Friction (10 page)

Oh, this is the young survivor, thinks Rebecca, as she watches the colour fade from Justin's cheeks. This may indeed be my young survivor. She looks around the club. It's full now, naked girls twisting like pale ribbons above starving men. She takes Justin's drink and takes a large gulp. Is that brain? No, no it can't be.

‘You want to understand yourself, understand your mind and your sex?' she asks, wiping a thin line of milk from her top lip. Justin nods, not sure entirely what she means and wrestling with a sudden and overwhelming desire to piss.

‘Justin,' Rebecca continues, ‘I want to understand your sexual desire.' Registering the lack of reaction on Justin's face, Rebecca leans forward and slaps him lightly across each cheek, whispering, ‘I want to know what you think about my tits.'

Rebecca spots her own project at work within Justin's idea. Sexuality, and how the fuck it can be figured out. Is Justin trying to understand how the sexual instinct slots into personality? Is he trying to work out how sex glides into our civilised, considered existence? Perhaps, but he's also jiggling his leg frantically under the table. At length, the lids of his eyes rise. He stares at Rebecca with a look of frightening possibility.

‘I don't want a girlfriend,' says Justin.

‘I don't want a boyfriend,' says Rebecca.

Am I a prostitute? thinks Rebecca. Is this how it happens? Justin takes out his wallet and hands Rebecca another twenty-pound note. The bar is really filling up, there are no girls loitering about at the back where he's sitting any more, it's just him and Rebecca. He feels extremely tired, as if he's done too much and can't even remember what he's thinking any more.

‘What do you reckon? I'll give you my number and you call me when you need me. Then I'll see how I feel about it, see what I can do. For money.' As she's saying this, Rebecca begins to wonder what it is exactly she can do, and why it is she's offering to do anything in the first place. In any case, Justin might be a serial killer. Or this might already be his fetish; getting girls to partake in grand sexual schemes under the banner of social emancipation.

‘I won't shit in your mouth, Justin. Really, I won't shit in your mouth,' she says, as a way distancing herself a little, curbing her enthusiasm.

‘Yes, I know,' says Justin, wearily, wondering what his mum would make of all this, then eventually deciding she'd be jealous. He watches, his faced scribbled out by drink, as Rebecca writes her name and number down on a piece of paper. She's feeling annoyed and excited by the situation, intrigued by his presence and the potential sorcery she senses in him. But she's infuriated by his fuzzy thinking and by the fact he's fucked.

‘Are you Dostoevsky?' she says quietly, more to herself than to him. It's nine-thirty and she has a reasonable stint of nudity to get through. Justin didn't even hear the question, too frozen and pissed. Rebecca feels Marcus's hand on her shoulder. She looks up and he gestures towards a group of bright-red boys in nylon tracksuits of blue and
green. Justin has fallen forwards, his forehead glued to the table. Two bouncers take him by each of his arms and lift him out of his chair. As Justin is dragged from the Nude Factory, Rebecca feels fingers the texture of denim drawing circles on her arse. They are just able to hear each other through the loud and terrible atmosphere.

‘I like your tits, Rebecca. I really like your tits!' calls Justin.

‘OK, handsome. OK!' she replies.

IF JOHNNY WAS
somehow blessed with magical powers, like if he could see through time and space and be aware of everything, then he'd know that as he watches a football match on TV, Rebecca is walking around a bar in stilettos, panties and bra. But as it is, he's powerless. He's got no idea where Rebecca gets all her money from; how she affords her books, her trips to Moscow, her theatre tickets and her regular restaurant lunches. Maybe she has a job, he thinks. Or just parents, perhaps. Johnny, corpse-like, sits on the couch in his house on Kingswood Road, Fallowfield.

Football is one star in a strange cultural constellation that appears as the sun sets on the twentieth century. It shines brightly. Celebrity, cinema, television, fashion and certain genres of music are united with football to comprise a new and strange cultural constellation. They all shine so brightly you can barely distinguish one star from another. The effect is a powerful and blinding white light; pyrotechnics, special effects.

Most people are kidding themselves. Reality is something that flashes. Disbelief is what makes money. The modern world is utterly unbelievable. It just can't be true. Images of the naked, the happy and the upset float like ghosts in our fields of vision. They are sustained by our blinking eyes. It's like staring straight into the sun and then trying to look at something normal and real. Then finding you can't see it properly because of the bright white light, left by the sun, in front of your eyes.

Johnny isn't the least bit interested in football. He can't detect any beauty in the passing, the movement or the flair. It constantly eludes him. He's shocked and confused when his contemporaries oooh and ahhh at a long shot or a seemingly uncomplicated succession of passes.

‘Oh my God, I forgot about the fugging game!'

This is Zakir, Johnny's housemate. He bursts into the living room from the kitchen with an oily fish slice in his hand. Zakir is an exchange student from Delhi, here for a year studying politics and economics. ‘What's the fuggin' score, Johnny?' shouts Zakir, waving the fish slice and splashing Johnny with painful drops of hot oil.

‘It's nil–nil, Johnny, it's fuggin nil–nil, thank God.'

Zakir sits on the edge of the sofa leaning forward at the television. Johnny estimates that about an inch of Zakir's arse is in touch with the sofa. Incredible. Zakir has the eyes of a B-movie zombie when he watches football. Johnny likes to sit and count how long it takes him to blink, sometimes it's minutes. Apart from believing that it's perfectly OK to say ‘fucking', or ‘fuggin', in every sentence he says, Zakir is virtually invincible. He doesn't smoke. Doesn't drink. Studies for at least four hours a night. Cooks often and splendidly. Never spends money frivolously. Even manages
to work two days a week and send regular letters and gifts back to India.

During the six months that they've shared the house on Kingswood Road, Johnny has watched Zakir like a hawk. It has been his obsession to find weakness in him. Just a moment of melancholy, a hint of despair. A sigh, a tear, a crack. But so far, nothing. He got angry at the news once when it was something to do with Kashmir, but Johnny found no fault in that. It was caring, pleasantly patriotic and it looked cool to get angry at the news. The closest he came to sexual frustration was when he roared Miss India to victory in the Miss World competition. But this was disappointing, too. He did seem to find her attractive, but also seemed to genuinely empathise with her call for peace, global friendship and religious tolerance. ‘Very, very clever and beautiful girl, don't you think, Johnny? It is so good for India, too. I'm so proud, really fuggin proud.'

Johnny has come to the conclusion that the English are fucked as a race. Everyone else seems invincible, and the English really do seem ignorant, inane, lazy and obese. He knows that Rebecca agrees with him and blames the impact of American cultural and economic hegemony. The Americanisation of earth and space. Johnny doesn't like to agree. He prefers to take the piss out of the anti-American attitude that dominates the world from the 1970s onwards. It's everywhere by now, rife, a very popular hatred. Most people have issues with the land of the free. Modes of rebellion range from blowing oneself up in public places to experiencing an awkward guilt while watching US comedy.

In the presence of Zakir, Johnny feels weak. The same is true when he's with Germans, Spaniards and Japs. It feels as if their brains aren't bleeding like his does, like ours do.
Like they haven't been damaged by the same attacks of information, colours, pressures and needs. Foreigners aren't great at telling jokes, but they are often laughing. Naturally happy. Slapping each other on the back, having coffee, talking politics in an entire rainbow of languages. Bastards. Why isn't Zakir's brain chasing itself out of his head, like mine is? thinks Johnny. How is he immune to the detritus that owns me? The petty thoughts and obligations: women, youth and happiness?

‘Are you OK, Johnny?' asks Zakir, gripping the fish slice, eyes on the pitch.

They haven't really become friends. In the beginning it looked as though they might, but it fizzled. Friendship hit a wall at women, fun and alcohol. They found themselves culturally estranged.

‘Yeh, I'm OK. I've got a bit of woman trouble, that's all.'

‘Oh I see. Strange fuggin creatures, Johnny, never to be understood.'

Maybe, thinks Johnny, it's all just a question of etiquette and convention. Maybe Zakir thinks it's improper to display any kind of weakness, base emotion or sexual frustration, unlike we who have been tutored in the ways of an open, ugly heart and amplified misery. Zakir's not blind, though. His brain must ripple and react in some way at the sight of Lucy's bust. He must notice the magazines. Something must occur.

‘I'm going to get some beers, Zakir. Would you like something from the shop?' Johnny gets up and leaves Zakir glued to the television.

‘Oh no, I'm fine thank you, Johnny, fuggin brilliant match.'

Johnny takes his dreadful anorak from a peg in the hall.
He peers through a layer of dust at his reflection in a mirror. Is this it, me? Just remind me, how long is life again? Jesus. The front door slams behind him.

It's dark now, and cold. Johnny walks at speed with his shoulders hunched, overtaking the occasional battalion of boozers that cross his path. They're en route to the bars and clubs of Fallowfield. With each set of girls and boys that Johnny approaches and overtakes, he is more and more struck by the formal agreement that seems to have taken place regarding fabric, cut and shape.

The boys are like toys. Bright, simple clothes. Silly little quiffs gelled into the front of their hair. Each of them subjected to the homogenising forces of money, culture and sport. And the girls, well. Beyond the chronically obese, all girls look beautiful from twenty yards.

Johnny is wearing a fairly decent pair of jeans and a jumper made of thin wool. The collar of his shirt pokes out the neck of his jumper; pale blue and navy blue combine to create something sensible, smart and attractive for the female gaze. It's Johnny's frame that is his undoing, all long limbs and unattractive stooping. He walks down Ladybarn Lane and turns right. He's on his way to a corner shop. I haven't made it clear, because of all the talk about fashion and how it makes people look the same, but Johnny is very sad and feeling a little daring. He's going to do something rather reckless and desperate.

He pushes open the heavy door. The shop is small. The owner is down at the back stacking some new products on to the shelves. ‘Hello!' she calls to Johnny. She is small, round and Asian. Her voice has a quiver to it. When she speaks it sounds as if she might be trying to sing.

‘Hello,' says Johnny, as he makes the short journey from
the doorway to the magazine rack. Lucy's here too, staring out from the cover of the magazine. Fingers over nipples, airbrushed tits, buy me, you bastard, you horny little shit. No, Lucy, thinks Johnny. You're a little too conservative for my and Zakir's needs. I'm afraid we need the kind of kick up the arse that you and your sterile poses simply don't offer. He smiles to himself, he's enjoying this. This really feels like living, he thinks. His eyes scroll up the shelves of bright media to the hardcore pornography on the top shelf.

He's not familiar with the titles, so he's not sure which ones he's going to buy. When his eyes finally register the simple blues, reds and yellows of the pornos, his mouth dries and his nerves begin to fray. He can't make out the words. He can just see sections of women's bodies: arms, tits and face. In the end, he reaches up and grips two magazines at once. Without looking at them and with a techno heart, he takes them over to the counter.

‘Just give me one second,' the shopkeeper sings, presumably unaware of the nature of his purchase. I can't wait to see her face, thinks Johnny. Will it be judgemental or simply blasé? She does sell the things, for fuck's sake. I wonder if she has any religious faith. Muslim or whatever. Fantastic. He looks down at the counter and discovers he's bought a magazine called
Razzle
and a magazine called
Just 18
. The cover of the latter has a picture of a young girl wearing what looks like the kind of underwear an adolescent might wear: simple and white. She's also wearing a pair of childish pink socks. Covering up her stomach is a caption that reads, ‘I've been naughty, fuck me like a dog and cum on my back.' Johnny genuinely doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. He breathes deeply as he notices, out of the corner of his eye, the shopkeeper clambering to her feet.

Rattle! Yes. There is a rattle behind him, oh God, the door. Johnny's head turns in a flash – something is trying to get through the fucking door. Something's trying to get in the shop. Oh crap. This shop is normally dead. The door opens halfway, then it stops. Whatever this creature is, it must be extremely weak, it can barely push the door open. Shit. This is a nightmare. Johnny wants porn, but not an audience to watch him buy it. He takes a large gasp of air into his lungs; it feels like a drawing pin is being stuck into his Adam's apple.

‘Wait there, Mrs . . . wait there, I'm coming.'

Bollocks. The shopkeeper is running towards the door to help the creature into the shop. Why would she do this? I should have fucking advertised this, jokes Johnny to himself, his thoughts oscillating wildly between excruciating embarrassment and a kind of arrogant self-belief. The creature is human. Johnny can just make out a hand and part of an arm. It's an old lady, wow, a very old lady, she might be dying, no, just old. Jesus, she must be at least three hundred years old, thinks Johnny, giddy, drugged by the excitement and the abnormality. The shopkeeper guides the old woman into the shop then squeezes past her on the way to the counter. The old woman's skin looks like beige velvet. It hangs from her like a macabre flesh drape. She looks like the kind of substance that could be scooped and poured.