Hari Kunzru - Transmission

A few weeks later, on one of Nic’s guy Saturday nights, when their apartment was invaded by men with beer and snack-foods and a primal urge to swap Mariners stats, she found herself at the Iron Bar, a vaguely fetishy mixed-gay place in the city, filling in Tori’s crowd about that evening at the mall and the world of Arjun Mehta more generally. Arjun, she explained, was actually a sweet guy. He wasn’t really misogynist or homophobic, just naive. Get him on the subject of computers and you almost forgot what a freak he was.

Maybe it was cruel to bring up the virgin thing, maybe it made her a bad person, but it was Saturday night and she did it and it got a laugh. I’m telling you he’s as fresh as the day he stepped off the plane. You’re kidding. How old? Carlos (predictably) said oh give me his phone number. Tori (ditto) started talking about strap-ons. In the air hung the consensus idea that it would be somehow entertaining to do something about Arjun. The topic cycled back intermittently through the evening. Scenarios were imagined, positions devised. For a while an extended riff on the word deflower took hold of the table. Somewhere later down the line Chris did half an Ε and a line of speed and some time after that, when she had done a couple more lines and was bored with the music at the club but not yet ready to face drunken horny badbreath post-guynight Nic, it started to feel like a good idea to actually go through with it, to take another half a pill and go round to Arjun’s place and fuck him.

This, she thought as she slid around in the back seat of a taxi, was going to make a great story. She was getting little fluttery rushes and the idea of being touched seemed really good, and she took sips of bottled water and chewed gum and didn’t really think about what she was going to do or say when she got there. He was a guy. She was going round to offer him sex. Lab-rat stuff. What could be more simple? Her serotonin-drenched brain pulled up a sugar-coated version of Arjun, somehow less gawky than lean, less sallow than mahogany-skinned, a tender young man in more or less matching clothing, ready to be initiated into the art of love.

Standing outside Berry Acres, reality failed to bite. Arjun’s voice on the intercom was perplexed, but he buzzed her in, opening the door dressed in a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt with Hi from Seattle! printed over a picture of the Space Needle. Chris rose above this and dispensed her most seductive grin, which, in her narcotized state, somehow extended itself into a sort of street-corner leer, an expression to match a stained polyester suit.

‘Sorry, did I wake you up?’

‘No, no, I was working.’

She amped the grin up a little. ‘Aintcha gonna invite me in?’

‘Sure.’

She had never been inside Arjun’s apartment. It looked as if someone had gone dumpster-diving behind an electrical store and left what they didn’t want there. Computer equipment was everywhere, coated in a teenage-boy mulch of dirty plates, underwear and paper waste. The whole place smelled strongly of fried chicken. As she stood, swaying slightly, Arjun ran around, kicking a hole in the mess so they could sit down.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ he asked, hurriedly closing windows on his computer screen.

‘That would be a start. What were you doing, checking out porn?’

Arjun looked shocked. ‘No.’

‘I bet you were.’ She stepped over a dismantled tower case and a slew of Indian magazines, and started to clean a cup at the sink. Arjun bobbed up beside her.

‘I’ll do it,’ he said.

‘Just want a drink of water.’ She stroked his cheek. ‘Hello.’

‘Um, hello. So not coffee, then?’

Stroking felt good. She carried on.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked.

‘Oh, nothing. Give me a hug.’

‘What?’

She drew his arms round her. Obediently he squeezed. The warmth set off more MDMA shivers in her body.

Despite her euphoria, Chris could not ignore the substandard ambience of Arjun’s living space. The smell she could live with, but the ceiling light-fitting had a bare high-wattage bulb, which cast hard shadows on the piles of junk and the undecorated walls and particularly on the man she was hugging, making him look disturbingly cadaverous and unmahogany. From somewhere beneath a pile of chemical pillows came the faint sound of an alarm bell ringing. She ignored it and pressed on.

‘It’s too bright in here. You got any candles?’

‘Candles? Why? Are you expecting a blackout?’

She barged around, stumbling over something which felt mushy underfoot. Ignoring it, she switched off the main light and turned the bulb of the desk lamp to the wall.

‘There. Much better. Music?’

Arjun, bemused, headed for the computer. The decision was too important to leave to him, so Chris waved him off, sat down and browsed a directory of MP3S. Discarding the Indian film music left her with a limited choice. Arjun hovered at her shoulder. He seemed nervous at having her around his system. As high as she was, she could tell he had it configured to do something unusual. A lot of crummy-looking hard drives had been networked together, and before he switched it off an old fourteen-inch monitor was displaying some kind of constantly updating log. She settled (‘N Sync? Jesus) for a Moby album: semi-lame but OK. Lush strings and blues samples filtered into the room.

‘There,’ she said, putting her arms round him. ‘That’s better.’

Arjun’s back muscles tensed under her hands. This is all — I mean, it’s a — very nice surprise.’

‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’

‘You seem hot. Have you been taking exercise?’

‘No, baby, I came here for that.’

‘Really? How come? I don’t actually have any equipment or anything.’

She ignored the buzz of his voice and slipped one hand underneath his shirt, drifting away into a world of touch. His back felt smooth, warm. She nuzzled his neck. It was annoying that he was still talking. The important thing right now was to be naked.

‘Arjun?’

‘Yes?’

‘You seem stressed. Would you like a massage?’

‘Um — is that why you came? To give me a massage?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Well, I must say that’s very — I wasn’t really expecting — but I suppose that would be OK. I was more or less finished with —’

‘Arjun?’

‘Yes?’

‘Shut up. I mean stop talking. You don’t need to talk. Lie down and take your shirt off.’

He made some more incoherent protests, but, after clearing the bed of printouts and Pringle tubes, she had him more or less where she wanted him, prone on his stomach with her straddling his hips. She started kneading his narrow back. After a minute or two she took off her top and unhooked her bra. He had his eyes shut and didn’t seem to notice. When she slid a hand under the waistband of his shorts, he did notice: his buttocks clenched and his back went rigid. Struggling underneath her, he flipped on to his back, only to be confronted by the crowning artistic achievements of San Francisco’s Needle Bob, snaking over her naked torso.

‘What are you —’ She took his hands and put them on her breasts. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh.’

Some hours later the grey morning light revealed a scene of devastation. Since Chris’s contact lenses were glued to her eyes the world appeared mercifully hazy, but even with the visuals turned down she knew it was bad. Someone had filmed a splatter movie in her mouth. Someone else had administered a spinal tap. She had not slept, at least not in any meaningful sense of the word. Since Arjun stopped talking and started to breathe regularly and noisily through his mouth, she had been less aware of her surroundings at certain times than at others. Did that count? Carefully she lifted up his arm and slipped out of bed. With her first pace she stubbed her toe on something sharp and had to put a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. The message was clear. It was imperative to leave. This was a bad place with sharp things in it. This was a chicken-smelling place of horror.