Meatspace (8 page)

I’m walking down my high street and I allow myself to feel good. I never feel good. I never allow myself to enjoy anything. If something feels good, I worry about it going wrong or the next thing to go wrong. The worst thing I can do is feel optimistic, because that’s akin to arrogance.

But today, I allow myself to feel good.

Everything about this day smells of possibility and chance. A smell of breakfast takes me to a new café I’ve not noticed before.

The newsagent stocks one vagrant copy of the
New Yorker
seemingly just for me. A girl smiles at me as she gets off the bus. I get a tax rebate. For the exact amount of the cost of a new pair of Nikes I saw on the internet. It’s going my way today. I catch myself in the mirror because once I get back to the flat, despite the autumnal chill outside, I wear a t-shirt and stick the heating on so I can see my tattoo.

I’m doing a book reading later that night at a bar in Shoreditch. We’ve been asked to read our favourite party anecdote, so I’ve prepared something about a night I spent out walking the canals with Aziz where we planned to find freaky sex parties on boats and failed.

I pack up what I need to read and some books to sell. I walk outside. It’s freezing. I am braving the cold so there’s more chance people can see my new ink, so no need to layer up. But it’s freezing. I crave hoodie. I crave thermals. I crave warmth.

I walk down the high street, against the contraflow of returning commuters, victorious in their ability to survive another day at work. I wonder if they’ve achieved the same amount of work as me, except with shielded screens and covert clicking back onto spreadsheets: watched YouTube videos, snacked, clicked through every single social network available; replied to emails as promptly as possible to indicate work efficiency and manage a total concentrated work effort of 55 minutes or so. We all spend our working days looking forward to our next meal.

My phone rings. It’s Rach’s number. I ignore it. She calls again. I let it ring in my pocket. Undeterred, she calls me again. This time, my impulses can’t let a ringing phone go unanswered. Must connect. I answer.

‘Can’t you speak to me now?’ She sounds pissed off for being ignored. The first time I hear her voice in 6 months and she sounds angry with me. Nothing has changed.

‘No, I’m out. I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I say.

‘Out, well, that’s good at least.’

‘Glad you approve.’

‘No, I just think that’s a really good thing, you really needed to …’

‘Is that why you called, Rach? To have a go?’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I was just thinking about you. I wanted to check you’re okay. I worry about you. And nobody’s seen you. I worry about you being on your own.’

‘Well, I’m not on my own.’

‘Oh. Good. Who …’

‘Look. I’m fine,’ I reply. ‘I don’t need your worry. I’m a fully functioning adult.’ I hang up the phone.

I have an @-reply on Twitter. It’s from Hayley. It says: ‘See you in a bit. I’m running late. Looking forward to it whisky buddy.’

I tweet her back: ‘Pre-pub-dutch courage. Join me if you can?’

I reach the pub. Mitch is at the bar on his stool and nods at me. I salute him with 2 fingers to my temple. Mitch, reliably, is always finishing a drink when you arrive, meaning the first round is always on him.

Mitch asks how my day has been. I tell him that my brother has gone on holiday and apart from that and the internet, I’ve achieved nothing. Mitch knows better than to ask about my second book’s progress and the first one’s fate. Both are constant sore subjects. I say nothing. Mitch can sense I’m not feeling talkative. I wait for my pint in silence.

I have the jitters for my reading later. No matter how many times I stand up in front of a group of various strangers, I still get nervous. Which is good because complacency is the public speaker’s end game. Mitch asks me my thoughts on a few new novels he’s read recently. I give answers that would indicate I’d bothered to read them. Truth be told though, since Rach broke up with me, all I can stomach is bad American sitcoms and Tumblrs of arty shots of naked females. Being dumped has brought out the lazy reductive sexist in me. Nothing else registers. I can’t be bothered to read. It was out of the blue. I wasn’t expecting it. I expected routine from her. I expected us to hang out and eat food and watch movies and make fun of people we knew. I expected us to cuddle and talk about our days and make hot drinks for each other. But now she’s gone and it kills me.

‘I like it,’ I reply to a query about one such book. ‘The middle’s a bit long.’

‘You are so wrong,’ Mitch bellows. ‘The whole thing is a lazy hack’s version of metaphorism.’

‘Is that a word?’ I ask.

‘Well, your tattoo’s still shit,’ he says, smiling at me.

‘Thanks.’

‘And you’re still an idiot …’

‘Why do you hang out with me, Mitch? You hate everything I say or do or tweet.’

‘I hang out at this pub. You join me. I’d say you’re hanging out with me. And I don’t know why you do that. Other than for the abuse.’

Mitch walks with me to the Book Doctor, a hipster bar near the pub that has nothing to do with books despite its name. Their official Twitter handle is @welovebooksbitches. I walk down the steps into the exposed-brick basement, wave my way past the pretty middle-class white girl handling the door and I enter the venue. I get a Twitter notification. Someone called @HannahBananaMonana has just tweeted: ‘@kitab is in the house. Spicy.’

Because all Asian guys are spicy. We all smell of curry.

There are about 20 people in the room, mostly writers and the odd publishing person, an agent or a publicist. The rest are girlfriends and boyfriends and the odd actual fan of people standing up in front of rooms full of people and telling stories in that slow soporific voice.

I greet the people I know with a mixture of pleasantry and aloofness so I can work my way to the organiser, May, and keep the supply of beer flowing. I’m being paid in beer, which is fine because what else would I be spending my money on. I kiss May hello. She says I look different. I amiably ask what’s changed. She smiles. I smile back. There’s something between us. Definitely. I sit with the other readers, a couple of people I’ve met before and one I haven’t. One of them is the beautiful Hayley Bankcroft.

Today she shows me more attention than ever before and I think, Hmmm, this is interesting – what’s different about today? There is something. There is a new energy in her greeting. I haven’t seen her since I broke up with Rach. Whenever I was with her at events, I would get the jittery stomach, fluttery sentences and the inflamed skin of a man with a crush on someone other than his girlfriend and a girlfriend called Rach. Now I’m single. And I’m pretty sure she’s still single. There is pressure now.

Once we got drunk after I’d done a reading and I asked her why she was single. ‘Because I’m in mourning that you’re not,’ she replied, looking pretend-serious, though I could tell she was serious. We didn’t mention it afterwards, probably consigning it to drunkenness in our heads. My memories of interactions with her, real life ones too, are stacked with little moments like that, that could have gone too far, that didn’t because I was with Rach. Like the other time when we were walking through the park near my flat. Rach was at work. I had the day to myself so I suggested to her that we go for coffee, and as we walked, she linked her arm in mine and we walked with her head on my shoulder. A casual observer would have assumed we were together. The way my heart was pounding, it’s like we were a new couple. And then, there’s the time we kissed goodbye, again drunk, because all my stories with Hayley involve boozing, when a cheek-kiss was misfired and our lips definitely touched. I ran home with the energy and fizziness of a schoolboy that night.

Now I’m single, these are now moments to take advantage of. Although, now, there’s a pressure to make moments like that happen on purpose.

‘You’re a beautiful man,’ she’d said last time we were together. She was joking about my vanity, because I was wearing a new shirt Rach didn’t like and needed compliments, stat. I’m pretty sure she was joking.

‘I know you’re placating me, but I’ll take it,’ I replied, watching her face for any sign of truth behind the sarcasm.

We take our seats. Hayley sits with her cross-leg pointing towards me and her naked arm touching mine. She leans in.

‘Alright chico,’ she says, using our usual names for each other.

‘Chiquita, it’s good to see you,’ I reply, with more bluster than I’ve achieved before. Confidence towards women. This is a new side effect. ‘It’s been tiiiime …’

‘I heard about you and …’

‘Rach …’

‘That’s the one. A real shame. She was so … organised.’ She sips on her drink and widens her eyes. She smiles into her glass.

‘So where have you been hiding yourself? Have you been writing something new?’

I grimace.

‘Well, you look good,’ she says, knowing that it’s bad luck to ask a writer what they’re working on, especially between first and second novel. It’s like yelling ‘Macbeth’ in an actor’s face.

‘Thanks, same ol’ jeans and shirt combo.’

‘There’s something different. I dunno what. Anyway, sorry about the
Telegraph
thing.’

‘What
Telegraph
thing?’ I say. Hayley pauses.

I’m only pretending I don’t know what she’s talking about because that’s the aloof thing to do. No one needs to know about my thorough Google Alerts. I know the
Telegraph
refer to me as ‘One of those new writers with nothing to say but the pretence of all the style in the world. A fleeting blip in literature’s great history of ethnic authors.’

‘I suppose it’s a humblebrag of sorts,’ I say.

‘Oh, who cares?’ she replies, diplomatically after a careful pause to consider her options. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Dodging questions about my second novel. You?’

‘I just signed mine to my publisher. It’s out next spring. And,’ she pauses conspiratorially. ‘My mother has signed up for Facebook. Now that’s a delight.’

‘Awesome,’ I say, as if I don’t know, as if my Google Alerts don’t carry information about my peers and their big deals with publishers bigger than my own. I’m not jealous. ‘Get the families off Facebook.’

‘There should be a family setting, right?’

‘Yeah, I mean, my dad writes LOL on every status I do.’

‘I know, I see. He’s cute. My mum wrote on my profile picture that I had jowls. JOWLS, Kit.’ Hayley grabs my hand and gestures for me to pinch her cheek and neck. I do. Her skin is soft. It smells of berries.

‘It feels jowly,’ I say, Hayley hits my forearm. I wince because it’s on my sore tattoo.

Hayley is wearing brown peep-toe shoes and I’m transfixed by her big toe. It’s painted orange. She wiggles it up and down when she talks. She has a very friendly big toe. I look at her and catch her look at my arms and my neck. She smiles and closes her eyes. She grabs my hand.

‘I’m nervous,’ she says.

‘You’re always great.’

‘I’m not funny like you, though.’

‘That’s why you’re great. You’ve got stuff to say. I’m just an idiot.’

‘Oh shush, you’re sweet.’

‘Oh … you,’ I say, not knowing how to reply to a compliment.

I get all my funniest lines from the things Aziz says. I reappropriate them and give them a proper narrative arc. He’s not here though. ‘I’m always nervous too,’ I say, and she smiles at me. I hate talking in public. I don’t ever dare look out at the audience. That would make me realise they were there. I can’t let myself know they’re there.

I check Twitter.

‘Here for the The Book Doctor Trials. Excited about @Hayleyspen reading. @kitab will bust out his Buddha of Suburbia bullshit for sure.’

‘The Book Doctor Trials @welovebooksbitches! @Hayleyspen @kitab @wself #lovereading #literature’

‘The Book Doctor Trials are starting. Who is Kitab Balasubramanyam?’

Hayley taps my hand twice to shush me as May, the organiser, takes to the stage to start proceedings. Her attempts to rally a crowd comprised mostly of writers who feel they should be the ones performing mean the evening flatlines before the first reader takes to the stage.

My mind wanders to Aziz and how he’s getting on just before I go on stage and so when I’m introduced, my first words are muted as I try to adjust to being in front of an audience.

‘His exotic words, his spicy references, his search for identity … please welcome Kitab Balasubramanyam!’

I’ve removed my coat on the way to the stage and people can see the hint of tattoo coming out of my sleeve and I feel like dynamite.

‘Thanks for the introduction,’ I say. ‘I don’t know if you all guessed … I’m Indian. What’s up, white people?’ I see Mitch in the audience. My heart is pounding. I wish I hadn’t looked up. I want to run away. He shakes his head. He tells me I play the race card too much.

No one laughs. I close my eyes and open them again staring at the page, tuning out the 20 people listening to me.

I’m telling them a story about a sex party gone wrong and instead of bawdy laughter and claps, I’m getting stony looks as if I’m a sexist, just because I’m a bloke reading about sex. I’m reading this because I wrote it and put it in a drawer. Aziz found it and read it and said it was too funny not to read out, and by reading it out, maybe I’ll become less repressed. I never wanted it to be aired in public. Talking about sex in front of people, it feels too intimate. There’s too much focus on the meat and the flesh. I don’t like it. As soon as I start reading the story, I realise I’ve made a mistake. I second-guess how funny I think my anecdote is and rush the set-ups to jokes meaning the punch lines don’t make any sense. It feels like I’m up there for 20 minutes longer than I am and the lights are burning hotter as I mosey on down the cul-de-sac of my words. I finish and have to say ‘thanks very much, good night’ to elicit any reaction from the audience. They applaud politely.

I consign this story back to the desk drawer for eternity. I feel embarrassed. The worst thing will be, because people automatically think you’re the subject of anything you write, I’m the priapic guy at a sex party in my story. They won’t get that it’s about vulnerability.