Noughties

by Ben Masters

  Tightfisted, Abi administers staccato pumps. Her confident pole-dance has me squirming with pleasure, going all gooey in the middle, like the ground is falling away from me—

  Me and Jack sat rammed against the wall, behind a long table on a long bench, farther down the hall. Another year of Oxford about to end … something worth celebrating. It was there, keeping his voice on the down-low, that he told me he loved Ella; how he was crazed for her; how he’d do anything for her, and any other cliché that needed fulfilling. His crisp tuxedo accentuated his earnestness while my more ruffled version added to my sense of being a fraud. He was so proud of the conviction of his feelings and I was frustrated by the muddiness of my own. I had loved Lucy, I thought, and I loved Ella, I think, and I was twisted into a stubborn knot of confusion by the idea of Jack making a move. He seemed glad to have confided in me … I had been chosen and trusted …

  Abi pounds at it for half a song. I feel clammy in her palm and I run my fingers all over her body, squeezing her hips, sliding my hand up her top to her yielding belly—

  Most of the college’s tutors were at the formal and Dylan came down the bar afterward. Everyone was already pissed from the wine and port provided with the meal, but Dylan insisted on buying the English crew a round of drinks. Ella declined the vodka and Coke he got for her and left to sit with Jack, Sanj, Scott, and Abi—I took the spare drink off his hands. I thought it was quite rude of her, but Dylan didn’t seem to mind. Like everything else, I put it down to alcohol. I remained standing to one side with Dylan, lapping up his conversation and beverages. I was always terribly impressed by whatever he had to say, as well as flattered that he would bother to say it to me. I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable though when he started ranting about Dr. Snow: “Polly’s the fittest in the faculty, isn’t she?”

  “Stop winding me up! You’re such a ball breaker.” I knew he was just trying to set me on edge, and the sadistic grin was confirmation enough.

  “Hah, don’t think I don’t hear what all you hormone-addled undergrads say about her.”

  “As if!” I pleaded my innocence.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry. There’s not much to choose from, is there, so a young buxom tutor like Polly is bound to attract attention.” I noticed that Ella was watching us from the table. She seemed on edge, standing out from all the bustle and bodies of the constricted college bar like an aching hologram. I turned my back so that I wasn’t facing her, but I could feel her stare clawing at the back of my head.

  “She’s not all that anyway. Trust me … I know!” With that Dylan excused himself and sauntered off to the bathroom. After a brace of astonished sips I rejoined the gang.

  Ella was missing.

  “Where’s Ella?”

  “I dunno,” answered Abi. “She just disappeared.”

  “Oh.” I looked to Jack for some information—I figured he’d be keeping an eye, considering what he’d told me earlier.

  “She’s left her purse,” he said. “I’ll go check if she’s in her room …”

  Abi is disengaging and turning to face me. What the fuck am I doing? I don’t want any of this. I think Jack has noticed something, because he’s looking at me strangely, but that’s probably just the lighting. And we seem to have caught Ella’s attention too, though clearly she doesn’t know: she almost looks happy, relieved even, and it would’ve killed her if she had seen … what was occurring in my pants just now. Sanjay jutters over and shouts in my ear—

  I lagged behind Jack by thirty seconds or so, having pulled into the toilets at the foot of Ella’s staircase for a quick pit-stop. Her bedroom was three floors up and I was still fiddling with the button on my trousers when I pushed open the expectant door.

  Great flashes of unreality projected onto the screen at the back of my eyes. I don’t know what I had been anticipating, but it emphatically was not this: the dancing figure, there, in the center of the room, bouncing inadequately on hot-coal tiptoes that vaguely kissed the floor with each downward plunge, straining to slacken the dressing-gown cord hanging from the light fixture, about to give. She was pulled taut, in desperate need of unspooling.

  “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” shouted Jack, sourcing the pitch and air from some uncharted depth. I was petrified, frozen in the sickening moment. Ella groped and fumbled at the cord with sloppy hands, complicating the knot against her best efforts; her lips a gorgeous pastel blue, her eyes popping stunning violence. Jack had wrapped his arms around her hips and was lifting her from the ground so that her hair scuffed the crack-stained ceiling. She could never have killed herself, the light hanging so low that she was only ever an inch or two from the ground. Her tugs brought the fixture free from its hold, collapsing her and Jack into a knot on the floor.

  Jack sat her up and held her tightly in the suddenly darkened room, fearing that she might try something else. She began to cry over his shoulder as she surrendered into his solid body, her eyes settling on me, there in the doorway. But I felt like I wasn’t there at all; as though she could see straight through me. Jack whispered desperate comforts and carefully stroked her hair …

  “Ready for Filth?” says Sanj.

  “Sure.”

  We all watch each other as this inevitable directive does the rounds, our commotions unwinding to a full stop. I can feel my body deflate as guilt and a subtle sense of sickness set in. Abi is smiling at me.

  And then we’re exit-bound, threading a wonky line through the ballistic mob.

  Club

  I awake … I think. It gets harder and harder each morning. More problematic. More tiresome. I begin to stir approximately ten minutes before the alarm is due, in sickly anticipation of its blurting GBH. I cringe when it hits. A full-bodied recoil. Fuck my life.

  Then (I say “then.” Really I mean forty-five minutes and a severe battle of self-will later) I’m in front of the sink and mirror. I leave more of myself in the basin each time: hairs (mainly hairs), lashes, nails, and a miscellany of scum. I curse experimental curses at the thick bush on top of my head: “Get down obnoxious cunt rug,” “I’ll cut you motherfucker,” “You’re dead mate, real dead.”

  Next, I go nuclear on the toilet seat. It’s pre-coffee though, so just a few dry explosions, opening up a wind shaft between my legs and letting it sing. I play a handful of complex notes, run through some Grade 8 scales, by which time my involuntary hard-on has gone down and I can shed the contents of my bladder. I blow my nose, provoking a final roar from my gut. That taken care of, I select some choice items from a heap of clothes on the floor, scrub my teeth, and I’m ready to roll.

  I open my door and there on the landing is a black pram, like a chariot of mourning. I wait for a familiar greeting but none is forthcoming. I look left and right for signs of delivery, half expecting a man with a clipboard asking me to please sign here. But, of course, no one is around.

  The babe is bundled up inside, his little body rising and falling under the slow measure of heavy breath. His oversized face is now shriveling into a grotesquely aged version of my own. His cheeks and eyes are puffed and his mouth obscenely crooked.

  “Hello,” I say.

  He screws my eyes, watery at the seams, and shakes his head repeatedly, as if to say, Make it stop, make it stop.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask, caught off guard by the intense concern in my voice. He simply stares at me, his deep, searching gaze expressing more than words ever could. And then it hits me: the severe laceration circling his neck, quivering between crimson and scarlet.

  “Who did this to you?”

  He looks at me. I reach in and gently rub his earlobe between my thumb and forefinger. He leans his head in toward his shoulder to make the contact fuller.

  “Okay.”

  I take the handle and wheel him away with me.

  “I thought I told you to fuck off.”

  “Huh?” says Scott.

  “I said I thought I told you to fuck off,” repeats the bouncer, outside the doors
of Filth.

  “You did?”

  “Is this kid taking the piss or what? Yeah, I told you to fuck off.”

  “Oh. What did you do that for?” asks Scott.

  The bouncer scoffs and raises his eyebrows, like they’re reaching up to sympathize with his bald head.

  “Because you were being leery and I told you to fuck off. Now, are you going to fuck off or am I gonna have to make you fuck off with my own two hands?” He steps forward and squares up.

  “When exactly did you tell him to fuck off?” I intercede, ever the voice of reason.

  The long queue trailing off behind, hemmed against the wall by dented iron railings, splits into pockets of excitement and impatience: those who want to see it kick off (nearest the front of the queue) and those who are simply desperate to get in (farther back). The entrance to the club groans inarticulately before us, like a black portal into the underworld. It’s a seashell of roaring waves and pounding beats. They’re playing an absolute tune (with a capital T) and I want to be in there busting some moves. It’s my last night of university, goddammit. The rest of the crew make their way in, pulled by the noise and the promise of flashing lights. Thanks a lot. Yeah, nice one.

  “Fifteen minutes ago. Ginger lad in a pink shirt. Can’t be many fitting that description.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I say.

  “Gosh, well, that wasn’t me,” says Scott, laughing in appeal. “We’ve been in the queue for the last thirty minutes,” he adds, looking from me to the bouncers in affronted disbelief. The bouncer doesn’t like this revelation: it dispels his cause for pissiness. “And besides, it’s auburn.” The backup bouncer is losing interest anyway, distracted by the dolled-up girls next in line.

  “Mistaken identity,” I conclude triumphantly. “Trust me, mate, this one don’t do leery, d’ya know what I mean?” (For some reason I think that vamping up my hometown accent will endear me to this brick shit-house.)

  Scott’s unsure whether to take this as a compliment or an insult, but nods readily in agreement.

  “Alright,” spits the bouncer, reluctantly removing the red cordon. “Fuck off in there. But I’m warning you, if you start causing any more trouble, posh-boy” (“but … but”) “I’ll personally see to it that you do fuck off. Got it?”

  “Thanks so much,” says Scott, genuinely grateful and relieved. We pay a fiver each for the privilege to a woman behind a hole in the wall. She smiles at me (probably recognizing my excellent hair). Then we pop our coats in the raffle-prize cloakroom (two quid). We’ll be lucky if we ever see them again.

  I close my eyes and take a deep, dramatic breath: I’ve arrived.

  Filth is filthy. It really is. Before the smoking ban, all you could smell in here was, well, smoke. A robust fag-screen masked all other scents and secretions. Downside was you’d wake up the next morning with a chimney sweep on top of your head and clothes that stank like your nan’s kitchen. These days the olfactory experience is far more nuanced in Filth. There’s nowhere for those pesky tangs to hide. Our noses are set upon by a palimpsest of farts, piss, sambuca, hair spray, armpits, vomit, perfume, shit, roll-ons, body spray, menstruation, lager, sweat, sex, and fear. It’s vast and stifling, all at once. Welcome to the great Filth Sensorium.

  This is liberty, my friend: I can let a huge one rip with no suspicion attached whatsoever. No one hears and it’s so packed it could’ve been anyone. In fact, I’m pretty sure Scott’s just let loose (all that tension from outside). He’s grinning at me. Filthy sod.

  “Thanks for that.”

  “No worries, mate.”

  Filth follows the panopticon design—circular, with a large dance floor in the center and several bars stretching around the perimeter. Maximum surveillance. We loiter and weigh our options.

  “What happened to Laura?” I shout at Scott. “Haven’t seen her since the cashpoint.”

  “She’s in here … somewhere … with all her year.” He peers over heads, a moonlight searchlight. The rest of the crew are standing at the rear of a pack of bar queuers, jostling for position. They give Scott a hero’s welcome of jeers and backslaps (“They let you in then?,” “You made it, old chap,” “Get over here, you silly twat”).

  Now that some of my beer armor has worn off (what with the wait and the negotiations) I’m starting to feel guilty about Abi in that last bar. The memory creeps up on me with palsied fingers, poking and twisting. There’s no way that was a good idea. I want to blame delayed reactions: when she started I was pretty stunned and wasn’t too fast out of the blocks; it felt good and I didn’t really have a chance to defend myself; and once she’d got going, well, it would’ve been rude of me to cause a scene. I couldn’t embarrass the poor girl like that, could I? It would’ve been demoralizing. And if we’re being honest, it has no significance compared to my dramas with Ella, Jack, and Lucy.

  “Jägerbombs?” suggests Sanjay, full lunged. We do a hand count and demand six (Ella opting out).

  “Sweet. You all got the dough?”

  I have a tenner, so Jack gives me two fivers for the break, meaning that I can give Sanj one in exchange for three quid and then break Scott’s fiver, by which time some complicating twenty- and fifty-pence pieces have found their way into circulation, moving perplexingly from hand to hand, my lost fiver ending up back in my possession and a twenty-pound note going to Jack (not a bad profit), Sanjay essentially paying for the entire round.

  “I’ve got a pound?” says Abi, unhelpfully holding her handbag open to the light over the bar.

  What the fuck was I thinking? Lucy’s flashing through my head like an emergency signal, piercing and insistent. I can’t even look at Abi … or Ella. I feel sick. Maybe I should hit the Men’s for a tactical vom? My phone weighs my pocket knowingly.

  We’ve nudged and leapfrogged to the front of the bar. You can see our warped reflections in the inch of spilt drink that swamps the surface. The bombs are prepped and lined up, brimming with delectable menace.

  “Let’s get filthy, boys and girls.”

  Drink more: it’s the only solution.

  But it doesn’t solve anything. Of course it doesn’t. This whole past year of university has been a complete fuckup, and here I was thinking I could fix it all tonight with one decisive act.

  The beginning of my third year was tough, that last summer vacation an inexorable drag of self-loathing and lonesomeness. It was a relief to go home after the drama of Ella’s suicide attempt, but relief soon shaded into sadness, and sadness amplified in solitude. I couldn’t summon the nerve to contact her and see how she was, too burdened by clammy notions of responsibility and ineptitude; and it seemed best to leave Jack be for the summer, knowing his feelings, but he not knowing mine. I just read and studied, looking for solace in Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley, hoping that obsessive revision might pull me through relatively intact and leave me with at least one good thing still to play for. And I didn’t see Lucy. How could I, with everything that had happened entirely unknown to her? She wouldn’t have wanted to see me anyway. As the summer languished toward its close, the nights becoming crisper, the fallen apples in the garden beginning to rot, I looked forward to seeing Jack again and finally opening up. If we could share the memory of that night on more honest and intimate terms, then we might be able to put it behind us.

  But it was with huge trepidation that I returned to Oxford. Dad wove our spluttering 206 around the streets outside my college, getting amongst all the Range Rovers, Mercedes, and Rolls Royces, with their dyslexic private number plates: N1 BO55, T1 MMY, W4 NKR. They were like smug grins gurning at me from front and behind, and I wanted to smash each and every one of their teeth out. We pulled up as close to college as possible and began unloading all my stuff for a third and final time.

  There was a chaos of panic-stricken freshers in the lodge, eager to impress, and haggard third-years battling back spasms to get their belongings into the college and up to their new rooms.

  “No common sen
se,” muttered Dad as a wide-eyed fresher lost control of a stack of boxes. “All the brains in the world, but not an ounce of common sense.” With subtle satisfaction he lugged a sack barrow from the boot and stood it on the curb. “Right, Eliot, pile her up. Biggest and heaviest boxes on the bottom, light ones on top.”

  At the start of each academic year Dad became a man possessed, joyfully donning the role of Captain Practical. The car was packed tight with drill-sergeant exactitude, every inch of space maximized (boxes, suitcases, bags, suits, gown, guitar, speakers), all stacked and interlocked into a formidable Tetris block, loaded and unloaded at breakneck speed. If there was one thing he wasn’t going to be outdone on it was practicality: packing, lifting, shifting. There were serious man-points to be had and Dad was no mug. The porter commented on our efficiency every year, which Dad noted as a considerable success. He watched in silent glee as the owners of the monstrous Range Rover rammed behind us faffed about with their poorly organized luggage (“Terrible packing system there, Eliot … Suitcase on top? Hah, elementary error. They’ve got a big enough bloody car!”).

  Sharing the load, we wheeled my things across the first quadrangle toward the staircase that was to house me for this final and most important year. With increasing fascination, Dad watched all the students lounging on the grass and chattering in clusters.