Sawn-Off Tales (3 page)

Into the World

S
TOP. REWIND. PLAY.
A camera nosing through purple velour curtains. A mucky window, the rhomboid prints of a miskicked football and the crushed corpse of a fly clinging to the glass with congealed gut. A hand print showed where the peeper had steadied herself. A line of digits whirred away. Then the focus lengthened and Derek saw his own car creep up his own drive and stop. Derek, dressed in overalls, emerged, hobbled round to the boot, and dipped in and dragged out his tool bag. He hauled out another and bundled them into the house.

‘You sponging bastard,' a voice close to the camera hissed. ‘Got you!'

Lines of static forked across, the speaker whooshed.

The video came with a letter. “Benefit Integrity Project. Claim Suspended”. Derek looked out of the window at his mother's house, at the purple velour curtains, the curtains she had chosen before he left.

 

 

Heavy Java Guy

L
EARN THE JARGON
and you can get any job. ‘Quick question, out of the gate,' the technogeek says. ‘What have you done Unix-wise? It all seems to be,' he glanced down at my CV, ‘shell scripting, some stuff on the thread management side. I'm wondering how I match you up with our environment. Aren't you the heavy Java guy, done a lot of clusters?'

I saluted. ‘That's me.'

‘Thing is, I don't hear anyone screaming “I know Solaris down to the bones”.'

‘Call me X-Ray.'

He slumped back and spread his arms. ‘Come to me, baby.'

But I didn't take it. The next day I had an interview for a music therapy job and they have gorgeous language; string-washes, brass-stabs, sobbing bass. I never take the jobs, it's the words I like, the sound of them nudging against each other, and the gawping faces of a panel hungry to listen.

 

 

She's Really Alt-Country

I
SPOTTED HER
at The Be Good Tanyas, moving her head to the music in a dreamy circling motion as if she were drawing a figure of eight in the air with her nose.

When I got home I wrote her a song, all about a country singer who hitches up with a fifteen-year-old girl. It goes

We called it love

The Judge called it assault

But they used to call it Country

And now they call it Alt

and after a Jesse Mallin gig, I handed her the cassette.

For a moment we were both holding the same piece of plastic, then I remembered that on the tape you could make out my mother bawling, ‘Geordie, your Pop-Tarts are cremated,' and me saying, ‘Shut up, you old bag,' in a pathetic hissy whisper.

So I snatched it back and mumbled that I'd see her at Calexico next week.

 

 

Smells Like

G
ORDON'S LIP CURLED
into a sneer when he saw me applying roll-on deodorant. ‘What you putting that stuff on for?'

‘There's a lot of attractive women at our place,' I explained. ‘I like to smell nice.'

‘You have no idea, mate,' Gordon said. ‘Those pretty whiffs won't get their engines running. Women are turned on by the real smell of a man. Sour sweat, rotting skin cells. It's a mainline into the bits of the brain that control desire.' He put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. ‘I use no artificial scents of any kind and I have never — except for that time in Asda — been turned down by a reasonable woman.'

So I haven't used any fragrances for two weeks now and I think it's making a difference. Women keep asking me if I live alone, and that's always a good sign.

 

 

Some Call it Loungecore

I
CALL IT
shite. A-plinking and a-plonking, a-twanging and a-trilling, kitsch Oxfam vinyl with titles like
Hammond Interlude
,
Moog TV Themes
and
Test Card Classics
, it's all Roger buys. And if our mates come round (like we have any now) it's
Beatles Hawaiian Style
or
Sinatra's Pan Pipe Moods
and him sitting with a big grin on his face stroking his chin.

Lounge music won't do any lasting harm, the doctor assured me, though wearing a permanent ironic smile doesn't help when you're stopped for speeding. But Roger's manager was worried. Sales were down and he blamed the easy-listening. ‘That Radio 2 mush,' he said, ‘is chewing off your balls,' and he forced on him some poodle-rock compilation.

‘Oh my fucking God,' Roger said to me. ‘
Music to Drive By
. What does that even mean?' and fed the tape into the waste disposal, meaning we had to call the engineer.

 

 

Special Interest

‘
E
XCUSE ME,' HE
said. It was the bloke who‘d been creeping around behind me in Woolworths. He had haunted muddy eyes and his breath reeked of curry and tic tacs.

‘I was wondering, did you pay for those seeds?'

He was right of course. Assorted Summer Blooms, palmed deftly into my secret pocket. But this guy didn't look like security.

‘What seeds?'

His eyes darted about. ‘Can we go for coffee?'

His thumb stroked my finger where it rested against my Latte. I didn't move it away.

‘I have a thing,' he said, ‘for people like you.'

I felt myself redden. ‘Like me?'

He gripped my finger in his hand. ‘Women who steal.'

I pulled my hand away. ‘So I'm just another?'

‘You're special. I bet you don't even have a garden for those seeds.'

‘One o'clock, B&Q,' I called after him. ‘Nails and fixings.'

 

 

We Are the Robots

S
HE WAS THE
third girlfriend to ditch me this year. ‘We went to this club,' I told Gary, ‘and at the end of the night she'd completely changed. She was distant, hostile.'

He looked at me over the rim of his spectacles. ‘Did you dance?'

‘Well,' I poked at a beer mat, ‘at one point I did throw a few shapes.'

He tilted his head towards me. ‘Did you do the robotics?'

‘Definitely not.'

‘What was the music?'

‘Eighties techno.'

Gary removed his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. ‘How many times have we been through this — you hear the music, you do the robotics.' He picked up his coat. ‘No woman will stand for it.'

Later I was on the floor. A Moog bass line squelched, a metallic snare ripped the air, I was part of a machine, a valve in the heart of a bleeping gnashing metal beast.

 

 

Little Jan

I
WAS THE
only Janet in the office until she arrived but there was no problem until one day I asked Harriet for the long stapler and she said she'd given it to Little Jan.

Little Jan. She wasn't particularly little and I'm not especially big. I didn't want to be known as Big Jan, like some bull dyke prisoner. Harriet tried to reassure me; the new Janet was Little Jan, but I would always be Jan. But they might as well write fat cow on my forehead for all the difference that made. So-called Little Jan is a 12 at least, and not TopShop, more like Marks.

So whilst recovering the long stapler I told Jan all about fast-track promotion in this place, the people to influence, and how to do it.

 

Now I'm still Jan but she's known as Stock­room Jan and she's off long-term with stress.