LOVE

BEN TURNED UP THIS AFTERNOON. I was celebrating the doctor giving me another sicknote and arguing in a nauseous no breakfast Carlsberg haze with Jewish Dave about whether Gordon Brown drank alcohol or not.

Ben turned up, unexpected, unannounced, because he’d been sent home from work and told to expect a disciplinary hearing. He’d sent an email with a funny picture of a midget in it to a colleague. The colleague’s manager, a woman of 5 foot who wasn’t a midget, thought it was about her. The video depicted a midget dressed as Ronald Macdonald riding a BMX over a ramp resting on some oil drums into a duck pond whilst some American voices whooped and hollered. The manager, who had ginger curly hair and cycled to work, made a formal complaint. Ben had been sent home at 1.00pm, and by 2.15 he was drinking Carlsberg with me in the Lescar.

When he’d arrived, he’d told me that he had the thirty quid he still owed me. He’d given a crisp twenty pound note out of which I’d bought several rounds. He’d paid for several rounds too and then tried to use the pub’s cash machine. It had told him that it couldn’t make the transaction and to refer to card issuer so he’d rushed out the pub and down the road and came back whinging about bank charges and could he borrow that twenty again. I got the money out of the pub’s cash machine.

We bought more pints and he started playing on the bandit. After he’d lost ten quid in fifteen minutes he came back over to the bar, shaking his simian head and resting both hands on the bar. I couldn’t find any consoling words, nor did I care.

He started moaning about his girlfriend then, exaggerating the hard Mancunian edges to his privately educated Wilmslow voice. “She’s getting right weird. Everything’s sweet, right? We’re doing all the sloppy stuff you do afterwards and I’m thinking I might be on for seconds and then she starts crying, right? Weeping is probably the word and she’s going,” he started speaking in a high-pitched approximation of an emotional female voice, “it feels so right, so nice, bein’ ‘ere with you, but it can’t go on.”

“When were this?” I ask. I’d quite liked his girlfriend.

“Erm, two days back, Monday.”

“So she chucked you on Monday, and now you’re gonna get done at work on a Wednesday. Great week.” I made no attempt to disguise the harshness of what I felt.

He thought I was joking. “Yeah,” he laughed, then went on, “but she hasn’t chucked me. I got a text off her last night…” His phone’s text message tone interrupted him. “Ey up, ey up, ‘ere we go.” His round brown eyes twinkled unpleasantly and he handed me his phone like a hospital looter sharing booty.

There was a message on the screen about wearing no underwear and feeling horny, spelt out in text message lettering with loads of 2’s, 4’s and 8’s. I laughed politely and, handing it back, asked, “Who’s that then?”

“You know that barmaid in t’Fountain in town, you know, the dirty looking one?”

“Blonde?” I knew exactly who he meant. A tired looking bar maid, thirty or so, stupid and bad mannered whose back tattoos and thong were always clearly visible when she was reaching into the bottle fridges. Although her face wasn’t unattractive, its hard lines and cynical stupidity made it seem much older than it was. The only words I’d exchanged with her were bewildered.

Ben nodded. “I shagged her last week,” he told me, “in the back office. Manager weren’t there, so she invited me round. Did her from behind over his desk.”

“Lovely,” I remarked. He laughed, missing the despair in my voice. “And she’s texting you know? There’s no wonder your lass, your proper lass, chucked you, you twat.” I felt myself spit the last word.

“Yeah, but she didn’t know about that. Or that lass in Broomhall, the student I shagged in t’front room of her flat. Her mate were in t’kitchen throwing up.” He gave a throaty chuckle that was truly revolting, necked his gassy lager and belched, a parody of manhood. Then he groped in his jeans pocket and pulled out some small change and a five pound note. He pretended to count it all.

“Mine’s a Carlsberg,” I told him.

“Yeah,” he replied, distractedly, then, “yeah,” more firmly. He ordered two pints from the new barmaid, a black haired round breasted student from Gloucester. Ben looked at her chest the whole time she poured the lager and when he gave her the money and when she gave him his change. Then he raised his eyebrows at me lasciviously and said, “Cheers!” and threw his face into his pint. Feeling tired, I agreed with a facial gesture and took a drink. We drank in silence whilst Ben’s eyes tried to absorb more breasts, this time on a young looking student girl in a flowery top who was ordering some soft drinks. I wished I was on my own.

Tags Processed