Noughties

by Ben Masters

  “Be careful, won’t you, sweetie? Just one or two pints, okay?”

  (“Tell her I had fun with her last night, mate,” says Sanj.)

  “Yes, Mum.”

  “Have you eaten anything?”

  “Mum, please.”

  “Okay, okay … you’ll understand when you have kids of your own.”

  “Gotta go, Mum.”

  “Okay, go and have fun. You’ve earned it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sorry, what time did you say, honey?”

  “Eleven?”

  “Okay. Love you.”

  “Yeah, okay. Bye.”

  “Bye bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I turn the phone off. Still not ready.

  Fella!

  I spin round. Quickest draw I ever did. Bang bang, you going down.

  It’s Scott and companion.

  Meet my woman.

  So she is out. Scott’s younger lady.

  He tells me her name. But I know her. She doesn’t know me. But I know her. I’ve seen her WANTED sign before … I’ve seen it about … checked it on Mugshot. I know her name, her age, her interests, and what bikini she wore on that last holiday to the Bahamas with the girls. Yeah, I’ve checked you before. Noted. She’s an unconscious celebrity, as we all are, to someone, to people. I must feign ignorance though, of course.

  Howdy. Eliot.

  Laura.

  Pleased.

  We’ve been hanging around here too long. Time to beat it. New haunt. Another bar. We’re en route.

  Who am I kiddi— who am I fooling? I can’t run forever. I’ve got to face up to what happened if I’m ever going to make any progress here.

  A week or so after English Drinks, after it all went down, I told Ella about the busted condom. Straight off she wanted to know why I hadn’t owned up when it happened.

  “I fucked up?”

  We left it at that. Ella wasn’t nearly as pissed as I thought she would be. In fact, she barely reacted at all. She must’ve done a pregnancy test that very night, because the next day she told me the result as we walked over to the English faculty for a lecture on “Shakespeare and the Metaphysics of the Scene.” It was positive. I turned around and went back to my room. She carried on to the lecture.

  Ella got her two referrals for the abortion. I was amazed by how quickly she managed to sort it all out. Personally, I would’ve spent a few weeks bricking it, hoping the problem might just go away. Not Ella: she was calm and levelheaded. At least at first she was.

  She attended her initial appointment at the clinic without telling me. That was when she would’ve been administered mifepristone. I looked it up on the Internet: it makes the lining of the womb inhospitable; it makes the lining of the womb inhospitable for the egg; it makes the lining of the womb inhospitable for the fertilized egg.

  Ella asked me if I’d mind going with her to the second appointment. With chemicals inimical to life coursing through her blood—through her invaded and examined body—she didn’t want to be alone, and I was desperate to help.

  The receptionist at the clinic was a daunting figure, with stern countenance and remorseless austerity. She looked like she wanted me dead: You bastard … couldn’t just keep it in your lousy pants, could you … creep … woman hater … murderer … filthy fucking lump of knob cheese. Her judgments were severe and I laid them thick on my heart. She sucked on a hard-boiled sweet—a humbug perhaps—and abruptly answered phone calls in a monotone drawl, obstinately filling her space behind the counter. Is this sorrowful or tiresome for you? I wanted to bellow. But it must be tough, being one of life’s gatekeepers; a raw gig, admitting us as three and sending us away as two; shells of our former selves.

  We took our seats. To my left was a stack of tattered magazines not up to the task of helping me forget. Just ahead was a notice board with an advert for “volunteer twins”: a local doctor was writing a book on the joyous phenomenon of twin birth … the double gift of life … the reminder of which seemed doubly cruel and doubly inappropriate. Next to this, facing us, was a mirror. I had found myself sobbing that morning in front of a different mirror, brushing my teeth in my college bedroom. The evidence now confronted me, encoded into my face with its puffed skin and strained eyes, the painterly reds and blues of despair smudged all over my pitiful canvas. Ella looked stronger, though more vacant. Her usual color had dissipated but her raw beauty remained, intensified, perhaps, by life’s brutal doings. Her long blonde hair fell majestically across her face, and her eyes affected a preternatural draw. I was weak in comparison. The reflection revealed two helpless amateurs, meeting life on its own terms for the first time and tensed for the fallout. We had been forced into the cold role of conspirators, not lovers. Love was the missing virtue that could redeem us and make everything okay. I tortured myself by fleshing out the little being whose passport into the world we were destroying. We were failing him (always a him to me), this defenseless foreigner whose inclusion we would bar. I took Ella’s hand in mine.

  When the doctor called for Ella she asked me to stay in the waiting room. I guess it was enough to know that I was nearby. There, on my own, I began to cry: molten tears of guilt and shame. I swallowed it back as best I could, my chin a quivering wreck, my eyes burning and stinging. I thought of the discoveries my parents must have made, finding me in their hands with all my podgy reality and utter neediness. How we must’ve grown together, entwining our roots and absorbing one another: the times I bathed with Dad, gradually recognizing our physical parity; Mum using her soap-lathered hands to enclose and wash my own, my mischievous digits, in front of the telly, a fragrant towel hanging ready over her shoulder; Dad pushing me along on my first bike in the empty playground, Christmas Day, and letting go without me knowing; Mum crying when they dropped me off in Oxford. (In the memory I call after her, “Mimi! Mimi!,” but I’m not sure why. What could it augur?) Marching through my head, it all came to me like a home movie, warping and wobbling. And here we were, denying such affirmation—each conception so unlikely and singular, against all odds, but in some cases just not right.

  The moment of termination. That was when my own unarguable being smashed me to pieces. I had never felt so real.

  Ella came out empty … a frail cage … yet still so much stronger than I. The second pill was having its wicked way, working its insidious influence deep in her core. Her womb’s lining was disintegrating and taking our witless mistake with it. I rose from the chair and put my arms around her as she wept into my neck, bracing herself for certain pain and the hard bloody evidence of the little stranger that we would never know.

  There. I’ve done it. At the very least made a start. But I don’t want to linger, not right now.

  We’ve made it to another bar. Let’s call it Bar No. 2. Fingers crossed we won’t get kicked out of this one. Sanjay splits a pack of salt and vinegar like a book and places it in the middle of the table. We all take dibs, some more liberal than others. They sting my fingers a bit from where I’ve dug out the skin, the pinked excavations of anxiety. My throbbing head murmurs reminders about the fight.

  “I’m gonna get like totally destroyed?” advertises Sanjay, swigging his lager.

  “I’m like literally getting off my tits?” supports Abi. All for one and one for all.

  Both of these sentences rise in pitch at their tail ends, almost modulating into questions. Their status is problematized: seemingly indicative in content, but loosening into something more subjunctive, the destabilizing intonation flickering between statement and conjecture. Maybe we’re just the great Metaphysicals of our time, using language to occupy multiple states of being; negatively capable. That’s George Herbert in front of me with his lucky Fred Perry and pint of Stella, and there’s a feminine John Donne, on my left, large rosé, out on the pull. I guess I’d have to be Milton.

  Or maybe we’re just twats.


  How gloriously haggard we seem. I can’t tell if the drink brings us to life or puts us to sleep. But the teleology is clear: get fucked.

  We keep taking until less and less remains, each leaving our greasy traces of fingerprints and crumbs. We’re like cubs around a carcass, exchanging subtle glimpses and twinkles. Our innocence is threadbare, experience setting its claws in with hideous commitment. We’re phased, the lot of us.

  We are stocked with another round, building turrets and moats of glass about us for fortification, yet my gullet is on autopilot, letting things in without check.

  “Any decisions on where we’re headed tonight?”

  “Scrot Lounge?”

  “Nah.”

  “Pulse?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Radius?”

  “Shit on a Friday.”

  “C’mon, it’s gotta be Filth. It wouldn’t be right otherwise.”

  “We couldn’t have it any other way.”

  “Yeah, Filth.”

  “Filth it is then.”

  “Filth.”

  Abi yawns. It spreads from mouth to mouth. A compliment perhaps: we’re staying awake for each other. It doesn’t get more caring than that.

  Ella takes the final crisp. The packet glistens on the table, beneath the spotlight, its remaindered specks inviting licked fingers. There’s nothing real left for us. We’ve used it all up. I interrogate the wrinkled surface with swipes and prods, but it’s futile. It’s done.

  So we just yawn and sip, shrug and sigh. The momentary lull will pass and we’ll soon be back on it.

  “Mate, can I talk to you about something?” says Jack, pulling me to the side as the others head to the bar for yet another restock.

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, uncertainly. This sudden proposition, unexpected and mysterious, makes me curious, as though he’s beating me to my own duties for the night: I’m the one who should be doing all the talking here.

  We sneak off to a dark alcove where a fitted, curving sofa awaits. A tropical fish tank is indented in the wall above, glowing green, blue, and yellow. We slide across the leather upholstery and settle in. The clamor of the music isn’t going to help.

  “What’s up?”

  Jack’s staring at his pint glass, distractedly adjusting its position on the table. “Mate.” He takes a gulp, gearing himself up.

  “Everything okay?” My stomach is rapidly suggesting that worry might be a suitable reaction.

  “I want to ask your advice about something … but you’ve gotta swear you’ll keep it to yourself.”

  “Of course. I’m hurt you’d even ask.”

  “Ah mate.” We both swig our beers, impending candor being a pressure we handle with apprehension. “It’s about Ella.”

  Great. Our unacknowledged specialist topic.

  “Oh yeah?” I say, nervously.

  “I feel like such a knob revealing this … I’ve kept it quiet for so long.”

  I’m terrified he’s going to tell me something that could throw a spanner in my night; that he might reveal more knowledge of me and Ella than I suspect of him. I’m already prepping myself with wormy alibis and explanations.

  “I think I got her pregnant … last year.”

  I sink into the seat, as though an invisible hand is pressing down on my head, but quickly straighten up. I’ve gone either deathly pale or bright red.

  “What makes you think that?” I ask. I’m mirroring him now, anxiously repositioning my glass.

  “I found a letter from an abortion clinic lying on her desk … ages ago.”

  “No, you’re probably mistaken, mate. I mean, you don’t think Ella’s ever got into a situation like that, do you?”

  “Well, it was a couple of weeks after … ah mate. I can’t.”

  “After what?” I press him.

  “After Joel Shaw’s house party …”

  Joel Shaw’s house party. The memory comes fast, all the details and sensations condensed into a flash: Jack and I caught a bus on the High Street, outside Queen’s College, a chill, wintry pre-Christmas night, and were swept off down the Cowley Road.

  I remember the party vividly because it was the night after Ella and I got it on, and I was still sourcing the courage to come clean (there I go again!) about the condom. I had resolved to tell her that night, banking on alcohol as the much-needed conversational aid: confidence booster, news softener, memory wiper, etc. I was also agitated by the prospect of a repeat performance, as though Ella might be looking to consolidate something more long-term with further sexual activity.

  Jack and I stood outside a dingy terraced house, brandishing Sainsbury’s bags filled with six-packs of lager: experienced second-years; journeyed; wizened. Dry thuds of music and muffled shouts sounded from within.

  “Let’s just have a good night, yeah?” said Jack.

  I opened the door and we were swept over by heat, marijuana, and noise, all operating in force fields of rapturous energy.

  “Boys!” shrieked Abi, greeting us with temptress cuddles, the booze having gone expressly to her head.

  This house was rammed fast-tight. A mixture of familiars and strangers laced the corridor, leaning against the dented walls with chemistry-class concoctions in their hands.

  “Alriiiight,” said Jack approvingly, jerking his head and strutting like a proud cock. “It’s popping up in here.”

  We fed our way through the kitchen, which looked and smelled like the insides of a broken-down dishwasher, and slung open the fridge. It was about as cool as an armpit in there but would have to do. Removing other people’s lagers to make room for our own, we safeguarded the gear. Then we took one each (from someone else’s stash, of course) and scuzzed them open, real warm and furry.

  “Living room?”

  “Sure.”

  People sat about on the floor or leaned against walls, a chosen few taking sofa, chairs, and beanbags, the music buzzing from a stereo on some makeshift shelves.

  “S’up motherfuckers,” said Jack to no one in particular, seamlessly passing into party mode.

  Our fellow partiers supped from a haphazard assortment of vessels: wine in chewed baby beaker, vodka from jam jar, measuring jug sambuca. Ella and Sanjay were sat in a corner, below a dying spider-plant and a Top Hunks calendar.

  “S’up bitches.”

  “Holla.”

  Ella was wearing a thin bohemian dress (purple), ending halfway up the thigh, with a small vintage bomber jacket of scuffed black leather. Her toned crossed legs meandered from beneath the svelte cut of her frock. I stared at her shimmering cheeks and gravity-blessed eyes. Again I examined her figure, searching for an increase in breast size or an unnerving hump, any sign of transformation. I wondered if she had felt sick that morning, having read about this kind of thing in Agony Aunt columns in Lucy’s magazines. She looked dangerous … like she had something inadvisable lined up. But she didn’t seem comfortable. I couldn’t look her in the eye. Something had changed.

  Grinning to himself, Jack pulled a pack of cards from his rump pocket and turned to face the center of the room, ever the master of the revels.

  “Ring of Fire?”

  This proposal was met with a general murmur and rumble, a few keen beans leaping in affirmation. Twenty minutes later, sitting round a low-slung coffee table in the middle of the room, a group of about ten of us was engaged in a game of Ring of Fire, all changing color from the paint-stripping, budget bacchanalia on offer. The much-feared “Dirty Pint” stood frothing in the middle of a shell-shocked circle of cards, filled to the brim with menace and cruelty—a mixture of reds, whites, beers, ciders, tequila, brandy, apple sours, raw egg, whipped cream, and a corn chip floating precariously on top.

  I already knew I was doomed as I lined my selection up. The game: whoever leaves a chink in the circle after drawing their card—a gap no matter how small—has to consume the Dirty Pint (plus a range of other supplementary rules and obligations depending on the specific card you draw, of course)
. With half the deck gone, I was screwed. Carefully teasing out a seven of clubs I haplessly revealed a millimeter of tabletop for all to see.

  “He who dares break the Ring of Fire must answer to the Dirty Pint!” bellowed Jack, a touch overexcited.

  “DIRTY PINT! DIRTY PINT!” chanted his trashed comrades.

  “For fuck’s sake.”

  With shamefaced defeat dripping down my chin I chugged back the toxic defreshment. My body shuddered: Why are you doing this to me … to us? Physical pleas for mercy: recoils; cringes; heaves. I wanted to die.

  “You’re an absolute leg end,” congratulated Jack, patting me on the back.

  “Cheers,” I said, fighting through the bile that was now lining my throat. And then I saw Ella sitting alone in the corner, drink in hand. I knew I had to be the man and take control of the situation … tell her the truth and look after her … maybe suggest escorting her home so that we could talk things through properly …

  Cut to an hour later: I was steaming. Oh boy, was I gone. I sat on the end of a bed upstairs with Ella, who was dutifully looking after me. There were a few other magic-eye masks in there, lounging and stretching across duvet and carpet. I hugged a tin of Fosters to my chest, clinking and crunching it with understated pinches. Ella twirled a glass of iridescent rosé.

  “See, thing is, Ella, you’re, like, the greatest.”

  “You’re so drunk.”

  “Like, forget that. I like really mean it. You’re, like, so like special to me. I like really, like, like you.” I was bolstering myself for revelation, also trying to justify my involvement.

  She gave me a modest smile.

  “You, like, like all the same things as me. I can actually, like, talk to you about literature and shit. I’ve never had that before.” Maybe this kind of gambit would soften her up. It was a long shot, but I meant it—so why not?

  Ella rustled her hair and looked at me searchingly. She had begun the evening rather distant and preoccupied, but my endearing stupidity seemed to be lifting a load … as though I was providing some relief with my pathetically teenage ways.