Haterz

by James Goss

  Teenaged girls loved Harry. Like really, really loved him.

  DUSTER HAD SENT me a Twitter profile for @PaperGurlRME. And the message, ‘End her.’

  OKAY, COUPLE OF problems. Firstly PaperGurlRME’s name was Jeannette Turlingham III (which meant that there were two people before her who had thought that name was okay). And secondly, Jeannette was fourteen.

  What could possibly make the Killuminati think that I would kill a fourteen-year-old?

  THEN I READ her tweets:

  To a famous actress who said she didn’t fancy Harry Paperboy: ‘ru a lesbain or ru 2 old? Die dyke.’

  To a reviewer who didn’t like Harry’s latest single: ‘shut ur mouth fag.’

  To a gossip columnist talking about Harry’s behaviour: ‘bitch ur not harry’s mother. Stfu.’

  To a twenty-five-year-old dancer seen out with Harry: ‘ur 101 back off he’s 19.’

  Again: ‘ur 1 ugly cow.’

  And: ‘get the fuck away from my babe whorecow.’

  And to a dad who hadn’t enjoyed the concert his daughters had dragged him to: ‘Sick peedo works at @DinksToys BOYCOT. #byebyejob.’

  BASICALLY, JEANNETTE WAS like the sinister henchman to Harry Paperboy’s dictator. Whenever someone criticised Harry, Jeannette would unleash the dogs of war. Specifically an army of several hundred thousand tweeters. Say @victim posted ‘Harry sucks’ and Jeannette’s PaperGurlArmy would bombard the offending account with block capital hatred, death threats and abuse before declaring them Nazis who hate free speech. But that was just the start. They would spread out like a biblical plague, bombarding @victim’s followers and the people who @victim followed with abuse. They would go further. They would find out who @victim worked for and deluge their official Twitter account. Basically, a single derogatory comment by someone could see them lose their friends and their job.

  NICE WORK, JEANNETTE Turlingham III. But I wasn’t going to kill you. You’re still a child. I’m not going to start killing children. I did stupid horrid stuff when I was fourteen. I think everyone did. The problem is that when I was a teenager we did all the stupid stuff in comparative privacy. Without Facebook or Twitter, the worst we could do was blog about how our life sucked, or email some friends. We’d still write our poetry in notebooks (the old paper ones, I mean). The poetry would be about how lonely and isolated and messed up we felt. But now, the Jeannettes of this world got to be messed up and isolated and lonely in front of an audience of hundreds of thousands. And instead of just staring at a poster on a wall, they could track their idol’s every move, shout directly at them for attention, and terrorise people on their behalf.

  I’d like to imagine that, in a few years’ time, Jeannette (now happily married and with a less crazy surname) would check back through Facebook and think, Oh, God. I did that? Thank fuck I had that tattoo removed, before hurrying off to do the school run.

  It seemed as insane to assassinate Jeanette for her schoolgirl crush as it did to hunt me down and kill me for a poem I’d once written about Snow (‘Hail, winter’s shivery blanket...’). But, for the moment, Jeanette was a problem. And one I couldn’t kill. Also, she lived in Arizona.

  I WAS STILL getting used to having a KillFund. The idea seemed so utterly insane that I carried on going to work. Standing still in the rain waving at strangers became even more pointless. But it was also a cover. If I ever became a suspect, it would seem suspicious if I suddenly stopped doing my ludicrous job. So that was the reason I carried on chugging.

  I did think about going out to Arizona to get to know Jeanette. But the logistics utterly defeated me. For a start, I would need to book a plane, which would mean using my passport. I could, I supposed, fake one, but the cost of doing this would pretty much have drained my KillFund. Just to go and not kill a teenager. I looked into it all, though. Obviously, I used the local library’s internet access. I didn’t want ‘Buy a fake passport’ and ‘Death penalty for accidental child murder in Arizona’ to show up in my Google cache. I also, it has to be said, spent a lot of time looking at pictures of teenage girls.

  I didn’t want that at home. Jeanette and her friends shared everything and didn’t appear to have heard of Facebook privacy settings (while at the same time ‘LEAVE ME ALONE’ was one of their favourite sayings). I could look at Jeanette cleaning her teeth (she had braces), watch videos of her doing cheerleading, and see her singing along to Harry’s songs in six-second chunks.

  It was all weird. Weird as in, ‘Why the hell would I want to experience any of this?’

  Don’t get me wrong. I’m not a paedophile. Looking at all those pictures of teenage girls proved it. Oh, crap, that sentence was all wrong. But why would you be a paedophile? Quite apart from it being inherently horrid, children are pretty unhygienic, you’d be bound to catch a cold. Also, children are appallingly selfish, so they’d be terrible lovers. I’m trying to see a single positive side to paedophilia, and I’m really drawing a complete blank.

  Still, I had spent a lot of time looking at pictures of teenage girls. Thankfully using the computer at the library. A glance into its history revealed all of humanity’s despair and that quite a lot of people can’t spell ‘porn.’ Plus that someone had tried to find out how to make a bomb. That caused me to glance around the library nervously before I remembered that I’d actually killed people. So no moral high ground there.

  MY FIRST GOAL was to make contact with Jeanette. I figured I would build up an identity for myself as a PaperGurl. So I set up a blog and posted lots and lots of reviews of everything he’d done. I carefully backdated the posts, and included lots of YouTube appearances on chat shows. It counted as handy research. I really began to feel I knew a lot about Harry Paperboy. I posted links to all the gossip sites, and joined in the mockery at the reporting. Of course it wasn’t Harry, but someone else at that party, who spat at the child from the Make-A-Wish Foundation who wanted an autograph. He never urinated through the windows of parked cars. And he would never, ever get Mexican caterers fired for being Mexican. And all those rumours about a sex tape were just unfounded—although I would totally LOOOOVE to see it as I bet he looks awesome in it—LOL ;)

  I really enjoyed putting together the blog and thought it was all fine. I was hoping it would get Jeanette’s attention.

  It did. But in the wrong way.

  I suddenly woke up to find the blog flooded with comments. Screaming comments. Outraged comments. They were calling me a hater. I was puzzled—but, wading through the barrage, I realised that in one or two of my reviews, in an attempt to appear honest, I’d said I ‘didn’t much care for’ a track. Just one track. On each album. I think that’s fair enough.

  ‘CALL YOUSELF A PAPERGURL???!? DIE’ summed up most of the comments. But there were masses of them. And a similar flood to the Twitter feed I’d built for the blog.

  In other news, that day Jeanette had tweeted Harry that ‘Failed Math Test. FML. Send me smoochies.’ No smoochies had been forthcoming, so maybe Jeanette had had a pretty bad day and was taking it out on me. Coincidentally, that same day, Harry had failed a meth test. But his PaperGurls were silent about that.

  My blog project was basically a heap of smoking ruins. Jeanette was certainly thorough. Could I use the burning embers as an excuse to apologise to her and make-up? I doubted it. She seemed pretty final about these things, picking up and then discarding BFFs for minor differences of opinion, or for the heresy of preferring One Direction to Harry. Or claiming to have seen said sex tape (‘YOU LIAR. SHOW ME OR IT’S NOT TRUE. OH GOD HARRY WOULD NEVER HARRY SO MANY FEELS’).

  So I came up with another plan. I ‘reached out’ to her pretending to be a PR from Harry’s record label. I was pretty pleased with a lot of the phrases I used. Basically I said that I worked for the label, really appreciated all her support, and wondered if we could work together to come up with any campaigns she could promote. Innocuous. I didn’t suggest she meet him, but I figured she would read it and be thrilled.

  No suc
h luck.

  Jeanette’s reply, which I won’t transcribe, went on for a lot of screens. A rough translation would be:

  Dear Sir

  Thank you for your recent communication. Sadly, I must decline your kind offer. As you did not use the codeword set by Harry’s management with me, I can only conclude that your offer is bogus and your intentions unfriendly. Furthermore, your IP address does not match the expected range for the offices of Harry’s record company. In short, you sir, are a loser, a hater and a paedophile.

  Your humble servant,

  Ms. Jeanette Turlingham III

  PS: Die.

  I glanced over the email, interested to see that she’d told me that she had an existing relationship of some kind with Harry’s people. Also, she was smart. Good. I could work with smart.

  I HASTILY DISCONNECTED my real self from any connection with the email address Jeanette had just replied to and threw away the notebook. Now I had a KillFund, I could afford to buy new ones. A touch sadly, I hung the meticulously crafted PR man’s online identity out to dry and let it be savaged by Jeanette’s pack of wolves. I watched as the various firms my fictitious PR agent had claimed to work for all winked out one by one, their servers taken down by Jeanette’s legions, their social media bombarded by messages. Even the servers of a charity subsidiary of Sodobus.

  Dragged puzzled and blinking into the spotlight, each company hastily denied ever having employed me. The question of who I was, and what exactly I had done to upset Harry Paperboy’s fans, puzzled the internet for a few moments. There was even a Slate article.

  I TOOK A quick step to the side. I’d been going after Harry’s fans. What if I went for Harry himself?

  ACTUALLY, IT TURNED out to be really easy. What you have to remember is that I wasn’t up against a rabid army of hyper-smart fans. I was up against a canny (yet fundamentally stupid) popstar. Also, I had quite a bit of cash on me. And he was coming to England soon.

  JEANETTE’S PAPERGURL ARMY helped me find out which hotel he was staying at. As soon as the news was announced they’d worked it out ‘Oh, it’ll be the Waverley again, I bet!!!’, ‘See you outside the Wave posing with George the Doorman yeah??? <3 George!!!’

  How to get to him? Annoyingly, it would have been so easy if Harry had been gay. Book a room, log on to Grindr, and wait. Until about 2am, probably, for a profile to match up with. Right age and height but no picture. And then, bingo.

  But no. He wasn’t gay and neither was I. So.

  The next vice was easier. Drugs are great. Thanks to Harry’s range of DUIs, I even knew what drugs he was partial to. I could use the KillFund to get some and then... then what? I couldn’t stand outside his hotel with a placard advertising free drugs for Harry. Nor could I establish myself as a top drugs dealer. Anyway, he wouldn’t come to me. He’d send a minion. He wasn’t that stupid, otherwise some tabloid would have snapped him doing coke off the back of his iPhone already.

  No. I messaged Nuala, one of my fellow actor/chuggers:

  Do you, by any chance,

  know any drugs dealers?

  WTF?

  Just, you remember that show you were in, in that theatre opposite the Waverley?

  The musical about Jane Eyre?

  Christ yes. Why?

  Who dealt the drugs? It’s just, I’ve a friend who’s working there and...

  This friend wouldn’t be a chugger

  would they?

  NOT ME. NOT ME. But yes. A chugger with a habit. He’s loaded. He really is just chugging cos he likes charity.

  And coke?

  Organic, responsibly-sourced coke with an amusing slogan on the wrap.

  I’ll put him in touch with Jaramy.

  DRUGS DEALERS AREN’T fun people. Nor do all of them go around with scary dogs and the sharper bits of their kitchen. The ones I’ve met are about as far away from those people in those films about Troubled Estates as you can get. But there’s one thing they’ve all got in common—they really hate people. The only guys I know who hate people more are waiters.

  Jaramy was a waiter and a drugs dealer. A tiny, neat Frenchman, he kept on the waitering (at a really posh restaurant) in order to put him in touch with clients. He was forever being beckoned over quietly, and softly being asked if he knew anyone. And he so often did. He would even, smilingly, offer to take care of the deal itself as “drugs dealers are all so terrible, aren’t they, monsieur?”

  Models, Russian businessmen, and bankers—all of them found themselves coming to Jaramy’s restaurant for the spendy wine and the quite excellent drugs.

  I got a couple of shifts at the restaurant washing dishes. It’s a great way to watch people, but it ruins your hands. I saw Jaramy at work. He was actually a great waiter and a brilliant drugs dealer. I joined him for a cigarette break or two outside. And, once we had bonded, I brought up the subject.

  “No,” he shut it down immediately. “I never deal to staff here. And never on the premises.”

  “That’s fine,” I reassured him. “It’s more that I would like you to give someone some drugs.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a reporter,” I told him. He groaned. “And I’d like you to give a celebrity some drugs. There’s nothing wrong with the stuff. They’ve just got a tracer in them—a marker which means we can find him with the drugs inside him. Just tipping us off to his location. He’ll never know you were involved.”

  “No, thanks,” said Jaramy. “I don’t like my clients, but I do like having them. I’m respectable.”

  “I’m a reporter,” I repeated and handed him over a wodge of photos I’d taken, showing him handing over drugs to a variety of interesting names.

  “Oh,” sighed Jaramy appreciatively. “Good blackmail.”

  “I thought so.”

  IN THE END it didn’t cost that much money. I had the pictures. I also told him who the victim was and he laughed. “I hate that little shit,” he sighed. “He’s a very rude customer.”

  Rude to a drug dealer?

  “No, rude to waiters. He was once smoking in the restaurant, and my friend Paula asked him not to. He smiled, apologised ever so nicely, and then stubbed the cigarette out on her hand.”

  I boggled.

  Jaramy shrugged. “She got some money out of it. No one saw because he always dines in those clam-shell booths. That’s kind of why they’re there.”

  He was disappointed when I gave him the drugs. “Where the hell did you get these from?” he asked. Brixton Market actually, behind a vegan falafel stall. “These are awful. Seriously, man, I have my pride to consider.” This was a worry—there were ingredients in these drugs which were important, I started to explain. I had done my research carefully and...

  Jaramy sighed. “Listen, don’t give me any of that genetic marker bullshit. You’ve put laxatives in here. I can tell. It’s fine and fairly normal. But the drugs you’ve cut them with are pretty pound shop.”

  Trust me, when a Frenchman says ‘pretty pound shop’ it’s kind of sexy.

  “Tell me what you’re up to.”

  I started to explain what I was doing, but I chose the wrong words. “I was looking on Google and—”

  Jaramy did a lot of laughing then. “Seriously, what kind of shit have you been reading?”

  I told him I had actually been reading about shit. Specifically, I had noted all of the prescription drugs that Harry was taking, as listed on his various charge sheets. Then looked up all the side-effects. And one of the three antidepressants reacted badly, prodigiously, with laxatives. I knew that drugs were frequently cut with laxatives, but I needed there to be a lot in order to cause the right reaction.

  Jaramy seemed a bit more impressed by that. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll cut the drugs. The things I do for you, eh?”

  He then went back to serving people food that they could take pictures of, and I went back to washing the leftovers off the plates.

  JARAMY HELPED ME get a job at the hotel as a night cleaner. It was through t
he same service company who provided washers-up to Jaramy’s restaurant, so it actually wasn’t that hard, but he acted as though he was pulling a massive favour. The trick, of course, was to be on the list for at least a week before and after Harry was supplied with drugs. So that I didn’t come under suspicion. Whenever anything like this happens, the casuals rota at a hotel was bound to scatter—they knew the police would be coming, and anyone with even a spent conviction, let alone a dodgy immigration status, would run for the hills, thus attracting plenty of police attention. But, if I just remained where I was, changing towels and wiping down tables, then all would be fine.

  Not, of course, that there would be any police attention, because this was all going to work out fine. But, you know, just in case it all went wrong.

  The great news was that, according to a budget I did on the back of an envelope, I was saving loads of money on this project. I could have flown to Arizona, at a cost of thousands. Instead, I was actually doing shifts at three different jobs—admittedly all of them minimum wage, but there we go. I was down £50 on drugs mixed with laxative, but Jaramy reckoned he could palm them off on someone (“I have a client I want to get rid of,” he said with a shrug).

  The week passed in the way that these things do. Night cleaning in a hotel, actually utterly exhausting. Most new jobs are tiring, but this is advanced tidying at a time when your body is screaming, ‘Let me go to bed, please.’Plus, the kind of cleaning you get to do at night is grim. A lot of toilets, vomit in the corridors, cleaning the steps, scrubbing out the hotel restaurant, then, if there was spare time, trying to polish the brassware of the hotel doorstep. Plus there was a mountain of sheets back from the laundry that needed pressing, but no-one really seemed that bothered by all that.