Meatspace

by Nikesh Shukla

  ‘“Shipbuilding”,’ I correct him. I instantly regret doing that.

  ‘That’s what I said,’ he says. ‘Remember when she used to sing it in the kitchen?’ I nod. It sounds like something she did. Dad hums the melody, badly. ‘Why have you done this?’ Dad says, looking into his now-empty tumbler of vodka.

  ‘I wanted to make a statement about myself to myself.’

  ‘And you want to live with that for ever? That statement? It’s not even a good song. You can’t dance to it. How do you dance to this song?’ he says and shakes his head. ‘It’s too slow.’ He sits down. I follow him.

  After that, any attempt I make to kick-start a conversation is met by a shrug and a shake of the head. I ask if he wants me to cook for him. He shrugs his head. There’s nothing in the kitchen I can do anything with anyway. I ask him about his social engagements and he grunts. I stand up to leave so I can get home and out from this oppressive regime of fatherhood. I can feel the disappointment seeping from his pores and it smells like onion and garlic.

  But he’s disappointed in me, and that feels comforting as much as it feels humiliating. I can sense he is desperate to get away from me from the way he avoids looking at me. It’s almost nice to be reminded that in a whirlwind of dates and drinking he still spares a thought for all the things I do wrong.

  I announce I’m leaving. He turns to me and says, ‘Son, I have worried that you were too passive in this world, just letting it let you live. Then you wrote a book and I thought, this is the guy who understands how the world works. Now you have a tattoo, like a sailor and I don’t know who you are anymore. Passive, writer or sailor?’

  I think, I’m probably all 3 in some way, or none at all, but that’s a passive writer’s way of dealing with things, endless scenarios and eventualities. What does he mean by sailor?

  He shakes his head. ‘You will look at that stupid thing when you’re my age and think, I’m a fool.’

  I nod. ‘Good night, Dad.’

  ‘What is wrong, son?’ he asks.

  ‘I don’t know, Dad.’

  He shakes his head. ‘You need to move on, kiddo,’ he says. ‘If I can, so can you. It’s been so long now.’

  I try to give Dad a hug but he offers no arms. I disengage and leave the house, walking through the same streets, past the same shops, the same everything of my childhood. It feels alien to me now. Like a biopic that approximates a version of my life.

  On the train, I line up tweets.

  @kitab: ‘I’ve literally had enough of the misuse of the word literally.’

  @kitab: ‘Without Instagram, I wouldn’t know what nail polish you all have and you wouldn’t know how well I eat.’

  @kitab: ‘People call it brownnosing. Brown people just call it nosing.’

  Perfecting those 3 tweets takes me a 45-minute journey and I’m still not happy with them when I release them into the world in a flurry as I leave the train station and dial my landline repeatedly till my phone catches a 3G signal.

  I look down my high street, considering hitting up the local where Mitch might be, or a short story night where literary fans of the female persuasion might be, or home where a television and Aziz’s spiced dark rum is.

  This is the busiest day of the week because it’s Sunday and on Sunday the most ironic nights happen around here. Like Shit Film Club, Twatfunk (a made-up genre from Twitter turned real with its own club night and tribute bands), Keeping Up With the Kardashians marathons, Tweet Dating (which is exactly how it sounds). The bars are full. I don’t want to be near people. I head home, stopping off to buy some limes and ginger beer to help Aziz’s spiced dark rum go down.

  My head is down at the pavement and my mind is processing what my dad said, the look of disappointment in his eyes. My neighbours are having a party. I can hear it before I get past their front garden. They’re always playing loud thumping breakneck indie – the nee-nee-nee-noo-noo-noo kind – when they have a party, because the speed of the song dictates the speed of their dance and they need to dance Sunday night off. Usually, I’d be annoyed.

  Today, I am only disappointed. But mostly in myself.

  As I get to our front garden, I notice some black Clarks shoes on my front step and look up. Kitab 2 is standing there, facing the door, peering in through the frosted glass, his suitcase next to him. I sigh, watching the trail of exhausted fumes leave my mouth.

  ‘Yo, Kitab,’ I call out. He turns to face me, looking the happiest a man could possibly be. ‘What the fuck are you doing, man?’

  ‘Help me please, brother Kitab. I’ve run out of money and nowhere to go. Please help me.’

  Maybe it’s because I’m feeling selfless in the face of disappointing my dad, but I think, what would Dad do in this situation? I invite him in to drink some of Aziz’s spiced dark rum and warm up.

  Kitab 2 scrolls through his story. He spent the night in a hotel I recommended to him but skipped out when it came to the morning of paying as he only has enough money to see him through the first term at university and nothing more.

  ‘I am on a strict budget. I have to collect receipts too. I can only spend money on books and essential food. And travel.’

  ‘Maybe you could get a job,’ I tell him.

  ‘When will I have time, dude?’

  ‘Why did you arrive in the UK a week early if you didn’t have anywhere to stay or any money to pay for somewhere to stay?’

  He shrugs. ‘It was the cheapest option,’ he mumbles. ‘Cheap ticket. Plus, I got the start date for term wrong in my G-Cal.’

  ‘I thought your dad booked the wrong flights.’

  ‘He did. I gave him the dates.’ He pauses and thinks. ‘Do you have a job?’

  ‘Not currently. Well, yeah, writer,’ I say, proud.

  ‘How much money do you make, dude?’

  ‘That’s personal,’ I say, pouring myself a drink.

  ‘So … not much then? How do you survive, dude?’

  ‘Kitab, that’s personal. I’m not comfortable discussing it.’

  Kitab 2 looks at his shoes, something he does a lot, then back up at me. ‘I’ve never had a job. I never needed to. My dad made me study. Then he bought me computer and made me study. Then he got internet in the house and he made me study. All the time, I was playing computer games.’

  ‘I can help you find a job, if you need a job. Do you have the right visa to work?’ In my head, I think, by helping you find a job all I really mean is, I can give you 3 or 4 websites to check for job listings.

  ‘I shouldn’t work,’ Kitab 2 says. ‘I don’t know how to take orders, dude.’

  I sigh and point back towards Aziz’s room and he wheels his suitcase in there like a small child trailing a blanket behind him.

  I don’t have a plan to get rid of him. He is my other and I pity him. I look at everything he is and everything I’m not and wonder if we’re yin and yang. Maybe we’ve been brought together to become the perfect human. He is incapable and wet. And I am depressed and able to utilise Google to solve any problem. He’s so cheerful and enthusiastic. It’s a welcome counterpoint to my usual misery. Having seen Dad earlier, how lost he looks on his own, I feel the need for company. With Aziz gone, maybe I do feel lonely, maybe that’s why this crushing wave of depression is over me. Maybe it is loneliness. Much as I don’t want to admit it, it’s nice having another body in this house, this mausoleum of static and failure. Hell, I might even apply for another job tomorrow.

  ‘Oi, Kitab,’ I call after him.

  He emerges from his room in a formerly-white vest and small penis. He is naked from the waist down. I don’t want to look but I do. It’s comparable to mine – i.e., more average-looking when it’s erect, probably.

  ‘Dude, put some pants on.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, roomie,’ he says, smiling, and runs back into Aziz’s bedroom. He re-emerges with pants on and a toothy grin, all top row and overbite. ‘What’s up, dude?’

  ‘Which university are you at, again?’


  ‘Queen Mary University. You’re not far from it, are you?’

  ‘Okay, so I’ll go with you tomorrow and see if we can get you some accommodation for the rest of the week, say there’s been a mix-up or something.’

  Kitab 2 nods. ‘I’m hungry, dude. Got any pizza?’

  ‘Nah, mate. I’ve eaten. There’s some bread over there. Make some toast or something. Help yourself.’ I point him to the open plan kitchen, overlooking the lounge in the way only a place where 2 boys live could. Kitab 2 looks dejected, like only pizza would do. I find a frozen pizza in the freezer and put it in the oven for him. That dejected look. It’s the worst. The way his eyes become wider and browner, his eyebrows quiver like they can’t quite hold the line over his brow and the upturned pursed lips, pinched together in an X of disappointment. Oh god. This is what parenting is like. Aziz has been a relatively easy child to deal with up until now because, regardless of his impulsive chaos, you can calm him down with a stern word or just release him into the ether, fully cocked. This guy – oh my god – it’s like being stabbed with sadness. I never want children of my own.

  Kitab 2 sits at our dining table, one foot on the chair, head on knee, and tears into the pizza packaging. He picks off the pepperoni and looks at me, shaking his head. ‘You are non-veg,’ he says.

  I know the lingo. I went to India once with my dad as a teenager. I hated the whole trip. It was hot. My family was stressful and I didn’t speak any of the languages – Hindi, Gujarati or the Victorian English everyone spoke. I was struck by the non-veg thing in restaurants. Non-veg is what they refer to meat-eaters as, because veg is the norm, which is cool. In the menus, all the non-veg stuff is at the back because most people turn to the veg things.

  ‘I eat meat,’ I say. I won’t say ‘non-veg’. I won’t make fun of his vernacular for the LOLs. It’s a lazy way to get laughs – the Mind Your Language approach – the bud-bud-ding-ding of it all.

  ‘So you are non-veg.’

  ‘I eat meat.’

  ‘Yes, non-veg,’ Kitab 2 says, bending down to peer into the oven.

  ‘No, meat-eater.’

  I leave him with that and turn my back to him, face the television. I grab the remote control and switch it on, flicking through channels without any interest, using the whole thing as a prop for conversation avoidance.

  ‘Kitab,’ Kitab 2 says. ‘Do you have a girlfriend, dude?’

  I turn to him without breaking the TV flicking motion. ‘What? None of your business.’

  ‘This is a place for boys.’

  ‘So what, man.’

  ‘You should get a girlfriend. I bet she would be nice to you.’

  ‘Okay, man.’

  ‘In fact, we could find some girls now. Have you got an iPhone, dude?’

  I turn to him. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Cool, download Blendr, dude. It’s this app that lets you find girls near you who are DTF. Do you know what DTF means? Definitely To Fuck. We could find 2 girls and have some fun, no? Blendr’s free. They might send us photos of their boobies.’

  ‘No, man. I don’t want to do that,’ I say, getting up to take out Kitab 2’s pizza.

  ‘It is late. Yes, you’re right. Sorry.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow …’

  ‘Tomorrow we’re going to your university.’

  I focus all my energy on the television.

  I settle on an episode of a sitcom I’ve seen before but am happy with the familiarity, and the conversational silence that canned laughter brings to a room. I sit and watch the sitcom, listening to Kitab 2’s loud chewing, like I’m inside his mouth, being tossed around with masticated burnt bread and cheese. When he laughs, I can hear the squelch of food against the back of his tongue and teeth so I turn the volume up and hope to drown him out.

  A couple of episodes of the sitcom and an entire eaten pizza later, he’s still awake but has joined me on the sofa. He shifts up and down in his seat, plays with his toenails, clears his sinuses in that AKAKAKAKAKUGH way and generally informs me of his presence with every single tic and move, every second I am with him, so I tell him I’m going to bed and to be ready to leave for the university at 8 a.m. I assume we’ll get there for 9 a.m. when it opens. I go to bed and can’t concentrate on the internet porn I choose to soothe me to sleep because the volume is off in case Kitab 2 hears my shame, and I want to hear the noises. I’ve gone amateur tonight and there’s sometimes nothing sexier than hearing real people film themselves orgasm, even if it is a simulated amateur orgasm. I try to sleep, unfulfilled, then hunt around for headphones, watch the clip again, realise it’s lost its impact and search for another, by which time my bedtime ardour has subsided and I switch my lamp on, doing the one thing I haven’t done since Rach left. I pick a book off the stack of freebies publishers have sent me, if to just endorse on Twitter, and scan the first line. I put it back down on the pile. I load up a website that streams illegal television and find myself something with canned laughter to tune out the sound and feel of another human in my flat. It has started to feel suffocating.

  *

  ‘Write drunk; edit sober LOL’ is the text message I receive from Hayley. I ignore it. How do you react to a non-sequitur like that? She follows it up with another text: ‘I’m adding LOL to the end of all my texts now. What do you think LOL?’

  ‘What’s happening, babes? You cool?’ I reply an hour later.

  She replies: ‘Yeah, just wondering when we can hang out LOL Also, babes? LOL.’

  ‘Soon,’ I reply.

  ‘Specific. Almost too specific LOL.’

  ‘Sorry, got a weird day. I’ll tell you about it.’

  ‘I’ve got secrets too,’ she replies. ‘Stuff that’d melt the nose off your nose. See you soon LOL xx.’

  Out of courtesy, I reply with ‘x’. Just one. Not 2. To keep her on her toes.

  ‘LOL x’ is how she leaves it.

  Sitting on the train with Kitab 2, you’d think he’d never been on a train before. His eyes are everywhere: reading over people’s shoulders, watching hushed commuter conversations, down the tops of poor unsuspecting females.

  ‘Have you never been on a train before?’ I ask him.

  ‘I’ve never seen so many hotties, dude. They are everywhere!’

  I look around at the scorched scowls of commuting faces, each one steeled with the need for space to read or zone out or check Facebook repeatedly. Everyone looks ordinary at this time in the morning. They’re all dressed in grey or black with matching nail polish, their lips downturned in disappointment. And they don’t wait for passengers to get off the train before pushing on.

  I ask Kitab 2 for more background details. He is very good at avoiding telling me anything specific. Other than strategies for winning Halo 4.

  He smiles at me and shakes his head. ‘I dunno, man. Look, she’s reading Fifty Shades, dude. Fifty Shades!’ He nods his head. He nods away my question. I persist. ‘It’s got sex in it,’ he adds as a stage whisper. ‘I bet she loves it. Sex. It.’ He gyrates in his seat, biting his bottom lip with bunny teeth.

  ‘Seriously, Kitab. Tell me about your family,’ I say, persisting. ‘What did your parents do?’

  Kitab doesn’t break his stare at the woman reading Fifty Shades of Grey. ‘My mother was a housewife. My father was a hard worker. Very hard worker,’ he says, like an automaton.

  He turns to face the commuters, his eyes away from my mouth, which is in an O of confusion. He spots a girl, a pretty, blonde girl in a naval jumper and skinny jeans, reading my book opposite us and down the aisle. He thumps me on the side and points.

  But I’m cool. I clocked her when we got on and tried to remain calm because this was the dream – seeing someone organically reading your stuff – it’s never happened before. Well, that would require someone actually buying the fucking thing. I don’t want to lose my shit in front of Kitab 2 so I keep quiet, bursting into the vaguest of smiles whenever the cover catches the corner of my eye. Kit
ab 2 can barely contain himself. He thumps my arm and says, ‘Dude, dude, look. Dude.’

  The commuters in earshot try to subtly look around to what he’s pointing at.

  ‘I know, man. It’s all good,’ I say dismissively, and wish I had something to stare at, other than the crotch of a man in jeans skinnier than the skinniest of my fingers.

  ‘But, dude. It’s your book.’

  ‘I know, man. It’s cool. It happens.’

  ‘This is exciting, dude.’

  ‘Bro, I know.’ Be cool, I think. Let me enjoy the moment. This is a first. This is a legendary moment. Please just shush and let it sink in, awash on top of us. Stop talking. ‘Shut up. It happens all the time.’

  ‘Hey,’ Kitab 2 calls out. ‘Hey!’ he says, louder. Everyone is looking at us. I look down at my hands. Wow, I should cut my nails, is the look I hope I’m giving. Kitab 2 calls out the name of my book. The girl reading my stupid coming-of-age book looks up. He points at it and then at me before realising I’m not playing. ‘That’s my book!’ he shouts. ‘I wrote that.’

  The girl holds an ironic thumb up. ‘Wow. Cool,’ she says flatly. I project my embarrassment onto her. Kitab 2 claiming credit for writing my book is one thing but acknowledging it to a stranger doing the morning commute – that is an urban no-no. The other commuters are looking at him like he’s a smug a-hole. The girl has ignored him and returned to his/my book, silently judging a living breathing writer now. She’ll probably hate it more than she already does.

  At the next stop, we get off the train and so does the girl with the book.

  We leave the station and walk in the direction of Kitab 2’s future university, hemmed in amongst council blocks and chicken shops. I can sense the girl with the book walking behind us. My ears flush the reddest brown ears can get. My eyes are down at the ground. I am half-listening to Kitab 2’s running inventory of his soon-to-be new surroundings.

  Chicken shop.

  Light fittings.

  News vendor.

  Supermarket.

  Indian supermarket.

  Caribbean supermarket.

  Chicken shop.