Friction (25 page)

‘Frank is a sleazebag and his partner's insane,' says Justin, kneading half-heartedly at Rebecca's scalp. Rebecca
is experiencing one of her confident days. She secretes self-esteem from all orifices. Words process along the conveyor belt of her tongue.

‘The most appropriate analogy is pain, it's a lot like pain. At least, in its consistency and intensity. Imagine every bone in your body being broken extremely slowly, but it's somehow enjoyable, extremely enjoyable. A disorientating pleasure that you can't find your way out of, but you don't mind.'

‘My hands are tired. Is this helping?'

‘Yeh, it's heaven, keep going.'

Rebecca used the sex machine three times in the twenty-four hours she had it. On one occasion, Justin had been present, watching but not wanking. It was as he watched her squirm and scream around the bedroom that he became certain that he should invest in the product. But Rebecca is adamant that the machine does not mark the end of their sexual experiment. She maintains that it's not the answer.

‘I'm not even sure I'd buy one,' she says. ‘It's too much insofar as it's too much pleasure, and too little insofar as it seems to have nothing to do with happiness. Even when it's on and you want to scream with pleasure.'

The sex machine sorted out the problems Justin and Rebecca had been experiencing since his night with the celebrity. It made them equal, brought them back together as experimenters in sex. It's only now, after Rebecca's affair with the machine, that calm has been restored. He had a celebrity and she had a machine. One all.

Justin described the sex with the celebrity in the only way he could. He spoke rather vaguely about how it was like shagging a void. Fucking a myth. Discovering the vulgar truth behind the constructed beauty. It didn't matter that
it wasn't at all like shagging a void or fucking a myth. It didn't matter that it had been quite nice in the end, if a little emotional. But the fact is celebrity-shagging isn't an answer, so Justin felt he should reassure Rebecca by pretending the sex had been shallow.

Justin stops massaging. He gets up from the sofa and walks to the window. It has been clear for a long time that Rebecca is falling in love with him. There is an unavoidable atmosphere when they're together. It's awkward. She'd attempted to make him jealous by flirting with the sex machine, but it hadn't worked. Of course, he thinks Rebecca is beautiful and wonderful. In another world, he keeps thinking, we are lovers. If he stares hard at her living room walls, he can almost see beyond to where their doubles are making real life plans on the sofa. But the experiment is everything. The other worlds are just the other worlds.

‘I think we should go to the Antiporn rally on Saturday,' says Rebecca, joining Justin by the window and trying to get him to give her a piggyback. ‘We should get that headmistress on her own and proposition her. If we could threesome with the leader of Antiporn, that'd be amazing.'

‘Would it?' says Justin, refusing to grab her under her knees and bearing her weight with his shoulders instead.

‘Wouldn't it?' says Rebecca, sliding slowly down his back to the floor.

The two of them reconvene on the sofa where Rebecca demands that the massaging continues. Justin agrees, thumbing her neck with force. Rebecca's sexual suggestions are increasingly unconvincing. They sound like ideas she's had for the sake of it rather than for the sake of global joy. Justin has recognised this and is disappointed. He'd tried to hold her in place and protect her from love. But sadly,
people love love. And Rebecca has wriggled free from Justin's lovelessness. She wants a boyfriend. She is falling in love with him.

Justin turns his attention to Rebecca's hair. This is love, he thinks. If love is anything, it's running your fingers across chemical scalps.

‘We're not going to try and fuck the headmistress, Rebecca. We're going to go with Colin's idea.'

‘Colin's idea is ridiculous,' says Rebecca, suddenly angry. She's been arguing against Colin's suggestion since it appeared on the site. Justin says nothing, just continues making small circles on her scalp with each of his fingers. ‘So, what?' says Rebecca, her voice tinny with irritation. ‘You expect me to have a kid?'

‘I expect you to get pregnant and I expect you to have an abortion. I expect you to at least give it a try,' says Justin softly, killing her with calmness. He feels the added blood pulsing through the veins of Rebecca's head, it's noticeably warmer. He stops massaging. Rebecca's head drops back into his lap so he can stare right into the depths of her nostrils and at the extremities of her eyeballs, where they become red.

‘With you, Justin? Are
you
going to make me pregnant?' she says, with the stretched and tortured eyes of a ghoul.

‘No, my love,' he replies. ‘Colin is.'

A DAY LATER,
in the grim light of the Nude Factory, Johnny's face is performing a foul grimace. The rolls of skin on his cheeks and forehead cast unfortunate shadows down his face. How did it come to this? For the third time in a minute, he demands confirmation that he lost his virginity to a prostitute. Rebecca adjusts the straps of her bra. Her breasts seem to titter within their satin cups. For the third time in a minute, she says: ‘All I'm saying, Johnny, is that you didn't sleep with me that night. That me and Justin tricked you.'

‘Right, OK.'

‘Have you been using prostitutes, Johnny? Please say you haven't.'

‘Well, how long have you been a stripper?'

‘A year. Have you been sleeping with prostitutes?'

‘I can't say, Rebecca.'

It seemed perfectly normal to Johnny when he recognised the ring on the girl's finger, as he handed her the Nude Token. It was a plastic emerald thing, exactly the same as the ring Rebecca often wears. His eyes scanned up her
arm and over her shoulder. It came as no surprise when he found himself staring at Rebecca's face. Oh, he thought, my friend.

He'd come into central Manchester for the afternoon. He'd woken up with this strange desire to buy a DVD and put his life back on track. He didn't know what DVD he wanted; a film perhaps, or the complete series of a television comedy. But before he could even locate a shop he felt himself gravitating towards the Nude Factory. It felt like a ton weight was hanging from his cock. He got an erection. Had to put fists into his trouser pockets to hide it. He walked into the Nude Factory at about two o'clock, and it wasn't long before he discovered that Rebecca worked there. But as I say, this seemed normal. Every attempt Johnny makes to enjoy an episode of illicit erotica seems to culminate in embarrassment. Usually when he encounters someone he knows.

So in the grained atmosphere of the strip club a few revelations are revealed. Johnny hadn't slept with Rebecca. Johnny had indeed lost his virginity to a prostitute and Rebecca works part time as a stripper. But, of course,
we
knew all this already.

Rebecca doesn't even entertain the idea of lap dancing for Johnny. His unexpected arrival at the Nude Factory is yet more evidence of man's cloudy and horrendous imagination. The mystery of sexuality and personality, she thinks, as she rests her thighs on the stale banquette beside Johnny. Jesus, men are melted tar.

‘Look, Johnny, if you want to talk you'll have to pay me. I'll get bollocked otherwise,' she says, folding her arms to block his view of her breasts.

Johnny hands Rebecca a handful of change, about five
quid. He turns his body towards her and wonders what life was like in the sixteenth century.

‘So you tricked me,' he says. ‘We never slept together?'

Rebecca nods with irritation. The manager, Marcus, is gesturing to her from beyond Johnny's left shoulder. He wants her to unfold her arms. She does so reluctantly, then watches as Johnny's gaze journeys down from her face, over her collarbone to her breasts. She sighs. So does Johnny. The two young people sigh.

‘You know, I came into town to buy a DVD,' says Johnny. ‘I wasn't certain what I wanted, but I felt sure that I could stand in front of the displays, look at the different products on offer and make a decision. I even felt sure that I could go home and watch it, put it in the DVD player and sit in front of it for a while, until it ended, I suppose.'

Johnny runs his finger over the space on his face where he wishes sideburns grew. But they don't. He can feel the uneven texture of a pointless rash and the presence of a few wiry and isolated hairs. Staring at Rebecca's boobs is no fun either; they remind him of crying. Her skin looks like clothing, her breasts simply accessories.

‘But I haven't bought anything,' he continues. ‘Apart from you, I suppose. I was hoping for a lap dance, or maybe not, maybe I wasn't. I was hoping to get this thick cement out of my mind.'

‘Cement?'

Johnny seems to fall uncontrollably towards Rebecca, but then halts decisively inches from her smirking cleavage. His eyes trace the arched journey of her bra. To be a bra, he thinks, yes, what a divine fate. The concept of happiness flits quickly through his mind, causing him to laugh, speak and long to weep.

‘I feel that if I were to sneeze, I might disappear into thin air. I feel like I'll never be happy, just crap and frustrated. And, of course, I love you.'

‘Don't cry, Johnny,' says Rebecca, trying desperately to relate to Johnny's puddle-like destiny. She puts a hand to his cheek, but he spasms and her fingers return to her knees. Johnny speaks again, his voice a weak squeal.

‘I shouldn't be here,' he says. ‘Earth, I mean. I shouldn't be here. I don't matter, that's the way it is . . . Look at my thin wrists, do you ever look at my thin wrists?'

‘You've got lovely wrists.'

Quite suddenly, Johnny is up like a shot. As if he didn't really want to leave but suddenly found his body propelling him towards the door and up the stairs, like the dregs of a drink being sucked up a straw. Rebecca gets to her feet and calls after him, but he's gone. She can hardly run after him in her underwear.

So yes, Johnny runs. He's running. He exits the Nude Factory and heads east away from Castlefield in the direction of Market Street. As he flies past a large toyshop, a huge woman staggers out holding an enormous wooden doll's house. She laughs, at him? Surely not. He passes a pub (there are always pubs). The sound of football. Beery cheers and groans. Johnny carries on running. The streets are packed. He changes direction with each skip, avoiding collision. In the back of his mind he hopes Rebecca might be following him, chasing at full speed in her knickers and her high heels, screaming his name. That's impossible, though; run on.

He tears up King Street. A man dressed in leather seems to have oil for hair. A woman with large teeth and the thatched head of a scarecrow pauses as he runs by, tibia
conspicuous inside her suede calf. On Cross Street a bus drives by, containing a pinch of people.

At the southern end of Market Street a space exists. In another city it might be a pleasing piazza buzzing with atmosphere, but not in Manchester. It's just uneven tarmac, argumentative architecture; bad maths. Johnny arrives and a pigeon leaves. The droves of people continue to move, not noticing the speedy arrival of the young man.

Are my clothes too baggy? wonders Johnny, marvelling at the plastic bags that bulge from the people's wrists. Can I do anything at all? He's stops and stares, people revolve around him like he's the central spear of an ancient merry-go-round. They bob up and down and round, like brightly coloured plastic horses with gaping mouths and fixed expressions.

‘Can I do anything at all?' he says out loud, trying to catch the eye of an old man who limps past supported by a wooden stick. Pigeons circle overhead, they're enjoying this.

‘Can I do anything at all?' he says again, to himself. Can I run back to the Nude Factory and demand that Rebecca gyrates on my lap for a while? Can I run to her and cover her exposed flesh in a large blanket? Can I tell her that everything will be fine and that I'm getting her out of stripping and building us a new and better life? Can I rescue anything? Johnny's thoughts tumble out of his brain, landing on the Tarmac with a wet thump. He screams at the top of his voice: ‘What am I meant to be doing?'

He's running again, prompted by the grim glances that turned to him as he screamed. He's running up Market Street, fumbling with his phone. He hardly recognises any of the names in his phonebook: Andy, Anka, Ben. The
names of people he's lost touch with, an entire alphabet of failure. He slips off Market Street and runs a little further down a quiet pedestrianised road. He comes to rest outside a pub called The Shakespeare. He's panting heavily as he taps in the telephone number of the sex line.

In this situation, what would Shakespeare do? Write a play about it probably. A girl, a guy, rejection, sexual experimentation, trickery, farce. But this is not the age of Shakespeare. For a moment Johnny considers entering the pub and buying a pint of Coke, but then his call connects.

‘Hello, who's that?' the girl's voice, unknown but familiar. Just like the rest.

‘It's me,' says Johnny, pacing frantically, staring up at Shakespeare's portrait. Which swings on a sign overhead.

‘Who's me, darlin'?' says the girl. Bless her, bless the girl. How long does she wait by her phone? And has she just sipped from a beaker of gravel? Her voice is ragged.

‘It's me. Johnny,' says Johnny, using his real name for the first time on this line. ‘I need your help. Do you know what I'm meant to be doing?'

‘Sorry?' comes the crackled reply.

‘What am I meant to be doing?'

Johnny kicks an invisible football from his feet and senses tears conspiring in his eyes. Against him, of course. He listens to his phone; the girl's confused. Why won't she speak? What am I meant to be doing? Wait – she's speaking.