Maybe Tomorrow
M.J. Nicholls

_ 1--An Introduction to Our Characters, Narrated With a Frosting of Empathy
Willem
Willem was pushed from his dreams into a small bedsit in South Louth where, with the day’s greatest effort, he heaved himself from the damp beige sheets and staggered to the bathroom where he hosed the come off his legs with a lo-flo shower nozzle. The previous night was a standard procedure: three two-litre bottles of supermarket cola, a tandoori chicken readymeal and a DVD boxset of Futurama. Although he was alone, he had Bender for company—the feisty alcoholic robot and his cohorts, going on crazy adventures with heartwarming consequences. He had a delicious meal in his tummy and a whole evening of televisual pleasure. It couldn’t get much better for Willem.
It literally could not get much better for Willem. A long line of useless forebears had led him to this point, had placed him in this room drinking flat cola and watching a DVD for the fortieth time because he couldn’t afford to indulge in another purchase for a month or he’d be skint. It was their fault he existed in this squalor. Their fault he washed the bedsheets once a year, brushed his teeth once a week. Willem could not be blamed for his slobbish lifestyle. Willem was a victim of his own genealogy.
Willem’s great-great-great grandfather was a disgusting little man who lived on the streets of Glasgow and fished trotters from filth mounds. He loathed his existence with such fury, he could barely drag himself off the festering stink-heap to look the man who was raping him in the eye. He devoted his life to making things as unpleasant as possible for every human being he encountered: robbing and fighting and, after a long period on the receiving end, raping. He made a child he would never see.
Children born of rape do not make successful human beings. This isn’t true of the present, but in the late 19th century, having bastards was a ticket to Hell. Willem’s great-great grandfather was beaten and abused by his mother, because his mother couldn’t bear to tell her son he was born of rape, couldn’t look her bastard in the eye, and turned her shame into ritualistic displays of hatred: cussing her useless offspring and booting him onto the streets at fourteen. Forced to fend for himself, he spent his life in menial labour, taking his pleasures from drink and thinking about drink while drinking.
His grandfather was the most impressive member of this lineage: fighting in wars always gives a man a little dignity, something to draw on throughout his life. And this man made sure people knew about his success blasting the Krauts to bits in the name of freedom. He spent most of his time stationed in bases during the war and couldn’t shoot for toffee, but he’d earned his right to brag. He’d played his part in bringing peace by sitting around a lot in cold rooms. At last, here was a real man.
His son could never live up to such heights of bravery, so he worked as a cobbler, a quintessentially Victorian occupation, forever under the thumb of his father. In the histories of every family, there are mothers screwing daughters, fathers screwing sons, children running round trying to trump their mommies and daddies, killing themselves to be better than what came before, desperate to make their lineage the most memorable.
Well, Willem didn’t have the stamina. He had watched his father quarrel with his grandfather, two proud men too proud to concede they were equals—human beings as endearing as eels. If anything Willem was the best one yet: he was the first one to know he was utterly useless. To know he came from a band of bog rapists and cobbling liars, to know it was best to avoid depressing fathers and grandfathers, and muddle through with as little raping and bog-dwelling as possible. Willem was a success, and yet, to lapsed acquaintances (those with jobs), Willem was a man who ate readymeals in a bedsit alone and watched DVDs blankly for the fifth time, filling himself with junk food and farting. And this was the morning Willem had a nervous breakdown.
Polly
Polly didn’t want a cracker, because Polly wasn’t a parrot, and she couldn’t see how people had forged a resemblance between her—a short woman in her early thirties with black hair—and a tropical bird with multicoloured plumage that sits in cages and amuses children. Today, after two decades of parrot comparisons, Polly decided, at last, to get to the bottom of this hilarity, this endless stream of wit parroting itself down the days.
Firstly, she was short. Yes. She was a short-arse, she’d stopped growing aged ten, and yes, being short was funny. She had stood beside tree-sized men and posed for photographs, the height difference causing second-long titters, and bore this with good grace—she had her allies in the height mis-allotment stakes. The people she got on with the best in her building were the freakishly tall, since they too knew what it meant to be a novelty, a ticket for people to treat you like a cute little nothing. So yes, she was short, and hey—parrots were short too, being birds and not people. And yes, her name was Polly. Har har.
But that didn’t make her a parrot.
She was a blonde in her teens, sometimes in her twenties. Then she stopped dying her hair to silence the parrot comparers. Parrots can have yellow feathers, but they also have green, blue, red, grey, black and white feathers. Why, then, isn’t the stubbly little woman with blue-green hair on the second floor a parrot? Why aren’t all the greying men or silver-haired old ladies, also, parrots? Do these people have special parrot dispensation, or do their heights pass a certain point of non-parrot acceptance? Yes: she used to be blonde.
But that still didn’t make her a parrot.
Her face. As far as she could see, peering into the mirror, her eyes weren’t too far apart, her cheeks weren’t too flat, and she didn’t have a huge beak protruding from her forehead. And her nose, although maybe a little big for her face, certainly didn’t make her Pinocchio’s wet dream. Plus, she’d spent years staring at her nose as a teen, comparing it to the noses of celebrities and friends in photographs with a centimetre ruler, so to her eyes the nose was much bigger than it seemed. So she did not have any parrot-like features, except, maybe, if you were being unkind, a slightly distended nose.
So: she still was not a parrot.
When Polly went to work the next morning she cornered her friend Allan in the cafeteria. Allan was known for being apologetically honest, one of her lanky allies in the fight against height discrimination. Having found herself passed over for promotion the third time, she knew the parrot comparisons were the culprit, the reason she was getting nowhere in this sweat-box office with the wonky aircon and bowtie bosses. So she asked Allan, she asked him, she asked: “Why do people call me The Parrot? Look, you have to be honest with me. I’ve put up with this shit long enough.” Allan was honest, he was honest, he honestly answered: “Polly, you repeat everything people say to you.” And Polly said, she said: “What do you mean I repeat everything people say to me?”
So Polly was a parrot, and she still didn’t want a cracker, because she didn’t much feel like one: she’d just found out she was a parrot. How could she have gone through two decades repeating what people said to her, the things people said to her, back at them, without someone telling her hey, you’re repeating things back at me? At me? How could this go unchecked for two whole decades? Two whole decades? So this was the day Polly had her nervous breakdown, her nervous breakdown, her nervous etc.
Carol
Carol was always telling people she was pregnant. At first she did it to prevent awkwardness on the part of men who said “so when’s the baby due?” while cooing at her flab—she was always doing this: tailoring her actions to cause the least embarrassment among strangers—but now she told people she was pregnant for the expectation on their faces. Telling someone she was pregnant was a sure-fire route to free hugs, cheers and smiles from people, provided the same people weren’t briefed twice, then all she’d get is a blank look, as though she was the thickest preggo on the street.
She needed these hugs, since she’d recently welcomed long-term depression into her home, taken it to her bed and wrapped her arms around it, letting its cold fingers explore her every orifice, creeping into her bloodstream like a recently divorced frost. She’d completed her four hundredth marital squabble the morning her husband, Whatshisnibs, left; her four hundred-and-first when he swaggered out the door; and her four hundred-and-second when he rang a moment later to say he’d forgotten his keys, but hang on a minute, he didn’t need them anymore, whoops, fuckoffwhore.
Her pregnant plan, of course, folded when people met her in nine months time expecting a baby. Now that time had come, the time of her undoing. She hadn’t wanted to leave the house that morning since she didn’t want to leave the house most mornings, not when there was a chance someone would mention Whatshisnibs, or how she wasn’t that fat for nine months in, and was Whatshisnibs going to make child support payments, and how was she coping in that big house by herself and was she feeling better since the separation or was she still on antidepressants and would she like to hang herself in their garage, there’s a lovely noose available and an undertaker on hand if you like?
What was she going to do in four seconds? In four seconds, in fact, now, she had to speak to--
“Hey Carol! How are you doing? Would you like to hang yourself in our garage? We have a lovely noose!”
“Fine, fine. A day at a time, you know?” But no, this woman, Whatshertits, didn’t know, since Carol’s divorce had been six months ago, for God’s sake, six months ago, and she was still sleeping with the frost, still fingering the bony spine of sadness, hahaha, no, she wouldn’t like to get herself a toy boy, she’s fine thanks, keeping (nowhere near) busy.
“I notice you’re—the baby, how’s that?”
Carol waited until the sentence was completed.
“Coming?”
“Look, Whatshertits, there is no fucking baby. I’ve been lying to you and fifty other women for the last year because I wanted sympathy. I’m not a strong person, OK? I get by thanks to Malteasers, Double Deckers, Cadbury’s Crème Eggs and mounds of goddamn Ferrero Rocher. Yes, I know it tastes like shit. I’m like this because the only person I’ve ever liked—oh, fine, loved—has dumped me to spend more time with his penis. Now get stuffed.”
This she didn’t say. This she did say:
“Umm, it’s going fine. I’ve got to get back now, so . . . ”
Why did people have to speak to her? Why couldn’t they leave her to her melodrama and depression, that one feeling she felt now, if she felt at all—that feeling of feeling so low, things can’t possibly get any worse, but then things can’t get any better either, so things will generally stay the same—you will stay the same, because you are who you are, you are a stubborn fatso who doesn’t know how to ask for help, doesn’t know to reach out to people, thinks people only want to do small talk on the street, would run a mile if real help was needed. And they would. Well, wouldn’t they? Of course: that’s what people are like. All of them.
She wouldn’t know. She was about to give birth. Today, she gave birth to her nervous breakdown, nine months in the making—a shrieking little thing covered in blood and gunk. It came surprisingly easy.
Greg
Greg was self-conscious enough walking down the street—trying to keep his arms swinging with metronomic regularity, to feel the cold swoosh between his hands and hips, maintaining a straight line nearest the wall in case more hurried walkers sought to overtake him—without his nose running now, at this of all times, when Jennifer was coming up behind him and this was his only chance to speak to her in the week without reference to coursework or Alfred Adler and his baldy Austrian pate. Not. Now.
When Greg worked at Evanescence doing something nondescript with figures, his only pleasure was staring at Jennifer in the office, and when she announced with bland matter-of-factness she was quitting to pursue an MA in psychology—“hey everyone, I’m leaving to do a masters”—Greg had his heart cut up into small slices, his hope pureed into pâté. He too, because he was weak, and because no one ever taught him how to approach women and declare feelings outright and risk looking a fool, chose to follow her to Glasgow Caledonia and enroll himself in the same MA programme.
And for six months, he’d been a diligent straight-B student. There were better motives for gaining degrees than stalking women in search of unrequited love, but for Greg it had proved quite an effective learning strategy. Not only did he get his daily fill of Jennifer in the lecture halls and tutorials, he also found the prospect of an end to the desperate longing and emptiness in his heart helped him to concentrate on the set texts and arguments. The self-conscious mind, when allowed to wander, will latch onto the teensiest of things and turn them into grand tragedies. Giving focus to one intolerable part of human existence can blot out the others, or at least relegate them to the idle few minutes when the mind isn’t completely centred on the obsession in progress.
But now, Greg was walking: when Greg walked, he never swung his arms, because once he realised he wasn’t swinging his arms, he began to swing his arms, turning a natural unthinking movement into a contrived mannerism inviting public scorn. He stopped swinging his arms for good and never left the flat without a pocketed coat, even on summer days. Today, his hands were in his hankieless holes, grabbing for an invisible tissue, for something to dam the imminent surge of cruel mucus about to spoil his one chance to unlock something personal about Jennifer.
Jennifer was several steps away now, her hand almost reaching to tap him on the back, and the mucus was flowing and flowing—no amount of frantic sniffing could block this potential embarrassment. He was sure Jennifer suspected nothing about his simultaneous decision to do a masters, citing her move as his inspiration to move from dead-end-office world into cashless student world. He was sure Jennifer viewed him as a shy kook with a good heart who fell into the ‘good listener’ category, not the ‘repellent freak’ category, a popular place to slot small men who like to lurk and plot.
In that split second his delicate brickwork came crashing down: the mucus hung from his left nostril and stretched into a big long drip, a drip that swung straight onto Jennifer’s cheek as Greg turned around, reaching for his nose too late, watching in horror that soft pink skin streaked with his fearless nose goo. Then the rest—“Eww!”—the rest—“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I don’t have a hankie!”—the rest—“God, get it off!”—the rest—“What with? What with?”—the rest—“Use your sleeve! Eww!”—the rest—“OK, it’s off now!”—the rest—“What the fuck, Greg?”—the rest—“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry!”—the rest was left to the cruel playback of his memory. Hearing this exchange for the two millionth time that night, he wandered into a nervous breakdown.
2--A Visual Gimmick to Drive the Plot Forward and Slightly Mock the Desperation of Our Characters
DO YOU NEED FOUR GOES TO GET OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING? DOES THE SITE OF BURNED TOAST HAVE YOU REACHING FOR THE CYANIDE CAPSULES? DO YOU STAND IN THE SHOWER FOR AN HOUR, DREADING THE MOMENT THE TIMER CUTS OFF THE WATER? MAYBE ITS TIME TO GET HELP.
ARSEKICK INDUSTRIES
We provide rousing therapeutic speeches for those in need of discipline, life-guiding, or a good old Kick Up the Arse. Often all we need in life is the tough love routines of missing parents. Once the parental figures in our lives are missing we lack direction. We can become blocked with choice, with not knowing what to do. At Arsekick Industries, we administer a good firm boot where it's required.
Guaranteed to help:
—Those in long-term unemployment
—Those undergoing divorces or breakups
—Those who feels their lives are aimless
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Sessions take place every Tuesday at 7 PM at South Louth Community Centre. £50 per hour. What do you have to lose?
3—Three Monologues to Bring the Characters Together and Mock the Ridiculousness of Self-Help Gurus
Week 1
“You loser. You failure. You piece of nothing. You ugly, useless lump of stupid. You disgrace. You blight on the landscape. You feckless little worm. You brainless, chinless, spineless mutt. You walking abortion. You soulless sack of slime. You dog. You turd. Flatfoot. Useless. Loser. Moron. Idiot. You absolute nothing. You utter NOTHING. These are the things. These are the things we think about ourselves. Daily. Hourly. Every minute. Maybe every few seconds. And it’s these remarks . . . these remarks that are killing us. These remarks are stabbing us. These remarks are clubbing us around the head, going BAM! BAM! BAM! Take THAT you useless. Piece. Of. Nothing. And take THAT! They’re killing us. Killing us. These are our lives. Our lives. These . . . are . . . our . . . lives. Look at them. What have we become? What’s happened to us? Where did it all go wrong? I’ll tell you where it all went wrong. We stopped believing. We stopped caring. We stopped believing we could be somebody. We stopped believing we could be those people on the adverts. The winners. The smilers. The lovers, the fighters. No, we thought. That isn’t us. That’s not for us. I’ll be OK over here. In the losers’ corner. I’ll be OK over here, in this skip, in this dustbin. I’ll be fine here. They can have their happiness. I’ll be fine with my nothing. Be OK with nothing. This . . . can’t go on any longer. We’ve been trodden on. We are the derelict few. We are the victims of our age. Of our time. Of a time when success seems so easy. When happiness is only a click away. Well . . . it’s not on. Why shouldn’t we be happy? Why shouldn’t we lead lives like those people in the adverts? No reason. And that’s what we’re here today to solve. We’ve been mugged by our ourselves, mugged by our own failings. We are human. We shouldn’t be made to suffer because we’re human. OK. Quite intense, eh? I like to give that monologue as an opener. I want you all, all four of you, to know that we understand what you’re going through. It’s important we know where we stand from the off. Now, each of you has problems that require specific solutions, long-term strategies for gradual change and self-improvement. But you know what? That’s for next time. Each of you came today, and that was the first step. You’re all stars for coming here this evening. You’re halfway there. Now, could you each leave your £50 on the sideboard on the way out? Thanks. Now go! Feel better! See you next week.”
Week 2
“Welcome back. OK, there’ve been a few changes since last time and I’m afraid the fees have increased to £80 per session. If any of you have a problem with the price increase, we understand, but remember we’re here to help, we may be the only choice you have. OK? Good. OK, this week’s session is simple. I’m going to give you fifty minutes, and I want you to fill an A4 sheet with positive things. With happy words. Upbeat sentiments. OK? I’ll be back in fifty minutes to see how you’ve done. All right. Let’s see how you got on. Willem? Willem’s written down I CAN CHANGE and I CAN BE HAPPY on his paper, and he’s drawn a lovely little cartoon. A little gory, Willem, but your art skills are excellent. Let’s have a round of applause for Willem! He’s awesome. There we go. Now Carol, let’s see what you’ve written. OK, Carol’s written . . . hmm, some slightly negative things here, Carol. That was not the point of the exercise, was it? You shouldn’t write things like THIS IS A RIPOFF. You shouldn’t indulge those negative nodes. You should take a leaf from Willem’s book and write I CAN CHANGE. You have to believe, Carol. OK, Greg . . . can we see what you’ve—OK, I know this is difficult, but people are really going to have to drop the cynicism. It’s a cancer, people. It’s a cancer. Polly, is there much point reading yours? No, I thought not. OK, OK. That wasn’t a total failure. Let’s regroup next week. I want you all to go away and think like Willem. Think I CAN CHANGE and I CAN BE HAPPY. Come back and let me know how you’ve got on. Remember, it’s £90 this week. Oh, did I say £90? I meant £80, of course.”
Week 3
“Welcome. Now. You’ve been coming here for, what is it, five weeks now? Five weeks, and all we’ve been doing is talking. Blah this and blah that. Isn’t it time we acted? Isn’t it time we took some goddamn action for once? Well, it isn’t up to me to tell you what to do. I’m here as a moderator. A temporary stepfather. So here’s the idea. You know each other reasonably well by now. You know what the other wants. How the other wants to change. So. Help each other. I want each of you, for one week, to run each other’s lives. I want you, Carol, to run Willem’s life for him, and Willem, you’re in charge of Carol’s life. Polly, you’re in charge of Greg. Greg, you’re in charge of Polly. I want you each to submit yourselves. Let yourselves be ordered around. The idea is to lose that need to take control. The pressure to assume responsibility. Let yourselves go. You’ll find it’s so much easier to take control of someone else’s life than it is your own. This will build your confidence. Make you feel so much better about taking charge of your own lives. So give it a go. Remember, you have nothing to lose. And have fun! We’ll reconvene next week. Oh, one more thing . . . the fee has gone up to £100 this week. Sorry! Biscuit expenses, you know. Just leave it on the desk as usual on your way out. Thanks.”
4—How the Characters Come Together in This Absurd Scenario in Unlikely Ways, Told in Uncynical Prose
Willem & Carol
The first couple stepped out the renovated shed, squinting in the stupid evening sun. Willem spoke first. “I . . . I . . . um . . . hello,” is what Willem said. Carol spoke next. “Yes . . . we’ve . . . um,” is what Carol said. Each plunged the new hole in their pockets, anxious hands tickling bus tickets, pennies and lint colonies for desperate pennies. “So . . . what do you want to do?” asked Willem. “Well, we’d better do as he says,” Carol replied. “Right?”
“Yep.”
“So . . . ”
“So . . . what do you think of him? Robin, I mean?” Willem asked.
“I think he’s a little nutty, you know . . . I suppose his heart’s in the right place.”
“Is it? I get the feeling he’s taking us for a ride.”
“Maybe.”
The exact spot they were standing in as they continued this syllable-heavy exchange grew warmer and warmer, the sun bouncing off a glass skyscraper a few doors down and onto their scalps. This backed them into a decision: to wander off alone, or obey Robin’s wishes. Carol pulled out a pair of sunglasses and Willem tutted.
“You don’t wear them, do you?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with sunglasses?”
“Nothing. They make you look like a grieving widow, that’s all,” Willem said. He thought he’d try rudeness now. It was a step up from the low-level observational stuff he’d been doing.
“Well,” Carol chuckled, “I suppose they do. Do you want to go sit down in that café, talk about the week?”
“Oh . . . OK.”
It wasn’t a place either of them frequented, the modern coffee shop. This place wasn’t even trendy—old men sat huddled over plastic cups, thinking about the way forward for tweed fabrics. But to Willem and Carol it was a fast-paced nightmare: sexy Polish coffeeslingers hurling doughnuts and pastries at catalogue model customers, Greek gods rolling their tongues around polysyllabic Italian coffee names. A glamorous soap opera into which these EastEnders cast-offs walked, ill-fitting and unsexy.
Still, they couldn’t back out now as they might have done solo, lurching in the doorway, assessing their fitness for participation in this world of gorgeous teenage flesh, skulking off to the cornershop in defeat. A short blonde woman with a thick Louth accent took their orders and reality pricked their shared delusion. Carol couldn’t believe she was here, actually doing this, but she didn’t say that to Willem, and Willem was totally flummoxed by the whole task, but he didn’t let that one out to Carol either.
“So, we should draft a plan?” Willem asked.
“Right. A plan. You’re in charge of my life for a week, me yours. I suppose we should break down what we do in the week.”
“OK. Well, I’m unemployed right now, so I don’t do much in the week. I read a little, watch some TV. Like to go for long walks, that sort of thing.”
“I see, OK.” Carol couldn’t help a little nose-wriggle, a little judgement of the nostrils. Willem noticed.
“So what do you do?”
“Well, I’m recently divorced. My former husband brought in the money, so I’ve been living off the settlement I got.”
“OK.” Willem’s nose didn’t wriggle, but his toes clenched in embarrassment. She was better than him.
With the pen Carol always kept in her handbag in case she had to take down numbers (which she hadn’t used for six months, even when people gave her numbers to take down), she scribbled Willem’s name on a napkin and underlined it. (The pen didn’t work at first, so she had to run the nib up and down two napkins, ripping through the first, then willing the ink onto the second for fear her frantic swishing might be in vain).
“So, OK. Let’s break down your day. 8AM to 10AM. What are you doing?” she asked.
“Sleeping.”
“Everyday?”
“Yes.”
“OK.”
The nose-wriggle again. Carol wrote down sleeping as best she could with her leaky pen on a rough napkin. It looked more like slurping than sleeping. Willem thought this, but he didn’t let it out, didn’t want his silly little thought to hit Carol’s better ears.
“Then from 10 to 12?”
“Have a bit of breakfast, watch some TV. Sometimes I sleep in until 11 or 12. Depends on the night before.”
“12 to 14?”
“I go for a walk, walk around. I hang around my dad’s shoe repair shop a lot.”
“Talking to your dad?”
“No, I just stand outside. I haven’t spoken to him for five years.”
“Right. Does he know you’re out there?”
“No, I don’t think so. He doesn’t have any windows.”
“You just stand outside the shop?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go in?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t spoken to him for five years, how can I go in?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Carol loosened up a little, her nostrils now flaring in sympathy. She’d steeled herself for a vague, quick chat with this man, rehearsed her lies and revue of facial pleasantries. She didn’t expect herself to say:
“I’ve been telling people I’m pregnant for the last nine months.” Willem let the remark sink in and chose a smile.
“Really? Why?”
“I . . . I wanted people to . . . oh, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, that’s OK. We’re here ‘cause we’re not normal, right?”
“No, we’re not. We’re not normal.”
“OK, so between three and . . . between 15 and 17, I go home and watch a little daytime TV. I sometimes read but, you know, it’s easier to slump in front of the TV, isn’t it?”
“It is, yeah.”
Willem’s evening wasn’t radically different, too tedious to even mention, but he did, reluctantly, shamefully. Already, telling another person how he spent his days, how he wasted his precious hours, felt like a public flogging—a sad declaration in a sad room—“My name is Willem, and I’m wasting my life. My name is Willem and I’m lost. Help me.”
Carol wasn’t entirely honest about her day. She got a lot done in her pretend version. She actually did things in this version —she didn’t pretend to buy baby products, think about an OU degree, scour the sink. Here she’d had the baby, got the Masters, hired a flunky to scour her many sinks. She liked this version better, but the inky lies ran down the napkin, and Willem wouldn’t be fooled.
“Is any of that true?” he asked.
“Yeah. Some of it. Well, sort of some of it.”
“How much is sort of some of it?”
“About no percent.”
More smirks. Carol’s unsipped coffee sweated on the glass table. Willem was sipping on his, sipping through nerves, each sip nervier, each sip a comfort, each sip familiar. He felt he could tell her how many evenings he’d spent in his pants watching the same DVD over and over again and she wouldn’t flinch.
“So, what’s the truth, then?”
Two hundred and nine.
“The truth is, I’ve been on antidepressants for nine months. I had a nervous breakdown a month ago.”
Three hundred and ten.
“It was low-key. I mean, I didn’t go mad in public or anything. I just couldn’t stop crying for four days, and I had this pain in my chest, like I was being punched in my stomach.”
Four hundred and eleven.
“I couldn’t get out of bed because I couldn’t stop shaking. I thought I was going to die, I was cold and terrified. Eventually, I called NHS Direct and they told me to go into hospital.”
“And did you?”
“I did. And you know what the best thing was? Everyone thought I was going in to give birth!”
“Really?”
“Yep. When I came out I told them I’d had the kid but it had died due to complications. Now I get sympathetic looks from everyone!”
Willem was loving the dark confessions but wasn’t convinced about the rectitude of faking dead babies. Carol, too, took her first coffee sup, a nervous sup, a sup to cover her madness. No actual child had perished in the world, but people were grieving real grief over this fictive child, so clearly she was leeching sympathy from their sadness. Still, Willem wasn’t there to make judgements. But now he knew she wasn’t better than him.
“What do you do all day?” he asked.
“Sit in front of the TV trying to stop myself ringing my ex-husband while eating more chocolate bars than is sensible for one stomach. Then I go out to buy more chocolate and get neighbours to take pity on me.”
Natural silence.
“We should go away.”
“Go away.”
“And write up new schedules for each other’s days.”
“Other’s days.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice to meet you, Willem.”
“You too, Carol.”
Willem’s Revised Schedule
Hour
Old Schedule
New Schedule
8—10AM
Sleep.
Get up about nine, have breakfast, shower, shave and put on fresh clothes.
10AM—12PM
Sleep.
Go to the public galleries and have a look around. Take a deliberate interest in one painting on each floor and express why you like them.
12—1PM
Get up, have breakfast, watch daytime TV.
Have lunch in the café and write down thoughts.
1—3PM
Walk around. Hang around outside father’s shoe repair shop.
Go into father’s shoe repair shop and speak to your father. Arrange to meet up when his shop closes. Go home and think about how you feel.
3—5PM
Watch daytime TV.
Have a look on the internet for possible jobs you might be interested in. Draft up a new CV and send off an application for one job.
5—7PM
Walk around or watch more TV or mess about on internet or sit in the pub. Have a bite to eat.
Meet father for coffee and bite to eat in the pub and discuss each other’s lives. Try to bridge the five-year gap between you.
7—9PM
TV or pub or internet.
Go online to a dating site and create a profile, or go to a speed dating session and meet some lovely new people.
9—11PM
Put a DVD in and have a readymeal.
Cook dinner and relax with a documentary or interesting foreign film.
11PM—1AM
Watch more DVDs, have more snacks, crash on the bed.
Shower, change into pyjamas, get into bed and read until ready for sleep.
Carol’s Revised Schedule
Hour
Old Schedule
New Schedule
8—10AM
Get up. Take antidepressants and have two bowls of Coco Pops. Watch TV.
Get up. Take vitamins and have fresh fruit for breakfast. Go for a jog around the block.
10AM—12PM
Walk to shop to pick up paper and chocolate. Lie to neighbours.
Shower off. Pick up papers and more fruit. Tell neighbours truth about pregnancy.
12—1PM
Lunch, usually a bacon sandwich and chocolate muffin followed by a Twix or four, with Coke.
Lunch, smoked mackerel fillets, mixed Greenleaf salad and vegetable soup, with fresh OJ.
1—3PM
Sit in front of the TV thinking about ex-husband or cry in the bathroom.
Phone ex-husband to clear the air. Arrange a meeting with a counsellor.
3—5PM
Read trashy paperbacks or watch daytime TV while eating lots of chocolate.
Go to the public galleries to see some paintings.
5—7PM
Go out and lie to more neighbours or have long teary chat with sister.
Go for dinner with a friend in a nice restaurant and have a positive chat with sister.
7—9PM
Watch The Days of Wine & Roses or Bringing Up Baby and cry over ex-husband. Eat chocolate until nearly sick.
Go to the cinema with a friend and laugh until throat hurts.
9—11PM
Go on the internet and look at photos of ex-husband on Facebook. Send him messages via fake account.
Read or relax. Have a nice deep bath.
11PM—1AM
Go to bed crying.
Go to bed happy.
Greg & Polly
Polly was wearing her man repellent that afternoon: a special solution of one-tenths perfume nine-tenths insect spray. She wore it when moving among the ranks of the male failures to dispel her aura of a vulnerable waif too parrot-like to garner male attention. Greg was wearing his spiffiest suit, feeling like a wedding extra who’d wandered off after the nuptials to avoid being dragged onto the dance floor by a freckly cousin.
“What’s that smell?” Polly smiled and sniffed, pushing her nose out to distance herself from the smell emanating from herself, that both she and he knew was coming from herself, but neither person was prepared to acknowledge for separate reasons and a shared desire to avoid embarrassment so soon into their forced acquaintance.
“Must be sewers around here or something,” Polly said. “So anyway, this thing—it’s mad. He’s mad. Do you really want to do this?”
“We are paying £100 a week for this. We should do it,” Greg said.
“All right. Well. I’m Polly, by the way. Nice to meet you,” she said, extending a stinky hand.
“Greg,” said Greg, shaking it.
Since his breakdown Greg was more terrified around women—he’d spent five years learning to be relaxed around Jennifer, he hadn’t prepared himself for the others—and Polly, by her very Jenniferlessness, by her strange parrotlikeness, with her baffling dimensions and confident speech, was an example of this very terror at its worst.
They found a bench a few minutes outside the self-help shed, in a clearing where rusted swings coupled with dying oak trees and doddery OAPs walked in circles, out-sighing each other.
“So I can’t believe I was roped into doing this,” Polly said. “I’m not a gullible person, normally, it’s only I’ve been through a rough patch, you know, and sometimes you take the first piece of help that comes your way, you know, I don’t about you, but I normally wouldn’t do this sort of thing. Anyway, listen to me chirruping on, what about you?” At times it was convenient for Polly to be a bird.
“Well, I . . . it’s sort of strange, I suppose. I mean, we all have our reasons for being here,” Greg said.
“For being here. Yep, of course. We do, and I suppose it’s personal, they’re personal, our reasons for being here. So look, how about we exchange addresses and then send each other our current routines, then the new routines? That’ll save any embarrassment of having to, you know, go into details face-to-face, which might be embarrassing for you. Or for me. Ha.”
“OK.”
“OK.”
They exchanged addresses and took a moment to be silent and awkward until a sun shower started, giving them new ammo for small talk and a perfect exit. Greg thanked the heavens.
“Well—”
“Well, I’ll get those to you as soon as,” Polly said, standing.
“OK, and . . . I’ll do the same.”
“I’ll do the same. Nice to meet you, Greg. Bye!”
“Bye.”
Phew.
And phew.
Polly’s Revised Schedule
Hour
Old Schedule
New Schedule
8—10AM
Get up and go to work. Try to say something exceedingly clever at morning meeting.
Get up and go to work. Say something exceedingly clever at morning meeting by preparing it beforehand.
10AM—12PM
Spend morning dodging parrot comparisons from the hilarious HR men. Sit in the toilets and stick more pins into voodoo dolls.
Ask the men from HR to stop comparing me to a parrot and threaten to take the issue to a higher-up. Put another pin in voodoo doll anyway.
12—1PM
Lunch alone in the canteen.
Lunch with someone in the canteen.
1—3PM
Afternoon meet on the fifth floor. Attempt to present reports coherently while HR men repeat the last few words of my sentences.
Ask HR men to stop repeating the last few words of my sentences or definitely take the issue to a higher-up.
3—5PM
Surf the net and look at watch until 5PM.
Go home early if there is no work left to do.
5—7PM
Go home, eat dinner and seethe with anger. Stare into mirror for new ways to reduce my parrot likeness.
Go home, eat dinner, and laugh at parrot likeness and how silly people can be.
7—9PM
Go to cinema or watch film to forget about self.
Go to a discussion group to talk about self.
9—11PM
Go online to find birdlike men to date.
Go online to find men I might like to date.
11PM—1AM
Bed, depressèd.
Bed, contentèd.
Greg’s Revised Schedule
Hour
Old Schedule
New Schedule
8—10AM
Get up and ready for first lecture. Aftershave and best clothes, etc.
Get up and ready for first lecture. Wear what I like and smell how I like.
10AM—12PM
Find closest seat to Jennifer, next to if available. Make it look casual. Try to ask one interesting question in lecture so she admires me more.
Sit next to Jennifer and tell her that I like her and would like to date her.
12—1PM
Lunch, with Jennifer if possible.
Lunch with Jennifer and explain further my feelings.
1—3PM
Afternoon tutorial or lecture. If Jennifer isn’t around, doodle her on paper, write a poem for her. If she is, say more impressive things.
Get on with education without thinking too much about Jennifer. Save that for the date.
3—5PM
As above.
As above.
5—7PM
Home. Try to walk Jennifer home and learn more about her personal life. Add details to my Big Book of Jennifer.
Ask Jennifer details about her personal life outright. Burn Big Book of Jennifer.
7—9PM
Dinner, dreaming about Jennifer.
Go out on date with Jennifer and discover whether compatible.
9—11PM
Read through transcripts of chats with Jennifer, look at photos on Facebook.
Come back to flat and have sex with Jennifer.
11PM—1AM
Sleep, dreaming of . . .
Sleep, on top of . . .
5—The New Schedules
8—10AM
So Willem got up and showered but couldn’t find fresh clothes, so dusted off an old suit, the suit he wore to his grandmother’s funeral, and wearing it made him feel like walking death, but he carried on regardless, shaving and turning over a new leaf, like Carol who hung around in the bathroom pulling her hand away from the antidepressants, over to the vitamins, antidepressants, vitamins, antidepressants, vitamins, knowing she would feel like trash all afternoon, knowing that when she went out jogging she would need a hurricane to keep her going in all that self-disgust, and indeed, she did, and Polly couldn’t think of something clever to say so she sat there in her cage, squawking out the occasional banality, and Greg couldn’t tone down his wardrobe because Jennifer liked fragrant people, being one herself, and she wouldn’t want to date a stinker, oh no.
10AM—12PM
And Greg couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t voice this desire buried inside him, this glacier, this sunk Titanic, this desire to say the words “I like you,” three pathetic words before she buggered off with some North Louth hunk, fuck fuck fuck, and Polly sat there and smirked at the hilarious HR men as they made their squawking noises because disrupting the status quo would make her the office elephant and right now she was only the office parrot—was that really so bad?—and Carol didn’t even leave the flat, because her body, so accustomed to the chemical kick from the antidepressants, fought back, trembling and trembling until she couldn’t take it much longer, lunging upstairs into the medicine cabinet, popping back her happiness capsules, sweet sweet relief, and Willem walked around the art gallery but what was he supposed to say?—that he liked the colours, the images, the brushstrokes, what?— he wasn’t an art person, he was bored, what was he doing here with these smarties, he didn’t fit in here, this is pointless.
12—1PM
Willem didn’t write anything down because he wasn’t thinking anything except what am I doing here, and Carol was so depressed the thought of salad made her retch so she had four Twixes instead, and Polly couldn’t find anyone to sit beside her in the canteen, and Jennifer was lunching with her girlfriends and Greg hadn’t spoken a word to her all morning.
1—3PM
He couldn’t stop thinking about Jennifer’s laugh, lips, legs, lungs, lugs, lies, loves, he couldn’t stop thinking about the no-date he was having with her, the pressure to arrange this no-date, the schedule, the failure, her laugh lips lungs lugs lies loves, oh Jennifer Jenny Jen-Jen, and ha ha, those HR man repeating repeating the last few last few words of her speech, it was quite funny, really, quite funny, really, but also frustrating and hateful, hateful, hateful hateful hateful, but hey, we’re all part of the same company, same fucking company, and she knew his number, knew it backwards and sideways, but what would she say to this man who dumped her and left her twisting in the wind, hello I am fine I hope you are fine too well it was nice to chat got to get on, oh forget it, his dad was in there repairing his shoes, going about his business, he wasn’t expecting his estranged son to walk in there, wasn’t expecting this old face to go in there, mess up his day, and what if he turned him away, eh, what if he turned him away?
3—5PM
He doesn’t want to work because his father is the one that works, he’s the one in the shop making the bucks, he isn’t a big enough lad to go to work yet, not big enough though he’s pushing thirty, and she doesn’t want to go to galleries because old paintings of fat ladies with angels sucking their enormous tits doesn’t cheer her up none, and she can’t go home because her section manager is looking from his glass office for dodgers to diddle out their overtime, and Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer oh Jennifer please please love me Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer, your beautiful name, Jenny-Din-Dins.
5—7PM
And he doesn’t get to walk Jennifer home because Jennifer isn’t going home, Jennifer is going to the library to cram up for the assessment, and she looks in the mirror and can’t laugh because she looks like a fucking parrot and there is nothing she can do about it do about it stop it STOP IT, and she can’t find a friend to go to dinner with and would rather eat chocolate and he hasn’t spoken to his father so that’s the end of that.
7—9PM
Who wants him? What good time? Talk about what? What date?
9—11PM
Jennifer, when? Never, never, never, Jennifer. Never. Men? Me, parrot-face? Little miss parrot parrot parrot face? No way. Relax, relax, sure, what about him, is he relaxed, what about him, is he happy? What about me? I can’t watch something serious, I need to hear laughter, I need to laugh, because if I don’t, I might never laugh again.
11PM—1AM
Food, food, food, bed, bed, bed, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Food, food, food, sad, sad, sad, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Food, food, food, parrot, parrot, parrot, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Food, food, food, her, her, her, tomorrow, tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.
Willem
Willem was pushed from his dreams into a small bedsit in South Louth where, with the day’s greatest effort, he heaved himself from the damp beige sheets and staggered to the bathroom where he hosed the come off his legs with a lo-flo shower nozzle. The previous night was a standard procedure: three two-litre bottles of supermarket cola, a tandoori chicken readymeal and a DVD boxset of Futurama. Although he was alone, he had Bender for company—the feisty alcoholic robot and his cohorts, going on crazy adventures with heartwarming consequences. He had a delicious meal in his tummy and a whole evening of televisual pleasure. It couldn’t get much better for Willem.
It literally could not get much better for Willem. A long line of useless forebears had led him to this point, had placed him in this room drinking flat cola and watching a DVD for the fortieth time because he couldn’t afford to indulge in another purchase for a month or he’d be skint. It was their fault he existed in this squalor. Their fault he washed the bedsheets once a year, brushed his teeth once a week. Willem could not be blamed for his slobbish lifestyle. Willem was a victim of his own genealogy.
Willem’s great-great-great grandfather was a disgusting little man who lived on the streets of Glasgow and fished trotters from filth mounds. He loathed his existence with such fury, he could barely drag himself off the festering stink-heap to look the man who was raping him in the eye. He devoted his life to making things as unpleasant as possible for every human being he encountered: robbing and fighting and, after a long period on the receiving end, raping. He made a child he would never see.
Children born of rape do not make successful human beings. This isn’t true of the present, but in the late 19th century, having bastards was a ticket to Hell. Willem’s great-great grandfather was beaten and abused by his mother, because his mother couldn’t bear to tell her son he was born of rape, couldn’t look her bastard in the eye, and turned her shame into ritualistic displays of hatred: cussing her useless offspring and booting him onto the streets at fourteen. Forced to fend for himself, he spent his life in menial labour, taking his pleasures from drink and thinking about drink while drinking.
His grandfather was the most impressive member of this lineage: fighting in wars always gives a man a little dignity, something to draw on throughout his life. And this man made sure people knew about his success blasting the Krauts to bits in the name of freedom. He spent most of his time stationed in bases during the war and couldn’t shoot for toffee, but he’d earned his right to brag. He’d played his part in bringing peace by sitting around a lot in cold rooms. At last, here was a real man.
His son could never live up to such heights of bravery, so he worked as a cobbler, a quintessentially Victorian occupation, forever under the thumb of his father. In the histories of every family, there are mothers screwing daughters, fathers screwing sons, children running round trying to trump their mommies and daddies, killing themselves to be better than what came before, desperate to make their lineage the most memorable.
Well, Willem didn’t have the stamina. He had watched his father quarrel with his grandfather, two proud men too proud to concede they were equals—human beings as endearing as eels. If anything Willem was the best one yet: he was the first one to know he was utterly useless. To know he came from a band of bog rapists and cobbling liars, to know it was best to avoid depressing fathers and grandfathers, and muddle through with as little raping and bog-dwelling as possible. Willem was a success, and yet, to lapsed acquaintances (those with jobs), Willem was a man who ate readymeals in a bedsit alone and watched DVDs blankly for the fifth time, filling himself with junk food and farting. And this was the morning Willem had a nervous breakdown.
Polly
Polly didn’t want a cracker, because Polly wasn’t a parrot, and she couldn’t see how people had forged a resemblance between her—a short woman in her early thirties with black hair—and a tropical bird with multicoloured plumage that sits in cages and amuses children. Today, after two decades of parrot comparisons, Polly decided, at last, to get to the bottom of this hilarity, this endless stream of wit parroting itself down the days.
Firstly, she was short. Yes. She was a short-arse, she’d stopped growing aged ten, and yes, being short was funny. She had stood beside tree-sized men and posed for photographs, the height difference causing second-long titters, and bore this with good grace—she had her allies in the height mis-allotment stakes. The people she got on with the best in her building were the freakishly tall, since they too knew what it meant to be a novelty, a ticket for people to treat you like a cute little nothing. So yes, she was short, and hey—parrots were short too, being birds and not people. And yes, her name was Polly. Har har.
But that didn’t make her a parrot.
She was a blonde in her teens, sometimes in her twenties. Then she stopped dying her hair to silence the parrot comparers. Parrots can have yellow feathers, but they also have green, blue, red, grey, black and white feathers. Why, then, isn’t the stubbly little woman with blue-green hair on the second floor a parrot? Why aren’t all the greying men or silver-haired old ladies, also, parrots? Do these people have special parrot dispensation, or do their heights pass a certain point of non-parrot acceptance? Yes: she used to be blonde.
But that still didn’t make her a parrot.
Her face. As far as she could see, peering into the mirror, her eyes weren’t too far apart, her cheeks weren’t too flat, and she didn’t have a huge beak protruding from her forehead. And her nose, although maybe a little big for her face, certainly didn’t make her Pinocchio’s wet dream. Plus, she’d spent years staring at her nose as a teen, comparing it to the noses of celebrities and friends in photographs with a centimetre ruler, so to her eyes the nose was much bigger than it seemed. So she did not have any parrot-like features, except, maybe, if you were being unkind, a slightly distended nose.
So: she still was not a parrot.
When Polly went to work the next morning she cornered her friend Allan in the cafeteria. Allan was known for being apologetically honest, one of her lanky allies in the fight against height discrimination. Having found herself passed over for promotion the third time, she knew the parrot comparisons were the culprit, the reason she was getting nowhere in this sweat-box office with the wonky aircon and bowtie bosses. So she asked Allan, she asked him, she asked: “Why do people call me The Parrot? Look, you have to be honest with me. I’ve put up with this shit long enough.” Allan was honest, he was honest, he honestly answered: “Polly, you repeat everything people say to you.” And Polly said, she said: “What do you mean I repeat everything people say to me?”
So Polly was a parrot, and she still didn’t want a cracker, because she didn’t much feel like one: she’d just found out she was a parrot. How could she have gone through two decades repeating what people said to her, the things people said to her, back at them, without someone telling her hey, you’re repeating things back at me? At me? How could this go unchecked for two whole decades? Two whole decades? So this was the day Polly had her nervous breakdown, her nervous breakdown, her nervous etc.
Carol
Carol was always telling people she was pregnant. At first she did it to prevent awkwardness on the part of men who said “so when’s the baby due?” while cooing at her flab—she was always doing this: tailoring her actions to cause the least embarrassment among strangers—but now she told people she was pregnant for the expectation on their faces. Telling someone she was pregnant was a sure-fire route to free hugs, cheers and smiles from people, provided the same people weren’t briefed twice, then all she’d get is a blank look, as though she was the thickest preggo on the street.
She needed these hugs, since she’d recently welcomed long-term depression into her home, taken it to her bed and wrapped her arms around it, letting its cold fingers explore her every orifice, creeping into her bloodstream like a recently divorced frost. She’d completed her four hundredth marital squabble the morning her husband, Whatshisnibs, left; her four hundred-and-first when he swaggered out the door; and her four hundred-and-second when he rang a moment later to say he’d forgotten his keys, but hang on a minute, he didn’t need them anymore, whoops, fuckoffwhore.
Her pregnant plan, of course, folded when people met her in nine months time expecting a baby. Now that time had come, the time of her undoing. She hadn’t wanted to leave the house that morning since she didn’t want to leave the house most mornings, not when there was a chance someone would mention Whatshisnibs, or how she wasn’t that fat for nine months in, and was Whatshisnibs going to make child support payments, and how was she coping in that big house by herself and was she feeling better since the separation or was she still on antidepressants and would she like to hang herself in their garage, there’s a lovely noose available and an undertaker on hand if you like?
What was she going to do in four seconds? In four seconds, in fact, now, she had to speak to--
“Hey Carol! How are you doing? Would you like to hang yourself in our garage? We have a lovely noose!”
“Fine, fine. A day at a time, you know?” But no, this woman, Whatshertits, didn’t know, since Carol’s divorce had been six months ago, for God’s sake, six months ago, and she was still sleeping with the frost, still fingering the bony spine of sadness, hahaha, no, she wouldn’t like to get herself a toy boy, she’s fine thanks, keeping (nowhere near) busy.
“I notice you’re—the baby, how’s that?”
Carol waited until the sentence was completed.
“Coming?”
“Look, Whatshertits, there is no fucking baby. I’ve been lying to you and fifty other women for the last year because I wanted sympathy. I’m not a strong person, OK? I get by thanks to Malteasers, Double Deckers, Cadbury’s Crème Eggs and mounds of goddamn Ferrero Rocher. Yes, I know it tastes like shit. I’m like this because the only person I’ve ever liked—oh, fine, loved—has dumped me to spend more time with his penis. Now get stuffed.”
This she didn’t say. This she did say:
“Umm, it’s going fine. I’ve got to get back now, so . . . ”
Why did people have to speak to her? Why couldn’t they leave her to her melodrama and depression, that one feeling she felt now, if she felt at all—that feeling of feeling so low, things can’t possibly get any worse, but then things can’t get any better either, so things will generally stay the same—you will stay the same, because you are who you are, you are a stubborn fatso who doesn’t know how to ask for help, doesn’t know to reach out to people, thinks people only want to do small talk on the street, would run a mile if real help was needed. And they would. Well, wouldn’t they? Of course: that’s what people are like. All of them.
She wouldn’t know. She was about to give birth. Today, she gave birth to her nervous breakdown, nine months in the making—a shrieking little thing covered in blood and gunk. It came surprisingly easy.
Greg
Greg was self-conscious enough walking down the street—trying to keep his arms swinging with metronomic regularity, to feel the cold swoosh between his hands and hips, maintaining a straight line nearest the wall in case more hurried walkers sought to overtake him—without his nose running now, at this of all times, when Jennifer was coming up behind him and this was his only chance to speak to her in the week without reference to coursework or Alfred Adler and his baldy Austrian pate. Not. Now.
When Greg worked at Evanescence doing something nondescript with figures, his only pleasure was staring at Jennifer in the office, and when she announced with bland matter-of-factness she was quitting to pursue an MA in psychology—“hey everyone, I’m leaving to do a masters”—Greg had his heart cut up into small slices, his hope pureed into pâté. He too, because he was weak, and because no one ever taught him how to approach women and declare feelings outright and risk looking a fool, chose to follow her to Glasgow Caledonia and enroll himself in the same MA programme.
And for six months, he’d been a diligent straight-B student. There were better motives for gaining degrees than stalking women in search of unrequited love, but for Greg it had proved quite an effective learning strategy. Not only did he get his daily fill of Jennifer in the lecture halls and tutorials, he also found the prospect of an end to the desperate longing and emptiness in his heart helped him to concentrate on the set texts and arguments. The self-conscious mind, when allowed to wander, will latch onto the teensiest of things and turn them into grand tragedies. Giving focus to one intolerable part of human existence can blot out the others, or at least relegate them to the idle few minutes when the mind isn’t completely centred on the obsession in progress.
But now, Greg was walking: when Greg walked, he never swung his arms, because once he realised he wasn’t swinging his arms, he began to swing his arms, turning a natural unthinking movement into a contrived mannerism inviting public scorn. He stopped swinging his arms for good and never left the flat without a pocketed coat, even on summer days. Today, his hands were in his hankieless holes, grabbing for an invisible tissue, for something to dam the imminent surge of cruel mucus about to spoil his one chance to unlock something personal about Jennifer.
Jennifer was several steps away now, her hand almost reaching to tap him on the back, and the mucus was flowing and flowing—no amount of frantic sniffing could block this potential embarrassment. He was sure Jennifer suspected nothing about his simultaneous decision to do a masters, citing her move as his inspiration to move from dead-end-office world into cashless student world. He was sure Jennifer viewed him as a shy kook with a good heart who fell into the ‘good listener’ category, not the ‘repellent freak’ category, a popular place to slot small men who like to lurk and plot.
In that split second his delicate brickwork came crashing down: the mucus hung from his left nostril and stretched into a big long drip, a drip that swung straight onto Jennifer’s cheek as Greg turned around, reaching for his nose too late, watching in horror that soft pink skin streaked with his fearless nose goo. Then the rest—“Eww!”—the rest—“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I don’t have a hankie!”—the rest—“God, get it off!”—the rest—“What with? What with?”—the rest—“Use your sleeve! Eww!”—the rest—“OK, it’s off now!”—the rest—“What the fuck, Greg?”—the rest—“Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry!”—the rest was left to the cruel playback of his memory. Hearing this exchange for the two millionth time that night, he wandered into a nervous breakdown.
2--A Visual Gimmick to Drive the Plot Forward and Slightly Mock the Desperation of Our Characters
DO YOU NEED FOUR GOES TO GET OUT OF BED IN THE MORNING? DOES THE SITE OF BURNED TOAST HAVE YOU REACHING FOR THE CYANIDE CAPSULES? DO YOU STAND IN THE SHOWER FOR AN HOUR, DREADING THE MOMENT THE TIMER CUTS OFF THE WATER? MAYBE ITS TIME TO GET HELP.
ARSEKICK INDUSTRIES
We provide rousing therapeutic speeches for those in need of discipline, life-guiding, or a good old Kick Up the Arse. Often all we need in life is the tough love routines of missing parents. Once the parental figures in our lives are missing we lack direction. We can become blocked with choice, with not knowing what to do. At Arsekick Industries, we administer a good firm boot where it's required.
Guaranteed to help:
—Those in long-term unemployment
—Those undergoing divorces or breakups
—Those who feels their lives are aimless
—The long-term depressed
Sessions take place every Tuesday at 7 PM at South Louth Community Centre. £50 per hour. What do you have to lose?
3—Three Monologues to Bring the Characters Together and Mock the Ridiculousness of Self-Help Gurus
Week 1
“You loser. You failure. You piece of nothing. You ugly, useless lump of stupid. You disgrace. You blight on the landscape. You feckless little worm. You brainless, chinless, spineless mutt. You walking abortion. You soulless sack of slime. You dog. You turd. Flatfoot. Useless. Loser. Moron. Idiot. You absolute nothing. You utter NOTHING. These are the things. These are the things we think about ourselves. Daily. Hourly. Every minute. Maybe every few seconds. And it’s these remarks . . . these remarks that are killing us. These remarks are stabbing us. These remarks are clubbing us around the head, going BAM! BAM! BAM! Take THAT you useless. Piece. Of. Nothing. And take THAT! They’re killing us. Killing us. These are our lives. Our lives. These . . . are . . . our . . . lives. Look at them. What have we become? What’s happened to us? Where did it all go wrong? I’ll tell you where it all went wrong. We stopped believing. We stopped caring. We stopped believing we could be somebody. We stopped believing we could be those people on the adverts. The winners. The smilers. The lovers, the fighters. No, we thought. That isn’t us. That’s not for us. I’ll be OK over here. In the losers’ corner. I’ll be OK over here, in this skip, in this dustbin. I’ll be fine here. They can have their happiness. I’ll be fine with my nothing. Be OK with nothing. This . . . can’t go on any longer. We’ve been trodden on. We are the derelict few. We are the victims of our age. Of our time. Of a time when success seems so easy. When happiness is only a click away. Well . . . it’s not on. Why shouldn’t we be happy? Why shouldn’t we lead lives like those people in the adverts? No reason. And that’s what we’re here today to solve. We’ve been mugged by our ourselves, mugged by our own failings. We are human. We shouldn’t be made to suffer because we’re human. OK. Quite intense, eh? I like to give that monologue as an opener. I want you all, all four of you, to know that we understand what you’re going through. It’s important we know where we stand from the off. Now, each of you has problems that require specific solutions, long-term strategies for gradual change and self-improvement. But you know what? That’s for next time. Each of you came today, and that was the first step. You’re all stars for coming here this evening. You’re halfway there. Now, could you each leave your £50 on the sideboard on the way out? Thanks. Now go! Feel better! See you next week.”
Week 2
“Welcome back. OK, there’ve been a few changes since last time and I’m afraid the fees have increased to £80 per session. If any of you have a problem with the price increase, we understand, but remember we’re here to help, we may be the only choice you have. OK? Good. OK, this week’s session is simple. I’m going to give you fifty minutes, and I want you to fill an A4 sheet with positive things. With happy words. Upbeat sentiments. OK? I’ll be back in fifty minutes to see how you’ve done. All right. Let’s see how you got on. Willem? Willem’s written down I CAN CHANGE and I CAN BE HAPPY on his paper, and he’s drawn a lovely little cartoon. A little gory, Willem, but your art skills are excellent. Let’s have a round of applause for Willem! He’s awesome. There we go. Now Carol, let’s see what you’ve written. OK, Carol’s written . . . hmm, some slightly negative things here, Carol. That was not the point of the exercise, was it? You shouldn’t write things like THIS IS A RIPOFF. You shouldn’t indulge those negative nodes. You should take a leaf from Willem’s book and write I CAN CHANGE. You have to believe, Carol. OK, Greg . . . can we see what you’ve—OK, I know this is difficult, but people are really going to have to drop the cynicism. It’s a cancer, people. It’s a cancer. Polly, is there much point reading yours? No, I thought not. OK, OK. That wasn’t a total failure. Let’s regroup next week. I want you all to go away and think like Willem. Think I CAN CHANGE and I CAN BE HAPPY. Come back and let me know how you’ve got on. Remember, it’s £90 this week. Oh, did I say £90? I meant £80, of course.”
Week 3
“Welcome. Now. You’ve been coming here for, what is it, five weeks now? Five weeks, and all we’ve been doing is talking. Blah this and blah that. Isn’t it time we acted? Isn’t it time we took some goddamn action for once? Well, it isn’t up to me to tell you what to do. I’m here as a moderator. A temporary stepfather. So here’s the idea. You know each other reasonably well by now. You know what the other wants. How the other wants to change. So. Help each other. I want each of you, for one week, to run each other’s lives. I want you, Carol, to run Willem’s life for him, and Willem, you’re in charge of Carol’s life. Polly, you’re in charge of Greg. Greg, you’re in charge of Polly. I want you each to submit yourselves. Let yourselves be ordered around. The idea is to lose that need to take control. The pressure to assume responsibility. Let yourselves go. You’ll find it’s so much easier to take control of someone else’s life than it is your own. This will build your confidence. Make you feel so much better about taking charge of your own lives. So give it a go. Remember, you have nothing to lose. And have fun! We’ll reconvene next week. Oh, one more thing . . . the fee has gone up to £100 this week. Sorry! Biscuit expenses, you know. Just leave it on the desk as usual on your way out. Thanks.”
4—How the Characters Come Together in This Absurd Scenario in Unlikely Ways, Told in Uncynical Prose
Willem & Carol
The first couple stepped out the renovated shed, squinting in the stupid evening sun. Willem spoke first. “I . . . I . . . um . . . hello,” is what Willem said. Carol spoke next. “Yes . . . we’ve . . . um,” is what Carol said. Each plunged the new hole in their pockets, anxious hands tickling bus tickets, pennies and lint colonies for desperate pennies. “So . . . what do you want to do?” asked Willem. “Well, we’d better do as he says,” Carol replied. “Right?”
“Yep.”
“So . . . ”
“So . . . what do you think of him? Robin, I mean?” Willem asked.
“I think he’s a little nutty, you know . . . I suppose his heart’s in the right place.”
“Is it? I get the feeling he’s taking us for a ride.”
“Maybe.”
The exact spot they were standing in as they continued this syllable-heavy exchange grew warmer and warmer, the sun bouncing off a glass skyscraper a few doors down and onto their scalps. This backed them into a decision: to wander off alone, or obey Robin’s wishes. Carol pulled out a pair of sunglasses and Willem tutted.
“You don’t wear them, do you?”
“Yes. What’s wrong with sunglasses?”
“Nothing. They make you look like a grieving widow, that’s all,” Willem said. He thought he’d try rudeness now. It was a step up from the low-level observational stuff he’d been doing.
“Well,” Carol chuckled, “I suppose they do. Do you want to go sit down in that café, talk about the week?”
“Oh . . . OK.”
It wasn’t a place either of them frequented, the modern coffee shop. This place wasn’t even trendy—old men sat huddled over plastic cups, thinking about the way forward for tweed fabrics. But to Willem and Carol it was a fast-paced nightmare: sexy Polish coffeeslingers hurling doughnuts and pastries at catalogue model customers, Greek gods rolling their tongues around polysyllabic Italian coffee names. A glamorous soap opera into which these EastEnders cast-offs walked, ill-fitting and unsexy.
Still, they couldn’t back out now as they might have done solo, lurching in the doorway, assessing their fitness for participation in this world of gorgeous teenage flesh, skulking off to the cornershop in defeat. A short blonde woman with a thick Louth accent took their orders and reality pricked their shared delusion. Carol couldn’t believe she was here, actually doing this, but she didn’t say that to Willem, and Willem was totally flummoxed by the whole task, but he didn’t let that one out to Carol either.
“So, we should draft a plan?” Willem asked.
“Right. A plan. You’re in charge of my life for a week, me yours. I suppose we should break down what we do in the week.”
“OK. Well, I’m unemployed right now, so I don’t do much in the week. I read a little, watch some TV. Like to go for long walks, that sort of thing.”
“I see, OK.” Carol couldn’t help a little nose-wriggle, a little judgement of the nostrils. Willem noticed.
“So what do you do?”
“Well, I’m recently divorced. My former husband brought in the money, so I’ve been living off the settlement I got.”
“OK.” Willem’s nose didn’t wriggle, but his toes clenched in embarrassment. She was better than him.
With the pen Carol always kept in her handbag in case she had to take down numbers (which she hadn’t used for six months, even when people gave her numbers to take down), she scribbled Willem’s name on a napkin and underlined it. (The pen didn’t work at first, so she had to run the nib up and down two napkins, ripping through the first, then willing the ink onto the second for fear her frantic swishing might be in vain).
“So, OK. Let’s break down your day. 8AM to 10AM. What are you doing?” she asked.
“Sleeping.”
“Everyday?”
“Yes.”
“OK.”
The nose-wriggle again. Carol wrote down sleeping as best she could with her leaky pen on a rough napkin. It looked more like slurping than sleeping. Willem thought this, but he didn’t let it out, didn’t want his silly little thought to hit Carol’s better ears.
“Then from 10 to 12?”
“Have a bit of breakfast, watch some TV. Sometimes I sleep in until 11 or 12. Depends on the night before.”
“12 to 14?”
“I go for a walk, walk around. I hang around my dad’s shoe repair shop a lot.”
“Talking to your dad?”
“No, I just stand outside. I haven’t spoken to him for five years.”
“Right. Does he know you’re out there?”
“No, I don’t think so. He doesn’t have any windows.”
“You just stand outside the shop?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to go in?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I haven’t spoken to him for five years, how can I go in?”
“No, I suppose not.”
Carol loosened up a little, her nostrils now flaring in sympathy. She’d steeled herself for a vague, quick chat with this man, rehearsed her lies and revue of facial pleasantries. She didn’t expect herself to say:
“I’ve been telling people I’m pregnant for the last nine months.” Willem let the remark sink in and chose a smile.
“Really? Why?”
“I . . . I wanted people to . . . oh, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, that’s OK. We’re here ‘cause we’re not normal, right?”
“No, we’re not. We’re not normal.”
“OK, so between three and . . . between 15 and 17, I go home and watch a little daytime TV. I sometimes read but, you know, it’s easier to slump in front of the TV, isn’t it?”
“It is, yeah.”
Willem’s evening wasn’t radically different, too tedious to even mention, but he did, reluctantly, shamefully. Already, telling another person how he spent his days, how he wasted his precious hours, felt like a public flogging—a sad declaration in a sad room—“My name is Willem, and I’m wasting my life. My name is Willem and I’m lost. Help me.”
Carol wasn’t entirely honest about her day. She got a lot done in her pretend version. She actually did things in this version —she didn’t pretend to buy baby products, think about an OU degree, scour the sink. Here she’d had the baby, got the Masters, hired a flunky to scour her many sinks. She liked this version better, but the inky lies ran down the napkin, and Willem wouldn’t be fooled.
“Is any of that true?” he asked.
“Yeah. Some of it. Well, sort of some of it.”
“How much is sort of some of it?”
“About no percent.”
More smirks. Carol’s unsipped coffee sweated on the glass table. Willem was sipping on his, sipping through nerves, each sip nervier, each sip a comfort, each sip familiar. He felt he could tell her how many evenings he’d spent in his pants watching the same DVD over and over again and she wouldn’t flinch.
“So, what’s the truth, then?”
Two hundred and nine.
“The truth is, I’ve been on antidepressants for nine months. I had a nervous breakdown a month ago.”
Three hundred and ten.
“It was low-key. I mean, I didn’t go mad in public or anything. I just couldn’t stop crying for four days, and I had this pain in my chest, like I was being punched in my stomach.”
Four hundred and eleven.
“I couldn’t get out of bed because I couldn’t stop shaking. I thought I was going to die, I was cold and terrified. Eventually, I called NHS Direct and they told me to go into hospital.”
“And did you?”
“I did. And you know what the best thing was? Everyone thought I was going in to give birth!”
“Really?”
“Yep. When I came out I told them I’d had the kid but it had died due to complications. Now I get sympathetic looks from everyone!”
Willem was loving the dark confessions but wasn’t convinced about the rectitude of faking dead babies. Carol, too, took her first coffee sup, a nervous sup, a sup to cover her madness. No actual child had perished in the world, but people were grieving real grief over this fictive child, so clearly she was leeching sympathy from their sadness. Still, Willem wasn’t there to make judgements. But now he knew she wasn’t better than him.
“What do you do all day?” he asked.
“Sit in front of the TV trying to stop myself ringing my ex-husband while eating more chocolate bars than is sensible for one stomach. Then I go out to buy more chocolate and get neighbours to take pity on me.”
Natural silence.
“We should go away.”
“Go away.”
“And write up new schedules for each other’s days.”
“Other’s days.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Nice to meet you, Willem.”
“You too, Carol.”
Willem’s Revised Schedule
Hour
Old Schedule
New Schedule
8—10AM
Sleep.
Get up about nine, have breakfast, shower, shave and put on fresh clothes.
10AM—12PM
Sleep.
Go to the public galleries and have a look around. Take a deliberate interest in one painting on each floor and express why you like them.
12—1PM
Get up, have breakfast, watch daytime TV.
Have lunch in the café and write down thoughts.
1—3PM
Walk around. Hang around outside father’s shoe repair shop.
Go into father’s shoe repair shop and speak to your father. Arrange to meet up when his shop closes. Go home and think about how you feel.
3—5PM
Watch daytime TV.
Have a look on the internet for possible jobs you might be interested in. Draft up a new CV and send off an application for one job.
5—7PM
Walk around or watch more TV or mess about on internet or sit in the pub. Have a bite to eat.
Meet father for coffee and bite to eat in the pub and discuss each other’s lives. Try to bridge the five-year gap between you.
7—9PM
TV or pub or internet.
Go online to a dating site and create a profile, or go to a speed dating session and meet some lovely new people.
9—11PM
Put a DVD in and have a readymeal.
Cook dinner and relax with a documentary or interesting foreign film.
11PM—1AM
Watch more DVDs, have more snacks, crash on the bed.
Shower, change into pyjamas, get into bed and read until ready for sleep.
Carol’s Revised Schedule
Hour
Old Schedule
New Schedule
8—10AM
Get up. Take antidepressants and have two bowls of Coco Pops. Watch TV.
Get up. Take vitamins and have fresh fruit for breakfast. Go for a jog around the block.
10AM—12PM
Walk to shop to pick up paper and chocolate. Lie to neighbours.
Shower off. Pick up papers and more fruit. Tell neighbours truth about pregnancy.
12—1PM
Lunch, usually a bacon sandwich and chocolate muffin followed by a Twix or four, with Coke.
Lunch, smoked mackerel fillets, mixed Greenleaf salad and vegetable soup, with fresh OJ.
1—3PM
Sit in front of the TV thinking about ex-husband or cry in the bathroom.
Phone ex-husband to clear the air. Arrange a meeting with a counsellor.
3—5PM
Read trashy paperbacks or watch daytime TV while eating lots of chocolate.
Go to the public galleries to see some paintings.
5—7PM
Go out and lie to more neighbours or have long teary chat with sister.
Go for dinner with a friend in a nice restaurant and have a positive chat with sister.
7—9PM
Watch The Days of Wine & Roses or Bringing Up Baby and cry over ex-husband. Eat chocolate until nearly sick.
Go to the cinema with a friend and laugh until throat hurts.
9—11PM
Go on the internet and look at photos of ex-husband on Facebook. Send him messages via fake account.
Read or relax. Have a nice deep bath.
11PM—1AM
Go to bed crying.
Go to bed happy.
Greg & Polly
Polly was wearing her man repellent that afternoon: a special solution of one-tenths perfume nine-tenths insect spray. She wore it when moving among the ranks of the male failures to dispel her aura of a vulnerable waif too parrot-like to garner male attention. Greg was wearing his spiffiest suit, feeling like a wedding extra who’d wandered off after the nuptials to avoid being dragged onto the dance floor by a freckly cousin.
“What’s that smell?” Polly smiled and sniffed, pushing her nose out to distance herself from the smell emanating from herself, that both she and he knew was coming from herself, but neither person was prepared to acknowledge for separate reasons and a shared desire to avoid embarrassment so soon into their forced acquaintance.
“Must be sewers around here or something,” Polly said. “So anyway, this thing—it’s mad. He’s mad. Do you really want to do this?”
“We are paying £100 a week for this. We should do it,” Greg said.
“All right. Well. I’m Polly, by the way. Nice to meet you,” she said, extending a stinky hand.
“Greg,” said Greg, shaking it.
Since his breakdown Greg was more terrified around women—he’d spent five years learning to be relaxed around Jennifer, he hadn’t prepared himself for the others—and Polly, by her very Jenniferlessness, by her strange parrotlikeness, with her baffling dimensions and confident speech, was an example of this very terror at its worst.
They found a bench a few minutes outside the self-help shed, in a clearing where rusted swings coupled with dying oak trees and doddery OAPs walked in circles, out-sighing each other.
“So I can’t believe I was roped into doing this,” Polly said. “I’m not a gullible person, normally, it’s only I’ve been through a rough patch, you know, and sometimes you take the first piece of help that comes your way, you know, I don’t about you, but I normally wouldn’t do this sort of thing. Anyway, listen to me chirruping on, what about you?” At times it was convenient for Polly to be a bird.
“Well, I . . . it’s sort of strange, I suppose. I mean, we all have our reasons for being here,” Greg said.
“For being here. Yep, of course. We do, and I suppose it’s personal, they’re personal, our reasons for being here. So look, how about we exchange addresses and then send each other our current routines, then the new routines? That’ll save any embarrassment of having to, you know, go into details face-to-face, which might be embarrassing for you. Or for me. Ha.”
“OK.”
“OK.”
They exchanged addresses and took a moment to be silent and awkward until a sun shower started, giving them new ammo for small talk and a perfect exit. Greg thanked the heavens.
“Well—”
“Well, I’ll get those to you as soon as,” Polly said, standing.
“OK, and . . . I’ll do the same.”
“I’ll do the same. Nice to meet you, Greg. Bye!”
“Bye.”
Phew.
And phew.
Polly’s Revised Schedule
Hour
Old Schedule
New Schedule
8—10AM
Get up and go to work. Try to say something exceedingly clever at morning meeting.
Get up and go to work. Say something exceedingly clever at morning meeting by preparing it beforehand.
10AM—12PM
Spend morning dodging parrot comparisons from the hilarious HR men. Sit in the toilets and stick more pins into voodoo dolls.
Ask the men from HR to stop comparing me to a parrot and threaten to take the issue to a higher-up. Put another pin in voodoo doll anyway.
12—1PM
Lunch alone in the canteen.
Lunch with someone in the canteen.
1—3PM
Afternoon meet on the fifth floor. Attempt to present reports coherently while HR men repeat the last few words of my sentences.
Ask HR men to stop repeating the last few words of my sentences or definitely take the issue to a higher-up.
3—5PM
Surf the net and look at watch until 5PM.
Go home early if there is no work left to do.
5—7PM
Go home, eat dinner and seethe with anger. Stare into mirror for new ways to reduce my parrot likeness.
Go home, eat dinner, and laugh at parrot likeness and how silly people can be.
7—9PM
Go to cinema or watch film to forget about self.
Go to a discussion group to talk about self.
9—11PM
Go online to find birdlike men to date.
Go online to find men I might like to date.
11PM—1AM
Bed, depressèd.
Bed, contentèd.
Greg’s Revised Schedule
Hour
Old Schedule
New Schedule
8—10AM
Get up and ready for first lecture. Aftershave and best clothes, etc.
Get up and ready for first lecture. Wear what I like and smell how I like.
10AM—12PM
Find closest seat to Jennifer, next to if available. Make it look casual. Try to ask one interesting question in lecture so she admires me more.
Sit next to Jennifer and tell her that I like her and would like to date her.
12—1PM
Lunch, with Jennifer if possible.
Lunch with Jennifer and explain further my feelings.
1—3PM
Afternoon tutorial or lecture. If Jennifer isn’t around, doodle her on paper, write a poem for her. If she is, say more impressive things.
Get on with education without thinking too much about Jennifer. Save that for the date.
3—5PM
As above.
As above.
5—7PM
Home. Try to walk Jennifer home and learn more about her personal life. Add details to my Big Book of Jennifer.
Ask Jennifer details about her personal life outright. Burn Big Book of Jennifer.
7—9PM
Dinner, dreaming about Jennifer.
Go out on date with Jennifer and discover whether compatible.
9—11PM
Read through transcripts of chats with Jennifer, look at photos on Facebook.
Come back to flat and have sex with Jennifer.
11PM—1AM
Sleep, dreaming of . . .
Sleep, on top of . . .
5—The New Schedules
8—10AM
So Willem got up and showered but couldn’t find fresh clothes, so dusted off an old suit, the suit he wore to his grandmother’s funeral, and wearing it made him feel like walking death, but he carried on regardless, shaving and turning over a new leaf, like Carol who hung around in the bathroom pulling her hand away from the antidepressants, over to the vitamins, antidepressants, vitamins, antidepressants, vitamins, knowing she would feel like trash all afternoon, knowing that when she went out jogging she would need a hurricane to keep her going in all that self-disgust, and indeed, she did, and Polly couldn’t think of something clever to say so she sat there in her cage, squawking out the occasional banality, and Greg couldn’t tone down his wardrobe because Jennifer liked fragrant people, being one herself, and she wouldn’t want to date a stinker, oh no.
10AM—12PM
And Greg couldn’t get the words out, couldn’t voice this desire buried inside him, this glacier, this sunk Titanic, this desire to say the words “I like you,” three pathetic words before she buggered off with some North Louth hunk, fuck fuck fuck, and Polly sat there and smirked at the hilarious HR men as they made their squawking noises because disrupting the status quo would make her the office elephant and right now she was only the office parrot—was that really so bad?—and Carol didn’t even leave the flat, because her body, so accustomed to the chemical kick from the antidepressants, fought back, trembling and trembling until she couldn’t take it much longer, lunging upstairs into the medicine cabinet, popping back her happiness capsules, sweet sweet relief, and Willem walked around the art gallery but what was he supposed to say?—that he liked the colours, the images, the brushstrokes, what?— he wasn’t an art person, he was bored, what was he doing here with these smarties, he didn’t fit in here, this is pointless.
12—1PM
Willem didn’t write anything down because he wasn’t thinking anything except what am I doing here, and Carol was so depressed the thought of salad made her retch so she had four Twixes instead, and Polly couldn’t find anyone to sit beside her in the canteen, and Jennifer was lunching with her girlfriends and Greg hadn’t spoken a word to her all morning.
1—3PM
He couldn’t stop thinking about Jennifer’s laugh, lips, legs, lungs, lugs, lies, loves, he couldn’t stop thinking about the no-date he was having with her, the pressure to arrange this no-date, the schedule, the failure, her laugh lips lungs lugs lies loves, oh Jennifer Jenny Jen-Jen, and ha ha, those HR man repeating repeating the last few last few words of her speech, it was quite funny, really, quite funny, really, but also frustrating and hateful, hateful, hateful hateful hateful, but hey, we’re all part of the same company, same fucking company, and she knew his number, knew it backwards and sideways, but what would she say to this man who dumped her and left her twisting in the wind, hello I am fine I hope you are fine too well it was nice to chat got to get on, oh forget it, his dad was in there repairing his shoes, going about his business, he wasn’t expecting his estranged son to walk in there, wasn’t expecting this old face to go in there, mess up his day, and what if he turned him away, eh, what if he turned him away?
3—5PM
He doesn’t want to work because his father is the one that works, he’s the one in the shop making the bucks, he isn’t a big enough lad to go to work yet, not big enough though he’s pushing thirty, and she doesn’t want to go to galleries because old paintings of fat ladies with angels sucking their enormous tits doesn’t cheer her up none, and she can’t go home because her section manager is looking from his glass office for dodgers to diddle out their overtime, and Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer oh Jennifer please please love me Jennifer Jennifer Jennifer, your beautiful name, Jenny-Din-Dins.
5—7PM
And he doesn’t get to walk Jennifer home because Jennifer isn’t going home, Jennifer is going to the library to cram up for the assessment, and she looks in the mirror and can’t laugh because she looks like a fucking parrot and there is nothing she can do about it do about it stop it STOP IT, and she can’t find a friend to go to dinner with and would rather eat chocolate and he hasn’t spoken to his father so that’s the end of that.
7—9PM
Who wants him? What good time? Talk about what? What date?
9—11PM
Jennifer, when? Never, never, never, Jennifer. Never. Men? Me, parrot-face? Little miss parrot parrot parrot face? No way. Relax, relax, sure, what about him, is he relaxed, what about him, is he happy? What about me? I can’t watch something serious, I need to hear laughter, I need to laugh, because if I don’t, I might never laugh again.
11PM—1AM
Food, food, food, bed, bed, bed, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Food, food, food, sad, sad, sad, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Food, food, food, parrot, parrot, parrot, tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Food, food, food, her, her, her, tomorrow, tomorrow, maybe tomorrow.