Sweet

by Julie Burchill

  ‘Oh, stop nit-picking, Sugar! The point is that you made us, Josh and myself, complicit in a hate crime!’

  I couldn’t believe this. ‘Hang about now! When the three of us were romping about slashing shit and pouring crap everywhere, what did you think was going down? Did you think we were doing a bit for Extreme Makeover? Or a spot of spring cleaning, perhaps!’

  They did look a bit sheepish here, and I took advantage of their retreat to press home my point. ‘Look, it wasn’t a hate crime – it was revenge. It wasn’t attacking – it was defending. Like, um . . . Frankenstein’s monster . . . when them peasants with the sticks on fire tried to murder him for summat he never done . . . or did he?’ I mused. I swear, sometimes I think I should have been an intellectual – I’m always thinking. Still, I suppose you can’t be an intellectual if you come from a council house.

  ‘SUGAR! Stop avoiding the issue – and stop thinking you can lead us up the garden path talking about Frankenstein,’ Katie tutted. ‘We’re just not interested any more. There’s only one story we’re interested in – and that’s the one you’re going to tell the police if you get caught.’

  It took me a minute to twig what she was saying. Then I laughed, it was so silly. ‘Oh! – you’re trying to find out if I intend to grass you up.’ I laughed again with real pleasure and confidence. ‘No, we don’t do that where I come from. That’s the last thing you’ve got to worry about.’

  They looked well relieved, like they’d both taken off shoes three sizes too small at the same time. And now they felt safe, of course, they could afford to care about me, or at least pretend to. ‘But what about you, Sugar?’ simpered Katie. ‘Aren’t you scared they’ll tell the police it was you?’

  ‘Not really.’ I caught their arms in mine and started walking us all back to the building. ‘Seeing as how we’ve got a mutual friend. A fifteen-year-old mate of my brother’s that they’ve been playing Strip-Twister with. I doubt they want that getting out – unless they fancy a bunch of peasants with sticks on fire going round and doing a damage to their precious house that’d make what we did look like a quick go-round with the Shake ’n’ Vac. In fact –’ I held the door open for them – ‘I really can’t imagine why they went to the cops in the first place, knowing that I know what I do.’

  Josh swept through, Katie following him, and sniggered over his shoulder, ‘Publicity, Sugar! Before this, they were just empty-headed rich micro-celebs. Now they’re heroes. What’s a few carpets compared to that! You’ve done something for them that no amount of money could buy.’

  I gaped at him in complete and utter amazement; this brain-dead ex-Goth had seen right through to the meat of the matter in a way that had totally passed me by. So it was even worse than I thought; I had been screwed two ways by those fuckers, first as a phoney friend and second as a sworn enemy. And if Duane decided to cross over, that’d make it a hat-trick. I’d never be able to hold my head up in this town again.

  But on the other hand, he had stuff to lose too – like my brother, he may have been fond of playing with make-up and walking with a wiggle when it suited him, but no way was he gay. I had to get to him, look him in the eye – one aspiring failed petty criminal to another – and make him realize how rubbish it was going to be for all of us if he squealed.

  After all, I would lose my liberty. But once it got out that he had been the paid plaything of a pair of dirty old men on a semi-regular basis, he would never get laid by a hot girl again. And when you’re fifteen, that’s a whole new level of punishment. Sweet!

  18

  The next few days were like some mad game of kiss-chase organized by the – what’s their name, them mad policemen always bumping into shit – the Keystone Kops. Asif followed me around shooting me lovelorn glances with eyes so cow-like I felt like slaughtering him and eating him between two bun-halves with cheese on top and a side order of salsa. Meanwhile I sought the elusive Mr Trulocke, lurking around every skatepark and graffiti wall in town, not to mention the benches above the walkway on Madeira Drive, until I felt like an ocean-going kiddy-fiddling perve myself.

  Would you believe it, at the start of the second week I randomly came across him at a bus stop in Churchill Square, cruising for an ABSO with his poxy posse. He clocked me the second before my hand shot out to grab the collar of his school blazer, and tried to hustle his way on to the bus that had just pulled up, but an old lady hit him in the shins with her walking stick and he fell back yelping. His gnarly mates boarded the bus jeering and pointing at him. ‘Collared by a girl! – dude, you’re such a dick!’ one of them yelled before the bus pulled away, leaving Duane bleating on the bus-stop bench, nursing his shins like a right royal wuss.

  I eyed him coldly. ‘Don’t look good, does it D, letting a girl get on top of you.’ Beat. ‘Boy, how much harder would they mock if it came out that you let an old man get on top of you! Or two,’ I added for good measure.

  He scowled, rubbing his leg. ‘Leave it out, Shugs – I’m dying here!’

  I held out my hand to him. ‘I thought you’d be used to taking punishment from senior citizens by now. Come on, let’s go for a walk.’

  We crossed the road to the Pizza Frita stall in front of the mall and I bought us a slice and a Coke each. We went and sat on a bench, and watched the language students flirt with each other in an international language they needed no phrase book for.

  Duane washed the last of his slice down with the last of his fizz, burped appreciatively and said, ‘That was the bollocks! – better than “Get in the car!” and a bullet in the head like in Goodfellas!’

  ‘The only Goodfellas you and me are ever gonna get close to is the kind that comes in a box and has mozzarella on top,’ I said, finishing mine up too. ‘Damn! – whoever thought up frying ’em was a clever bugger!’ I lit up a fag, sat back and inhaled happily. ‘Now. To business . . .’

  ‘Gis one!’ Duane snatched at the pack.

  I slapped him sharply. ‘Paws off! – you’re not old enough. Still,’ I continued sneakily, handing him one, ‘I s’pose that’s a bit like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.’ I sniggered. ‘Whore, rather!’

  It was all psychology, see; I was being good cop, bad cop, carer and cusser, and the poor little tosser didn’t know whether he was coming or going. I lit his ciggy and narrowed my eyes. ‘But I guess if you’re old enough to screw, you’re old enough to smoke. And you’re old enough to do business with too . . .’

  ‘Fire away!’ he coughed.

  ‘Duane.’ I took his clammy little hand and gave him a well-sincere look. ‘Unlike the goodfellas of the non-edible kind, we’re not criminals. Well, not really. I might have spilt some stuff on someone’s carpet . . . but then, you might have let a pair of perverts do you three ways and got paid for it, and I think you’ll find that could have you on record as a “common prostitute” for life.’ I was winging it now, but the ignorant little prick wasn’t to know that. I sat back and shook my head in a sorrowful sort of way. ‘Look at you! – so young, so handsome, all your life in front of you, all that . . .’ And I stuttered to a stop here, because for the life of me I couldn’t imagine what lay in front of Duane – nothing good anyway. I mean, I’d intended to paint some rosy picture of his future all laid out before him – but even I’m not that good a liar.

  He looked at me hopefully, waiting to hear how good it was all gonna be and, even though he was a little prick who used to perve over me when he should have been, I dunno, birdwatching or something, it almost broke my heart. Just because he came from some estate and didn’t go to no poncey school, it was just so wrong that I had nothing to tell him about the way his life was gonna be.

  ‘From ABC to Macky D in one accident of birth’, Kizza used to say all sad-like about Ravendene kids, and even though I’d twisted her nipple for it at the time – which she probably enjoyed, come to think of it! – for being such a mis-bucket, now I could totally see her point.

  ‘JJ says you’ve got a lot of ho
t girls after you,’ I improvised. ‘But think. If you were by any chance to grass a person up in order to get a reward, then a person would naturally have to grass you up back, and what sort of reaction d’you think it would get from the hot girls, mmm? To know you’d been coining it by being a bitch yourself!’

  He looked shocked, then looked away; I could tell that had got to him. I did feel a right cow, adding to his troubles, considering what a miserable little life I’d just foreseen for him – but me taking the risk of letting him add to mine wouldn’t have helped him, would it, just landed both of us in it. It was each boy/girl for him/herself down here – and by ‘down here’ I don’t mean Brighton.

  He looked back at me, and he looked five years older than he had a minute ago. He looked hard, and on the way to somewhere harder. ‘You din’t have to say that, Ria. You din’t have to threaten me. I wasn’t gonna grass. Not on any one – specially not on you. Not after how you and your family been good to me since I was little.’ He stood up, and looking up at him I didn’t see a harmless, ignorant little boy anymore. Instead I saw a knowing, bitter young man. One who, for the first time, scared me. Just a little bit.

  I tried to laugh the whole thing off. ‘Duane, come on! – I never really thought you’d rat on me. I was just playin’ you—’

  ‘Yeah, you were.’ He laughed, hoisting his rucksack.

  ‘Look, don’t go yet – you wanna hang for a bit? Have a laugh about the old times?’

  ‘No.’ He pulled out his mobile; he was already somewhere else even as he hit the button.

  ‘We’ll go to Threshers – I’ll get you some voddy—’

  ‘I can get my own – I’m a big boy now. Big enough for you to think I could grass you up.’ He jangled coins in the pocket of his hoody and handed me 50p. ‘There you are – that’s for the fag. Keep the change.’

  As I watched him walk away, I knew that I had won – but I also felt that we had both lost, and that we would go on losing, separately and together, because of the way the world was. Wherever there were rich young people trying not to feel old, there would be young people trying not to feel.

  He wouldn’t die of it – but he’d already grown up before his time. That was his punishment; whenever he met someone, from now on, he wouldn’t see them as a potential friend or lover or general source of fun – he’d see them as someone to pay for stuff. Which meant that he was basically already a prostitute. A fifteen-year-old kid, already a prostitute.

  You can call people gold-diggers and say they’ve got a choice in it and that, and of course you’d be right; I mean, this isn’t bloody Thailand, no one forced him into it. And I’m not coming over all judgemental here – not after the stuff I’ve done! – and saying it’s some sort of moral evil. All I’m saying is that seeing sex and money as having something to do with each other is going to leave you really short changed, somehow, sometime, somewhere down the line – probably forever.

  I’m not saying it’s going to rob you of your morals or your soul or anything hysterical like that – but it will rob a lot of the fun from your life. Because, and this could be just me here, it seems that we spend such a proportion of our lives working and hustling for a buck that the bedroom – or beach, or broom closet, or bench in the park after dark, wherever – is like one of the few places where we’re just ourselves, just free. I swear I’m starting to be some sort of intellectual; probably started in prison, all those sleepless hours.

  I’ve done some stuff in my life, violent and illegal and what have you, but I’ve never once been tempted to do it for money; drinks, yes, but drinks are the opposite of money, in’t they – just gone in a split second, and bring you closer to the person that’s buying them for you. Whereas taking money off them just pushes you further apart. And it sounds weird, but I reckon part of the reason I’ve never lost the plot, despite all the drama I’ve been through even though I’m still a teenager, is because I’ve always kept sex as my own private place to retreat to, where I can be my proper self, separate from the rest of the pushing-and-shoving world.

  That’s partly why I stabbed that guy on the beach that night – it was like he was trying to burn my house down or something, where I lived, and all I knew was that I sure as hell wasn’t going to stand there – lay there – and do nothing to stop him. And to a lesser extent, that’s how I feel about being offered money for sex; it’s like you’re letting someone rob you of something they don’t have any right to. I know some girls, WAGS and that, are all ‘Ooh, he pays for everything!’, and they think they’re so smart, and they think it’s fun – but you’re actually robbing yourself of real fun, real sex. At the end of the day, I think that if someone pays for you in the short term, you’ll be the one who pays in the long run.

  Fuck! – I laughed aloud in sheer disbelief at the fountain of airy-fairy thoughts my head was spouting. Was that a sermon or what! – it looked like Asif had been rubbing off on me in more ways than one. I needed a stiff drink and some hard shingle to toughen me up.

  I walked down West Street, bought a half-bottle of Smirnoff and sat on the beach looking out to sea. I wondered if it was the same in France – people condemned to life being either hard or soft by an ‘accident of birth’, like Kizza had said. Or are they all snooty over there! I took a hard swig and considered the outcome of finally finding Duane. I was safe – but however you sliced it, Baggy and Aggy were safer: they were still sitting pretty, brave victims and charity belles.

  So was this just the way it was meant to be, no matter how much you fought it? – if you were poor and pretty like me and Duane, were you just born to be fucked, and fucked over, by the rich and ugly? That’s certainly the way it seemed from where I was sitting. And the old days were no better, from what Kiz had told me when she was off on one of her feminist ones – all them poor little pregnant servant girls screwed by the son of the house and chucked out into the snow; all them child prostitutes; Jack the Ripper! Boy, things don’t change, do they! Except these days, since the gays came out of the closet and started pulling in the pink pounds, boys have to put up with being rich people’s playthings too. Talk about come one, come all!

  I thought about that magazine Attitude that I’d lifted a few times from Smith’s on the odd day when I thought I might be/wanted to be gay; they didn’t half make it look a lovely life, all about going out and getting mashed and lovely flats and gorgeous moisturizers. But then, right at the back – like a dirty little secret, miles away from the lovely life they show you in the rest of it – there’re all these sex-lines, which are basically about shagging impoverished young boys. Sorry – ‘lads’; obviously calling them ‘men’ would make them too threatening and calling them ‘boys’ not threatening enough.

  It’s not pretty boys with too much mince and mascara that the old gaylords lust after these days, apparently; all the vids are called things like Paramilitaries, Council Estate Europe and Scally Boy Wankers. Flogging the different chatlines they’ve got obviously made-up quotes like, ‘SEX WIV ME CHAV MATES: WHAT’S WRONG HAVIN’ A BIT OF C**K FUN WIV A MATE YOU CAN TRUST?’ – Robbie, 18. That’ll be ‘Rupert, 48’ then, in some hot-and-bothered gay advertising agency in the West End of London!

  I mean, I thought we were all meant to be proper PC these days so gays didn’t get offended – but it’s not like they’re PC themselves, is it! Not with sex-lines like ‘Three prison inmates give me a good time’, ‘Soccer thug sex’ or, worst of all, ‘Let DSS bloke shag me for a crisis loan’. What next – shagging the homeless?!

  Still, who was I kidding – if that sexy Dr Fox, say, wanted me to be her bit of rough, offered to set me up in a flat somewhere so long as I gave her Sugar privileges three nights a week, no way would I turn it down! As if that was ever gonna happen . . . I drained the bottle and flopped back on the pebbles, yelping as they hit my back. So now I was a hypocrite – the thing I hated most in all the world – as well as being broke, bored and on the wrong side of the law. Sweet – not!

  Just then
a text came through. I picked it up and squinted at it.

  It was from Saz – the chief Fallen Angel from the airport. And an angel for real, for me, it seemed.

  IBIZA GR8, STILL STEAMING, PARTY SAT NITE, CALL ME! R U READY 2 ROCK?!

  Oh yes! – yes, I was.

  19

  Well, as I was saying, I may be a broke, bored, law-breaking hypocrite, but if there’s one thing I can do better than anyone else it’s party. And like the people who think the holiday begins at the airport – usually people I’ve had to sweep up the sick of at Stanwick – I think the party begins in the bedroom. On the other hand I’m certainly not one of those saddos who says that the best part of a party is a getting ready . . . hmm, someone can’t pull/dance/be the sexiest girl at the party then!

  Unlike me, I preened, as I gazed at the beautiful sight in the mirror while wiggling around to Gnarls Barkley with a bottle of Aftershock Black in my hand. Red dress plus shiny long dark hair plus gleaming caramel skin covering toned taut teenage bod equals perfection, in my book; I felt like reaching into the mirror, pulling my reflection out and giving it a good seeing to, that’s how hot I was! To be honest, I wouldn’t have minded my little ghost-girl turning up tonight, spooky as it sounds; it was at times like these that I missed Kim, I must admit. Kim: my portable, lovable and, as it turned out, shaggable little audience. OK – quit giving me evils – I know that we shouldn’t think of our friends as audiences. But if they’re staring up at us with adoring eyes full of love and longing, what else would you call them – tell me that!

  I wondered what sort of mate Saz was going to turn out to be; whether she was going to roll over and accept Sugar Rules – in both senses of the word – straight away like a sensible girl, or whether she was going to put up a fight and jostle to be boss. I hoped not, for her sake; I liked the girl, I could use a new mate and I didn’t want to have to go to the trouble of breaking her nose and/or her spirit before we became BFFAB – Best Friends For A Bit. But I had noticed the way she bossed little Vic around – so it was more than likely there might be a tiny bit of a power struggle ahead. Whatever! – I’d cross that bitch when I came to it, I decided as I took another slug of Aftershock and used the other hand to spray myself with Gucci Rush. In the meantime, she’d be a good wing-girl and hunting partner, so long as we weren’t after the same prey. Which, luckily, it didn’t seem we were this time at least.