When she woke up this morning in Johnnie’s bed, there was just a ditch laid next to her instead of a boyfriend. She hopes Johnnie hasn’t flipped again, storming around the town, mutilating young men in his path. She unzips her clingy top, lying back on the sofa while Bobby pervs, memorising her curves for ‘The Angels’ (244x233cm). He thinks Ellen’s quite sound because she takes a lot of heavy-duty drugs and doesn’t seem to give a shit about anything – she’s like a sixties child in an eighties tracksuit, always enjoying herself, getting laid, doing pills, not going to work. She reminds him a bit of himself, except he doesn’t have blonde hair and he’s never shagged two men at once in San Antonio on holiday. He’s not going to make a pass at her – he really couldn’t do that to Georgie, and he doesn’t fancy dining on razor blades either. He asks Ellen if she’s got a spare ciggy, but no smoker ever has a spare cigarette, and she ends up going on her own to the bathroom to spark up the Richmonds Johnnie bought her so Bobby won’t cadge off her. At around 5am Ellen starts getting tired and she figures she’d better get some sleep since she’s at the dole tomorrow, despite Bobby the Artist rambling to her about primary colours and Josef Albers and optical illusions and other shite. He slaps some bright red next to some bright blue on this new painting he’s doing called ‘Bobby’s Favourite Trip’ (120x150cm), based on an afternoon in Spar when Bobby tried to climb into the confectionery counter, thinking all the gaudy chocolate bars were gaudy chocolate cars. He says, ‘See how your eye flickers between the red and blue, like it can’t tell which is nearer? It’s called an illusion I think.’ Ellen yawns and curls into a mollusc shape on the settee, opening one eye then saying, ‘Ah right, well anyway that’s nice but I think I’d best be off to sleep. You gonna stay up much longer?’ Ellen nuzzles her head right into one of the cushions, completely shattered, while Bobby potters about in the living room, scrabbling for change for a two-litre bottle of cider from the shop across the road. When times are hard, he can often rustle £1.99 for White Strike and get pissed for a few hours – anything to avoid the boring lifeless ordeal of being sober. He uncovers a few 10 and 20ps from under the settee and round ‘The Angels’ (244x233cm) and ‘Bobby’s Favourite Trip’ (120x150cm) and behind the telly and in Georgie’s tweed purse, then he propels himself shopward. The boys at the Coca-Cola newsagent always sort him out for booze way before they’re licensed, and there’s that faint rock-and-roll scruffy charm buying gutrot cider at daft o’clock in the morning surrounded by paper boys and the dawn yawning. Bobby trundles back into Peach House with bare feet and his arm round the cider, and an hour or so later he’s completely legless and Georgie and Ellen are just waking up with grumpy pale faces. He tries to make them a cup of tea in the kitchen but he just jibbers about like an octopus on downers, flapping his arms and knocking things over but really enjoying it. Georgie’s less impressed, sorting her and Ellen a fried-egg sarnie each and still really pooing herself about the dentist. She’s got on the geisha dressing-gown, and she tells Bobby to go to bed but he just laughs and says to her lighten up and he’s a bit of a nuisance. She gives him a karate chop and makes herself the perfect white-four-sugars cup of tea, then she sits in a huff in front of GMTV. It’s funny how you take normal days for granted, normal days where you don’t have to have your teeth drilled out, or you don’t have to look after Bobby, or you don’t have your hay fever. Georgie sniffs and sulks into her teacup, feeling all snotty and red-eyed and nervous. It’s one of those mornings the air stinks and the sun’s a big yellow circle, all the pretty flowers opening their petals to it like slutty vaginas and pissing out ping-pong pollen. Georgie gets hay fever really awful every summer, and just when she thought she’d get through June without a sneeze or a sniffle, she wakes up on the morning of her dentist appointment with sloppy marshmallow eyeballs and a throat full of flames. Poor little blossom. Summer’s a funny time for Georgie in that she loves sunny weather and rolling around in daisy patches, but she gets punished for it so severely. She finishes off her tea and says cheerio to the wobbly wino in the kitchen, then her and Ellen set off into the thick slimy sunlight. There’s a heatwave floating over Cargo Fleet Lane, and her and Ellen sit together on the grassy slope instead of hanging out with the silent cunts at the bus shelter. Georgie and Ellen actually get on quite well – a relationship built on drunken nights round each other’s flats, often talking totally openly about boyfriends’ cum faces, farting, and so-and-so’s (Mandy’s) stinky fanny. The only thing is Georgie really disagrees with people sponging off the dole and being lazy, and she worries people like Ellen will go nowhere in their beautiful massive lives. Having said that, while the two of them sit there constructing a daisy-chain, Georgie wishes she was going to the Jobcentre and getting £44 a week for nowt rather than going to the dentist then a six-hour shift at Bhs on minimum wage. The bad thing about work today is she won’t be in the mood for scoffing sweets after getting her mouth carved out, and sitting amongst the posters of rotten teeth and cartoon kids saying NO! to sugary treats puts you on such a fucking guilt trip. Slapping dark hair and bright sun out of her eyes, Georgie positions herself in some lamp-post shadow and asks Ellen, ‘You and Johnnie aren’t on the rocks, are you?’ Ellen sits in the buttercups with her top rolled up to her turtle-green bra and shellsuit bottoms turned up, and she squints at Georgie and goes, ‘Naw, I don’t think so. I just want to give him space, know what I mean? Give him some space and that. I think he’s just pissed off about Angelo, something to do with drugs or something.’ Georgie nods, thinking she’s lucky in a way that Bobby’s not that violent or temperamental; he’s just plain mental. She stabs another daisy with her pink nail and attaches it to their metre-long chain, and as the 65 bus comes wibbling into view from over the hill she says, ‘Here’s the bus.’ They jump on, Ellen hanging the dainty chain round her neck and borrowing the fare off Georgie, which she says she’ll ‘definitely get back’. Georgie says it’s okay with a blank face, sitting down and worrying more about her left eye than a wee bit of money. She’s leaking all this yellow gooey stuff, probably because Georgie’s rubbing her eyes with the same hand she’s been rubbing her nose with, but she can’t help it. She stares sadly at the backs of people’s heads. Keeping themselves occupied on the white-hot bus, her and Ellen chatter a bit longer about boys and troubles, Ellen asking things like, ‘So is Bobby a good shag and that?’ and Georgie replying things like, ‘Aw yeah, it’s the best. I mean, I haven’t shagged loads of lads, but Bobby’s incredible. Only sometimes he can get carried away, you know, like wanting to get tied up or wanting me to put a finger up his bum …’ Ellen laughs and nods, but really she thinks Georgie’s probably pretty frigid – or at least not very outgoing in bed – when really sex is like a blank page and you can either leave it pretty blank or you can squirt a thousand colours over it. Sometimes Ellen thinks of herself as being artistic like Bobby, but only when it comes to being a good shag – she’s no good with a paintbrush, but incredibly creative with a man’s hard penis. She smiles wistfully, remembering all the many willies squirting semen left right and centre like squeezy mayonnaise bottles, and she also thinks slightly about Angelo in hospital, unable to shag him because he’s all bandaged up but she might’ve wanted to again. As the bus grumbles and drops everyone outside the Crown, Ellen guesses it’s probably for the best Angelo’s gone. She doesn’t want her head caved in either. Ellen scuttles off towards the Jobcentre, feeling the sun melting drab brown Legoland, and she waves Georgie off lighting her last Richmond Superking. Georgie gives her a lonely little nod, pacing with her head down to the dental practice. The word ‘practice’ always makes her nervous – she hopes they’ve practised well enough by now not to make any mistakes. Georgie walks into the crinkly white surgery, the smell of mouthwash and plastic gloves sending a shiver down her spine, and she feels dismal telling the receptionist her name and that she’s in for two fillings. The receptionist smiles but not with any sympathy, and tells Georgie to sit in the waiting room for ten minutes in between kids�
� toys and out-of-date women’s magazines and the stereo chirping out CDs full of whale noises or the rainforest or a marmoset dying. Georgie knocks her knees together, waiting with her heart in her mouth on the ripped school-staff-roomy chairs. She’d much rather be at work, but it’s funny how she always whinges about going to Bhs too, and she wonders to herself if she’s got a fairly shitty life. Ellen and Bobby the Artist have it soooooo easy, being able to do what they want – they don’t know what it’s like working nine-to-five; what a way to make a living. It’s fucking shite. It’s just that Georgie has no choice – she figures you’ve got to make money to stay alive, and there’s people out there doing much worse jobs and they might not even have a partner and they might eat ready-meals-for-one every night crying into the pasta or the shepherd’s pie and then just go to bed. At least Georgie’s life is exciting – what with living with complete nutcases – and she tries to hold her head high when the nurse in blue calls her name, leading her up the tight grubby staircase. But in the operating room it’s torture – for starters Mr West aggravates her with lots of small-talk (nice weather today eh, see the footy, going anywhere nice this summer?), then he leans her right back in the grey leather seat and blinds poor Georgie with the rectangle light. Georgie’s pulse is battering as the dentist cleans her molars with that cold sucky machine, the sound of it going through her like nails down a blackboard but much much worse. It’s the fact Mr West never informs her what he’s doing that gets to Georgie; he concentrates closed-mouthed as he starts drilling into Georgie’s soft tooth, as if it’s worse to actually say the word ‘drill’ to her than to just dive in with it completely unexpectedly. Georgie flinches, a weeny tear plopping out of her eye – at first the pain’s not so bad, but then Mr West pushes down a bit harder and the drill goes whizz and bits of mouldy white gravel start flying out of her mouth. All the while the blue nurse still has that sicky sucky thing shoved in her gob like Georgie’s giving a blow-job to all these metal instruments, and she starts crying like a little girl, wishing her mammy was here or at least Bobby the Artist to tell the surgeons to push off. Soon the pain’s unbearable, and Mr West even has the nerve to poke into the cavity with this skinny spike, sending an electric shock round Georgie’s skull and out through her eyeballs. She cries sloppy tears and makes the odd moan, trying to be a big girl but she’s positive Mr West’s hurting her on purpose, the sadistic little rotter. She clutches the arms of the leathery seat, wishing all the dentists of the world dead but at least she’s forgotten about her hay fever. Her molars feel like big lightning-struck rocks, and even when Mr West fills the nerves in with white glob her mouth still kills and all she can think of is Ellen at the dole office, doing two minutes’ work a fortnight then going out and getting pissed and not giving a shit for the next two weeks. Even Ellen’s healthcare’s free because she’s signing on; Georgie has to pay the surgery forty-odd pound for the pleasure of having her teethies hurt. She pays up with a sour face and a fat lip, then trundles out of the surgery with a little bit of relief but mostly antagonism and numbness. It’s eleven o’clock and she picks up the pace on her way to Bhs, not bearing to look at the Jobcentre as she scuttles past. Ellen’s probably down the pub by now, with a cocktail in one hand. Lucky bitch. However, in actual fact Ellen’s still sitting on the plaggy seats with her white giro booklet in hand, waiting very impatiently to get her name called by one of the grotesque blouse-mad JC assistants. It’s shit weather in the Jobcentre – mostly grey and humid, some scattered fans about doing nowt. Ellen watches the plastic clock not moving in the corner of her eye, desperately wanting to get back outside and out of this fucking depressing zoo. They’re funny old creatures, dole scum: man and wife with zebra tattoos probably been signing on for years, girl with peacock hair and little baby joey, bloke in grey seal suit probably got made redundant, little teenage cheetahs cheating the dole like Ellen. She feels a weird bond with all these people – the ones who sign on every first and third Thursday of the month around the half-ten mark. Johnnie used to be one. Ellen’s got no intention of finding a job what with her leeching off her boyfriend and enjoying herself so much – she thinks people who work are absolute mugs. The dole people are mugs and all – when Ellen finally gets called to Desk Number One, the lady behind it asks her what she’s been doing this week to find a job and Ellen says with a serious face, ‘Aw loads … Been looking in the Evening Gazette but there was nowt suitable, came in the Jobcentre a few times to look for … vacancies, is it? … yeah, and my uncle Gary reckons he can get me a job at Morrison’s, so I’m just waiting to hear from him really … oh yeah, and I checked the Herald and Post and all.’ The lady nods, quite skeletal from years of hearing bullshit – Ellen doesn’t really have an uncle Gary; she’s got an aunty Diana, but she’s a lesbian and works at the dog-track in Sunderland and Ellen doesn’t think she could be fucked with that. She taps her feet up and down on the grey carpet tiles, signing her name under all her other signatures on the slip the lady hands her, seeing jackpot signs whizz round her eyeballs like her head’s a one-armed bandit. ‘Have you checked the vacancies today?’ the lady asks, every bit of her creased like a hairless old ball sac. ‘Yeah,’ Ellen lies, but the ball sac still has a check through the database for her just in case. Ellen cringes, wishing very bad things on the dole lady and the dole lady’s family. Blowing into a tissue, the lady glances at Ellen’s details and spouts, ‘So I see you’re looking for jobs in either animal care, engineering, or computer management? Well what about this = Veterinarian Nurse, five days a week in Redcar, two years’ experience minimum, ten pounds fifty an hour?’ Ellen’s belly smiles. She goes, ‘Ah, I don’t have the experience, sorry.’ To be a professional dole merchant, you’ve got to have good qualifications in Excuse Making – the only subject Ellen really excelled at in school. The ball-sac lady gazes at her with a bit of contempt, but there’s nothing she can say really and she stares at her computer again feeling shitty and annoyed – it’s not like she loves working at the Jobcentre; all she wants herself is an easy life. The lady’s had a million awful jobs (on the till at Netto, parking attendant, human filing cabinet at the Inland Revenue, school bog cleaner), and she doesn’t see why some people (her) have to go through murder while others (Ellen) wake up to Diagnosis Murder at three in the afternoon and have no worries in the world. The lady purses her lips, clicks the cream keyboard, then snaps at Ellen, ‘Well, you said you’re looking at a job in Morrison’s so I take it you’re not against working in retail … well, what have we here: Sales Assistant, Asda South Bank, meets national minimum wage, full training given. Sounds ideal.’ Ellen grins sour milk, stomach churning. ‘Just give them a ring on this number,’ the crinkly lady continues, printing out a wee slip of details, then, ‘You can use the phone free of charge, over there.’ In her head Ellen sees herself rimming the dole lady while getting whipped by the dole lady’s devilish minions. The lady hands her the slip, then ushers Ellen away to the black tacky phone in a booth sat all on its lonesome. In full view of Mrs Ball Sac, Ellen picks up the receiver. She has a sulk to the sound of the dial tone, even the thought of getting up early for an interview let alone fucking working there bringing a tear to her eye. Why in this world can you not just do what you want? Cavemen got on alright without money and dole ladies and Asda. Ellen sits all tired and grumpy in the MDF booth, stalling for a bit then, in a flash of inspiration, she says to the dead phone, ‘Hi, is that Asda? … Yeah, can I speak to Gloria please? … Oh, hi! Yeah, I hope so … I’d like to apply for the post of sales assistant, please … Oh, really? … Well great, yes, that’d be lovely. Monday. Nine fifty-five. Nice one … Okay, yep, will do … Alright, ta ra.’ Ellen turns and smiles at the dole lady, giving her a dead corny thumbs-up and the lady nods, slightly suspicious but not really giving much of a shit now. She’s got another person to see (girl with the peacock hair), and Ellen swivels in her swivelly chair grinning to herself. There’s a sign above the phone saying NO PERSONAL CALLS, but Ellen decides she might as well
give Johnnie a personal call seeing as it’s free and she’s free from the horrible lady too. Her breath crackles on the creaky black plastic. ‘Where are you?’ she asks when Johnnie picks up, and it’s a relief to hear his voice, ‘I’ve been dead worried. What are you up to?’ Johnnie sniffs. ‘I’m just in Lidl,’ he replies, pushing the cagey trolley round the aisles while his Nanna picks up packs of potatoes and orange juices and chopped tomatoes and slings them in. ‘Eh?’ Ellen ehs, twizzling the wire round her little finger. ‘Ah, I’m just helping Nanna out with the shopping, aren’t I,’ Johnnie says, his grandmother suddenly perking up with Choco Rice in one hand and wittering, ‘Ooh is it Eleanor? Tell her hello from me, John, tell her hello from me.’ Nanna stands there for a good minute with the box in her claw like a stone sculpture, staring at her grandson until he finally says, ‘Yeah, Ellen, our Nanna says alright by the way.’ Nanna grins and carries on loading the trolley (it’s brilliant in Lidl, you can get noodles for 13p and eight Excelsiors for £4.49), Johnnie breaking his back trying to scoot it round with one hand. It’s been a terrible couple of days for him – he doesn’t mean to get paranoid all the time, but he had to run away after getting all upset about a couple of tissues in his dustbin. Of all the things! Early Tuesday morning, just before he disappeared, Johnnie woke up very proud to have Ellen back and to be feeling like a sort of hardcase Don figure around the block, and he decided to treat himself to his first wank in fifteen days. Ellen was snoring. He got out the uncut video of Arse Mania VI (the one where five men practically gang-rape a young girl), but when he reached for the box of mansize Kleenex he was dismayed to find the box empty. Scratching his head in very over-the-top confusion, Johnnie saw the bin next to Ellen’s side of the bed was full of screwed-up tissues, glooped together in what looked like PVA. Shuddering, Johnnie quickly came to the conclusion that either Ellen’s got a cold and a very very runny nose, or she’s been seeping somebody else’s semen. True to form, Johnnie Jealousy decided to believe the latter. After all, Johnnie hadn’t wanked or shot spunk into Ellen for weeks (their last excruciating shag was cut short by the Express pizza boy), and he hadn’t heard her sniffing recently. Johnnie fell to the floor in agony, imagining Angelo’s thick jizz oozing out of Ellen’s fanny bum and mouth. He cried a couple of tears. Getting wound up, Johnnie scrabbled round the carpet like a bull terrier, trying to gather up more clues and evidence. He felt certain Ellen’s lacy blue knickers (the ones she wore not last night but the night before) smelt of another man’s aftershave, and he started to see claw marks in her skinny exposed back, and he even dished the tissues out of the dustbin and took a lungful of their scent, and he felt fairly certain they ponged of semen. Johnnie dropped back down to the ground, feeling insane. He listened silently to Ellen’s breath for twenty-five minutes, dreading her mumbling the word ‘Angeloooo’ in her sleep. But she just kept saying, ‘Snore breath snore breath snore breath.’ Twitching, he crept quietly out of the flat, not wanting to wake Ellen and argue with her, instead driving all the way to his Nanna’s house in Eston with the heavy weight of Ellen and Angelo’s naked bodies on top of his head. He’s not sure if he’s overreacting, or if he’s being made a fool of, but either way it’s been a painful couple of days. And just because of tissues! Occasionally Johnnie wishes he had the guts to just dump Ellen and be done with it, but he’s paranoid too that he’ll never go out with anyone more beautiful than Ellen, especially since he’s no Brad Pitt himself, even though he’s got strange psychotic Fight Club tendencies. Anyhow, after a couple of slap-up meals round Nanna’s and a lonely lonely bed to sleep in last night, Johnnie quickly realised what he was missing. And strangely, he feels quite smug that it’s Ellen phoning him and not the other way round, and he asks her, ‘So, what you been up to, darling?’ Ellen scrapes her foot along the crunchy grey carpet, then replies, ‘Er, I’ve just finished at the doley. I was just wondering if I could come over? When are you done with your Nanna? You having dinner at hers?’ Johnnie dodges a pot of mayonnaise, skidding off one wheel, then says, ‘Naw naw, I’ll come and meet you. That’d be mint. I’ll just drop Nanna off in a bit … what say we meet at the flat in about half an hourish?’ Ellen smiles a big cheesy grin and nods, then remembers to speak, ‘Yeah alright.’ The two of them say all their see you laters, and Johnnie considers saying I love you but he doesn’t want to sound too desperate – in his head he wants to be cool and nonchalant and play hard to get and make Ellen work a little bit, but really in this world if you love someone you should definitely tell them. Oh well. He puts the phone down then carries on wheeling the groceries round Lidl with his nutty old granny, and he really doesn’t feel that cool at all. His Nanna looks a bit like a white-haired Ronald McDonald, corned-beef legs dribbling out of her sensible shoes and her red cardigan slowly turning pale burgundy as the years go by. She smells of hospital beds, but she’s got a great sense of humour and a terrible memory which only adds to the hilarity. ‘Who was that?’ she asks once Johnnie’s off the phone. ‘Ellen. You know, Eleanor or whatever you just …’ he says. He can feel weeny sweat patches sprouting under his armpits – there’s no air-conditioning in Lidl, but it makes up for it with the hazy rays of light beaming through the glass, the sort of sight that makes you realise you were right drawing the sun with blocky yellow stripes coming out when you were young. Johnnie was always a shit drawer at school – his suns were just orange spirals, or he wouldn’t draw suns at all, just black clouds instead. Nanna’s got a picture of his at home; this big dark stormcloud in the middle with an evil frowny face. Some teachers thought Johnnie was a disturbed little child, but then again he did go round at breaktime breaking other kids’ toys. Johnnie gets pissed off and says ‘fuck’ when the trolley-wheel gets caught on a jelly–fishy Lidl bag on the ground and gets all mangled, but his Nanna’s always in a good mood and she releases the jellyfish then says to him, ‘Ho ho, someone got out the wrong side of bed today.’ Johnnie didn’t exactly get out the wrong side of bed, it’s just that he didn’t get out of it with Ellen this morning. In the last aisle Johnnie helps Nanna lift three bottles of cut-price Hock into the trolley then pushes it to the cashiers at top speed, desperate now to get home – it’s only been two days, but he’s forgotten what Ellen kisses like, what she feels like, how she tastes. He’s practically forgotten all about the tissues, and all. Shuddering, Johnnie almost starts getting a slight stiffy as him and Nanna load the shopping on the conveyor belt, but to avoid embarrassment he imagines Nanna all spread-eagled in one of those 50+ magazines you get in Premier, and it soon subsides. It’s strange to think how many newsagents stock that kind of senile smut, but who actually has the nerve to step up to the counter and buy it? Johnnie wonders if, when his granddad was alive, did he prefer to see naked sixty-year-olds, or still get a kick out of shaven, supple Just Eighteens? Sweating, him and Nanna cram all the chunky bags into his Nissan Sunny out in the car park, then the two of them whittle off down the sunny street-stripe to Nanna’s pad, Johnnie driving carefully because he doesn’t want to worry his Nanna and he doesn’t want to kill her either. On the way down Normanby Road, passing those loopy houses with the curvy brown roofies like futuristic farm stables, Nanna puts her hand on Johnnie’s knee and asks softly, ‘Now, love, have you seen your mother recently? You know she’s going through a bit of a bad patch, and I’m sure she’d love to see you.’ Johnnie sighs silently, feeling a bit unnerved by the granny-grip on his leg and the fact she’s brought up his mam while he’s manoeuvring that tricky crossroad down by the post office. Johnnie’s mam’s been suffering a bit of depression since she fell headfirst into the menopause, fluttering violently from hibernating in her dark bedroom for weeks on end to lashing out at family members like a prickly porcupine. She’s never liked the idea of her sons (Barrie, Johnnie and Robbie) growing up to be failures, and with Robbie being the only one at home now (Barrie flew the nest to set up an unsuccessful twenty-four-hour booze delivery service with his ex-missus, and Tony the Dad goes off-shore for periods of t
hree months on, one month off at the oil rigs), he gets most of the spines. Johnnie bites his lip as he swerves down curvy Windsor Road, nodding in certain places while his Nanna says, ‘You see, you don’t want your Robbie getting an earful every time he comes home late, gets his PE kit mucky, that sort of thing. She didn’t even let him see his new girlfriend the other night! She’s just lonely mind – I try my best to see her, but it’s tricky with me not being so mobile now …’ Once they reach Nanna’s, Johnnie lugs all the shopping into her kitchen, saying to her, ‘I dunno, it’s just she just kicks off at me. You know how hard it is finding a job round here, Nanna; it’s rock hard. And I’m really trying; I really am, but last time I went round she just started crying and chucked the plates at me.’ Johnnie does want to see her, but it’s the heartbreak of telling your mam you’re pathetic and penniless and can’t find a job (when in fact you’re pathetic and penniless and punt pills and pilfer people) that puts him off. Johnnie coming round with a big Smiley Face when all he does in life is sell SmileyFaces to idiots is only going to depress her even more. But Johnnie promises his Nanna he’ll give it a go, and she smiles and delves into her purse and hands him a crisp new fiver, to help tide him over. Johnnie kisses her goodbye and walks through her lovely lilac garden, chuffed about the money. He beeps the horn while Nanna waves cheery at the window, gently pulling off the drive then whacking his foot down once he’s completely out of view. If only his mam and Nanna knew how talented he is in the field of criminal behaviour! It’s not easy being a failure, you know. Over the years Johnnie’s really honed his craft; sometimes he makes more money drug-dealing when he doesn’t even have any drugs on him. Genius! Some of his favourite tricks of the trade range from ‘hit-and-run’ (where you literally hit and run away from someone who’s just given you money/unveiled their wallet), ‘lucky cellophane’ (insert any piece of cellophane or other worthless plastic into a cigarette box, then sell to unsuspecting customers as ‘drugs’), the ‘unlucky cell phone’ (advertise yourself as a trendy drug dealer to kids, then snatch their mobile when they go to take your number), and sometimes you’ve just got to be fearless and put your hand in people’s pockets, or your elbow in people’s car windows. Vroom-vroom-vrooming down Cargo Fleet, Johnnie spots a couple of youths in flammable tops who got ganj off him once at a party, and he considers for a second trying the old ‘unlucky cell phone’ on them, but today he’s just not in the mood. It’s 12.30pm and the sun’s at pretty much full force, zapping the town with life – it’s one of those days when all the playing fields are jolly and green and the sky’s a neon sign and all the houses are pink pomegranates; everything looking completely beautiful. Sliding the Nissan Sunny into the Peach/Pear House car park, Johnnie smiles and spots Ellen impersonating a bright lamp-post by the edge of the road. He waves then parks up, being careful not to stall or crash into the five five-year-olds having a kickabout on the concrete. He gets out the car, then stepping-stones on his own shadow to where Ellen’s parked herself. ‘Hiya,’ he says, all baby deer eyes and jailbird haircut. Ellen smiles, then for twenty-two seconds there’s a sort of awkward silence, friction in the air like the streets and the trees are made of sandpaper. Johnnie looks at Ellen. She’s so gorgeous, he hopes up to the cloudless sky she didn’t sleep with Angelo etc. etc. ‘I missed you!’ she yelps, and she hugs him and Johnnie finally manages to relax. He can be a bit of a pushover and he trips over a big bucket of love and says, ‘I missed you too.’ They have a bit of a kiss and a bit of a grope, then Johnnie scrambles through his pocket for the fiver Nanna gave him, and he says, ‘Here, Ellen, this is for you. I just wanna say sorry for being a dickhead. Soz for scaring you, you know, when I went mad at Angelo. It wasn’t your fault. I’m alright now.’ Ellen’s eyes ping on when she sees the money, and it’s annoying because deep down she’s a right greedy cunt but it’s hard to kick off at a girl when she’s wrapped herself around you. To Johnnie a cuddle from Ellen’s worth at least a fiver anyhow. The two of them squeeze and squeeze until it’s too hot and sweaty, then Ellen pockets the money and says, ‘Aww, Johnnie, I love you.’ Johnnie says ahh he loves her as well and everything else then he says, ‘So what you up to? Wanna nip down the park or something?’ Ellen squints at the sun then covers her eyes with a hand full of rings and goes, ‘Yeah! It’s too nice to stay in the flat, isn’t it …’ After a bit more cuddling the two of them skip off to the adventure playground in Pally Park, linking pinkies rather than holding hands because it’s far too sticky. The world’s revolving like a microwave. Like Dorothy and her daft dog Toto, Ellen and Johnnie meander together down the yellow streets of heatwave; through the enchanted forest of council houses; past scary lads with footballs, tinheads on motorbikes and giant lions on deckchairs in threadbare gardens; down to the Emerald City. Pallister Park is beautiful in sunshine, dismal in winter, and the two of them zip across the crispy green grass with smiles the size of bananas. Firstly, Johnnie and Ellen climb the climbing frame, sitting at the summit with their legs dangling off, the fizz and flutter of birds, barks, cars, screams and ice-cream vans sounding around them. Then they jump off and spin on the roundabout for eighteen rotations, then they see-saw, then Johnnie has a go on the bouncy sheep thing on a spring but there’s threat of him bashing his head on the ground so he gets off. Five minutes are spent having a fag on the park bench, Johnnie and Ellen chatting about the crinkly ball sac at the dole office, his mother’s depression, and the lads over there having a wee against the railings. All the while Johnnie thinks how he’d love to put all thoughts of Angelo behind him and give shagging Ellen another go. He pecks her lemon meringue left cheek, then they stub out their fags and jump on the swings. There’s nowhere he’d rather be than swinging with his girlfriend into the neverending sky. At first they start off gentle, the shiny flats and houses coming and going beneath them then, as the momentum builds, one minute you’re in Pallister Park and the next minute you’re in the Milky Way. Johnnie dangles his feet in a cirrus cloud while Ellen kicks at fluffy aeroplane trails, both of them whizzing at high speed like happy demolition balls. Ellen thinks to herself, ‘I can see my house from here,’ but then again she does live in a big fuck-off tower block. Johnnie begins to show off, kicking harder and harder with every swing, and soon he’s nearly going full-circle with the earth coming back in view over the back of his head. He’s like a ghostly galleon, all pale and skeletal. While her boyfriend zooms back and forth on his back, Ellen starts getting tired and swings a bit less passionately, feeling her tight top stick to her flesh. She checks in the back of her miniskirt the fiver’s still there and it is, then she gradually comes to a halt with a gleeful little face on her head. She glances at Johnnie being a blur next to her, and she thinks to herself everything’s going to be fine and dandy between them. Then she thinks how easy it is to cheat on your boyfriend! After a bit, Johnnie starts getting sweaty too and he stops kicking his legs, gliding back down to earth like a feather. The sky and the land slowly become flat again – not big arcs of rainbow whoosh – and Johnnie eases himself into a more sedate swinging style. Squinting through burnt blue retinas, Johnnie sees the playground has emptied slightly, possibly due to his menacing presence or it could be the ice-cream van round the corner. Sparking up another Richmond, Johnnie yawns, eyeballing two big pigeons waddling about the coloured tarmac. One’s a man bird and the other’s a woman bird, and they look so downtrodden and scratty it seems out of place on such a happy day. The bloke pigeon has his neck feathers all puffed out, chasing the lady like Benny Hill on birdseed. The lady clearly wants nothing to do with him, scrabbling away on the hot ground or flying onto the climbing frame only to get followed a second later, the gadge pigeon pushing his neck out fatter and fatter and it’s pure comedy watching the two of them. Johnnie laughs in his head but then he feels sad, thinking of all the human ladies in the same position in all the clubs and pubs in Britain or the whole universe. But then it’s just Mother Nature’s fault boys are always randy – after all it’s a scientific fac
t the human race would disappear if no one wanted to have sex any more. Just as long as they don’t want to have sex with your bird, that’s all. Johnnie sighs then dismounts the swing, and him and Ellen walk off hand in hand through the smell of the playground. Ellen likes to take funny little penguin steps, while Johnnie prefers walking at ten-to-two, which means – if you happened to be standing on a clock-face – left foot would point at ten, right foot at two. It’s a walk generally favoured by frogs and ruffians. Trundling towards Corpus Christi primary with their bodies pushed together, Johnnie tries his best to smile but he feels funny. He can’t wait for the little things again, like nibbling Americano pizzas and stroking Ellen in bed and getting stroked back. He has to learn how to calm down. Fucking tissues! He clings her a bit closer, then the both of them laugh when they spot Alan Blunt the Cunt lurking by the primary school fence in his deer-hide jacket, perving over the pre-teens on their afternoon break. Alan’s a weirdo but he’s also rather friendly, and Johnnie blurts out ‘Hello’ as they amble past. Alan waves back, looking a bit grim in such heavy clothes and bags under his eyes, one hand still attached to the metal rungs. ‘Now then, Johnnie,’ he says stiffly. Alan gets on with most (white) people in Peach House, despite Johnnie piping monotonous earth-quaky trance through his pillow every night. It drives Alan to very murderous thoughts, but on the flipside Johnnie does help him put shelves up and he did bring a Sardinian to an inch of his life the other day. As well as hating foreigners, Alan also hates to see people in love, and he gazes at Johnnie and Ellen with a bit of disgust as they pace off into the shadows. Alan’s wife disappeared four years back, and since then no one’s succumbed to Racist Cunt Alan’s racy racist charms. He adjusts his thick-rim gegs then turns back to the school playground, suddenly disappointed when the bell goes and all the kids scamper back indoors for their music lesson (yes, it’s 1.30pm on a Thursday). Some weeks he likes to stay and listen to the recorders getting sucked and blown, but this afternoon he’s promised Bobby the Artist he’ll sit for a portrait and a piss-up, so he slowly detaches himself from the green gates and follows the lovebirds’ footsteps up wide wonderful Cargo Fleet Lane. Alan Blunt the Cunt’s not a big fan of the sun – on scorching days like this he tends to stay indoors watching the Toshiba telly, stepping out only to drive the containers at ICI and sit in dismal ferry terminals, or stare at the kids in the playground. He likes the children at Corpus Christi, since it’s a Catholic school and they’re mostly pale faces. Alan’s always been a Cunt and he’s always been Racist – he was a copper in the seventies and eighties, renowned for using his truncheon on anything with off-white skin at any opportunity. His wife came back from holiday having shagged an Italian stallion, and rumour has it he used his truncheon on her as well. Alan Blunt is a member of the Socialist Workers’ Union in town, but he’s also under the Hitlerish impression that Niggers, Nips, Pakis and Chinks are all out to get white people’s jobs, out to terrorise white people’s neighbourhoods, and out to shag white people’s wives. He’s the sort of person who says ‘Fuck off back to Arabia, you fucking Paki’ to people from India when he’s had a bit too much to drink. He thinks the Chinese have suspicious eyes. He believes all Mediterranean men are big greasy STD carriers. Alan’s father Larry used to show him books about lynchings in the Southern states of the US and Vietnam and race riots, making up joke captions and spazzy accents for all the poor victims. It’s a wonder he didn’t read Alan Mein Kampf at bedtime. Alan’s father died years back after refusing a flu jab from a Bangladeshi nurse and, as Alan plods past the Thorntree cemetery where the daft bastard’s buried, he feels glad that Larry Blunt the Cunt can’t see what a lonely situation his son’s in now. Alan steps across the hot-plate car park then bashes the code into the side of the tower block, yawning as he steps into the cool dark of the foyer. He hangs silently in the lift for about a minute, pressing buttons with chipolata fingers, but it’s still fucking broke. The letting agency keep telling him it’ll be fixed within a fortnight; every day you can see Alan lingering in there with the same tense expression. Hissing, he gives the lift panel a bit of a slap then proceeds up the six staircases like a grumpy tortoise. Alan’s face is a crumpled crisp packet from too many years frowning. At his door (6E, but the E’s fallen off) he finds Bobby the Artist sitting cross-legged supping a bubbly bottle of White Ace. Bobby’s feeling half-cut already after just a litre of the stuff, but he’s been huffing Lynx again all morning and his brain feels like mushy peas. Alan Blunt the Cunt stops for a sec on the mottled vinyl, then pushes his specs up and goes, ‘What you drinking that shite for? Howay in and I’ll get us a can of Special.’ Bobby smiles and claps his hands, following Alan into the flat with his biggest argyle all sweaty and floppy round his skinny frame. In all those argyle sweaters, Bobby looks a bit like a sixties Mark E Smith, except Mark’s a little city hobgoblin and Bobby’s a six-foot elastic man. Yawning again, Alan Blunt the Cunt gets some Carlsberg Special out the fridge, then puts on Sinatra’s ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’ and tells Bobby to sit down and start drinking. Bobby the Artist dives into the brown knackered sofa. From that viewpoint, Alan’s flat looks like the mad headquarters of a stalker or serial killer or other strange person, and yet it’s also sort of homely. The walls are Blu Tacked with sun-dried pages of the Sun and Mirror singing out BOY KILLED BY RACIST THUGS and ASIAN GIRL, 18, RAPED and RAPPER KILLED IN GANGLAND SHOOTOUT, like black white and nicotine retro wallpaper. Frank Sinatra sits with other Franks on the mantelpiece instead of family photos, and the gramophone skips all his records. Mosquitoes lounge around the walls in piles of human blood. The Toshiba telly sits in the corner with its arms crossed, switched off. The floors are all bare, with only cans of Special Brew and shoes and dusty binoculars and cutted-out newspapers scattered about the underlay. It’s one of those homes with so much character it practically talks to you. ‘Hello,’ says the wallpaper. Bobby the Artist pushes the frothy White Ace back in his Premier carrier and takes out a rolled sheet of cartridge paper, along with his crayons and watercolours. He sets everything out on the crusty floor, pinning the A1 paper flat with four more Carlsbergs they’re going to drink. ‘So you’re doing a portrait then?’ Alan Blunt asks, quickly taking Bobby’s place on the sofa and going ‘aahh’ with his can in his mouth. ‘Yeah, just a sketch like,’ Bobby replies, ‘I dunno, I might make it into a big canvas later like, but you never know.’ Bobby the Artist starts out by crayoning Alan’s head and glasses quite large and cartoony, with the suggestion of wavy b+w tabloids behind him and the grumpy Toshiba telly. Blur your eyes and the walls go into a kind of Bridget Riley, or is that just the Special Brew? Bobby the Artist burps then does a squiggle for Alan’s sickly hair, the sun bursting in through the window like a magic yellow filter. ‘So what you been up to today, Al?’ Bobby asks, lifting one of the Carlsbergs to scribble a fag packet with centipede legs in the bottom left corner. ‘Ah, not much; this and that, you know how it is,’ Alan replies, too ashamed to talk about the Corpus Christi kiddies, even though everyone on the estate must’ve seen him gawping through the railings at one time or another. Alan doesn’t think of himself as a pervert or a paedo, but he knows what people say about him behind shut doors. It’s becoming a bit of an obsession for him. One of the kids in particular, Tiny Tina, plagues his beery dreams every night, so perfect she is in her dining-cloth dress with her piggytails and rosy legs. ‘Aaahh,’ Alan says again, thinking about the girl but pretending it’s the grog. ‘How’s the picture going?’ he asks next, reddening, shuffling on the settee. The problem with drawing Alan Blunt the Cunt is he can’t keep still at all, but Bobby uses it to his advantage and throws rapid marks across the paper, telling him, ‘Er, it’s going to be sort of abstract.’ Alan Blunt nods, but he doesn’t know a great deal about art except for the Constable print his father used to have above the Toshiba telly when it lived with his folks in Thorntree. However, Alan did once see some of Bobby’s work at his degree show in college – these groovy, childish pictures of sunshines a
nd flowers and body parts. They could’ve been done by a five-year-old, but that’s not a bad thing in Alan’s book. Slurping, Bobby mixes up some luminous pinky-red for all the Sun logos behind the Cunt, like the poppies in that very famous painting someone painted about poppies in the olden days. Without drugs, it’s been a tricky week for the Artist – the boredom’s the worst and the ever-so-slight downcast can’t-be-bothered-to-talk-to-you feeling but, saying that, there’s no drug in the world better than painting. Oh and the Special Brew’s starting to kick in, and Bobby’s brushstrokes start to flow much looser and stranger, and he ends up drawing an elephant trunk coming out of Alan’s face. ‘So, you up to owt later on?’ Bobby asks, much happier to make small-talk now he’s getting sloshed. ‘Ah, well I’ve gotta drive the fucking truck tonight like, but God knows if I’m gonna be sober in time,’ Alan replies, then takes a big guzzle and asks, ‘Are you working nowadays, Bob?’ Bobby the Artist glances up from the paper, then sort of stammers, ‘No, er, it’s shite like cos I haven’t had any commissions for ages. But, er, well this weekend this dealer’s coming up here to look at some paintings and maybe do something together, or something.’ Perhaps the only bad thing about drinking is Bobby can feel himself getting slower and stupider the more drunk he gets, and he shifts uneasily on the floorboards. He sees photos scattered on the floor of Alan and his ex-wife with all her heads cut out, and he wonders if Alan pasted them on voodoo dolls or set them on fire or just threw them out the window. On the cartridge paper, Bobby draws lots of women’s heads floating around in the background. ‘Well good luck with it all,’ Alan suddenly spouts, his chin on the Special Brew. He takes another sip, then changes his position again – hunched forward with goggly eyes. ‘Cheers, Al,’ Bobby replies. ‘Hopefully I’ll get some money for it; I’ll have to take you out for a bevvy or summat.’ With Alan Blunt the Cunt moving about so much, Bobby the Artist tries to bring the drawing to a close with one last curl on Alan’s head and a few extra broken blood vessels, then he takes it out from under the Carlsbergs and hands it over. Bobby’s satisfied with it – he always tries to show the good in people, but he does feel a little nervous while Alan glares at it. Eventually he burps and laughs and goes, ‘Cheers, mate, that’s lovely … Look, there’s Sinatra in the background! Ho ho ho. Not sure about the elephant trunk, like …’ Bobby the Artist pukes up a smile, then sups more Brew and goes, ‘Soz yeah, it’s a bit avant garde eh. You can have it though, if you want?’ Alan Blunt claps his hands, then gets up off the sofa and replaces Frank’s The Man with the Golden Arm with Bobby’s ‘The Man with the Golden Can’ (59.4x84.1cm) on the mantelpiece. He ruffles the Artist’s shabby hair then goes, ‘That means a lot to me, Bob,’ and for the first time in a while he feels a connection and real joy and admiration for another human person. Bobby grins more gooey teeth and feels like his work here is done. What a beautiful day on floor six. Bobby swallows a load more Carlsberg then lazily packs his paints and crayons back in the Premier bag, not really wanting to leave Alan on his own but also not wanting Georgie to come home to an empty flat after she’s been at work and had her teeth filled and all that. It’s five o’clock already – doesn’t time fly when you’re getting pissed! Bobby watches Alan crush a can with his eyes all sad and soggy, and he can tell Alan wants him to stay and he can’t help but kneel back down when Alan murmurs, ‘Actually, Bobby, if you’re not in a rush or owt, I’ve got something to show you. Something I’ve drawn – my own bit of art, I suppose. I’d be keen to know what you think.’ Then Alan Blunt the Cunt goes rushing out to his bedroom and comes back brandishing an A3 tabloid mock-up he’s devised with a headline reading HORRIBLE DRUG DEALER TAUGHT A LESSON BY THE BOY DOWNSTAIRS and a smaller sub-heading ANGELO BASHINI WAS MADE TO EAT RAZOR BLADES AFTER BEING CAUGHT SELLING FIVE-YEAR-OLDS SMACK – JOHNNIE HYDE SAYS ‘NEXT TIME YOU’RE DEAD’. Even though it’s a mental spin on the razor episode, the paper’s been beautifully illustrated in ink with made-up images of Johnnie hitting Angelo and Angelo’s head in bandages in hospital, as well as delicate hand-drawn courier text and red tempera logo. ‘I had to make me own headline up cos the prick never pressed charges. There wasn’t even a peep from the Gazette,’ Alan explains, ‘but what do you think? It’s quite funny, isn’t it …’ Bobby the Artist scans a bit of the racist text (for example the ‘reporter’ ends the article with ‘but at the end of the day, the daft cunt had it coming’) and cringes, but as for craftsmanship it’s a wonderful piece of bonkers Pop Art and he replies, ‘It’s lovely, mate.’ Bobby the Artist feels uneasy when Racist Cunt Alan starts being a total Racist Cunt rather than just a Cunt or just plain Alan, but he holds the A3 drawing in both hands and keeps smiling. To be honest Bobby’s going to miss Angelo. It’s a real shame he’s not in Peach House any more (rumour has it he’s going to move back to his mam’s in Sardinia once he’s out of hospital), since Bobby used to have some right wild times up at Angelo’s, for instance that time they threw Roman candles off the top of Peach House off their heads, thinking they could spell NOW THEN in firework – and it wasn’t even Guy Fawkes night! Crazy days. Wistfully looking up at the Artexed ceiling, Bobby the Artist grins then hands the bit of A3 carefully back to Alan, who swallows down a burp. ‘Cheers, Bob, I mean I don’t think it’s in your league or owt, but I do love having a little scribble now and then … it keeps me occupied. It gets quite lonely up here, you know, being so high up off the ground.’ Totally charmed by the old bastard, Bobby pats Alan Blunt on the shoulder. He reminds Bobby a bit of that artist Henry Darger, the one who did all his work on his lonesome in some Chicago apartment and it only got discovered once he’d popped his clogs. Henry left behind these great big fairytale panoramas, tracing little girls (and giving them little willies) and Disney animals and beautiful flowers. He could’ve been seen as some kind of paedo (like Alan), but some people reckon Henry was such an outsider he might’ve been unaware females don’t have cocks. But anyhow, the paintings are absolutely delightful – each one of them depicts a scene from the epic million-page fairy story Henry made up, and the colours are all luminous and the Vivian Girls are all cute and morbid, and the composition’s so natural and vibrant it almost makes Bobby cry just to see them in shitty reproductions. Bobby often wonders what it’d be like for Henry to have done all this wonderful art but never have found any recognition in his lifetime, and in a way it makes him sad because he’s on the cusp of fame himself and he doesn’t even feel that excited about it. All he feels is bored bored bored because he hasn’t got any drugs to eat any more. But looking at Alan Blunt the Cunt, lumbered in a stinky flat with just his Toshiba telly and Sun cutouts, Bobby does realise in his heart he can’t end up forty years old with no one having appreciated him for his artwork. Alan Blunt hardly even has anyone to appreciate him as a person, let alone as an artist. But saying that, perhaps it’s best if the world doesn’t see Alan’s disgusting drawings. Firing himself up again, Bobby gives Alan a hug goodbye, and for the rest of the week he paints furiously, snorting coffee powder and getting pissed and chasing fame like a maniac with a carving knife. He completes ‘The Angels’ (244x233cm) and ‘Bobby’s Favourite Trip’ (120x150cm) as well as something called ‘Georgie on the Toilet’ (60x80cm) and a large canvas with Alan peering lonely out of a TV set called ‘Channel Alan’ (200x1513⁄4cm) and, by the time Bent Lewis turns up at Peach House in his platinum BMW and paisley cravat, Bobby’s got masterpiece after masterpiece lined up in the front room and the bedroom and one on the cistern in the bog. Bobby imagines the flat to be some sort of underground makeshift gallery like what you’d find in the East Village in the eighties or Shoreditch in the nineties. There’s nothing Bent Lewis enjoys more than viewing art in a trendy squat or disused butcher’s shop or North East tower block, and he’s beside himself with glee walking up the patchy stairs to floor four with Bobby the Artist dressed like a trampy golfer. ‘This is it,’ Bobby says, pulling the sleeves of his smartest (blue) argyle sweater shyly as he shows Lewis into the flat. ‘Gosh, it’s like
the Fun Gallery in New York … this one’s very Keith Haring,’ Bent Lewis yelps, pointing at ‘Bobby’s Favourite Trip’ (120x150cm). He looks like your typical London art dealer: pink shirt, plush suit, posh shoes, cravat, creases in his face from thinking about conceptual art too much. Bobby shuffles on the clean carpet (him and Georgie hoovered it especially) while Bent Lewis lifts paintings and looks at them with his head on its side, Georgie peeking out from the kitchenette. Bobby mumbles a few embarrassed comments like, ‘I was off my head when I did that one,’ and, ‘That’s our lass in the nud,’ but it goes down well with Bent Lewis – it’s the first time he’s heard an artist speak so candidly about his work, like how a commoner would explain their holiday snaps of Faliraki to you. He thinks Bobby’s very good looking – as well as a fairly good painter – and he loves watching Bobby trying to sell his work in an obviously hangovery state. To calm his nerves, the last few nights Bobby’s been on a binge of Special Brew, Bombay Sapphire and Three Hammers, and to be honest it hasn’t helped much. He only just rose in time this morning to fix up the flat. Georgie, still peering from the crusty breakfast bar, has been finding him unbearable now he’s on solely the fighting juice – last night he accused her of not giving a shit about him or his artwork, and he refused to say good-night to her before bedtime, which upset her. Bobby hates himself this morning for acting like that, and he hates how booze can turn you into a dithering, manic-depressive aggressive cunt, with very bad breath. He adores Georgie and would never want to hurt her feelings, but sometimes on booze he feels so much weird antagonism towards her (for example when she moves his paints to sit down, when she leaves the light on in the bathroom, or when she says she’s too tired to have sex with a jibbery drunk fool) and last night it worried him because he was THAT close to hitting her for no reason. You just get in such a foul mood sometimes! In the past Bobby and Georgie haven’t really been ones to argue about anything, but mostly the fights stem from him wanting a rock-and-roll bohemian lifestyle, not a life where you worry about food and rent and clean carpets, except you have to. Today he feels all crappy, and now and then he catches Georgie’s eye in the kitchen and gives her a little sorry blink. ‘I love all of them,’ Bent Lewis yips, his posh-tosser voice grating on Bobby slightly though he seems like a nice enough person. ‘This one in particular,’ Lewis continues, pointing out ‘Boozy Bastard Bashes Bird’ (81x58cm) – a wacky cathartic painting Bobby whipped up last night, ‘has a real don’t-give-a-fuck quality, like a cross between – say – Willem de Kooning and Liam Gallagher. It’s great.’ Bobby the Artist nods but smirks a little inside, clocking straight away Bent Lewis trying to butter him up with hip pop references and shite like that, and slowly he realises he’s got Lewis wrapped around his finger. It’s weird – no one’s really spoken about his work since art college two years ago, and back then it was all ‘maybe put some blue over there’ or ‘this area’s a little unresolved’. Today it’s all gasps of pleasure and slapping on the back. Bent Lewis doesn’t usually drink before six but he desperately does want to appear credible to Bobby and he asks, ‘Shall we have a drop of champagne?’ and the answer’s yes and he takes a fancy bottle of Laurent-Perrier from his bag of tricks and Bobby and Georgie’s eyes both pop out. Georgie scrabbles like a budgerigar, washing three pint glasses in the sink, then comes through and says, ‘Are these alright? Soz, the wine glasses got smashed a bit ago …’ Georgie feels a bit uncivilised, but she tries to strike a divine pose in her charity shop Jessica Rabbit dress while Lewis fills the glasses. ‘No no no, it’s fine,’ he laughs. Imagine the stories he can tell the guys at the Tate, or the guys he vaguely knows at Frieze magazine! Giggling, Lewis sips the champers, glancing over the rim at Bobby with huge blackpool eyes, feeling absolutely giddy. Georgie follows Lewis’s movements and sips hers delicately too. Bobby the Artist wallops his down, then gets a refill and asks, ‘So you might want some of these for an exhibition and that?’ Bent Lewis’s face expands into a big gay balloon then he bellows, ‘Oh definitely! I’ll show you which of these would be perfect.’ He stands up, then fingers all the canvases again and singles out ‘Bobby’s Favourite Trip’, ‘Georgie on the Toilet’, ‘Boozy Bastard Bashes Bird’, ‘Channel Alan’, ‘Stripy Socks’, and ‘The Angels’. ‘I mean, basically, my gallery opens next month and I think these one two three four five six paintings would be ideal for the opening,’ Lewis rambles, feeling the champoo going to his head already, ‘it’s sort of a group show – you’ll like the other artists. I think your work will stand out particularly well. I can see them all fetching high prices. What I propose is – if you accept – you bring all the work down mid-August, we’ll set up the show together ready for the 18th, and hopefully we’ll both make lots of money! I’m going to suggest a sixty per cent commission. How that works is, say, if a painting is sold for a thousand pounds, you’d get four hundred and I’d get six. It’s simple. Trust me, Bobby, I expect us to make lots of filthy lucre! Haw haw haw. Anyhow, would you like another refill?’ Bobby nods, but it’s weird how fancy Laurent-Perrier tastes about the same as the £1.49 Friscino Perry from over the road, and it’s about the same percentage and all. And Bobby hates all the talk of money, as if that’s all he’s even bothered about. What he really wants is just a bit of fame before he dies of a drug overdose or perhaps natural causes. Bobby the Artist says, ‘Well, don’t worry too much about coin, mate, but yeah, nice one,’ then carries on swallowing the champagne trying to get hammered. ‘Oh yes, of course,’ Bent Lewis interjects, ‘but it’s nice to have financial support, isn’t it? I think you’re going to make lots of dollars, Bobby, whether you like it or not!’ Soon Bobby starts to feel fidgety with boozyness, and the aggressive pangs come back what with Lewis kissing his arse so much – it just seems rather fake and plastic like they’re both Barbie dolls and someone else is playing with them. Bobby would much rather just get mortalled with the gadge and talk about artists they like or the parties or the women, not all this fucking oohing and aahing. However, Bobby does sort of agree it’d be nice to have some money and enjoy himself and get the rent in on time this month, and the exhibition malarkey sounds exciting too. The afternoon really picks up when Bent Lewis, art dealer extraordinaire, pulls out a wee baggy of cocaine he bought out of the gallery finances. ‘Shall we adjourn to the bathroom?’ Lewis asks with a slopey eyebrow, and at first Bobby thinks he means Bobby has to bum him in order to seal the deal and his stomach turns over, but then he sees the Charles and he laughs. Georgie politely declines the offer, swishing the Perrier, feeling like royalty despite her sixty-seventh period sandpapering her insides. Slightly grimacing, she listens to the boys cram in the bog, and they move ‘Gurnica’ (100x350cm) from the cistern to rack up a couple of white worms. Bobby hoovers his through his craggy white nostril, then blurts, ‘Cheers, mate, for the sniff; you’re sound, you.’ Bent Lewis pats Bobby on the back like they’re best mates, then snorts his own – more modest – line, and in his head he squeals the word, ‘Yes!’ He’s a bit of a tosspot but Bobby supposes you have to be in a business where all deals are made by licking someone else’s arse. ‘I’m really excited about your future, Bobby,’ Lewis says, gobshiteing in a look-at-me-I’m-on-drugs way, rolling his eyes round. ‘Aye, top notch,’ Bobby grins, feeling all fat-lipped and frozen from the dusty Charlie. ‘So where’d you get it from?’ he asks. ‘Oh, down in London you can get cocaine delivered by cab nowadays – it’s hot stuff, isn’t it? – woo, haw haw haw,’ Lewis explains, and Bobby wonders what sort of insane place his capital city is. The furthest south he’s ever travelled is to his aunty’s for hols in Leeds, and in his head Bobby always imagines London to be some cartoony citadel of smoking chimneys and Big Bens and Krays and people in suits drinking coffee and breathing cocaine and going hmmmm. It gives Bobby the Artist sparkly chills in his belly just to think he’ll be there in a month! ‘Cheers for sorting all this out for us, like, Lewis,’ Bobby speaks, the aggression finally drifting off like a red helicopter. ‘Oh, not at all, Bobby. Th
ank you for creating such lovely art,’ Lewis jabbers. ‘So I expect you’ll be celebrating tonight then, eh?’ Bent Lewis nudges Bobby in the ribs, which is quite irritating, and Bobby sort of ducks his shoulders a bit and says, ‘Ah, well, I would do, but I haven’t got a penny to my name at the minute, so probably just get a White Ace and sit in with the lass.’ Bent Lewis gives him a glare of oh-my-God-no and says, ‘That’s not on – here, Bobby, have a drink on me,’ then hands the Artist the twenty they snorted the coke through. Bobby licks the residue off, then remembers to say thanks and shakes Bent Lewis’s shaky hand. What a dream come true – a real-life art dealer drooling over his work and handing him free money. But then he does feel slightly guilty and greedy (after all, he’s never taken twenty quid off a stranger before in his life, and now he’s got his new-found fame he doesn’t want to always be expecting everything handed to him on a shiny plate), so Bobby the Artist lands his hand on Bent Lewis’s forearm and asks, ‘Lewis, would you like to stick around for another drink? I might have some Brew left in the fridge …’ Bent Lewis’s eyes prise open all bewildered like the ugly duckling at a disco getting picked to dance by the school heartthrob. He grabs the Artist’s hand again, shakes it again, then sort of holds on to it for a minute and says, ‘I’d love to, Bobby, but I’ve promised I’d see Mary before I head off back to the Smoke. Do you know the Fletchers very well? No?’ Bobby just shrugs, even though it was Mrs Fletcher who discovered ‘Blob with Eyes’ (58x81cm) all those days ago. ‘She’s my cousin,’ Lewis continues, ‘don’t see her very often. Nice to kill two birds with one stone eh, coming here. I just hope I’m not too coked up to see her!’ Bobby cringes. By now he just finds Lewis sort of comedy; a bit embarrassing like when your mam says she likes your taste in music when you’re thirteen. The two of them shake hands another handful of times before Bent Lewis takes the trek to floor eight, Bobby shouting behind him, ‘Thanks for the money!’ and ‘See you later, mate!’ and all that pleasant stuff. When Bobby finally taps the door shut, he flops onto the clear carpet with a face like a fried egg. Georgie wanders over and gives her boyfriend a great massive hug, spilling a bit of her champagne on the floor but it doesn’t matter now. They kiss for a long time. Bobby the Artist grins, feeling like he’s been given the key to a secret silver castle. He’s now part of the Art World, which he imagines is a sort of fantasy world with Kandinsky hills, Cubist crazy paving, money growing on trees, still-life foliage and lots of silly wankers. Georgie plants a slobbery rosy-red kiss on Bobby’s neck and she sighs heavily, like saying, ‘Ooh, well done,’ in breath, then they start throwing each other round the room with glee, then twenty seconds later Bobby’s in Johnnie’s flat telling him and Ellen about the exhibition and telling them they have to come out tonight for a shindig. The last few days Johnnie and Ellen have been bored, crunching Americanos and watching American sitcoms on the box, and Bobby says he’ll pay them both out in exchange for a couple pills for everyone, if that’s alright. ‘I should be able to pay my ticky off in a month and all, Johnnie,’ Bobby promises with big round thank-you eyes. Johnnie’s not bothered – he’s in higher spirits now Ellen’s back in the flat and the dustbin’s been emptied of tissues, and even more chuffed now Bobby’s got a break down in London. It saddens him slightly that Bobby has to go down South where apparently all the dickheads are, but he supposes that’s just where you go to become famous. Johnnie ruffles the Artist’s neverending hair and hugs him round the neck, getting all elated and saying, ‘God, Bobby, you’ve made it, mate, you’ve made it,’ then he goes scrabbling about in the vitamin tin and pulls out a goody-bag of a hundredish ecstasy, and gives Bobby a handful of fifteen or so. Bobby’s face goes all happy and spastic and elastic. ‘Cheers, Johnnie, I’ll defo pay youse out tonight – fancy coming to the Indie Night, though?’ The Indie Night takes place at a place called the Arena and, although Bobby would never admit to listening to indie music, it is the sort of scene where lots of people take lots of old-fashioned drugs like speed and pills and occasionally mushrooms if they’re in season (last October Bobby found himself clinging to the dark walls of the Arena like he was in some hellish cave, accidentally stumbling into the heavy-metal room). So Bobby pockets the pills, then there’s two or three hours of getting ready and phoning people (Pamela, Mandy, Dave Morton and all those madheads from upstairs are over the Linny, and they agree to come over Arena later, on the promise of free E) and putting away paintings and putting on fresh jumpers, and Johnnie wheels the Sunny out of the car park and Bobby, Georgie and Ellen jump in. It’s five minutes past seven and, as they drive, this half of the world gradually starts going dark blue and the wind starts smelling dusky and the birds start saying night-night to each other, and Bobby the Artist sticks his head out the window with puppy eyes of wonder. He feels like he’s on ecstasy already – sometimes the world can do that to you. Sometimes it can be such a heart-choking beautiful place, like you’ve accidentally walked into a Turner painting. Bobby feels so humble and grateful and wobbly with joy crammed in a car full of his favourite people, and he thinks even if every dickhead and idiot in the world are out tonight as well he’ll still have a wonderful time. Johnnie pulls into the Linthorpe car park, reversing at top speed into one of the white spaces. Being in such close proximity to two art colleges, the Linny is sort of the Beat Hotel of the North East, where all manner of beatniks and meatheads and thinkers and drinkers smash it into themselves. Three years back, Georgie and Bobby were studying their Art Foundations two minutes down the Roman Road, and they had their first drink together in the Linthorpe and their first kiss and their first toasted cheese sandwich. They failed their second term coursework after submitting their video collaboration ‘Un Hommage de Monsieur Condom, 2005’, which was basically forty mins of the pair making love in Georgie’s parents’ boudoir. The video still lives under the couple’s bed in Peach House, and Bobby occasionally digs it out – not for sexual gratification, mind you – to remember what it’s like to first go out with a girl and be excited about everything about her. He can’t believe the teachers shunned it. Stepping into the Linny, Bobby squeezes Georgie’s paw and can’t help grinning in her face as they worm their way to the bar. The pub’s quite hot and packed, and you can tell who’s been on their hols recently because they’ve got roast chicken skin and rainbow braids in their hair, and all their mates have gone overboard with the fake tan to compensate. Georgie feels horribly pale in comparison – you’d think she’d see a lot of sun living so high in the blue sky, but in fact their flat faces north and she spends most of her time in Bhs watching sweeties getting old and sweaty instead. Saying that, she’s kitted herself out in a white Victorian slip and wee winkle-pickers and she’s stolen that daisy-chain off Ellen, and she does look the embodiment of summer. Bobby the Artist smirks. The hippy outfit is one of his favourites. ‘I’ll go look for the others,’ Johnnie states, kicking about in his brown Kickers. It turns out Pamela, Dave and Mandy have popped off to Isaac’s instead – the Wetherspoon’s – so the Peach Housemates perch themselves round one of the pint-size tables, working their way through lots of pint-size drinks. It’s nice to be back in the Linny – Bobby doesn’t recognise half as many faces as he used to back in his heyday of sex, lectures and Ayingerbräu, but at least the lager’s still strong and cheap. He gets about four rounds in with the twenty pound, and everyone toasts him and he feels like a king and very pleased to be alive. It’s the first time in a while they’ve all been out together, and how nice it is just to sit around a table with your best mates laughing and talking and getting full of liquid! Bobby the Artist strokes Georgie’s knee under the flowery embroidered slip, gazing out at the beer garden though it’s not made of beer it’s made of trees and grass. Over the slopey table, Johnnie and Ellen are having a bit of a snog, and it’s nice to see them so happy together. Bobby the Artist knows they’ve been going through a tricky patch even if he doesn’t know all the details, but relationships are meant to be all ups and downs, aren’t they? Weird how you g
et maybe a three-month honeymoon period, then suddenly you’re in a boring pantomime of breaking up and making up over and over and over and over. ‘I love you,’ Bobby says to Georgie in her fossil-shaped ear, and she says it back. Soon there’s lots of empty glasses in the middle of the table (the glass-collector’s sick tonight, with some sort of summer cold or maybe hay fever or lazyitis), and everyone’s pissed and jabbering to each other and laughing loudly like fire alarms. Just for the fun of it, Bobby and Johnnie and Ellen drop a pill for the walk to the Arena, and Georgie drops an antihistamine. The pollen count’s astronomical today, and she can feel her eyes turning to mush the more she touches them. She sniffs and sniffs and sniffs en route to the Arena, the four of them striding up the Roman Road like marionettes on very wobbly wires. It’s a lovely evening with all the brown stars out and a cool breeze dipping into the streets occasionally, although it’s spoiled slightly when a boy in shellsuit bottoms shouts from across the road, ‘Fucking pansies!’ He’s probably referring to Bobby the Artist, what with his long girly hair and strange fashion sense, or perhaps he’s referring to Georgie’s daisy-chain. Seething, Johnnie shouts back the word ‘Eh?’ and manages to give the boy in the shellsuit some dirty eyeballs. ‘Get a fucking haircut,’ the boy screams, but then he backs off and scuttles down the alley with his shoulders hunched round his earlobes. What a bastard. Bobby the Artist feels all upset now, clinging on to Georgie like a security blanket, although to be honest it’s pretty common for someone in a town where everyone’s got army haircuts to get abuse if they let it all hang out. Bobby’s dream is to live in some sort of happy Shangri-La, where everyone’s nice to each other and it’s hot and you can have any haircut you want. Round here, everyone loves taking the piss out of each other – groups of lads will go out at night, call each other names, embarrass one another in front of the opposite sex, try to start fights with other groups of lads, and never in their life tell each other they love them. What a stupid world we live in where it’s easier to say you hate someone than to say you love them. Bobby bobs his head, but once they get in the Arena he starts feeling comfortable again. They walk through the dark misty entrance. Then they drop another pill with a bottle of Holsten Pils, the sound of three rooms pounding different drumbeats and guitars in different keys, spinning their heads. The Indie Night is a bit of a safe haven, full of kids in their mam and dad’s outfits and tight jeans dancing and hugging each other. Most of the kids think they’re wild and dangerous, but in fact they’re fairly harmless – they spend too much time in their bedrooms listening to music to be that fearsome. Bobby the Artist starts smiling again as the four of them weave their way up the slippy steps, to that dinky room where you’re allowed to sit down. He can feel the pills ever so slightly casting spells on him, and he has his first gurn as he drops down on the sofa. Georgie kneels next to him, pinching her hippy skirt in two hands so it doesn’t touch the scummy ground. She wishes she had the guts to try a pill, because Bobby looks so happy, but sometimes even the buzz off a vodka-Red Bull is too much for her. Johnnie and Ellen come over to sit with them, wibbling like flowerpot men with their jowls going all over the place. It’s one of those nights you want to thank the heavens and angels that the world got made up and you got invited to play on it. Bobby has his first big rush of ecstasy just as Mandy, Pamela and Dave Morton come downstairs from the main bit, and he beams at them with a smile the size of a white brick. They’re with a girl from the green tower block (Pear House) called Katey, and straight away he thinks she’s good looking and very paintable and nice, but then he looks back at Georgie and his pupils go dilated and she climbs into them. She makes space for Mandy and Pamela on the crushy sofa, and Mandy quite surreptitiously keys up a bit of white powder. As usual her head’s full of bizarre thoughts and her mouth’s full of shit, and she tells Pamela, ‘I want to be on the ceiling. Like Bowie in Labyrinth. But I wouldn’t sing! I want to dance, how good would it be to dance up there! God, it’s getting busy in here …’ Pamela pulls a face, and says in the nicest possible way, ‘Shut up.’ Pamela’s a bit grumpy tonight – she’s knackered after a long shift at the nursery (the kids are hell sometimes, and every time she wants a cigarette she has to play hide-and-seek with them and run off to the furthest reaches of the playing field), her pill hasn’t worked yet, and she’s still gutted Mandy’s shagging Dave Morton. Dave stands a bit awkwardly with a plastic pint in his fist, feeling a bit out of place in his Hackett jumper and Clarks loafers. He’s back in training now for the professional football team, and unfortunately he’s got a drugs test tomorrow – so no pills for Dave tonight, as usual – and he gazes at Mandy through sleepy peepers. She’s skinny as a climbing frame, and sometimes when Dave climbs into bed with her they knock hip-bones and kneecaps and their sex makes the most beautiful African clave music. Those two go off to the bathroom for a bit of a breather and an incoherent chit-chat, and Pamela slides up to Bobby and asks, ‘How’s it going?’ Bobby grins and gurns and tells her about London and the bent art dealer, and they hug and Bobby gives her another pill since hers isn’t working too well. Half an hour later Bobby and Georgie wander upstairs for a little boogie, and they find Pamela dancing manically on the stage with two boys round her waist and her arms in the air. Bobby laughs, feeling great, and him and his girlfriend swing each other like a couple in the fifties hearing rock and roll for the first time. Georgie’s very floppy and gurgly and staggers to most of the songs, whereas Bobby’s all focused and ecstatic and in his moon boots. They don’t like the Libertines, so when those lot come on they retreat back to one of the park-bench affairs dotted around the walls and plonk down next to Johnnie and Ellen. The seat bounces in time with people’s feet dancing in time to the music. It’s quite difficult to talk, but Bobby shouts ‘Alright’ to Johnnie and Ellen and they both nod with big round cheery faces. Johnnie’s got his arm round Ellen and she’s hugging his right knee, and they look so happy and in love. Most of the night they’ve just been sat there watching kids dance, kissing each other, cuddling, telling each other really nice things. ‘It’s mint how we’re back on track now,’ Johnnie yells in Ellen’s ear, touching her hip. How weird it was for them to be apart just because of Kleenex! Johnnie thinks it’s his fault, and Ellen thinks it’s hers. ‘I proper missed you,’ he says, all doe-eyed and creamy-mouthed, ‘I proper did.’ Ellen nods with her lids shut, lashes moving gently in time with the snare drum. ‘I love yooou,’ she gushes. Johnnie gives her another squeeze as the Libertines burst into the Kinks’ ‘Victoria’, watching Bobby and Georgie totter off to the dancefloor again. Johnnie dribbles, ‘I love you toooo,’ then they have a luxurious snog and they laugh because it’s all so wonderful and romantic and Hollywoodish. The disco lights for this particular song are red and blue, which equals purple. ‘I still wanna say sorry for being weird last week,’ Johnnie says, speaking very direct and dramatic like you do on pills sometimes. He goes, ‘I shouldn’t have done that to Angelo. I was just frustrated, I don’t know why. I mean, I just get jealous when you’re over his, but I’m not saying you shagged him or owt like that. I mean, you didn’t, did you?’ For a long long time Johnnie’s wanted to know the truth about Ellen and Angelo (as long as the answer’s no). It’s been tearing him up – admittedly, he’d rather not know if the answer’s yes (it’d kill him – he’d be inclined to dump Ellen, and the prospect of not being with her scares him), but when you’re on pills you’re probably in the best mindset to find out once and for all. At first Ellen looks at him and her heart goes squelch, still cuddling and holding hands with her boyfriend. She blinks an invisible tear back in her eye, then strokes his paw and says, ‘Naw, of course I never.’ Before Johnnie clocks her guilty doll’s face, he swamps her with arms and hands and kisses, and he feels like his life’s worthwhile again and all the crime’s worthwhile and the drugs are worthwhile and the whole big struggle’s worthwhile, all for Ellen. He shouts to her, ‘I love you I love you,’ then he needs to go to the toilet desperately and runs off quickly throug
h groups of people bashing into each other. He pretends he’s bursting for a piss, but in actual fact he locks himself in one of the cubicles and sits down and cries buckets of joy into his hands. He feels like he’s the luckiest person on earth. It’s been such a crazy rollercoaster with Ellen, and he’s been so worried and worked-up about her (having stress-dreams at night where his teeth all crumble and fall out in big painful chunks), and now finally he feels thankful to be alive again. How fantastic it is, to be crying and crying and crying in that pissy-floored toilet! Johnnie gurgles saltwater, then wipes his streaming eyes with the bottom of his Lacoste T-shirt and rushes back out of that cubicle to go and hug Ellen again and maybe tell her he’s been weeping with happiness or maybe not. In the end he doesn’t need to; Ellen can see all the red and wet round his eyelids and, although she feels despicable for lying, she knows she’s done the right thing. The two of them carry on kissing and singing each other’s praises, and soon it’s the end of the night and the lights gently pop on around them. Nights always go so fast when you’re on ecstasy, since there’s no time to be bored whatsoever. As Johnnie and Ellen sit there like teddy bears on a shop counter, gradually Bobby and Georgie and Mandy and all them congregate around with rusty limbs from dancing too much. Everyone looks lovely, all the couples wrapped up in each other like a perfect vision of the world, everyone smiling, everyone feeling wonderful inside. Pamela comes over in a bit, having lost her two new boyfriends and her left shoe, munching her lip gloss and dithering about. Katey, the one from the pear-coloured tower block, takes her under her wing and then they all stumble back down the steps and into the swirly night air. All the pillheads start wobbling about, chattering to strangers getting kicked out, not like Dave Morton and Georgie who stand all grumpy and knackered by the car park edges. Even though there’s eight of them, Johnnie’s still feeling dandy and he says, ‘’Ere, we can all squeeze in the Sunny like, if youse don’t mind walking back to the Linny?’ Johnnie starts marching off down Parliament Road with Ellen under his arm, and even though she goes ‘Naw, Johnnie, I dunno if it’s a good idea,’ everyone else seems to think so, and the group of them follow the crinkled pavement back into town. It’s a nice night for a stroll, but unfortunately they end up rousing all the families in the houses as the gobby e-heads pass by. ‘Swear down, I’ll be sound driving,’ Mr and Mrs Evans from number 64 hear quite clearly out their open window. ‘I’m still fucking buzzing, me,’ little baby Shane hears from his cot in 55, waking up and bawling his eyes out. ‘God, I never did get on that ceiling,’ the dog from 49 catches, rushing out of his shitty kennel and barking as Mandy stampedes past. She craps herself, grabs onto Dave’s bulky arm, then the two of them laugh and carry on pacing down the dead street. It takes about twenty-five minutes for the gang to reach the Linthorpe car park, rubbing shoulders with all the other people from other chucking-out times round town: the sad lonely people looking for girls and taxis, the rock-hard ruffians looking for a fight because they haven’t pulled, the greedy pigs nibbling pizzas, and the happy drug fiends riding the streets like a conveyor belt. Johnnie and Ellen are first to reach the Nissan, sat on its tod in the cold lumpy car park. Johnnie’s still gurning, and still happy to pile everyone into the Sunny, as long as they hurry up! Bobby the Artist and Georgie arrive after a bit, followed by Mandy and Dave Morton, who keep lagging behind for snogs and gropes in the veins of the town. Last come Pamela and Katey, keeping a safe distance behind Mandy so they can bitch about her as well as get fags from the twenty-four-hour shop and not share any with her. ‘Howay, then, it’s gonna be a fucking squeeze,’ Johnnie gargles, waving his limbs about. He motions for Ellen to join him in the front, then Bobby and Georgie and Mandy and Dave get in the back with Katey laid across their laps, and Pamela grudgingly clambers in the boot although she’s still buzzing her tits off. It’s a bit like that trick where they try to squeeze loads of Chinks into a Mini, except on ecstasy. In particular, Bobby the Artist enjoys having Katey’s left booby pressed into his groin and the other one pressed into his crushed hand. ‘God, I bet youse fuck the suspension,’ Johnnie slurps, setting off at about two miles an hour. Ahh, but it’s nice to have all his friends squashed in one place like a Christmas stocking, and there’s promise of a party back at Peach House once they reach dry land. Johnnie loves speeding, but he can only reach 41mph on Roman Road, and it’s very obvious to all the people passing by it’s a car chock-full of gurning gorillas. Johnnie tells them to keep their heads down in case there’s any police, but in the back everyone’s chatting and giggling and feeling each other up, not arsed. The town tumbles past the windows. Johnnie tries to floor it after the lights keep going green, but he’s still getting overtaken by taxis and lads on push-bikes. The tank starts groaning as they reach Keith Road, which must have been named after a person called Keith. Johnnie slows to about 20mph going up and down the dips, the car feeling like a rock super-glued to the earth. He gazes at the wonderful skinny trees straddling the avenue. Are they oak, beech, pine, or fir? He wonders how all the estates got their names – like Beechwood, Thorntree, Netherfields, Brambles Farm – and he imagines the town a thousand years ago, all rolling plains and forests and men with straw in their mouths. He wonders if Keith used to be a famous farmer. Dreaming away, Johnnie finds himself in one of those lovely, thoughtful still-on-pills moods, jaw swinging from one side of his face to the other. Then suddenly, against all the odds, the Ford Focus in front slams on its brakes and, had Johnnie not been travelling at a girly 20mph, he might’ve ploughed into the back of it. ‘Screeeech!’ say all the tyres. The Sunny comes to a halt six centimetres from the Focus’s bumper, and Johnnie just sits there in shocked silence with feet all shaky on the emergency stop pedals. ‘Fucking hell!’ Ellen shrieks. Johnnie stares into space. ‘What a fucking dickhead,’ Dave Morton says from the back. ‘What’s he fucking doing?!’ Soon everyone in the back of the Sunny starts moaning and cursing the Focus, especially Katey since she’s got an elbow in her spine. They all could’ve died. Johnnie bursts a cough out of his head. The last time he got blocked in by another car, he was down a back-alley and it was an angry taxi driver he’d just done a runner from. ‘Here, mebbies just give him a beep,’ Bobby suggests, quite contented really being squadged between all the girls. In the boot, Pamela’s thinking, ‘God, I wish I got those boys’ numbers.’ She’s been occupying herself in there, quite enjoying the fairground aspect of getting thrown around. Why has it stopped? Back in the front, Johnnie squints, trying to see who’s driving the Focus and whether they’re eligible for a slap. Just as he’s about to whack his paw on the lion-roar horn, the Focus driver leaps out of the car, looking quite moody. He seems about thirtyish, crew cut, navy blue jumper but not that muscly, and Johnnie reckons he could batter him given half a chance. Perhaps everyone’s beginning to feel a bit paranoid coming down off the pills (Mandy whines: ‘Is it an illusion?’), but Johnnie’s convinced the fellow’s after a fight. It’s not unheard of round these parts for lads to throw bricks through people’s windows just for kicks, but forcing someone to smash into the back of your own car? What a wanker. Johnnie’s almost tempted to slide the Sunny into the cunt’s path and wipe him out, but perhaps that’s going a bit far. Instead, he clenches and unclenches his fists, firing himself up for a good old fashioned punch-up with the Black Rebel Ford Focus Club, when suddenly the man turns to face Johnnie and he sees the badge on his jumper CLEVELAND POLICE. Johnnie shits it. With eight of them crushed in the Sunny – most of them on pills, most of all the driver – Johnnie suddenly backs down, taps all the locks down, and puts his foot down. He pushes the Nissan into first then rams it over the left kerb, squeezing round the Focus and the wonderful spindly trees, then quickly down Keith’s road. ‘Fuck!’ Dave Morton swears, dreading his expulsion from the famous football team. Everyone’s a jittery mess. ‘Can’t believe the fucking scum tried to block us in!’ Johnnie yells, all pissed off now that he didn’t knack Mr Focus anyhow. He keeps glancing in the misty mirror as he tears do
wn the remainder of the street, conjuring up 59mph this time, and fortunately there doesn’t seem to be any following blue lights or woo-woo-woops! Just to be on the safe side, Johnnie ignores the red lights at Belle Vue roundabout as well as the reds further down Marton Road, and thankfully God decides not to send any innocent vehicles in his flight-path. The Ford Focus man fades into a teeny bug in the rear-view mirror. Mr Mark Regan, a dog lover, scratches underneath his CLEVELAND GAS LTD sweater, feeling a bit shaky too. He feels terrible. He watches the Nissan Sunny jet off towards Belle Vue in such a hurry, then glances down at the beautiful grey greyhound laid under his front wheels, splattered to death. He doesn’t know what to do. Maybe he’s a little tired from such a long shift at the power plant, but the hound just came out of nowhere and he couldn’t stop the car in time. The sickly memory of the dog going thump on the left side of the bonnet then crunch underneath the tyres will haunt him for months. All he wanted was to get home as quickly as poss and get back into Barbara’s arms, and now look what he’s done. The greyhound lies twisted in a puddle of black blood. Sniffing back tears, Mark Regan stands shivering in the crisp silence of Keith Road, uncertain what to do. The image of the greyhound charging out of number 14’s gate flashes in his memory bank, and he wonders if he really could’ve done anything to save its life. All around the murder scene, the houses are dark and silent and sinister. Getting his breath back, Mark Regan supposes the best thing to do is knock on door number 14 and explain what’s happened, only it’s half-past three in the morning and he can’t see the news being taken very sportingly. ‘Excuse me, sorry for waking you up, but I’ve murdered your dog,’ he mumbles to himself, grimacing. Glancing up and down the street, Mark Regan rolls his sleeves above the elbow, dreading the repercussions. But, just as he’s about to step into number 14’s garden, Mark has a far better (less incriminating) idea. He swallows back a bit of sick, then crouches next to the beautiful grey greyhound and pulls it out from the wheels of his shiny Focus. The dog’s absolutely saturated with blood, and it trails a dark red stripe as Mr Regan drags it into 14’s front yard. At first one of the hind legs gets caught on the rusty metal gate but, after a bit of yanking, the leg snaps and comes free. Mark feels ill. He tugs the greyhound softly onto the patch of scrubby lawn, arranging its sticky limbs in a fairly decent order, then he gathers a couple of twigs from the hedging and sticks a makeshift cross in the soil. His red hands make him feel green. Sniffing and snortling, Mr Mark Regan tiptoes gently back to his car, hops in, then cringes when the engine makes a loud noise starting up. He tries to regulate his breathing, huff puff huff puff, then he drives off towards Belle Vue very very carefully, keeping a lookout for more stray animals. He can’t wait to get back home to Barbara. He thinks he’s done the noble thing, getting the beautiful dead grey greyhound off the road but, as he turns cautiously onto Marton Road, suddenly a horrible thought hits him: what if he hasn’t put the hound in the right garden? Trembling, one mile ahead of Mr Regan, Johnnie and his cronies ease themselves to a 30mph dawdle the rest of the way home, hearts still stammering and mouths still squealing. The ones in the back try to keep their heads in each other’s laps, out of sight. ‘Was that aliens, trying to beam us up?!’ Mandy thinks out loud, scratching her neck uncontrollably. ‘I saw the green in his eyes …’ she carries on, but to be fair it’s not actually that spooky for a person to have green eyes. Johnnie shudders on the steering wheel, desperate to get home but feeling inclined to stop at every light now and stick to the speed limit. Ellen rubs his leg, trying to calm him down. He takes a breath of the hot sweaty air, skirting the estates rather than steaming through, and his forehead finally stops pouring out water as the juicy giant Peach looms into view. He says a little prayer up to God (his mam and dad are devout Catholics and, although Johnnie never goes to church with them, he does say hello to God now and then), then parks the Sunny out of sight between a Volvo estate and the Biffa bins. ‘Thank fuck for that,’ he mumbles, though he’s still on the para. What did the bobbies want? Did they get his registration? Why did he run two red lights? He’s vibrating like a five-foot dildo, huffing and puffing the tangy night air. Ellen gives him a hug, watching everyone tumble out of the Nissan like toys tumbling out of a toy-box, and Pamela emerges from the boot looking white and ghostly. Her dress has twizzled itself 180 degrees round her abdomen, and she stumbles into Peach House repeating, ‘That was mint, that was mint.’ Even when someone explains to her about the police she’s still smiling and her eyes are dropping out everywhere. Falling around, the lot of them proceed into the building, Johnnie and Ellen tagging on the end of the line after locking up the stupid car. From up one floor Bobby the Artist yells, ‘Howay round mine, there’s more pills to be had. Johnnie! Johnnie! Party round ours …’ Johnnie hears the words, but he’s too exasperated and stressed to carry on with the others, and for some reason Ellen keeps feeling his arse and snogging his earlobes and the two of them scuttle off to 5E instead. Ellen puts the chain on the door and drags him through to the red/white bedroom. Johnnie tries to ignore all thoughts of Ford Focuses when Ellen starts to undress, almost frenzied as she unbuttons her top and slides out of the patent miniskirt. Johnnie’s heart starts beating in a 4/5 tempo, tugging off garments and letting them fly around like jazzy poltergeists. In his checked boxers, Johnnie clambers onto the bed and envelops Ellen in a great big swampy hug. He pushes her down on the mattress, trying to be quite macho and sexy with his firm kissing and ultra hands-on approach. Ellen mmmms with pleasure, egging him on, and she leans back on her hands as Johnnie tears off her knicks. For some reason Ellen’s shaven all her fanny hair off (bored in the shower, plus paranoid she found a crab-egg after shagging Angelo but it was actually a bit of fluff), and Johnnie smiles as he slides his finger down her rashed gash. She’s quite drippy. ‘Do you want me to lick you out?’ he asks, giving her a Sean Connery eyebrow. ‘Mmm, yes police, Johnnie,’ Ellen replies, opening her grand canyon legs. Johnnie’s not quite sure what he just heard (the party’s just started beneath them, to the sound of Bardo Pond’s ‘Dilate’ at volume 88), but in any case he jumps into Ellen’s fanny face-first. He gargles her name in her wee hole. He has a bit of trouble opening her flaps with his mouth, and at one point he accidentally bites down on her clit and a bit of lip, and Ellen reels back in pain. Johnnie says sorry and, realising he’s spoiled the moment, sits up all sheepish with a floppy knob. Ellen tells him not to worry though and, despite the sore bits, carries on kissing him on the lips and elsewhere. ‘Here, I’ll sort you out,’ she says. Ellen gets down on all-fours, looking into his eyes like a sex-crazed slut, and she takes his dangly cock in one hand and starts kneading it, stretching it, stroking it, embarrassing it. What a waste of time. ‘Why carn’t you get it up?’ she asks, slightly ashamed of herself.‘ Is it me?’ Johnnie just shrugs then shakes his head, thundery pangs of frustration clanging him about the head. He’s desperate for a shag, but his brain’s all in tatters and the more he tells his dick to liven up, the more it defies him. It’s just one of those nights – a fucking shit one. And the more Johnnie tugs and curses his flaccid wobbly bits, the more Ellen thinks it’s her fault. ‘Aw, Johnnie, I was looking Ford to this all night,’ she continues, biting her lip in a provocative manner, but it’s still no use. Johnnie feels a little heave-ho in his stomach, bordering on sickness, and he wishes there was a pair of scissors nearby to just put his cock out of its misery. Grrr! And it doesn’t really help when Ellen starts wanking herself off in front of him. She does look quite lovely, sliding one finger round her cunt with her tits out and a filthy look on her face, but Johnnie’s knob’s still just a sad old grave-marker that’s fallen down. ‘Police, Johnnie,’ Ellen pleads, trying to be sexy, ‘just Focus on me, Johnnie … Copper look at that …’ Ellen opens her flaps so Johnnie can see her inserting a couple slender fingers, but Johnnie’s sure his mind’s all twisted and he’s hearing things, and he just lies back on the bed with a growl. He wants to kill himself. What follows is the sad procedure of J
ohnnie and Ellen ashamedly putting back on clothes, all furtive and awkward like children in a swimming-pool changing room. They can hardly look at each other, and Johnnie hates how such a promising night can suddenly turn sour, like a delicate vase of flowers falling off a mantelpiece. Falling off a mantelpiece, smashing into a million pieces, and inside that vase there’s not only flowers but a Polaroid of Johnnie’s small floppy penis, and all his friends and family are there to see it and laugh. Gritting his teeth, Johnnie tries to console himself and convince himself the floppy-on was due to the pills or the police mishap earlier on, but anyhow he still feels like a cock. All aggravated, he sits on the edge of the bed with his head in the palms of his hands. He wonders if all that pain and hard work keeping Ellen was just a waste, and he’s absolutely certain in his head they’ll never have sex again. He rolls into the foetal position like a snail going to sleep, his mind completely ravaged, and Ellen pauses there looking at him, not sure whether to hug him or go away. She’s slightly tempted to nip downstairs and see what the party’s like; after all, it’s not the first time Johnnie’s fucked up in bed and there’s no point hanging round with him if he’s going to be in a bad mood. The only confusing thing for her is Johnnie didn’t seem receptive to all her best moves (the wanking worked wonders for Angelo the other week, but let’s not mention that), and Ellen feels a bit deflated and unattractive. Johnnie sinks slowly slowly into the bed-covers. After a large amount of silence, Ellen decides to forget the party and crawls under the duvet with him, next to the ton-weight clamping down one half. She says ‘good night’ and that depresses Johnnie even more – they’ve only been going out about half a year, and they’re lucky if they have sex once a month. Johnnie worries they’ll turn into one of those couples that never have sex; instead they’ll go for nice walks and do the garden instead of each other, and it’ll be all Johnnie’s fault. For another half-hour he stares blankly at the red and white wallpaper, too wired and anxious to sleep, and he wonders what it is that makes him so pathetic in bed. Is his technique really that much shitter than all the other boys Ellen’s nailed? He loves her so much and he really wants to please her, but what can he do? He considers putting on Slutty Cheerleaders From Hell Vol. IV, to double-check how to have sex, but the idea of it makes his tummy gurgle. He rolls over on the bed, but seeing Ellen’s back turned towards him makes him feel even worse. He wonders whether it’s better to be happy and lonely, or sad and married? His brain’s like a melon getting scooped out. It keeps him awake the rest of the night, especially with that song ‘Ganges’ rumbling like a forest fire under the floorboards at a million decibels, and Johnnie prays up to the sky that him and Ellen will have sex again, and that they’ll get to sleep too. Even Alan Blunt the Cunt can hear the dreaded music, one storey higher, and he paces round and round his apartment, making a sort of rain-cloud sound on Johnnie and Ellen’s ceiling. Alan’s been drinking, and even though it’s a relaxant he too can’t sleep what with all that fucking racket. What he hates most about teenagers is their ability to listen to blitzkriegy-loud music without their ears bursting off the sides of their heads. Whenever he puts on Sinatra it has to be at a pleasant volume, otherwise you lose all the subtlety of the strings, the swooping arrangements, and Frank’s voice farts at you instead of showering you with perfume. Alan Blunt the Cunt spent the evening at the Brambles Farm Hotel, opposite Peach House on the whoosh-whoosh nee-naw crossroad, where they happened to have a bit of karaoke on. Alan only intended to go for one glass of McEwan’s 80 – since he feels awkward and depressed drinking there on his own – but he happened upon a fellow ex-copper and sat there sharing stories and dropping more and more pints into his belly, and after a bit he blocked out the embarrassedness with a feeling of being completely smashed. When his partner in crime eventually headed home to his wife and four delinquent children, Alan was seeing stars and he even had the courage to warble ‘Under My Skin’ on the karaoke. Despite lots of slurring, it was a fine performance. When they were younger, Alan and his brother Ronny used to duet on all sorts of Sinatra or Dean Martin standards, getting up at family barbecues or wedding receptions or funerals to croon ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’ or ‘Mambo Italiano’ to wet-eyed nannas and granddads. Thirty years and three hundred thousand Regals later, Alan’s voice has become nothing short of heavenly, and he felt like Frank himself this evening in the Brambles. Pissed as a fanny, he thought he was serenading a caberet concert hall, and all the workmen were cool cats in zoot suits and all the wrinkly wives were Ingrid Bergmans or Kim Novaks. After the karaoke, Alan Blunt scoffed a burger from the shop and waltzed back to the flat in high spirits. It’s only now, coma setting in and his brain rotting like an amp speaker leaking battery fluid, Alan feels sad again and he wishes himself dead. Funny how booze squirts you full of confidence, diluting all your worries and troubles, only to be pissed out of you again, revealing your nightmares like a murky tide going out. It’s called a hangover. Trembling, Alan Blunt wonders what it’d be like to hang over the edge of a ten-storey tower block. He wonders if he can fit through the slightly open window. Shaking his head, he’s not sure why he feels so shitty all of a sudden. He got scolded this morning for turning up to work late, he owes a bottomless amount of money to the Loan Company, he’s forty years old and it’s doubtful he’ll kiss any women again, and he feels all embarrassed now for singing in the local. Fucking hell, why did he have to jump up on that tabletop?? Sniffing, Alan staggers into the rumbling kitchen – the noise is just as loud there too – and he bonks his head off the double-glazing a few times. He’s losing it. Sub-woofers are the worst – you can try drowning out the sound with ‘My Way’ on full-blast but it’s like bouncing two bassy footballs round your flat, the two tempos colliding and making your inner ear all seasick. Sometimes Alan gets so radgy he’ll storm downstairs with a baseball bat or candlestick holder, but then again he hates to get on bad terms with his neighbours, and it’s so much easier (and disappointing) to just hide your head under a pillow until the onslaught stops. At least Bobby the Artist listens to music with real-life vocals and instruments – that boy Johnnie from downstairs puts his robot music on so loud you can only imagine him dancing round his flat with ears bleeding, and when Angelo lived next-door the most awful booom-booom-booom ragga music came on at six like clockwork, heralding his return from working at the tyre factory. God, and those lyrics! Anyone would think black people hated everyone, always referring to ladies as bitches and prozzies (despite wanting to shag them all) and swinging guns around and things. Alan puts on the kettle and scratches his knob. It’s been years since he last had sex, and it was a nauseating affair with a fat bird he used to talk to in the Cargo Fleet Club. She was there tonight at the Brambles, but he didn’t look over and in his heart he’s glad she didn’t come over to talk to him. Sex, to Alan, is a dirty old raindrop now evaporated into the gloomy grey sky. There’s not too much in his life now that makes him happy, except perhaps visiting Tiny Tina at Corpus Christi. Last week a lady came to school to make kites with the kids, and Tiny Tina was a picture of perfection in her little gingham dress, sprinting down the length of the field clutching the lovely smiley-face kite she’d made. Alan thinks he could make her smile. Face pressed between the rungs of the anti-paedophile fence, he gazed at her longingly, wishing he could take her home. Oh, the things he could do with her! Misting over, Alan Blunt the Cunt imagines Tina sat on his lap giving him a big squeeze. On kite day he saw her trip over and graze her knee, and Alan wanted to jump the fence and put a plaster on or kiss her leg better, but he didn’t have the guts. Or the plaster. Pouring a cup of coffee (he thinks it’ll sober him up), Alan plots Tina’s Big Kidnap. He’s so desperate for company, he’d gladly go to jail for twenty-five years just to spend twenty-four glorious hours with the girl. Scratching under his teary glasses, Alan wonders when his life went so tits up. He pounds his feet into the living room in slippers, then sits down to the sound of ‘Despite the Roar’ kicking in with all them distorted guitars. Bloody rock mu
sic; it’s a wonder Bobby the Artist doesn’t get a fucking rock in his face sometimes. Alan has a big dramatic groan to himself. He’s still drunk, and with every blink the room shifts leftwards in a sickly, uncontrollable manner. Left. Left. Left. Left. Alan Blunt rarely vomits, but his stomach’s full of lashing waves and rotting old sailboats. He mumbles a swearword, clutching his gut, trying his best to sink into a coma on the sofa. He spills coffee on his trousers. Then one minute later he’s off to sleep, just him and his belly ache and a thousand bad dreams, then in the morning he feels alright again. He gets up and finishes off the cold coffee, totally oblivious to all his evil thoughts the night before. The flat’s silent again (silence is the subtle sound of feet and doors and birds), and he opens the curtains to a bright summery eleven and a half o’clock. Sitting back on the musty couch, Alan vaguely remembers Bobby’s awful cannonball music, and he vaguely remembers being upset about something. Never mind. Hangovers bring a certain cloudy depression, but nothing compared to your lowest shitty pissed maudlin moment. He feels like a dried-up old plant that needs watering, and he runs the cold tap into his mouth for two minutes. Alan hopes to God he didn’t offend anyone last night, or show himself up too much. Although he hates excessive noise and obnoxious bastards, he can’t imagine ever living anywhere else. He loves knowing everyone’s secret business, and he loves sharing his worldly wit and wisdom with everybody. For example, he once had a lovely, heated discussion with Mrs Fletcher in the foyer about government immigration legislation, and just before Bobby the Artist sets sail to London he gives him the advice to ‘steer clear of Brixton – it’s full of blacks and drug dealers’. Racist Cunt Alan feels he’s a sort of father figure to the residents of Peach House (although he’s by no means the oldest), and he’s always there to celebrate people’s birthdays or greet new tenants, whether invited or not. For instance, when Bobby the Artist steps onto the 65A on the first leg of his journey to the capital, Alan’s face is there amongst all the young ones waving him off. Georgie feels uncontrollably upset, getting hugged by Ellen and Pamela, standing there on the gritty pavement as the bus wobbles off down Cargo Fleet. Bobby the Artist waves and waves and waves until Georgie, his friends, and then the tower block itself disintegrate into dots on the blobby horizon. He feels weird and nervous, all his travel and hotel and itinerary prearranged by Bent Lewis, getting pushed into a strange southern city without any brakes or stabilisers on. He stares as the town where he grew up dribbles away, all the beautiful grey maisons and green muddy playing fields and famous bridges and pepperpot cooling towers and the underpass where he first fell off his bike disappearing slowly into specks as well. Goodbye lovely factory town. On the back of his crumpled itinerary (labelled MONDAY to FRIDAY), Bobby scribbles three quick pencil drawings of the town and its funny frowny residents – one last memory of the place to keep in his pocket once he gets munched up by the scary monster called London. He doesn’t want to leave but he does want to be a famous artist, and his stomach puts itself in a knot and then a double-knot as he turns the itinerary over again and re-reads the list. MONDAY: Bobby the Artist loads the six canvases into the boot of the National Express, each one of them carefully bubble-wrapped and tagged by him and Georgie the night before. They got all gluey and stuck to each other, and they couldn’t help popping loads of the bubbles for fun. On the coach, Bobby sits near the back surrounded by Geordies and children scoffing sweets, and he wishes he had some headphones and Merzbow to drown out those silly fuckers. He’s in a bad mood because he doesn’t want to leave home. And he feels like he’s on a fucking school trip, the driver stressing that no food or drink and especially no drugs are allowed on the bus. Well the chance would be a fine thing. At services somewhere just west of Shitsville, Bobby feels like a right nerd tramping into Burger King with the rest of the National Express goons, and he orders a bacon-double-cheeseburger and munches it all self-consciously on his own on a red squashy seat. He’s on expenses (which means Bent Lewis pays for everything Bobby buys on his arty excursion), and it’s strange getting into the routine of putting receipts in your pocket instead of screwing them up and booting them far as you can down the street. In a way he’s very tempted to exploit getting everything paid for, and he considers getting another burger and chips and Coke and maybe even an ice cream, but he doesn’t want to spew up, does he. Back on the bus, Bobby the Artist tries to sleep for the remaining three hours, but the Geordies are too loud and annoying. He looks out the window, but after a while you get bored of the same old patchwork fields and the odd white pillows floating about in the sky. The view finally starts getting exciting when the coach sneaks through the outskirts of London, Bobby the Artist observing the boulevards of Barnet, then the posh pillared mansions of St John’s Wood, then Victoria Station where the buses go to sleep. Bobby gets off and, although the itinerary says ‘get a cab immediately to the +! Gallery’, he’s far too parched and sits in the Shakespeare instead with all his paintings, and he buys each of them a pint. It’s not a myth – drinks in London are extremely expensive, so thank God he’s on expenses. Bobby the Artist perches at a table in the corner, gurgling lager, staring in awe at all the people running around outside in such a rush! It’s like everyone turned up for the London marathon in suits and casual clothes, and decided to run wherever they wanted, like a caucus-race. Madness. Bobby’s also shocked how many different sorts of people there are – people with faces all the colours of the rainbow, all shapes and sizes, all sorts of straights and gays and inbetweenies. After just one sip of Kronenbourg, he spots a man with a Mohican sporting leopard hotpants and a pink furry coat, strolling the highway. Bobby laughs into his glass. He feels sort of underdressed, but also safe and happy to be just a face in the crowd for once – back home you can get beaten up just for having slightly colourful shoes. After swallowing the rest of the pints, Bobby the Artist bundles the canvases together again and struggles with them out onto the whizzing street. Accidentally he annoys everyone, causing an obstruction on their precious little pavement. Frowning, Bobby hails a taxi then whooshes to the gallery on Clerkenwell Road, under a tepee of bubble-wrap and slight drunkenness. Bent Lewis is stood there waiting, and he welcomes Bobby with a great big cheery hug and then a more civilised shake of the hand. ‘Welcome to London,’ Lewis sings, the sun smashing into his fluorescent teeth. Bent Lewis leads Bobby the Artist into the gallery, which is a huge white box with the aroma of cement and oil paint stuck to the air. Lewis shows him the other works featured in the upcoming exhibition, but Bobby’s not all that interested. There’s a few monochrome prints of flower petals and sex organs (quite commercial, but nice if you like things that are black and white), abstract paintings with 300-word explanations next to them, and a set of lively photographs taken in some crap nightclub or other. Bobby’s not totally impressed, but it warms his heart when Bent Lewis leads him into the vast empty Gallery 2 and says, ‘We reserved the largest space for you.’ Bobby the Artist has a little spin in the big white sugarcube, the yellow argyle sticking to his chest because it’s been sweaty dragging all those paintings across town. Him and Bent Lewis pull the canvases into the chilly space and unwrap them, Lewis yelping at the sight of each one as they get unveiled. ‘Wonderful stuff,’ he says. ‘Gosh, I’d forgotten that one!’ Bent Lewis explains next that time is of the essence since the gallery opens on Thursday, and he wants Bobby to come in early each morning to sort the hanging. Bobby was actually hoping to enjoy a few casual days in London exploring the Big Bens and the drinking dens, but it’s exciting too imagining the paintings nailed up all professional and jazzy. Him and Lewis arrange to meet at the gallery at 9.30 tomorrow morning, then they shake hands and all that rigmarole, and Lewis escorts him back out onto the road going vroombroomvroombroomvroom. ‘So what do I do now?’ Bobby the Artist asks, since there’s nothing on his itinerary to tell him how to spend his leisure time. ‘I’m not sure!’ Bent Lewis giggles, awed and also slightly jealous of Bobby the wee fawn in the big bad city for the first time. �
�I’d invite you out for a drink – and maybe a snort, haw haw – but I’m meeting a very important client for supper … there’s Farringdon tube down there’ (Lewis points down there). ‘Have an explore! The city’s your oyster, my friend.’ Bobby the Artist smiles skew-whiff, and it’s only when he finds himself in Farringdon station he realises an Oyster’s that daft card that lets you travel on the trains and buses and that. You have to bash it on the little pad to get through the gates, and at rush-hour it’s a bit like being at the dog-track with all the funny greyhounds bursting out the traps. No one in London likes to talk to each other – on the tube, everyone avoids eye contact at all costs. At one point Bobby asks a fellow passenger what time it is, but he gets completely blanked and it makes him sad. He doesn’t feel very comfortable, and he has the first pang in his heart of: Aaargh, where’s Georgie? On Alan Blunt the Cunt’s advice, Bobby’s first port of call is Brixton, and although it does seem to be a largely black community it’s pretty cosmopolitan and not a ‘fucking hellhole’, as Alan put it. Bobby the Artist pushes down Atlantic Road then Coldharbour Lane, dodging ticket touts for the Academy and ginger cunts trying to scrounge money off people who look pretty skint themselves. The hum of people and traffic sounds like one big ghetto-blaster, and within a moment or two there’s a stocky black fellow offering him a menu of, ‘Skunk, hash, pills?’ Bobby goes round the corner with him to score a twenty-bag of weed, and the fellow tells him, ‘This shit’s the bomb, bruv, I smoke it myself, gets you right off your bonce and that,’ or words to that effect. Bobby waits to see the goods before handing over any coin (he knows what Johnnie’s like to unsuspecting customers, giving them a jab in the eye then running off), but the black guy seems trustworthy and quite amicable. He loves how he talks in such a rhythmical, Bob Marley manner. ‘Can I get a receipt off you?’ Bobby asks, pocketing the skunk, but a split-second later his friend has tootled off down Coldharbour, and Bobby shrugs and decides to head back to the tube. He does his Oyster again on the yellow pad, it says beep yes, then he gets the sky blue line to Oxford Circus. The trains are less busy now, but when he gets off all the shops are still open and people are milling around with armfuls of designer clothes and shoes and records and other silly bits and bobs. There’s a man on the corner talking about Jesus. His head in the clouds, Bobby gets some small green Rizla and a twenty-four pack of crisps from a newsagent, asking the hairy man at the counter if he knows where the Saint Georges Hotel is. Bobby gets told to head up Regent Street, past tables with people on them sipping coffees and shops beginning to shut their metal eyelids, and when he finally reaches the Saint Georges it reminds him of Peach House except much fatter and not pink. There’s a bar and restaurant on the top floor, and he grins, imagining sipping cocktails on top of the world. He checks in, then takes the lift up to floor seven, staring with spiral pupils at how smart and spotless the place is. The dodgy lift at Peach House smells of disinfected wee and crap sex. When Bobby the Artist keycards his door open, ker-clink, the first thing he does is bellyflop onto the double-bed and gaze out the window at the BT tower and Centrepoint and the big Duchamp bike wheel. It feels weird being at the edge of fame and fortune in the most famous city of them all, and it also feels weird being at the edge of the double-bed and he falls off by accident. Bomping his head off the floor, Bobby the Artist lies there in a daze, tweety birds ballroom dancing round his temples. What an unusual day. Bobby the Artist unpacks his things – he was so overloaded with canvases, all he’s brought is a toothbrush, two socks, one boxers, cigs, HB pencil, and the itinerary – then adopts a lounging pose on the mattress and mechanically sparks up joints and gets stoned for a bit. He considers taking a shower, but after a few Happy Fags he can’t be fussed and instead just slouches there, turning into part of the furniture. The wallpaper goes slightly Indian and arabesque for half an hour and he eats a lot of crisps. But it’s boring not being able to tell Georgie all his wacky spacky thoughts, and sooner or later he starts drifting off to sleep on the sinking-sand covers. It’s been a busy day, after all, and completely insane to think he was drinking tea with Georgie in the flat this morning and now he’s here. He wants to give her a ring but the hotel phone doesn’t seem to spit out receipts, and he wants to raid the mini-bar but he feels too much like a giant and it worries him. After one more smelly joint he resigns himself to a deep dingy sleep, weird dreams of big cities unfolding in his head like the pages of comic books. Snore snore snore. TUESDAY: The sun wakes him up, grinning through the window. Bobby the Artist can’t be arsed sharing croissants and all that continental shite with the tourist types he observed yesterday in reception, so he smokes the rest of the ganj for breakfast and sets off to Clerkenwell at 10.02 by the hotel clock. Maybe it’s the smokes, but everything seems to be staring at him on the tube this morning. He wishes he packed more than just the yellow argyle; he feels a bit of a scruffbag when he turns up to the gallery late, and Bent Lewis is standing there all immaculate in an Outrageous Orange shirt, like a work of art himself. The other pieces in the exhibition look a lot more innovative and appealing on skunk this morn. ‘How are you today?’ Bent Lewis asks, clinging to Bobby’s arm as they step through to Gallery 2. ‘A bit stoned like,’ Bobby replies. Bent Lewis’s face ruptures like a sunflower, laughing hysterically in that squeaky gay tone he has, and it sets Bobby off too because it’s fucking giggly reefy. The whiteness of the gallery almost blinds the poor boy to death. Squinting, Bobby the Artist sees Lewis has leant the paintings against the walls in a certain arrangement, with all these tools and spirit levels and stepladders and tape measures and fancy things relaxing in the middle of the space. ‘I think this arrangement gives the works a fabulous tension, a sort of ambiguous narrative flowing from one painting to the next …’ Lewis begins, smugly waving his paws about but, for the sake of being different, Bobby pushes him aside and starts wildly bashing in nails and throwing up the canvases in the wrong order, at wonky heights and angles. Bent Lewis looks fabulously tense as the paintings go up. ‘Voilá,’ Bobby the Artist puffs, putting down the hammer. Lewis frowns at first, then his eyebrows lift and all his hairs stand on end and he starts raving, ‘I see, I see … yes yes … you’re completely right – a very raw hang. It’s like, well, I suppose it’s like two fingers up to the stuck-up art world, isn’t it?’ Bobby the Artist nods, but to be honest he just wanted to get the paintings up as quick as poss so he can enjoy all the sights of London while the ganjy feeling lasts. All the characters in the paintings have a little smirk. Bent Lewis stands still, slack-jawed. Having said that, when Bobby the Artist dashes off merely forty-five minutes after turning up, Lewis can’t help straightening the paintings slightly and he air-freshens the space of Bobby’s BO. Stinking out the Circle Line, Bobby the Artist stands all the way to the Westminster stop, feeling cheery about the exhibition and all the beautiful ladies hopping on and off in slinky summer outfits. He’s starting to like London. Bobby wafts a bit of air under his sweater, racing up the escalator then diving into the sunny breeze rubbing shoulders with Japs and Yankees oohing and aahing at Big Ben standing there all erect on the Thames. It’s like a giant gold grandfather clock, and Bobby stares at it for thirteen puffs of a Regal. On the last puff, he turns his back and starts ambling up Whitehall, following the signs to TRAFALGAR SQUARE. He tries to see the Prime Minister’s house at Downing Street but there’s a big black fence keeping your eyes out, and when he gets to the square he’s annoyed to see Nelson’s Column hidden in scaffolding, getting spring cleaned. Sighing and sweating, Bobby sits for a bit on a lion’s paw, then goes wandering over to Leicester Square but there’s no celebs or premieres, and he goes to Carnaby Street but there’s no sixties people just Reebok and Diesel, and he tries Buckingham Palace but the Queen’s not in. There’s loads of queens on Old Compton Street, but it freaks him out slightly getting eyed-up by a muscly bald T-shirted person. Bobby gets lost in Selfridges, and he even gets lost in McDonald’s. Plopping himself down on a red bench, he puts his chin in an eggcuppy fis
t and sulks at London. All that great British history like beefeaters and Chelsea girls and mods and men in big white ruffles seems to have swirled down a plughole in the Thames. Now it’s just a town full of shops and clowns and adverts – London probably cries itself to sleep every night, missing the good old days. Bobby misses the North East, and he really misses Georgie. It’s funny how, after living with her for months and getting so used to her little intricacies and getting used to arguing with her, just two days apart gives him insane withdrawal symptoms, and he’d do anything to have just one little cuddle with her or a single lingering kiss. He never wants to be apart from her again. Sprinting into a BT phone box, Bobby the Artist dials her number but he only has 20p and he only gets to talk to her for a minute. Georgie sounds well – she tells him quickly she loves him and she’s dead proud of him, and she also tells him Alan Blunt the Cunt caused a scene in the chippy last night after the two Korean boys tried to charge him for the HP sauce. Bobby cringes, smiling, but his skin feels slightly frosted with sadness because he wishes he was there with her. When the phone dies, Bobby dies a bit inside, and he’s left holding the limp telephone with all the call-card girls leering at him. He bashes it down on its holder, then screams silently with his hands like tense eagle claws, then slips out onto Oxford Street again and composes himself as he goes to find the nearest watering hole. Weaving through rampant shoppers, Bobby can’t possibly face the city sober. He ducks into the Ship on Wardour Street, makes himself comfy at the table over in the corner, and all he wants to see of London now sits in a bottle on top of the counter. He’s green and his name is Gordon. WEDNESDAY: Bobby the Artist turns up to the gallery at 2.36pm wearing a terrifying hangover like a crown of thorns. He ended up with his head down the bog last night, sicking up, and his hair’s still soaked with toilet water when he trails into the gallery space on such a fairytale summer afternoon. His stomach still feels turbulent, and he remembers nothing past the seventh supersonic in the Ship, but he smiles earnestly at Bent Lewis when he arrives. Bobby bought all the drinks on expenses, but let’s not mention that to Lewis, shall we. Instead, Bobby shakes the fairy’s hand as usual and asks, ‘What’s the crack then?’ Bent Lewis grimaces, sniffing the Artist’s eau de toilette of sweat, sicky dribble and hotel lino, then replies, ‘Ah, well, we’re just waiting for the card stock to arrive with the printed labels, then we’ll discuss how we might want to present the titles, prices, etc. If you’re feeling up to it, that is …’ To be fair, Bent Lewis is starting to get a bit aggravated about Bobby’s awful punctuality and increasing body odour, although in his heart he knows these incredible paintings could never be painted by a clean-cut, always-on-time sensible human being. If only he could get Bobby the Artist to die young, Bent Lewis would make an absolute killing. But as it stands, he just wants his first exhibition to run smoothly. ‘I’ve marked up a basic price list,’ he explains, handing Bobby this laminated bit of paper, ‘but prices can fluctuate – hopefully for the best, if I do my job right!’ The figures make Bobby’s eyes roll back (ranging from £750 for ‘Georgie on the Toilet’ to £4,000 for ‘The Angels’). He only got £100 to paint the Fireman Sam mural at Corpus Christi, where Alan Blunt the Cunt nowadays pervs over young girls. Squinting, Bobby’s too hungover to speak. Taking that as bewilderment and joy, Bent Lewis bashes the Artist on the back and yippety-yaps, ‘I think we’ll have no problem off-loading all these works – you’re going to be a star, mate! I could see this one, in particular, making an excellent commercial poster. Or an album cover even …’ Bent Lewis motions limp-wristy at ‘Bobby’s Favourite Trip’ (the one with the Artist climbing into the bright shopping shelves, six inches tall) and, although Bobby wants the world to see his work, he cringes at the thought of some wanky student having his image on their dusty cum-crusted wall. ‘I mean, I think you’ll go down very well with the kids,’ Bent Lewis continues, sunny sky slapping him on the face. ‘You’ve got a great future ahead. Trust me, Bobby, I’ll take care of everything. We’re mates, me and you.’ Bobby just stands there perfectly still, like the Statue of David got put in the exhibition too except it got pissed up on gin the night before. He doesn’t really think of Bent Lewis as a mate per se, after all they’ve never been out on the town together and they’ve never snorted coke off a Page 3 model’s tits yet, like he thought they might. London’s slowly becoming a disappointment to Bobby – everyone’s so obsessed with money, and less interested in getting to know each other. Down the Linthorpe back home, you can get mortalled with total strangers on just a tenner; down here you need twice the money for half the pleasure. For someone like Bent Lewis it’s a great place to be, always in contact with clients and wankers and always invited to the latest trendy private view, but for someone normal like Bobby it’s a nightmare. He always did imagine London to be a wonderful crazy castle of hedonism and history and people living in cardboard boxes, but as well as that it’s full of brainwashed people in suits chasing pound notes round the city. Down the tube, you can bash into someone and say sorry sorry sorry and you won’t get any reaction. Getting exasperated, Bobby the Artist’s brain starts to t t h h r r o o b b, and he sits down with a gasp on the gallery floor. ‘So the painting titles are going to be dead professional and that?’ he asks, looking up at Lewis all distorted from his mouse-eye view. ‘Yes yes, they’re made by a lovely little printer off Old Street. They’re couriering them over as soon as they’re ready.’ Bent Lewis smiles at the sweet efficiency of it all, but of course Bobby has to go and throw a spanner in the works and mumbles, ‘Righty ho, but, but I thought maybe it might look better if I just scribble all the titles in felt-tip. Have you got a felt-tip?’ Unfortunately for Lewis, he’s got a felt-tip. He screws his nose up as Bobby jumps to attention, snatches the permanent marker, and hurriedly scrawls the titles and dates and dimensions straight onto the whitewashed walls. Bobby’s handwriting is like that of a ten-year-old girl – his teachers tried to get him to join everything up and put dots instead of circles and punctuate everything perfectly, but it’s quite typical of Bobby to ignore anyone like that. ‘What do you reckon?’ he asks Lewis. Sweating, the two of them twirl once in the finished space like cassette-rollers, and at first Bent Lewis is devastated, but then he tries to convince himself it looks primitive, or seductive, or not bad. In any case, by now he just can’t be bothered arguing. ‘It might just work!’ Lewis guffaws, feeling like a loon. ‘So we’re done and dusted now then, eh?’ Bobby asks, proud as punch to have his very own art exhibition. Look at it! ‘Yes, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens tomorrow!’ Bent Lewis replies, knowing it’ll cause a storm but the art world can be awfully harsh sometimes. It’s one of those industries you either get your arse licked and roses thrown at you, or you get criticised to death by people who never made it as artists but know lots of long fancy words. ‘So I’m free to go, then?’ Bobby the Artist asks, tongue lolling at the prospect of drinking the Saint Georges dry the rest of the day. So much twirling round Gallery 2 has made his head go funny. ‘Of course yes, cheers Bobby,’ Bent Lewis says, then, ‘What are your plans?’ Bobby the Artist picks a bit of black bogey out of his nose (smoggy London gives you that), then sniffs and says, ‘Oh I’m just gonna get wrecked again.’ Bent Lewis lets out a belly-laugh like a flock of cawing birds, then his face becomes serious again and he says, ‘Oh yes, that reminds me. A friend of mine, Francis Fuller, gave me a present to give you. He’s very interested in seeing your work tomorrow – he could prove to be a very important buyer.’ Bent Lewis smiles, then takes great pride in looking over his shoulder once or twice (to add tension), then palms a chunky wrap of coke into Bobby’s hand. Bobby the Artist grins appreciatively, sliding it into his Magic Pocket (the tiny compartment situated above your right pocket, perfect for hiding drugs and johnnies and other embarrassing things). ‘Admittedly I’ve already had a little dab myself,’ Bent Lewis continues, trying to be cooooool, ‘but there’s about two or three grams there for yourself. This stuff is top notch, mate. One word of ad
vice though: don’t get too wrecked tonight, as you put it, and don’t forget the private view starts at six o’clock tomorrow!’ Who does Bent Lewis think he is: giving Bobby three g of Charlie then telling him not to get wrecked! He nods though, leaving the +! Gallery to the sound of Bent Lewis’s hysterical, camp laughter. Bobby sticks out his pink bottom lip as he stumbles down Farringdon Road and into the tube, humming softly to himself while the train rattles back to Oxford Circus. Bobby races his shadow back to the hotel, and it’s about evening-time when he finally gets sat in the Heights; the restaurant/bar thing located at the very top of the Saint Georges. There’s a tear-jerking, dramatic view over the city with all its spires and blocks and squares and towers and colours and lots of lovely sky as well, and Bobby gets a Guinness then a Carlsberg then another Carlsberg then a bit of sniff to perk him up then another Guinness then a whisky then a bit more sniff then a gin and tonic for hair of the dog then another sniff then another Carlsberg, sitting by the window. But it’s not much fun being famous and being on your own. By about ten o’clock Bobby’s mortalled again and bored of the same old pitch-black view, and he plucks up the courage to go and sit with these three pretty girls who’ve been catching his eye all night, although it could just be the double-vision. Full of cokey confidence, Bobby asks, ‘Can I sit here?’ The girls giggle and nod, then he plonks himself down sharply between the lasses. They coo, ‘How are you?’ Bobby replies, ‘Ah, I’m a bit spaced out. Been a mad old day, like …’ The girls (one blonde, one brunette, one ginger) snigger and swoon over Bobby’s exotic accent, and they look at each other and smile like squirrels as Bobby recounts his day, how he’s an artist, and how he’s got an exhibition tomorrow night and they can come if they want. The girls flutter their eyeballs and say they’d love to, only they’re flying to Milan tomorrow afternoon. Bobby clocks them instantly as spoilt little brats – not only do they have the posh accent, they’re all decked out in delicate designer dresses and they’re only about seventeen. The ginge one wears shabby hippy slippers though, to appear bohemian and anticapitalist or shite like that. The brunette one’s got a CND badge dangling off her Louis Vuitton satchel. The blonde one’s got quite nice tits. Glazing over, Bobby coughs then chats to them for a bit, finding out where they’re from and what subjects they do and what jobs Mummy and Daddy do. It turns out they go to an all-girl school somewhere boring outside London, which sounds a bit Carry On-ish but probably a bit shit getting segregated like that. He submerges himself in another gin and tonic, the girls entertaining him with their soft plummy voices. ‘I like your hair,’ the blonde bird says, since she’s into guitar music. All the girls are giddy and heavy-lidded, and after a bit more conversing Bobby invites them down to his room for a go of the Charlie. In the lift his brainwaves mosaic together an image of him snorting it off the girls’ thighs, spanking their smooth pink hides, chucking the telly out the window, but under such lonely circumstances he’ll settle for a nice conversation instead. He’s just a bit drunk and flustered. In his room, Bobby gets the girls to sit on the bed then he racks up four lines, each one the length of this sentence. ‘I love coke, I could really do with a line right now!’ the brunette titters, trying her best to impress the mysterious mop-topped artist. Bobby just laughs, sucking up the first line. The brunette goes next since she’s apparently so desperate, then the blonde, then the ginger. All three of them are mouth-wateringly gorgeous, the way posh girls often are – after all, their beautiful pristine genes come from a long line of wealthy men bedding gold-digging big-titted stunners. The blonde bird’s mother was actually a Miss Sussex, and her dad’s a rich banker in the City. The girls intrigue/annoy Bobby, since they were obviously born with silver spoons in their gobs and yet they talk as if they’ve had it really tough. ‘My sister used to squat with ten people above a kebab shop,’ the ginger one brags, having trouble snorting the shit though her ever so weeny nostril. ‘And I ran away from home two years ago and had to sleep on the beach,’ the brunette explains, with a very feel-sorry-for-me expression. Bobby the Artist nods, but he thinks girls like them only do things like that for attention, or they’ve got no identity at all in dull, stuffy Suburbialand so they try to adopt the maddest personality they can muster. That’s why most Goths come from nice houses in the posh parts of town, not haunted castles. ‘So do youse do many drugs?’ Bobby asks, licking up the girls’ crumbs. ‘Oh, I love drugs!’ they chorus, then the brunette takes over: ‘I’ve done absolutely everything, you know; pills, poppers, skunk. I did ketamine at Glastonbury, and you’ll never guess what happened: I went really small! It was like I was on fucking acid or something … but I’d never do acid though, or crack … I just know if I got into crack I’d do it too much and just overdose and die, I’m that sort of person. This one time my friend thought he was in hell after, I don’t know, loads of ketamine, and this other time there was a boy who threw himself off a building after doing acid … it’s true.’ Bobby the Artist cringes then lights up one of the girls’ Marlboro Lights, getting steamy-eyed as he tells them, ‘Ah, acid’s class though. I’ve never had a bad buzz, like …’ The girls’ jaws drop but then they try to adopt a cool expression, and the brunette goes, ‘Oh, yeah, well I’d totally do acid … it’d be so fun …’ Bobby shudders, getting the Charles out again. He makes four little white snakes on the melamine chest of drawers, then the snakes climb one by one through a rolled-up fiver into everyone’s nose and slither round and round the brain. He offers the girls a packet of crisps, but the coke has eaten up their appetites for them and they decline. Soon they’re off their faces, lips numb with snowflakes, and talking more and more shite as the night turns dusky blue to wavy navy. ‘I’d love to be an artist too. I want to help the world through art, like, start a revolution versus war and poverty, through art, you know what I mean?’ the ginge one babbles, but Bobby the Artist doesn’t know what she means. ‘The upper classes should be shot! It’s up to us working class to open the world’s eyes to injustice and mistreatment of people. If I ever get stinking rich, I’d give most of it to charity. Or spend it all on ketamine!’ the brunette guffaws, in the most pompous accent known to man. ‘I mean, yeah, my daddy’s not even rich by any means, for instance he used to live in a terraced house …’ the blondie explains, and Bobby feels exhausted to hear such a pretty thing speak such silly words. By their third snort of dandruff the girls are just babbling high-pitched white noise, which is sometimes used as a torture device in far-away countries. ‘Everyone should be vegetarian coke’s so fun it makes me more intelligent you know I wish we had some smack that’d be so fun Milan tomorrow Daddy’s given me five hundred euros allowance I could spend it in one day he might want to buy some of your paintings he’s in property it’s like the same thing lahdeedahdeedah …’ Bobby the Artist feels sick and bored, wishing he’d never invited down such irritating cunts, and he wants to be alone again. He sits on the corner of the bed with his knees up, covering his mouth, trying to give off bad body language. The girls start to calm down and shut up as the cocaine fades from thick white cloud to clear sky in their skulls. Bobby hates them. Even if they were to suddenly rip off their clothes and pounce on Bobby he wouldn’t like them any better, and it’s definitely for the best when the girls start collecting their things together and start edging towards the door. Some boys (in particular, those who are off their head) would cheat on their girlfriends if they thought they could get away with it but, as the pretentious princesses waddle off back to their rooms, Bobby’s pleased that God made them annoying little shits and didn’t force him to have sex with them and be unfaithful to Georgie. He’s never cheated on her, and if he carries on successfully dodging beautiful ladies, he thinks he’ll stay with her for ever. Oh, Georgie! He fills his brain up with pictures of his girlfriend, then he puts his brain on the pillow and all the pictures turn into beautiful dreams as he falls into slumber. Kerplunk. THURSDAY: The build-up to the exhibition starts with a build-up of diarrhoea in Bobby the Artist’s panties. Sat on the tube to Farring
don at 6.45pm, he hasn’t actually soiled himself (not like Johnnie that first night he bonked Ellen), but he feels deathly nervous zipping through the black tunnels and white stations black tunnels and white stations. He finally managed a shower this afternoon at the hotel, spent the rest of the day combing his hair a different way, all the while fretting about the private view. As he leaves the tube and wobbles towards Clerkenwell Road like a lonely clown with a down-turned mouth, Bobby wonders if he’ll have to explain his art to everybody, if he’ll have to make pleasant conversation to complete dickheads with lots of money/power, if he’ll be forced to sign his soul away to the Devil. The thought of free champagne and getting lashed is the only thing keeping his feet plodding in the right direction. To be fair, there’s also a weeny bit of excitement at seeing his artworks in a real living, breathing exhibition, with real people there, but that feeling’s just a tiny ladybird fluttering in his heart – not like the humongous slathering, gnashing dragon tunnelling through his guts. Nevertheless, Bobby the Artist keeps his head held high as he paces through the glass doors of the +! Gallery, and his eyelashes stutter at the sight of the space completely chock-a-block with people holding wine glasses and curious expressions on their faces. Bobby grabs a couple of red wines from the table with the tablecloth, then barges through to Gallery 2 but all you can see are people’s faces, not paintings. Bent Lewis is there, entertaining a circle of floppy-haired gayboys, and as soon as he claps eyes on our humble artist he claps his hands and says, ‘Bobby! You’re here! You simply must meet some friends of mine …’ So Bobby has to shake hands with lots of weird strangers – most of whom are fancy-dressed art dealers, wacky art critics or elderly gay abstract painters – and he stands stock-still when Bent Lewis explains to them, ‘So this is the artist. He grew up on a council estate up North, and he only paints under the influence of psychedelic drugs. Pretty fucked up, don’t you think? Pretty raw.’ That’s not strictly true, Bobby thinks to himself. Quite a few of these paintings were created under the influence of boredom, or when he’s been Three Hammered. But Bent Lewis is in his element, and Bobby the Artist doesn’t think it’d be appropriate to interrupt him, so he just keeps shhhhtum as Lewis continues, ‘The works are anti-establishment, anti-art.
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