Friction

by Joe Stretch

  At the southern end of Market Street a space exists. In another city it might be a pleasing piazza buzzing with atmosphere, but not in Manchester. It’s just uneven tarmac, argumentative architecture; bad maths. Johnny arrives and a pigeon leaves. The droves of people continue to move, not noticing the speedy arrival of the young man.

  Are my clothes too baggy? wonders Johnny, marvelling at the plastic bags that bulge from the people’s wrists. Can I do anything at all? He’s stops and stares, people revolve around him like he’s the central spear of an ancient merry-go-round. They bob up and down and round, like brightly coloured plastic horses with gaping mouths and fixed expressions.

  ‘Can I do anything at all?’ he says out loud, trying to catch the eye of an old man who limps past supported by a wooden stick. Pigeons circle overhead, they’re enjoying this.

  ‘Can I do anything at all?’ he says again, to himself. Can I run back to the Nude Factory and demand that Rebecca gyrates on my lap for a while? Can I run to her and cover her exposed flesh in a large blanket? Can I tell her that everything will be fine and that I’m getting her out of stripping and building us a new and better life? Can I rescue anything? Johnny’s thoughts tumble out of his brain, landing on the Tarmac with a wet thump. He screams at the top of his voice: ‘What am I meant to be doing?’

  He’s running again, prompted by the grim glances that turned to him as he screamed. He’s running up Market Street, fumbling with his phone. He hardly recognises any of the names in his phonebook: Andy, Anka, Ben. The names of people he’s lost touch with, an entire alphabet of failure. He slips off Market Street and runs a little further down a quiet pedestrianised road. He comes to rest outside a pub called The Shakespeare. He’s panting heavily as he taps in the telephone number of the sex line.

  In this situation, what would Shakespeare do? Write a play about it probably. A girl, a guy, rejection, sexual experimentation, trickery, farce. But this is not the age of Shakespeare. For a moment Johnny considers entering the pub and buying a pint of Coke, but then his call connects.

  ‘Hello, who’s that?’ the girl’s voice, unknown but familiar. Just like the rest.

  ‘It’s me,’ says Johnny, pacing frantically, staring up at Shakespeare’s portrait. Which swings on a sign overhead.

  ‘Who’s me, darlin’?’ says the girl. Bless her, bless the girl. How long does she wait by her phone? And has she just sipped from a beaker of gravel? Her voice is ragged.

  ‘It’s me. Johnny,’ says Johnny, using his real name for the first time on this line. ‘I need your help. Do you know what I’m meant to be doing?’

  ‘Sorry?’ comes the crackled reply.

  ‘What am I meant to be doing?’

  Johnny kicks an invisible football from his feet and senses tears conspiring in his eyes. Against him, of course. He listens to his phone; the girl’s confused. Why won’t she speak? What am I meant to be doing? Wait – she’s speaking.

  ‘Well, Johnny, usually guys just choose a fantasy, then wank as I talk ’em through it.’

  ‘Really? But everything is going wrong.’

  ‘You know, like doggy? Or anal?’

  Johnny is tall with thin brown hair. The sky is blue. At the end of the road a lorry reverses slowly away from a building site. Bleep, bleep, bleep.

  ‘Please, I need some guidance.’

  ‘Blow job? Tit-fuck?’

  ‘Help me.’

  Out of desperation, Johnny takes the handset from his ear and watches as the lorry works backwards towards him. He thinks about dying, then about God. Does God have personal problems? Surely he must. Johnny decides quickly that he definitely believes in God, just to give himself an outside chance of meeting the fucker. He brings the handset back to his ear, the tone of the girl’s voice has changed completely. Shit.

  ‘Are you outside?’ she asks, her voice missing its previous eroticism. ‘You’re fucking outside, aren’t ya?’

  Johnny feels tears sneak across the southern borders of his eyes.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I’m outside, help me, please!’

  ‘You’re a fucking pervert!’

  The line goes dead. The crackled voice of the girl is replaced by a warm monotone. The reversing lorry continues towards Johnny, its bleeping getting louder and louder. In an ideal world, Johnny could just stand still and be slowly crushed by the reversing vehicle. In a perfect world he would be flattened like a pancake by the lorry’s heavy wheels, then folded up like a cartoon fatality and posted to his parents. But naturally, this is not a perfect world. This is a world where lorries bleep when placed into reverse, allowing people to step on to pavements out of the way and be safe. Johnny leans on the sandwich board at the entrance to The Shakespeare: cold lager, homemade sandwiches, steak and ale pie, bangers, mash.

  In his head he begins to count silently to himself, one, two, three and so on. He pauses at twenty-one: his age. Two decades and one year. God knows how many days. Certainly he can’t recall any specific ones offhand. Life: blue sky, red blood, grey streets, bleep, bleep.

  Johnny does what he probably ought to do. He puts his hands into his trouser pockets and walks towards the end of the street. Overhead, Shakespeare swings on his sign. Johnny is somewhere else, then somewhere else again.

  III

  Seven Months Later

  26

  WHAT A FUCKING nightmare. That’s what people would say. I see myself groaning in a pub, a half-drunk ale in my hand. I’m tossing my pupils to the tops of my eyes. I’m going, what a fucking nightmare. Seriously. I’m like.

  Draw breath and realise that we’re in this together. Doomed to swallow more talk of tits and in and out and blood. The truth is leant against the bar and it’s staring at you and me. We continue to talk, to hold each other’s eyes. But we feel its gaze and are excited. We wonder which of us the truth would like to smooch.

  By the way, I’m in the shit.

  It’s very funny. Hee hee. See. This morning I got a very special visitor. Not my Narrative Health Aid, Susan. No, not her. I looked up from my work to see our illustrious governor, overweight in the doorway, his grey head drifting like smoke from the collar of his red shirt. I smiled and decided his name is Gordon. Gordon said nothing. He gestured that I should continue writing, so I did. It has dawned on me that it was no accident that I found myself studying human history on the Evernet system. Or at least no accident that I have been allowed to complete my studies. It appears I fascinate the governor. I am special. I am a dead body. Governor Gordon watched me like the devout watch miracles. The governor knows who I am. He knows that I know who I am.

  There is nothing anyone can do to prevent this story. I know that it will not earn me my release. Sod it or fuck it and certainly whatever. But the governor knows he’d be in the shit if his superiors learnt of my being exposed to Evernet. It’s a screw-up. We’ll be like. Fucking come on. I’m like.

  I am shipwreck rusty. I can barely hold the figures on the page. I can barely read the maps. Translate them. Bring myself to life. I’ll finish this tonight. My brain was never built to be so full. It was built for fresh air. Its pipes were intended as slides but now, sadly, friction has occurred. My mind is dry with turned earth, history and information. I’ll finish this tonight.

  I’m thinking about death today. My own, I think. I see myself wilting on to a large stone, far away from the bright pine that surrounds me now. I bring a hand to my forehead and think for a second, trying to capture a few memories. Is it because there are too few? Or too many perhaps? Either way I don’t remember a thing. Not one second of my life falls before me, split with a knife. No images or sounds. No cause to smile or be satisfied. And as my eyelids droop a figure leans above me. And although the sunlight on his shoulder makes a shadow of this man, I somehow know that he is me. Or you perhaps, yes, perhaps the figure is you. Offering me your hand and dragging me to my feet.

  As Gordon the Governor watched me this morning I knew that he was horrified. I am a wobbly tooth. I am a ca
r crash. I am a tortuous sex game. I am a freak of nature. The governor mopped his brow as I tapped like a demon, turning occasionally to smile in his direction. Gordon shuddered, turning away. He knows that I have found out who I am. You know, don’t you? You wonder what I’m capable of.

  My name? Not allowed.

  I’m ready and so are you. Fuck Gordon. Fuck Susan. The finale is for you and me. The truth wants a three-way smooch. Ride like a piggy. We’ll be like. We’re leaping through time again. Stretching for the end. Seven months later. I could shout my name but the winds of time would steal it. So not yet. No matter. Seven months later. The end.

  27

  One Million Cokes

  MARCO FRANCHESI IS a skinny Italian from Ancona. He is a ridiculous dead-tree of a man. His bony body is tightly wrapped in black fabric; a polo shirt has been tucked into denim drainpipes. He’s old Europe. He sits with his legs painfully crossed, surrounded by ashtray, cigarettes and his black-rimmed glasses. He’s leaking his thin, squeaky accent into the air around his face.

  ‘Oh Jesus, Justin, is this not all a little English? Like you don’t know how to make love to a woman properly?’

  Justin yawns enormously. He’s been coughing on Franchesi’s smoke for almost an hour. Getting annoyed at the persistently rising intonation of the Italian’s questions.

  ‘It’s completely to do with personal gratification,’ Justin says. ‘It’s completely to do with happiness.’

  The bar at the Malmaison Hotel is disappointingly dark. The furniture is jet black, the carpet too. The windows are tinted to the extent that they are barely see-through. Justin had hoped for more light, less atmosphere.

  ‘Cigarette?’ asks Franchesi, passing an unlit fag between each of the fingers on his left hand. Justin declines and Franchesi seems strangely insulted. ‘I’m not Catholic, you know, Justin? You can relax.’

  ‘I know,’ replies Justin, defensively. ‘It’s just that I don’t think I smoke any more. I thought I did, but thinking about it now, it’s clear I don’t. I must have given up.’

  The Italian nods and refers briefly to some notes he’s been making since the interview began. He puts a line through one line of text, and ticks another.

  ‘You went to work at the football stadium immediately after leaving school, is this correct?’

  ‘Yes, that’s correct.’

  Franchesi adjusts the dictaphone on the table in front of him; it’s not clear why. After curling the end of his burning fag around the rim of the ashtray for a moment, he sucks on it, exhales and speaks.

  ‘What do you know about Briony Freeman?’

  ‘Only what I read in the papers.’

  ‘Is that happiness, Justin? Do you think Briony found this “happiness” I notice you like to talk about?’

  At this, Justin smiles, the kind of smile you make when someone’s whispering brilliant news into your ear. Journalists have been asking him about happiness all day. He wishes he hadn’t been so exuberant on his website.

  ‘I am the leader of nobody, Mr Franchesi.’

  Justin runs a dry palm over his shaved head; these interviews are getting boring. He’s been sitting in this hotel bar since ten o’clock this morning. It’s four now and through the dark window panes he can make out the shapes of commuters walking down from the station with slow, exhausted steps. He’s lost count of how many journalists he’s spoken to today, ten maybe. Marco Franchesi, the skinny Italian from the Spectator, ought to be the last.

  ‘Are you in contact with Rebecca Fields?’ asks Franchesi.

  ‘Rebecca is a friend of mine, you know that. Why ask that when you’ve seen the website?’

  Justin pushes against the floor with his feet. His chair slides backwards away from the table. Franchesi grunts with disapproval, but Justin doesn’t give a shit. He stares out of the window at the silhouettes walking home. Again Franchesi relocates the dictaphone on the table, moving forward towards Justin as he does so. The Italian is certainly a bastard, even a twat, perhaps. His eyes seem conical, a brown pupil at each tip.

  ‘Do you know your site received over two million hits last month, Justin?’ he asks, attempting to lure Justin’s attention from the window. ‘Are you prepared to tell me who Colin Rogers is?’

  Unbeknownst to Franchesi, Justin farts gently into his leather seat. How did it come to this? he wonders. Trumping around journalists who think I’m the devil incarnate. I’ve made mistakes, Justin decides, I’ve clearly made mistakes. He turns away from the window and looks calmly at the journalist. ‘Colin is a guy I met. You’ve seen the site. Why ask?’

  ‘It was Colin’s idea, wasn’t it? To get girls pregnant? He’s to blame for Briony Freeman, isn’t he?’

  ‘We don’t even know Briony Freeman. She’s nothing to do with me. I barely know Colin.’

  Briony Freeman was a girl from Leeds. She and her boyfriend enjoyed the idea of deliberate conception and multiple abortion. Only they got bored of the depressing atmosphere at the clinics. Got bored of listening to the judgemental sighs of the staff. So one night they got pissed on cider and Briony spread herself naked on the kitchen table as her boyfriend rifled through the cutlery drawer. They were fuck-ups. They were bad surgeons. Septicaemia. Bad blood. Briony rotted away miserably from Monday to Friday.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Justin, two fingers over his right eye. ‘I don’t know.’

  He’s drunk so much Coke in the last few hours it’s likely his blood has become carbonated. It feels fizzy, brown and sugary in his veins. He’s getting angry. Bored by the boring Italian. He feels he might have to explode and shower him in blood and Coca-Cola.

  ‘I have to write three thousand words on you and your activities, Justin. About this craze you’ve started. You’re gonna have to talk about abortion. If you want fairness, I’ll need more.’

  Franchesi scrunches up an empty packet of cigarettes and produces a fresh deck from his leather satchel. He’s lit one in seconds, so fast it must be magic. Justin composes himself, preparing to tell Franchesi exactly what he told the other journalists.

  ‘Rebecca and I began the experiment because we wanted to find better ways of having sex. Colin’s is the idea that has proven most popular. I don’t want to go to prison. I don’t want to break the law. We were fed up, OK? We were fed up.’

  Franchesi is unimpressed. There’s so much smoke coming from his face that Justin suspects he may be on fire. He can just make out his slender black figure through the white fog. He can just make out the regrettable movements of his lips.

  ‘The law is being broken, Justin.’

  ‘Not by me. I just want a sex life, fuck’s sake . . . this constant repetition . . .’

  Depending on which way you choose to look at it, the timing of Rebecca and Justin’s sexual experiment is either perfect or deeply unfortunate. If you’re going to partake in the premeditated termination of foetuses for one’s own sexual pleasure, then it can be unfortunate if your activities coincide with a widespread re-evaluation of the issue of abortion. Alternatively, the recent controversy surrounding abortion has brought Justin’s adventures to a wider audience. He’s received free publicity for his crusade. Only it doesn’t feel like he’s saving the world any more. The experiment is fucking up in his face. But, then again, it is exciting to find oneself at the centre of national outrage.

  Combined with the horror story of Briony Freeman, the revelation that a high-ranking government minister secretly negotiated and fast-tracked as many as six terminations for his various mistresses sent the issue of abortion splattering over the front pages. Of course, once the scent of a particular issue has been established and the journalistic hounds have had a sniff, then sick revelation can be found everywhere. It wasn’t long before newsex.biz was the talk of the tabloids. The idea of recreational abortion shocked and disturbed the population. The people raged and grew red in the face at the idea. They seethed. Spluttered. They clenched their fists and willed that the blood of the damned be spilled.

&
nbsp; And it was, kind of. The minister resigned and was replaced by another minister, and Justin was identified as the pitch-black-minded devil behind newsex.biz and the idea of recreational abortion. Since the story broke, Justin has agreed to as many interviews as he can bear. With every article that appears criticising him and his circle of deviants, his circle of deviants seems to breed. It grows. So it is that Franchesi has been sent to Manchester to meet the beast. So it is that he’s referring to his list of questions, wondering which one to ask next.

  ‘Tell me about “unseen lives”,’ asks Franchesi, after some thought.

  ‘Life’s a piece of shit, Mr Franchesi. We wanted to create life without the shit,’ replies Justin, for the tenth time today.

  ‘Is Colin a dangerous man?’

  ‘I hardly know him . . . But no, no I don’t think he is.’

  Franchesi stubs out a fag unsuccessfully; it continues to smoulder in the tray. As if attempting to compensate for this blunder he leans forward through the smoke and pushes the dictaphone right to the edge of the table to where Justin sits. The Italian’s eyes flash briefly, then appear to darken two or three shades, like an evening sky collapsing quickly into night.

  ‘Is Rebecca still capable of giving birth, Justin?’ His voice is rotten and vindictive.

  ‘Yes,’ Justin replies instantly, splaying his fingers across the tabletop, admiring their innocence. But the Italian won’t stop.

  ‘What’s your connection to Frank Jacobs, to the White Love organisation? Can you explain that, Justin?’

  For a moment it seems as if air doesn’t exist in this awful bar, as if it’s been completely replaced by enormous hedges of bright green stinging nettles. Justin yawns and sips from his millionth Coke.

  ‘No, I can’t explain that. That’s something different.’