Ali Smith - Girl Meets Boy

Yeah, but the world now divides into people who think it’s good fun looking up pictures on the net of women fucking horses and dogs, and people who don’t, Paul says. If you need me to come and get you, call me later.

Paul is very uptight, I think when I press the button to hang up.

I don’t see why he can’t just pretend to find it funny like the rest of us have to.

(Maybe he is gay.)

So what about that other work experience girl, then? Norman is saying when I get back through. The one who’s not Chantelle. What about work-experiencing her?

I’ve other things in mind, Dominic says looking at me.

I look above his eyes, at his forehead. I can’t help noticing that both Dominic and Norman have the exact same haircut. Norman goes to the bar and comes back with a full wine bottle. He and Dominic are drinking Grolsch.

I can’t drink all that, I say. I’m only out for one or two, I’ve got to get back.

Yes you can, Norman says. He fills the glass up past the little line, right to the very top, so that it’s almost spilling over onto the table, so that to drink anything out of it at all I’m going to have to lean over and put my mouth to it there on the table, or pick it up with superhuman care so as not to spill it.

We’re off for a curry in a minute, Dominic says. You’re coming too. Drink it fast.

I can’t, I say. It’s Monday. There’s work tomorrow.

Yes you can, Norman says. We work too, you know.

I drink four glasses filled to the top like this. It makes them roar with laughter when I bend right down to drink it. Eventually I do it so that that’s what it will do, make them laugh.

At the restaurant, where everything smells too strong, and where the walls seem to be coming away from their skirting boards, they talk about work as if I’m not there. They make several jokes about Muslim pilots. They tell a long complicated joke about a blind Jewish man and a prostitute. Then Brian texts Dominic to say he can’t come. This causes a shouted dialogue with him down the phone about Chantelle, about Chantelle’s greggy friend, and about whether Chantelle’s greggy friend is there with Chantelle right now so that Brian can ‘watch’. Meanwhile I sit in the swirling restaurant and wonder what the word greggy means. It’s clearly a word they’ve made up. It makes them really laugh. It makes them laugh so much that people round us are looking offended, and so are the Indian people serving us. I can’t help laughing too.

The word seems to mean, on the whole, that they don’t think the other work experience girl wears enough make-up to work, regardless of the fact she’s sixteen and should really know how to by now, as Norman says. That she wears the wrong kinds of clothes. That she is a bit of a disappointment.

That she’s a bit, you know, greg, Dominic says.

I think I’m beginning to understand, I say.

I mean, take you. You exercise, and everything. You’ve got a top job, and everything. But that doesn’t make you a greg. That bike you’ve got. You can get away with it, Norman says.

So the fact that I look all right on a motorbike means I’m not a greg? I say.

They both burst out laughing.

So it means unfeminine? I say.

I’d like to see her gregging, Norman says looking at me. You and that good-looking little sister of yours.

They roar with laughter. I am beginning to find the laughter a bit like someone is sandpapering my skull. I look away from the people all looking at us. I look down at the tablecloth.

Aw. She doesn’t like not knowing the politically correct terms for things, Dominic says.

Greggy greggy greggy. Use your head, Norman says. Come on. Free associate.

Dreggy? I say. Something to do with dregs?

Getting there, getting there, Norman says.

Go on, give her a clue, Dominic says.

Okay. Here’s a great big clue. Like the man at the BBC, Norman says.

What man? I say.

The man who got the sack for Iraq, who used to run the BBC until he let people say what they shouldn’t have, out loud, on the news, Norman says.

Um, I say.

Are you retarded? Greg Dyke. Remember? Dominic says.

You mean, the work experience girl is something to do with Greg Dyke? I say.

They both laugh.

You mean, she says things out loud that she shouldn’t? I say.

She’s, like, a thespian, Norman says.

A what? I say.

A lickian, Norman says. Well, she looks like one.

Like that freakshow who daubed the Pure sign that day, Dominic says. Fucking dyke.

(My whole body goes cold.)

Now there’s one trial I can’t wait to see come to court. I hope we all get to come to it, Norman is saying.

We will, Dominic says. They’ll need men for there to be any coming at a trial like that.

Just what I was telling Brian, Norman says. Be ready to step in, now, when the moment’s right.

You know, I say, it said in the paper this morning that teenagers who are gay are six times more likely to kill themselves than teenagers who aren’t.

Good. Ha ha! Norman says.

Dominic’s eyes cloud. Human species, self-patrolling, he says.

They start talking as if I’m not there again, like they did when they were talking about work.

See, that’s what I don’t get, Dominic says shaking his head, serious. Because, there’s no way they could do it, I mean, without one. So it’s like, pointless.

Freud defined it, Norman says (Norman did psychology at Stirling), as a state of lack. A state of lacking something really, you know, fundamental.

Dominic nods, grave-faced.

Exactly, he says. Obviously.

Adolescent backwardness. Marked underdevelopment, Norman says.

Yeah, but a really heavy case of underdevelopment, Dominic says. I mean, never mind anything else. Never mind how weird it is. Like, what gets me is, there’s nothing to do the job. Nothing to do the jiggery-pokery with. And that’s why Queen Victoria didn’t make rugmunch illegal.

How’s that? Norman says.

It was on Channel Four. Apparently she said there was no such thing, like, it didn’t exist. And she was right. I mean, when men do it, poofs, in sexual terms, I mean, it’s fucking disgusting and it leads to queer paedophilia and everything, but at least it’s real sex they have, eh? But women. It’s, like, how can they? I just don’t get it. It’s a joke, Dominic says.

Yeah, but it’s good, Norman says, if you’re watching and they’re both fuckable.

Yeah, but the real ones are really mostly pretty unfuckable, you have to admit, Dominic says.

(Oh my God my sister who is related to me is a greg, a lack, unfuckable, not properly developed, and not even worth making illegal.)

(There are so many words I don’t know for what my little sister is.)

Dominic and Norman are somehow roaring with laughter again. They have their arms round each other.

I have to go now, I say.

No you don’t, they say in unison and fill my glass with Cobra.

Yes, I do, I say.

I shake them off at the multi-storey. I dodge behind a car so they don’t know where I’ve gone. I wait there until the legs I can see moving about have disappeared. I hear them go up the stairs and I watch them fumble at the exit ticket machine until finally whichever one of them is driving finds the ticket, works out how to put it into the machine the right way and their car goes under the lifted barrier.

I throw up under a tree at the side of the road on my way home. I look up. The tree I’ve just been sick under is in full white blossom.

(Adolescent backwardness.)

(I am fourteen. Myself and Denise MacCall are in a geography classroom. It is interval. We have somehow managed to stay in; maybe Denise said she was feeling sick or maybe I did; that was how you got to stay in over interval. We often said we felt sick if it was raining or cold.