Meatspace (11 page)

@hayleyspen: ‘Great reading with @kitab last night. He’s possibly the nicest guy I’ve met.’

I don’t feel very nice.

I tweet: ‘I met myself last night.’

I delete it. It doesn’t make any sense. I try: ‘I met my only namesake last night. Now I know how Dave Gorman feels.’

I delete that. It’s a pretty English reference. I need to be international in my tone. I try: ‘I met my only namesake last night. He’s the most Indian person I know. He’s brown Kitab. I am coconut Kitab. #50shadesofkitab’

I’m happy with that.

I scroll down through my tweets. I go back as far as the days my book came out and I was on it, tweeting bloggers, reviewers, readers, anyone who might be interested. That was my heyday of excitement. I’d been waiting my entire life for that book to come out and then it did and it felt exactly the same as before. Now what? I thought. So I tweeted everyone I could, trying to get their attention. I replied to anyone who said they were reading. I told book bloggers they’d love it. Hardly anyone tweeted me back. No one likes a showboat.

The first thing I’d tweeted that day was ‘Suddenly, everything has changed’ with a link to a Flaming Lips song.

Kitab 2 is unpacking his suitcase when I walk past his opened door the next morning, in just my boxer shorts, a pup tent of morning glory dangerously, perilously close to a wide reveal. I can see Aziz’s wardrobe open. I knock on the door and he looks out at me.

‘Hey dude,’ he says in an accent that sounds like he’s trying his hardest not to sound like he’s from Bangalore.

‘What you doing there, buddy?’

‘Just unpacking, dude. I hate being in a suitcase. What is all these things? Your t-shirts? They look too small for you.’

‘No. My brother. Aziz. He’s back in a week. Seriously. What are you doing there, buddy?’

‘You have lots of photographs of him as a kid. Hey man, where are your family from?’

‘Gujarat.’

‘I knew it! Me too! My dad only moved to Bangalore for a job. Where in Gujarat?’

‘Ahmedabad. Seriously, man … what are you doing?’

‘Come on, man … let’s get a bacon sausage fry. I’m from Ahmedabad too!’

‘Kitab, I said one night. Last night was one night. You can’t stay here again.’

Kitab 2 stops refolding a pink dress shirt and looks at me with a quivering bottom lip. I use this opportunity to go to the toilet.

I spend more time than I need to in the toilet, sitting on the bowl, trying to work out the nicest way to tell him I have things to do so he should leave. But then I start to wonder, if I just sit still and not move and not make any sound in here, maybe he will just get the message and go.

Kitab 2 says ‘sh’ when it should be an ‘s’ and vice versa. Sushi is pronounced Shu-see. He starts every sentence with ‘But-aaaaa’, and he calls me ‘Kithaaaabuh’.

I try to find the most comfortable way to sit still with bare butt cheeks on toilet seat but the squeaky floorboard underneath my foot lets out a wood fart and I freeze.

‘Kitab!’ I hear Kitab 2 shout from somewhere within my flat. I don’t answer. I will not answer. ‘What’s the wi-fi password?’

Wi-fi password? Why does he need the wi-fi password? Maybe to find a hotel or somewhere to stay. Last night, as we walked home, I’d asked what he was doing in the UK.

‘I moved here to study.’

‘Ahhh cool, where are you studying?’

‘Over at Queen Mary University. In East London.’

‘Nice. What are you doing?’

‘Just carrying on my degree.’

‘Cool, what was that in?’

‘I want to design computer games one day,’ he said firmly, and we walked in silence. He was being evasive.

‘You play a lot of computer games?’

‘All the time, man. I’m a master at
Call of Duty
.’

‘I don’t really like them.’

‘What? You seem like you would love them. I mean, they’re so cool. How you pretend to be other people and go and explore universes and see from other people’s points of view …’

‘… kinda like books,’ I said.

‘And kill zombies and Muslims and time jump onto other planets …’

‘So where are you meant to be staying?’

‘In the dormitories but they are closed till next week. We booked the wrong flight. Silly Dad.’

‘And you don’t have any relatives here?’

‘No. All in India. Or Canada. I have an uncle in Australia but he’s a horse trainer.’

‘No family in England? You’re a Gujarati with no family in England?’ Kitab 2 shook his head. ‘That sounds impossible. Every Gujarati has a distant uncle in Harrow, Wembley, Birmingham or Leicester. That’s why they still exist as places.’

We arrived at my flat and I showed him in. When he entered, he dropped his suitcase and spun around, arms outstretched, like there was a camera above him, filming in slow motion, his ecstatic joy at having attained nirvana.

‘This is the coolest place, dude,’ he said before setting about touching everything, from my stack of articles I’ll most likely never re-read on the kitchen table, to Aziz’s gun controller for his Wii – the one he pestered me to buy for us both and the one he hasn’t played since the end of his first month of owning it – to my books. He kept pulling out my books and not replacing them properly, wearing the wide-eyed grin of a vacant child. I followed him around, watching him be stunned by the simple household life of 2 bachelors who understood basic hygiene and the need to provide for oneself but also liked to drink and watch television in the most luxurious way possible.

Kitab 2 looked at me and said, ‘Dude, you’re like my idol.’

‘Are you drunk?’

‘I don’t drink, dude. No way. Look at you. All this freedom. All these things. What’s this about?’ He pulled out an erotica photography book of Aziz’s, pushing some postcards to the floor. I ignored him.

All this is flooding back to me now, piecemeal reminders of how the rest of my night unfolded. I remember him asking me to buy him cigarettes, which I refused, because he didn’t have any money and I didn’t want to waste my own. I remember him asking for different sheets as Aziz’s hadn’t been cleaned that week. I remember him clearing his sinuses of phlegm and mucus so loudly, you could hear the neighbours retching. We were all in the back of his throat and in the outer perimeters of his nose with him as he hack-hack-hack HAKKKKKKT up something disgusting and fully formed into my sink. I’d checked my email for word from Aziz, nothing. I checked his blog. Nothing. He was probably fine.

And then I’d put Kitab 2 to bed, leaving the door half open so he would feel too embarrassed to wank himself to sleep. Then I went to bed.

‘Why do you need the wi-fi? Need to look up a hotel to stay in?’ I shout back.

‘No, dude. Just checking my email. I found it. “69duuuude” you are so funny. Bill and Ted. Excellent.’

I remembered – Aziz put a sticker with the wi-fi password on his headboard one night, so girls staying over could treat themselves to a Facebook status update if they woke up before him.

I flush the toilet and boxer up. I tie a towel around my bottom half and leave the bathroom with my aggressive arms folded and a pursed brow.

‘Kitab,’ I say and he looks up from his computer where he is either looking up porn or a medical condition. The skin contours are unmistakable. The actual shapes aren’t. ‘Kitab, I’m really sorry but I have a busy day today so I can’t hang out, so you need to get going to your next place you’re staying, if you don’t mind, mate. Sorry – deadlines.’ I punch my hip in frustration that I am not being firm. I’m being ‘nice’. Since when were nice guys able to extract strangers from their house without a conflagration?

Deadline – what a joke. Empty pages await.

‘What? Dude, I thought I was staying here …’

‘No, you didn’t. Kitab, I told you, like, 400 times, one night only.’

‘I know. But then I thought you’d get to know me and it would be fine. One week. Only one week. Till halls. Please?’

‘Mate, we’ve been asleep for 8 hours. When would I get a chance to get to know you?’

‘I haven’t got anywhere to go, dude.’

‘It doesn’t matter anyway …’ I say, hoping he gets the message, that I’m not interested.

‘How similar do you think we are, dude?’ Kitab 2 stretches himself out on Aziz’s bed.

‘What?’

‘I mean, I don’t like bread, or jazz. I like video games. I hate my dad. He’s a
pudu
…’ When Kitab 2 says
pudu
, his neck oscillates so violently, it looks like it might snap.

‘What’s a
pudu
?’

‘It’s a word I made up, dude. It means arsehole.’

‘Why not just say arsehole?’

‘It’s a disgusting word … So, dude … I love girls. I love the blonde ones, I love the black ones, I love the brown-haired ones. I kinda like the Indian ones … but the ones I love the most are the redheaded ones … What about you?’

I don’t know if Kitab 2 knows this but redheads are the elixir of the Indian male. We’re drawn to the fieriness. Maybe it’s because old men stain their hair red with henna when they go grey to appear more youthful, and these girls remind us of that. Maybe it’s the freckles and alabaster skin, the ginger of the hair – the exact opposite end of the spectrum to us. Maybe it’s because it’s the whitest you can get, and secretly, we all want to date white girls … but redheads are our lifeblood of crushes. We have no success with them though.

‘I like a redhead.’

‘I knew it, dude. Peas in a pod. Have you ever had sex with a redhead?’

‘Look, Kitab, let’s not … okay?’

‘Please, tell me … I mean, you’re my doppelganger. If you can, maybe I can.’

‘I think we should find you a hotel, my friend.’

Kitab 2 looks sad and horny all at once. It’s as confusing to watch as it probably is to feel.

‘Sorry, Kitab, listen … I have a really busy day. Let’s … go, okay?’

There’s a look in his eyes that makes me hesitate. Like the final cute-but-pathetic doe-eyed stare into the oblivion of death of a puppy that’s been shot point blank. But with some coaxing and the directions to a budget hotel, 50 pounds taken from Aziz’s ‘cash in hand’ stash and an endless stream of apologies, I get Kitab 2 to leave. I watch from my window and he must linger in the hallway for 20 minutes hoping I’ll let him back in because it takes about that long for him to appear outside.

I sit down on the sofa and think, I am such an arsehole. Hayley’s a fool. I’m not nice. I’m a
pudu.

I scratch my tattoo to see if it’ll hum me a song to cheer me up. Instead I get the coarse burn of a rash flaring up.

The rest of my day is a write-off.

aZiZWILLKILLYOU episode 7 Aziz vs Prey
[posted 13 September, 12:23]

Mission accomplished, my friends.

I was like James Bond.

This morning after waking up and going to get a really early coffee and bagel from the bodega next door to my hotel, I came back to my room and dressed myself up to look like the one of Teddy Baker in his avi. I put on the same tank top, some dark blue jeans and my aviators. It wasn’t even warm out, family. It was freezing. But I did this for you. Now, the guy’s a freelance graphic designer or something so I assumed he’d be working from home all day BUT, everyone in New York goes out for every meal, of this much we can be sure, isn’t that what Seinfeld and Friends and Sex and the Motherfucking City have told us? They have fridges to chill bottles of mineral water and the odd condiment.

I walked down the street towards Teddy Baker’s apartment building and I waited outside. Just leaning against a lamp post. Nonchalant. Nothing going on. Just hanging. Just waiting.

Teddy Baker walked out of his building onto his stoop and stood there, lingering in the day trying to work out what was awaiting him or what he wanted for breakfast or whether he should go for a shit first? I dunno, either way, the man paused and looked around. I skipped into action and struck the pose: hands on hips, shit-eating grin, sunglasses on. I was still bothered by how much this guy looks like me. And another thing, what’s a brown brother doing with a milk bottle name? Comedy racism, you love it, white people. I love you. You’re the only ones who get me. Why is this obvious desi called Teddy Baker? He sounds like a suit.

So, I stood there for a good 10 seconds or something, which felt like a long time to be stood out in the street with your hands on your hips modelling an amazing tattoo in a wife-beater in early autumn, sorry, The Fall. But I did it. I did it for you. Finally Teddy Baker walked down the steps and at the same eye level, he noticed me. He circled me. He walked around me slowly and placed his fingers on his chin, like that would help him work out exactly what was going on. I was a human statue. Of you, Teddy Baker. Of you.

‘Holy shit, is this a 3-D painting?’ he asked. I don’t know who he’s asking, it’s just him and me.

‘Nah, mate. It’s me, Aziz. I believe you’re my doppelganger.’

Teddy Baker, into it, smiled. ‘Wait, doesn’t that make you my doppelganger?’

‘Why can’t you be my doppelganger?’

‘Cos you’re my doppelganger.’

‘And you’re mine.’

‘Teddy Baker.’

‘I know. I’m Aziz. Pleased to meet you.’

I held out my hand to the brother. He grabbed me and gave me the biggest bear hug in the fucking world, like we were twins or some shit.

Wait, what if we’re twins? Long lost twins. Kitab would be freaked if there were 2 of us.

‘Wanna come to breakfast?’ he asked me.

You KNOW what I thought? Double breakfast day. I said yes. But first, I asked him to pull down his t-shirt and show me the tattoo. We bow tie tatt-bumped, innit.

He started walking me down the street and wanted to know what’s going on, why I’d turned up on his doorstep with his tattoo. I told him the whole story, about discussing new tattoo ideas with my bro Kitab, about Googling for bow tie tattoos, about finding him on the image search and about being so amazed that I just had to come and meet him as soon as possible to see how similar we were. It’s not often you get to meet your doppelganger. I was well chuffed. He talks with that very clear and booming American voice that you can pinpoint in any bustling room and hear every single word. He talks very clear, never stutters or anything. It’s amazing. It’s like an episode of Law and Order. He’s like John Barrowman. But actually American.