Twenty Something

by Iain Hollingshead

  ‘Yes,’ chipped in Leila. ‘And if it hadn’t been for your April Fools’ joke, it could have taken us ages to find out how the other one felt.’

  The illogical little filly. If I’d really wanted to help out, I wouldn’t have lied to them both when entrusted with my Cupid mission. Women really are a conundrum. But unlike ‘Jimmy the barber shaves all the men on Anglesey, except for those who shave themselves. Who shaves Jimmy?’, women are at least a conundrum with breasts.

  Office love, it would seem, forgives all.

  Buddy’s hand was on Leila’s thigh. How bloody dare he. That was private property. No trespassing. I love her as much as I hate Buddy. There is no doubt about it: I have to leave this office now.

  Sunday 10th April

  ‘Fred, I was on the BBC website again at work yesterday, and I started looking at their “On This Day” page. And you know what I found out this time?’

  ‘No, do tell.’

  ‘Well, on 9th April 2003 Saddam Hussein’s statue was toppled in Iraq. On 9th April 1999 the President of Niger, a certain Ibrahim Bare Mainassara, was shot dead in a coup attempt. And I suddenly realised that, yet again, yesterday, I, Jack Lancaster, got up at 6.45am on a Saturday to go to work, showered, shat, shaved, read my book on the tube and spent twelve hours staring into space at a highly paid job that I hate.’

  ‘Yeah, not much has changed, has it?’ said Fred.

  He paused before adding, ‘Although you aren’t having as much sex as you used to.’

  ‘Thanks. I mean, for many of the five billion human beings with whom we share this little in-joke of existence, Saturday 9th April will have been a memorable day. Thousands will have got married, had their first child or paid off their mortgages. Others will have won the lottery, visited long-lost friends or run over the cat. Relationships will have stopped and started, grandchildren born, dogs died, wars waged, deals struck, enemies made, friends lost, parents divorced. Someone, somewhere, has just this second had their first unforgettable orgasm.’

  I paused, waiting for Flatmate Fred to grasp the significance of what I was saying.

  ‘Jack, you really are having a midlife crisis.’

  ‘Can we call it a quarter-life crisis at least?’ I protested.

  ‘Sure,’ he continued. ‘But crisis away. Get it out of your system. You’re young and liberated. Do young and liberated things before you’re too embarrassingly old to do them any more. Make love to two women at once. Nose-hoover Peruvian narcotics off an ice ledge. Run naked through flowered fields. Stand in the middle of a chapel and scream. Live the dream.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I mean, there’s nothing sadder than a middle-aged man with a sports car and a comb-over, combing the streets for his lost youth.’

  ‘Indeed. But what exactly do you have in mind? Specifically, I mean.’

  ‘In your case, I’d recommend trying to get sacked from work, followed by a few weeks of heavy, debauched partying, followed by an attempt to work out what your purpose in life is.’

  Flatmate Fred’s a genius. That’s exactly what I’ll do.

  Monday 11th April

  Day one of trying to lose my job. Of course, I could do this the boring way and hand in a resignation letter like everyone else. But where’s the fun in that? Or I could do one outrageous act — such as getting naked on my desk and dancing the Macarena with my pants over my head — which would lead to instant dismissal. But that’s far too easy.

  So I plan on waging a long-term war of attrition. Stage by stage I will wear the bastards down. My trench is dug and I’m coming over the top.

  I started my campaign by sending an email to Buddy with every swear word I could think of spelled out in full. I’d rather not repeat the torrent of bile and invective in my diary, but the essential gist was as follows:

  ‘Dear Buddy (you canine copulator), I think you’re a bit of a wally. Perhaps you’d like to go back to the States at some point and leave us all in peace. Jack.’

  Except that, in the course of the email I managed to use thirty-five of the forty-two words which are banned by our IT department. I always wished I’d been at the meeting where that list was drawn up:

  ‘Derek?’

  ‘Yes, Martin.’

  ‘Can you close the door, please. This is a bit of a sensitive topic, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh sure, Derek. All very hush-hush, need-to-know basis.’

  ‘Exactly. Right, Trevor. Why don’t you blue-sky-think this one.’

  ‘Sure, Martin. So far I’ve got “shit”, “cock”, “twat”, “nob”, “dick”.’

  Nervous cough.

  ‘Yes, Richard. Do you have something to say?’

  ‘Well, yes, Martin. It’s just that if we ban the word “dick”, some of my emails aren’t going to get through. A lot of my friends call me Dick.’

  ‘Good point, Richard. I can see we’re going to have to think out of the box on this one.’

  Etc., etc.

  My email to Buddy pinged straight back, which means he never got to read it. IT have reported me to my managing director and I am in big sh*t. Excellent. The fact that I’m dying from a lump in my bollock aside, I haven’t felt this good for ages.

  Wednesday 13th April

  Big sh*t.

  Rupert (bald) asked me to step into his office just after lunch.

  ‘Wotcha, Jack.’ He punched me playfully on the arm. ‘I see your hair’s still receding.’

  ‘Yes, Rupert, it is. One day, if the gods continue to smile on me, I’m going to be as handsome as you.’

  ‘Maybe, Jack, maybe. God knows, you’ve already got a pretty handsome vocabulary. What was going through your mind when you sent that email?’

  I could have handled a dressing-down from Rupert (bald). He’s early thirties, unmarried and a bit of a prat. He talks incessantly about girls but never has one. He thinks he’s still twenty-three. He’s a warning to us all of how we might turn out. But he means well.

  But I hadn’t counted on Mr Cox joining our little discussion. I’m not sure that Mr Cox has a Christian name. He’s just Mr Cox. His wife probably calls him Mr Cox. He’s mid-fifties, the overall managing director for both Rupert (bald) and me, and one of the top five scariest people in the world. He came into the office, shut the door behind him and eased his pince-nez down his beak of a nose.

  I’m ashamed to say I had to lock my knees together to stop them shaking.

  ‘Jack Lancaster, through sins of both omission and commission, it has been a little while since I, open brackets, your managing director, close brackets, have had a tête-à-tête, that is to say a head-to-head, with you.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Cox.’

  Mr Cox hitched up his red braces and smoothed down his shiny parting.

  ‘And, PS, Jack, post scriptum, it would be untruthful of me, in my capacity as your professional and moral mentor, to pretend that this is not a bad state of affairs. PPS, to put it more simply, I am not unconcerned by your recent behaviour — id est, I am rather concerned.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Cox?’

  ‘Exempli gratia, inter alia, your electronic communication with young Mr Wilton-Steer. Pray, which unusual cognitive processes led you to conclude that this might not be an unreasonable course of action?’

  I couldn’t think of any reasonable answer to give this walking Cicero. So I was scared into telling the truth.

  ‘Love, Mr Cox, love.’

  ‘Love, Jack, love? Would it not be incorrect for me to conclude a priori that you are emotionally attached to Mr Wilton-Steer? The love that dare not speak its name?’

  How do you disagree with a double negative?

  ‘Yes, Mr Cox. I mean, no, Mr Cox. I’m in love with Leila. Buddy stole her off me.’

  ‘ O tempora, o mores! Leila Sid-day-bot-tome?’

  I stifled a giggle.

  ‘Yes, Leila Sidebottom.’

  Mr Cox glared at me down his pince-nez.

  ‘Young man, I will not be corrected on my pronunciatio
n by someone with a vocabulary as vulgar as yours. This is your final warning. You are not here to fall in love. You are not here to embark on courtships in situ. I do not pay you for your abusive electronic communications. I pay you to maximise value for our shareholders. Be so good as to leave my presence and do that now. Mutatis mutandis, you might make a respectable banker one day.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Cox. I do hope so.’

  Cunnus maximus.

  Saturday 16th April

  First boys’ night out in over a month. Buddy wasn’t invited (for obvious reasons), but it was the first time that the core four of us had been together since the disastrous game of ‘I have never’.

  Rick and Jasper joined Flatmate Fred and me, and we drank ten beers each before getting changed and going to School Disco at the Hammersmith Palais. I’ve never felt that easy about the whole schoolgirl erotica thing. It strikes me as slightly odd that a society that is so vigilant about paedophilia can actively promote school uniform as saucy attire.

  Slightly odd. But who cares? Twentysomethings look great in short pleated skirts and white shirts. Hell, when you’re wearing your ten-pint beer goggles, fortysomethings look great in short skirts.

  Which is lucky, because the Palais (and what a palace it is) was full of middle-aged secretaries on hen nights. It’s enough to make you feel proud to be British. Ageing Italians don’t dress up like slags and go on the pull. Arab women don’t behave in such a debauched fashion.

  Fortunately, we found a corner with some younger-looking slags and we were soon gyrating away merrily to S Club 7. I felt a hand on my trousers and a tongue in my ear.

  ‘Take me back to yours.’

  She was fit, or at least she acted fit. It would have been rude not to. Jasper and Flatmate Fred, who were dancing either side of another girl, gave me a big thumbs-up. Rick waved from the bar where he was ordering Smirnoff Ices and chatting up the cross-dressing barmaid.

  So I did the honourable thing, took her back to mine and took her to heaven and back five times before sunrise. It was even better than sex with Lucy, because there was no gulf between what it was supposed to mean and what it actually meant. It was raw and it was inevitable and it was very, very good.

  I recall one particular highlight when she put a finger up my bum.

  ‘Don’t touch me there Oh touch me there Touch me there.’

  Spring is in the air, and I am one frolicking, randy ram.

  Sunday 17th April

  I am no expert at one-night stands — in fact, this was my first since university — so I had no idea of the etiquette the next morning. Was I meant to wake her up and sleep with her again? Did she expect a cuddle? Did she want breakfast? Could I walk around my own room naked? Were we meant to go to a Sunday-morning church service together? And why was my school tie knotted around the bedpost?

  So many meaningless questions and only one really counted: what the hell was she called?

  She was still asleep, so I had a rummage in her handbag, which was lying by my bed. I fished out a credit card — ‘Miss P. M. Gilmour’. Oh shit-sticks. Was it Polly? I was pretty sure she was a Polly. She looked like a Polly. Definitely not a Penelope. Or was she Pam? What if she was called by her second initial? Mandy, Marian, Mary? She was hardly the virgin Mary. Miss P. M. Gilmour. I couldn’t call her Miss Gilmour.

  ‘What are you doing in my handbag?’

  Polly/Marian had woken up and wasn’t looking very happy.

  ‘Oh. Sorry. I was just being nosy,’ I stammered.

  ‘You can’t remember my name, can you, Jack Lancaster?’

  ‘No, don’t be silly. Of course I can remember your name.’

  ‘Well, what is it then, Jack Lancaster?’

  ‘Er, Miss Gilmour?’

  At which point Rick, Flatmate Fred and Jasper all charged into my room singing ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ and tried to give me a wedgie.

  Miss P. M. Gilmour gathered up her tattered dignity and her school uniform and ran outside.

  ‘Polly, Polly, I’m sorry. come back.’ I ran after her.

  Miss P. M. Gilmour put her head round the corner and said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear, ‘Jack, it’s Prudence. And, by the way, you’ve got a small cock and you’re crap in bed.’

  Yeuch. Prudence — lucky escape. I was also consoled by the fact that she had to do the walk of shame in her schoolgirl outfit the entire way back to Clapham.

  Friday 22nd April

  A very boring week at work. My continuing campaign to undermine the system from within is the only thing that’s kept me going.

  The attrition war is mounting. On Monday I put my bin on my desk and fastened the word ‘In-tray’ to it with sticky-backed plastic. No one batted an eyelid. On Wednesday I changed my voicemail to ‘Please leave a message for me to ignore’. No one rang me. On Thursday I changed my email footer. It now reads:

  Jack Lancaster

  Managing Director

  Tantric Love Ltd

  0898 69 69 69

  No one commented.

  Today I brought in a postcard from home and glued it to my monitor. It was a free card handed out by the Unison trade union: ‘Work me to the bone, pay me a pittance, never let me go home.’

  Mr Cox swung by my desk.

  ‘Jack, salve. Not to mention greetings. Are you quite well? You’re quite well, I trust.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Cox, I am very well indeed.’

  ‘That is not unpleasing to hear, Jack — far from unpleasing at all. So you are quite compos mentis, then? It’s just that the picture postcard that you are displaying on your monitor might suggest otherwise.’

  ‘Oh really, Mr Cox? I’m merely identifying with the struggle of the proletariat. The workers of the world are uniting. We have nothing to lose but our network log-ins.’

  ‘No, Jack. That’s a non sequitur. The workers of the world are revolting, and you are more revolting than most. Now take that postcard down and put it in your “In-tray”.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Cox.’

  Mr Cox will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

  Monday 25th April

  On the plus side, I have now given up on going to the gym — that temple to inadequacy and despair, vain aggression and directionless virility. I am bored of competing subconsciously with people twice my size (almost certain to lose) or against the machines themselves (absolutely certain to lose). The treadmill’s power supply will always last longer than mine. The step machine might not be able to carry on stepping without my help, but at least it won’t be lying on the floor retching its guts out.

  Gym-philes have two illusions: one, that they will get more action in the bedroom; two, that physical prowess will translate into wider success. These fantasies aren’t helped by the fitness fanatics currently occupying some of the most powerful positions in international politics.

  Well, I’m under neither of these illusions. Welcome back, my lovely beer keg. All is forgiven.

  Wednesday 27th April

  The irony of the little Buddy ’n’ Leila sideshow is that Leila and I have made up and become really good friends again. Now that I’m no longer seen as a sexual threat, she’s even more open with me than before. And now that she’s no longer on my direct target list, I am much more at ease around her. Our lunches have started again. And Buddy works such long hours that Leila and I have regularly gone drinking à deux in the evenings. She even knows that I’m having a quarter-life crisis and am trying to get sacked (although I’ve kept the testicle bit to myself — cancer isn’t much of a turn-on, I’m told).

  We might have turned into genuine friends, but I still like the fact that I can see beyond her obvious charms. Others might think she’s fit; I think she’s beautiful. And somehow she manages to be bubbly and shy, giggly and serious, compassionate and ironic, modern and old-fashioned, ambitious and homely, in all the right measures.

  And, as for her, I think she looks up to me in a bemused — if depressingly asexual — sort of way. I mi
ght not be Buddy with his cocksure American ambition, but I do at least make her laugh. I think she admires my silly give-a-damn attitude. She is straight out of university. This job is a dream come true for her. She lacks my cynical nature.

  ‘I’m not a cynic,’ I tell her. ‘I’m just a lapsed idealist.’

  ‘Same difference,’ she giggles. ‘Now just tell me again why my favourite lapsed idealist would like to leave a job with such lovely colleagues and a six-figure salary.’

  That’s the problem. Some of the colleagues are just that little bit too lovely; the rest are subhuman/shagging the lovely ones.

  In some ways I’ve grown to see her in a new light. She’s no longer a very fit girl who happens to be a nice person. She’s now a very good friend who just happens to be attractive.

  Well done, me. But it doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped fantasising about her. She ticks every box and I’m madly in love with her.

  Saturday 30th April

  Lucy rang up to say that she was pregnant.

  MAY

  Sunday 1st May

  Lucy refused to give any more details on the phone yesterday, arranging only to meet up on the Bank Holiday tomorrow to talk properly. Until then I am left in a living hell of unanswerable questions. Is she sure she’s pregnant? Isn’t she on the pill? Is she going to terminate it? And who the hell is the father — Rick, me or someone else?

  I try to take my mind off this by buying a newspaper, but the advert on the front page is for baby bonds — ‘investing in your child’s future’. A glance at the TV guide tells me that there is a documentary in the evening on unwanted pregnancies. I turn on the TV in the morning and there is a nappies advert. I try to escape the flat and the first thing I see on the Underground is a three-metre poster for pregnancy-test kits. I go into Boots to buy some painkillers for my pounding headache and the girl in front of me is crying and asking for the morning-after pill.