Worst. Person. Ever. (26 page)

Stuart stalked over to us.
Fuck.

“Potter, what the fuck is going on here?”

“Just chatting with my mum is all, having a lovely time watching some attractive young people eat insects.”

“Can you tell your mother to please keep her fucking voice down?”

“How dare you swear at my mother!” As though tasered by some unseen force of filial duty, I dove off the bleachers head first at Stuart and knocked him to the ground. “Nobody talks to my mother like that!”

If you’ve ever seen a fight erupt in public, you’ll know that nobody ever dashes in right away to stop things—even nuns and vicars want a dab of free blood. So there I am hammering away on Stuart, with him hammering away on me, with grit in our eyes and countless dozens of entertained eyeballs staring at us, cast and crew yelling encouragement, when in my blurred peripheral vision I see Mother crabwalk down the bleachers, screaming, “Kill him, Raymond! Kill that nasty fucker who swore at me! Kick him in the teeth! Kick him in the bollocks! Kill that fucker!
Kill! Kill!
” I have to admit, I felt just the tiniest whiff—just a kitten fart, really—of love for the old woman.

Fiona was also on her feet, chanting, “Get him!” I had no idea whom she was supporting.

And then, when we had started to slow down a bit, a couple of the more burly PAs pulled the two of us apart to Mother’s chorus of “Fucking pussies. Fucking he-pussies is what you are!”

Stuart pulled free of his PA and started brushing the
coral dust from his khaki trousers. “Potter, you are FIRED from this show.”

Tony and Eli grabbed me so that I didn’t lunge at him again. “Fine. Like I
care.
And by the way, while we’re all here, Stuart, how can someone who’s a big shot TV network guy like you be so incredibly fucking cheap that he actually seeks out free bootleg CDs of a children’s movie? I mean, how can anyone be that fucking cheap, Stuart?”

Victory! I could see everyone thinking:
Well, yes, this Gunt does have a point. Why couldn’t a flunky have bought one for you? You couldn’t just get it off Apple TV or Netflix? You really had to save a few bucks by having someone import a bootleg?

Nailed you, you
fucker.

“Actually, the CDs weren’t for me, you selfish dickhead. They were for the children’s hospice in Bonriki.” Hospice?
Uh-oh.

“That’s right, a hospice! For children dying of cancer. Yes, you heard that right,
cancer.
”

I could feel audience sympathy drifting Stuart’s way.

“The trans-Pacific Internet connection went down, and the children really wanted to see
Harry Potter
, like it was a final wish, so I thought that I, Stuart, would make a difference. So excuse me if helping some dying children get their final wish is cheap. I guess we should all follow
your
fine example and retreat to a lagoon-side fuck hut while the rest of the world goes to hell.”

I could then see an idea entering Stuart’s mind, and I sensed I wouldn’t like it one bit. “Yes, well, Herry,” he said calmly. “I’m not a total asshole, and I apologize to your mother for swearing at her.” He looked at Mother,
who was just then shaking dandruff flakes from her hair. “Sorry about that.”

“Not to worry, whoever you are.”

Stuart turned back to me. “Okay, here’s the deal. Just to show you how magnanimous I am, I’ll set you a challenge. If you can eat a full bowl of bugs, you can have your job back.”

“Really? You’re not just fucking with me?”

“In front of everyone I give you my word: one bowl of insect medley and you are not just a B-unit cameraman again, but you officially become an A-unit cameraman, with a hike in pay.”

I had to admit, being an A-unit cameraman has always been a career dream of mine. How hard could it be to eat some bugs? What was the catch? I nodded.

Stuart called out, “Okay, fifteen-minute break for everyone while Raymond here eats a bowl of mixed insects. Gather close!”

Cast members and crew bustled in to form a circle around me. Moments later, Scott appeared with a writhing bowl of … well, nature’s medley: grubs, spiders, centipedes, millipedes, encyclopedias, mumps, cysts and whatever other unholy spawn the crew had managed to find beneath the island’s logs.

But here’s the thing: the show’s contestants were actually starving, whereas
I
had had a delightful meal of cheeses and cold cuts in Neal’s palace. There was barely room for a Mars bar inside me.

If Sarah were there, she would have stopped Stuart from being such a twat. What did she see in him?

“Okay, Herry, every single bug down the hatch and fully swallowed. Puke and you’re out—unless you choose
to ingest the puke, but I don’t credit you with that level of commitment.”

“Fine, Stuart, I understand.”

Me, an A-unit cameraman!

“Good. Now let’s get some cameras rolling—I want to document this train wreck.”

Mother nuzzled in beside Stuart and began brown-nosing. “You should see his refrigerator back home, a cold and godless place it is. Ooh, look at that little bugger there—he’s got to be a six-incher, and all those tiny legs—it makes you marvel at the universe.”

The flavours came in waves: a pecan-like crunch, followed by an avocado smoothness, followed by a glob of something chowdery and phlegmy. Next? A clump of
larvae, tasting something like chanterelle mushrooms.

Did all of the wriggling and writhing disturb me, you ask? Fuck no. That’s why God gave us jaws. Added bonus? Live bugs were better than anything you’d find in a Honolulu Airport vending machine. I ploughed through my bowl like it was so much bar mix, with supportive chanting from all around.

“Shells for texture; guts for flavour!”

“The vitamins are in the legs, Ray, the legs!”

Scott offered, “If it tastes sour, it’s probably an ant.”

“All that formic acid,” another PA added.

Halfway through my bowl, I spat out a thorax of some sort to ask for a glass of water, but Stuart scotched that idea. “You should have thought of that beforehand, Gunt! And pick up that thorax you just spat out and eat it, too.”

Fuck him.

Crunch.

I don’t know if you’ve ever eaten a bowl of insects. Perhaps you enjoy them regularly—and good for you! So you know that bug eating is all about mind over matter. Something crickety tasted prawn-like, and I couldn’t help but wonder what most things in the bowl might have tasted like with some peanut oil and a bouillon cube in a good hot wok.

By now Stuart was looking thoroughly pissed. Fuck him. He’d shortly have to rehire me on as an A-unit cameraman.
Ha!

Within a very jumbled minute or so, everything from the bowl was gone, except a huge pink millipede. For the first time I couldn’t use mind over matter. Its two rows of little pincers were fluttering in waves along its
length, and I couldn’t imagine eating anything so utterly disgusting.

Stuart could sense that I’d lost my momentum. “Just look at it, Gunt: if that thing crawled into your tent at night, it’d chew your dick off. But you still have to
eat
it.”

“No need for colour commentary, Stuart.”

“No, I want you to know
exactly
what you’re eating: it’s the most vile insect ever known to man, repulsive and ready to explode with guts and stingers.”

“Stuart, just fuck right off.”

I steeled myself for the final mouthful.
Raymond, you’ve probably eaten far worse things at a kebab take-away. So just do it.
I threw the bug in my mouth and was just about to crunch down on its middle when my mother shouted, “Raymond, just think of that thing as a giant pussy with teeth!”

I promptly hurled out every single organism I’d just ingested in one glistening Niagara of mangled coffee-coloured protein.

The next thing I knew, I was being lifted off the ground and onto a wheezing golf cart driven by Eli, and we were chugging back through the forest of vile Venus flytraps. I then fuzzed out of consciousness and came to with my head on a foam pad and a freezer’s dull thrum in my ears: Neal’s storeroom. A nice calm place, really. Private. Quiet.

Out of nowhere I needed to wank. Seems simple enough, you’d think, but from some damaged corner of my brain came a slew of political thoughts—possible nuclear war and all—and suddenly my innocent desire to self-pleasure took on a charged new meaning. Before the nuclear war, my thinking had been along the lines of, “Sure, right now I’m wanking, though it’s just a pale substitute for the genuine action I hope to have in the near future.” But when your future no longer feels infinite, the sterility and pointlessness of wanking is hard to overcome. Instead of feeling sexy and tingly, it felt useless, like recycling plastics or registering to vote. I called the whole thing off.

A person listening to this tale might be thinking, “Oh, woe is poor Raymond.” But what happened next might well surprise that listener. I stood up and felt a little rumble in my tummy. I spotted a door beside the deep-freeze that opened on that most prized of luxuries in the tropics: a fully functional flush toilet, its cistern groaning from an abundant load of name-brand loo roll. I stepped inside and began to take what I honestly considered to be a dump of the gods.

After I was finished, I ambled over to Neal’s. It was nearing sunset, and he was behind his bar in a smoking jacket, finishing a fag and holding the glasses up to the sunset-drenched window to check for dishwasher spots.

“Where are the girls?”

“Oh hello, Ray! Gave me a start, you did. They’re off getting pedicures. Fancy a cocktail?”

“Please. Vodka martini, straight up, dirty with two olives.”

Neal, being a good friend, really (and no longer my slave), prepared my martini without mentioning my disgrace at the purple picnic table.

I sat at the bar. “By the by, where’s your bouncer chap who answered the front door the first time I was here?”

“Eamon? He’s working in the herb garden I’ve started out back. I was inspired by the herb garden outside your flat in London. Nothing like fresh herbs to make the meal—they add a bit of love to the menu.”

“Neal, you take back that last thought or I will justifiably vomit yet again, this time all over your bar.”

“Sorry, Ray. Just trying to be gracious.”

Neal handed me the martini—it was perfection. I felt like Noel Coward or James Bond or one of the great
debonairs of all time, greeting the early evening with style. I exhaled and took stock of my day. In one of my more philosophical moods, I asked, “Neal, have you ever taken a large and satisfying shit, only to look in the bowl afterwards to find … 
nothing?
”

“Phantom shit, Ray. Happens all the time.”

“Nonsense, Neal.”

“Let me guess: afterwards little to no wiping required.”

“Why … that is correct. None, really. A shame with all that five-star loo paper available.”

“Perhaps it’s interdimensional leakage, Ray. That could explain it.”

“Interdimensional leakage? What is
wrong
with you? I shit in the real world, Neal. My shit does not enter a parallel universe or time stream.”

“You’re the one who spoke the words ‘parallel universe’ and ‘time stream,’ not me.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning that even
you
believe there are unsolved mysteries in this universe.”

“I grudgingly concede the point.”

Neal handed me another well-deserved drink. “I watched your bug-eating challenge on the show’s website. Great stuff, Ray. Bold.”

“The entire planet has no Internet except here on Arsefuck Island? How does that happen?”

“Calm down, Ray. They’ve got some smart young kids on the show, with solid IT skills. They set up a very robust LAN, with a rewards program where you can get discount car rentals for—”

My overtaxed brain shot sideways from both ears.
“
Car rentals?
Your driver’s licence expired the day Nirvana taped
MTV Unplugged in New York
—and there are no cars to rent. They’ve all been melted by nuclear war.”

“No war just yet, and who knows—diplomatic talks might stave it off.”

“Neal, if you keep spouting this naive claptrap, I’m afraid I’ll have to stop having my philosophical discussions with you.”

“That’s not fair, Ray. I’m trying to keep our spirits up.”

“Another martini. Please.”
So delicious.

I looked around. “Where’s Mother’s room?”

“Down the hall. She’s watching some telly and eating crisps.”

I pointed at a set of French doors. “What’s out there?”

“The infinity pool.”

Fucker.

Neal looked around as if to make sure nobody else was near. “Ray …”

“Yes, Neal? Smashing martinis, by the way.”

“Ray, do you feel slightly, I don’t know—
guilty
—for starting the nuclear crisis?”

“Guilty? Why should I feel guilty?”