Boy Parts(19)

‘Do you have a note?’

She does. She has a fiver. I feel safer with the plastic money, I feel less like I’m going to get hepatitis. Cashing up at work with paper money, you feel like you could shake the notes off and salvage a bump, at least. Plastic money, though, it just bounces off. And if you have a nosebleed, it’s not like you’ve ruined a note; you can just rinse it off. I make Flo go first, because she has the note, and I watch her hoover up that line like the sesh gremlin I know she really is. Fuck morals. Fuck ethical drug consumption. What’s that fucking bit in Trainspotting from the posters, you know, from everyone’s room when they’re sixteen, Choose Life, Choose A Job, and all that shit. Choose fucking up. Choose to come into my office and take cocaine because I told you to. Choose to follow me back out to the bar, after we’ve had a line, and drink a shot of tequila.

The thing with Flo, with a lot of people our age: she’s so fucking quick to blame everyone else for her shit, you know? And you do choose these things. You choose to make yourself feel like an absolute fucking spineless, easily led pile of shit with a steaming hangover tomorrow morning. Maybe even tomorrow evening. The night is young, and I have so much cocaine in my bra.

When Finch turns back up, I buy another round of shots, and tell him it’s apology tequila and he has to drink it.

I realise I forgot to piss.





Tequila makes my fingers numb, so I keep dropping my phone in the Uber. We’re heading to Will’s presumably squalid house in Heaton. Student Village, Flo calls it, every time, like she doesn’t live three feet away in Sandyford. I sit in the front, because I’m the only adult, and the only person who can handle talking to strangers for extended periods of time. I order drinks, I order cabs, I make men go away, I make drug deals happen, I get us into places. In the land of the borderline autistic, the man who can make eye contact is king. I’ve known Finch for three years and he’s never looked me in the eye once.

‘How’s your night going, then?’ I ask. I can’t bear the silence. Finch has gone quiet, furiously chewing gum, and Flo is creased; she’s absolutely pissing herself back there, stuffing her fingers into her mouth to try and stop herself from laughing.

‘Just students and stuff. Back and forth, town to Heaton, Heaton to town,’ he says. ‘You going home?’

‘Nah, house party.’

‘Is… Is she okay?’ The driver (Iqbal) nods back at Flo.

‘She’s fine. In fact, I’d be more worried about your man there.’ I point at Finch. ‘Gurning like an absolute twat. Forgot to take his magnesium supplements, now look at him. He’s going to lose a tooth, like that. Have you ever seen Bounce by the Ounce? On YouTube, Bounce by the Ounce?’

‘No… What is that, is it a music thing?’

‘Sort of. It’s a video of this tragic club, somewhere shit. Some shitty town. There’s this bald feller, gurning his tits off. Looks like Gollum, Gollum in a really rough extended cut, Gollum in Middle Earth After Dark, like one bump to rule them all, one bump to line them, one bump to… something, and in the sesh we bind them,’ I say. Flo screams with laughter, stomping her feet on the floor of the taxi.

‘God, you fucking love Lord of the Rings, don’t you?’ says Finch. ‘You only ever talk about it when you’re off your tits and that’s how I know you love it.’

‘She still had an Aragorn poster while we were in college,’ says Flo, gasping between giggles. ‘In 2008.’

‘Fuck off.’ I drop my phone again. Flo laughs more. ‘Hey, since we’re sharing fun facts, did you all know that Flo isn’t actually called Flo? Did you all know she was christened Lauren.’ And Flo’s laughter slows. ‘Lauren, and rebranded before she started foundation, and actually named herself after Florence of the Machine fame? Changed it by deed poll and everything.’

‘Well, I think you should be able to choose whatever name you want for yourself. For instance, Irina, if you decided to change your name to Mrs Frodo Baggins, I would support you,’ says Finch.

‘That’s not funny because it wasn’t a fucking Frodo poster, it was an Aragorn poster, so if you wanted your joke to land, Finch, which it didn’t, you’d have said I’d fucking change my name to fucking… Look, he’s not short on aliases, is he? Like, I’d be Irina Telcontar, Queen of Gondor or something, wouldn’t I? Jesus. If you’re going to fucking do this, if you’re going to fucking—’ I sniff. ‘—pull this shit with me, pull something I haven’t heard before, alright? Pull something less basic than Mrs Frodo.’

‘Telcon… what?’

‘It’s the royal house of Gondor,’ I snap. ‘Jesus.’

My loose, powdered lips have dug me a hole deeper than any lingering reference to teenaged posters, or spiteful revelations regarding Flaurence. There’s no real getting out of it. My face feels warm. Not cokey warm, just warm, and I feel squirmy. I shrink in my seat a little. I have accidentally conjured up a shorter, wider, speckier version of myself, hunched over a battered copy of Fellowship.

The feeling is like when someone sees a mark from where you’ve self-harmed, and you slap your hand over the cut, or the burn, or the bruise. You’ve tried to hide it and, in doing so, made it even more obvious that mark is not an accident.