Lolito (7 page)

It doesn’t feel like a party in The Outside.

It feels heavy and cold.

The air smells of popcorn and dead leaves. Next to one house, it smells of roast dinner. I can see two people sitting down at a table inside of it. There are candles. I want to be inside with them. I want to eat roast dinner at a table with a girl and then sex the girl and fall asleep on her stomach.

Three men run the corner shop by my house. When I go inside, they’re playing catch with rotten tomatoes. One of them nods at me. A tomato lands by my feet. I look down at it and panic. The cheap striplight highlights its misshapenness. The men are looking at me. Do I throw it or step over it or pick it up and eat it? I’m probably not supposed to eat it. I should make a joke. If I don’t make a joke then I’ll look rude and offended. I’m not offended. It’s only a tomato.

I throw the tomato to the nearest man.

I shout, ‘Beckham.’

The man looks confused. I’m confused. I try to remember a better sporting fact than that David Beckham exists.

‘Joking,’ I say, closing my eyes for a second and walking into the alcohol aisle. The men are looking at me and thinking about how stupid I am. They think I walk around shouting ‘Beckham’ at everything. Maybe I should do that. That would be easier than trying to remain coherent.

Beckham.

White Ace is the most units for the least amount of money. It’s £3.89 for 22.5. That is enough for me to drink until sleeping isn’t hard to do. It is enough for me to vomit in the morning and then drink a little more with breakfast. Hangovers don’t matter if you are allowed to stay in bed or if your girlfriend has been kissing Aaron Mathews.

I pick up two cans of tripe and go to the counter. The man in front of me buys three porn magazines in grey plastic wallets. I briefly panic that I’ve somehow gone back in time to the 80s. AIDS is real again. My parents use swear words. Everything is grainy. Computers are houses.

I pay for my stuff with 20ps and refuse a plastic bag. At the door, I turn around and say ‘Beckham’. The men smile at me. They smile
okay, that’s great
smiles and I sink.

Alice Poem #2
Once there was an elephant mum and
the elephant mum had a baby and the baby
elephant had no legs and everyone called
it a retard and hit it with sticks and the mum
elephant ate the baby elephant and was Moby
Dick even real by the way Poems Are Gay and
Elephants
Are Gay and I want to wake up in yesterday and
FUCK YOU.

12

I’m indiscriminately slapping bushes as I walk past the repainted houses where young professionals with clean babies live. Sometimes I pull leaves off and throw them at other bushes. There are lights on in most of the houses. Soft, white IKEA lights looking over original floorboards and large televisions and full fruit bowls.

Someone’s walking towards me.

He’s looking down into his phone.

It’s The Tiger.

I stop. I don’t know what to do. He looks up. My body stops working. It won’t do anything. It has fallen asleep. My body often fails to be a real asset to my brain, I feel.

He walks towards me, slowly and unevenly, sliding
his phone into the pocket of his quilted jacket.

‘All right,’ he says. He doesn’t say it like a question. It’s a nothing word. Like sorry and okay and goodbye. A word that fills up the space between two people.

I nod and he hits me.

I can tell that he’s going to hit me, so I lean into the punch, effectively reducing its potential for serious damage. This is something I learned from Dad’s book. Thanks, Dad.

He hits me in the eye that he didn’t hit me in last time. Is that considerate? I can’t tell. I tip backwards but don’t fall over. My body has started working again. It turns around and runs. It runs past the lit-up windows and the shop and the hairdresser, hugging the green plastic bottle of cider. The Tiger is behind me. His feet clap the ground so fast it sounds like sleet. He catches my collar and I stop. I shake off his hand. I face him.

‘Wait,’ I say. ‘Wait. Stop fighting me. I’ll give you ten pounds.’

‘I don’t want ten quid,’ he says. He’s out of breath. ‘I want to fuck you in.’

‘You’re going to bum me?’

‘Fuck off, am I.’

‘Wait, are you?’

‘No.’

Another gap of silence opens between us.

‘You want to talk to God?’ I say. ‘Let’s go see him together. I’ve got nothing better to do.’

And I hit him. I’m amazed at my hands. I think, congratulations me. It isn’t a hard punch but it’s definitely a punch. He doesn’t move at all and doesn’t look hurt, only surprised and slightly angry.

‘Stop fighting me,’ I say again. ‘Don’t fight me any more.’

‘You hit me.’

‘You hit me first.’

‘Whatever.’

‘Wait, if I let you punch me in the face, can I go? Or I’ll lie down and you can kick me. I don’t care. You choose.’

‘No.’

‘What do you mean, no?’ I lie down on the pavement and curl into a ball. I look into the nighttime I’ve made inside of my elbows. I’m safe. I’m lying in Mum’s womb as she reclines on the sofa, watching
Escape to the Sun
and being brought cups of ginger tea. ‘Kick me. It doesn’t matter. Beckham.’

‘I’m not going to kick you. Get up.’

‘No. You’ll just punch me. Kick me now. Wherever you want.’

‘Get up, you twat.’

‘Kick me in the head. Go on.’

‘Stop being a prick.’

‘Kick me. Beckham. Fuck me in. Bum me. Do whatever.’

‘I’m not going to bum you. Stop saying that.’

‘Break my spine. Sit on me. Jump on me. Bite off my ear.’

‘Just get up. Jesus.’

‘Will you punch me if I get up?’

‘Stand up and give me the ten quid.’

‘Okay.’

I stand up and give him the ten pounds. He looks me in the eyes. I look him in the eyes too. His face isn’t scary like Aaron Mathews’. Maybe because I’m not imagining it nuzzling Alice’s vagina. What if they had a threesome? A Manson family drugs orgy. Joking. His face isn’t scary because it looks like Simba.

‘You can have it back,’ he says. ‘I don’t want it.’

I don’t take it. I turn around and walk back towards home. I walk slowly and count my steps, making sure not to stand on sets of three drains because Aslam says that’s bad luck and I don’t want more of that or I do or it doesn’t matter.

PART 2

Wet

13

I came home from school, made tea and sat with Mum while she watched the news. The news said that young people were stabbing each other. In the gut and in the face and in the heart. They were dying. It showed pictures of their knives. All of the knives were bigger than mine. Some flicked out of their handles. Some were the length of babies. One was a samurai sword. One was a machete. I buried the butter knife by the dead apple tree in our garden and took a bread knife instead.

They found the second weapon at school one day when Ellen Kane’s christening necklace went missing. She had taken it off for art. Mrs Layton wouldn’t let anyone leave the room until someone owned up and gave it back. No one owned up and gave it back. Mrs Layton told us to put our bags on the table. She came to us one by one and performed thorough and invasive searches. My hands were dripping. I asked if I could go to the toilet. Mrs
Layton said to wait. I said I really needed to go. She said I really needed to wait. I said, ‘I’m literally going to shit myself’ and she gave me a detention. When she got to my bag, my knees were bouncing like basketballs and I was trying not to cry.

‘Get away,’ I said. ‘I know my rights. You need a warrant for that.’

I had been listening to a lot of Jay-Z.

She shouted. She made me stand in a corner.

Then the bread knife appeared in her hand.

Then I was sitting in the headmaster’s office, next to Mum, holding toilet paper against my eyes, promising that I was not planning to do a murder.

‘But why do you have it?’ Mr Keating said. He was rubbing his chin. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What are you scared of?’

‘Just scared.’

Three days later, a policeman came to our house. He smelled of chewing gum, hair gel and too much deodorant. His hands were tiny and hardly moved. I talked at them, not at his face.

‘You’re not in trouble,’ he said. ‘But we need you to understand how serious this is.’ He blinked. ‘It’s very
serious.’ (Later, I found out that school had suspected Dad of fingering me while I slept.)

He asked me what I was planning to do with the knife. I said I was planning to defend myself. He told me that adults were there to protect me, and that no one can hurt me in school. I asked if he’d ever heard of Colombine. He said that sort of thing only happens in America and he told me not to do it again and he went away.

‘There’s nothing to be afraid of,’ Mum said. ‘You know you can talk to me about anything, darling.’ I turned the TV onto BBC1 because I thought it would be the news, but it wasn’t, it was a programme about antiques. I locked myself in the bathroom and lay in the empty bathtub for two hours, picturing myself alone in a spaceship, surrounded by slowly spinning purple galaxies.

Mum reacted by saying that I could do martial arts. Ben Wheelan said there were kung-fu monks who can kill you without even touching you. That sounded like something I wanted to do. I went through the phone book and found a place run by a woman. I trusted women more. They can’t do rapes and their hands are smoother. I stopped going after two sessions because none of the moves seemed like they could beat a knife or a gun.

Dad reacted by giving me a used copy of a book called
The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook.
It was
supposed to make me less anxious. I memorised everything in it. It didn’t make me less anxious. It brought to my attention the almost endless amount of potentially dangerous situations I had to be anxious about. It said about how to deliver babies and cope with parachutes that won’t open. It talked about how to act while on the roof of a moving train.

Junior school ended on a day without clouds and I stopped seeing Ben Wheelan. I got into a secondary school with an entrance exam. He got into a secondary school for people who sometimes hit other people.

I spent the summer collecting slugs in plastic takeaway cartons, reading
The Worst Case Scenario Survival Handbook,
and stealing Dad’s beers.

14

At home, I watch my face in the bathroom mirror. It looks red and a little confused. There are no bruises yet. There will be. I’m Natasha Bedingfield. It will be okay. Mum will believe me when I tell her it’s from walking into a lamppost. Dad will think it’s from fighting and he won’t say anything but he’ll secretly be imagining the triumphant victory of his only son. A victory in which I break bones and spit blood between punches.

I splash myself with water and go to watch television on the sofa with Amundsen. I fill a pint glass with cider. There’s a film on where Daniel Craig and Billy Elliot do Polish accents and captain a group of Jews who are hiding from the Nazis in a deep forest. They build huts and steal food and argue. There’s a lot of arguing. There
are a lot of guns being fired and hungry people with mud-speckled faces. Normally, I only like films where nothing bad happens. Where you know that no one will die or get severely maimed or starve. Films like
Love, Actually
and
Bridget Jones’ Diary.
There’s no way that Bridget Jones would ever be raped and left for dead, so I didn’t feel anxious during it. I felt calm with alternating periods of amusement and sadness.

I like the film about the Jews, though. I start to pretend that I’m one of them. I’m taking lookout duty late at night. I’m breaking into the ghetto to let the others know they can join us. I’m shooting Nazis in their cars and celebrating afterwards. It’s tough, but it’s what we have to do to survive.

Eat.

Hide.

Kill Nazis.

When it ends, I’m alone with a sleeping Amundsen, very drunk, and increasingly aware that I’m not the leader of any kind of uprising.

Macy’s online.

I carry the computer upstairs and climb into bed with it. I lock Amundsen out. I pull off my trousers and one sock, and bring the duvet up to my chin.

‘Hi,’ I say. ‘How are you?’

‘Hi. Did you get caught in the office?’

‘Almost. It was close. My boss was talking to me and my dick was out.’

‘That’s hot.’

‘Yeah. And dangerous. I could have lost my job, which I need to support myself and so on.’

‘It was fun.’

‘I wish you were here. I wish someone was here. Or I was somewhere else.’

‘Bad day?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Yes.’ I got punched in the face and mugged, quietly, like an elderly person giving out their credit card details over the phone. ‘Sometimes I think about finding a small, dark space and climbing in, and never coming out. Not for food or water or people or anything. And I die in the space, but it’s okay, because it’s just in the space.’ I’m drunk. I shouldn’t have said that.

‘I think about that too, but then I think about angry hands reaching in to pull me out, and it seems worse than never going in.’

‘I wish people would let other people hide.’

‘I’ve got kids, hon. I know.’ I try to imagine being permanently tied to two miniature humans who require constant amusement and affection. I picture myself lightly holding a roll of yellow tape, walking between trees, testing the strengths of various low branches.

‘That’s horrible.’

‘Haha.’

‘That you always have to be responsible, I mean.’

‘It’s like everything’s narrowed down to right now, and you can’t do what you want. It’s like there’s this
point where doing what you want starts being selfish.’ ‘What do you want to do?’

‘Anything. I don’t know. Go somewhere hot and exotic, where I don’t know anyone. Somewhere with palm trees and cocktails. Learn the language. Get a bar job. Sleep whenever I want.’

‘That sounds nice. We should do that.’

‘I wish.’

‘Your kids will be fine. Kids grow up quickly now. When you leave, they’ll invent a new kind of social networking and become billionaires.’