Grow Up (7 page)

She draws in a very sombre way. It is the only sombre part of her. It is a part of her that manifests only whilst smoking. It is strange to see a large aspect of a person given away only through small gestures, like when Keith uses homicide clichés or when Mum winks at my friends. People can never guard their embarrassments enough.

‘Hi,' the receptionist says. ‘Are you from the school?'

‘No,' I say.

We walk away and finish our cigarettes inside an uncomfortable bush, because talking to people who smile a lot is even more tiring than doing triathlons.

11

It is 8:45 a.m. My head is a junk band. Jonah just tried to wake up Ping by pulling his duvet off and when he did Ana was underneath it naked, curled around Ping's coffee-coloured buttocks like a half-sexy leech. Ping swore and Jonah laughed.

‘Breakfast time,' Jonah announces. Today he is wearing a white sleeveless vest and very tight black jeans. His hair is a nest composed of old wax, haunted by the ghost of a pillow.

We all go down to the canteen, which is like the school cafeteria except full of homeless-looking people and backpackers. It is a ‘Continental buffet breakfast'. Tenaya has a croissant and I have jam on toast. Some of the old men get angry at Jonah because he drank the whole bottle of milk that was meant for coffee and is denying it, despite the white smudges of guilt around his mouth.

We arrange ourselves along the length of one of the tables. Unshaven men are burning Jonah with their eyes. We may have to fight our way out. Ana keeps trying to hold Ping's hand but Ping is trying to eat. The result is a sort of unacknowledged battle. They are at war but both acting as though they are not, like when a girl is kissing your neck and you have to subtly try to subtly push her head down so that she will suck you off.

‘I had the weirdest dream last night,' Ana says.

I stop listening.

+

We are in the crime museum. We have been here for two hours already. I have seen countless antique truncheons and torture devices and pistols and slave memorabilia. Earlier, Jonah took one of the Ku Klux Klan hoods off its display stand, put it on, and ran up to Imran, screaming ‘Your end is nigh!' Imran punched him through the hood and Mrs Norton almost fainted. Now Jonah has a swelling field of mould around his left eye.

Me and Tenaya are looking at an old electric chair from America. It has the nickname ‘Yellow Mama'. Its informative plaque reads:

Early Electric Chair

First invented by Alfred P. Southwick in 1887 as a method of execution to replace hanging. His inspiration came from seeing a drunken man quickly die after touching exposed power lines. It is still in use in America.

‘I can't believe they still use that.' Tenaya says.

I shrug. ‘I can,' I say.

Next to the chair is a clumsy model of Auschwitz inside a cuboid glass atmosphere. None of the exhibits are grouped logically. Next to Auschwitz is one of the splurge guns from
Bugsy Malone
. The whole building smells of cats and wet paper.

‘Auschwitz,' Tenaya says. She says it very quietly.

I know she is thinking the same thing as me. She is thinking about the History trip when we visited it. When we all sat in a semicircle of plastic chairs and listened to a survivor slowly recount his experiences. He looked as frail as a spun-sugar cage and had the blurred ghost of a number across his left forearm. Mr Glover cried. Tenaya squeezed my hand until it didn't feel like my hand any more. Jonah experienced something not unlike the opposite of a religious experience.

Mostly people wander around the museum touching things with their hands and noses. This often happens in life. Last year we went to the Tate and everyone tried to look as though they were interested in the art but actually all they wanted to do was touch it. People spent hours groping the marble sculptures. One thing I have learned from being alive for seventeen years is that people like to touch things very much.

Things that people like to touch:

Vaginas

Expensive things in shops

Jelly that is not ready to eat yet

Cigarette lighters

Necks

Dead things

Dogs

Glass

Scars

Piercings

Things that are on the floor but shouldn't be

Toddlers' cheeks

Snow

Each other's knees

Buttons

Bottoms

People also like to touch death. They do this by abseiling or by watching reports about Israel on the news. Touching is about curiosity. Curiosity is about death.

Once we have seen everything, Jonah insists that we visit the gift shop. The gift shop sells yellow rubbers and pencil sharpeners and large, brightly painted pebbles. Everything says ‘Plymouth Crime Museum' on it. In one corner of the room an elderly woman is sat behind a grey plastic till, reading a Maeve Binchy and massaging her temples with slow, steady finger-orbits.

‘This stuff is so shit,' Jonah says. He throws a plastic letter-opener back onto its pile.

The elderly woman winces. She does not look up.

‘Can we go?' I say.

Jonah does not answer.

He walks over to a wire stand laden with novelty items. Itching powder, black soap, piss-flavoured boiled sweets. Novelty items are the worst kind of items. Jonah enjoys novelty items. They make him feel as though he is sharing an in-joke with the rest of the world.

‘Look at this,' Jonah says, pressing a small packet into my hands. He is laughing hysterically. I turn the packet over. There is a picture of a crucifix and it says ‘Catholic Condom' on. Jonah has bent himself in half. He is laughing even harder. ‘It's a . . . ' More laughs. ‘It's a . . . ' Laughter. ‘It's a condom with the end cut off.' He thinks that this is very funny.

‘I do not think that is very funny,' I say. ‘I think that it is highly irresponsible.'

We walk back out to the main room where Mrs Norton is stood, flapping her arms about, trying to count heads.

‘Everyone!' Mrs Norton says. She is stood beside an early policeman's uniform. ‘Myself and Mr Mandalay will be leaving now. You may stay as long as you like, or return to the hostel, or visit the town. BE WARNED that curfew is SIX O'CLOCK, and anyone breaching that WILL face SEVERE PUNISHMENT.'

Everyone nods and shuffles off. Ping and Ana disappear together, their arms looped like Olympic rings.

‘What now?' Jonah says, removing a pouch of tobacco from his back pocket.

‘I might go back to the hostel,' Tenaya replies. She is still wearing the ghost of Tom. Time is the only suitable exorcist.

We both nod and Tenaya pats my arm then leaves.

‘You are not going anywhere,' Jonah tells me.

‘Fine,' I say. I wanted to do something anyway.

‘What time is it?'

I pull out my phone.

‘Five.'

‘Good,' he says. ‘We are going to go and have some coffee now. Then I have a surprise for us. After the surprise we will get beers and go with the night.'

‘“Go with the night”, what does that mean?'

‘It means that the surprise will make plans for us.'

‘The surprise isn't a hooker, is it?'

‘Fuck off, am I paying for a whore for you.'

We walk out into Plymouth's dull grey stomach.

12

‘Mephedrone?'

‘Yea.'

Jonah is grinning.

Mephedrone. The surprise was mephedrone. Mephedrone is a legal drug you can buy off the Internet. It is sold as ‘plant fertiliser'. It lends you the kindness of the Dalai Lama and the charisma of Hitler, and all it asks in return is that, afterwards, you spend a little while in a moody black hole.

‘I don't know,' I say. ‘Really?'

I am currently not emotionally equipped to deal with severe fluctuations in mood.

‘Don't be a Gaylord.' Jonah nods toward the toilet door.

We are in the kind of Formica café frequented by builders and people on benefits. All of the waitresses are from Poland or somewhere. Nobody's eyes even flick up when we both pass through the toilet doors.

There is barely any room in the cubicle. There are piss puddles on the floor with cardboard toilet-roll cores crumpled inside of them like aborted foetuses.

Jonah unfolds the powder, concealed in a wrap made from a leaflet for ‘An Evening of Delirious Dubstep'. He uses his library card to make four lines on the toilet seat and we hoover them up.

We slouch onto the floor. Both sat with backs to tiles, we stare at other tiles for a few minutes. Burning nostrils, throat like a faecal waterfall, then I can feel it growing in my head.

My head is simmering.

‘You okay?' I say.

‘Yea. More?'

‘Word.'

‘Word?'

‘What? I heard it in a rap.'

Jonah smiles and shakes his head. He scrapes another two lines out of the wrap then licks the side of his library card. We take them and sit back. I feel huge.

‘Thanks,' I say.

‘It's okay.'

‘Thanks, really. Not in like a gay way or anything, but I love you, man. You have great calves.'

‘I know, we don't say it enough. I love you, too, man. We're so young. Everything is good,' Jonah says.

His hand is on my arm.

I put my hand on his shoulder.

‘Yes, YES. People don't love each other enough. People love war and money. I don't love war and money. I love you.'

‘Yea, fuck war and money.'

‘War and money can suck my dick.'

‘I love you and Tenaya and Ping and Ana.'

‘Ping and Ana! They are so happy together. They are wonderful. They are tiny stars.'

‘They'll get married and we'll all be there.'

‘Yea, telling them how fucking sweet they are.'

‘All existing happy.'

‘Fuck war and money!'

‘Weddings, that's what we should be doing.'

‘We should all get married.'

‘Confetti!'

Our legs are all bending about like blades of grass in a hurricane.

We push back through the doors and out into the café. We beam at the foreign waitresses then move towards the door. Jonah pushes it.

‘Excuse, excuse!' the waitress says. ‘You no pay!'

She is beautiful. She is like a porn star or a
Vogue
model or something. She has huge cheekbones and huge eyes and I am very glad she exists.

‘We are SO sorry,' Jonah says. ‘Please, please forgive us.'

He pulls a twenty-pound note out of his pocket and forces it into her hand. I pull out a ten and do the same. Thirty pounds for two coffees.

‘Very generous,' she says, returning our sloppy smiles.

‘You are so beautiful,' I say.

Me and Jonah both descend on her, pulling her tiny body into a fierce three-way hug.

‘Please be happy,' I say. ‘You deserve to be happy.'

Outside the air is beautiful. It smells of pot pourri. We drink it like drowning men. It fills us up full of sun.

‘Lets find a club, spread some love.'

‘Right,' I say. ‘People need to know we love them.'

‘Yea, we need to scream it and hug them.'

It is 8:00 p.m. Probably no clubs are open. We walk, anyway. Just following streets.

Jonah lights a cigarette. ‘Fucking beautiful,' he says.

He passes me one.

‘Uh,' I say.

We pass a Tesco Express, an unbranded shoe shop, a soap shop, a Starbucks and a Debenhams. They are all wonderful. An alleyway opens to our left. Its walls are splattered with lurid splashes of neon paint.

‘Down there,' Jonah says.

We both skip through the alley. A sign looms, tacked to the red brick building ahead.

FUNKYTOWN: THE HOME OF DISCO

‘Fuck!' Jonah says. ‘I fucking love disco.'

‘Fuck, disco, yes.'

With that settled, we both go in. There are no bouncers guarding the doors because a seventies disco is not the sort of place that under-age kids go to. It is the sort of place that middle-age women and slightly-over-middle-age men go to.

Funkytown is beautiful. There is music as grateful as school hymns ringing off the discoball. The discoball is beautiful. It is like what one of God's eyes must look like. The wallpaper is a scrolling collage of bright colour and the floor is a wooden mirror. Pairs of people are dancing and smiling. They are happy. I am happy for them. There are people in flocks at the bar and in twos around the room. Sipping drinks and being humans. I want to tell them ‘Congratulations!'

‘Congratulations!' I say. Jonah hugs me.

‘Let's get drinks,' he says. ‘Let's get drinks for ourselves and also for these VERY PRETTY WOMEN.'

He says it very loud so they can hear. They need to hear because they are beautiful. They should be told. We are going to tell them. Tell them and buy them drinks and make sure that they are as happy as monks in a strip bar. Everyone is a human being!

There are two women. Both in their late thirties, maybe. They are beautiful shards of sun. One has blonde hair, as straight as my dick while I stare at her. She is wearing a tight polka dot dress and a polished scarlet belt to cinch-in her waist. She must watch Gok Wan. There are lines around her eyes like picture frames. She is beautiful. The other one has short chestnut hair and is wearing a white summer dress. She is beautiful.

‘What is it you're drinking then, ladies?' Jonah says. They tell him what they're drinking and he orders them drinks. I am totally occupied feeling brilliant and loving, so I do not notice really. He pushes a beer into my hand and ruffles my hair. ‘How's your night going then, girls?'

The blonde one grins. ‘Lovely, thanks, and you boys?'

‘Oh, it was okay. Just got a whole lot better, though,' Jonah says.

The brunette one laughs. ‘Want to dance, cutie?' she says, stretching out her hand. He takes it and they saunter off to the dance floor. I am very happy for them.

Now it is just me and the blonde one. She is beautiful. In films she could play Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Keira Knightly or Reese Witherspoon. She smells of concentrated flowers and clouds. Her head is a marble bust of the sun.

‘Not a dancer, then?' she asks.

‘Oh, me? What? No, we can dance if you like. We can do whatever you like. What would make you happy? Let's do what would make you happy.'

‘Awwh,' she makes a noise like she's looking at baby photos. ‘You're so sweet.'

‘Thank you,' I say. ‘People aren't nice enough. People only care about money and, uh, and boats and castles and stuff. I don't care about that. Are you happy?'

‘Yes.' She is nodding her head.

‘Do you want to dance?'

‘I'm happy here. We can dance if you want to.'

‘No way,' I say. ‘Finish that drink, I'll get us more.'

I order more drinks from the barman. He is wearing a cowboy shirt and looks vaguely Mexican. I am delighted to meet him. I tip him five pounds. When I give it to him, I say ‘Share the wealth' and he laughs.

‘So,' the blonde one says, ‘what do you do?'

As propelled by ‘plant fertiliser' as I am, I recognise that in this situation honesty will only lead me down a cul-de-sac where I do not end up having sex.

‘I am a police officer,' I say. ‘And Jonah is a porn baron.' I think he will enjoy being that. ‘We are both twenty-two but I am by far the more mature.'

The blonde one laughs. She has teeth like pieces of chewing gum pressed together in their packet. Her lips are the colour of watermelon guts.

‘And what do you do?' I say.

‘I'm a receptionist for an insurance firm, and Susie over there's a waitress, and don't try to ask my age.' She winks.

It's like we're characters in a happy film. I am chatting up a beautiful woman in a bar and she will fall in love with me and our love will blossom like a sunflower in an eternal summer. Thank you, Jesus.

When his legs get tired, Jonah comes over and nudges me into accompanying him to the toilet.

‘Why do you need to go to the bog together?' the brunette one says.

‘I need a wingman,' Jonah tells her. ‘Never shit alone.'

Really we go to the toilet so we can fill our noses/throats/heads with more mephedrone. There is a lot left. No danger of tumbling down any hills yet.

‘We are definitely going to pork those gash,' Jonah says. ‘Fuck, they are so wonderful. This is perfect.'

‘Fucking beautiful,' I say.

We leave the toilet.

At the bar, our catches have re-constructed the Great Wall of China using shots of black sambuca. Black sambuca is beautiful.

Jonah wraps his arms around the brunette one from behind and kisses her cheek. She grins. I grin at the blonde one.

‘Ready?' she says.

‘Four each,' the brunette one says. ‘Last one has to make out with the barman.'

Everyone laughs. I am happy. We are all existing and interacting. Well done, us.

Jonah is the first to finish. The blonde one is the last to finish. We all have black stains around our lips and down our necks and fronts. Everyone is smiling. I am smiling. The blonde one licks the sambuca stains off my neck. Her tongue feels like Abby Hall's face.

‘Oi!' the brunette one says. ‘You're supposed to be getting on the barman, loser!'

The blonde one laughs. Jonah does the type of whistling where you put a finger into each corner of your mouth. Is it called a wolf whistle? He is good at it. I am happy.

The barman comes over because of Jonah's wolf whistle. The blonde one grabs his cowboy shirt in her thin hand, pulls him towards her and throws her face against him. Everyone is laughing. Jackson 5 is playing. I can hear people singing. Jonah sings. We all go to dance.

+

Funkytown shuts.

I have reached second base with the blonde one and have good reason to believe that Jonah reached third base with the brunette one. The good reason is that he held his fingers under my nose and said, ‘Smell those babies, mate.' Then we hugged. I am happy.

We all move outside, where it is cold and the wind is enthusiastic. A girl in sequinned hotpants is being sick into a bin and a boy with heavily gelled hair is holding her extensions out of her face. Jonah laughs. I give the blonde one my coat and she kisses me. She says ‘So sweet' when I do this.

‘Right, back to ours then?' the brunette one says. We all agree and start walking.

Their house turns out to be a semi-detached slice of suburbia. Is the mephedrone wearing off? I say this to Jonah. He nods. When we get inside, we turn to go to the toilet but the brunette one says, ‘Whatever it is, you can just do it off the kitchen side.' And the blonde one adds, ‘Just let us have some.'

We let them have some. Jonah scratches out eight lines and we all suck them up. One of the girls puts on some music. I don't recognise it.

‘It's Etta James,' the brunette one says. We all hug.

‘This is beautiful,' I say.

‘So beautiful,' Jonah says. ‘You two are amazing.'

‘No,
you
two are amazing,' the brunette one says.

We all hug.

The blonde one pulls me onto a sofa that smells of cheap wine. Behind it there is an upright piano. A dog idles into the room like a child who has wandered onto the stage of a play.

‘This is Peter,' the blonde one says.

‘Hi, Peter.'

‘Hi, Peter.'

Jonah and the brunette one disappear. The blonde one is kissing me on the sofa. She leans back and tugs at my collar until I am laid flat on top of her. I have never laid on top of breasts so experienced before. She guides my hand up her thigh. I guide it around the edge of her lace pants. Her vagina feels like a Brillo pad.

‘Lets go upstairs,' she says.

She takes my hand in hers and pulls me up the stairs. I stare at her beautiful ass the whole time, thinking about how happy I am.

I am going to have sex with her. It will be practice. I want to be as good as possible for Georgia in Devon. I must work on my stamina.

Her bedroom is . . . I don't notice. We collapse under the duvet. My t-shirt falls off quickly, and my trousers, and my socks. We join forces when attempting to remove her dress but we are both unwilling to disentangle our lips so this proves difficult. Difficult but not impossible. I consider myself an expert at the removal of bras, that part is not a problem. Then we are both near-naked. I am laid between her legs like a dot in Pacman's mouth. We are kissing. Her left hand blindly spanks the bedside table in search of a condom. A condom is found. She dresses me in it. I enter. Sighing. Moaning. I am a yo-yo. Turning her over. Slapping her ass and rocking backwards and forwards. Sighing. Moaning. Sleeping.