Читать книгу Meatspace - Nikesh Shukla, Nikesh Shukla - Страница 17

I wake up from a dream where Aziz follows me around a shopping centre with a toothbrush and toothpaste, telling me it’s time to brush my teeth because my breath smells of chutney.

I listen to Aziz singing to himself from bedroom to shower to kitchen to bedroom. I walk into the kitchen and switch the kettle on. I open the fridge. There’s no milk.

I sneak a look at the communal iPad, left on the kitchen table. He’s left his browser open on Teddy Baker’s Facebook profile.

Teddy Baker’s profile avatar is a close-up of his face, which, sans shit-eating grin and sunglasses doesn’t look so much like Aziz. There’s no obvious reason for why this brown guy has a white name. Bow tie aside, he looks ordinary, solid, just like one of the guys.

He lists his likes as ‘vigilante justice, weapons, Megadeth, PVC, abattoir politics’ but that’s it. The rest of his profile is sparse to the public. He has ‘liked’ Taylor Swift and the NRA. I hope ironically.

Aziz catches me from the doorway peering at his laptop. ‘You fraping me, bro?’ he asks.

‘Frape … what a lovely reappropriation of the word “rape”. Because outside of Facebook, making it look as if your friend is saying weird stuff is pretty much exactly what rape is.’

‘Mate, it’s just LOLZ.’

Aziz started off saying LOLZ in conversation because he thought it was funny – I had told him about Cara once Skyping me, me making a joke and her saying wearily, ‘Oh … LOL, etc.’ Aziz said she was a linguistics genius. Now it’s become a grating habit. I’ve long since given up trying to get him to stop.

‘Yeah … tell that to a rape victim,’ I say and leave the room to brush my teeth.

‘If I blog about the trip, do you promise to read it?’ Aziz asks me over breakfast. ‘So you can follow my adventures?’

‘You’re still going away then?’

‘I’ve called the tag “The Boy with the Bow Tie Tattoo”. You know I have to go.’

‘Catchy,’ I say dismissively. If he goes, who’ll look after me?

‘Will you tweet about it?’

‘You hate Twitter.’

‘I don’t hate Twitter. I’ve just got too much game for Twitter. Who cares about breakfasts and live-tweeting reality television. I just want people to read my blog. This is a writing thing. I want your respected followers, the writers and editors and whatnot, to know what I’m up to.’

‘Why would those ponces care?’

‘What? Don’t all your illustrious boring literati peeps like laughing?’

‘Not if it’s over some tattooed hooligan stalking a stranger off the internet. I’m a serious novelist now. Only serious novelist tweets.’

‘You’re right. I’ll use lots of metaphors,’ Aziz says, thumping the table.

‘Who cares what they think?’ I say, knowing in my heart of hearts that I care and thus wouldn’t want to associate myself with a bro/lad challenge for fear of loss of credibility points from the spurious few who bestow them.

Aziz’s bow tie tattoo is cartoonish. It’s huge. It covers the whole of his neck. He has chosen a thick red, like it’s the filling of a Jammy Dodger, like it’s jam, in fact. It covers up the scar, which probably makes it look darker and richer. His skin is smoother and newer in that part of his neck. It’s a proper dinner party bow tie. He looks like a clown on his day off.

Aziz grabs my arm and stares at my tattoo nodding furiously. He’s done this 3 or 4 times this morning. He tells me repeatedly to Facebook it, tweet it, Instagram it. I say no. I don’t want any of my family to see it. Or Rach.

Rach would have hated me getting a tattoo. Her and my dad. I feel like I’m 14 again, a rebel, a maverick on the edge with nothing left to lose. She has a tattoo of a rose on her foot. She got it when she was a student and regrets it. She avoids wearing flip-flops to ensure no one can see it. I once joked about getting a matching one and she punched me on the arm, hard. She’s not the boss of me anymore. And I always thought the tattoo was cute. I’d trace it when she was asleep. The game was to not wake her up by tickling her.

Meanwhile my family rule Facebook. It’s become their standard method of communication. When I first joined up, I was indiscriminate about adding people on sites like Facebook and Twitter. You never knew who you might stumble across: girls you liked, people you went to school with, possible networking opportunities. Also, I liked the idea of amassing numbers of people. It was addictive. Like heroin. A numbers game heroin. I got more discerning when the influx of my family arrived. When Dad joined up, and started adding middle-aged females and tagging me in his posts to them as his ‘son’, and I got a glimpse of who he was dating beyond abstract retold stories, I actively started looking at other sites my family hadn’t adopted. I love Vine.

There’s no way they’d let this tattoo slide. They interact with my every status update. Even with them on a family list, with restricted viewing, I know them – they’re too good, they’d find me and my tattoo and tell my dad. Even on the internet, you can still feel like an 11-year-old naughty boy.

Aziz puts his bowl in the sink. ‘Right,’ he declares. ‘I need to get ready for New Yoik. What happened to you last night anyway?’ I look at his back. I have minutes to make him stay. I have a reading tonight. I need him there. I haven’t done anything except go to the pub and the shop and the toilet. This is actual ‘outside’ business. I can’t breathe. I look at him.

‘Nothing, man. Absolutely nothing. I left the tattoo studio with the express intention of showing people my ink. I tweeted a picture of my arm wrapped in cling film.’

‘You didn’t Facebook it though?’

‘Nope. In case Dad saw it.’

Twitter was a safer haven in that my family was far from the zeitgeist, even though, counting all extended Indian relatives, I was related to enough people to stage an invasion of a small country. I deleted all the emails I’d received in the last few hours and prepared for my new life. I saw a Facebook message from my namesake asking ‘Add?!’, which I ignored and prepared myself for a night out I’d never forget. I ignored it because I felt guilty about not accepting his request. Dad called. I sent it to voicemail. Listening back to the message, he sounded drunk, saying something about ‘life being a journey’ – a misquote from what his brother had posted on my Facebook wall. Maybe they crib their Vedic quotes from the same website.

Going out with cling film on your arm doesn’t have the same impact as having a living, breathing tattoo to show. So, last night when I left the tattoo studio, instead of going to bars with my sleeves rolled up, I went to try to find Aziz and ran into my friend Mitch, who was always at the same pub every night, sitting at the bar, reading paperback fiction written by great middle-aged American men. Mitch admonished me for getting a tattoo.

‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?’ he said. I smiled.

‘Good to see you, Mitch.’

I met Mitch at a book reading I didn’t know anyone at. I was going out most nights and reading the same passage that would form the opening chapter of my book. I was anxious and hungry then. Mitch approached me afterwards and offered to buy me a drink. He gave me some editorial advice on my book, which I thought was pushy, but he did have a drink for me in his hand. Since then, he’s always been around, very supportive. Mitch thinks the end is nigh and the backs of his ilk will be the first against the wall.

‘But’ – he likes to remind me – ‘I’m the last generation of actual fighters. Any nerd tries to replace me, I’ll box his ears.’

‘It’s been a while,’ Mitch said, blowing hair out of his eyes. ‘Where have you been? Post-break-up solitude?’

‘Something like that,’ I replied, shrugging. As my arm lifted up, Mitch saw the contour of my tattoo.

‘What have you done? Is this your post-break-up statement? A tattoo? You cliché. You’re an idiot,’ he said. ‘Nay, a blithering wannabe-trendy idiot.’

‘Yeah, well … my brother made me do it.’

‘Brother? It is all go, isn’t it?’ he said. He paused. ‘Did you see the Samuel Beckett YouTube thing I put on your wall? It’s hilarious.’

‘I was busy dude, sorry.’

‘That’s you all over, Kit … you have a book out and you think you’re Samuel Beckett. You’ve changed.’

Mitch believed in only maintaining real relationships online. His Facebook friends were family and friends he knew. He was nothing like Aziz, who encouraged me to be a numbers whore to help spread the word about my work.

‘Bruv, truss in an Aziz,’ Aziz would tell me. ‘The more friends and followers you have, the more interactions you create. It’s all about interactions.’

Mitch was just offended I would let people in on my private life.

‘Sorry, Mitch,’ I said. ‘I very rarely go on Facebook. It’s become a quagmire of familial oppression.’

‘Why have an account?’

‘Because my family might be the only people who ever buy my book,’ I said, laughing. I looked around the pub. It was loud. There were quite a few drinkers. It felt okay being out. Just fine. I laid out the statistics for Mitch. ‘I have 843 Facebook friends, I am related to 207 of them, am good friends with another 234 of them, leaving 402 people I am acquainted with. The numbers don’t add up. That’s a lot of interactions, a lot of posts, a lot of Mafia invitations. So sorry I missed your Ginsberg thing.’

‘Beckett,’ Mitch corrected me. ‘Wait. You have 234 close friends? I don’t think I even know 234 people in the entire world.’

Mitch is my favourite person to hang out with apart from Aziz because they represent opposite ends of a spectrum. I’m either destined to be an over-confident buffoon like Aziz or a curmudgeon like Mitch. He is balding but still carries a comb in his blazer pocket. That vintage attitude is why I like him. I may find the concept of hankies revolting, but I’m glad for him having one. He’s Friendster in a Twitter universe, dial-up in a web 2.0 second life. He is my meatspace. Mitch likes to talk about the good ol’ days. I’ve missed him these last few months.

‘That’s cos you’re a barfly.’

‘Very true. But 234 people?’

‘Maybe I need to cull some people,’ I admitted.

‘You definitely do,’ Mitch said and shook his head. He went outside for a cigarette.

I could easily get rid of 400-odd people, I thought. I could reclaim my space. I could hide the ‘add’ button too. Make it harder to approach me. The only 3 requests in my ‘add’ folder were 3 people I didn’t know or have mutual friends with. And the only 2 people in my folder labelled ‘pending requests’ were Kitab 2 and new-to-Facebook Rach. Now she wanted to be friends. I’d left her hanging.

Mitch came back, stinking of fresh cigarette to add to the dull ache of old nicotine ingrained in his sports coat. ‘The reason I hate modern life,’ he declared, loud enough for those around us to hear, sermonising, ‘why I love books, is all this bullshit you’re saying … that’s what we’re reduced to, isn’t it? Etchings and imprints … Connections used to be important. Now it’s all selfies and sandwiches on Twitter. Now the very meaning of the word, it doesn’t mean shit. Associations have some weird cultural capital now.’

‘Innit,’ I said, to purposely undercut him.

‘Did you get a friend request from Rach?’ I nodded. ‘You know she has a new boyfriend?’

‘You’re Facebook friends with Rach?’

‘Oh, yes. Dunno why you don’t go out anymore.’

‘She dumped me. She said because I was a self-obsessed depressive.’

‘She does have a joie de vivre you don’t really do …’ he said, downing the rest of his pint and signalling for another 2.

‘I’m going through a lot of stuff, man.’

‘No need to act like a bore about it.’

‘Anyway, what’s your problem with Twitter?’

‘I don’t “do” Twitter. It’s all pictures of sandwiches and misspelled signs, no?’

‘Only for those who don’t use it properly.’

‘That’s what your feed is full of … Anyways, I hate how we’re all diminishing circles of actual friendship.’

‘What?’

‘All your followers and all your Facebook friends know your every movement. Your real friends know what you’re like. Where’s someone who knows both?’

‘That used to be Rach. But then she hated it when I was always online.’

‘Look at her now. She can’t get enough of the stuff.’

‘She’s a social animal,’ I mumbled. ‘Just another content queen.’

When I got home, I Googled Mitch to verify how off-radar he was. It didn’t take many search results to discover Mitch had a secret blog that no one knew about, called ‘The Weird Shit People Say to Me’. Of the entries, 3 could be attributed to me. I don’t mind.

‘I’m really excited about this trip,’ Aziz tells me as we’re sitting in his room. ‘I packed your camera, for the posterity.’

‘It is effectively yours. You use it all the time.’

‘How else can I document my lifestyle? No one would believe me otherwise.’

‘Just keep it,’ I said of the unwanted present Dad bought me Duty Free when he returned from a singles holiday to Prague last year.

‘Yeah, you can’t frame a decent shot.’

‘Decent framed pictures do rule the world.’

‘If only I could Instagram some of those sexcapades. The world isn’t ready.’

Aziz has packed enough underwear for a week, but only 3 t-shirts, because they’re his coolest. He bought a black vest that resembles the one Teddy Baker’s wearing in his photograph. He and I debate the word wife-beater. He ends it by telling me to man up, which irks me into a sulk. I then ask whereabouts in New York Teddy Baker lives.

‘Well, it says Brooklyn on his account,’ Aziz says, lifting his suitcase up and down like he’s weight training with it.

‘Wait, you didn’t message him?’

‘Nah, man, that’s part of the surprise.’

‘You’re going to just turn up? He’ll think you’re weird.’

‘Part of the challenge is getting through the awkwardness and getting to be best friends,’ Aziz says, downing his tea.

‘How do you know how to find him? You know New York’s pretty massive, right?’

‘Dude, give me some motherfrickin’ credit. I Googled him. I found his Facebook, his Twitter, his Foursquare and his Linkedin. I know where he works right now. I can see where he checks in on Foursquare or just follow his Twitter. Mate, I’ll find the guy. All I have to do is turn my wi-fi on.’

‘And your data roaming off. I ain’t helping you with another mobile phone bill.’

‘That was different. That was phone chat lines.’

‘Yeah, I’m not helping you pay another mobile phone bill because you’re too much of a dick to use your phone wisely.’

‘Fine, anyway, stop making this awkward for me. I was excited till I spoke to you. You know, Kit, you’re such a hangover depressive. You just gotta smiley face up. Smiley face up.’

Aziz points at me. I force a smile.

‘Yeah. Sorry, man.’

‘What’s your 5-point plan for your new tattoo? It’s new tattoo day. Today your life will change, just a little bit. And it’ll be fucking awesome.’

‘I dunno, get some breakfast, do some writing. I got a reading later. Whatever.’

‘Okay, so have you made a list of fit and female acquaintances you can impress with your tattoo? Have you made a list of places people might approach you and say, wow, that looks cool. Is that Hayley going to the reading?’ Aziz raises his eyebrows at me, waving air glasses up and down.

‘It’s not just for pulling girls. Is it?’ I say. ‘And yes she is.’

‘And now you’re finally single.’

I panic. I show him my arm. ‘Should it be so red?’

I show Aziz my arm. There are some inflamed red rings around the tattoo. He dismisses it. ‘Just put some moisturiser on it. It’ll be fine.’

Sick Charlie has given me nappy rash cream to quell the burn so I put that on. I’ve expressly been told that moisturiser isn’t great and petroleum jelly is worse. Aloe vera or baby rash cream is best for soothing 2 hours of skin rubbing. It burns a little. Just like an inflammation. It’s fine.

We hear a car horn beep twice outside, signalling the arrival of Aziz’s cab I called for him. I don’t want him to go. Last night was the first night I’ve not hung out with him in 6 months. Who’s going to keep me entertained? He wants to go. I don’t want him to go. I could ask him to stay. He probably won’t stay. He’s doing this for my good. Stop distracting me. Give me time to write. He clutches me and gives me a long slow cuddle. We have this thing where you hug and the first one to feel awkward or break the cuddle for the sake of practicality loses. Currently I’m losing 172–4 to Aziz. But I hold on because he’s my brother and I feel protective over him and he’s an impulsive funny man and he’s off to do something slightly stupid but I respect his desire to see things through.

And hell, at least he doesn’t sit there and over-analyse for an inordinate amount of time. Except he’s still holding on and I’m worried the cab will leave without him and we’ll have to wait for another one and he’ll miss his flight and it’ll be because I didn’t let go in time. I pull away.

‘You better get your cab, dude.’

Aziz smiles, crosses over to the chalkboard next to our fridge and changes 172 to 173. Damnit. I’ve been hustled.

‘See you man,’ he says.

‘Please take care and don’t do anything stupid with a bunch of strangers you found off the internet,’ I say, grimacing.

‘Read my blog,’ he says, throwing his hands out and waving them jazzily at me. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

‘Come back with both your kidneys.’

‘Promote my progress on Twitter.’

The cab beeps again.

‘Keep your passport in your pocket at all times.’

‘Blog comments are always welcome too.’

‘Just go.’

‘I’m going.’

‘I love you very much, Aziz.’

‘I know.’

The cab beeps its horn again and Aziz picks up his Eastpak and my suitcase and heads to the door. Instead of watching his cab pull away like a proper surrogate dad would, I go to the toilet and stare at myself topless in the mirror, trying to ingrain the new ‘me’ into my mind’s eye. I spend the next hour with my phone trying to take the best casual selfie of my tattoo for Instagram. Outside a car keeps sounding its horn before eventually leaving.