“Cool,” said Jet Girl, flippantly.
“And that guy is fucking my mum,” pondered Barney.
“Up the arse, probably,” I added.
TWENTY-ONE
GETTING TOO STONED WITH ONE BIRD
Booga’s pledge to pack in toking reefer put me in mind of the days when I used to consume copious amounts of Lebanese red-seal “squidgy” cannabis resin with my smoking and travelling partner, Ely Matthews.
Ely had a penchant for old cars and playing the bongos. He just wanted to drive – that was what his life revolved around: driving, driving and more fuckin’ driving. I’d go along for the ride, skinning up all the way and suggesting stupid places to visit.
We were pretty mashed-up most of the time. I can’t remember that much of what we did together; my main recollection is the general air of detachment we had about us – that sort of separate, uninvolved feeling you get when you’ve been smoking for too long. Sometimes we’d pull into a town, stoned out of our skulls, fall out of the car and stagger around the streets on some loony quest, not giving two shits what anybody thought about us. It wasn’t a feeling of superiority, but more of an opting out, like the town and even the whole of civilisation was grinding on as usual and we were just floating past it in a funny bubble, our brains in a different gear, wondering why everyone was looking so fuckin’ miserable.
I guess those times had a deep impact on my internal programming: now I act like that naturally; I can’t help myself, my mindset is that of a stoned person – even when I’m straight.
Booga never had that. Booga’s early dope-smoking days were spent in dimly lit living rooms, watching somebody else play Super Nintendo. Pretty fuckin’ dull and unadventurous if you ask me.
I think that I may have just inadvertently and succinctly summed up the two definitive types of pot-head:
The courageous, rule-breaking, quantum-leaping, visceral psychonaut (i.e. me);
The habitual, cave-dwelling, role-play gaming, boring cunt (i.e. Booga).
It has to be said that Booga has definitely made moves into the former category since teaming up with me, but some days he is still just a monotonous stoned wanker. That’s just men in general though, I ’spose.
Maybe now that he has sworn abstinence from the evil weed, he might actually turn into the man-hero I’d always dreamed he would be.
I live in hope.
TWENTY-TWO
GUNS GUNS GUNS
Sittin’ in a café in dark glasses sippin’ coffee dunkin’ doughnuts while it’s sunny thinking guns guns guns and I’ve got pockets full of bullets and a suitcase full of money and a fuckin’ awful headache and a police rifle that fires dummies and I’m listening to Barney because she really wants to tell me all the fifty million reasons why she’s feelin’ fuckin’ funny and she wants to kill her mummy and she wants me to kill her daddy but there really is no logic to the way we’re spending Sunday because we don’t know where we’re going and we’ve been drinking since last Monday and Booga’s sharpening sticks and he’s looking like a monkey and I’m waiting for my tank and I know it will look chumly because Dobson is my man and he’s part of my fuckin’ family and when I see him next I’m gonna buy him half a shandy.
TWENTY-THREE
DOBSON’S AT THE DOOR
“Dobson’s at the door,” shouted Jet Girl. It was lunchtime; she was poaching eggs and burning toast. I was sound asleep, but her words entered into my dream like an echo down an empty passage.
“Dobson’s at the fuckin’ front door!” she yelled again.
In my dream I had opened the door to Zulu Dobson and he had presented me with a full-grown dead sperm whale, preserved in paraffin and strapped onto the back of a ten ton flat-bed truck.
“Is this it?” I asked with nervous excitement.
“This is your baby now,” replied Dobson proudly, “there’s nothing more I can do to it. Take it away,”
“Does it... fly?” I enquired tentatively.
He smiled at me, giving a little nod towards the truck. “Why don’t you try it...”
Then Jet Girl kicked me in the butt. “Fuckin’ wake up for Pete’s sake, Dobson’s at the front door.”
I fell off of the sofa and bashed my chin on the corner of the coffee table. That woke me up. I went to the door and opened it up. Zulu was standing right in my face, grinning like an idiot.
A tingle of adrenaline pushed me into full consciousness; the time had come, he was really there and he’d actually brought me the new tank.
I stretched up onto tippy-toes and took a look over his shoulder. There was nothing in the garden. “Well?” I enquired.
“Yes thanks,” quipped Dobson.
“Quit it with the shit jokes and tell me what you’re here for,” I demanded, my excitement rapidly turning into frustration.
An even broader smile spread across his face, revealing a perfect set of pearly-white gnashers. “Put your slippers on and come outside,” he said, turning away and making for the back of the house.
Fuck slippers, I thought, as I quickly scurried out, dodging bits of broken bottles and scrap metal on the ground in a mad effort to keep up. We rounded the corner into the field where Jet Girl keeps a couple of broken planes, and there it was – ready to roll off of the back of a flatbed truck, just like the truck in my dreams, except it wasn’t a dead whale, it was definitely a tank.
My jaw fell off of my face and hit the dirt.
It was beautiful.
The most beautiful tank the world has ever seen.
Its glossy khaki paint-job glistened in the midday sun and its brown tinted windows reflected our happy faces. It was much smaller than I had imagined, more rounded and ergonomic, no sharp angles or stickyout bits.
Dobson stood behind me and dangled a set of keys in front of my face. “There’s zero on the clock and a full tank of fuel. What d’ya say we go get some booze?”
“Let’s fuckin’ drive!” I replied, snatching the keys and pressing the red button on the fob.
The driver’s side door opened upwards, silent and smooth, like a bird’s wing, and I was up and in like a shot. I opened the door on the other side and Zulu slid naturally into the soft leather-covered racing seat beside me.
“Boots!” I shouted out of the door.
Someone threw a pair of boots in.
Boots on.
Doors shut.
Sunroof open.
Supertramp nice and loud.
Foot down.
See ya later.
TWENTY-FOUR
GET BACK INSIDE ME
Zulu had done me good and proud. The tank drove like a dream, doing a ton with ease on open straights and cornering like a speedway bike.
He talked me through the myriad flashing lights, dials and switches. There was nothing left to chance, everything was monitored and in fine tune. He revealed to me an inordinate amount of gadgets and extras; every conceivable weapon, gizmo and electronic device was on board.
I drove for five hours straight, getting the feel of the thing and trying out a few of the extras. Zulu had dumped copies of his entire music and film collections into the tank’s computer – a comprehensive and eclectic mix. I wanted for nothing.
We listened to the whole of ‘Electric Ladyland’ as we cruised across vast stretches of empty desert.
I was blissed out.
It was more like being in a floatation tank than a tank tank.
It started to dawn on me what I had.
Either by design or by accident, Zulu Dobson had built a vehicle that fitted my sweet butt like a glove. It was woman and machine in perfect harmony.
I had been rattling around in that other old rust-bucket for far too many years and Booga had done me a mighty big favour by blowing the fucking thing up.
But this... this was something very special.
This was spiritual.
I had come home.
My mind was at peace.
My senses and reactions were in perfect sync w
ith a well-tuned machine.
My body was cosseted like a manicured hand in a velvet glove.
My soul was in heaven.
TWENTY-FIVE
THE BURGER PEOPLE
We spent the night camped out in the desert. Zulu tried it on with me – if it had been a few years earlier, then I might’ve thought about it, but at that moment all I could think about was Booga; I let him know in no uncertain terms that it definitely wasn’t going to happen between us. But I said I was flattered and all that bullshit anyway, just to let him down easy. He rolled over and farted. I just lay there, gazing up at the stars, unable to sleep.
My mind got to wandering and I started to remember passages from a piece of writing I did when I was at school – ‘The Burger People’ it was called, the result of an archaeological field trip to some prehistoric rubbish dump way out in the desert. All the kids on the trip got to leave the site with a little memento of the occasion, y’know the kind of thing, stone arrowheads, broken pottery and stuff. I went home with what can only be described as a fossilised burger in my pocket – a rounded patty-like lump of hard brown matter. They just gave it to me, not even bothering to explain what it was. So I thought it was a burger. We all had to write essays on what we had been given and I was never very good at research, so I just made up this whole mad story about a civilisation that lived long ago, called The Burger People (I guess parallels could be drawn between the Burgers and The Beaker People or the Bog Men). Anyway, I got a right good telling off for taking the rise out of my history teacher and I was made to read sections of the essay out in front of the whole school, supposedly as a form of humiliating punishment.
My classmates thought that my writing was hilariously funny and I became the most popular kid in school. The Burger People became a bit of a cult; there was even a band named after it.
The result of all the furore surrounding my essay meant that it became the one piece of schoolwork that I can actually recall.
Check this out...
“It is not known how The Burger People created their buns without the relevant technology to mill flour. However, ancient relish has been discovered preserved in caves as recently as 1956.”
And...
“The Burgers were a nomadic people who, not unlike the modern teenager, needed to eat their food on the move. The hamburger, and later the chiliburger, lent themselves perfectly to this need. The roaming Burgerman was able to eat with one hand whilst leaving the other hand free to carry a spear, catapult or napkin.”
The ultimate conclusion of my thesis was that The Burger People had finally petered out just before the Bronze Age. Their voracious appetite for cow-meat had depleted cattle supplies in the surrounding areas so badly that the nomadic groups had to disperse and join other tribes to survive. Thus their great travelling society came to an end – which, in hindsight, was a very astutely (albeit accidentally) observed parallel with our modern, fast food-powered civilisation and its imminent demise.
So that’s what I was thinking about.
Zulu snored away next to me.
I lit a cigarette and waited for a shooting star.
A shooting star never came.
I guess I’d already used up my wishes for that week.
TWENTY-SIX
BABY LET YOUR MIND ROLL ON
There wasn’t a lot of sleeping done by me that night; maybe it was the excitement of having a new tank, I dunno.
I got up and wandered around in the dark, just kicking stones and sand around, mulling stuff over, that kind of thing. I realised that I had become abnormally uptight. All the shit that had been happening had taken its toll on my mind, and my body was starting to seize up in sympathy. Man I needed a damn good massage. A sauna and steam would’ve come in handy too. And maybe even an extended class with my yoga teacher, Bert. And a nice salad, with lots of those little crunchy bacon bits that aren’t bacon. And perhaps a good hard fucking would’ve unblocked a few chakras.
That’s what I started to think.
The more I thought about it, the more I became aware of a definite strung-out-ness that had infiltrated every aspect of my life. It wasn’t like me at all; I was getting stressed at every minor detail of every poxy little unimportant issue.
I needed to loosen up some.
Maybe get a holiday in.
Get out on the road for a while.
Let my freak-flag fly.
Y’know, just chill, hang, and maybe even dangle for a while.
Everybody else’s shit was crushing me into the dirt: Booga’s issues with the people of Chankers, Barney’s desire to wipe her family off the face of the planet, Jet Girl’s shady habits – I hate her when she gets that wasted, it’s so fucking boring – somehow I had to shrug it all off.
I resolved to untangle my shoulder muscles and just go with the flow and flow with the go and, above all, go on with the show.
Y’know?
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE SOFT CENTRE
I’m lettin’ you in on a secret...
I’m leavin’ all my doors unlocked while I pop out for a pint of milk,
I’m leavin’ you the keys to my tank,
I’m leavin’ my diary open on the page where I say it all –
on the page where I say who I am,
the page where I unwittingly give it all away,
the page that could be a photograph of my soul.
I’m gonna tell you something,
Because I’m as drunk as a bum,
I don’t care who hears it,
But I’m gonna whisper it anyway, just for effect,
And I’ve been needing to get this off of my chest,
But something has been getting in my way...
So...
This is it...
Here it is...
Comin’ right up...
Any second now...
The one thing I really need to say...
Is...
I’m a little fluffy bunny rabbit.
TWENTY-EIGHT
CHERRY ISLAND
I put my new plan into action. It seemed like a good plan – everyone sitting around on their butts in the sunshine for a week – and the guys concurred, so we packed a few things for a trip.
Dobson suggested we adjourn to a secluded beach on a tiny island he knew – a place where he had often holidayed as a kid.
“Sounds idyllic,” I said.
So it was sorted.
It was just a short ride to the coast and then a quick splosh in Sub Girl’s submarine. We were at Cherry Island within eight hours of leaving Jet Girl’s house.
Cherry Island is so called because it is supposed to resemble a cherry when viewed from above. We thought it looked more like a turd when we saw it on the map, but then who’s gonna name a place ‘Turd Island’?
Booga thought that the guy who’d discovered it might’ve lost his cherry there, but that was a little too fuckin’ obvious to be funny, so we gave him a good dunking in the sea as soon as we arrived.
Dobson was spot-on again: the beach was a paradise – a small, deserted stretch of totally unspoilt sand and palm trees, and an ocean of crystal-clear turquoise water stretching off to the horizon.
Booga pulled me out of the water and we bundled each other all the way up the sand. Finally he threw me down on my back and collapsed next to me, paralysed with laughter. We lay there on the beach for the rest of the day; our sand-covered bodies baking like cakes in the sunshine and bits of seaweed drying like crusts on our skin.
Beer and food always taste so great after you’ve spent a day on the beach. It must be the salty air or something, but everything just zings with flavour and beer goes down so damn quick and easy.
And I love getting little bits of sand in my mouth, like when it gets all gritty when you’re chewing a mouthful of sandwich. People are always pissing and moaning about that, y’know the kind of thing some fucking dullard might say, “Dontcha just hate it when ya get sand in your food? That’s what I hate a
bout comin’ to the beach – sand in my food.” Well that’s what makes it a fuckin’ beach, you moron. If you don’t want sand, go eat your sandwich in a fucking car park and leave us sand lovers alone. Plus sand is full of essential salts and minerals and shit. So go get some sand down your neck, that’s what I say. Yum yum.
Anyway, we were having a glorious picnic – loads of beer, fresh crusty bread, exotic cheeses, fruits from many lands, some sand, and a jar of Sub Girl’s home-made kidney bean chutney – when I suddenly noticed that Booga was nowhere to be seen. Then Sub Girl spotted that her sub had gone too.
“Bastard’s pinched me sub,” she said as she walked up to the water’s edge, her mouth full of bread and cheese.
It was true. He had. He’d fuckin’ pinched Sub Girl’s sub and buggered off to the mainland, leaving us stranded on a beautiful, but totally isolated, island beach.
I ran into the sea until it came up to my belly. I waved a small spoon in the air and screamed at the top of my lungs, “Booga! Booga, you cunt! Bring that submarine back here this fuckin’ minute or I’m gonna remove your testes with this teaspoon and stuff ’em right up your arse!”
Nothing.
The sea was silent.
It was getting dark by that time and the water was reflecting the moon like a giant mirror – we could detect any movement for miles.
“Buttocks,” I mumbled as I made my way back up the beach to the others.
After all that Booga had promised me, it took no longer than a couple of days for his solemn word to end up meaning absolutely fuck all. Still, at least it was Sub Girl’s property that was on the line this time – my new tank was safely locked up in Jet Girl’s shed.
Tank Girl Page 6
