A Fucked Up Life in Books (5 page)

And back I went to the front of the shop to tidy all the shit there.

About an hour later the phone rang and I was called over.

‘It’s for you,’ said a colleague, thrusting the receiver at me whilst greeting her next customer.

I put the phone up to my ear and said hello.

‘Oh, hi, ___. It’s erm ___, I was just in the shop, I bought two underwear sets. You see, the thing is I don’t actually have a girlfriend. I was outside the shop and I saw you working and I thought you looked really nice. So I came in and when you spoke to me I didn’t know what to do so made that up. But anyway, I got the phone number and your name off the receipt and I was wondering if you wanted to go for a drink when you finished?’

He’s mental, he’s going to rape and murder you
, was the first thing that went through my mind.

‘Where are you?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, I’m just outside the shop, on the bench.’

I looked to my left. Just outside the door on some crescent shaped wooden benches, there he was. Looking at me. I looked away.

‘That’s very kind of you, ___,’ I said. ‘However I’m afraid I have a boyfriend and so it wouldn’t really be appropriate.’

‘Oh. Well, do you want the underwear? It’s your size, after all …’ He laughed.

I pressed the panic buttons under the desk, hung up the phone and looked out of the door. He wasn’t there anymore.

I spent the next week at work being monitored by plain clothed security people in the shopping centre. He came back once, they said, and was escorted away by the police. A lot of very strange people came in and out of that shop, but he was probably the one that fucked my head up the most, and guaranteed for the 18 months that I’d work there before leaving for uni, that I’d never go out on a lunch break and instead would stay safely inside the staff room reading Ben Elton.

When I was in sixth form a friend and I used to spend Thursday mornings in the city centre in our local Wetherspoons pub. What we’d do is go into school, register, and then get the bus into town to spend the first two free periods in the pub. At the pub we’d each get a massive fry up and a pint, and then sit quietly and read our books together over another pint.

On this occasion we were both reading
The Caucasian Chalk Circle
for part of one of our English modules. The pub was loud and busy because it was right next door to the city centre college, and all of those college students had more or less the same brilliant Thursday morning plans as us.

I wasn’t 18 yet, and so I was drinking illegally. So was my friend. This wasn’t a problem in this pub. It was back in the day before everything got really strict and you had to have fifteen forms of ID just to get into the pub, and then hand over said ID again at the bar along with something important and sentimental to you in order to get a sniff of a Bacardi Breezer.

So we were there. In the pub. Reading a play and talking about what a fucking great guy Brecht was when I needed to go for a piss. Me and this girl were not the kinds to go to the toilet in pairs, so while she waited at our table I wandered up the stairs to the loo.

The toilet had six cubicles. Let’s name them, from right to left, 1-6. 2, 3, 5 and 6 were taken, so I went into 4.

I pulled down my pants and did a massive piss. I’m not sure how much description you need here, but I was a bit wobbly from the beer and I wanted to be in and out of there as quickly as possible. Wetherspoons toilets are not a great place to be. I wiped, pulled up my pants, flushed, unlocked the doors and went over to the sinks, which were facing the toilets. I turned on the tap and heard coming from one of the cubicles:

‘OH MY GOD HE’S GOT A MIRROR! OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OHMYGOD!’

I turned around as the door to cubicle 3 flew open and a man in a long grey coat rushed out with his head down. As he was at the door the door of cubicle 2 flew open and a girl ran out with her shirt all untucked and her flies open. She turned to me.

‘THAT FUCKING PERVERT CUNT WAS WATCHING ME PISS WITH A MIRROR! THAT FUCKING CUNT!’

‘Shit, man,’ I said, ‘That’s bad.’

She huffed and puffed and sorted her shirt and flies out and stormed out. I followed her downstairs where she left the pub immediately and I went back to sit with my friend.

I was telling my friend what had happened when two policemen came over to our table.

‘What are you doing here, ladies?’

Shit. They know we’re underage. They’re definitely going to put us both in prison.

‘Err, we’re at the college studying English …’ I held up our books. ‘And we are here for a … meeting.’

‘Have either of you been into the toilet? We’ve had a report of a man hiding in the toilet.’

Thank fuck! I’m not getting arrested! I’m helping to condemn the filth, like a proper fucking brilliant hero.

And so I told the policeman about what had happened in the toilet. I fabricated a brilliant description of the man because I was 17 and high on power and then they thanked us and we left.

We were late back to school though, and a bollocking was in the air. Our head of year was waiting at the fucking gate for us, the jobsworthy cunt, and sniffed our mouths and looked in our eyes and declared us drunk. I tried to tell him that there had been a pervert in the pub toilet but he roared at me for admitting to being in the pub, and they rang my Dad and I got told off when I got home. Unluckily for my mate, her Dad was the head of drama so she had the pleasure of being bollocked in front of the entire school. She couldn’t get a fucking word in.

I don’t know if that man was watching me piss. At the time I didn’t care. I’m not sure I even care now. I just hope that some poor cunt didn’t get arrested based on my ropey description of a tall man (6’2") in a long grey coat with a pointy beard, thin moustache and cold dead, eyes. I wonder if the police even used that description at all.

Being a fucking massive geek, rather than asking my parents for a party or a car for my 18
^th
birthday present, I asked for a trip to the Normandy beaches so that I could go on a D-Day tour.

My Mum happily booked us tickets for everything that I wanted to see. I was going with her because I knew that she would fuck off and leave me alone. This way I could really
learn
about War.

Mum’s friend heard that we were going, and decided for the first time ever to give me a birthday present:
Birdsong
by Sebastian Faulks. She’d bought me it because it was about ‘The War’. I decided not to tell her what was wrong with this, but instead thanked her graciously and packed it in my bag for the journey.

We got the Eurostar over to France and then got on a coach. My Mum had as little interest in being with me as I had in being with her, and so didn’t sit next to me on the coach but instead sat on the seats in front of me to ‘give me some room to read’. I didn’t really know what that meant but I ran with it. No one sat down next to me but an old man sat down next to Mum.

I opened
Birdsong
and began to read. In front of me the old man had begun to talk at my Mum. I chuckled away. I was safe back here from these fucking people and their bastard conversation.

‘… I’m actually here with my daughter, she’s sat behind us.’

Fuck. I knew I’d celebrated too soon.

The old man turned around and looked through the gap in the seat at me. He looked at my face, then at my tits, then at my book.

‘Ah,
Birdsong
! I know it well. Tell me, dear, did you know there was that much tunnelling involved?’

I told him of course I fucking did, and stuck the book up in front of my face to stop him from speaking to me anymore.

As time went on and I continued to read, my eyes got tired and I found myself tuning out of the story in the book, and tuning into the conversation that my Mum and the old twat were having.

‘My wife and I take separate holidays each year. I’m very interested in the War, you see, and she isn’t really. She goes over to Spain and sits on the beach, and I come over to France or Germany and have a look at the historical bits and pieces. I’m an artist, and she doesn’t work, so we are at home together most of the time. We live in Sussex, by the sea. It’s nice to have holidays apart sometimes, when you are with someone that often.’

An artist. I hear ‘artist’ and I think ‘cunt’. It’s just one of those things, isn’t it?

Anyway, he continues speaking to my Mum.

‘I have an exhibition in three weeks’ time, I’d love it if you and your daughter would come along.’

I closed my eyes and tried to force myself to sleep, thinking that if she even suggested taking me with her to that man’s exhibition that I would punch her in the face. At the age of eighteen, you see, I was much the same as I am now at the age of twenty-seven: awkward, angry and often vehemently anti-social.

We got to Normandy safely. I went and saw all the shit that I wanted to see. My Mum spent most of her time in the hotel bar, and that old man kept fucking talking to me on every tour I went to.

A week after we got home, my Mum phoned to say that we had received an invitation to the old man’s exhibition. She gave me his full name and the location of said exhibition. I went and looked it up on the internet.

It was a fucking HUGE exhibition. It was going to be on The Strand and this old man who I had been so rude to all the time in France was a pretty big and successful artist. Weird.

A week after receiving the invitation, I was at my Mum’s house when the post arrived – another letter from the old man. It was short:

‘___,

I should have asked you in France whether you’d come back to my hotel room with me. I feel very silly that I didn’t ask you, but was worried that I may not be able to satisfy a woman like you, at my age.

I will be staying in a hotel after the exhibition. If you would like my room details, you can call me.’

A signature and a phone number followed. I do not know whether my Mum fucked that man.

I’d intended all the way through this to tell you who he was at the end. I’ve just Googled him on a whim, and he’s dead now.

So I’ve decided to keep his dirty little secret between you and me.

I used to have the best friend in the world. She was beautiful and clever and funny and she loved to go out on a Friday night with me and dance.

Every Friday, and sometimes other days during the week, too. We’d share a bottle of wine at her house and then go out and dance all night. We’d go to places where the music was cheesy and where you could get in wearing jeans and trainers and a hat. And we never talked to boys. Just danced.

One Friday I went round to her house for our bottle of wine before we went into town. This time was different to other times because this time I had an overnight bag with me with a bunch of stuff in because I was staying over at her house, and in the morning we were going out for the day.

I had that overnight bag with toiletries and my toothbrush, but I also had another bag that I’d brought with me that had in it my long black coat, some sunglasses, a black t-shirt with a weird white creature on that I’d bought from a shop in Malaysia, a map, and
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
, which is what I was reading at the time.

When I arrived at her house she was stood outside. Her Dad had locked her out by accident. We climbed over the fence into the garden and I put my bags in the garage. We looked each other up and down and decided that we were ready to go out as we were, so we went and got the bus into town.

On the way there she told me that her brother was on leave from the army and that him and his friend were in a pub, and that we should go and meet them. So we did. We decided that since we hadn’t had any wine at home that we’d get a large glass each in the pub, drink it with her brother and his mate and then fuck off out dancing. I was excited.

We got to the pub and found her brother and his friend. The brother I’d met before but the friend I’d not. He was very interested in knowing about what I liked, what I did, where I lived and all kinds of other shit. My friend was busy catching up with her brother so didn’t really notice how much we’d been chatting. I ordered my wine, and hers, and then excused myself to go to the toilet.

When I came back the guy handed me my wine. My friend had already got hers and was halfway down the glass. I began to drink mine and felt the familiar warm rush that you get from your first sip of wine in a busy pub when you’re happy and excited and a boy is talking to you.

We finished our wine and left the pub to go to one of our favourite clubs.

I say club, but it was actually just the upstairs of a bit of a rough pub. But the music was loud and they played old rock n roll and it was fun to dance to. We went upstairs and that’d the last I remember of the night.

I woke up on the lawn in front of my Dad’s house. That cunt had spiked my drink and as soon as I’d got into the club (which apparently he’d followed us to) I collapsed on the floor. My friend dragged me out and rang my Dad who picked me up. Her brother had a massive row with his friend. My friend went on our big day out the next day with someone else, because I was too ill at home.

Later on she came over and I told her to get the fucking butterflies out of here, they’re doing my head in. I was hallucinating. Fuck knows what that bastard had fed me.

A few weeks later when I felt brave enough to go out again I went back to my friend’s house. I remembered that I’d left that bag with my things in in her Dad’s garage. We went and looked for it but it wasn’t there.

The next day she rang me. Her Dad had been cleaning out the garage and had accidentally thrown out my bag of stuff mistaking it for rubbish. Mistaking my fucking book and coat and t-shirt and other shit for rubbish. Arsehole.

So that was about ten years ago that I started reading
Fear and Loathing
. I only recently got another copy and read it last year.

It was good, but not good enough to wait ten years for.