How to Build a Girl

  And then, around 9pm, she says a very big thing. She leans forward confidingly, and tells me that she knows all about me – because she and Rich used to go out with each other, until recently. She dumped him, and he was ‘very cut up about it’, but, ‘We still fuck occasionally, now. It’s not a big thing. You know what I mean?’

  So here comes something I’m not prepared for, on this delightful evening, when I am very drunk: a sudden, emergency delivery of pain and embarrassment. I feel like I’m signing for a parcel that now takes up the entire lawn.

  When she first tells me, I want to burst into tears. I want to run away. I want to run away – maybe whilst setting fire to my hair – and never come back.

  He’s still in love with this girl, who he’s fucking – and he brought me here, to meet her? What a horrible thing to do. Amusingly, for someone whose heart should be breaking, the thing I’m initially most angry about is that he didn’t even offer to pay my train-fare down.

  ‘I’ve spunked nearly fifty quid getting here, to meet the girl he likes better. And I bought his parents a mug,’ I think. ‘For that kind of money, I expect some kind of exclusivity – not some “Oh Dolly, here’s the person I usually think of when I’m coming in you” surprise party.’ This is total bullshit.

  ‘But we’re cool, yeah?’ Emilia says – rattled by the look on my face. ‘I mean, he said you sleep around a lot – that it’s just a sex-thing. That you … do things … I mean … that you’re …’

  ‘A Lady Sex Adventurer? Yes. Yes I am,’ I say, to relieve her awkwardness. ‘I’m a Swashfuck-ler. I’m Indiana Bones!’

  ‘That’s so cool. I’d like to be that, too,’ Emilia says. ‘A Lady Sex Adventurer!’

  And we clink glasses, in a toast, to Lady Sex Adventurers.

  And in my tiny, weaselly drunk mind – desperate not to go anywhere near the shame that sits, on the lawn, looming over me – I make a decision, to save my pride.

  I decide I will show that I’m okay with this humiliating situation I knew nothing about – and that the best way to do that is to get off with Emilia. This is how I will remain top dog, in this situation: I will get off with the girl he likes best. After all, everyone is bisexual after 11pm.

  Thirty seconds later, I’m finding that kissing a girl is weird. Well, this girl, anyway. She’s so soft, and her face is so small, that it’s almost like nothing’s happening at all. It’s a tiny, gentle, lapping thing – like kittens nuzzling their mother. But that’s cool. Who doesn’t like kittens? I like kittens. I kiss on.

  On the lawn, I can see the others have stopped playing their game, and are watching us.

  From the lawn, I can hear Tony say, appreciatively, ‘She’s so filthy.’

  I thrill to hear him say it again.

  ‘That’s right!’ I think to myself. ‘I am absolutely filthy! Listen to Tony, telling everyone of my legend!’

  I redouble my kissing-Emilia efforts – stroking her face; putting my hands in her hair. I’m putting on a show.

  After a few minutes of this hushed watching from the lawn, Tony leaves the others, and comes to sit at the table, next to us. He smokes a cigarette, silently – occasionally reaching across to stroke Emilia’s hair, or mine – but otherwise, nothing is said.

  In the end, I break off the kissing, and look across at Tony, and say, ‘Hello,’ in a sexy way.

  ‘Oh – don’t stop on my account,’ Tony says, in his slow, low way that means he’s very turned on. ‘I’m glad you girls are getting on so well.’

  But I notice he’s stroking her hair more than mine.

  And so it is my little weasel-mind – hammered on MD 20/20 and gin – that decides to get back in control of this situation by taking it up a gear: suggesting a threesome. I cannot argue with my logic – mainly because I am pissed. But my deduction is that if I am the less-fancied girl who, nonetheless, then suggests the most-wanted thing, I will become the most-fancied girl again.

  And when Tony gently takes Emilia by a tendril of her hair, and pulls her away from me so he can kiss me, I think, ‘Yes! I have done the right thing!’

  And when he then kisses her, I think, ‘Well, he’s just being polite. And besides, it was all my idea. I’m still in charge here.’

  I stroke Emilia’s hair while he kisses her – just so I’m joining in.

  ‘So outrageously filthy,’ he says, pulling back – staring at me, and then her, pupils blasted.

  ‘Well, this is all going splendidly!’ I think. ‘I am about to go up a Sex Level!’

  ‘Excuse me for a moment,’ I murmur, standing up – and then almost falling over again. I have had a lot of gin since I last stood up. ‘I’ll be back in a … Sex-mo.’

  Waving ostentatiously over my shoulder, in the manner of Carmen Miranda, I walk very carefully back into the house, and go up to our bedroom. I have to be ready for my first threesome! Gotta look good for this!

  I take my eyeliner out of my bag, and apply it until my eyes are circled with black. I apply underarm deodorant – gotta smell nice for the girl! Girls are picky! – and then perfume: Body Shop Vanilla Musk, the nineties’ most sophisticated way to cover up fag-smoke. I then go to the toilet, and clean my teeth while sitting there. I am like a dirty goth bride, preparing for her bisexual wedding night.

  The bathroom window is open, and I can hear the conversation, slightly muffled, outside. Tony is talking to Christian, Will and Frances – they are clearly being encouraged to leave. I stop cleaning my teeth for a minute.

  ‘We should go for a walk,’ Will is saying. ‘To the pub.’

  Christian seems reluctant.

  ‘I’m tired,’ he says, petulantly.

  There’s a scuffle, and some laughter – Tony appears to be mock-fighting with Christian.

  ‘Ow!’ Christian says – still laughing. ‘Alright! Alright!’

  Then he says something in a murmur I cannot hear, but which ends with, ‘… your bit of rough.’

  And then the sound of them leaving – bottles clinking, Christian moaning, ‘Well, I just hope it’s not too full. I don’t want to stand at a bar.’

  I sit there for a moment, trying to absorb what I’ve just heard.

  A bit of rough. I’m his … bit of rough.

  And for the second time this evening, I tell myself how to deal with this situation. I order myself to be okay with this. I will be whoever the situation demands. Fake it ’til yow make it, kidder. I will be his piece of rough – like when Rochester is won over by the impoverished Jane Eyre. Or … like Julia Roberts and Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. There is nobility in this! I have triumphed against the odds of society, sexually – simply by being me! I’m two-for-one here! I’m the working-class S&M threesome girl! My sexual CV has all the kinks in it! Man, I am well-qualified. Hot tramp, I love me so.

  But when I get back onto the terrace and greet my two future fuckees with a cheerful, ‘So – let’s get this threesome started!’, I see Tony grinding Emilia up against the wall, with his hand in her bra.

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘I see you … already have.’

  I stand there for a minute.

  For the first thirty seconds, I have absolutely no thoughts at all – I feel like Wile E. Coyote when he goes over the side of a cliff, and his legs are just bicycling in the air. Is this bad? Is it bad I feel bad? Should I tell me not to feel bad?

  ‘Er … hello?’ I say.

  Tony and Emilia turn to face me. Emilia is totally pissed, but still has her hands on Tony’s chest. Tony holds a hand out to me.

  ‘Come and join us!’ he says, cheerfully.

  I don’t move.

  ‘Come – join us!’ he says again – arm still outstretched.

  I actually can’t think of anything to say.

  ‘You look … unhappy,’ he says – as if geeing up a sulky child.

  ‘Well,’ I say. I reach around for the locus of my discontent. All I can do is state fact: ‘You had your hand in Emilia’s bra.’

  ‘You agreed to a t
hreesome!’ Tony says.

  ‘Well, yes – but then you started having a twosome,’ I say, slowly.

  ‘A twosome is contained within the threesome. It’s inherent,’ Tony says, laughing. He comes over to me – leaving Emilia against the wall, looking confused – and kisses me. ‘Come on, darling,’ he says. ‘Let me show you something really dirty.’

  And suddenly – for the first time in years – I get angry. I have always, previously, shied away from anger – I do not like the way it speeds your thoughts and emotions up; it feels too like anxiety to be welcomed. Anger is like putting acid into already boiling water – it makes things effervesce uncontrollably. It makes you act and speak with dangerous rapidity, and I already feel too rapid.

  But now – now, it feels like an unexpected rain-burst of power. It feels like – if I can get a handle on it – the solution to this troublesome day. For I am indignant. I am affronted by this. My carriage has arrived, it’s a high dudgeon, and I am getting into it.

  ‘Let’s get one thing straight,’ I say, pushing my top hat back into place, and trying to keep on top of this galloping rage. ‘Let’s get one thing very straight. I – am the dirty one here. I – am the sex-expert. I have had more fucks than you’ve had hot dinners. I was coming, thinking about talking lions in Narnia while you were doing your fucking A levels. I’ve actually read de Sade – rather than just listening to the Velvet Underground whilst wearing stupid pointy boots. I’ve had sex with a penis so big it nearly killed me. I’ve seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, and c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate – in my pants. It’s pervy for me to be fucking you. Not the other way round. I pulled you.’

  I’ve started crying whilst saying this. Not from sadness, but from … sorrow that, I’ve had to say it. That I stupidly came here, with this stupid boy.

  ‘I was objectifying you,’ I continue, trying to suppress any sobs that will ruin this soliloquy. ‘I have a scorecard for shagging nobs. I’m on a fucking Gold Run for banging you. I’m getting high-fives down the Working Men’s Club. We make our own amusements on the council estates. I’m not … your bit of rough. You’re … my bit of posh.’

  He’s my drummer. He’s my drummer. All these men I’ve fucked are my drummers.

  I look at him – just staring at me. And behind him – Emilia. Also staring. I see what I have done: I have launched into a drunken rant about the class system. I know what this means. I’ve finally turned into my dad. There is only one way I know to end a speech like this.

  ‘I am the bastard gypsy Jewish son of Brendan Behan,’ I say, ‘and one day, YOU FUCKERS WILL BOW DOWN TO ME.’

  I pause. Rich and Emilia are still just looking at me.

  ‘I’m going away now – to smoke an angry Marxist cigarette,’ I conclude.

  I smoke it all the way up the stairs, and into our bedroom, even though you’re not allowed to smoke in the house. I then put the cigarette out in the small clay bowl that Tony made when he was seven – grinding it out on his mum’s melted Star Trek face – and pass out in the bed.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I wake amidst the opulence of the dawn chorus – the yolk and phoenix feather, and the particular pearly grey leather of a cockatoo’s feet, which would make a beautiful Chesterfield sofa, at the price of 50,000 dead cockatoos. Birds are outrageous. Listen to them singing up the sun! Their voices fill its limp golden skin until it floats up over the horizon, like a glowing zeppelin of noise; oh God, I’m still drunk.

  I fall back asleep, and wake again at eight. It is bright.

  I get out of bed – Rich is still sleeping, sprawled where he must have thrown himself, hours after I left him, love-bites on his neck. What a cunt – dress, pack, find the Yellow Pages, and order a cab.

  Sitting on the front doorstep, smoking a fag as I wait for it to arrive, I feel a sudden, unexpected moment of calm – as if I’ve pressed ‘pause’ for a second, on a life that seems to have been on ‘fast-forward’ for some time.

  Watching the smoke coil upwards, like an Indian Rope Trick, I look at my hands, and think, ‘Those look like the hands of a grown-up. You have grown-up hands, now, Johanna. Grown-up hands smoking a grown-up fag, the night after preventing a sex debacle.’

  I feel excitingly … free. Things were going to happen to me last night that I did not like – and I stopped them. I have never prevented my own doom before. I have never stood in the path of certain unhappiness, and told myself – lovingly, like a mother to myself – ‘No! This unhappiness will not suit you! Turn around, and go another way!’

  I have previously been resigned to any and all fates ahead – mute and compliant; worried about seeming weird, or unfuckable, or about making a fuss.

  But now, things have changed: it seems I am now the kind of girl who can instigate a threesome – then cancel a threesome, then order a cab. I am in charge of me. I can change fates! I can re-order evenings! I can say ‘Yes’ – and then ‘No’! This is new information to me. I like this information. I like all information about me. I am compiling a dossier. I am my own specialist subject.

  When the cab arrives, it’s trailing behind Tony’s parents’ BMW. They both crunch up the gravel driveway, amusingly disparate – the gleaming BMW, for them, and the battered Ford Fiesta with the huge aerial, for me.

  His parents get out of the car carrying their overnight bags, and walk to greet me. Putting my rucksack on my back, I go over to shake their hands.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Rich, thank you for having me over,’ I say, in my poshest voice. ‘You have a very beautiful house. A very, very beautiful house. But a very bad son.’

  And I get into the cab, and drive away.

  On the train back to London – dizzy with hangover – I realise that I am not going out with Tony Rich any more. Partly because I’ve drunkenly shouted at him, but mainly because I never was in the first place. And that, actually, I had never really wanted to. I had just acted like a peasant girl, desperate to be wed, who offered herself to the first dashing pedlar who visited the village, selling hair-ribbons, and tonics.

  Pressing my head against the window, I have a little chat with me.

  ‘So, what do you want?’ I ask me, in a friendly manner. ‘Where do you want to be? What is good for you? Who do you actually like?’

  And that is obvious: John Kite. I would like to sit and talk with John Kite. I would like to go and have a conversation with John Kite where we do all the things we do together: agree on things, and end each other’s sentences, and feel like we are the best two people in the world. And I know where I will find him: The Good Mixer, in Camden. This is where he will wash up, if I wait long enough. I am getting off this train, and I am going to find John Kite.

  I go in there, at midday. An otherwise unremarkable old man’s pub, in Camden, 1993, the Mixer is essentially the Cheers of the indie-music world: if you sit at the bar long enough, all the regular cast-members will turn up. James from the Manic Street Preachers, Norman from Teenage Fanclub. Miki from Lush. Blur seem to have the pool table permanently reserved – pints on the table beside them. As I am but a very minor cast member of this indie sitcom – basically Cliff’s mum – I nod at the ones who I vaguely know, then put my head back down, head for an empty corner-table, light a fag and wait for John Kite.

  At 1.30pm I feel restless with waiting and go outside, where the rickety market-stalls are, and buy a battered copy of Ulysses and a bag of tangerines. Sitting on the kerb I peel the tangerines, reading Joyce in the weak-tea sun. I’ve never tried to read Joyce before. For twenty minutes, I enjoy how he appears to be writing across all space and time – his past, present and future; as himself, and a dog, and the sea itself – and then I realise I’ve read the same page twice, go, ‘Oh God, I can’t handle this right now,’ and buy Viz instead from the mini-mart opposite.

  Finally, at 2.59pm, when I’m back in the pub, John advents – shabby linen suit, brogues, gold rings. He’s with a group of people – but walks away when he sees
me, and looms over my table, beaming, face like a lighthouse; already a little drunk.

  ‘Duchess!’ he roars. ‘Christmas in August – delivered to my pub, to my very table, for my delight! What a salve to incipient cantankerousness you are!’

  ‘How you doing?’ I say, pretending everything is normal.

  ‘Oh, you know,’ Kite says, lighting a cigarette and sitting down beside me, forcing me to budge up. ‘Westward-leading, still proceeding. What’ – he looks at me – ‘is happening with you?’

  I burst into tears.

  Kite spends three minutes trying to calm me down – ‘Dutch! Dutch!’ – and then just hugs me with his huge arms, so I am completely wrapped up, and inside him, like an owl inside a hollow tree. This is my most enjoyable crying ever – if all crying were this pleasant, I would do it more often.

  I slow down the crying – partly because I’m feeling better, and partly so I can illicitly inhale Kite’s cologne – and then shudder to a halt, like a car that has slalomed down a hill, and finally come to rest in a hedge.

  When I emerge from his arms, I see that the bar man has brought a bottle of gin to the table, and Kite has poured us both a measure.

  ‘Go and wash your face,’ Kite says, gently, ‘and then we will sit here and set the world to rights. And if you’re unhappy for one second more – some cunt will RUE me!’

  I go to the toilet, and wash all my streaky make-up off. I start to apply Dolly Wilde’s face to my own again – then decide I can’t be bothered. Kite’s seen my old face, without make-up, before. There’s no need to make this effort.

  When I return, his entourage have gone – ‘I set them free, to wander’ – and he is holding up a glass of gin to me. I take a sip, and immediately feel calmer.

  ‘I got into a huge argument with Tony Rich in front of his real girlfriend, and dumped him. I don’t think I can go to nice places, or talk to nice people,’ I say, eventually. ‘I don’t think I can do that. I belong in the ghetto, with my people.’

  ‘Bollocks – you would adorn the Palace of the Doge,’ Kite says, firmly.