Pirate Cinema (17 page)

I felt irrationally angry at Annika. I thought I'd had a genius idea, one that would really impress Twenty, and Annika had made me look like a noob. I was a noob. I should have just kept my mouth shut. But 26 gave my hand a little pat, as if to say,
there, there
, and I felt one nanometer better.

I didn't have anything else to say after that. Everyone else seemed to know more about this stuff than I did. It turned out that one of the guys in a suit was an MP, from the Green Party, and he got up on his feet to say how much he appreciated all this, and how he knew that there were LibDem and Labour and Tory MPs who would love to vote against the whip, but they were too afraid of being thrown out of the party if they didn't cooperate. This was just too weird: I had thought that MPs got elected to represent the voters back home. How could they do that if someone else could tell them how to vote? It made me wish I'd paid more attention in school to all those civics classes.

The meeting broke up with everyone giving out e-mail addresses to Annika, which I thought was hilarious, since she was meant to be all punk and alternative, but here she was using e-mail like some old crumblie. I'd have thought she'd use Facebook Reloaded like everyone else, but when I asked 26 about it, she shook her head in the way that told me I was being stupid again and said, "Facebook's all spied-on. Everything you do -- anyone who sets up an advertiser account can get everything, all your private info and all your friends' public info. Why do you think we use Cynical April? Anyone tries to arrange an illegal party on Facebook Reloaded, the Bill know about it before their mates do."

There we were, standing in the flood of people pushing up and down Brick Lane, elbowing past touts offering free wine with a curry from one of the dozens of Balti houses, stepping around street musicians or peddlers with blankets, stopping at food wagons or to shout at a cyclist who got too close. The sun was a bloody blob just over the roofline, and the heat was seeping away to something tolerable, and I was standing so close to 26 that I could see the stubble on her scalp and the holes up and down her ears where she'd taken her earrings out.

"Erm," I said.

"You're a real charmer, you know that?" she said. My heart dropped into my stomach and my stomach dropped out my arse and I stood there like an idiot. "Oh, come on," she said, tweaking my nose, "you don't need to be such a nutcase about this. I like you all right so far. Let's go somewhere, okay?"

I almost invited her back to the Zeroday, but that would have been too much. So I said, "I'm skint, but I know where we can get some free food."

"No five-finger discounts," she said. "I don't believe in going to jail for stupid things like stealing."

"What
do
you believe in going to jail for?"

She nodded. "Good question. I expect I'll find out soon enough."

Taking a girl to a skip for dinner makes for an odd first date, but I admit that I thought it might make me seem all dangerous and street, and besides, I really was broke. We weren't all that far from the Barbican and the Waitrose skip, but I had my sights on bigger spoils (so to speak). Over the river, Borough Market had just finished for the day. Hawkers have been selling food there since the 1200s, and it's one of the biggest food-markets in the world. Most of the week, it's just wholesale, but on Saturday it opens up to the public, with endless stalls selling fine meats and cheeses, braces of exotic game like pheasant and rabbit, handmade chocolates, farmers' produce, thick sandwiches, fizzy drinks, fresh breads, and some of the finest coffee I've ever drunk. Just thinking about it made my mouth water.

But as good as it was during the day, it was even better at night time. That was when the stall-holders set out all the stuff that didn't sell during the day, but wouldn't last until the next Saturday market. On a Saturday night, Borough's skips were like an elephant's graveyard for slightly unlovely vegetables, mildly squashed boxes of hand-made truffles, slightly stale loaves studded with walnuts or dried fruits, and wheels of cheese gone a little green around the gills. Like Jem says, cheese is just milk that's spoiled in a very specific way, and mold is part of the package. Just scrape it off and eat the rest.

We walked to Borough through a magic and sparkling night, and 26 told me all about her mates who ran the anarchist bookstore -- it was called Dancing Emma's -- and how much fun she had reading all the strange books they stocked. "I mean, when I started working there, I had
no idea
. I'd literally never thought about how the system worked and that. It never occurred to me to wonder why some people had stuff and other people had nothing. Why there were bosses and people who got bossed. My mum isn't very political."

"My parents don't do politics, either. Do you see your old mum?"

She shook her head. "Naw," she said. "Left my mum when I was little. He's a cop, believe it or not. In Glasgow. Mum's been remarried for ages, though. Stepdad's a good bloke."

We walked a while. I got up the courage to say, "So, why
are
there bosses? What else would we do, just let everyone do what they want?"

"That's about right. What's wrong with that?"

I started to say something, stopped. "What if someone wanted to go and do murders or commit rape?"

We walked for a while, and I snuck a peek at her. She seemed to be thinking it over. "This is hard to explain. Whenever you ask an anarchist about it, she'll usually go on and on about how most of those crimes are committed because people are poor and powerless and so on. Like, when we get rid of bosses and masters and everyone has enough, it won't matter. But I think some people are just, like,
total bastards
and I don't know exactly what you do about them. Maybe after we get rid of the state and everyone can do what they want, we'll agree on some rules, you know, some crimes that involve hurting people, and we'll all agree to enforce them." She shrugged. "You go right to the hard question, you know? I don't really have the answer. But look around London, all the crime and violence and that -- it's not like having all kinds of laws and rules and jails and power is making us safe."

"Maybe we'd be a lot less safe without them," I said. I liked this kind of discussion and I didn't get much of it with Rabid Dog and Chester. My mind raced.

"Maybe. But I don't know, doesn't it seem, you know,
obvious
that at least some crime is down to the fact that there are rich bastards and poor sods? Maybe there's some nutter who'd steal even if he had plenty, but isn't most crime down to not having enough?"

I shook my head. "Maybe. But that makes it sound like poor people are bigger crims than rich ones. But we were poor, my family, and we weren't criminals. If we could get by without breaking the law --"

She laughed. "Mate, are you
serious
? You're the biggest crim I know! Or did you get a license for all those tasty clips you cut together for those videos last night?"

I laughed too. "Right, right, okay. But I didn't make that video cos I'm
poor
."

"Not exactly, okay. But you know that
ninety percent
of the film copyrights in the whole history of the
planet
belong to five studios? And that eight companies control
85 percent
of the world's radio, TV, films, newspaper, book publishing, and Internet publishing? So if you worked for one of
those
companies, chances are that you'd be able to use all those clips you cut up. I see stuff like that all the time, stupid adverts to pimp Coke or Nike or whatever. Those companies own all our culture and they get to make anything they want with it. The rest of us have to break the law to do what they do all the time. But it's everyone's culture -- that's the whole point, right? Once you put it out into the world, it's the
world's
-- it's part of the stories we tell one another to make sense of life."

I'd been about one-quarter in love with 26 until this point. Now I felt like I was 75 percent of the way, and climbing. It was like she was saying something I'd always known but never been able to put into words -- like she was revealing a truth that had been inside of me, waiting for her to let it out. I felt like dancing. I felt like singing. I also felt like kissing her, but that thought also made me want to throw up with nervousness, so I pushed it down.

"You're a very clever lass," I said. "Christ, that was
brilliant
."

She stopped in the middle of the pavement, and people behind us had to swerve around us, making that
tsk-huff
sound that Londoners make when you violate the Unwritten Code of Walking. I didn't care. She was smiling so much she almost lit up the whole street. "Thank you, Cecil. That means a lot, coming from you. I thought your videos were just genius. When I saw them, I thought to myself, 'Whoever made these is someone really special.' I'm glad to see that I was right."

I thought I should kiss her then. Was she waiting for me to kiss her? Her face was tilted toward mine -- she was nearly as tall as me. I could smell her breath, a hint of the peppermint tea we'd drunk. I'd never kissed a girl before. What if I messed it up? What if she slapped me and never wanted to see me again? What if --

She kissed me.

In the films, they always say that you'll never forget your first kiss. In the films, your first kiss is always perfect. In the films, everyone participating in the kiss knows what to do,

In real life, my first kiss was wildly imperfect. First, there was the business of noses. Hers was small and round and adorable, like a Bollywood star on a poster. Mine was a large, no-shape English nose. Both of them tried to occupy the same space at the same time and it didn't really work out.

Then teeth. The sound your teeth make when they knock against someone else's teeth is minging, and you hear it
right in your head
,like the sound you get when you crunch an unexpected chicken bone. And it seemed that no matter where I wanted to put my teeth, she wanted to put her teeth.

And tongues! Christ, tongues! I mean, when you see them going at it in the videos, they're doing
insane
things with their tongues, making them writhe like an eelmonger's barrow. But when I tried to use a bit of tongue, I ended up licking her teeth, and then I had the realization that my tongue was in another person's
mouth
, which was nearly as weird as, say, having your hand in someone's stomach or your foot in someone's lung.

That was only the first realization that entered my head. After that, it was a nonstop monologue, something like,
Holy crap, I'm kissing her, I'm really kissing her! What should I be doing with my hands? Should I put my hands on her bum? I'd love to put my hands on her bum. I probably shouldn't put my hands on her bum. Oh, yes I should. No. Wait, why am I thinking this, should the kiss be, like, all-obliterating and occupying 300 percent of my total consciousness, transporting me to the Galaxy of the First Kiss? I wonder if this means she's my girlfriend now? I wonder if she's kissed other blokes. I bet she has. I wonder if I'm better at it than they are. I bet I'm rubbish at it. Of course I'm rubbish at it. I'm spending all my time thinking instead of kissing her. For god's sake, Trent, stop thinking and KISS. Oh, there's that tongue again. It's not exactly nice, but it's not exactly horrible, either. We're standing right here on the public pavement kissing! Everyone can see. I'm so embarrassed. Wait, no I'm not. I'm the freaking king of the world! See that, London, I'm KISSING! Oh shitshitshit, I just got a stiffie.

The other thing about kissing: when do you stop? I mean, if it's just your mum kissing you good night, it's easy to tell where it ends. But a kiss like this, a proper snog, where does it end? In the vids, I'd carry her into a bedroom or a cupboard or something. But we were in the middle of the street, on the north side of London Bridge. I didn't have any handy bedrooms or cupboards. Besides, my mind was still racing, going off in demented directions:
Does it matter that I'm white? Has she kissed more Asian guys or more white guys? Is she Asian? Maybe her dad is white? She doesn't look that Asian. Maybe her mum is white? Maybe she's all Asian. Maybe she's just kind of dark-skinned. Does she think I'm weird because I'm white?
I mean, this was just mad. I hadn't given two thoughts to 26's background until she kissed me -- half the people I knew in Bradford had families from India or Bangladesh or Pakistan. And half of
them
were more British than I was, more into footie and the Royals and all that stuff.

And there I was, standing on the street, snogging the crap out of a girl I was falling in love with, thinking of how my neighbors in Bradford had hung out their England flags every World Cup and how no one in my English family could be arsed to watch the game. Get that? I wasn't just thinking about
football
-- I was thinking of
how little I cared about football
. Stupid brain.

But at least that distracted me from the throbber in my pants, which was about to become a major embarrassment once 26 let go and I turned to face the crowd. I was going to look like someone had pitched a tent in there. Stupid cock.