A Fucked Up Life in Books (12 page)

But that’s another story.

So this boy was someone I was in a long-distance relationship with. He lived in Yorkshire and I lived somewhere in the Midlands. So it was a 2 hour train, each way, each weekend, if I wanted to see him.

And that I did. He was quite nice, and also I was quite bored where I was living. So I’d travel to his most weekends and we’d do shit that couples in long distance relationships do. In this case argue a lot.

At the end of one weekend trip, we were having an argument about his weird penis, and about the fact that the fucker would not go inside me unless it was covered by the seam-free sheath of a condom.

Me: ‘Sort your fucking penis out. That end bit shouldn’t be like that.’

Him: ‘It’s fine. It’s always been like that.’

Me: ‘It’s not fucking fine, I’ve been with you over a year and I’ve never seen the end of your knob. It’s weird. Get it cut off.’

Him: ‘No. Fuck off.’

We had other arguments but that one was quite prominent because I felt like I wasn’t getting enough cock, and he felt like his penis was normal and didn’t need medical attention. (It did.)

So without having a goodbye shag, I began to get ready to go to the train station.

Me: ‘I’ve nearly finished my book. Got a book I can borrow for the way back?’

He was very excited about this.

Him: ‘How about some Terry Pratchett?’

His poor little eyes looked so hopeful I couldn’t say no.

He selected
Guards! Guards!
From the shelf and I put it in my bag, said my goodbyes (‘please think about going to a doctor, yeah?’) and headed to the train station.

I had such a lovely journey. There weren’t too many people because I’d got the last train so I’d been able to put my bag in the luggage nook at the end of the carriage instead of having to sit on it in the vestibule, and I had a whole four chairs and a table to myself. I was also very much enjoying
Guards! Guards!
and the journey was whizzing by.

My stop seemed to arrive in no time at all, and I got up, hopped off the train and walked halfway down the platform before I thought I was a bit light.

I looked down at my hands: the book and train ticket were there, good. Why the fuck did I feel like I was missing something.

My bag. My fucking bag is still on the train. I turned and ran and leapt, fucking LEAPT (so gracefully) back on to the train just as the driver announced that I should stand clear of the doors. I grabbed my bag and turned. And the doors slammed shut.

Fuck. It’s fine though, it’s fine. The next stop is just 15 minutes up the road. I can get off there and scoot back and these train bastards won’t even realise that I’ve had a free ride! Stupid wankers.

Train Guard: ‘This train is now non-stop to London. Passengers for other destinations should change at London and check the local departure boards. I repeat, this train is now non-stop to London.’

Oh. That’s a bit shit then.

It was late because I’d so cleverly got the last train, and I’d now I’d probably tripled my fucking journey because of this fucking bastard twat of a book that had distracted me with that fucking dragon woman when I should’ve been happily leaving the train at my destination. What is that woman’s name again? I blame her for everything.

Being an adult I just about managed not to scream and cry and kill everyone, and instead went in search of the train Guard.

I found a cleaner first.

Me: ‘Hello, I need to find the Guard.’

Cleaner, glancing at my book: ‘The Guard?’

Me, glancing at my book, too: ‘Oh, yeah. Har har har! The Guard!
Guards! Guards!
Har har har.’ I waggle the book in her face a little. ‘Arghh! Guards!’

Cleaner: ‘Are you okay?’

What a cunt, I fucking hate myself.

So she took me to the Guard and he was a large man. He looked like a Guard should look. He said ‘Now Then’, and I like that because I think it’s quite nice. It’s nice, isn’t it?

Guard: ‘Now then, what’s the problem?’

I told him the
whole
story, which is not what he asked for but what he got. He listened very carefully and then asked for my ticket. I gave it to him and he wrote OVERCARRIED on it, and a bunch of special, secret numbers. The he told me to go and sit down and at London to get on the next train back.

Me: ‘So you can’t just let me off here?’

Cunt. Hate myself. 23 years old. ‘Can you let me off here?’ God. Fucking idiot.

Guard:
Silence

He looked at me for quite a long time. A couple of minutes must have passed. He was probably chewing over whether or not I was a bit simple.

Guard: ‘… No.’

I went and sat down and I didn’t read anymore of
Guards! Guards!
because I was too frightened I’d end up somewhere else and then next Guard would have no room on my ticket to point out to the others that I’m a fucking idiot and I needed taking back, again. Instead I just sat down and berated myself for that ridiculous conversation with that poor, poor cleaner.

On my second attempt at completing a university degree (I fucked up the first after two years) I met a boy who I had a lot in common with. On this course there were a lot less people than I’d been used to on the last one, and he stuck out on the first day because he was wearing a denim jacket with a
Black Sabbath
patch on one breast and a
Deep Purple
one on the other. He had long, greasy, curly hair that he tied back in a ponytail, and thin framed square glasses. After talking to him on the first day we became friends and would spend time in between lectures and seminars in the pub or in the library.

One day he asked me whether I’d read
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. I hadn’t, and he said that he had a copy and that I could borrow it. It was his favourite book.

That evening I went over to his house and we sat in his room painting High Elves for his Games Workshop battles. He gave me the book and I looked it over.

‘Have you read it?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, course,’ he replied.

‘What, this copy? The spine’s still smooth.’

‘Yeah, I don’t break the spines on my books.’

I handed him the book back.

‘Fuck it, then. I’ll get it from the library.’

A couple of days later, in the university library where I was trying to find the shelf where they’d hidden the one copy of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
that they had in stock, my friend was particularly cheery. This was not like him. He was usually angry and hateful like me. That’s why I liked him.

I finally found the shelf I was looking for and plucked the book from it, turning round to walk towards the check-out machine. I asked him why he was so fucking happy. He glanced around and took out his phone.

‘Been sending this girl dirty messages,’ he said, holding the phone out to me. On it was a picture of a very thin girl with no clothes on. She had a great big bush and not really any tits to speak of.

‘Oh right. Erm, nice. Who is she?’

‘My best friend’s girlfriend.’

I stopped where I was and had a look at him. My new friend, biggest geek I’d ever met, liked reading books and going to The Games Workshop on a Saturday afternoon to play hours of
Warhammer
with the other local geeks.

‘Does your friend know?’ I asked.

‘Nah, but he’s leaving soon. Going in the army. They’ve been together two years but once he goes she’s breaking up with him and I’m going to fuck her.’

Fuck her?
He’d never spoken like that before. It was weird, like he’d turned into someone else. Some utter bastard.

‘So you’re going to
fuck
her? Your mate’s girlfriend, once he leaves to go to the army?’

‘Yeah.’ He grinned a weird pervy grin that I hadn’t seen before. I felt a bit sick. I scanned my book through the self-service check out machine.

‘Okay. Well, about that. I can’t be your friend anymore. That’s fucking disgusting.’

He looked at me blankly and then laughed. ‘What are you talking about? It’s fine, it happens.’

‘Yeah, apart from it’s not fine, is it? It makes you a massive cunt,’ I said, putting the book in my tote bag and walking away from him.

He stayed where he was and watched me go.

A couple of weeks later, as I walked out of a lecture behind him I saw her waiting for him. With her boyfriend. They’d both come to visit him for a couple of days. As I walked by he stopped me and asked me if I’d like to go and get some food with them. I did not want to get some food with them. I watched the three of them walk away, the boyfriend excitedly chatting and walking with his arm round his best mate, while his girlfriend was on his other side holding his free hand.

That was the last I ever saw of him. After two weeks of not coming to uni we were told that he’d moved to Newcastle with some girl to get away from his mate who apparently ‘went a bit mad’. Instead of finishing his degree he’d got a part time job in Mothercare. No one heard from him after that.

I think about him sometimes and wonder what he’s doing, whether it worked, or whether one or both of them repeated history and went off to fuck someone else. Each to their own, and I’m not an angry, bitter cunt and of course only heard part of the story, his side, but I hope that he’s at home on his own painting tits on his high elves and crywanking over them after what he did to his mate.

Like most people who don’t know what the fuck to do with their life after finishing whatever level of education they managed to do, I twatted off around India for a bit with my friend.

We decided that we’d do that really knobby middle class thing and go and teach in a school for a while, and then go and see a few things that we wanted to see, and then go home covered in henna and doing yoga and ‘namaste’ing everyone we saw.

We stayed with an Indian family while we taught at the school for two weeks. To say they were a bit weird was putting it mildly. We didn’t really understand why they did any of the stuff that they did, and they didn’t understand why every couple of days we needed to have a bit of time to ourselves, to go for a walk and just be quiet for a few fucking minutes.

I think that in those two weeks they let us out twice. The reason it was only twice is because the second time we went out I made such a monumental fuck up that I managed to offend everyone in the village.

We went out for a walk. It was nice. We were somewhere that didn’t see that many white people so we were being followed all the time by local people trying out the English that they’d learned off the telly watching
Friends.
It was nice. We were like celebrities.

We wandered round and round in circles in the market and I spotted a little shack with various bits of shit for sale. I rummaged through said shit and found a book. I couldn’t tell immediately what book it was because the front and back covers were missing. I turned a few pages.
A Prayer for Owen Meany
by John Irving stared back at me. I was so fucking excited, this was the first time in almost a week that I’d seen a book that wasn’t the one that I’d read on the plane. I rummaged some more and managed to locate both the front and back covers. I held it all up together in front of the face of the man behind the table.

‘How much?’ I asked.

‘Fifteen rupees,’ he replied.

‘Fuck off! Ten,’ I retorted.

He sighed. He didn’t argue with me at all, just nodded and took my money. I’m not going to tell you how many pennies I had saved on that book by getting the price down by five rupees, but rest assured, I still feel like a cunt about it to this day.

I left my friend and headed back to the house. We had some parcel tape in one of the rucksacks and I wanted to patch up my new book and start reading. On the way I passed a man selling shoes. He stopped me and told me about the beautiful shoes that he had and what they were made out of.

‘… and this one – camel! And this one – goat!’

‘Why are the goat ones so much more expensive?’

‘There is less skin on a goat.’

‘Ah, right. Yes, I see now.’

‘Your shoes are nice. What are they?’

I had spent quite a lot of money (for me) on a nice pair of comfy sandals in anticipation of my trip to India. They really were lovely.

‘These? Oh, cow.’

He went quiet. I was still turning over the goat shoes in my hand. Everyone went quiet. I didn’t notice because these goat shoes in my hand were really quite nice. I wondered how they dyed them red. Eventually I looked up to see half of the village staring at me. What the fuck were they all looking at? I put on my best English what-the-pissing-cunt-are-you-staring-at face. I opened my mouth, but Mr Shoeman got there first.

‘Your shoes are made of cow?’ he asked.

Fuck.
FUCKfuckfuckFuuuuck.
It suddenly clicked. Cows are sacred animals. Everyone here is vegetarian. They all have pet cows in their gardens. They worship the cows when they pray. Fucking cocking shit, what had I done?

A cow casually strolled past at that moment, looking at me. Staring into my eyes, into my soul.

‘Oh, not
cow
!’ I forced out an incredibly false laugh. The laugh of misunderstanding. Suddenly, through the crowds I could see my friend approaching. I called her over. She was excellent at thinking on her feet.

‘What are my shoes made out of?’ I asked her, giving her a look that I hope conveyed how fucked I would be if she wasn’t particularly quick and clever on this occasion.

‘What are you talking about? They’re leat– … oh, er, plastic, I think. Yeah plastic.’

FUCKING PLASTIC. I could’ve killed her.

I grabbed her arm and we ducked through the crowd, who were by now spitting at me and calling me a prostitute.

We half walked, half ran back to the house, where I kicked my shoes off and hid them under the bed, then went and explained the ‘misunderstanding’ to my Indian Mum through the only person in the house who could speak English – her daughter. They both frowned at me. The mum could tell I was lying, but she didn’t tell me off. I was relieved. I sat on my bed, dug the brown parcel tape from my rucksack and began to patch up my new book. It looked spectacular. I opened it and began to read.