We watched Jerry and the girl, for a while.
“I guess, in the future, we will be friends with that girl,” I said, finally, looking at Jerry’s new inamorata with pity. “Next time we bump into her, we’ll end up bitching with her, in the toilets, about him. Comparing notes on bad sex.”
“Oh—she’s not having bad sex,” Suzanne said, decisively.
Jerry had gone to the toilet—leaving the girl standing alone—and Suzanne grabbed my hand, and walked over to the girl.
“What are you doing?” I asked, panicked.
“I’m just going to go and . . . give her some relevant information,” Suzanne said, dragging me behind her.
“Suzanne, no! Let’s not. I’m too drunk, I don’t want to make a fuss. It’s none of our business. And I’ve probably remembered it all wrong, anyway.”
I didn’t like this at all—I had the cold, panicky feeling you had as a kid in a playground fight, when the teachers suddenly appeared, and you knew you were about to get into serious trouble.
Despite my writhing to get free, Suzanne literally pulled me to the girl.
“Hiya!” Suzanne said to the girl, who looked at us cautiously. “Can we just have a quick word with you?”
“I’m here against my will. I’m just here to say ‘Hello!’” I clarified.
“Hello?” the girl said back. Suzanne extended her hand, for a handshake. The girl shook it, still looking confused.
“I’m Suzanne, and this is Dolly, and we’re from the Feminist Avenging League Against Sexual Predators,” Suzanne said. “We are a new service—we’re here to give fellow women information about bad men,” she continued, conversationally. “And you are currently being chatted up by the Number One bad guy on our Most Not-Wanted list. Jerry Sharp is a bad man, sexually.”
“Personally, I still believe in total freedom of choice! You shag who you want!” I said, still wriggling in the opposite direction.
“We have both had sexual experience of Mr. Sharp, and so we are simply passing on the fruits of our research to you, in the name of sisterly solidarity,” Suzanne said. “We seriously advise you not to have sex with this man.”
I could see Jerry was returning to the bar, and I was so desperate to escape this situation that I kicked Suzanne in the shin. Unfortunately, she was wearing knee-high biker boots, and didn’t feel anything.
“He tried to watch his sitcom whilst I gave him a blow job, and videoed my unwilling colleague here, during coitus,” Suzanne continued, pleasantly, as Jerry joined us.
He looked at us both, confused, for a minute, and then recognized us both—me still thrashing around, trying to leave.
“Well, hello, Dolly,” he said. “Whoah. Wait. That would make a great title for a film.”
I gave in, and stopped trying to escape. It was happening.
“What are you two girls doing here?” Jerry asked—still very pleasantly.
“They said you’re a bad man,” the girl said. “I don’t really understand.”
“Word gets around, Jerry,” Suzanne said, slurring slightly, but still firm. “We’re just letting this girl know what your whole deal is.”
Jerry looked at us both, and the penny dropped.
He turned to the girl. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “You’ve seen Fatal Attraction?”
This was the worst thing he could do.
“Don’t fucking Glenn Close us!” Suzanne shouted. “Don’t fucking Glenn Close this situation, you Michael Douglas cunt. I could give an interview next week and tell this whole fucking story.”
“And what story would you tell?” Jerry said, still being flippant. “That you and your friend both had totally consensual, amazing, dirty sex with me? Great exclusive. I don’t think I’m going to look bad in that situation. Tell away.”
“Did you consent to being filmed, Dolly?” Suzanne asked. Her grip on my wrist was iron.
“Uh, I don’t—I don’t think so. I mean, I’ve never wanted to be filmed. But it doesn’t matter. My motto is, you know . . . let’s let bygones be bygones!”
“I seem to remember Dolly was very keen to have sex with me,” Jerry said. “She galloped into that taxi, didn’t you, darling?”
“But she didn’t ask you to film her?” Suzanne persisted.
“She was too busy saying ‘Do it harder,’ as I recall,” Jerry said, still pleasantly. “She said it a lot. So I felt it was implied.”
I recoiled.
There was a pause.
“You enjoying that drink?” Suzanne said, gesturing to Jerry’s glass, in his hand.
“I was enjoying it more a moment ago, to be honest,” Jerry replied, smoothly.
Suzanne nodded—then threw her drink into his face.
Cranberry juice dripped from his hair. The people around us stopped talking, and stared. Everything went quiet.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he asked, momentarily stunned.
“Well, you’re already drinking,” Suzanne replied. “So I presume you’d enjoy having one in the face, as well. I don’t need to ask you. It’s implied.”
Jerry stood there for one second more—and then went berserk.
“You fucking crazy bitch,” he roared. “What the fuck do you think you’re playing at? What the fuck are you doing?”
A bouncer appeared beside us.
“This is a metaphor for consent, Jerry—a fucking living metaphor for consent!” Suzanne screamed, as the bouncer put his hand on her arm.
“Let’s go,” I said to Suzanne.
“That’s a good idea, love,” the bouncer said, moving us toward the exit. “Out.”
I panicked. I didn’t want to miss John. I had a date with John! “No—I don’t want to leave,” I cried. “We have passes! We’re here for the aftershow!” I showed the bouncer my AAA pass.
He pushed us toward the door.
“You can’t throw us out! I’m friends with the band!” I said, wriggling to get free.
“No alcohol for people who are already intoxicated,” he said, taking my pass off. “And that’s you. Licensing laws.”
“I don’t want to stay at this crappy party anyway,” Suzanne sniffed, starting to leave.
“I do!” I said, thinking of John. “I really do!”
“You bitches are dead. You are fucking dead,” Jerry said, before realizing everyone was staring at him and regaining his composure.
“Haha—mad exes,” he said, shrugging. “You don’t have one for ages—then two come along at once.”
There was nervous laughter.
He looked at the girl—but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at me. She suddenly realized something.
“Hang on—aren’t you Dolly Wilde?” she said. “You wrote that thing in The Face—about how teenage girls should have sex with famous people.”
She looked at Jerry, and then to me again, confused.
“Yes, teenage girls should have sex with famous people,” I said, as the bouncers ushered us away. “Just not him.”
I was being pushed through the doorway, in a tangle with Suzanne.
“It’s quite a complex issue, really!” I offered, finally, as we were ejected into the stairway. “I may have to write another thousand words about it! Check next month’s edition for further clarification!”
The last thing I saw was the girl standing there, looking very alone, as Jerry put his arm around her, and glared after us.
“Got you taped,” he mouthed—and then smiled. It was not a kind smile.
It took a very long time to find a cab—as I was being sick into a bin, from the horror, and cabdrivers tend not to favor those potential customers.
By the time I got home, after dropping Suzanne off—“Wasn’t that brilliant?” Me: “Um”—there were three answerphone messages from John.
The first—with the roar of a party in the background—was, “Where are you, honey? I’m at the aftershow—I can’t find you. I thought we were going to piss off together, and chat beautiful balls? I n
eed to download.”
The second was far more slurring: “Babe, I don’t know where you are. I’m too pissed to go home yet. We’re going on to the Groucho now—I hate all these cunts. Why aren’t you here?”
The third was just the sound of people laughing, and John breathing, then sighing, “Dutch? Dutch?” in a puzzled voice, before hanging up.
Part III
20
The next morning, I wake up very anxious.
It’s all very well for Suzanne to noisily confront Jerry in a public bar, in front of the entire music industry, but my problem is that I don’t know enough about having sex to be able to say, with confidence, “What Jerry did was one hundred percent wrong.”
Sex is so mysterious—I mean, half of it happens inside you. How crazy is that?—that I just don’t know if “a man filming your shit shag” is wrong. I’ve only ever had six sexes, and I’ve never read a definitive checklist of what “normal” sex is. There are no official guidelines on it. You cannot look it up at the library, as with literally everything else in my life. Maybe people are having “Jerry sex” all the time—and I am simply revealing my terrible inexperience if I wail, “Actually, I didn’t want you to do that!”
I don’t want to say, outright, that I hated the sex with Jerry, because it might well be that this kind of sex is like olives: at first, you gag, and can’t understand why people go on about it; but if you keep trying then, eventually, you get it. You are rewarded for your persistence, and start to love the video-sex with Jerry/Olives! You are a sexually sophisticated grown-up now, that smells of olives and sexual daring!
I really want to be a sexually sophisticated grown-up that smells of olives and sexual daring.
However, I also only want to have sex that I actually like. And I did not like that sex.
The ultimate problem with Jerry is that I can’t work out which of the two available truths about our shag would upset me more:
That I have been sexually naive and shocked about something that, actually, is perfectly normal; or
That I have actually been badly abused by a massive sex case.
Both of those are things I don’t want. But they’re my only options. Which is why I have been resolutely trying to forget the whole thing.
And now, in the midst of all this confusion, Suzanne has waded into war, and turned my vagina into a feminist battleground. That was not what I had planned for my vagina at all. I’d always been gunning for something more like “a well-loved public space, with limited parking,” instead.
This whole thing is making me very anxious. I decide to ring Suzanne, and tell her we need to apologize. Just to calm everything down. That’s the right thing to do. You should never instigate a full-blown nuclear Gender War when you’re feeling a bit wobbly.
However, when I dial her number, it rings for ages, before she finally picks up the phone, drops it—and, before I can say anything, shouts, “Whoever you are, fuck off until midday” in a very croaky voice, before slamming the phone down again.
Although this is a very Suzanne thing to do—it is only 10:00 a.m.—it doesn’t help my anxiety, or paranoia, so I ring Zee, for reassurance. Talking to Zee is always like eating a lovely baked potato. He is the human carbohydrate.
“How you doing?” I ask, sitting in bed, feeling pale.
“Bit stressed,” Zee says, mildly. “Suzanne’s supposed to be in the studio right now, doing vocals. Whenever I ring her up, she says ‘Fuck off until midday’ and puts the phone down. So far, the sound of her silence has cost me two hundred seventy quid. There goes my mum’s sofa.”
“Can I ask your advice?” I say.
I fill him in on last night—on Jerry, and the girl, and basically calling him a sexual pervert. “And now I feel like there’s a load of bad vibes, and that I should apologize to Jerry—make everything better again.”
“And what, exactly, would you apologize for?” Zee says, slightly confused. “Giving some friendly advice to a potential sexual victim?”
“When you say it like that, it sounds so reasonable!” I say.
“Well, it is reasonable. You’re allowed to tell people things,” Zee says, simply. “You can say how you feel. You can share your knowledge. That’s a thing humans do.”
“But it’s causing such a fuss,” I wail. “I don’t like it.”
“Sometimes, just by being alive, you cause a fuss,” he says. “Life is fussy. Look, I’ve got to go—got my alarm call to put into Suzanne. Take care. Call me later if you’re worried. But do not apologize to Jerry.”
I wander around the flat for a while, wondering what to do. Everything seems a bit . . . wrong. John, Suzanne, Zee, me—no one’s in a great place. We are all stuck. Life has become weighty. The fruit machine of London seems jammed. What would make all of this better?
I run a bath, to soak my hangover, and stare at my breasts, floating on top of the water.
“What shall I do, tits?” I ask.
They carry on floating there, looking a bit confused. I guess most of the time, they can’t see anything—they are essentially blindfolded, inside my bra, like birds of prey. They must be so surprised every time they come out! They’re either in a bath, or being pawed by a random. Surprise!
“One day, I’ll fill you in on all the stuff that happens in between,” I promise them. “Mostly, it’s just me typing.”
It is, as I idly wobble my breasts, and promise them a better life, that I realize what might just make everything better, for everyone: a party! A “We’re All Fucked” party! For surely, by bringing together a collection of troubled people—all loosely interconnected and/or already at odds with each other—and filling them with alcohol, things will immediately improve! If the fruit machine is jammed, just . . . knock it a little. Give it a bang on the side, to get things going again. That’s what a party is. A bang on the side of the machine. I’m going to bang the machine.
21
Two weeks later, and I am cleaning the flat from top to bottom. I have to admit, the place has become a bit of a tip.
This morning, I hauled six, bursting, rotting bags out of the kitchen, to the bins outside. I noticed that some of them had leaked bin juice all over the floor, and that when I picked them up, there were gangs of maggots thrashing around and swimming around in the goo, like some hellish vermin swimming pool. I am disappointed in myself.
“Your destiny was not to become a maggot farmer, Johanna,” I say, as I scoop them up with a J Cloth, and flick them into the garden. “You can do better than this.”
Intent on improving myself, I wait until there’s no one walking down the street, and then steal some tulips from next-door’s garden, and put them in a milk bottle on the table.
“You lift the soul, and delight the eye!” I tell them, as I start hoovering up the roughly six tons of molted dog hair from the carpet.
In my invitation to my follow partygoers, I have explained that I would provide the venue, and, in exchange, they must bring the booze (John), food (Suzanne), and soft drinks (Zee). This is because of the spirit of the collective, and also because I’m broke: The Face still haven’t paid me, and, last week, the electricity got cut off, and I had to go to an office on Bond Street, with cash, and pay to have it reconnected.
I took the dog with me, but she panicked on the underground, and tried to run down an up escalator, and then whined constantly while I was queuing to pay. I’m surprised major facilities such as electricity don’t fast-track people who have dogs with them. Judging by how annoyed everyone looked, it would benefit everyone, and it would certainly be kinder to dogs.
Having the electricity turned back on was a mixed blessing, however. While it was off, I’d lit the flat with candles—several of them on top of the TV. When the electricity came back on, I realized that the wax from the candles had dripped down the back of the TV, and into its innards. I realized this because the TV then exploded, quite dramatically.
Today—as part of my salon preparation—I hump the dead TV
out to the next-door neighbor’s skip, but the skip is too full for me to fit it in. I can’t believe they’re so lazy about this. Sort your skip out, guys!
I leave it on the pavement next to the skip, instead. I’m getting things done.
Zee was the first to turn up. Of course he was. He had a bottle of Ribena, a bottle of Dandelion & Burdock, and a bottle of cream soda.
“All the best ones!” I said. “Quick—before Suzanne gets here: how’s the album going?”
“Oh my word,” Zee said. “She’s killing me. She says she’s scrapped everything, and started again. The stress is giving me gingivitis. It’s all gone to my gums.”
He looked more unhappy than I’d ever seen him.
“I’m going to pour you a bracing measure,” I said, splashing the Dandelion & Burdock into a mug. “You need it. Would you like to take up smoking? I find it helps.”
“Lung cancer would actually be more relaxing than this,” Zee said, sadly. “She’s driving me crazy. She just doesn’t seem to understand deadlines. Or money. Suzanne just doesn’t seem . . . scared. Of anything. She never worries.”
“I guess that’s the good thing about her, too,” I said, dubiously.
The doorbell rang.
On the doorstep was Julia. She was wearing her Wellington boots and her yellow mac, and was looking slightly put out at being here.
“Suzanne told me to come,” she said, observing my confusion.
“Oh!” I replied.
“I’m to stop her drinking more than five drinks, and I’m to put her in a taxi by midnight,” Julia recited, looking sour. “She’s being ‘professional.’”
“It’s a pleasure to have you here,” I said, gallantly.
“She’s really getting on my tits at the moment,” Julia continued. “Really, fuck all this. I trained as an architect. I could jack this in any time.”
She came in, and looked around for a drink.
“I’m so sorry—the drink hasn’t arrived yet,” I said, gesturing to a chair for her to sit down. “It should be arriving shortly.”