Meatspace (14 page)

Kitab 2 takes my book and signs the wrong page. He signs the blank end leaf at the front, and not the title page. This is not author industry standard. Hayley taught me this. You’re supposed to cross out your name and write underneath it. He does it all wrong but she doesn’t seem to know the difference.

‘How long did it take you to write the book?’ she asks. Kitab 2 looks up at her and then me.

‘Years,’ he says. ‘Lots of years. But it was worth every word.’ He smiles and hands the book back to her.

‘I want to write a book,’ she says.

‘Good. You should.’

‘Any advice?’

Watching this all from my side of the fence makes me realise what a phoney I sound like whenever I do ‘advice’. Sometimes I co-opt Amis and say ‘Get it finished.’ If someone asks me for advice, I’ve been known to say, ‘Don’t ask for permission.’ If anyone asks me where I get my ideas from, I say, ‘Life gives us nuggets everyday. Whether we choose to make them chicken or gold is up to us.’

I’m not very good at talking about writing. I’m not that well-read. I’ve never read Joyce and I’ve never finished anything by Dickens. My favourite book was turned into a film starring Brad Pitt. Kitab 2 can have all this. Maybe
he
can not squander it. All he has to do is earnestly enjoy the attention, instead of wondering all the time why his peers are doing better than him, like me. He can just enjoy the ride.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t need the competition.’ He is smooth, I think to myself. I tap him on the shoulder as she bites her lip in appreciation of the sound bite, and gesture him on. He says his goodbyes. I nod at the girl and we walk on. I make us cross the street so we can avoid an awkward same side of the street goodbye. I’m a little gutted that the first time I see someone reading my book in public I don’t have the guts to take credit for it, but it’s still amazing. My heart does a little extra pound from pride that makes me sweat. I smile as she walks away. I am somebody, I think. Go me.

‘Does that happen to you a lot, dude? Wow,’ Kitab 2 says, hitting me on my arm.

‘Hardly ever, man.’

‘It’s like electricity.’

‘Yeah, it can make your head swell.’

‘I know. I like it. Kitab the writer. I like that too. I really liked that. I liked that a lot.’

‘You should write a book then,’ I say.

‘Write a book? I like that.’

Kitab 2 says ‘I like that’ a lot. But he makes it sound like someone’s said a zinger and he appreciates it. Like, ‘I … like … thaaaaaaaaaat.’ He has said it about my shower, about Aziz’s mint shower gel, about the tea I made for him and about an email he received this morning, the contents of which were never revealed.

The university is anonymously located in and amongst some estate buildings. It overlooks the river and once you’re on campus, it feels like a calm enclave, miles away from the through-road to the east of the city and the rows of chicken shops.

We follow signs for the administration office. Despite the lack of term being in session, students on their theses and dissertations amble about smoking, talking on phones, dressed down for the off-season. I spot 3 pairs of tracksuit bottoms and a questionable pyjama ensemble as we pass the library. In the hub of buildings where teachings happen, there is a zombie apocalypse of quiet. The reception building has its doors open and we walk up the steps into it. There’s a statue of an old queen, overseeing administration for the campus. Inside, there are 2 members of staff looking perplexed at computer screens. Everything is quiet. I feel self-conscious breaking the atmosphere of concentration so ‘ahem’ my arrival. Both of the perplexed receptionists look up. One smiles. The other notes us and returns to his computer screen. The smiling one has the pulse and fizz of someone who is doing something tedious and is happy for the interruption.

‘Hi,’ she says.

‘Hey there,’ I reply.

‘And how can I help you today?’

‘Hey, so this guy here, he’s enrolled in your university. He’s starting next week. But he hasn’t got anywhere to stay yet. When is the earliest he can move into his halls?’

Once the receptionist has realised this is someone else’s department she points us in the direction of the housing office. I walk and Kitab 2 follows, looking around at his new place of education.

‘Dude,’ he says, in a reverential hushed tone. ‘We shouldn’t bother them. Maybe I just stay with you? Yes?’ Kitab 2’s body language has changed. He’s hunched, his constant fidgets are more nervous.

‘Look, Kitab,’ I say. ‘I’m not being funny but I don’t open my house to strangers. I’ve done it twice for you already. You’re not my problem, man. You need to get on with your own stuff.’

‘Kitab, I ask only for your kindness. You see, I saw in your eyes, your kindness. You are a kind man who can help me. I have nowhere to go for one week and I don’t want to make a fuss. I want only to stay somewhere I can call home. I miss home so much. Please can you help me miss home less. I am no trouble. No problem. Please. I am scared. This is a strange country. You are like me, no? Same-same? Parents from the same place. Please? I ask you.’

‘No. I’m really sorry, man.’

‘I can make bad trouble for you.’

‘Excuse me?’

Kitab 2 touches his finger to his nose and finds blood oozing out slowly. He looks at it and then at me and before we can process what’s happening to him, his eyes roll up and back and he falls to the floor. A trickle of blood slithers from his nose.

aZiZWILLKILLYOU episode 8 Aziz vs the Bad Guys
[posted 14 September, 13:06]

My children, I am one of the 1% of people who has kicked someone’s ass in the name of righteousness. Take that in your face and smoke it like a crack pipe, bankers.

You are now the 99%.

Look, politics – whatever. Be nice to everyone and everyone will be nice back and if you ever do a fuckery, you will find yourself at the wrong end of an Aziz ass-kicking one day, truss.

Aziz Will Kill You. Get that tattooed on your arm and look at it everyday. Because it is the truest thing that’s ever been said. Except ‘We were on a break’ by Ross to Rachel.

#teamdrgeller

What’s all this politics got to do with my special status as kicker of asses? Well, I’ll tell you, man. I am ALIVE right now. I went to visit Teddy Baker at his house last night. He met me outside and he was acting weird. He was flinchy and nervy. Like he had a bomb strapped to his chest. You know … flinchy. Like a flinch. He had a gym bag with him and a long raincoat, like he was going to go and expose himself to a bus stop full of girls and the bag was full of whips, chains and dildos in case shit went off. Nothing says perv like a long raincoat and gym bag. Take that with you on your morning commute tomorrow. Oh, how wrong I was, and you know I hate to be wrong, but in this case, I was more than happy to get it so wrong.

We rode out on the subway to Brooklyn, to an undisclosed location somewhere in this 1 of the 5 boroughs. Let’s call it Sector 4. On the way, Teddy Baker told me that he’s been Googling me and he was into my blog and all the cray-cray shit I did and maybe I was a cool dude after all, and I was like, Teddy Baker, bruv, you have no idea. Would just anyone in the world come out here on this crazy whim just to share tattoos with each other? I asked the guy if he has a missus or a mister or whatever, I was cool with whatever. He smiled and says he didn’t have time for loving, he was on a path of righteousness. This was when alarm bells start ringing in my brain because, to me, a path of righteousness translated as ‘I love Jesus, wanna love Jesus with me?’ So I started asking him more questions to try and establish his religious beliefs, like, did he believe in an afterlife or whether he believed in heaven and he looked at me, like ‘Dickhead, why you asking me about God?’ So I shut up. I was rumbled. Then he told me where we were going – I couldn’t reveal to no one. It was our secret. I winked at him. I am not telling you where we went. No way. It’s a secret.

Okay, so not an exact address, but you know … a thereabouts to set the scene, because we were in New York and it is the coolest city in the world. Sector 4 of the Brooklyn Quadrant in New York.

Somewhere in deepest darkest Brooklyn, he took me to this bar that wasn’t too far from the subway; it was underneath one of those flatpack houses that looked like a big bad wolf could huff and puff and blow it down. It was all PVC white panels on the outside, and inside, it was all square boxes and American drama series clean kitchen counters and hardwood floors. There was one that was kinda leaning against its neighbour. Underneath it in the basement, there was a bar called Micky McGinty’s (truth serum aside: this is not the real name of the bar, but instead the coolest name for a bar ever – I’m gonna open a bar. It’s gonna be called Micky McGinty’s. We’ll only serve rum and play sea shanties. And you’ll have to piss in the street if you need the toilet. That is how we do).

Inside, he ordered us shots of Jameson’s and they came with free cans of this thing called Pabst-Blue Ribbon that tasted cheap and disgusting and 7 parts water to half a hop; it’s the best beer I’ve ever had. We shotgunned the beers and he said, let’s play darts. So I said, yeah, cool, let’s play darts.

Now we were playing darts for a good hour or so, and I’m a good darts player. I kept thrashing him at ‘301’. And we were knocking back shots of Jameson’s and shotgunning Pabst-Blue Ribbon. We had like 6 of them in the hour and I beat him 3 times and we didn’t really talk while we were playing but that’s cool. I just watched him. He occasionally looked at the door or at the bar and smiled at people walking in, but it was pretty dead. They didn’t even play music in this place. The girl at the counter was reading David Foster Wallace like a fucking ponce (yo, Kit – they love that Foster Wallace shit out here. Shame you’re too much of a dumb fuck to understand it. Sorry peoples, that’s my bro. Carry on). We started practising throwing our darts backwards and we missed the board by miles. Teddy Baker kept doing his unhinged throat giggle – a real ‘tee-hee-hee’. He threw his darts backwards as hard as he could while I was styling out attempts at overhead throws. We were pissed and we were breaking all health and safety conventions in safe darts playing. We were throwing them blind, over our heads, through our legs, we were laughing like goons. At some point, I nearly threw the dart through the side of the face of this guy in a baseball cap and turquoise basketball vest as he walked past. He turned to me and was like, what the fuck you doing cuz? So I went ragu sauce on him, like, ‘Bruv, don’t worry about it. I get you. I didn’t do nothing, naaaaaah’mean. Leave it. Leeeeeave it,’ like I was Lethal Bizzle defending the Tulisa sex tape on YouTube. He pushed at me and I pushed back at him. Suddenly, I couldn’t breathe and I was being pulled back by a pool cue against my neck, like tightly against my neck, choking Aziz, proper choke-hold. The blue baseball cap guy put his drinks down on a table and walked up to me smiling. I was trying to figure out where Teddy Baker was and then I clocked, the boy holding me was him. Teddy Baker had taken me hostage and the guy who I nearly darted was squaring up to punch me. And Teddy Baker was whispering in my ear, ‘Dude, just let it happen. Don’t fear it. Don’t be an asshole. Just let it happen’ and I was spluttering cos I couldn’t breathe but my splutters were like spitballs of W.T.F. And I remembered the gym bag and the long raincoat and I thought, ‘What’s in the gym bag? What’s in the gym bag?’ The guy went to hit me and I tensed my stomach muscles and Teddy Baker pulled me close and the guy stopped his fist at my solar plexus … just hanging there and he looked up at me and Teddy Baker released me and they laughed.

They were pissing themselves.

‘Bob, this is that crazy cat Aziz I was telling you about. Aziz, this is Bob.’

‘Who’s Bob?’

‘I’m Bob.’

‘Yeah, Bob. I get that, Bob,’ I said, rubbing my stomach and my neck. ‘But who the fuck are you, Bob?’

He laughed and said, ‘The dude who’s going to change your life’.

Bob has not met me. Obviously.

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History:

Lose weight in 30 days – pop-up
Flights to New York – Expedia

I’m not proud of it but I ran. I left Kitab 2 there between the administration office and the housing office on the floor, curled up, hyperventilating and bleeding from his nose and I ran. I ran towards the library and then out of the university, which was filling up now with out of season students working on their coursework.

A day later and I’m racked with guilt. I check my interactions. Today’s motivational Vedic message from my uncle is: ‘If you have never eaten rice with your hands, how can you know the taste of the earth on your lips?’

I delete it from my Facebook wall. I check Rach’s Facebook account. She is now friends with 263 people, 16 of whom are mutual friends. There are a few new photographs of her, all with that impish half smile of hers. She looks good. I want to call her. That impish half smile is what attracted me to her in the first place. And the Pippi Longstocking-like plaits in her hair. I check through Aziz’s blog and email him some corrections. I listen out for his sounds in the flat. Nothing. Not even the squeak of a mattress or the whirring of an electric blanket. I look over my computer at a picture of him and me pinned to my noticeboard. We’re riding bikes. He’s flexing his bicep. I’m laughing. Always laughing with Aziz.

I refresh my Facebook feed. The Vedic message has reappeared. Even though I deleted it, it refuses to go away.

‘If you have never eaten rice with your hands, how can you know the taste of the earth on your lips?’

I tweet: ‘Oh to be truly anonymous online. Says a nobody.’

It gets retweeted 17 times and favourited 4 times. I delete my uncle from my Facebook account. If he notices, I’ll blame a bug. I don’t want him in my space anymore. I want to reclaim myself online.

An hour after deleting my uncle from my Facebook, he calls me up and leaves a message asking why I’ve done this.

I didn’t feel any guilt about running away at the time. It was only when I got to the train station and took stock of my flight that I felt a morsel of remorse for leaving him on the floor, unable to fend for himself.