by Ben Masters
There are some bastards in the middle dancing with flair, busting out panache. They’re actually impressive. We turn our backs on them. No one wants to see that.
A reveling clown, all arms and legs, slops some of his J.D. and Coke down my back as our prancing bodies collide. He hasn’t even noticed and continues on with his rhythmic convulsions, those tribal dances of time immemorial. I arch my back and shift fitfully, waiting for the spillage to be neutralized by lashings of spinal sweat. Careening round to locate the root of my discomfort, I spot Ella with that stylish player from before; the one who was giving her the “oi oi love” when we first got here. She appears trapped, politely dancing but wanting to escape. She’s alone in a crowd of rampant male attention, wriggling for invasive eyes.
Her pursuer puts his hands on her hips and she brushes them away. Ella seems to give me a pleading glimmer. And then he starts kissing her neck. I’m not having this.
“Do you wanna fuck off?” I say to him, squaring up while Ella steps aside.
“Huh?”
“I said, do you wanna fuck off?”
“I can’t hear you, boss.”
This is kind of embarrassing … really takes the wind out of my bravado.
“I said you’re a cunt.” He’ll be glad he can’t hear that one.
“Oh yeah? The fuck you gonna do, pretty boy?” Oh Christ … selective hearing. Good question too, if we’re being honest. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead and, frankly, I’m new at this.
Ella’s looking at me with troubled eyes, so I full-fist the guy in the ear.
Now, I went for the ear because I’m not totally committed. I figured the jaw would be too dangerous (can’t that kill someone if luck isn’t swinging your way?), and the nose would’ve just felt gross—all bony and crunchy. No, the ear was a good place to start: it’s inoffensive but it stings. I can tell it hurt too, because he’s now proceeding to nut me. Thwack.
My head is tasting all sorts of colors and special effects … the memory of the only other fight I’ve ever been in rushes to the fore: “So let me get this straight,” the policeman had said, post-ruckus: “The big yellow banana was acting as peacemaker when the assailant head-butted the tomato, provoking the giant pineapple to square up to the assailant?”
We nodded.
“And then the melon throws a punch?”
“That’s correct.”
“Right …”
It all began when we were standing at a kebab van—those ubiquitous chariots of the student-framed nightscape—in the orange crush early hours, binged on booze (again), looking for the illogical conclusion to our night. A banana, a pineapple, a melon, a tomato, and a pair of strawberries. We’d been at a food-themed fancy dress party and constituted a cartoon hamper, dressed in full body suits. I was the banana.
Beer-bloated bellies yapped “FEED ME” to the dissonant tune of drunken self-certainty.
Here comes the kebab van man,
Driving in his kebab man van,
Bringing lots of vegetables for us to eat:
CHIPS CHEESE BURGER
CHIPS CHEESE BURGER
Come and get your veg’tables from the van.
Alliances form swiftly in kebab van culture, and we had wasted no time in fully committing to Abdul’s on the High. Fidelity is so evanescent in this day and age, you have to take a stand.
“How are you, my friend?” asked Abdul. It’s impossible to envy him his task, dealing exclusively as he does with slurring nocturnals.
“Ten on ten, mate, ten on ten.”
“Chips cheese hummus?”
He had my order by heart—already. It still brings a tear to my eye every time.
“You know it.”
Abdul plied his trade, trunching about in the corrugated steel trailer, grease and steam sinking into every pore.
“Salt vinegar?”
Abdul doesn’t have time for grammatical conjunctions, too stretched and awearied.
“Absolutely.”
I retrieved the polystyrene coffin of bellyache with sincere gratitude.
“Legend.”
There I was with Sanjay, Jack, Scott, Abi, and Ella. And this is when it all kicked off:
Some razor-edge thug, with his Burberry cap tilted almost vertical and his trackie-bs tucked into white socks like he’d come straight from the AstroTurf, spotted us from the other side of the High Street. He brought a pal with him. Real bike-chain-scrapping, White-Lightning-glued, wood-block-oaf types. The second one was fat, the first one thin. The skinny one gobbed venomously on the road. They walked like they’d got Lilt cans lodged up their arses; they had faces like written-off Vauxhall Novas; they were like broken fridges that have been dumped on the roadside.
Getting amongst us, they glared and leered, tightening their lips and jerking their heads.
“Look, Chase,” said the skinny one, his voice inappropriately high pitch, “it’s a Paki pineapple.” This Chase character pulled a badly acted smirk across his brick-wall face.
“The fuck d’you say?” blasted Sanjay, his spiky green hat almost falling off.
“Chill, chill,” I pleaded, as I stepped across Sanjay, arms spread out to keep him back.
“Haha, it’s a Paki fucking pineapple,” repeated the mouthy one. I should point out that multiracialism has never really arrived at Oxford University. Nor has multiculturalism. Sanjay and Abdul’s kebab van are about as diverse as it gets here on the predictable student scene.
“Let’s get out of here,” reasoned the bright red tomato. The strawberries looked on.
“Fancy some cream, love?” said the fatty to Abi, and then the leery one head-butted the tomato.
It is a common misconception that hardness—brawling flare—is directly proportionate to size. Not true. Hardness is about 70 percent mentality, 30 percent muscle; more psychology than biology. A disposition, if you will: you’ve got to want to hurt someone and be tuned out from consequence. Just think back to school: the rough kids were the mouthy little shits. This chump was a prime example.
And they say you learn a lot about yourself in a fight, which is halfway true. But you learn even more about your companions in a multiplayer affair. No other occasion will lay their morality and philosophy so unflinchingly bare; no other situation will place their coordinates and factory settings under such cold-eyed scrutiny.
The pineapple fought around my banana-blockade, flanked by a bruised tomato that could sense a pulping.
“Fuckin university cunts,” spat the head-butter.
“I’ll fucking drop you,” retorted the pineapple.
“Lamp the pineapple out,” suggested the butter’s sidekick.
A strawberry was crying.
The pineapple, particularly averse to the last directive, smacked the head-butter with a swinging right hand. Like a foolhardy Jack Russell, the kid still wouldn’t back off; so the tomato twatted him in the ear. This really did drop him, and his mate fled down a side street. Tirelessly, the lippy one continued to mouth off, adorning the chewing gum pavement with his felled body.
“I’ll cut you, motherfucker. You all dead men. Believe.”
“Shut the fuck up,” shouted an aggravated melon.
“You best watch your backs. Motherfucking dead motherfuckers. Trust.”
The pineapple and the tomato gave the talking pavement a sharp dose of foot-fire, kicking its hips and ribs with measured fall. Banana and melon pulled tomato and pineapple away and sat down on top of head-butter.
“Are you gonna shut up?”
“You is fucked. Believe. I is gonna fuck you all up.”
“Well, we’ll just have to sit here a while longer then,” said the melon, perching on him.
“Fucking fags.”
When the police car came nee-nawing to a halt, the absent sidekick miraculously reappeared: “They was caning my mate. We was minding our business and they kicked off.”
One of the coppers tried to get information from the melon while the other pulled
us apart. A second squad car arrived. A cluster of haggard spectators looked on, fresh from nightclubs and bars, bemused by our fruity antics.
“You started it all,” I protested.
“Nah blud, it’s a fuckin racist pineapple. He was dissing me innit …”
“Come off it. You called him a Paki … you’re the racist.”
“My mate ain’t no racist … he’s just straight-talking … calls a spade a spade … tells it like he sees it.”
“Let’s get them to the station.”
“The fucking pineapple was cussing me out.”
“I’ll take these two. You take the melon and the banana and the … bloody hell, what am I saying?”
“What should we do about the strawberries?…”
Whatever experience I gleaned from that last fight—passing sharply and swiftly before my mind like a violent rejoicing—it isn’t helping me in this one. Crikey, my forehead licks with pain. And it doesn’t make any sense either—shouldn’t the head butt hurt him just as much? Probably some law of physics which is over my arty-farty head. The dance floor opens its belly to us, hospitably lending room to operate and perform. I shove him backward to buy some time while I plan my next move. After much deliberation I opt for a knee in the babymaker. It’s not very sportsmanlike, but I don’t give a toss anymore.
While he’s bent double, like he’s reached a marathon finish line, some bloke (evidently his tag-team partner) comes pelting in with windmill arms and floors me good and proper. I grope about amongst smashed glass and spilled ice cubes, focalizing as best I can.
Jack enters the fray. His loyalty has pulled him this far—I’m his brother and he won’t stand back and watch me take a beating—but fortunately for him the bouncers have infiltrated the war zone before he need get his hands dirty. Bouncer No. 1 (bald, black suit, wide as he is tall) hoists me from the floor while Bouncer No. 2 (bald, black suit, wide as he is tall) smothers the KO artist. (A bouncer’s job description is a sinisterly gray area, you have to admit. Believing themselves to be outside of the law, they’re just psychos looking for a sanctioned fight. I can feel this one relieving his unhappy marriage all over my neck and his shitty pay into my arm as he wrenches it behind my back. His colleague is ruffling the other participants up as hard as he can without it becoming full-blown assault.)
The bar whirls past me as I’m escorted most peremptorily toward the doors. Everyone stares like I’m a dead man walking, before returning to their unthinking routines.
Unloading us on their fag-butted doorstep, I think the bouncers (does the name derive from their guts?) want to see us start back up again—as though all they’d done was press pause to fetch some grub. But this is one cockfight they ain’t gonna see, what with the two baddies walking off into the distance already.
The others join us outside, struggling with their hurriedly fetched coats like escapologists in rewind.
“Ah mate, that was sick!” celebrates Sanjay with a simpleton’s grin, bouncing up and down.
“It’s all my fault,” cries Ella, sobbing into Abi’s bosom.
“Another bar then?” says Jack, passing me my jacket, trying to erase the moment and move us on.
“Oh, it’s all my fault.”
“Sick.”
Ella has stormed ahead, arms folded, head low. I jog—as coolly as I can—to catch her up. I try collecting her in with my left arm, but there’s something hard and resistant about her now … angular and other. We continue along in a jagged embrace, her arms still folded, our hips clanging together. I thought she’d be impressed. I may’ve got floored, but it can’t harm my cause.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” She doesn’t say anything, but I can see some silent tears on her cheeks reflecting the liquid amber of the streetlights. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault,” I say.
She raises her head in one orchestral sweep, confronting me with the vast upset that is splashed across her face.
“Ah, forget it, Eliot.” I’m silenced. “You should stay away from me … I only cause trouble—”
“That’s crazy,” I protest. “After everything that’s happened … after everything we’ve been through … you and me …”
“No … no, Eliot,” she says, shaking her head. There’s something imploring in her voice. My hold of her shoulders loosens slightly and I hear a tight sigh of exhaustion escape from her lips. “That’s not right,” she cries. “Don’t count on me, Eliot. Please—” She shrugs me off and walks away. I drop back to the others, utterly confused. Ella carries on ahead, shoulders trembling in the nighttime chill. The reverberating clip-clop of her high heels sounds isolated and desperate, searching for an echo to their lonely call.
I’m in a horizontal line with the gang, me on one end, Jack on the other. Jack looks across, inquiring and vulnerable. Of course he’s curious, has every right to be, though he doesn’t know the full story … not yet. I don’t give him anything: just keep my chin down and shovel my hands inside my coat.
Jack runs ahead and puts his jacket over Ella’s shoulders.
I know what she’s talking about. Of course I do. But I grow excruciatingly self-conscious over these things. I’m a bungler. How to put it? Our “sexual mishap,” I suppose …
The splitting of the condom. It caused all sorts of nuclear explosions inside of me, catalyzing chain reactions of terror, guilt, paranoia, and—dare I say it—depression. Not my finest moment. I stuttered and delayed … yeah, I fucked up. I didn’t tell Ella at first. I should’ve come clean (excuse the unfortunate word selection … but all words are unfortunate in moments like this). If I had told her straightaway she could have done something about it … I realize that now and I feel terrible about it. I just needed some time … time to assess the options; you know, plan my move.
I bumped into Ella the day after the English Drinks party, up in the café in Blackwell’s bookshop. I was huddled over The Intellectuals and the Masses with a large skinny latte (oh, how the words roll off my tongue) and a frankly appalling almond croissant. Ella came over to say hello. I couldn’t take my eyes off her belly, spying subtly for a telling bump … any suggestion of my dreaded spawn. I felt sick.
But I didn’t say anything.
We continue to make our way through the dark streets of Oxford—the byways between pubs, the channels between clubs. Ella and Jack are still in front, but I won’t interrupt; I’ve had my chance.
“Would you rather,” says Abi, savoring each word to increase the suspense, “have green pubes or hair made out of jelly?”
“Can I shave the pubes?” asks Scott, like it’s a real deal clincher.
“Of course you can’t,” says Abi, affronted that someone would flout the unspoken rules so. “Ditto for the jelly hair.”
“Gotta go with the pubes, every time,” says Sanjay. “Once you’ve explained them away they wouldn’t be that freaky, not really, and it’s not like they always have to be on display.” That puts an end to that. I’m not really engaging with these philosophical binds, too busy watching Jack and Ella.
“Would you rather,” says Scott this time, “have a tail or a fin?”
“Tail,” replies Megan instantly. We’re all surprised by the alacrity of her response. I’d almost forgotten she was even here.
“Kinky!” cries Abi. “I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Sanjay?” she says rather brazenly.
“Huh?” says Sanjay, mortified.
I tried a “would I rather” to solve my scenario with Ella at the time, but it never worked: Would I rather Ella find out for herself that she’s pregnant or confront her about it? Would I rather Ella has a baby or an abortion? Would I rather Ella sleeps with someone else and thinks it’s his or ask her to be my girlfriend and hope for the best? Not that these were the only possibilities of course … believe me, I figured out all the combinations. None of them ever sounded quite right.
I think about turning my phone back on and letting Lucy know that I’m ready to talk. But I’m not. So I don’t
.
Fifteen minutes later and we’re still on the lookout. I turn my phone back on. It’s time to toughen up.
Not quite a bar. Near a bar. En route to a bar. We’re grizzled third-years at a cashpoint, forked into queues, hands at holsters, ready to draw. It’s the Wild West shoot-out. This is a holdup. The great gold rush for all (hundred quid max).
A flapping breeze drags a bundle of stray hair and dust into the corner where the wall juts out to shelter the end machine. It’s a twilight scene, many different nuances of gray and blue, with streaks of deep brooding purple, all conspiring toward a final black. A lonesome traveler wheels past on his rusty steed, unlit to cultivate stranger-anonymity. A crescent moon, unabashed in its teasing partiality, radiates a marvelous glow as though full-bodied.
The wall blinks green-lighted at me as I step up onto the pavement, weapon in hand, not particularly loaded. Nothing more useless than an unloaded gun, son. Give me all my money, punk. And yeah, give me a receipt too, or I’m gonna slap you silly. C’mon, c’mon, I say, shiftily looking around, side to side. I ain’t got all day. It dispenses the gear. Spews its guts into my grubby hands. Feel the paper. Yeah boy, give it to me. Fifty bunse, that ought to see us through the night. All that finger-swirl dirt and journeyed bacteria. Yeah boy, give it to me. Give it to me straight.
My phone. It’s ringing. The big moment. Time to rise to the occasion and deal with Lucy; time to come through in the clutch. I draw, ready to fire.
“Mum?”
“Oh, hi love.”
(The rest cotton on straightaway: “Stop hogging the coke, Eliot!” shouts Sanj in the background. “Yeah, Eliot, give me the crack,” follows Abi.)
“What was that?”
“I’m kind of out and about at the moment, Mum.”
“That’s okay, honey, I don’t mind. Me and your dad were just wondering what time you want picking up tomorrow.”
“Mum! Couldn’t this have waited?” (“Do it faster, big boy,” squeals Abi.) “I don’t know … not too early though … I’m out tonight.”