The Upgrade: A Cautionary Tale of a Life Without Reservations (25 page)

It was 11 p.m. and Robert and I were the last to leave. The pub was near to Robert’s student dorm—we’d decided to head there after lunch so Robert could show me around—but we hadn’t quite made it there, having been distracted by the pub.

We’d spent the whole day talking about Karen and my idiocy. Specifically, I’d spent the day coming up with plans to try to fix things, while Robert had spent the day telling me why each of them was less brilliant than the last.

He was right—this was now definitely an unfixable situation, and one entirely of my making, again. Karen had given me a window of opportunity to make things better, and I’d got drunk and thrown a rock through it.

The only thing left for me to do was to give up.

And had I been stone cold sober, and had it been the morning, then that’s what I would have done.

“Mate, this is the worst idea you have ever had. I’ll say this again: I’m only here because I know you’ll do something even more dumb if I leave you alone. But this—what you are doing now—is the dumbest thing you have done in your entire life.”

“It’s fine,” I slurred. “I need to do this.”

Robert was still appealing to my sanity by the time we got out of the cab, and, by the time I reached Karen’s front door, he was all but physically restraining me from pressing the buzzer. No answer.

I buzzed again.

Nothing.

“Come on, mate, let’s go.”

But I was determined now, in that way that only the world’s most drunken idiot could possibly be. Behind Karen’s house was an alleyway, except that in the part of London where she lives alleyways are considered terribly common, so behind her house was a “mews.”

I remembered that her living-room window backed onto the mews and figured that, maybe, if I knocked on that, she’d … well, I don’t know. I wasn’t exactly thinking straight. I walked down the mews—Robert following behind—yelling now—“THIS IS A TERRIBLE IDEA, STOP.”

I knocked on the window. Suddenly there she was. The back door of the house swung open, and there was the girl who for the past year had been my digital nemesis, but also the girl to whom I owed this apology.

“I …”

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“I’m …”

“Just leave. Now. I mean it.”

“But, I …”

“And as for you …” she glared at Robert, “I mean, him—
him
—I expect this drunken bullshit from, but you—you should fucking know better.”

“I tried to stop him,” shrugged Robert, deciding that this would be the appropriate time to walk back to the main street and have a cigarette. He’d done everything he could.

“I just …”

“Leave now or I’ll call the police. I really mean it.”

She walked back inside, slamming the door. I knew she wouldn’t actually call the police—she was just making a point—but I’d had my chance and I’d blown it. I stood in the mews for a few more minutes, calling through the window.

She didn’t reply. She’d probably gone to bed.

I started to walk back down to Rob. Which is when I saw the blue lights. She’d called the police. Of course she’d called the fucking police. I sobered up, or at least I thought I did, and decided that the best course of action would be to keep walking, and not to react in any way to the police car that was now slowly driving down the mews toward me.

Hopefully, like in movies, they’d assume I was just a drunk and cruise right past me. I still hadn’t learned that the way things happen in movies is rarely the way they turn out in real life: and, anyway, in this case the police were actually looking for a drunk.

The police car stopped right in front of me, and two policemen jumped out. Between the flashing blue lights and the speed with which they got out of the car, the police clearly take crazy drunk ex-boyfriends standing outside the houses of girls who live on their own very seriously. That fact actually made me happy, for a second, until I remembered that the crazy drunk ex-boyfriend in this situation was me. And that less than a week earlier I’d been given a caution.

This was a complete and utter fucking disaster. Why hadn’t Robert stopped me?

“Are you Paul?” shouted one of the policemen, even though he was less than five feet away.

“Uh, Paul?” I said. “No, officer. My name’s Bradley.” A half lie: Bradley is my middle name.

“Do you have any ID?” I reached into my pocket and took out my drivers license. My still-actually-quite-drunk-it-turns-out logic kicked in. “See,” I said, pointing at my middle name on the license. “Bradley.”

The policeman looked at the license and then looked at me. He’d seen some dumb lies in his time.

“Yeah,” he said, “Paul Bradley.”

While I was being busted by the first policeman, I noticed Robert was talking to one of the others. They were both nodding, and I swear I saw the policeman laugh. My policeman wasn’t laughing, though, he was on his radio. “Yes, Charlie. Alpha. Romeo. Romeo. Paul Bradley. Date of birth 7 December 1979.”

A pause. His head was tilted towards the radio, waiting for the reply that would seal my fate. I couldn’t make out what the radio operator said but he turned and walked back to his colleague who was now—definitely—sharing a joke with Rob.

The three of them stood in their little huddle for maybe half a minute as I just stood forlornly, waiting. Finally, my policeman came back.

“OK,” he said, “your friend has explained the situation. Sounds to me like you do owe the poor girl an apology, but this isn’t the way to do it. I’ve spoken to the station and they say there’s no record of you, so as this is your first screw-up, and because Robert has promised he’s going to take you home, we’ll leave it there.”

I couldn’t believe it. No record of me. Obviously the police hadn’t had time to update their records since my arrest. Thank the lord.

“Thank you, officer,” I said.

“Come on, mate, let’s get your stuff from your hotel,” said Robert. “I’m checking you in at the student dorm. I’m not letting you out of my sight until you leave London.”

With the book launch just two days away, I decided that Robert was right: it would probably be a good idea to move into his halls. For one thing I was keen to see for myself what £35 could get you in London, but more importantly I was hoping that Robert would be close enough at hand to stop me should I get any more silly ideas about showing up at Karen’s house. As it turned out, the rooms weren’t bad at all—nowhere near up to the standards of a hotel, but far better than I’d expected for £35.

Still, having seen Hannah’s reaction to the Easy Hotel, I’d have to remind myself not to bring any girls back from the Gardening Club after-party. Hannah, at least, was unlikely to be the girl I brought back. After I’d drunk-dialed her ten times before being arrested, she’d decided that perhaps her initial assessment of me as a drunken dick might not have been entirely off the mark.

We hadn’t fallen out exactly, but nor did she have any desire ever to sleep with me again. We settled on being “just friends.” Hard to blame her, really.

I considered writing a post on my blog about how London had forced me to make a brief transition from luxury hotel living to living like a student, but I decided not to. Part of the popularity of the blog, at least according to the people who emailed me about it, was the fantasy element. It’s fun to read about someone traveling the world and living in amazing hotels and having madcap adventures.

A £35-a-night student bedroom doesn’t really fit into that narrative.
I mentioned this to Robert the night before the party, as we sat sharing a bottle of vodka in the student dining room. He was clearly concerned that I was starting to take myself a little too seriously.

“Jesus, mate, when did you start to care about ‘narratives’? I thought the whole point was you didn’t think about things in advance. That certainly seems to have been the theme for the past couple of weeks.”

“Well, yes,” I said, “but somewhere along the way I seem to have become some kind of cartoon character. People are reading my blog waiting for the next ridiculous fuck-up; that’s what people keep commissioning me to write about too; the hotels, the drinking and the inevitable train wreck. That’s what keeps my readers interested.”

“Your readers?” Robert handed me the vodka. “Just for future reference, do you want me to draw attention to every milestone on your journey towards being a pretentious cock?”

“This is a case in point,” I continued, gesturing with the vodka bottle before taking a huge swig, “I know logically I should give up drinking. It ends in disaster every time. But that’s precisely why I can’t—tomor-row night a bunch of people are going to come to a party celebrating the launch of a book about my disasters. It’s the only thing I’ve ever succeeded at. I can hardly give it up. What would I have left then?”

“Your liver?”

The launch party was a huge success, even if I do write so myself. Almost all of the fifty or so guests of honor from the book—those who were still talking to me—turned up, as did a smattering of journalists, my agent and at least fifty people I’ve never seen before in my life.

Copies of the book were scattered around—and by the end of the night they had all been stolen, which I took to be a positive sign. On
a giant screen, photographs of the various incidents recounted in the book rotated in a slideshow. I was drunk in every single one of the photos. Towards the end of the night, my agent—who I suspect was there out of a sense of duty, rather than because I’m a particularly valued client—took me aside.
⁴¹

“Good party,” he said, “so, what’s next?”

“Well, a few of us are heading to the Gardening Club to try to find some girls,” I said.

“That’s nice,” he said, “but I actually meant what’s the next book idea?”

“Oh.”

This was actually a question that I’d been giving a lot of thought to; not least because now this book was published, I needed something to do with my life. I was making reasonable money from freelance gigs but I’d got a taste for being an author now—all Sky News appearances and quotes from Mil Millington—and was keen to stick with it. I had no shortage of ideas—a novel about British men and American woman, a guide to living in hotels, a cutesy observational book about Brits abroad—but most of them were terrible. I decided on the spot to combine them into one big idea and see if my agent thought any part of it had potential …

“Well, I’ve been traveling around for the past few months, living in hotels—and I’ve spent quite a lot of that time in the US. I thought I might write a novel about the differences between the US and the UK, with a special focus on American women versus their British counterparts. Maybe based in a hotel.”

“Hmm,” said my agent.

And he was right; every part of the idea was bad. That’s why I hadn’t sent him a proposal; I knew it still needed work. I needed a fresh angle.

“Wait,” he said, “you’ve been living in hotels? Why? How?”

I began to tell him about the previous five months. “It started when I got a letter from my landlord … and then I woke up in the corridor … a suite in Vegas for $100 a night … just pretended we were hairdressers … got in free … thought Kate Bosworth was a waitress … doesn’t work in London, though …”

By the time I finished the story, he was laughing. Hard.

“That’s great. Can you write it up as a proposal?”

“Write what up?”

“Everything you just told me—a guide to living in hotels and blagging your way around the world. All the crazy drunken stuff and the women and the fast cars—the works. Do you think you can keep up the pace for the rest of the year?”

I looked down at the glass of wine in my hand.

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Great—then get me the proposal together and I’ll send it to W&N. Let’s strike while the iron’s hot.”

And that was that. The booze, the madness, everything: assuming W&N liked the proposal then for the next twelve months at least—perhaps even permanently—it would be my job to ensure it continued. I necked my whole glass of wine. I was destined to be a professional drunken dick. Give the people what they want, right?

“Oh,” said my agent, putting his coat on to leave, “have you seen the publicity material Rebecca has put out about your book? It’s rather good.”

He handed me a piece of paper from his briefcase. I read the first line out loud. “If Paul Carr didn’t exist, Douglas Coupland would have to invent him.”

I laughed.

Douglas fucking Coupland.

D
ecember 2008
.
Five and a half months later
.

“Are you here for the nature … or the exchange rate?” asked the sign in the arrivals lounge of Keflavik airport.
⁴²
To which the only sensible reply was: “It’s two days before the winter solstice, there are four hours of sunlight, it’s minus three outside and you eat puffins. Yeah—I’m here for the nature; pass me a fork.”

I’d ended up in Iceland for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I’d just got back from another visa waiver-busting stay in the US and wanted to spend the couple of weeks before Christmas exploring a new place. Secondly, the country’s banking system had crashed a month or so earlier, and every travel writer and her dog was hyping it as the place to go for a cheap weekend break.

Sadly this information hadn’t filtered through to Iceland itself, and the twenty-five-minute taxi ride from the airport into town cost me the best part of $140.

At least my hotel was cheap. There’s little enough to do in Reykjavik at the best of times and as I was arriving during the week—so missing the weekend-break crowd—I was able to get a room for just slightly over my $100-a-night budget which, when you consider the costs of taking cabs is even higher than in London, represents amazing value.