A Fucked Up Life in Books

by AnonYMous

  After relaying the conversation between him and his friend my brother was pretty angry, and then worried. I got my phone out and selected her name in the phone book. Home phone number. It rang and rang and no one answered.

  Right, try the mobile.

  That too, rang and rang with no answer.

  My brother rang his friend back and told him to bang on the door some more. He was really worried now but I just felt angry.

  I rang a few more times. On the fifth or sixth attempt she answered the phone.

  ‘Eurghh, hello …?’ She croaked down the line.

  I could hear my brother’s friend banging on the door in the background.

  ‘Go downstairs right now and answer the door. It is X. Tell him that you are alright and on the phone to me and then close the door and get the fuck back up here.’

  ‘What? No …’

  ‘I SAID: ANSWER THE FUCKING DOOR.’

  I heard her grumbling as she put the receiver down on the table and went downstairs, heard her answer the door, do a little laugh and then come back to the phone. It took a look time to get it to her face, judging by the fumbley scratchy noises that I could hear.’

  ‘Now, why the fuck are you ringing me at … 8.30 in the morning. I was asleep.’

  ‘Where did you go last night?’ I asked.

  ‘Out,’ she replied.

  ‘Out where?’

  ‘To a friend’s, to X’s.’

  ‘Drinking, were you?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Drive there, did you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where does X live?’

  She told me.

  ‘Are you fucking kidding me, that’s a five minute walk. So you went round there, drunk, I don’t know how many bottles of wine, and then got in the car and drove home?’

  ‘Yes, look I don’t know why you’re so angry or what the problem is here, calling me at this time in the morning and screaming down the phone at me. I’m a grown woman, I can go out if I like, I can have a drink if I like. I probably shouldn’t have driven home but it was fine. Nothing happened.’

  ‘NOTHING HAPPENED?’ I was really screaming at her now. ‘GO AND LOOK AT YOUR FUCKING CAR AND THEN COME BACK HERE AND TALK TO ME.’

  More grumbling. More muffly scratching noises as she put the phone on the table and went outside. Then a THUD THUD THUD as she ran back upstairs.

  ‘Where’s the car?’

  ‘End of the road. Go on. I’ll wait.’

  She went again. It took a while. When she came back she groaned into the phone, ‘Ooohhh, fuck. What happened?’

  ‘You, dickhead, went out, drank, drove home and stacked your car into X’s car. Then from what it apparently looks like, you reversed your fucking car, drove round his and parked somewhere up the road and somehow managed to find your house. You cunt.’

  ‘Don’t call me a cunt.’

  ‘You are a cunt. What the fuck were you thinking?’

  ‘The roads were quiet …’

  ‘THE ROADS WERE QUIET? My fucking BROTHER, your SON drives around those roads at night. If you had hit him and hurt him in your fucking ridiculous state I would’ve fucking killed you. That’s not a threat or me being dramatic. I would have killed you. You FUCKING IDIOT.’

  She was silent now. On the other end of the phone I was throwing my hands in the air and sighing and gasping for breath and wondering if she cared.

  ‘Right,’ I said eventually. ‘I am coming over right now.’

  ‘Oh no, you can’t, I’m …’

  I hung up. We were pretty far away. I’d take us an hour to get there.

  We drove back towards home, taking the fourth turn at the roundabout instead of the first, which led us to Mum. I got out of the car, marched towards the door and slammed my hand down on the handle. It didn’t move. Locked.

  ‘OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR RIGHT NOW,’ I screamed.

  Someone opened the door. Not my Mum. Some old man.

  ‘Brilliant. Who the fuck are you?’ I asked. He gave me some name and I pushed past him.

  Mum was in the living room having a cigarette. My brother and I went in. Someone else was in there too. A woman, who I thought I recognised as being a neighbour.

  ‘Hello,’ said Mum. ‘I’ve spoken to X, it’s all fine. The police are just on their way over now for insurance purposes. It could have been a lot worse if it weren’t your brother’s friend! Hahahaha, quite funny really. Anyway, I’ve been talking to my friends …’ she nodded at the man and woman in the room with her, ‘… and there’s no harm done. X will get his car fixed on my insurance, and he’s going to say it was a mistake, we’ve worked something out.’

  I looked at the pair of unfamiliar faces in the living room. Her friends.

  ‘So, she’s told you what she did, and you said there’s no harm done? And what fucking planet are you on exactly? I don’t know who the fuck you are but you are probably the worst people in the world that I have met so far. Tell her it’s okay to do something like that, not to worry about it? You’re fucking disgusting.’

  ‘Darling, I do wish you wouldn’t swear at my friends.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  She turned back to her friends. ‘She takes after her Mother! Fiery!’

  ‘I DO NOT TAKE AFTER MY FUCKING MOTHER. YOU ARE FUCKING INSANE. YOU ARE INSANE AND YOUR FRIENDS ARE CUNTS.’

  I went to storm out of the house as the door knocked. The police. I left the door open and told them to take her fucking licence off her. They looked at each other in bemusement and stepped past me and into the warm welcome of my Mum’s smoky living room. They didn’t take her licence off her.

  Because it was my brother’s friend’s car that she’d crashed into, he’d felt bad and not pressed charges. We went and looked at his car, and the impact of her smacking into the back of it had crumpled the back seats, one which had his daughter’s baby car chair in, deeply into the back of the drivers and passenger seats. It made me feel sick.

  She paid out for his car and she paid out for her own, ignoring what could’ve happened to her and what kind of trouble she could’ve been in, and instead making up a new story to tell friends and family about what happened.

  When I passed my driving test a few years later and was worried about my driving, my brother said to me, ‘Your driving is fine. There is nothing wrong with your driving. It’s all of these other cunts that you have to watch. You don’t know what they’re going to do. Just watch the road and watch them.’

  A fucking good piece of advice, if you ask me.

  Guards! Guards!

  I used to go out with a boy who loved Terry Pratchett. Now, I’ve never really been all that interested in Pratchett; I’ve read a couple of books but I can’t remember now exactly what was going on. And yes, they made me chuckle a few times but only having plucked two from the massive back catalogue of choice I had never really got all that invested in the characters and their world. I am currently collecting up the Discworld books, in order, so that I can remedy this because I think I’d like them.

  But that’s another story.

  So this boy was someone I was in a long-distance relationship with. He lived in Yorkshire and I lived somewhere in the Midlands. So it was a 2 hour train, each way, each weekend, if I wanted to see him.

  And that I did. He was quite nice, and also I was quite bored where I was living. So I’d travel to his most weekends and we’d do shit that couples in long distance relationships do. In this case argue a lot.

  At the end of one weekend trip, we were having an argument about his weird penis, and about the fact that the fucker would not go inside me unless it was covered by the seam-free sheath of a condom.

  Me: ‘Sort your fucking penis out. That end bit shouldn’t be like that.’

  Him: ‘It’s fine. It’s always been like that.’

  Me: ‘It’s not fucking fine, I’ve been with you over a year and I’ve never seen the end of your knob. It’s weird. Get it cut off.’

 
; Him: ‘No. Fuck off.’

  We had other arguments but that one was quite prominent because I felt like I wasn’t getting enough cock, and he felt like his penis was normal and didn’t need medical attention. (It did.)

  So without having a goodbye shag, I began to get ready to go to the train station.

  Me: ‘I’ve nearly finished my book. Got a book I can borrow for the way back?’

  He was very excited about this.

  Him: ‘How about some Terry Pratchett?’

  His poor little eyes looked so hopeful I couldn’t say no.

  He selected Guards! Guards! From the shelf and I put it in my bag, said my goodbyes (‘please think about going to a doctor, yeah?’) and headed to the train station.

  I had such a lovely journey. There weren’t too many people because I’d got the last train so I’d been able to put my bag in the luggage nook at the end of the carriage instead of having to sit on it in the vestibule, and I had a whole four chairs and a table to myself. I was also very much enjoying Guards! Guards! and the journey was whizzing by.

  My stop seemed to arrive in no time at all, and I got up, hopped off the train and walked halfway down the platform before I thought I was a bit light.

  I looked down at my hands: the book and train ticket were there, good. Why the fuck did I feel like I was missing something.

  My bag. My fucking bag is still on the train. I turned and ran and leapt, fucking LEAPT (so gracefully) back on to the train just as the driver announced that I should stand clear of the doors. I grabbed my bag and turned. And the doors slammed shut.

  Fuck. It’s fine though, it’s fine. The next stop is just 15 minutes up the road. I can get off there and scoot back and these train bastards won’t even realise that I’ve had a free ride! Stupid wankers.

  Train Guard: ‘This train is now non-stop to London. Passengers for other destinations should change at London and check the local departure boards. I repeat, this train is now non-stop to London.’

  Oh. That’s a bit shit then.

  It was late because I’d so cleverly got the last train, and I’d now I’d probably tripled my fucking journey because of this fucking bastard twat of a book that had distracted me with that fucking dragon woman when I should’ve been happily leaving the train at my destination. What is that woman’s name again? I blame her for everything.

  Being an adult I just about managed not to scream and cry and kill everyone, and instead went in search of the train Guard.

  I found a cleaner first.

  Me: ‘Hello, I need to find the Guard.’

  Cleaner, glancing at my book: ‘The Guard?’

  Me, glancing at my book, too: ‘Oh, yeah. Har har har! The Guard! Guards! Guards! Har har har.’ I waggle the book in her face a little. ‘Arghh! Guards!’

  Cleaner: ‘Are you okay?’

  What a cunt, I fucking hate myself.

  So she took me to the Guard and he was a large man. He looked like a Guard should look. He said ‘Now Then’, and I like that because I think it’s quite nice. It’s nice, isn’t it?

  Guard: ‘Now then, what’s the problem?’

  I told him the whole story, which is not what he asked for but what he got. He listened very carefully and then asked for my ticket. I gave it to him and he wrote OVERCARRIED on it, and a bunch of special, secret numbers. The he told me to go and sit down and at London to get on the next train back.

  Me: ‘So you can’t just let me off here?’

  Cunt. Hate myself. 23 years old. ‘Can you let me off here?’ God. Fucking idiot.

  Guard: Silence

  He looked at me for quite a long time. A couple of minutes must have passed. He was probably chewing over whether or not I was a bit simple.

  Guard: ‘… No.’

  I went and sat down and I didn’t read anymore of Guards! Guards! because I was too frightened I’d end up somewhere else and then next Guard would have no room on my ticket to point out to the others that I’m a fucking idiot and I needed taking back, again. Instead I just sat down and berated myself for that ridiculous conversation with that poor, poor cleaner.

  Nineteen Eighty-Four

  On my second attempt at completing a university degree (I fucked up the first after two years) I met a boy who I had a lot in common with. On this course there were a lot less people than I’d been used to on the last one, and he stuck out on the first day because he was wearing a denim jacket with a Black Sabbath patch on one breast and a Deep Purple one on the other. He had long, greasy, curly hair that he tied back in a ponytail, and thin framed square glasses. After talking to him on the first day we became friends and would spend time in between lectures and seminars in the pub or in the library.

  One day he asked me whether I’d read Nineteen Eighty-Four. I hadn’t, and he said that he had a copy and that I could borrow it. It was his favourite book.

  That evening I went over to his house and we sat in his room painting High Elves for his Games Workshop battles. He gave me the book and I looked it over.

  ‘Have you read it?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, course,’ he replied.

  ‘What, this copy? The spine’s still smooth.’

  ‘Yeah, I don’t break the spines on my books.’

  I handed him the book back.

  ‘Fuck it, then. I’ll get it from the library.’

  A couple of days later, in the university library where I was trying to find the shelf where they’d hidden the one copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four that they had in stock, my friend was particularly cheery. This was not like him. He was usually angry and hateful like me. That’s why I liked him.

  I finally found the shelf I was looking for and plucked the book from it, turning round to walk towards the check-out machine. I asked him why he was so fucking happy. He glanced around and took out his phone.

  ‘Been sending this girl dirty messages,’ he said, holding the phone out to me. On it was a picture of a very thin girl with no clothes on. She had a great big bush and not really any tits to speak of.

  ‘Oh right. Erm, nice. Who is she?’

  ‘My best friend’s girlfriend.’

  I stopped where I was and had a look at him. My new friend, biggest geek I’d ever met, liked reading books and going to The Games Workshop on a Saturday afternoon to play hours of Warhammer with the other local geeks.

  ‘Does your friend know?’ I asked.

  ‘Nah, but he’s leaving soon. Going in the army. They’ve been together two years but once he goes she’s breaking up with him and I’m going to fuck her.’

  Fuck her? He’d never spoken like that before. It was weird, like he’d turned into someone else. Some utter bastard.

  ‘So you’re going to fuck her? Your mate’s girlfriend, once he leaves to go to the army?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He grinned a weird pervy grin that I hadn’t seen before. I felt a bit sick. I scanned my book through the self-service check out machine.

  ‘Okay. Well, about that. I can’t be your friend anymore. That’s fucking disgusting.’

  He looked at me blankly and then laughed. ‘What are you talking about? It’s fine, it happens.’

  ‘Yeah, apart from it’s not fine, is it? It makes you a massive cunt,’ I said, putting the book in my tote bag and walking away from him.

  He stayed where he was and watched me go.

  A couple of weeks later, as I walked out of a lecture behind him I saw her waiting for him. With her boyfriend. They’d both come to visit him for a couple of days. As I walked by he stopped me and asked me if I’d like to go and get some food with them. I did not want to get some food with them. I watched the three of them walk away, the boyfriend excitedly chatting and walking with his arm round his best mate, while his girlfriend was on his other side holding his free hand.

  That was the last I ever saw of him. After two weeks of not coming to uni we were told that he’d moved to Newcastle with some girl to get away from his mate who apparently ‘went a bit mad’. Instead of finishing his degr
ee he’d got a part time job in Mothercare. No one heard from him after that.

  I think about him sometimes and wonder what he’s doing, whether it worked, or whether one or both of them repeated history and went off to fuck someone else. Each to their own, and I’m not an angry, bitter cunt and of course only heard part of the story, his side, but I hope that he’s at home on his own painting tits on his high elves and crywanking over them after what he did to his mate.

  A proper grown-up

  A Prayer for Owen Meany

  Like most people who don’t know what the fuck to do with their life after finishing whatever level of education they managed to do, I twatted off around India for a bit with my friend.

  We decided that we’d do that really knobby middle class thing and go and teach in a school for a while, and then go and see a few things that we wanted to see, and then go home covered in henna and doing yoga and ‘namaste’ing everyone we saw.

  We stayed with an Indian family while we taught at the school for two weeks. To say they were a bit weird was putting it mildly. We didn’t really understand why they did any of the stuff that they did, and they didn’t understand why every couple of days we needed to have a bit of time to ourselves, to go for a walk and just be quiet for a few fucking minutes.

  I think that in those two weeks they let us out twice. The reason it was only twice is because the second time we went out I made such a monumental fuck up that I managed to offend everyone in the village.

  We went out for a walk. It was nice. We were somewhere that didn’t see that many white people so we were being followed all the time by local people trying out the English that they’d learned off the telly watching Friends. It was nice. We were like celebrities.

  We wandered round and round in circles in the market and I spotted a little shack with various bits of shit for sale. I rummaged through said shit and found a book. I couldn’t tell immediately what book it was because the front and back covers were missing. I turned a few pages. A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving stared back at me. I was so fucking excited, this was the first time in almost a week that I’d seen a book that wasn’t the one that I’d read on the plane. I rummaged some more and managed to locate both the front and back covers. I held it all up together in front of the face of the man behind the table.