And it was good. And fun. And great. We were mates at the top of our game; a team to be reckoned with. And I was happy.
But then, one day, Ben overstepped the mark.
The unwritten rule in those happy teenage years was that we were a team. And the team never played pranks on each other. The team was as one.
You may find the following rather harrowing.
It was a Saturday morning. I was dressed in my ill-fitting slacks and gray Argos tie. My hair was badly gelled and I cut an awkward, gangly figure as I lolloped down the hill to work, the winter sun bringing every single dented beer can and waterlogged cigarette end into sharp Saturday focus. Everything was normal as Bath recovered from the night before: the payphone had been bashed and smashed as usual. The subway had been given a fresh lick of mildly offensive graffiti. And, as every week, someone had inexplicably left a single chicken nugget on top of the postbox opposite Millets.
The first of the day’s shoppers were milling around Southgate shopping center (“Bath’s largest covered shopping area!” was its only sad boast) waiting for the keycutters to open, and I left the beauty of a bright morning for the flickering striplights that painted the bags under your eyes and yellowed your face.
I’d bought a coronation chicken sandwich and a can of Tizer for me and Ben on the way in, and my first vital mission was to make it to the staffroom to deposit them in the fridge. But there was something not quite right. Something different, as I walked past the wonky pile of catalogues by the door. There were glances, and smirks. A giggle and a nudge.
I nodded a hello to the girl whose till was one down from mine, but she avoided my eye and pretended to be studying the homemade tattoo on her arm. The woman in the jewelry section—whose alarming enthusiasm with make-up has since been made illegal in nine countries—was simply smiling at me.
Nevertheless, being a true and proud Argos professional, I pressed on, through the double doors with the peeling silver windows and up the too-steep steps to the staffroom, where I would make a cup of tea before the doors opened and the horrors began. I was looking forward to seeing Ben that day. I had something funny to tell him, and as well as Gladiators, there was going to be a very exciting edition of Noel’s House Party that night, because I’d seen a trailer and Lionel Blair got a Gotcha. It was going to be a magical evening.
But then… then I saw it.
Up on the noticeboard.
Neatly tacked in, a pin in each corner.
A letter.
A letter with my name at the end of it.
Which was odd, because I hadn’t written any letters. And I certainly hadn’t written any letters here. Why would I write letters from Argos? I was confused. Concerned.
I stood closer, and began to read…
PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL
Eh?
This was a bad start. A bad start to something that suddenly seemed likely to get a lot worse.
I broke into a sweat.
To: Dr. Riversticks
The Reinhardt Private Clinic for Young Men
10–12 Lime Buildings
Chippenham
RE: Your letter of August 18th
Dear Dr. Riversticks,
My name is Daniel Wallace, and I wish to point out that your assessment of the so-called “outstanding” balance on my account is plagued with a startling presumptuousness.
What? What was this? Who was Dr. Riversticks? What was the Reinhardt Private Clinic for Young Men? And where had I learned a word like “presumptuousness”?
When I originally embarked upon the Genital Exfoliation treatment…
On what?!
… I was led to believe that the overall outlay of £280.25 would easily cover the scheduled twelve sessions…
Twelve sessions? I’d had twelve sessions of genital exfoliation!? I didn’t even remember having one! I think I’d remember having twelve of anything involving my genitals!
Besides my extreme dissatisfaction with the “results” of the surgery, your final balance of £1,326.35 is entirely unacceptable.
Why had I written the word “results” like that? What had happened with the surgery? What had happened to my genitals? Was it possible to over-exfoliate them? Who had over-exfoliated my genitals?
I had imagined, when first I embarked upon my journey with the Reinhardt Private Clinic for Young Men, that the journey would be short, cheap, painless and successful. I certainly didn’t imagine it would make my knackers look like a weeping sparrow.
A WEEPING SPARROW??
Please contact my lawyers at Casey & Bodfish, on all future matters.
No! Casey & Bodfish!? Casey… and Bodfish! This… this was the work of…
Sincerely,
D. Wallace
No! Not D. Wallace! This was B. Ives! Ben Ives! A comrade! A team-mate! A… hang on…
P.S. I am writing this at work so I hope I don’t accidentally print it out on all the printers here, because I would be quite embarrassed by that.
… a bastard!
Ben Ives had broken the rules! He’d gone against everything that was good and holy in our world! Everything that was right and proper! Everything we’d built up and bonded over! He’d turned me from pranker to prankee! A victim! A mark! A… a loser! A loser who quibbles over the high price of genital exfoliation!
And to think I’d brought him a can of Tizer.
This was terrible. Terrible! I was humiliated! Humiliated, as I walked out of the staffroom to notice a copy of the letter on the door! Humiliated, as I stumbled past Connie from the stockroom. Humiliated, as I realized that yes—Ben had printed out a copy on every printer in the store, and yes—those copies had been read. And passed around. And photocopied. And, for all I knew, sent to the Bath Chronicle and the Associated Press.
This was it! This was war! The army had been split! Torn apart by betrayal and menace! Ripped in two by the actions of a young maverick trying to make a name for himself! A line had been crossed. A line that now separated us. A line too wide to ignore; too wide to reach out and shake hands across. A line that meant trouble.
Hours later, at my station, my cheeks still burning, I caught a glimpse of Ben Ives as he came down from the stockroom. He looked slightly apologetic; slightly shamefaced. But I knew what was happening inside of him. I knew because I had been like him once. I knew the feeling of elation, the bubble of joy in the base of the gut that comes from a prank that hit the target. And he knew I knew. And I knew he knew I knew. But now… now I was a different person. I had learned my lesson well. The lesson of the victim.
I turned around. I had work to do. Good, honorable, Argos work. Those fancy, gold-plated BEST MUM IN THE WORLD sovereign rings weren’t going to sell themselves.
But soon… soon I would come up with something to get him back. Soon I would conquer the master. I would use what he had taught me to exploit his weaknesses; I would find the chink in his armor and, when the moment was right, I would strike. Strike like the panther! But it had to be good. It had to be right. It had to be better than his; he’d really nailed me with that genital exfoliation. Which is a sentence I never thought I’d write.
But guess what? As the weeks passed, as one month slopped into another… I never got Ben Ives back. Yeah, so I tried, once or twice. But he was on to me. He found the ladies’ magazines I’d hidden in his backpack. He knew, when I phoned up in a funny voice to tell him he’d won a competition and he was to make his way to Germany immediately, that it was me. He was always one step ahead. And annoyingly, he knew it. Gradually, he became more arrogant about it.
“Give up,” he’d said one day, as we left Argos. “You’re never going to pull it off. Admit you’re in second place and maybe we can start doing stuff again…”
But I was too proud. I didn’t want to be in second place. All I wanted was for us both to be in first place. The old team. Back together. But the only way for that to happen was to get even; to prove my worth; to regain equality.
I was quite down
about it. I knew, deep inside, that Ben was the better prankster. I knew that perhaps I needed him to bounce off; to make my own pranks that little bit better. The split had caught me unawares. Now I knew that somehow he would always catch me out; that my prank would never live up to expectation; that he’d know it was me in an instant. My confidence was rocked.
Maybe all we needed was a bit of distance.
And that’s kind of what we got. A week or two later I was moved to the stockroom. I didn’t see Ben as much. I began to watch Gladiators on my own. Later, Ben got a job at Superdrug, and he started hanging out with a kid named Gary, who had his own TV in his room. They could watch Gladiators whenever they liked.
Soon, my days at Argos were over, and thus, my last link to Ben Ives.
It was a shame.
Suddenly now, in London, halfway through varnishing a garden table on a bright and sunny summer morning, I was consumed by an overwhelming urge to see him. To tell him that upon further reflection and after more than a decade of thought, his accusations of genital exfoliation had been excellent; that he’d got me and that I didn’t mind; that I would happily take second place if only we could be friends again…
Within moments, I was at my computer. I thought back to what Anil had implied. That these were opportunities to be grabbed. That the past is as important as the present. That I shouldn’t pass up the chance to right a wrong. That wrongs were there to be righted. That sometimes that’s how you make peace with the past.
I retraced my steps of the night before, and then… I found him. I knew where he was, and what he was doing. I knew some of what he’d done, and some of what he hoped to do. I even knew what he looked like.
It was all rather impressive. Ben Ives was now a journalist. On a paper somewhere outside of LA. Writing features, and opinion pieces… a review of a touring production of Pirates of Penzance… a lengthy diatribe on the links between oil and war… a feature about a strange group of people called “Furries” who enjoy dressing up in big furry pig costumes, or bear costumes, or Snoopy costumes, and then having intimate relations, which he’d titled FUR THE LOVE OF DOG… and next to them all, under his byline… a picture.
It was him! It was definitely him!
But as I looked into those eyes—and this is something I am deeply ashamed of—I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of annoyance. A twinge of regret that I never quite managed to get him back. It sounds silly, and childish, and stupid, but looking into those dark Ives eyes brought something else out in me…
What had Anil said again? That I shouldn’t pass up a chance to right a wrong? Well, here was a wrong to be righted. The letter on the Argos staffroom noticeboard! That was the real wrong! Not the falling out of touch with Ben Ives—but the catalyst. The kick-off. The reason. This… this was a wrong worth righting!
But no. Wait.
That is not what Anil meant.
No. He meant I correct the past nicely. Make positive moves.
Yes. I’ll forgive and forget. Email him nicely. Ask him how he’s doing. Lay the past to rest. Ignore the fact that he’d informed half of Bath I’d been undergoing an intensive course of genital exfoliation which had left my knackers looking like a weeping sparrow. Ignore the fact that he’d gotten away with it. Gotten away with it because we’d never got even. And we’d never got even because he was expecting it. Waiting for it. Wanting and willing it to happen. And how do you get even with someone who wants you to? Who’s waiting for it? None of my plans had ever been quite good enough, quite right enough to carry out… because now I see he was expecting retribution. Expecting a comeback. Expecting my revenge!
And now, as I sat in London, a million miles away from such immature and childish things, a million miles away from having to prove myself… a strange and satisfying thought occurred…
Would he still be expecting it after fifteen years?
To: Ben Ives
From: ManGriff the Beast Warrior
Subject: YOUR “ARTICLE”
Dear Ben Ives,
I got your email from a friend of mine, Domino Bullets, at the recent FurCon in Miami.
My name is ManGriff the Beast Warrior and I am a Furry.
I would like to speak with you about being a Furry.
You appear to have a problem with us Furries. Your article FUR THE LOVE OF DOG describes us thus:
“A bizarro world of animal love and human failings… they dress up as animals, but why these people think they can hide behind their costumes is beyond even the most eccentric mind…”
This is outrageous. We enjoy dressing as furry animals, talking and, yes, sometimes making love. You do not. So what?
You may well know you have become known as Ben Lie-ves by some of the higher powers at FurCon—Ujagi Mokanda and Panda Al in particular. Your duplicity at once united and split many at the DeathStar BBS in Washington and the MidWest FurFest and you have been the subject of many debates (you have come to represent the media as a whole for many thousands of Furries in the US of Americans).
I am coming to LA in the next month or so and I will be coming by your offices where you work to see you. I would welcome the chance to tell you how it really is. I think that you should write another article about Furries—one that shows things how they REALLY are.
Can you let me know your availability for the next month please.
ManGriff
(Tom)
CHAPTER NINE
IN WHICH WE LEARN THAT WHEN YOU LOOK BACK, MOST OF YOUR MATES DO WORK IN I.T.…
My email to Ben Ives had filled me with childish glee. I had tried to hook him. Reel him in. ManGriff the Beast Warrior was on his way, and there was nothing Ben could do about it. I’d been slightly worried, though. Ben was a smart cookie. Hard to fool. But that had been when we were in Bath. He was in LA, now. This kind of thing must happen to him all the time.
The next morning, however, I was concerned. I hadn’t heard back from him. Maybe I’d pushed it too far.
By mid-afternoon, I knew I hadn’t.
To: ManGriff the Beast Warrior
From: Ben Ives
Subject: RE: YOUR “ARTICLE”
Er, hi ManGriff/Tom,
Just picked up your message—I’m just about to go into a meeting for the rest of the day but I’m more than happy to meet with you—in fact I would welcome the opportunity.
I realize that I upset a number of Furries thru my piece—I got some nasty emails about it—but certainly I didn’t realize it had become such a hot potato in the US Furry community. And in fact I think I have been well and truly misrepresented. I don’t know who Domino Bullets is, nor what DeathStar BBS is, perhaps you could fill me in? It would be interesting to consider a follow-up piece, depending on my editor’s feelings.
Do you have any particular date in mind? I could do the afternoon of the 21st. Are you in LA?
All the best,
Ben Ives
Ha. This was great! Ives was mine! Now all I had to do was keep this going for a while—at least until he’d booked a meeting room or shown some sign that I’d tricked him, and then I would reveal all. Revenge! Revenge was on its way! After fifteen years! Well done, Wallace!
I bounced around my room for a moment or two, thinking about what to write next. Ben Ives would rue the day he’d made a target out of me. But the best thing was, he was currently ruing the day he’d made an enemy out of the Furries—those poor, misunderstood people who innocently enjoy the simple plea sure of dressing up as animals and having sex. This was for them.
I decided to up the ante. Which, if you add the word “lope” to the end of that sentence, sounds like something a Furry might do.
To: Ben Ives
From: ManGriff the Beast Warrior
Subject: RE: YOUR “ARTICLE”
ROOOOOOOAAARRRR
Ben,
This is EGGSELLENT news. My girlfriend, the Stormy Leopard, has asked me to ask you this: in her “human” form, she is developing a per formance piece based on being
a Furry, which she has developed over the years. She wanted me to ask you whether you and your staff would be interested in a small performance of this piece when we meet. For my part, I believe it is among the only things that will truly help you understand the way that we Furries have to live. Here’s to the follow-up story!
With thanks,
ManGriff
There. I was introducing a new layer: a new player. A new Furry for Ben to deal with. The Stormy Leopard. Who was she? I had no idea. I would find out when Ben did.
I also admired my own use of the word “eggsellent” instead of “excellent,” and hoped Ben would assume this was some kind of special Furry speak, even though eggs very rarely turn out furry.
I was having fun. I realized I’d have to pay for it. I had MPs to earn.
I went outside and got the varnishing brush out of the shed.
“So, what’ve you been up to?” said Ian, putting his pint down on the table. He’d called, out of the blue, and said he was heading into London for the day. He sounded quite down about it, as if leaving Chislehurst was the worst thing a man could ever go through. We’d decided to watch the Costa Rica versus Poland match, in a pub just off Tottenham Court Road.
“I’ve been doing a lot of DIY,” I told him, importantly.
“Ah,” said Ian. “Of course. How many Man Points are you on?”
“DIY is important, Ian. It is a vital stage in my evolution towards adulthood. Already, I have had several meetings about my guttering, there’s a ladder in my hallway, I’ve decided to get a canopy and I’ve varnished half a table.”
“You must be exhausted,” said Ian, and I made an exhausted face and nodded. Poland scored a goal.
“Well, how about you? How’s Chislehurst?”
At this, the heavens above Ian’s head opened—angels sang, and he was bathed in a glorious and golden light.
“It is wonderful,” said Ian, his eyes shining. On his shoulder, a small fairy was playing a harp. “It is just wonderful. There are the caves, of course—miles of history and mystery…”
Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play Page 14
