Noughties (3 page)

Sex. It’s astoundingly democratic and permissive here in the twenty-first century. At school you heard rumors of people at it all the time—Year 11s (always boys) banging awed Year 9s (always girls); ugly brothers and sisters making ugly sons and daughters in bushes on the council estate; sixth-formers settling into “serious” relationships and boning away on a more permanent basis … ragging with regularity. I use impassioned and degrading verbs intentionally, because that’s what young sex is in the twenty-first century: a cold verb; a
doing
word. It’s all about performance and tally … love rarely figures … doesn’t even make a cameo. There is no meaning in the act beyond your shagging CV. And I meant “rumors” too, coz that’s all sex was to me as my final school year came to an end: a rumor that had begun to preoccupy my mind with alarming tenacity. All its intrigue and unknowns, its supposed universality, had me a gibbering mess.

I was a conscientious non-fucker before I hooked up with Lucy. I could’ve got my end away multiple times (oh yeah, believe me), but I had standards. I wasn’t going to give it all up for some get-around or industrious cock-monster. No—I wanted my first time to be pumped with meaning. That’s why I was so keen to make it legit with
Lucy … so ready to resolve the panicking virgin’s inner turmoil with some outer turmoil. I couldn’t possibly arrive at university branded with virgin status—

“This is ridiculous,” says Ella. “Shall we grab a table?”

“Good call,” I say, snapping out of my reverie. I’m never going to get anywhere tonight if Lucy continues to steal my spotlight like this.

The place is heaving, but there’s an unmanned table near the entrance. I slot myself in on the oak settle that backs up against the wall, with Ella and Sanj for accompaniment. Jack and Scott are darting around doing the old “Excuse me, mate, is anyone using this?” Sip … sip …

So yeah, my virginity (why not? It’s a welcome distraction and we have got a long night ahead of us). I aimed to dispense with the big V-tag before starting at Oxford and made arrangements, accordingly, about two months prior. The whole affair was pulled off with clinical precision. Lucy and I met in the Wellingborough town center outside a crummy chain hotel, 8 p.m., a sticky July Friday, suggestively early in our relationship.

“Hey,” I said, glowing red and pecking her on the cheek.

“Hiya,” said Lucy, not glowing red, receiving the peck on the cheek.

I took her small overnight bag. I had gentlemanly aspirations.

I hadn’t asked, but I was pretty sure she had done
it
before. She hadn’t asked, but she was pretty sure I hadn’t. Neither of us had asked, but we were almost certain that we were going to do
it
that night.

I felt like Dustin Hoffman in that film. You know, the one where he goes to the hotel to meet the older bird. Only I was meant to be the older one. I sure didn’t feel like
it. “Just do it,” I advertised to myself (the image of Michael Jordan soaring in for a dunk seizing my concentration).

“Have you got a reservation?” asked the orange receptionist, with her heaving chest that sang of experience and boasted special moves and combos that I could never imagine.

“Yes … double room for Mr. Reservation please.”

“Mr. Reservation?”

“Errrr, no, I said Mr. Lamb.”

“Right … one second, please.”

While she did whatever it was she did on her computer and rooted for our key, a hen party tramped into the lobby, clucking and crowing. They had just pulled up outside in a pink Playboy Bunny limo—those once exclusive chariots of statesmen and celebrities. They were a flabby lot, dressed in pink, plastic tiaras riding their heads. The cumulative sexual know-how of this orgy was climactic—something to which their specially made T-shirts bore testament: Deep-Throat Debbie, Katherine the Clunge, Tit-Wank Terri, Donkey-Punch Delilah, Fist Me Full of Fun Fran, The Head Mistress. I mused over the future marriage they were so eager to celebrate: would the golden couple be able to keep the nascent romance alive; maintain their lovers’ dignity through thick and thicker; uphold the integrity of their intimacy? And on cold winter nights would they light a fire and open a book, passionately discuss their reading over a glass or two? Or would they wake up next week, in a few months, next year, on their fiftieth wedding anniversary, and roll over in abject horror?

What was I getting myself into?

Lucy looked at me and laughed. I took a deep gulp and smiled back.

“Oh dear,” I said. The words melted in my throat. Lucy gripped my hand and we made our way to the prepared love-nest.

The room was no Cleopatra’s boudoir, let me tell you. The brown raspy duvet was smudged with the kindness of strangers and the carpet was hard as concrete. In lieu of curtains hung feeble blinds, and our luxury view on the other side was the delivery vehicles’ drop-off point. It was our very own anti-romance factory.

“Freedom, eh?” I said, trying to swallow the desperation in my voice. But we had come here to escape parental CCTV, and that much this shit-ole did achieve.

Sat on the breeze-block bed, we set about kissing and fumbling. Interestingly, we didn’t hold a position for longer than five seconds, rolling and re-forming with hysterical energy. Don’t get the wrong impression—I was well experienced and educated in the first three bases (figure
them
out for yourself). It was just that elusive fourth base—the deal clincher—that was absent from my repertoire. But all experience crumbles when you know you’re going the whole hog—when you’re promoted to the main stage. This might help explain our manic maneuvers: we wanted a bit of everything, and all at once. That’s just part of the twenty-first-century condition though … isn’t it?

I thought it best to stretch this thing out, what with the whole night before us—and paid for—so I directed our attention to the unplugged minibar instead. Two minutes later, Lucy was indulging in a lukewarm Smirnoff Ice and I was savoring a flat tin of Carlsberg.

And then we were at it again.

It pains me too much to recall every sordid detail … to retrace the event step by step. But if there was a halftime report it would’ve gone something like this:

“Hello sports fans and welcome to the Virgin Halftime Analysis with me, Corey Shucks, and Rod ‘the Hitman’ Nosh. Eliot’s performance in the first half was perhaps as to be expected, Rod.”

“That sure is right, Corey. At moments he seems content to make the usual rookie mistakes: frantic with the tempo, a bit too aggressive around the box, and occasionally struggling to keep himself up for it.”

“You’ve hit the nail on the head there, Rod, but remember: Eliot isn’t a big-game player. Let’s get serious here, okay? At the end of the day, when you look at Eliot you’ve gotta like his intensity. Here’s a young guy, not used to the big occasion—a perennial semifinalist, to be fair. You’ve gotta give him a lot of credit, going into a hostile environment and trying to come away with the win—something which, frankly, his franchise has never managed to do before. It’s a game of two halves and the second is going to be huge. For me, if you can’t get up for a big one like this there’s something wrong with you.”

“That’s a great point, Corey. What are the areas to look out for in the second half?”

“Well, Rod, watch for Eliot to tone down some of his offense. For me, when he wraps around her he needs to be less grippy and grabby—he needs to stop attacking her like an indoor climbing wall. At the same time, if you’re Eliot, you’ve gotta like the fact that she hasn’t run out of there yet. She’s sticking around and he needs to feed off that. I’m not being funny, but, for me, if you can’t get up for a big one like this there’s something wrong with you.”

“Another great point.”

“It may not be pretty, Rod, but he’ll get the job done.”

It was hard work, I’ll tell you now … but yes, we got it done (a solid 6.5 or thereabouts). The intersubjective
dynamic pricked my curiosity. Or was it more intrasubjective? Well, no, actually. No, it wasn’t. Disappointingly there was no ontological mix-up … no blurring of being as the Beat poets had led me to expect. It was far more carnal Earl of Rochester than transcendent Keats. I don’t think Lucy would’ve put it like that, but there you have it. At all points we were two very distinct people, slopping about in our individual anatomies … our individual autonomies. I was brutally aware of where I ended and she began. Zero confusion on that front. But it was a relief, like when you manage to use up all those stray five pences and coppers that have been weighing down your wallet for so long; that cozy feeling of “well, at least I don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

The post-match bit I could handle. Snuggling and chatting I had down. I had prescripted some sophisticated conversation in preparation for this part of the night (“How did that compare to your ex?,” “Got any sexually transmitted infections?”), but none of it seemed appropriate when the moment came. Like contented springer spaniels we rolled about in our own mess, riffing on fancy and autobiography into the early hours. Lucy was tender and, as my paranoia would have it, implicitly forgiving. She didn’t tell me about her dreams and hopes, because at that point I don’t think she really had any. But she watched me. She wrapped me in a warm woolen stare. It was the beginning of the summer and already I couldn’t see how we would ever call it off.

“Are you looking forward to uni?” she asked, staring past me at the wall, pretending not to be bothered. Even then I think she saw the obstacles that Oxford might present: different interests, diverging ambitions, alternative ways of
seeing the world … an inflated sense of self. I was far more idealistic about it at the time, or maybe just wilfully shortsighted.

“I guess. Why?”

“Just wondering.”

“Cool.”

“What are you thinking?”

What am I thinking of? What thinking? What? Such a disarming question, this one, the answer rarely ever worth knowing. I toyed with saying “How beautiful you are,” but feared the cringe police would come tearing in, bent double with their contortions of squirm-armory, clamoring to throw up all over me.

“Nothing really. You?”

“Nothing.”

“Cool.”

There was comfort in our aimless words. There was true romance in our banality. It all made sense.

“Haven’t you got something you want to tell me?”

I thought this one over carefully, rolling it about in my mushy head. At least five minutes passed in our unhurried embrace.

“I love you?”

“Oh, I love you too, Eliot!”

This pleased me. I don’t like getting questions wrong. (Goes right back to Year 6 SATs.)

Lucy fell asleep first, as would become our standard. Her body looked for mine in its sleep with exploratory fidgets and experimental wiggles. When it found the warm contact of my wakeful limbs, I would crumple and curl around her like a benign Venus flytrap. I happily allowed her everything: her intermittent snoring, her bed-hogging
antics, her ovenlike heat, her funny suckling noises, her bullying hair getting in my face. I allowed her everything, as I lay awake, collecting pins and needles in the arm lopped beneath her neck, right through till the beeps and grunts of the early-morning delivery trucks made her stir.

Jack has wandered off, probably rucking his way toward the bar, and the girls are ranting about some bitch in the year below, which I really can’t be bothered with. My pint is almost nonexistent so I may as well follow.

“I think I’m gonna get another. Anyone?”

“I’m good, ta.”

“No, cheers.”

I’m up and off.

I need to stop delaying. Either confront Ella or ring Lucy and find out what the matter is …

And how about these dreams I’ve been having? I’m not even sure if they are dreams … hallucinations or visions might be nearer the mark. They’ve been with me for a while now. For example: I’m sitting in a café. A jet-black Americano, dark as the day I was born, steams its little heart out beneath my nose. An odd bustle, mindful of being hush, murmurs and meanders. I’m surrounded by academics with their squints and their dandruff, their Biros and ring binders.

I’m sitting in a café on Broad Street, opposite the Sheldonian Theater and its comic grotesqueries; those gurning statues of Monty Python stock. A chap to my left, like a monk in a suit, talks of the South African constitution; a ruddy old Irishman in the middle of the room raves at his seen-it-all-before interlocutor about terrorism and the Church; a bohemian tutor conducts a tutorial with two
undergraduates on economics in the eighteenth-century sentimental novel. I take my place in this brain boggle with my
Essays of Elia
and thirteen-part
Prelude
.

I’m in a café, in a bookshop, the university’s unofficial library and staff room. It smells of aspiration and intrigue. It sounds of niche interest and internal gossip. I’ve got my laptop out in front of me, whinnying and whirring, drafting yet another job application, trying to sound like I possess direction, trying not to sound like an arrogant prick. The flakes of a pain au raisin get about the keys and granules of brown sugar are embedded into my forearm. My stomach begins to hurt and I find myself doubling up.

“Alright mate.” I look around but can’t locate the voice. “Down here,” it says. A pram has appeared to my left. “That’s right … in here.” I peer inside to find a baby grinning up at me. I try to scream but I’ve got nothing. Its body is the size of an eighteen-month-old perhaps, but its head is preposterously adult-sized. I look harder, almost falling off the edge of my chair: it has my face on it.

SMASH.

I jump at the unexpected sound of a slamming door: “Ian, stop being so
gray
,” says the lady over from me to the ranting Irishman. “You could win an Oscar for such a wild performance!”

I stare incredulously at the mini portrait of myself, wrapped up in its abandoned pram. I can’t see his body, hidden behind a soft white blanket, but I can make out the hump of his exaggerated baby’s paunch.

“Do you mind? I’m a bit embarrassed about the old beer belly. That’s what three years of
your
hard drinking has done to me, I tell myself, but I still don’t like it.” The baby reaches behind his head and pulls out a can of lager, whacks
it open, and takes a thirsty glug. “What can I say?” Its voice is a perfect imitation of mine. “Helps us sleep though, doesn’t it?” His large head, transposed onto that toddler body, impractically fills the pram. Facially he’s identical, though his hair seems a little thinner than mine and I can make out some specks of premature gray. “What now? Is it the hair? Well, you have put us through a lot. The question is: do you think you’ve been provident in peril?”