‘Rachel. Please. I need to go.’
‘I’m glad you’re proud of yourself. Stuff like that makes it very easy to get over you, Kitab. Which hasn’t been easy. Now, though, it suddenly feels like the right decision.’
She hangs up.
She obviously doesn’t remember my penis that well, which is darker and less ball-heavy than Kitab 2’s. Which begs the question, who takes stock of each phallus they come into contact with? Could you match the boobs and face of everyone you’ve slept with, Kit? No, probably not.
I’m mentioned in a flurry of comments on the Guardian, where commentators mock my tactics for getting noticed for a book that was okay. Nothing special. Not Hollinghurst or Rushdie. Just funny and twee and harmless. They didn’t know who I was yesterday. Now they’re experts. The commentators discuss the lengths authors go to for attention now they have the channels to take control of their own promotion and be responsible for their own content, bypassing a previously successful vetting process by a publicity team, and is that a good thing? The final comment before discussion peters out wonders whether Dickens himself would have been more famous in his lifetime if he’d printed a picture of his Dick[ens] next to installments of The Pickwick Papers, which is a stupid comparison. He was famous in his lifetime. And probably had a massive penis.
I wake up to the same number of followers on Twitter as I did last night but 50 new ‘is now following’ emails. At least I’m gaining at the same rate I’m losing. Which means I’m still losing. Luckily this hasn’t really exploded on my Facebook profile yet, so my family is blissfully unaware of my shortcomings as a man.
It’s not like I’ve been punched. It’s not like it’s been a physical public shaming. These pixels carry weight.
I need to find him. I have to ensure he has no other passwords of mine, work out why he did what he did. I can’t access his Facebook. He hasn’t accepted my too little too late friend request. He’s not obvious on Twitter. I’ve searched through all my followers hoping to spot him but I can’t. He’s a digital ghost all of a sudden. Google searches only bring up me and I drill down to the 20th page, and there’s nothing about him. The only result that comes up is the search for his Facebook page. He obviously doesn’t care about privacy that much, or prospective employees only finding his Facebook during the inevitable Google check.
To the university.
I run to the train station, panting with months and years of inactivity sending my heart rate into conniptions. I flick through a free newspaper, trying to calm myself down, but every word seen burns away on my retina and I take nothing in. I check my phone, knowing there’s no signal in these tunnels. I scroll the screen down to refresh, like a tic, knowing that there’s no reception. I need to be plugged in. I need to know what’s going on. I wonder how our brains function in these short bursts of signal outage. How do the commuting masses cope when their 3G signal drops in and out and they have to either read or listen to music or converse? I’m trembling, desperate to check my Twitter and see if I’ve been replaced by something of actual worth as a literary news story in my little ghetto of the internet, something bigger than my penis. I can’t cope with this black hole of no information.
Arriving at the university, I keep an eye out for Kitab 2. Maybe skulking in doorways, following me, shopping for food. He’s Single Brown Male-ing me.
At the administration office, I ask after him and no one has heard of him. Or me. But that’s fine. It’s not important right now. No one remembers administering medical attention to a passed out single brown male yesterday morning, which makes me wonder whether it happened. I trace our steps back to the stairs leading up to the housing office and look down at the linoleum, hoping for blood traces like I’m a TV detective and this is the crime I need to solve the day before I retire.
I chase the trail up the stairs to the housing office. It’s closed for lunch. I allow myself a Twitter break, plug my phone into an unused electrical socket and sit down on the floor.
Twitter has moved on to Prime Minister’s Question Time and reality television. I am officially yesterday’s news. I break my Twitter silence with a tweet about sitting on linoleum being bad for my piles.
I send it into the ether and click on refresh till I get a reply.
‘Send us a picture of your piles next to your massive bollocks, mate. #themostpointlessnovelistinBritain.’
I sigh and ask him not to flirt with me in public, breaking the cardinal rule of the internet: ‘Do not feed the internet troll’ – whatever sarcastic comment you make they will deconstruct and make you feel stupid within 5 seconds. Don’t even think about it, mate.
‘Why do you want to see my bollocks so much, “mate”?’
‘I don’t. I want you to fuck off and die.’
‘Why don’t you fuck off?’
‘With this witty banter, I’m surprised you haven’t won a Booker.’
During this back and forth, I leave my own body and watch myself from the outside, laughing at my own brilliant putdowns and snorting at his. After 7 minutes of a back and forth, I come to my senses and stop saying anything. I can feel my heart racing. I feel no better than before. No more vindicated or venerated. I’m still the guy who put a picture of my penis on the internet.
I wish Aziz was here. He’d know what to do.
An hour later, a harassed-looking lady with glasses and middle-aged spread opens the door to the housing office, wolfing down the last 2 bites of a sandwich.
‘Yes,’ she says with a voice that says I have 30 seconds to catch her attention.
I decide that asking after Kitab 2 is pointless because bureaucracy’s favourite policy is hiding behind confidentiality. If I ask for Kitab 2’s contact details, I’ll be fobbed off before I finish my query. A 29-second shutdown. That’s what she wants.
I share his name. I have the bankcard to prove it. I channel his accent, which is Americanised Indianised Queen’s English, not too comedy, not too international, and say, ‘Hi, I’m Kitab Balasubramanyam. I wanted to look into perhaps enquiring into my accommodation for the term.’
‘You know term doesn’t start for a week.’
‘I know. I want to know where to send my boxes.’
I realise the mistake I’ve made. If she’s already seen Kitab 2, then maybe she’ll recognise my name. She doesn’t. Not a Twitter follower either then. She’s probably definitely not seen my penis picture.
She sits down at her computer and licks the remnants of pickle off her fingers before logging into her desktop. I thank her and she asks me to spell my name, which I do. She searches. I can’t see the screen. But a warning ‘urrr’ stab keeps sounding through the PC speakers every time she hits ‘Enter’ on the keyboard.
‘Is there a problem?’ I ask, forgetting my accent. She looks up at me and then back at the screen.
‘You’re not a student here.’
‘I’m what?’
‘I don’t have you registered as a student.’
‘But I am a student here. I’ve travelled all the way from Bangalore to be a student here.’
‘Honestly, I have no record of you on the system. Are you sure you’re at the right university?’ She pauses. ‘It happens a lot with foreign students.’
This goes on for a few more minutes, a circular conversation where I qualify my name and she insists she has no record of it. I say my name louder and slower and she insists louder and firmer. Either way, we don’t get anywhere so I thank her for her time and leave the office.
Outside, I retrieve the iPhone I’ve left charging in the wall by accident and sit back down.
Before processing what I’ve just learnt, I check my email, Facebook and Twitter …
I’ve been asked to no longer contribute a short story to an installation at a gallery, one that required 4 hour-long coffees to discuss, as my inappropriate online behaviour makes me less than family friendly. This is £250 for 4 hours of my time I won’t see.
On Twitter, the references to my penis
picture have slowed. People are talking about something else now. Which is fine by me. I want to jump in and have my say on what’s now the water cooler topic but I don’t dare. My fingers try to betray me.
On Facebook, my cousin posts a picture of his baby’s first birthday party, a video of her babbling something incomprehensible but cute. I ‘like’ it. Out of obligation. I ‘like’ a few more things hoping the goodwill will bestow some karma on me.
There is no reply from Kitab 2.
Kitab 2 who doesn’t even go to the university.
I leave the accommodation building and decide to walk along the canal running behind the university buildings back towards the general direction of my flat so I can think.
I remember when Twitter was fun.
*
A couple of weeks after Rach moved out, Aziz took it upon himself to get me to leave the flat. I resisted but he’s one big war of attrition. He wore me down and we spent a night walking the length of the canal looking for adventures. Our mission was to live-tweet the journey and drink as many cans of beer as we could find. I was feeling cavalier with Aziz next to me. I didn’t care how I came across online. We started at 9 o’clock, having decided to embark on this grand journey at 8.50 p.m. instead of going home. We’d gone to the pub for a quiet drink but had forgotten the pub was having its monthly poetry night and thirsty for good times, we decided to bail and do something stupid instead of listen to autumnal turgid couplets.
Along the walk, we saw 17 different graffiti artists, 24 runners, 2 cyclists, 12 homeless people and an arguing couple. No one wanted to talk to us and no one would take us on an adventure. When we walked past a row of occupied canal boats where couples and singles were settling in for the evening, we fantasised that we might accidentally walk in on orgies. Instead we walked in silence the whole time, complaining about the cold and the lack of people to talk to and needing the loo. We’d been together all day and had nothing to say to each other. In lieu of adventures, we decided to make them up. We made up a story about how we had met a series of costumed and cloaked men and women on their way to a houseboat sex party and somehow, because we had a blue plastic bag full of beer cans, we were allowed to come with them. We tweeted about the weird people we came across, the weird made-up people and their priapic expectations for a sexual healing of an evening. We made up horny housewives, impotent bankers who liked to watch, and Gary – everyone’s mate Gary who loved doing everything and thought everything was well funny, in a proper Essex accent, like ‘that’s well funny’ because everything was well funny. And he was going along for some sexy shits and giggles. We had a lot of fun doing it and it probably caught the imagination of 5 people who kept asking us weird things to ask the weird people we’d made up we were with. We soon became the mystique of the evening. Real life didn’t matter as much as the claim of a life better than the one everyone else was having, i.e., pressing refresh on Twitter instead of talking or absorbing or having adventures of their own. We had the smugness of being 2 people who were inventing a life more interesting than a life spent on Twitter, on Twitter.
We then tried to live-tweet a bank robbery. But after people started tweeting us stay safe tips, alerting media tweeters and worrying about us, the game was up. It had lost its thrill.
Walking back home along the canal today, I get a pang of homesickness. I’m alone. I have to come up with solutions myself. I don’t have Aziz around to advise me, tell me the wrongest thing to do in order to make the right one seem so clear. The canal looks nothing like our inventions and when I get home, I trawl through his old blogs, emails and texts, hoping there’ll be a message from the past telling me what to do and how to do it, and then I’ll know what the right thing to do is.
I get distracted by how much trouble he appears to be in. I phone him and it goes to voicemail. He hasn’t changed his voicemail since he was 14. I’m doing the backing vocals. ‘Yo-yo-yo-yo it’s Aziz [one time]. I’m busy killin’ em softly [2 time]. Leave a message [one time].’
aZiZWILLKILLYOU episode 9 Aziz vs Guys Who Wanna Change Your Life
[posted 14 September, 14:09]
Bob was an intense dude. You’d best describe him as a cop on the edge, a maverick who played by his own rules, a red-faced sizzled douchebag. He had terrible pockmarks and dirty fingernails – the hallmarks of a deviant. He had no swag. Teddy Baker called him his ‘favourite motherfucking city-dwelling redneck’. I shook his hand and Bob just kinda nodded at me. Teddy Baker ushered us out of the bar and we went into the flat above it. Inside it was this empty exposed floorboard crack den chic kinda place where there was no furniture, only a sofa and a chair and a mattress that all looked like they’d been at the business end of a stream of piss. ‘Right on,’ I said. And they both laughed. Inside the flat – sorry, the apartment – was cold and empty. No one lived here. But Teddy Baker walked over to the cupboard by the door and opened it. Inside there were 3 long costumes hanging up. He grabbed them and threw one to me.
‘Put that on,’ he said. I asked what it was. ‘You’ll see,’ he said and winked.
He stripped down to his meat and stood in front of me, cock swinging for all to see. Let me tell you homeys, right? If Aziz is the guy with the ample length to arm himself with a billy club then this guy has a weapon of mass ejaculation down his pants. He pulled at it and I was thinking, what the hell is this place? Some kind of weird swingers doggers furries bears circle jerk empty flat? Was I about to get myself killed? Now, peoples, you know I don’t mind a bit of stranger danger but this is weird. He started putting on his outfit and it was an all-in-one wetsuit spandex monstrosity. It was black and grey with silver shoulder blades, and … yes, a cape.
‘Are you about to murder me, Teddy Baker?’ I asked. Bob and Teddy Baker looked at each other, then towards me and laughed their cocks off, both swinging in my direction.
‘No, dude. We’re not going to murder you.’
‘Coulda did that in the bar,’ man of few words, Bob, said.
‘Tonight you join us in the fight for justice. We need numbers.’
‘You guys crime-fighters or something?’ I’ve read comics. I know the ruckus. They both nodded sheepishly, like they were ashamed of it. Crime-fighter Aziz, I think. Fuck it. I’ve been fighting crime since I was a youth. Might as well do it properly. I stripped down to my meat.
‘You can keep your boxers on if you want,’ Bob said. ‘Teddy here likes to swing free.’
‘Yeah,’ Teddy Baker said. ‘You haven’t lived life if you haven’t kicked a purse snatcher in the face with your big balls flying through the air.’
‘What if someone whacks you in the nuts?’ I asked. They both shrugged.
As I slipped my spandex costume over Big Aziz, I realised there was protective padding around the nuts. I was a bit unhappy cos my suit is mostly gold sequins. I looked like an Egyptian god.
‘What’s your handles?’ I asked.
‘Like what?’ Bob said. Dude was so aggressive.
‘Like your superhero names?’
‘This ain’t a comic book, buddy,’ Bob said. ‘I’m Bob. He’s Teddy. You’re ZZ.’
‘Aziz.’
‘Whatever.’
‘Yeah, dude,’ Teddy Baker said, coming back from the mirror in the bathroom. ‘We’re just fighting on the side of righteousness so we don’t hide behind any names.’
‘Oh, okay. Why is my costume so gold?’
‘That’s for our lady, Mika. She’s this Japanese student who studies Egyptology. That’s her suit.’
‘Where is she tonight? Dead? In the hospital?’
‘Nah, dude. Period pains. Women eh?’
For the record, #azizlovesallwomen. I ain’t down with all that subjugation talk.
My costume, made for a Japanese student, kinda groaned around the Aziz bulk. It was properly tight. Even with the protective padding, you could make out every vein and contour on Big Aziz, which was cool if purse snatchers were fit. But they were probably just idiots with beanie hats
. Not my style.
Once we were suited up, Teddy passed round some camouflage paint to wear on our faces. ‘Aren’t I brown enough?’ I said. They both nodded.
‘Where you from?’ Bob asked, like it would be a problem whatever I said, unless I said the Good ol’ US of A.
‘I’m from England,’ I said.
‘I know where you live,’ he said. ‘But where you from?’
‘Oh. London.’
‘Not India. Taliban?’
‘Nah, mate. Hindu.’
‘So, Muslim.’
‘Fucking hell, you really don’t know the rest of the world, do you, chief?’
Bob stared at me hoping I’d explain the difference but I let it hang and turned to Teddy Baker.
‘You look Indian, Teddy. How come? Swarthy parents?’
Teddy Baker looked up and rushed towards me, trying to grab me by the neck but Aziz knows self-defence so I batted him away and put up my dukes.
‘No one asks about my parents,’ he said. ‘No one.’
‘Yeah, cool, man. No worries.’
What a strange and mysterious reaction. He’s got issues there. In the last 24 hours, though, I’d added him on Facebook and when he accepted me, I went through all his friends and family. He had his whole family listed there. His sisters Rita and Anita, and his mum wrote ‘lol x’ on every status he made and his dad worked for a hospital. The things you can find out online, eh? His mum’s name was Rupa and his dad’s name was Tim. I think I get it.
Now we were suited up, we all looked at ourselves in the mirror and despite the stinky atmosphere – not only was it awkward, but it smelt of dead cat faeces in this place – we all looked suitably bad-ass.
We headed out into the night.
And what adventures we had, dear reader. You have no fucking idea. Here’s a spoiler though: Bob remains a douchebag throughout.
There are 15 comments for this blog:
df325: Wow, Aziz, you are the coolest.
KJAYSAYYAY: Dude, this is amazing. I knew you were a superhero.
Gogo Girl 322: Aziz, What DId You Guys Do?
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