“Eight when they started to foster me, eleven when we made it formal. Pretty old really. But they wanted to adopt an older kid.”
“Yeah, babies are a lot of work.”
She gives me a look. “I think it was more to do with the fact that a lot of people don’t want to adopt older kids, so they get left in the system.”
“Oh. Shit. I mean, yeah, of course. Sorry.”
She laughs and walks into the kitchen. It’s bright because it’s in an extension and the roof and walls are all glass. Bow opens the fridge and takes out a carton of chocolate soy milk. “It’s okay. You want one?”
“Is it like Nesquik?”
She frowns. “I guess. We’re not allowed stuff like that.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Powdered milk, Pop-Tarts. You know, junk.”
I splutter. “Junk?”
“You don’t think they’re junk?”
“I eat Pop-Tarts like they’re a food group.”
She hands me out a glass and we toast, grinning.
“So what about Tim?” I ask, gesturing to a picture and getting milk on my arm. I suck it off my sleeve. “Is he adopted?”
“Yeah, he’s three years younger than me and they fostered us both around the same time, so he was five years old. They adopted him pretty much immediately though, ’cause his parents are dead.”
“Ah, I see, and they wanted to wait with you ’cause you might have turned into a troublemaker?” I nod and wink at her. “I get that.”
Rainbow grins and pokes my stomach in a sexy way. “Well, you have to be available to be adopted,” she says softly, which I don’t really understand, but then she floors me with a suggestive eyebrow lift and I forget what we were talking about, how to ask questions, my own name, etc. Bow murmurs, “Shall we go upstairs?”
I down the rest of my milk. “Hell yes.”
We head up to her bedroom with no adult interference as no one else seems to be home. Probably, I think somewhat jealously, out at art galleries or some shit like that. As soon as she opens her door I’m hit by the enclosure of floor-to-ceiling bookcases covering two entire walls, packed full of meaty volumes with titles like The Kennedy Tapes: Inside The White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis and September 11, 2001: Feminist Perspectives. I scan the shelves and try not to stare as Rainbow throws her bag on her multicolored duvet and peels off her still-sopping jeans. Notably cool CDs in Rainbow’s homemade library include Make Yourself by Incubus, Is This It by the Strokes and what looks like every single album ever made by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Notably intimidating DVDs, the titles of which I have no idea how to pronounce, include Y tu mamá también, Volver, Le fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, La mala educación, La cité des enfants perdus and, intriguingly, Lucía y el sexo.
I pick up the book about the Cuban missile crisis and thumb through it. “It’s quite cool having all these here, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?” Rainbow’s fluffy hair springs out the neck of a bright blue top.
“Ah, that looks soft.” I stroke it. “I mean, you’d think it would be claustrophobic being surrounded by all these books and that, like the library in school, but it must be quite freeing, having the power to visit foreign countries and go to different times in history and . . .” I realize how dumb what I’m saying sounds and trail off. She’s clearly intelligent and I clearly sound like a retard. Should have fucking read something growing up. Anything. But I swear to God I didn’t even really know about books until I was about ten. It just never crossed my mind that anyone would read for pleasure. And then I discovered some comic books in my dad’s closet while looking for porn and obsessively read his entire collection, spanning the years 1975 to 2000. But since then I’ve not read much besides Men’s Health magazine and a couple of books on Banksy. I’m not a fan of lads’ mags because all the women in them look stupid and pretty much like porn stars with ginormous plastic tits and inflated lips (no, I really, really wouldn’t), so I’m kind of proud I’ve avoided that cultural stereotype, but I haven’t exactly progressed to Brontë or anything if you know what I mean. I point at a stonker of a book that pronounces itself “the definitive authority on contemporary art, globally, now,” and finish my sentence clumsily, losing faith in myself, the volume dropping off my voice, “. . . to know about art in Guatemala.” I shrug uncomfortably. I know Rainbow’s not making me feel so small and undeserving beside her on purpose, because she’s not like that. It’s all in my head. I know this, but it seems I can’t help myself. I poke some books on the floor with my shoe, fake nonchalance and raise my voice, acting the cock. “I just meant that it’s all at your fingertips, surrounding you when you’re asleep. It’s insane . . . but, y’know, pretty cool.”
Rainbow smiles innocently, unaware of my inner monologue, and nods to the book I’m unknowingly still holding, the transcription of the Kennedy tapes. “You can borrow that if you want.” She roughly dries her hair with a hand towel. “I’ve got an idea for this afternoon. Let’s order pizza and watch Y tu mamá también, it’s an awesome film, d’you want to?”
“Yeah, sure, okay.” I shrug.
She slips her hands round my waist and I stand stiff for a moment, but then I fall under her spell, fold my arms about her and drop my head onto her shoulder, enveloping this tiny and wonderful human being, glad she hasn’t noticed my awkwardness. We relax with huge sighs into this overwhelmingly deep and comforting hug.
“Rainbooooow,” I let out involuntarily, and burrow my face into her hair with embarrassment.
Then, unanticipated, soft and warm into my chest: “Will.” And my insecurities slip away and my mind and everything in me shakes with excitement and happiness. I’m such a soft twat. Don’t tell on me.
WANKING
No story of my life would be complete without attention paid to my most voraciously pursued hobby. Wanking. Spanking the monkey. Teasing the weasel. Buffing the banana, jackin’ the bean stalk, applying the hand brake, squeezing the cream from the flesh Twinkie, choking the chicken, checking for testicular cancer, wielding the flesh baton, and my personal favorite, slap-boxing the one-eyed champ. I could go on. I’ve thought about it a lot. While wanking.
It is a warm day in early May, about a week after my first time with Rainbow, which, in retrospect, was perfect. Unfortunately, I’ve spent all my time dreaming and wanking about it, and not much time revising. Our exams are only a month away and Jamie, myself, and Mike have a maths paper to take first (Josh, Daisy, Ella, and Ash take the lower-tier paper, so while they do have an exam at the same time as us, it’s basically questions like “If I have three beans and add two, then I have five beans, don’t I?” so this hardly counts). To make a long, boring story about inept teaching and apathy on my part short, I’ll just put it plainly: no one knows a thing. No teacher seems to help when I ask and no one can tell me where I’m going wrong or what a quadratic equation is. I look for Mr. Banbury, the maths dude, and find him smoking behind the bike sheds. I give up. I go home. I couldn’t care less. All I can think about these days is . . .
“Rainbow.” Her name tastes like strawberry on my lips and I think of her breath in my ear. I think of the gorgeous scent of her beautiful cunt in my mouth. “Rainbow . . .” The North Sea, freezing, salty, swirling around us as I fuck her. “Rainbo-oh—yeah—oh . . .”
“WILL?” Three staccato bangs on the door follow. “Is that you wanking to the word ‘Rainbow’?”
I open my eyes and lean up on the bed with my mouth open in indignation. I’m fucking annoyed if I’m honest. “Fuck off, Mum!”
“Calm down, I was only letting you know there’s fish fingers, chips and peas on the table.”
Fish fingers, chips and peas. Because I’m five years old.
“Thank you.” There’s a pause.
“D’you want ketchup?”
“Fuck off!”
Retreating footsteps and an “Oh fine,” as if I’m being unreasonable to want to wank without simultaneously discussin
g dinner with my mother through the door. I begin to rant in my head but take a deep breath and decide not to let it ruin my thoughts of lovely Rainbow and her lovely smile and lovely breasts.
I’m pulling at my dick again with my eyes closed and for some reason I hear the voice of my French teacher, a staunch feminist, say, “Oh, all right, cite only her physical attributes! You’re shallow, that’s what you are, Will Flicker, shallow!”
No, I argue back, her intelligence and mind make her sexy and make every part of her more attractive, thus enabling me to wank in part about her physical attributes, yes, but also imagining them acting in a way that corresponds to Rainbow’s personality and innately deep and sincere beauty. So fuck you, Madame Dubois.
I start up again. Jesus. Now I can’t get my French teacher out my head.
Then, worse, an image of Jamie appears, saying, “Well . . . why not?” and hunkering down happily to jerk off to the old bitch. Fuuck!
I give up and roll over onto my tummy. It’s Thursday at about five thirty. I think about ringing Rainbow, but she’ll be having dinner and probably talking about something very clever, like one of her books, or politics, or the mating habits of rhinoceroses . . . rhinoceroes . . . rhinoceri. Yeah, rhinoceri. I could go down and get my dinner, skin my fish fingers and chat about CSI: Miami with Mam and her friend Tina, who comes around to share her Weight Watchers double chocolate brownies and lose at rummy, and who’ll no doubt have been warned of my “self-pleasuring,” as Mam says in company.
Rainbow . . . I wish I could be with you all the time. To chat about your day . . . and discuss the single currency . . . and slip my fingers inside you . . . hot and wet around me . . . and pull them slowly out . . . and then . . .
Wait . . . yeah, maybe I can wank. Let’s put some lipstick on this pig.
CHOICES
So May is chuntering on and as exams (largely ignored) and study leave (highly anticipated) approach, me and Rainbow relax quickly into a routine. We go everywhere together and I start to feel like we could really, seriously, have a chance for a future. We meet up practically every day after school, we watch her DVDs, she teaches me how to say “fuck off” in French, I teach her how to bellyboard, we spend more hours in bed than even I thought I was capable of, and I feel very grateful and very proud. I tell her things I’ve never told anyone, I let my guard down more than I’ve ever done before. Most of the time I’m a pretty upbeat person, but Rainbow knows when things aren’t okay and I start to be able to tell her when I’m not feeling tutti-frutti about my life. In particular, she’s not fond of the drug-addled part of me that edits Friday nights before recounting them, and instead of being defensive, calling her a whore, turning off my phone and getting twatted, I begin to admit that sometimes I wonder what in the blue hell I’m doing with the precious little time I have on earth.
Rainbow falls into step with my gang easily enough, given that we only hang out with them occasionally because in all honesty now that I know Rainbow and her ideals and dreams and general amazingness I’m a little embarrassed about the gang at times. Putting it plainly I’m terrified she’ll realize how stupid and stereotypical they all are and that it will reflect badly on me. To be fair to them we act no different, so I know I’m no better, but I am generally brighter than they are, and not a slag, and I should probably know better than to do all the things we do . . . which I guess makes me worse. In any case, Rainbow is cultured and intelligent and I am not having our budding love life obliterated by the sight of me snorting horse tranquilizer and waxing lyrical about why we’re all so doomed. Mainly because I look like a cock when I do. I just don’t know if my actions make me one or not (I hope not for Rainbow’s sake). The difficulty when you’re fifteen is that you have an idea of who you are inside, but you are facing five or six years of time when you will be molded more or less into the human being you will be for your whole life, and the issue is that you don’t know what will make the difference, what will decide who you become. You find yourself doing things you never thought you’d do when you were ten and things were simple and druggies were idiots and you were going to be a spy or a firefighter or the pilot of a World War II–era Spitfire and the girl of your dreams was Katie Pool, to whom you said “I love you” when she climbed a ladder above you in gym and you saw her knickers. And then you have to ask the same old questions, about a man and his actions and how he feels inside, and whether the choices you made were the right ones, or whether they were choices at all.
WHY STONERS ARE LIKE BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIANS
The tricky thing about stoners, or alkies, or any type of addict, even those of us who do it socially, is that we are like born-again Christians (bear with me, it will make sense). We not only partake in our drug of choice, but we actively encourage others to; we preach; we hang about on street corners selling our wares; we advocate it as a way of life, as normal, even as the right way to be. It strikes me as odd when I think about it, that I dabble in the worlds I do, when I’m really not a fan of the other types of organized religion. And getting stoned is a religion. Let’s examine the parallels:
1. All religions and all drugs are just another way of getting you high, reaching that heaven, exploring that connection with a deeper consciousness. Amen, brother.
2. Both disassociate you from reality. Example A: While in the launderette the other day (our washer broke) I read a pamphlet on depression, it being the only thing around apart from a pamphlet from the same series on addiction to prescription medication, and with a hangover and four Tylenol in my stomach I wasn’t in the mood for a lecture. I didn’t realize, however, that it was a Jehovah’s Witness pamphlet until, at the end of an otherwise informative article, it said, and I quote/bastardize “Don’t worry, because God’s Kingdom will restore the ‘new earth,’ a society of righteous people on earth, to perfect physical, emotional and spiritual health. All sicknesses will be wiped out permanently.” “Unrealistic” isn’t the only word that springs to mind, but a definite disassociation from reality. Example B: the K-hole, not something I’ve experienced, though I may well at some point, but certainly the pinnacle of the stoner’s version of the sweet denial of guilt and avoidance of responsibility.
3. Both prey on the weak, one on Old Age Pensioners and university students, the other on impressionable teens and . . . university students (weaklings). In any case, both offer a way out to people in trouble; both are seemingly a solution.
4. Both require dedication and worship. You are a much better stoner if you know the Art of the Right Amount of Stoned, you gain more respect the more information you have at your fingertips, you get a better price and better stuff if you shop around and take advice and lastly, perfecting all of the above will enable you to have a long-term, sustainable habit, and not burn out over a mere summer. With religion, the dedication and worship part is obvious. It is required. In the Bible. Speaking of which, stoners should get one of them. Maybe I’ll write it and make a mint.
5. Both have networks of support. As the church has its congregation, its “love for one another” bullshit, its interfering do-gooders yadda yadda yadda, so does the stoner. Believe me, you will never have a better friend than a junkie. They will fight for you to the bitter end, they will hold back your hair as you vom into the bowl, they will sit with you at five in the morning when you’re waxing lyrical, they are on call any time you’re low and you need to feel that high. And the reason that they both have such fantastic networks of support is . . .
6. The thing about choices/getting fucked up all the time/living your life by something questionable is that you want other people to do it too, to reaffirm your choices. It’s that wonderfully reassuring concept of “If I’m going down, I’m taking you all with me.” Aw! The merits of supportive friends.
HUBRIS ALREADY
We are at a party at Ash’s flat. It’s just a group of us sat about, but Ash is dressed like someone from the seventies, with massive flares, platform boots and her Afro wildly curling. The lads sit about an
d worship her while I brood.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how much puff and booze I’m doing and unfortunately my pensiveness on said subject matter seems to be well timed. Earlier in the evening, on the way over (I came with Mike and Jamie from the chippie), we ran into Gav, bleeding from his nose and both eye sockets. He managed to tell us that he’d fucked up a deal for Fez by spending the profit on skag again. He was shaking and trying to be brave but you could tell he was freaked out.
“It’s the junk,” he said with his big grin still present, but pained from the beating he’d obviously just received. “It’s making my head go all weird. I’ve got to get off it, you know, man.” He managed to laugh weakly and warn us not to tell anyone before the police showed up. He then winked at us, told the bobbies he didn’t know us and was just asking for money, and they cuffed him over the front of the patrol car and fucked off with him in the back. The worst thing about it (and this sounds weird but it’s the first thing that sprang to mind at the time) is that Gav and Fez are friends. They always have been. You wouldn’t expect Fez to fuck up a mate like that. It’s a sign that something’s getting serious somewhere close. We get these waves of bad atmosphere that run through Clyde County sometimes, ’specially in the reet scummiest parts of Langrick, and in those cases everyone is at risk. You don’t choose whose side you’re on, or what part you play, someone else does, someone older or bigger, someone with less fear, someone who’ll stick a knife in your face or jump you ’cause at the end of the day they’ve got less to lose than you do. I saw a program on telly about a place in Los Angeles where kids growing up have to be in gangs, because if you’re not part of one then you’re against one and you’re the first to feel the shit when it hits. Seems like there’s so many different places where human beings have set up a society in the world, and they call it civilized and they tell you there are choices, but if you’re broke or weak or in need you can move anywhere you like, because you’re still broke and weak and in need and the rules all seem to be the same. So it’s the same thing here. You’re in with a gang or some crazy twat, or you’re out, in a really bad way. If something goes down in this wave and one of our mates is called up, as it were, to fuck shit up or be party to something heavy, we just have to turn a blind eye and wish them luck. It’s horrible to say but you have to take calculated risks. You defend your family and your very closest friends, but what it comes down to is that you can’t risk your life for anyone on the sidelines. And that’s something that we’ve all thought about, and it’s not a nice thing to have to realize or decide about yourself, but you can’t just act the dumb hero and play anyone else’s games ’cause the risk of dying in some places in the world is too great for that kind of thing. And I’m not saying it’s as bad here as it is for those kids in LA, not at all, and I’m not saying that girls here have it easy either. Pregnancy can’t be fun for one thing, but you can bet it’ll be guys like us and not chicks that get picked on for the shitty jobs. But as I say, there aren’t any choices, so it almost doesn’t bear thinking about. If a storm is brewing, we just have to hold on and keep our heads down ’til it passes.
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