by Ben Brooks
‘Mm.’
‘I am holding your thighs and rolling you back and forth.’
‘Fucking eat my pussy, you pathetic asshole.’
‘Um. I’m not really into that either.’
‘Oh, I just thought . . . because you did it. Okay. Keep eating.’
She’s moaning. She’s moaning in long, low bursts, like a zombie. There are no sounds coming from my mouth. I don’t make sex noises. I’m anxious about sounding retarded.
‘Your turn,’ she says. ‘I’m kissing from your chin down. All the way down your naked body. Down your chest and your belly. To your hard cock.’
‘Great.’
I’m terrible at every kind of sex ever invented.
‘Do you have hair?’
‘Yes.’
Not really.
‘Good. I don’t like men who look like babies. I’m licking around your huge balls. Kissing up your shaft. Taking it in my mouth.’
Why does she want me to have big balls so much? It doesn’t matter, I guess. I can have whatever she wants me to have. I can be her dream man.
‘Yes, my giant veiny balls. It feels good.’ I make my hand go slower. I’m scared of cumming. ‘On my massive balls. Thanks.’
‘Taking you all the way into my throat.’
‘I am pushing you off and bending you over.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Pulling your legs apart and pushing myself into you.’
‘Fuck, hon. It feels amazing.’
‘Putting my fingers between your fingers and my face into your hair.’
‘I’m pushing against you with my ass. Faster.’
‘Okay.’
‘Go faster. Fuck. Harder.’
‘I am fucking you.’
‘Harder.’
‘I’m trying.’
‘Harder.’
‘I’m honestly trying my best.’
‘Fuck me.’
‘I am.’
I’m not.
‘Fuck.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Yes’
‘Jesus.’
I cum. I pull off the sock and throw it at the television. Macy does a high-pitched moan and a sigh. I go to shout ‘spilled wine’ and slam the computer but she says something that makes me stop. She says, ‘Oh, I wish you could snuggle through the computer.’
There’s a pause. We’re panting.
‘You can sort of fuck. But you can’t hug afterwards. You’re alone. Even if you forgot for a second.’ She’s talking in between fast, windy breaths. ‘It’s like. I don’t know. Hon, that was great. I love doing this with you.’
‘Me too. It’s good. I’ve got to go. Um. I’ve got to do something.’
‘Do you have to?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Email me. Please.’
‘I will.’
‘Goodbye, hon.’
‘Bye.’
I roll a cigarette, light it and sit on the living-room carpet hugging myself. Why did I go? Macy’s nice. She doesn’t make me feel small. She wants to hide too. The Alice Gulf. I push my eyes into my arm. They’re heavy. Amundsen wakes up, shakes himself and comes over to put his tongue in my ear. My arms fall and I turn to face him. He licks my bruises.
15
I finish the bottle of wine in the bath, surrounded by Radox clouds, loudly singing ‘Drop The World’ to a rubber duck. I hold my breath underwater, pretending that I’m a giant squid at the bottom of the blackest ocean. The part so deep that it will never meet the sun, only hear about it in whispers from passing whales. No human will ever see me. I will die and my bulbous body will be picked apart by creatures that have not yet been discovered.
There’s an orgy happening in my head.
Alice sucking Aaron Mathews’ dick. Aaron Mathews fisting Alice. Alice sliding a finger into Aaron Mathews’ ass. Aaron Mathews enjoying it. Aaron Mathews cumming on Alice’s face. Alice enjoying it. Aaron Mathews being immediately ready to begin again. A third person entering the room. The third person being invited to participate.
I wish I was the third person.
No, I don’t.
I’m drinking neat gin.
Staring at the ceiling.
I slip twice when I get out of the bath, cracking my head against the sink. Everything’s being dragged down. Everything’s being weighed down by the weight of Alice’s disappearance. She didn’t disappear. She made me make her disappear. She’s gone. I’m one human in the world. I don’t want to be one human in the world. I want to be Alice and Etgar in the world.
I don’t dry myself. I climb straight into old clothes.
I take thirty pounds from the box in my parents’ bedroom, drink more cider, and leave. Doing the key is hard so I leave the door unlocked. The rain outside has settled in small pools dotted along the pavement. It’s half-light. A single grey bird loiters by the roots of a tree. I scream and chase it into the sky. I follow the street down and to the right, onto Denton Lane, where there are three shops the colour of old fax machines. One’s a dry cleaner. One’s a hairdresser. One’s Shanghai Palace.
The waitress who seats me is familiar from times I’ve collected takeaway. She is short and perfect-looking in the way that any young female who is not Alice is now perfect-looking. I want to ask if she’ll come home with me, to build a blanket castle and drink rum and watch Judd Apatow films. The thing that makes me do heavy weather most is when you see someone and you can tell they want to be not alone and you know you want to be not alone but you can’t be not-alone together because of things like how she’s forty-two and you’re fifteen, or how she’s got kids and your mum’s waiting for you at home. That’s what makes me do heavy weather the most. It’s fucking retarded.
I don’t say anything.
I let her direct me to a table next to the tank of clownfish.
I do an Irish accent. I say ‘top of the morning to you’ in it. I immediately feel severely retarded and like I want to climb into bed and never climb out.
‘Are you okay?’ the waitress says.
‘Yes,’ I say. I’m still doing the accent.
‘Yes?’
My body sags. Bodies aren’t supposed to be this heavy. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Alice lied about being raped with kisses by Aaron Mathews. He’s got tribal tattoos. He punched me and I don’t know what to do. I want to get drunk. I want to disappear.’ The fish in the tank drift past each other like blimps. They don’t fight and don’t lie and are never alone. ‘Yes,’ I say.
‘To drink?’ she says.
‘To drinking,’ I say. ‘I mean yes. Drinks. Wine. Gay wine. Rosé.’
She nods and disappears.
I think about Macy. I imagine her having a midlife crisis that manifests itself in the form of a large, expensive coffee machine. I imagine her worrying about her children being bullied because their shoes don’t light up. I imagine her hiding under a duvet and sighing and masturbating over me, a twenty-six-year-old mortgage broker who owns a briefcase and knows the rules of golf.
The wine arrives. I pour a glass and down it. I order beef in green pepper and black bean sauce, three bowls of chips, and prawn crackers. When the prawn crackers come, I line four up on the table and give them names. I eat the Alice one. It tastes stale and chewy. I move the Aslam cracker into the gap. I eat it too.
*
There isn’t a fortune in my fortune cookie. There’s a bad joke: What do you get when you cross a creek and a river? Wet feet.
*
The waitress wakes me up and asks me to leave. I tuck the thirty pounds into her breast pocket, flatten my hair and go outside. At home, I collapse and open the computer. There’s an email waiting. From Macy.
RE: something
Etgar,
I hope this doesn’t sound weird, and I’m sorry I didn’t say something before, I was worried that it would sound weird, and now it definitely does sound weird. If you think it’s weird,
forget I said anything. Please, hon. I really enjoy playing with you and don’t want to fuck it up.
I’m coming to London in two days.
It’s for a business meeting that’s been planned for months. Meeting retailers and that sort of thing. But if you had any free time, I’d love to meet up. I know we barely know each other but I’ve been thinking about you. I’ve been thinking about what it would be like to touch you.
Actually, since your first picture I imagined us meeting in London when I came for this meeting. I imagined you meeting me off the plane, and fucking me in the train station toilets.
My train gets in at six in the evening. I don’t have any meetings that day so maybe we could spend the night together then.
Talk later,
Macy
PS: attached something to prove something
It’s an .mp4 attachment. I download and play it. Macy’s face fills my screen. She stares into her computer. She’s doing a don’t be afraid of me smile.
‘Etgar,’ she says. ‘I’m not a man. I promise.’
She’s wearing a thin, white vest top, and the wine-colour straps of her bra are visible. There are smudges that look like oil under her eyes. She presses a key and disappears.
I stare at my hands. I want mouths to appear in my hands and I want the mouths to talk and tell me what to do. Would she be able to tell I wasn’t a mortgage broker? Wait, what? I can’t go to London. I can’t. I could. The money Gran left me. I can’t go and have sex with a woman from the Internet. It wouldn’t work. Amundsen’s here. I’m staying. I’ll tell her I’m busy. I’ll tell her it’s mortgage-broking season. Everyone wants their mortgages broken this time of year. I’m swamped.
Do something.
I go into the kitchen, fill a pint glass with water and down it. There’s half of the cider left. I refill the pint glass with that. My stomach panics and settles. Amundsen comes in from the garden. He’s holding a dead rat in his mouth. His snout is damp with red. The rat lands between my feet and Amundsen sits back, wagging his tail, eyes wide with pride.
‘Can we just –’ I say. ‘Can you put that somewhere else?’
He doesn’t put it somewhere else.
‘I’m proud of you. Now go and eat it or something.’
He doesn’t eat it. I pick it up by its tail and carry it through to the garden, throwing it as far as my arm will throw. It cartwheels in the air and lands near the compost heap.
16
My phone wakes me up. Mum. I feel bloated and brain dead. I’m on the sofa, under a yellow towel, two empty crisp packets, and Amundsen’s forelegs. The sky looks like it’s mid-afternoon and verging on rain. I press accept.
‘Hi,’ Dad says.
‘Hi, Dad.’ It’s unusual for Dad to talk on the phone. He says it’s dishonest, and that there are too many secret rules, like how you have to wait for the other person to say hi first.
‘Your mum made me call.’
‘What’s she doing?’
‘I’m not entirely sure. She appears to be playing some sort of coin game with Alena’s family. A kind of flicking game. They’re flicking the coins.’
I relocate to the windowsill. Amundsen rises, sniffs his paw and lies back down. ‘What’s Alena like?’
Dad makes rustling sounds. His breathing deepens. ‘They’re too close. I’ll tell you when I get back.’
‘Yes or no that they’re hilarious together?’
‘Absolutely yes.’
‘Okay.’ I picture Uncle Michael in a tuxedo, awkwardly pushing his mouth against the mouth of a woman who doesn’t understand anything he says.
‘Did you kill or set fire to anything?’
‘Not yet.’
‘And you’re okay?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Should I check anything else?’
‘I don’t know. About Amundsen maybe.’
‘Did you walk it?
‘Yes.’
‘Okay, I’m going now.’
He hangs up.
I stand at the window and pinch my cheeks. Amundsen nuzzles the backs of my knees. A cornflake-colour squirrel darts along the branches of our elm tree, shakes its head and disappears behind a cloud of leaves.
‘Breakfast.’
In the kitchen, I make coffee, put toast in, and fill a bowl with dry dog food. All the tripe is gone. Amundsen eats quickly and runs several laps of the garden. I butter the toast, pour out coffee, and arrange everything on the table.
I open Mum’s computer and read Guardian articles about rape law, piracy and ecological disaster. Heavy, distant things that will never enter this kitchen. I sip coffee. It tastes like tinned soup, but makes the tiny people in my body start to sit up and yawn and add milk to cereal.
Sarah Wakely is sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Elliot Venn loves fat cocks and not logging off fb.
Thayyab Ahmed is starting pre-drinks a little early methinks.
I click on Alice.
She’s sitting on the deck of a catamaran, cradling a cocktail glass and smiling. She’s by a boy the colour of hazelnuts. His hand is around her shoulder and his fingers are dangling by the pits of her collarbones. I go to the alcohol cabinet, take another red wine and decide to finish it all on the sofa while blowing saliva bubbles and watching Storage Wars.
17
The wind in The Outside has muscles. It’s kicking at the branches of trees and hurling leaves at windows. There’s a little water in the wind. A man passes me, carrying four Tesco bags fat with food. I run and fall. My knees burn. The man turns his head and keeps walking. I get up and keep running. I don’t look into the houses. I run and my head gets hot. I’m angry.
Fuck you, Alice.
Fuck everything.
I sat next to you in church while you bit your fingers and cried. I stayed awake with you watching documentaries about potential afterlives. I carried your dad to his car. I epilated your bum. I shampooed your hair and painted your toenails and now you’re sunbathing with hazelnuts.
You kissed Aaron Mathews.
You held his dick in your hand.
Fuck you.
I collapse onto the grass at the park, in the same spot Aslam and I fell after the party.
After I tried to hit someone for you.
The tall buildings are capped with bright lights. Yellow and orange and red. The broad cement shoulders of the hospital are glowing. There’s half a moon and thin strings of cloud. A plane cuts diagonally through them.
I call Alice.
‘I’m calling to say you’re a massive stupid walrus bitch.’
‘Etgar?’
‘Stupid sea animal go back to the sea.’
‘Etgar, please.’ Her voice wobbles.
‘You ruin everything.’
‘Let me talk.’ It sounds like her cheeks are filled with water.
She’s crying. I am too.
‘Manson family sexy orgy with hazelnuts.’
‘What?’
‘I know everything.’
‘What is everything?’
‘Fuck you I’m so sad.’
‘I am too.’
‘You’re just sad you got caught. You got fingered and then sad. I just got sad. I want to be fingered by Aaron Mathews’ great hands that he punched my face with. He put his hand in your vag then punched my face with it. Fuck you.’ She’s crying. I’m carrying on. ‘He punched me with your vagina and infidelity. I thought you were Alice but you’re not. You’re something else. You’re a walrus and I hate you.’
‘Etgar.’ Her voice is small and wet.
‘Etgar. Etgar. Etgar. Etgar. Etgar. Etgar. Etgar is hanging up the phone now, bye for ever.’
I stand up and pull at my hair. Clumps of it come out in my hands. My eyes blur. A police car runs past and for a second everything is blue.
18
Two days before the start of secondary school, I Googled how to shave and cut my chin so deep it made me dizzy.
I was eleven.
For three months, I missed fifty per cent of school. Dad left the house at seven. Mum at eight. I carried my duvet downstairs, lay on the sofa and watched documentaries about natural disasters, genocide and notorious serial killers. I went up to the loft and sorted through Dad’s old records. I sold several of them on eBay and spent the money on Lili Six, sensuous massage in the comfort of your own home. I didn’t have any sensuous massages in the comfort of my own home. Lili repeatedly called school and told them I had a bug/food poisoning/tonsillitis. She explained that I was born prematurely and so was prone to sickness. Lili called me ‘chick’ in the mornings when we talked over the phone. She told me about premiership football scandals and I told her about Ted Bundy.
Eventually, someone, somewhere, became suspicious, and school called one evening while Mum and Dad were in the living room, watching Casualty and eating After Eights. They made me come downstairs and sit between them on the sofa. I didn’t feel scared. I felt calm. My parents don’t shout. They used to, when they still had sex, but stopped when they realised every argument ended the same way, with everything being fine.
‘Are you being bullied?’
‘Are you stressed?’
‘Are you gay?’
A pause.
‘Why would being gay mean skipping school?’
‘It’s a tough thing to come to terms with.’ Dad blinks and pulls his earlobe. ‘Very daunting.’ Mum stares at him.
‘I’m not gay.’
Dad has been suggesting this on a regular basis since I was nine. He doesn’t know how to react to male humans who are scared of things. He thinks that being scared is for women, gays and the under-nines.
‘It’s okay if you are.’
‘Well, I’m not.’
‘Well, you can be.’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
I had to go to school every day after that, otherwise they said they’d expel me and I’d move to a school with metal detectors and drug dogs. I did all of the work we were given quietly and quickly. I got good marks for Mum. I didn’t care about good marks. I cared about bed and beer and Daniel Clowes. I spent a lot of time in the places people who don’t have anywhere to go spend their time.
