Ruby and the Stone Age Diet (3 page)

I walk round the corner and beat on Paul’s door to let me in and then I climb his back wall and walk through the gardens of some rented houses and avoid a barking dog to clamber into our backyard. I force the window at the back of my room. Once inside I can’t get out because I now
remember I have padlocked my room on the outside as a security measure against everyone else who squats there.

So I have to hop out the back and break the window of the next room. Unfortunately once inside the room I find that the person who lives there has followed my example and this door too is padlocked outside.

I curse him for being so suspicious of his fellow human beings and wonder what to do. By this time I am growling with frustration and Anastasia is somewhere outside in the rain wondering where I am, so I just take hold of the door and beat it till the locks break. The door is in shreds.

I run to the front door and haul it open.

‘Hi Anastasia, come in.’

We enter my room via my neighbour’s room, the backyard and my window.

Up above spaceships fly through the night sky, puny human craft and mighty alien movable worlds. Somewhere on a mighty alien movable world two beings are clambering through a window and into bed. Being mighty aliens they will have conquered all sexual diseases and will be able to fuck with complete abandon.

‘This is an interesting way to get into bed,’ says Anastasia, clambering over the window-ledge. After undressing she takes a diaphragm from her bag, smears it with spermicide, and pushes it into her vagina.

After fucking I have the longest journey ever up to the kitchen to make some tea and carry the teapot back through the obstacle course of the shattered door. Two
windows and a backyard is no easy matter. Later I have to make the same journey again to rummage round for some dog-ends to roll a few cigarettes, but all in all it is a pleasant experience, though as I never see Anastasia again, possibly she does not enjoy it as much as me.

The following day Danny in the next room is furious that someone has torn his door off its hinges but I just deny all knowledge of it, and when he gets round to taking some glue and some heroin he soon forgets all about it.

Ruby comes out of her room and starts being friendly. I immediately co-operate because if Ruby is friendly to me I will always be friendly right back, even if she has been unpleasant to me only minutes before.

‘Here is some tea,’ she says. ‘Help me with my hair.’

She is tying some small lilac ribbons into her plaited locks.

‘They are lovely,’ I tell her. ‘They look beautiful with your dress.’

‘I’d like to show them off. Let’s go out.’

We walk down into the centre of Brixton and call on Izzy. Izzy lives with Marilyn. They are both Ruby’s friends rather than mine. Marilyn is not in and Izzy is busy lifting her weights. They seem like very small weights but she must have been lifting them for a while because her body is glistening with sweat.

‘See the improvement?’ she says flexing her biceps.

‘Yes,’ we say, although neither Ruby nor I can see any difference.

Izzy is wearing a dull yellow tracksuit with the sleeves ripped off and holes in the knees. For some reason I feel sorry for her, standing there in rags, pretending her muscles are growing.

Before we go Ruby asks her how she is getting on with Dean. Izzy tells us she is mad at him because he is busy rebuilding an old motorbike and never has any time for her. And then when he does call round he expects her to drop everything and pay him lots of attention. What’s worse, she always does. And she still thinks he is fucking someone else.

We leave Izzy to her weights. Outside Ruby says she feels a little sorry for her, though she isn’t sure why.

We set off again to visit some more of Ruby’s friends.
When we arrive they are busy putting some padlocks on their front door.

‘Can’t be too careful,’ says Phil, who is a small-time cocaine dealer, and attracted to Ruby.

When they hear about how Domino has been unpleasant to Ruby and I have been left by Cis they do their best to cheer us up.

‘How could Domino be so unpleasant to you?’ says Phil. ‘Compared to him you are a goddess.’

Later on I go home and Ruby stays. Close to our flat I am so full of things to cheer me up that I find myself lying face down in a puddle with a vivid memory of someone telling me that you can drown in only two inches of water.

I struggle to my knees. Only an inch and a half, I estimate. A lucky escape. Four young men pass by, singing and shouting and causing a disturbance. I hate them. They ask me if I am all right and they go to a lot of trouble to help me home. I still hate them.

Next morning I wake up in bed with the Great Goddess Astarte.

I am surprised, of course, that the Great Goddess Astarte has chosen to visit a council flat in Brixton, let alone sleep in my bed, but I go along with it because I do not want to offend her in any way. I have nothing but respect for the Great Goddess.

At this time I am working for a man in Dulwich who does painting and decorating. I have to strip off wallpaper with a steaming machine. It is unpleasant and difficult.

Some people do easy jobs and earn huge amounts of money. I do dreadful jobs and am always poorly paid. I am not quite sure why this is. Maybe I didn’t pay enough attention at school.

When I am doing these menial things I think about whatever band I’m playing in at the time. I imagine us being successful. I imagine that one day I will not have to visit any more building sites or factories because I will be making records and making money and having fun. Even though I am realistic enough to know that this is unlikely, I still think about it.

However, I abandon the decorating because I cannot leave the Great Goddess to go and strip wallpaper. It would be a terrible insult.

For some days I go around making food and keeping the flat tidy and generally being organised because I am sure that the Great Goddess will be totally fucked off if she keeps tripping over old clothes on the floor or finds there isn’t any soap in the bathroom.

She seems to adjust to the modern world very well, working the TV doesn’t cause her any problems at all and she consistently plays all the best records in Ruby’s and my collection. Ruby seems to be away somewhere, which is a shame as I know she would have liked to meet Astarte.

‘Can you make Cis come back to me?’ I ask, respectfully bringing her a cup of tea.

‘Of course,’ she replies. ‘I can do anything. But I’m not going to. She has a life of her own to lead.’

‘Oh.’

I think about asking her to find me a good drummer but I do not want to burden such an important being with my petty problems. She has told me that she is presently engaged in trying to stop the world being destroyed by heartless humans. Apparently it is a very close thing. She does however take the time to say a few words to my cactus and afterwards it is always spectacularly healthy. It starts to grow, but there is no sign of a flower.

I meet a man who can’t relate to the world because he is too shy to talk to anyone. He is too shy to talk to me and we don’t have any fun. I meet a woman who hates herself because she is fat and she apologises for not saying she was fat in the contact advert. I tell her not to worry about it because I don’t mind but she says she knows I am lying and that really I hate her for being fat and she wishes she’d never met me. I meet a man of fifty who runs a company making yachts and he says he is looking for a nice young houseboy who he can fuck on his own personal yacht but I am not good-looking enough so it isn’t going to be me. I meet a man who lives in a cardboard box under the National Theatre and he promises that he is only living there whilst pursuing a sociological study of the homeless and if I will take him home and let him fuck me we will be very happy together. I get rained on and wet waiting for a woman who wants a young lover to take her to art galleries and she never shows. I meet a young man with a withered arm who says he used to be a drummer until he got burnt in a fire. I like him but he says he never wants to have sex because he is ashamed of his withered arm and he is sorry he wasted my time. I brush my hair downstairs in McDonald’s whilst waiting for a young soldier who promises he has books, magazines and videos, but he never shows
and I don’t wait long because four noisy young men at the next table are making me nervous. I meet a man who wants to teach me to fly helicopters but when we get undressed he is nervous that I will steal his suit so he cannot concentrate. I meet a woman who says she is embarrassed about placing an advert but since her husband died she has not been able to stop crying and the doctor told her to get out of the house more. I meet a young woman from Iceland who is so bright, intelligent and attractive that it seems like a bad miracle that she cannot meet anyone she likes and has to sit every night alone in a bedsit with one ring of her gas cooker lit because her electric heater is too expensive. On reflection she decides that she does not want to sit there with me. I do not want to sit there with her. I do not want to do anything with anyone. I want to wake up in bed with Cis.

I wake up in bed with Ruby.

‘Good morning, Ruby. Where have you been? Why are you in my bed? Where is the Great Goddess Astarte?’

Ruby tells me to stop rambling and says she will make us some tea. I rush out of bed to make the tea myself.

While the kettle is boiling I have to go and be sick in the toilet and while I am sicking up a little blood I try and think what has been happening the last few days. However, with the vomiting and the kettle boiling over and Ruby screaming will I bring her a bit of toast as well I can’t get much thinking done so I abandon the attempt.