Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

‘What do you mean?’ Pete looks up at him, right hand round his beer glass, swirling his pint a little.

‘The fluoride. In the toothpaste?’ Dale’s hands are on his thighs, elbows poking out.

‘What about the fluoride?’ Pete picks himself up so that he’s not so low down any more. Straightens his back. Frowns as he listens.

‘Well, it’s been scientifically proven that there’s no use for fluoride at all. Fluoride has no benefit to cleaning teeth .’ Dale leans forwards, nodding.

‘So why’s it in all the toothpaste? And the tap water?’ Pete asks him.

Dale looks at him, raises a finger, points at him. ‘Keep us passive.’

‘Does fluoride make you passive?’ Pete drinks his whisky, winces.

‘Yep.’ Dale scratches the nape of his neck, runs his hand over his head. ‘Fucked up, eh? You know about the pineal gland?’ he asks, speaking low.

‘No,’ says Pete, dropping his eyebrows. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s your Third Eye,’ Dale whispers, tapping the space in the middle of his forehead. ‘A gland in the brain, in exactly the spot the Third Eye is in. It’s the part where visions and higher understanding are stored. It’s how you access higher truth.’ Dale nods, his fingertip paused at his forehead.

‘Right,’ says Pete, nodding.

‘Fluoride. ’ Dale pauses for effect, ‘calcifies the pineal gland. Blocks it.’ His eyes are wide, his voice a desperate whisper. ‘Stops it from being able to see beyond the here and now, to access the deeper worlds.’ Dale closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. His forehead creased and troubled. He calms himself, opens his eyes and stares at Pete. ‘You need to smoke DMT or something, man. You need to access.’ He taps his forehead again.

Pete nods slowly. A pause settles as they mull it over. They each take deep swigs, the beer clings to their chops. They wipe their faces with the backs of their hands. Dale looks at him right in the eyes. ‘Do you toot?’

‘What?’ Pete puts his pint down.

‘Fancy a line?’

‘Yeah, go on then.’

They place beer mats on top of their glasses, leave their pints on the table, and Pete follows Dale into the toilets while Mitch presses play on his laptop.

‘This one’s by Neil Young, and here we go.’

Straight in , Pete notices. True showman .

The cubicle’s small and Dale is massive. Pete stands drunkenly against the tiled wall and nods along with interest as Dale talks and digs around for his wrap.

‘There was this guy, right, I saw it on Vice , I think — he drank controlled doses of snake venom every day of his life for like twenty-five years or something.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah. He has all these pet snakes, fucking beasts, you know, hundred foot long or whatever, fucking three foot wide. I’m exaggerating, but, you know what I’m getting at?’

‘Yeah. What? How did he take the venom? He let them bite him?’

‘No no, he would just kind of squeeze their heads so that venom come shooting out by their fangs, and collect it in test tubes, and then just, like, neck it.’

‘Drink it?’

‘Yeah — that might have been more for the cameras, like — but what he would do, right, is. ’ He finds the wrap and opens it out on the closed toilet lid. Hunches over. Huge man . Pete watches him. Foetal like that . He wipes his nose in anticipation.

‘He would take measured amounts of this snake venom, and, like, cook it up with some kind of solution, I forget now what it was, and he would, erm, inject it. You know. Mainline. In the video he’s, like, “Fucking hell — it BURNS, you know, it BURNS,” but he went to the doctor’s, and turns out. ’ Dale chops up two fat lines on the lid of the toilet seat. Thick as your middle finger. Long as a cigarette. Fuck , thinks Pete. ‘Turns out he’s got the respiratory system of an eighteen-year-old. Fit as you like, all his insides, tip-top. And he’s an average guy — doesn’t smoke or anything, but he drinks, and he don’t do that much exercise. So he reckons it’s the venom that’s done it.’ Dale looks over his shoulder at Pete. Pete nods, impressed. ‘Put thirty years on his heart.’

They sniff it up. One after the other, crouched down, knees an inch from the toilet floor. Sniff and hold.

Back at the table things seem much brighter already. Dale gets the next round. Whiskies first. Then the lager.

‘Want a dab of MDMA?’ Dale asks.

‘Why not?’ Pete says. ‘It’s Wednesday.’

Dale glances around, satisfied that no one is looking, he cradles a wrap of MDMA in the palm of his hand. They lick their little fingers, each scoop a glistening beige clump of dirt into their mouths, rub the crystals into their gums. Pete shudders, sticks his tongue out in disgust, grabs his drink and swills it around his mouth, frowning, trying to escape the taste. Dale doesn’t register any response.

‘You got a missus then, have you?’ Dale asks him.

‘Yep.’ Pete smashes a gulp of beer down. ‘I do, yep.’

‘Wedding bells yet?’

‘Fuck me, no.’

‘Why not? If I had a girlfriend I’d marry her straight away.’ Dale has a habit of pointing aggressively, even when he’s saying something essentially quite sweet. ‘Don’t you love her?’ Dale has not yet managed to meet a girl he can trust enough to fall in love with. It’s the one thing about his life that bothers him.

‘Course I do,’ Pete says, a little drunk, the coke loosening his lips. Dale is sitting, legs miles apart, one hand on his knee, the other hand palm down on the table. Taking up as much space as he possibly can. Pete is more contained. Skinny and tall and hunched down, slouching against the wall. Knees touching the underside of the table top. ‘I do,’ he says, ‘I do. I do love her.’

‘Course you do, mate.’ Dale nods. Kindly. Understanding.

‘I just, things are just. ’ Pete picks a beer mat up. Rips it into shreds, places the shreds neatly in a pile. Dale waits for him to continue, studying him. ‘Not good. You know what I mean? Not cool.’ This is the first time Pete has spoken to anyone apart from Becky about his troubles with her. He doesn’t know how to put it into words that aren’t hers. He struggles to find his own take on it.

Mitch is still singing away. Dale crosses his legs so his ankle rests on his knee, examines his bootlace. Satisfied, he drops his massive foot back to the floor.

‘We’re fighting all the time. We fight all the fucking time,’ Pete says angrily. Exasperated.

‘What about?’

‘I don’t know.’ Pete waves his hand in front of his face, shrugs it off like it’s nothing really.

Back in the cubicle, fast and slow at the same time. More present than before, and further away, Pete shrinks into the corner while Dale takes up the rest of the space.

‘It’s her job,’ he says. ‘Her job causes a lot of beef.’

‘Got a lot of work stress, has she?’ Dale asks, crouching and flattening the wrap out, cutting a piece off the main clump with the edge of his card. Dragging it off the wrap and onto the toilet lid. ‘Not switching off properly?’ he asks.

‘No. Not that.’ Pete puts his hands in his pockets, leans his head back against the cubicle wall. ‘It’s not her. It’s me . I can’t stand her fucking job.’

Dale looks at him, registers the remark. Looks back at the coke, reaches round with his note like an aardvark. Sniff. And hold. Head back. That’s the ticket .

‘Why?’ Dale asks, holding his breath, head tilted back, not wanting to drop a crumb, looking searchingly at Pete.

Pete crouches. He reaches the note to the end of the line, scans the ceramic surface for anything missed. Sniff. And hold. And up. He blinks, brushing down his trousers. He stands in front of Dale, an inch apart in the cubicle. He doesn’t know how to say it. Dale watches him patiently. Pete looks at his shoes. ‘She’s a masseuse.’