not to share. At present we’re with Justin. He’s standing in Exchange Square staring at his mobile phone, waiting for it to ring. It’s approaching nine o’clock. A large television screen relays footage of a natural disaster to a few uninterested passers-by. Justin stares at his phone. It’s high time he seduced a celebrity.

  He spent this morning and much of this afternoon shopping for dresses with Rebecca. They bought six at considerable expense, one for each of the strippers he’s rented for the night. In order to seduce a celebrity, one needs to be in possession of certain capital, ways of rewarding the celebrity for its love. Fame, of course, is the most obvious and the most lucrative; a celebrity likes nothing better than loving one of their own, combining their values and holding hands as they are captured by the cameras. But money is a close second: in the eyes of the wealthy, a celebrity recognises a mutual concern, a shared love, the confident glint of cash. Appearing to be rich is Justin’s only hope. If the celebrity is to be lured, then the promise of cash must appear entirely genuine. The celebrity could bolt at the slightest sniff of reality. They mustn’t suspect a thing.

  A neat side parting has been combed into Justin’s hair by Rebecca. There is a nuance of the 1930s gentleman about him, the playboy, the cad. His suit is purest white and instead of a shirt he wears a black vest that lightly traces the contours of his toned chest. He is modern yet traditional, old money combined with contemporary style, he is perfect. Stains are his only concern: if a drink gets spilled on the suit, then he might be screwed. Celebrities shy away from mistake and mild humiliation. They don’t like it. But there are always risks, particularly when hunting a celebrity; there is always peril and the possibility of failure.

  Finally his phone rings. It does so twice, then stops. This is code. It means that Rebecca and the other girls are in position, they’re at the party and are awaiting his arrival. Justin places his phone in his inside pocket and breathes deeply.

  As he leaves Exchange Square and heads towards Papparazzi, the night club where the party is being thrown, Justin identifies the first possible flaw in his plan. He has no idea what the film is about. All the celebrities will have just attended its premiere and Justin has no clue what the themes and plot of the thing are. As he reaches Papparazzi, however, his fears melt away. Above the entrance on a large canvas awning the film is being advertised. He pauses to figure it out.

  The film is called The Blood of the Flag. Justin sighs with relief as he realises the film is total shit. A young man stares out across the poster with stern, longing eyes. He’s dressed in the green felt uniform of a Second World War Allied soldier. The soldier’s gaze is met on the other side of the poster by a woman with sky-blue eyes and blond ringlets of hair dangling like springs from her scalp. She is beautiful, dressed in a long silk summer dress decorated with roses of yellow, pink and red. Justin clasps his neck with his hand, his eyes squint. The question is simple: does the young man get gunned down or does the couple’s love survive the experience of war? Justin pulls out a cigarette from his top pocket and lights it with a gold Zippo. He smokes and watches the poster, examining the gazes of the two young leads. Only popped corn is missing from this cinematic experience.

  After a few seconds it all becomes clear. The young boy meets the young girl in about 1941. The war is in full swing, but they’re Texans and feel kind of out of it and invincible. They’re worried, of course, but not enough to resist embarking on a combative love affair of overblown romance, tactile teasing and finally explosive, meaningful sex. They get married and you suspect she might be pregnant. Then one day they’re smooching in a barn when the radio relays the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Shit, says the young man, I’ve got to go to war. Don’t, says the young girl, I don’t want you getting hurt. Don’t worry, says the young man, I’m an integral part of this film, it’s unlikely I’ll die. So he looks smart in his uniform and kisses her goodbye. As he leaves, she drops the bombshell that she’s pregnant. Fuck, he’s overjoyed, but goes to war all the same. While fighting in Iwo Jima he sees a few things that fuck him over and a really good mate dies in his arms. Meanwhile, she’s at home making bullets and discovering her independence, telling her son how great his dad is. Finally, just when she’s assumed he’s been killed in some much publicised and futile offensive, he walks into a room and catches her doing something mega wholesome like mending the kid’s pullover. They’re reunited, thank God, and fuck. For a while, though, it’s not great; they struggle to communicate, he’s troubled, she’s grown up and whatever. Their son wonders why his dad is so sad and nothing like the stories. But, in the end, the young woman goes downstairs one night to find the soldier sitting at the kitchen table with a gun and she’s like, what’s up? and for a moment the young soldier says nothing, then he just cries and cries and cries. They embrace frantically. Then everything is OK and there’s a lovely musical score to their lives. The two young people truly enjoy the 1950s together, he goes into plastics and they have a second child, a girl.

  Shit film, thinks Justin, as he drops his cigarette and walks towards the entrance of Papparazzi.

  Justin meets Rebecca at the main bar, a short distance from the VIP area where the party’s taking place. She looks incredible, high-heeled and heavenly. Elongated by expert tailoring, a green silk dress giving the impression of an entirely new body. She smiles and Justin stares at her subtle bust.

  ‘Well, the good news is the celebs have arrived and the girls are already mingling. They’re saying you invested in the film, in The Blood of the Flag, that’s what you do, you invest in the arts, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Have you got the coke?’

  ‘Yes, just now.’

  ‘Good, they’ll expect it if you get back to the hotel.’

  The club is electrified by the rumour that fame is present. Girls and boys hover by the VIP area, flashing pushed tits and painted eyes at the bouncer, believing, perhaps, that if they stare hard enough the thick red curtain will become transparent and they’ll see celebrity with their own actual eyes. Justin orders two White Russians for Rebecca and himself. It’s red velvet, you fools. It will never be transparent. Only reminiscent of bloody murder.

  ‘You don’t have a chance with the cast,’ says Rebecca. ‘They’ve got lines of people waiting to talk to them, even the minor characters.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘But there are still loads to choose from, TV stars mostly. I think some have done film but I couldn’t tell you which. I guess it’ll only work if you see one you like. Just don’t waste time with the cast, we’re not going to blow this chance, right? All right, Justin?’

  Rebecca is demonstrating that manic and babbling bogus enthusiasm for which women are famous. She refuses to catch Justin’s eye, just stares at the neckline of his vest and occasionally at his shoulder or his hair. Justin can only make out the meaning of Rebecc
a’s eyes if he really tries. She loves him. In an adjacent world, he loves her. Yes. On the other side of life, these two are lovers. They are choosing ingredients in a bright supermarket. They are meeting each other’s parents and sharing a bank account. But not on this side. On this side they are personalities in the dark. Blinkered experimenters. Justin looks at Rebecca as he might a fading photograph.

  ‘Are you OK, Rebecca?’

  ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’

  Justin pauses, sucks liquid through a straw. You can only love once or twice, he maintains. In any case, love is the great Western lie, a white one perhaps, but a lie all the same. He glares. Love is banal, safe. Please let it be so.

  ‘I hate society, you know? I hate almost everything about it,’ he says.

  ‘I don’t want a boyfriend. Haha.’

  ‘No, listen to me. I hate society.’ Justin throws a fag into his mouth and watches impatiently as Rebecca’s eyes begin to plead.

  ‘Please don’t do this, Justin. Please,’ she says. ‘Let’s go home. Don’t do it.’

  1, 2, 3, 4.

  ‘I have to.’

  He walks forward past her exposed shoulder, which seems dissected by the thin green strap of her dress. As he passes by, he notices, out of the corner of his eye, Rebecca’s head, bowing slowly towards the ground. Too much cinema, he thinks, way too much cinema in the world. Love is the white lie of the West, he chants, love is the white lie of the West. He places a hand on the shoulder of the bouncer and assembles a devastating smile. He produces his ticket and is shepherded into the VIP area, to the astonishment of the herd.

  As he enters, the six strippers prick their ears, their eyes suck like syringes. Justin pauses and smiles. He arches his neck slightly, then sips at his drink. That was a good sip, elegant and controlled. Great sip, great start. As planned, Sidney is the first girl to approach. He watches as she carefully avoids the gropes of a group of middle-aged men and makes her way over to him.