Lolito

by Ben Brooks

  It’s not Ashton Kutcher. It’s Hattie.

  She’s wearing a yellow dress and a parka and large, metal earrings. She’s holding two Tesco bags and a blue duffel bag.

  ‘Hattie,’ I say. ‘You’re at my house.’

  ‘Aslam said you might need cheering up,’ she says, pushing past me. ‘I am here to do that. I brought oven chips and chicken dippers and Titanic. Also, you can borrow my panda suit.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I say. I stare at a man talking on his phone in the street. I close the front door.

  ‘Here. Put it on.’ She passes me the duffel bag. ‘Now?’

  ‘It’ll make you feel better.’

  ‘Will it?’

  ‘Put it on. I’ll put the food in.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Me and Hattie never have sex. We dryhump each other and kiss. She gave me a handjob once but it hurt and I told her to stop. It’s fun. It never matters that James and Alice exist because we aren’t doing anything wrong because nobody gets upset. Alice did it wrong. I can tell because I’m upset. She could have sexed one hundred people and if I hadn’t found out she wouldn’t have done anything wrong. People say lots of nice things about honesty and I think that honesty is like a piñata with nothing inside. People should make other people happy and you don’t need to be honest to do that.

  I wish Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was real. As Jim Carey, I would be extremely happy to let Kate Winslet disappear from inside of my head. I wouldn’t fight. I wouldn’t run around in memories trying to stop her evaporating. I would say goodbye and kiss her and forget about her for ever. That is probably the only way to ever be happy.

  Keep saying bye.

  I should hit myself with something heavy and give myself amnesia.

  Joking.

  I reappear in the panda suit. It’s oversized and extremely comfortable. I’m a safe toddler. We go upstairs and lie on the bed and put Titanic in. Hattie watches Titanic once every three days. She says it gives her good perspective.

  We lie on our backs and Hattie puts her hand on my hand.

  ‘How many times did you see it this week?’ I say.

  ‘I watched it once already. I was going to watch it yesterday but there were too many moths in my room. They come when I’m menstruating. Mum says it’s the smell.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about Alice? It’s okay if you do. I never even liked her that much really because she thinks that ghosts are real, which they aren’t. Also I don’t think she should have instagrammed her mum’s grave so much.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘Do you want to take it in turns saying things we don’t like about her?’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘She smells like margarine.’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘She never laughs properly and she spits on people’s backs.’

  ‘She spits on people’s backs?’

  ‘Yes. I saw her and Marie doing it in the corridor. Only to fat people and Ann Barry.’ I think, that sounds like something Alice would do. Ann Barry has learning difficulties and often falls asleep while picking her nose. Alice takes photos.

  Hattie rearranges herself. She rests her head on my chest.

  I try to focus on the film.

  I mentally photoshop Aaron Mathews’ face onto Leonardo DiCaprio’s, and Alice’s onto Kate Winslet’s. I feel tiny bubbles of anger rising up from my ankles and bursting behind my eyes. I mentally encourage the plot of the film to change, abruptly and drastically, so that they both get beheaded by a rampaging murderer before kissing for the first time.

  I feel heavy weather for thinking like that.

  When Kate tries to suicide off the boat, we kiss. Hattie climbs on top of me. She’s close and I want her to be closer. I want her face to melt into my face and I want my face to melt into Kate Winslet’s face.

  ‘You’ve got a boner.’

  ‘Do I? No, I don’t.’ I try to nudge my boner to one side but it’s impossible because Hattie’s sat on top of it, looking down at me like I’ve committed a violent and calculated crime. She’s pinning it down like a winning wrestler.

  ‘Yes, you do. You haven’t had one before.’

  I think, smackdown.

  ‘Yes, I have.’

  I think, The Alice Gulf.

  ‘Not against my leg.’ She scratches her eyebrow. ‘It’s because Alice doesn’t matter any more. We should stop. One of us could get attached.’

  ‘No, we won’t. I will always never love you.’

  ‘Everything isn’t you.’

  ‘What?’

  She climbs off me and settles onto her back to watch the film. I don’t understand. Leonardo is eating dinner with Kate and Kate’s horrible boyfriend. They offer him caviar. I think, is caviar real? You can probably get it at Waitrose. Alice’s dad probably eats it on his Weetabix. I’m hungry. I want to eat Hattie’s sweetcorn fritters. How do I make her cook them?

  ‘Leonardo’s face looks great in this,’ I say. ‘It looks like a sweetcorn fritter.’

  I stare at Hattie.

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’

  ‘It looks great,’ I say. ‘Like a sweetcorn fritter.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Can you cook sweetcorn fritters, please?’

  Hattie sits up and looks at me. Her eyes have sad dogs behind them. She shakes her head. She picks up her shoes and walks out of the room and quietly closes the door. I pull the duvet over my head.

  10

  Amundsen watches the rest of Titanic with me and we eat. Afterwards, we watch a documentary about wild Alaskan salmon and fall asleep on the sofa. When I wake up, the sky’s coming down a little and Amundsen’s pacing in the kitchen. I attach his lead and we go into The Outside.

  The sun is hiding behind swelling clouds. A girl on a bike is smoking. I can’t see Mabel anywhere. I imagine her lying dead in the shower, with Mushroom kissing her folded ears and clambering across her back. I walk to the centre of the field and sit down. I call Alice.

  ‘Alice?’ I say. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Etgar? Where are you? It’s windy. I have to go in a minute.’

  ‘Go and eat a bag of dicks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sorry, nothing. Aslam told me to say that. I am breaking up with you.’ I look at Amundsen. He’s being stroked by a man beneath an open golf umbrella.

  ‘What? Etgar? Why? What’s happened?’

  ‘Because you lied about Aaron Mathews. You said he raped you with kisses but he didn’t, you kissed each other which I understand because he is taller and more muscly and has more facial hair than me but it’s not okay to do that because you were my girlfriend and I was your boyfriend and that isn’t what girlfriends and boyfriends do.’

  There’s a pause and Alice starts to cry. I thought I’d be crying but I’m not. A lot of bad things have happened in my head already and now my eyes are empty.

  ‘It wasn’t like that,’ she says. ‘I can explain.’

  ‘You can explain to your mum.’ I don’t know what that means.

  ‘I was drunk. And you weren’t there. I was being stupid. I thought you’d be kissing someone in Leicester.’ ‘I was staying with my gran in Leicester.’ Amundsen comes to sit next to me. He drops his wet snout onto my shoulder. I imagine that he is my sidekick and Alice is an evil villain we need to defeat. I will hold her down by the wrists. Amundsen will tear off her head.

  ‘Etgar?’

  ‘Alice.’

  We’ll play Frisbee with the severed head.

  ‘I can’t go to sixth form without you. I don’t want to. Please.’

  When we’re tired, I’ll let Amundsen eat it.

  ‘I’m still going to sixth form.’

  It will have the texture of underdone pork and taste faintly of garlic.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  He will give up after six bites.

  ‘Then you shouldn’t have handjobbed Aaron
Mathews. Go back in time and hit him or something.’

  I don’t want to tear off her head.

  ‘I love you.’

  I want to kiss it.

  ‘Do you?’

  I want to rub my head against it.

  ‘Yes.’

  Wait, I don’t.

  ‘I’m going to go now.’

  I don’t know.

  ‘Etgar, please.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I’ll let you finger someone. Anyone you want.’

  ‘I don’t want to finger anyone. You’re the only person I want to finger.’

  ‘Then finger me.’

  ‘I don’t know if I want to finger you any more.’

  I hang up. I feel like a serious man in the emotional climax of a film that ends with teary defeat. I wish this was in a film. I wish I was sitting on a sofa watching the film with Alice and eating Doritos and laughing. I’m not. I’m in the middle of a cold field with a stupid dog. There’s nothing in the sky. There’s no one else here. I lie down in the grass. I lie on my front. Amundsen lies next to me, our faces turned toward each other. He’s panting. My heart is going tripletime. I know I definitely want to do something, but I don’t know what the something is.

  11

  I type severe depression into Mum’s computer. It says to eat vegetables and run around outside. I don’t think I have that. I type autism. I don’t have that either. I type cancer. I type Alice Calloway is a piece of shit. I type how to disappear. There are lots of people talking about throwing themselves off buildings or eating lots of paracetamol or other painful-sounding activities that require courage and also a car.

  The computer says that there’s a forest in Japan where a lot of people go to suicide. They tie coloured tape to trees and walk with it in their hands in case they stop wanting to disappear and need to find a way out. There’s a lot of tape. The forest looks like a room in a museum filled with diagonal lasers to stop people stealing things. Volunteers walk through the forest looking for dead bodies and for people who want to be dead bodies but aren’t one hundred per cent sure yet. There are a lot of empty tents in the forest and old cars in the car park.

  I imagine a film where two sad people meet in the forest and fall in love and leave the forest and are happy for ever. The film would be a romantic comedy with a lot of jokes about dying. The tagline would be Sometimes you find everything, when you’ve got nothing left to lose. The soundtrack would be Sigur Rós.

  I wonder if I will ever fall in love like people do in films. I wonder if I will take girls out to dinner and invite them back to my house then prematurely ejaculate into my well-ironed trousers.

  Nothing is going to happen from now until for ever.

  I’m being melodramatic.

  I’m hungry.

  I eat a Ryvita and check the computer. Macy’s sent me an email. The subject line is ‘this was you’. There’s an attachment. I download and open it. I’m looking at a large, pink dildo being held up to a webcam in the hand of a thin woman. The woman’s fingernails are immaculately painted the colour of Ribena. The dildo is the length of both of my hands put together. I stretch out the waistband of my boxer shorts and look down at my dick. I sigh. She’s online.

  ‘I’m not that big,’ I say. ‘I’m not pink.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘It’s not about length. This was a gift from my ex. It’s about people.’

  ‘Oh. Yeah. Great. I fuck the woman too. I like looking at the woman in the face. I like looking at the woman in the eyes.’

  I have no idea what we are talking about.

  ‘Mm. I think you’ll like my eyes hehe.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘What colour are yours? I couldn’t see in the pic.’

  I stand up and walk over to the mirror and stare at myself.

  ‘I’m not sure. Grey or blue or something.’

  ‘Metallic.’

  ‘I guess.’

  No. Absolutely not.

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes. You?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘You hard?’

  No.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m wet. I wish you were here.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Are you in the office now?’

  I look at Amundsen. He yawns.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘It’s a nightmare. I wish I was tucked into a warm bed with you.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘I wish the bed was floating in the middle of the ocean.’ ‘We could fuck each other all day.’

  ‘Birds would drop parcels of chocolate down to us.’

  ‘Hon, that sounds like heaven.’

  It sounds wildly dangerous.

  It sounds better than anything happening here.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Do you have time to play?’

  ‘I’ve got some work to do. And a meeting. Later I’ll lock the door and we can do that.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘Okay.’

  I’m bored and I don’t want to be anywhere so I decide to walk to the corner shop for cider because what else. I put Mum’s coat on and apologise to Amundsen, who whines behind the front door like a child locked out of his parents’ party.

  It doesn’t feel like a party in The Outside.

  It feels heavy and cold.

  The air smells of popcorn and dead leaves. Next to one house, it smells of roast dinner. I can see two people sitting down at a table inside of it. There are candles. I want to be inside with them. I want to eat roast dinner at a table with a girl and then sex the girl and fall asleep on her stomach.

  Three men run the corner shop by my house. When I go inside, they’re playing catch with rotten tomatoes. One of them nods at me. A tomato lands by my feet. I look down at it and panic. The cheap striplight highlights its misshapenness. The men are looking at me. Do I throw it or step over it or pick it up and eat it? I’m probably not supposed to eat it. I should make a joke. If I don’t make a joke then I’ll look rude and offended. I’m not offended. It’s only a tomato.

  I throw the tomato to the nearest man.

  I shout, ‘Beckham.’

  The man looks confused. I’m confused. I try to remember a better sporting fact than that David Beckham exists.

  ‘Joking,’ I say, closing my eyes for a second and walking into the alcohol aisle. The men are looking at me and thinking about how stupid I am. They think I walk around shouting ‘Beckham’ at everything. Maybe I should do that. That would be easier than trying to remain coherent.

  Beckham.

  White Ace is the most units for the least amount of money. It’s £3.89 for 22.5. That is enough for me to drink until sleeping isn’t hard to do. It is enough for me to vomit in the morning and then drink a little more with breakfast. Hangovers don’t matter if you are allowed to stay in bed or if your girlfriend has been kissing Aaron Mathews.

  I pick up two cans of tripe and go to the counter. The man in front of me buys three porn magazines in grey plastic wallets. I briefly panic that I’ve somehow gone back in time to the 80s. AIDS is real again. My parents use swear words. Everything is grainy. Computers are houses.

  I pay for my stuff with 20ps and refuse a plastic bag. At the door, I turn around and say ‘Beckham’. The men smile at me. They smile okay, that’s great smiles and I sink.

  Alice Poem #2

  Once there was an elephant mum and

  the elephant mum had a baby and the baby

  elephant had no legs and everyone called

  it a retard and hit it with sticks and the mum

  elephant ate the baby elephant and was Moby

  Dick even real by the way Poems Are Gay and

  Elephants

  Are Gay and I want to wake up in yesterday and

  FUCK YOU.

  12

  I’m indiscriminately slapping bushes as I walk past the repainted houses where
young professionals with clean babies live. Sometimes I pull leaves off and throw them at other bushes. There are lights on in most of the houses. Soft, white IKEA lights looking over original floorboards and large televisions and full fruit bowls.

  Someone’s walking towards me.

  He’s looking down into his phone.

  It’s The Tiger.

  I stop. I don’t know what to do. He looks up. My body stops working. It won’t do anything. It has fallen asleep. My body often fails to be a real asset to my brain, I feel.

  He walks towards me, slowly and unevenly, sliding his phone into the pocket of his quilted jacket.

  ‘All right,’ he says. He doesn’t say it like a question. It’s a nothing word. Like sorry and okay and goodbye. A word that fills up the space between two people.

  I nod and he hits me.

  I can tell that he’s going to hit me, so I lean into the punch, effectively reducing its potential for serious damage. This is something I learned from Dad’s book. Thanks, Dad.

  He hits me in the eye that he didn’t hit me in last time. Is that considerate? I can’t tell. I tip backwards but don’t fall over. My body has started working again. It turns around and runs. It runs past the lit-up windows and the shop and the hairdresser, hugging the green plastic bottle of cider. The Tiger is behind me. His feet clap the ground so fast it sounds like sleet. He catches my collar and I stop. I shake off his hand. I face him.

  ‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Wait. Stop fighting me. I’ll give you ten pounds.’

  ‘I don’t want ten quid,’ he says. He’s out of breath. ‘I want to fuck you in.’

  ‘You’re going to bum me?’

  ‘Fuck off, am I.’

  ‘Wait, are you?’

  ‘No.’

  Another gap of silence opens between us.

  ‘You want to talk to God?’ I say. ‘Let’s go see him together. I’ve got nothing better to do.’

  And I hit him. I’m amazed at my hands. I think, congratulations me. It isn’t a hard punch but it’s definitely a punch. He doesn’t move at all and doesn’t look hurt, only surprised and slightly angry.