Friction

by Joe Stretch

  ‘Rebecca?’ whispers Justin.

  ‘Yeah?’ she replies.

  ‘We’re sleeping with Johnny tonight, then?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘What’s that smell?’

  ‘It’s a mixture of perfume, semen, urine, me and you.’

  ‘OK.’

  Justin carefully liberates a pillow from under Johnny’s head and turns over so his eyes look out at the wall, away from the smells.

  ‘Justin?’ whispers Rebecca.

  ‘Yeh?’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m OK. Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m OK.’

  In a daring act of nocturnal manipulation, Rebecca climbs over Johnny and nudges him over to the side of the bed she had just occupied. ‘Can you hold me tight?’ she asks, placing a hand on Justin’s stomach. Justin embraces Rebecca. His arms collar her neck. Her face is ground into his chest. His whispering is a soft, warm breeze.

  ‘I checked the website just now,’ he says. ‘A guy’s gone on suggesting a new idea. It might be a pregnancy fetish, I’m not sure. His name’s Colin and he’s left a number.’

  ‘Will you call?’

  ‘Dunno, maybe. I need to concentrate on the celebrity project, we’re halfway there I think. There’s a few TV stars going to this premiere next week. I can get us in, but after that I’m not sure. I might need to rent out some of the girls from the Nude Factory.’

  ‘They’d be up for it,’ says Rebecca, wishing that each moment of intimacy didn’t have to include the discussion of some laborious sexual mission. ‘Hold me tight,’ she demands, mid-yawn.

  Their breathing slows down and Justin’s arm begins to go dead. Memories of his old girlfriends can-can through his head. All the girls that he’s lain beside. The rituals that are repeated without ever acknowledging the fact that it’s been done before, intimately, with someone else, in almost exactly the same ways. Is it a lie or simply what human beings need and do? Is it wrong that we so expertly remember to forget, and allow the ancient to masquerade as the new?

  ‘I don’t want a girlfriend,’ whispers Justin, his voice note-less, just breath, like the sound of two different airs passing though each other.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ says Rebecca, buried to her nose in sleep. Then a silence, a silence which seems to promote the idea of more noise, of more whispering. But there is no more noise, just sleep. Three young people, out like lights. Justin is the last to fall.

  22

  Figures of Eight

  ‘LET’S WALK,’ SAYS Frank, his tanned cheeks lifting into a smile like two large, brown drapes. He’s back from Japan and fatter than ever. He is a boat, a schooner. His blazer comprises enormous expanses of grey fabric.

  ‘Doesn’t winter happen in Japan, Frank?’ enquires Steve, envious of his colleague’s tanned skin.

  ‘Oh, yes, my boy, it was freezing. My tan is fake. That whorehouse down in Burnage has just got a sunbed – it’s a regular little country club.’

  Steve and Frank turn off Whitworth Street and on to Oxford Road. It’s been three days since Carly’s accident and they’re off to the hospital to pay her a visit. Steve sports the most contemporary elements of his wardrobe: a red tweed flat cap, a pair of white moccasins and a fitted denim jacket. There is no chance that his decisions can be reversed; he will not return to his studies, he will not stop lifting weights and the beautiful girl must always be his. So this morning he visited a salon and had his hair coloured and cut into fantastical geometric proportions. After all, the Sex Machine doesn’t have a fashionable haircut. How could it? Nor can it be fashionably attired, because it can’t go shopping and the clothes won’t fit. Ha, he thinks, as a passing brunette catches his eye. I shall win Carly back. I shall. The machine will lose to me, to man, to fashion.

  ‘So let me get this straight in my head,’ begins Frank, stuffing a circular mint into his mouth. ‘Carly was using the machine when she fell into the coffee table in some kind of fit of ecstasy, right?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘Brilliant news, Steve, my boy. We’re rich. And that table wasn’t very tasteful now, was it?’

  It’s noon and the air tastes like freshly squeezed orange juice. A white light winter day. No wind whatsoever. Frank can’t help rubbing his hands together like a cartoon millionaire. His trip to Japan appears to have yielded results.

  ‘Autopen sales are already beginning to level out. The clit thing isn’t to everybody’s taste, what’s it called? The clit fizzer, that’s it. Apparently it’s a bit feeble, not as good as most vibrators. And the repetitive penetration is just a novelty, certainly not a great source of pleasure. It’s purely a replacement for men, and it seems we’re hardly worth replacing, haha.’

  Steve tuts, his lips vibrate as if he’s just jettisoned an invisible jet of saliva on to the pavement in front of him. It’s fine for Frank, he’s a fat bastard who only screws prostitutes. Steve likes to think of himself as a sexual athlete of Olympic proportions. That’s the main reason he changed his life: for the sex and for the fit-as-fuck girls.

  Frank is brimming with delight: ‘If Carly’s reaction proves to be anything like the norm then I don’t see why we can’t get to work right away. We can import the things ourselves. Sell to Versus, Shirley Rivers, sell the things ourselves over the Internet. We just need more evidence, and then we shall need a great deal of publicity.’

  Steve begins to feel faintly ridiculous. As if the red cap he purchased this morning might already have drifted out of fashion, and been replaced by something newer and entirely different. Are people laughing? thinks Steve. Must I really make the Sex Machine famous? Must I really be its pimp? That machine. That fucker.

  As Frank and Steve enter Carly’s ward, Frank speeds off ahead in the direction of the poor victim of his incredible machine. The fat bastard can’t contain his excitement; his jacket flaps about him as if he might be in danger of flight. He pours himself over Carly. Smiling, pointed, questioning eyes.

  ‘How are you, my sweet, sweet child?’ says the terribly fat bastard.

  ‘I’m fine, Frank,’ says Carly, the victim of the sex machine’s love.

  ‘You’re a naughty girl opening Steve’s post like that. What were you thinking?’

  ‘I was bored, Frank, you know, I’m always so bored.’

  Steve appears at the end of the bed. This isn’t the first time he’s visited, of course, but they’re yet to have a proper conversation. He stares at Carly until her eyes are forced to wander from Frank’s face and meet his own yellow gaze.

  ‘Nice hat, Steve,’ shrieks Carly, an unfortunate mania affecting her voice.

  Steve blinks nervously. He’s so anxious about his clothes. They must be in fashion, he reassures himself, I only bought them this morning. He composes a smile, a cool one that alludes to his financial brain and able cock. He takes a deep breath: ‘Carly, do you really like my hat?’

  But Carly doesn’t answer. Her healed and healthy hand leaps from the bed in the direction of Frank’s. Frank’s hands look like cow’s udders. ‘Listen to me, Frank,’ Carly shrieks again, ‘where did you get that machine? It’s better than the Relentless Bliss.’

  ‘I hadn’t realised you were a connoisseur.’ Frank smiles, the sort of smile that businessmen perform when a punter has fallen for their product. ‘Let me guess, you didn’t like the clit fizzer?’

  ‘Well, I liked it, of course, but it was nothing compared to your machine!’

  At the end of the bed, Steve’s heart leaks down into his stomach then onwards into his bowels. It continues though his intestine, then drips down the bones and ligaments of his right leg and into his feet, and then to his shoes. It seeps though the rubber soles of his moccasins, and finally comes to rest, bloody and beating on the hospital floor. Someone ought to call a doctor.

  ‘Well, you’ll be pleased to know, my dear, that your boyfriend and I stand to make a great deal of money from that machine. Do you suppose all girls will like it as much as you
?’

  ‘I love it. It will be loved.’ Carly pauses and looks down at her body, still wrapped in bandages, but mending, healing calmly, returning to perfection. She turns to Steve, who’s staring at the floor, to where his broken heart still beats. ‘Steve,’ asks Carly, ‘have you cleaned the machine yet? Like I asked.’

  ‘No,’ says Steve, nudging his heart self-consciously with his shoe. ‘No, it’s still covered in your blood.’

  Steve removes his cap and prods his hair into a heartstoppingly fashionable shape. But something is dying. A way of life is being stretched and tortured. He holds his cap as if in mourning. His hair and his distressed jeans are suddenly a source of shame, his status is being flushed down the toilet, is circling round and round in dirty water, preparing itself for the sewers.

  ‘He’s so precious, is he not, Carly?’ Frank interjects. ‘He can’t bear the idea of a machine doing a better job than he himself.’

  ‘I used to think I could change the world,’ says Steve, for the second time this week. Frank looks at Steve with sympathy, sensing that society may well be changing and that Steve may well be a casualty of this change. He attempts but fails to change the subject.

  ‘What do you know of this website, newsex.biz? Some guy and his girlfriend are documenting their efforts to partake in every single kind of sex. It’s the talk of every brothel in the city. I thought the girl could be a useful guinea pig, what with her refined tastes.’

  Carly’s and Steve’s faces are blank. Almost featureless.

  ‘I mean I could offer the machine to my whore friends,’ continues Frank, ‘but they’re all so numb to new experience and sceptical of orgasm. Unless it’s with their dreadful boyfriends . . . “Sorry, Frank,” they say to me, “I save my arse for my boyfriend.” My God, the times I’ve heard that sentence. Will they never relinquish their cherubic arsehole, uncork it like a fine wine . . .?’

  Frank trails off, distracted by some invisible object that seems to be hovering inches from his fat nose; an invisible arse, perhaps. Steve takes this opportunity to walk round the bed and kneel at Carly’s side.

  ‘Will you be coming back to the flat, Carly?’

  Carly shuffles awkwardly, turning to meet the gaze of her fashionable boyfriend. ‘They let me out tomorrow. I guess I’ll come back, I’ll need to see the machine for one.’ As she says this, the colour of Steve’s skin seems to fade, as if he’s shedding the top layers of his bogus tan.

  ‘And me for two, right?’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  Would anyone care, wonders Steve, if I was to pinch a scalpel and slice Carly’s face off with it? Would anyone really care, if I was exceptionally quick? Then I could stab her a thousand times in the heart, the thousandth lunge as committed and lethal as the first. I want to spill my beautiful lover’s guts, pound her until she’s a revolting stain.

  The invisible arse in front of Frank’s nose disappears and he comes to his senses like a flock of seagulls flapping into flight.

  ‘Come, come, my sweets, don’t argue. Steve, I do need you to clean the machine. No girl will try it if it’s covered in Carly’s blood. I need to get it to this girl at newsex.biz. She’s local, it won’t be difficult.’

  ‘Would you just shut the fuck up, Frank?’ asks Steve, back at the end of the bed, stuffing his heart back into place.

  ‘Oh, Steve. How unkind. You look unwell, rather grey. Let’s leave. Carly, I wish you a speedy recovery, I will send your regards to the machine.’

  ‘Make sure you do, Frank . . . and Frank – thank you.’

  Steve is a house built too close to the sea. Year after year, the waves work away at the cliff beneath him, burrowing into the rock. It takes time, but eventually the house falls; the ground gives way and the house slumps downwards, bricks and masonry falling into the sea. No one dies. The inhabitants are warned and leave in good time. Steve is doomed, vacated, preparing to drop.

  Along the corridor from Carly’s ward a mop moves about the beige floor in slow figures of eight, steered by Colin. He looks up from his work and notices a fat man and a tall, attractive guy making for the lift. Colin must try to take care of his rage.

  News travels fast among the emergency services and quickly works its way down to the hospital cleaners. Carly, the girl who almost died from mechanical sex, has become quite a celebrity among the doctors, nurses and the lesser staff of the hospital. Colin mops his way carefully along the corridor to view the beast.

  Colin hasn’t seen Boy 1 or Boy 2 in a while. Last he heard of Boy 1 was that he’d split his foreskin shagging his sofa, but that remains unconfirmed. Colin has been in his room, liaising with the rat and perfecting his sexual needs. He thinks often of what Deaks said to him that night in the Wishing Well, about the feeling of fucking the already fucked. He hadn’t spoken to him since. He’d seen him around the Antenatal Ward and noticed the knowing glances he exchanged with the women, but that was it. Melissa gave birth a week or so ago. Colin spoke to one of the doctors about her, enquired about her health. She was fine and so was her kid.

  After that night with Melissa, everything changed. Colin has discovered new and minimal ways of surviving on his part-time wage from the hospital. He has given up drinking, no longer goes out. He buys what clothes he still needs from charity shops. His time is spent in his room, which continues to rot. The rodents have multiplied. They have heard of his hospitality, scurried in for the winter and taken up residence amid the decay. Colin lives entirely on rice and peas. He never smokes, never masturbates. There is a calm about him. There is an unnerved subsistence, and a sense that he is preparing for chaos.

  The volume has finally been turned down. The motion slowed. The women of winter are of little distraction, wrapped as they are in thick coats, fake furs and wool. But no, in truth, women don’t concern Colin at all, because they are already lost. Men, too. Lost at birth.

  Colin refuses to iron his clothes because smooth clothes are not necessary. He refuses to kick balls or throw stones and he refuses to run. Colin refuses to smile, refuses to cry or be angry, refuses to wank his cock, to say hello. He refuses the media, refuses to crane his neck, refuses women and men, refuses to thank the helpful or punish the rude. He refuses to be questioned or answer, to consume, refuses his phone and his mail, refuses his friends, his past, refuses to hear the drunken singing in the night, the gossip in the streets, the sirens and the laughs. Colin categorically refuses to die.

  Colin has only one ambition: he wishes to make secret, unseen lives. He wants to make minuscule hearts beat unheard in vacuumed spaces. He wants to create uninterrupted biological constructions; secret configurations of nature that operate unbeknownst to people and their dismal working-out of things. Put simply, he wants to impregnate women and abort the child.

  He mops to the doorway of Carly’s ward and peers cautiously through the open door. The room is too white, like an unused plate. Carly lies spotlit flicking through a magazine, nails painted nosebleed red.

  Colin can just make out the colour of skin on the front cover of Carly’s magazine, airbrushed and eggshell-like. Belonging to some famous person, a life turned professional. It’s not a photograph of a person, it can’t be. It is a photograph of a photograph of a photograph of a photograph of a photograph; an endless regression of captured images that continues infinitely, until the subject of the first photo is no longer understood, and seems devoid of humanity and sense. Something arbitrary, something forgotten.

  Colin stares at Carly, watching the slight changes of direction in her eyes as she scans the different pages. She spends only moments on each page, like she’s blessed with superhuman reading skills and is hurrying through some great work, just so she can say she’s read it. The girl with painted nails who was ripped to shreds by a sex machine. The girl who tied her hair into a ponytail before she spoke to her visitors. Breaking a personal silence of what must be days, Colin steps into the doorway and speaks in a thick Mancunian accent.

  ‘What do you re
member, girl?’ he says, his eyes like marbles containing small strips of white ribbon.

  ‘What?’ says Carly, bending the pages of her magazine to one side.

  ‘What kinds of things do you remember?’

  ‘Get lost,’ blares Carly, her mouth a drunken circle of soft, purple lip. By the door, Colin winces and places a hand into his brown, overgrown hair.

  ‘I remember nothing,’ he says. ‘I’ve just mopped a floor, I must have – why else would I be holding a mop?’

  ‘Can you fucking believe this?’ Carly appeals to an elderly lady in an adjacent bed. As she does so, Colin disappears, begins mopping the remainder of the corridor in slow figures of eight.

  It’s late by the time Colin returns home to the rats and the room of dark dirt. But what of time? He heats some rice and peas in a pan and takes it to the bedroom, greeted by the familiar sound of small claws scratching at wood. This is a situation, no question it is. A room infested with rodents and debris, lit by a solitary bulb which hangs from the ceiling like a noose. And Colin is in transit, as humans are. He inhabits a succession of moments that alter him and help him to understand the precise nature of his regrets. He lifts a forkful of rice to his mouth, and bites.

  The night with Melissa helped to reveal the more precise characteristics of his sexual desires. It wasn’t the form of the pregnant women that was so captivating, he realised in retrospect. The large bellies and the manner in which they are carried is all incidental, all part of a far greater beauty which he has been unable to forget: the beauty of a life that has barely been interfered with at all. A life that never sees the light of day. Foetuses do not paint their nails. They do not speak shit or think shit. They don’t go to bars and fight and drink too much. They float, alone. A foetus has never been spotted propping up a bar, reading a magazine, sipping Bacardi and Coke through a straw.

  So what if human life never saw the light of day? thinks Colin. It would be perfect. It would be brief, of course, a matter of weeks or months, but at least it would be untouched by the withering boredoms and the dull dangers of society. This idea has draped itself over Colin’s brain like a hot towel. Finally, a meaning to sex, a meaning at last. The creation of short, perfect life.