Noughties (30 page)

“Yeah, well, you know, trying,” I said. “I seem to spend more time
thinking
about revision than actually doing any though.” That was pretty accurate (
to be fair
). “How’s yours going?”

“Disastrously,” he said. Yeah right. You’re just lucky we aren’t in your room. He dumped himself onto my sofa, so I lurched for the desk chair.

So is shagging Ella all you thought it would be?
I felt like saying, small talk being impossible in this kind of situation. Instead I settled for the rather more reserved: “Cup of tea?”

“Cheers.”

Jack fidgeted while I made the drinks, like he was trying to shake off a pest that had been dragging him down.

“Everything okay?”

“Ah mate.”

“Ah mate?”

“Ah mate.”

“I’m sorry. What happened?”

We sipped our drinks and I made haste to burn my tongue. Felt like carpet.

Ella and Jack had broken up.

“It’s impossible really.” He watched me cautiously between sentences, trying to judge whether it was wise to pull me back into his affairs. I wanted in, desperately. “She’s a demon when it comes to work, and she’s got a one-track mind now Finals are near. It hasn’t been easy. She’s absolutely convinced that she’s going to fuck up her exams. It’s ridiculous … I mean, you know better than me how clever she is … and dedicated. She reckons Dr. Fletcher has it in for her, and that she’s been at a disadvantage ever since she asked to switch her tutorials over to Dr. Snow. You’d think there
was a conspiracy the way she goes on about it. She gets really upset when she talks about this stuff. And it isn’t just like nerdy paranoia … I mean she properly sobs and shit.”

“I had no idea. We don’t have many tutes together anymore, but from what I’ve heard she’s doing great.”

“Exactly. But she is beyond obsessive when it comes to her studies. She loses so much sleep thinking about whatever she’s working on and pulling all-nighters to nail essays. I think the pressure of work had a lot to do with her suicide attempt, you know?”

I nearly choked on my tea. It was so unexpected—we had never talked about that event to each other. “Do you think?”

“Yeah. Well, that and some other stuff, but I probably shouldn’t go into it all.” I got the sense that he wanted to confide in me, but I was raring to move the conversation on, panicking at the thought that Ella might have told him what happened between us.

“Of course. I don’t want to pry, mate. Maybe you just need to break until Finals are done.”

We slurped our tea a bit more. Civilized, like.

“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not convinced. It’s more than that though … Sometimes I think she only ended up with me because she was vulnerable. I was there when she needed someone and perhaps she wasn’t thinking straight. I don’t resent that … I understand. If anything, I feel guilty, like I took advantage or something.”

“I’m sorry, man. I really am. It’s hard to know what to say.”

“Don’t worry. I know. It’s tough opening up about this as it is.” We both looked down, feeling it excruciatingly unmanly to engage each other’s eyes. “You really are the only person I can turn to right now.”

“Cheers, bro.” I cringed at this for it sounded far more
conceited than I had intended; almost knowing. “I’ve missed you, actually,” I ventured, still looking anywhere but at Jack.

“I’ve missed you too … man.”

I was getting choked up, which was ridiculous. I gave an “ah mate” to puncture the awkwardness.

“So was it mutual?” I said to the wall.

“Kinda … I guess,” he said to the floor. “I mean, we’re more like brother and sister these days.” We silently nodded, as though we had collaboratively hit upon a hard-gleaned truth. “She better get a fucking First after all this.” We both laughed, relieved to be sharing an emotion with which we were more accustomed. Mates again, I guess … in a way.

Where is he?

I’m never going to find Jack out here. I’m feeling clearer-headed though, the breeze having whipped some sense into me, so I wander back inside the club and loiter around the edge of the dance floor, trying to locate some familiar faces. I observe the dancers absently, writhing in their dispossessed bodies. They shake their selves off like a dog shakes from the rain. They’re all mass productions.

Someone nudges me in the back. It’s Ella. “Are you okay now?”

Is Ella the one? I thought I had the answer, but now … Just tell her and see what happens …

My phone is vibrating. Instead of talking I pull it from my pocket and start squinting at the screen.

“How’s Lucy?” says Ella, perhaps affronted by the discourtesy and guessing the source of the message. “Still keeping in touch with her?”

“Oh fuck off, Ella.” What does she know about it—about Lucy, about us? How could she ever understand how badly I’ve ruined things? “Just fuck off, would you?”

Ella swings wide and high with her flattened hand and although things seem to be running in slo-mo I don’t bother to duck. I deserve it and I’m going to take it. My cheek stings with the immediate sensations of hard truth. I grab her by both arms and confront her: “Stop being such a cunt.” My shout demands the attention of several people around us. There’s a fleck of spittle on Ella’s cheek, loathsome evidence of me losing it. The future is suddenly closing in on me, my chest tightening, my head about to implode. Where am I going? What am I going to do with myself?

“I hate you,” bawls Ella, ripping herself free and running off.

I watch her disappear for a few seconds before I turn around. Spinning, I crash into a girl who is standing right behind me. She falls hard to the ground.

“Sorry,” I say, bending desperately to help her up, everything moving in unexpected directions. A hand grabs me round the collar and yanks me to my feet.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing touching my girlfriend?” shouts a burly bloke with popping eyes and chunky jaw.

“I was help—”

“You’re a fucking wanker, mate,” he says, nose on nose. I don’t say anything. I’m too shocked about everything that has happened. I’m shaking. “You’re a fucking wanker.” He throws me off and I stutter my way to the edge of the club.

He’s right. I
am
a fucking wanker. So what? At least I can admit it.

I have significant and diverse experience in fucking things up. During my time at Oxford University, where I have recently completed a BA in Fucking Things Up, I have been able to fuck things up to a very high standard through my unwavering hard work and dedication, while still managing to consistently fuck up academically. Moreover, due to my personal drive and ambition I was able to fuck up my two best friends
and
my girlfriend almost simultaneously. I believe that this exceptional ability to balance my extracurricular and academic fucking up demonstrates strong organizational skills.

I relish working in a team, as evidenced by my aforementioned participation in the fucking up of my two best friends and girlfriend. At the same time, I am extremely confident in leadership roles, such as when I efficiently orchestrated the fucking up of said trio.

I have represented my county in fucking up for several years.

Furthermore, I have strong communication skills: I was able to fuck up my best mate by telling him clearly and concisely that I fucked and fucked up his ex-girlfriend. The subsequent calamity demonstrates my ability to construct an argument that is both cogent and authoritative. Indeed, I have been told by various people that I am highly effective at fucking things up.

With all of my experience in fucking things up, I have been able to cultivate a notable degree of self-fucked-upness, which makes me an ideal fucker-upper. I am absolutely committed to, and passionate about, fucking up and am fluent in several different types of fucking things up.

I am keen to enter the world of advanced fucking up, and am eager to fuck things up in a range of new and exciting ways.

Yes, I am a wanker, and it’s time to be completely straight with myself about this …

Thus I sense this chapter of my life closing in toward a conclusion, and the past few weeks have been some of the most significant in getting here. I completed Finals just ten days ago and the buildup to this landmark event was intense and never to be forgotten. That is perhaps untrue: the details have already failed to remain, though the leaden sense of responsibility has stuck.

My mind, my welfare, and indeed my life entire, had been reduced to Post-it notes. They were splattered about the room (against the walls, up the side of the desk, above my bed) like shot-out bits of brain. They carried quotations which I had strained to learn and have since more leisurely
forgotten. Revision doesn’t suit me. It requires extended concentration and an airtight memory, and I have neither of these. I have the retention of a fork in a bowl of soup and the attention span of a knob. I like to tell myself that I have ADHD but it’s yet to be clinically verified. Everyone’s ADHD these days. The Internet and TV have programmed us this way. It’s evolution, though I don’t have the necessary time, concentration, or tools to prove this. Twenty-first-century condition. (Note: apply for large postgraduate grant to carry out fairly in-depth study of this.)

I did try hard though. I badly wanted a First and I knew that this meant a certain amount of total devotion. I drew up one of those revision timetables that grossly overestimates the human capacity and—when you fail to keep up with it—makes you feel like a no-good slacker. Each morning my alarm grated that much more, increasing and increasing with exponential severity. It was especially soul-crushing when it signaled nothing more than a date with Jeff Chaucer or an early-morning workout with the Middle Scots poets.

Revision fertilized thoughts of Lucy and Ella like shit on a field of crops. I was Milton’s Adam, for instance, eating chocolate-caramel digestives in the Garden of Eden with my Lucy-Eve. We’d take our fill of love and love’s disport, wet with the solace of sin. And then, with postlapsarian vigor, a cry of “Sex me here.” And I would obey this Lady, in my head, over on the bed. And then, back on my feet, walking around the room, throwing a baseball up and down, I would recite, “Let us go then, you and I, when Ella’s legs are spread out against the sky.”

My wanking schedule quadrupled over the revision period. I could always find time for this, the ultimate distraction. No sweat. There was the painfully bladdered wake-up wank, the manic morning rush-hour wank, the corpulent
post-lunch wank, the traditional wank-then-nap afternoon wank, the limp dessert wank, the steamy shower wank, and the fantastical knockout nightcap wank. Arm cramp, bollock ache, and bell-end friction burn were constant afflictions, but so much less painful than the eighteenth-century sentimental novel. That said, there were many sentimental wanks (over Lucy), and sociability was never far away (the frustrating Jack-and-Ella combo insisting on guest appearances: oh fuck off … get the hell out of here). Lucy or Ella would always claim the dénouement and end credits, of course, me being a loyal kind of guy. Unfortunately my “ADHD” even managed to infect my wanking—my subject rarely holding a position, a scenario, or even a face, for more than a second at a time. Sad to admit, I became a dour master at the limp tug, reaching dull orgasms without even getting it up—just shaking it from the wrist like I was throwing dice. This virtually always ended in sorry throbs of guilt (revision revision revision) and a grimy self-loathing (she’s not yours). Try all that eight times a day with impenetrable literary quotations tramping through your head. Now
that’s
what I call hard work. If I get my First I won’t have anyone saying it’s undeserved.

I go to the bar and reload. I need it more than ever.

Call it what you will (drunk, pissed, fucked, hammered, lashed, steaming, destroyed, blottoed, pie-eyed, wankered, off your tits, lubed, mullered, paralytic), but I like to think of it as transcendence. I’m nothing less than a spiritual ideal walking around with sticky tequila stubble and warm, fuzzy bottles of Bud. The consumption levels tonight have been abnormally high (which is the norm) and we’re veering
toward an entirely other plane of consciousness. Time for an outer-body experience, don’t you think? I unzip myself from the mouth down and climb on out. I float up to the vaulting heights of the twenty-foot ceiling and take it all in from a cosmic perspective. Deep.

Filth is at capacity. It fluctuates like a lapping tongue, curling and twisting; its innumerable force fields work in concentricity, sending shock waves back and forth, side to side, around and around. Steam rises from the surface like heat off some mythical beast. The punters seem so insignificant, locked in their paltry games of sexual auctioneering and mindless clowning. I watch this grotesque globule of performance from afar with profound disinterest.

Who am I? Where do I fit into all this? I see an eighteen-year-old (baggier jeans, higher buttoned shirt, fresher face) prancing about, an irrepressible little first-year. Me? Eliot the kid in miracle world, leaping and swimming from station to station. Me? It’s his first night here and he’s hurling drinks down his gullet to get things off to an appropriate start. Me? He is religious in the attention he pays to a wide-eyed Ella. Me? He knocks about ecstatically with his hoped-for reflection, Jack. Me? He reeks of relief and contentedness. Me? He misses Lucy, his new girlfriend from back home. Definitely me. How inconsequential this all seems.

Dear lover, who art thou? O bold lover, where art thou? I struggle to find the language. Shall I compare thee … oh stop it, stop it. Enough. Enough; a nought; the noughties.

We are not an age kitted out for the telling of true love, hardwired for fripperies and drivel instead.

No, but we
are
capable of love, if we can just get over ourselves for a second.

Is this love? Who am I to judge.

Is this a failed love letter? Doesn’t even come close.

I come back down to earth. I’m hemmed in by animal shapes and horror-show masks. A girl with a spotty face and dirty teeth pins me back—“Nice hair! Haha! How d’ya get it like that?” A gluey Neanderthal with corrugated neck pushes me aside as he plods into the pit, throwing me at a terrifying stranger who wants to dance up close and personal. Her face is in mine: eyes shot, pupils swollen black holes, mouth twisted, cheeks mushy. I slide away, dragged helplessly by the filthy, murky slipstreams, farther into the pit. It opens its fishy gob to receive me.