Authors: Nikesh Shukla
Meatspace
For Nimer, who introduced me to IRC in the mid-nineties
Meatspace
Pronunciation:
mi:tspeis
noun
[mass noun] informal
the physical world, as opposed to cyberspace or a virtual environment.
‘Technology proposes itself as the architect of our intimacies.’ Sherry Turkle
‘Have you ever had that moment when you are updating your status and you realise that every status update is just a variation on a single request: “Would someone please acknowledge me?”’ Marc Maron
Contents
History:
Which alcoholic drink has the most calories? – Google
Hayley Bankcroft – Facebook
Olivia Munn – YouTube
Olivia Munn nude – Google
[109] – Twitter
[email protected] [4 new]
The first and last thing I do everyday is see what strangers are saying about me.
I pull the laptop closer from the other side of the bed and press refresh on my inboxes. I have a Google calendar alert that tells me I have no events scheduled today, an assortment of Twitter and Facebook notifications, alerting me to 7 new followers, a favourite of a tweet thanking someone for liking my book, an invite to an event I’ll never go to, spam from Play and Guardian Jobs. Hayley Bankcroft has sent me a direct message about an event we’re both doing next week. Amazon recommends I buy the book I wrote. There’s a rejection email from an agency I’d applied to do some freelance marketing copy for. I didn’t want the job, but now I haven’t got it I feel annoyed and hurt. I think about tweeting ‘will write copy for food’ but decide against it.
There’s an email from my dad. He doesn’t usually send me emails; he prefers text messages. It’s a forwarded message from a woman on a dating website. In it she’s written ‘Would love to meet your son and be his new mummy’. In bold at the top, Dad has written ‘Kitab-san, Wen u free?!!!!’ I ignore it. I never want to meet one of his girlfriends. Ever.
The only other 2 messages from actual humans are a friend request from the one other person with my name on Facebook, which I ignore when I see the next one is from Rach: an email letting people know her new address. I wonder why she wants me to have this information. Am I supposed to think, ‘Oh, she’s moved out of her parents’ house, which even being in Zone 6 and involving interacting with her racist brother and the cat that hated me and her dad’s collection of plaid shirts with effervescent sweat patches was still preferable to living here with me’? Or, more realistically, ‘Why is she moving out of her parents’ house
now
, 6 months after dumping me, 6 months after moving out, 6 months after she told me she couldn’t bear the way I lived any longer and that I was draining her enthusiasm for life’? Is that what I’m supposed to think?
She’s moving to North London, where she lived when we first met. I used to like meeting her at her flat. It overlooked a park and had a big kitchen I would sit in while she made coffee with the landlord’s Gaggia filter coffee machine. There was a disused railway line we’d take walks down. I haven’t been there in years.
That flat was amazing. We cooked all the time, she didn’t own a television, just stacks of books, a balcony where she grew tomatoes and a posh coffee machine. It was a middle-class idyll. None of the furniture pointed at an entertainment source. We were those people. For the life of me, I can’t work out why we chose to move her to my place instead of me to hers.
She was clinical in collecting all of her things when it ended. The only trace of her was a t-shirt of mine she took ownership of while we were together but I got full custody of in the break-up and the chutneys she left in the fridge. I notice them every time I open the fridge.
I hate chutneys. They’re a painfully white condiment, a colonial response to the spicy Indian pickle. I keep meaning to throw them away. When she’d first moved out, I spent a drunken night spooning onion chutney into my mouth because that was the closest I could get to what she’d tasted like.
The related Google ad next to her email is for ‘house-warming gift ideas’. I click out of my emails and think of things to tweet. I’ve got nothing to say. I look at the account of this other Kitab.
I’ve known about his existence for a while now. Around 6 months ago, his Facebook profile had started showing up in my self-Googling. I was surprised at first. Another Kitab with my obscure surname. Another one. Another me. He kinda looked like me too. He had fair brown (what I call caramel, ex-girlfriends have called ‘dusty’) skin and the hairstyle I had in the 80s, swept up into a Patrick Swayze cowlick of quiff and oil. He had eyes like mine, almond-shaped and -coloured and he had my mouth. Full kissable lips. Or at least this is how I would describe myself on an internet dating profile – caramel-skinned, quiffed black hair, almond-coloured eyes and big full lips.
He wore a white turtleneck sweater, like a Bond villain. His location was listed as Bangalore, India and the avatar photo itself looked like a warped driving licence scanned on a low-resolution photocopier. I was immediately disappointed that my namesake was so Indian-looking.
The related Facebook ad on the search results page for Kitab Balasubramanyam is an identity theft-solving app. It’s 69p. I don’t buy it.
I wonder why he’s decided to add me.
I tweet:
‘
Feet hurt. Too much bogling last night. #boglingrelatedinjuries’
This is a lie. I was in bed by 10 last night. I had 4 beers on an empty stomach, felt pissed and irritated, shouted a lot in our front room about Rach and how I was better off without her and was put to bed by Aziz, who complained I was too drunk to take out on the town to find some trouble. He’d sighed, I was never up for getting in trouble now I was single.
I clear my throat. It stings like I’ve been singing too much.
The air in my room feels thick and musty. I try to remember the last time I left the flat. It hasn’t been often since Rach moved out. Except for the pub and for supplies. If it wasn’t for Aziz, I probably wouldn’t talk to anyone apart from online. I left the flat yesterday. It was to go to the pub. And the big shop. I did the big shop after the pub. It consisted of Budvars, bread, and frozen pizzas for emergencies. Now Rach isn’t here to fill the fridge with fresh sustainable organic food and chutneys, I’m taking full advantage.
I sleep with my quilt rolled and bunched up into the sausage of a human body. She’s my bedtime girlfriend now I’m newly single. I call her Quiltina.
As if he can feel me stir, Aziz opens my door and comes and sits on the edge of the bed.
‘Watching porn?’ he asks.
‘No.’
‘I never want to catch you wanking again.’
‘Then knock,’ I say as he checks himself out in my mirror.
‘Actually I do want to,’ he says, turning to me and grinning. ‘I’m not going to lie, I think you have an interesting wank-face. It’s somewhere between “this sweet is too sour” and “my knees are hurting from old age”.’ Aziz contorts his face into a pained cry and simulates juddering hand thrusts. I turn over onto my side and close my eyes.
‘Did you and I go out bogling last night? I really don’t remember that,’ Aziz says.
I try to cover myself up. Just to annoy me, Aziz pulls the cover off.
‘That was just for the internet.’
Aziz pounces on me, pulls the cover over my head and cuddles it. I can feel him humping my body. I try to push him off but he’s too strong.
‘Mercy?’ he cries.
‘Mercy,’ I say.
‘Seriously, I can’t hear you. Mercy?’
‘Mercy,’ I call again.
Aziz pounds away, but I manage to get a knee up to connect with his side. He falls off me laughing. I allow myself a smile. I’m awake now.
‘I love you, idiot brother of mine,’ he says. He pauses. ‘What are you up to today?’
‘Writing.’
Aziz laughs sarcastically. He pulls the cover off me entirely. I go fetal. ‘No, but seriously, ladies and gentlemen,’ he says in his 1930s stand-up comedian voice. ‘What are you up to today?’
‘Job-hunting.’
‘So you’ll be on email?’
‘Yeah, probably.’
‘Cool. I’ll send you some pop culture gifs to keep you company.’
‘Won’t you be busy … you know, working?’
‘That’s how I’m so swag, my friend,’ Aziz says, scratching the dark scar on his neck. ‘That. Is how I’m so swag.’
Aziz heads to the door. ‘Hey man,’ I call to him. ‘What were we doing last night? Singing? SingStar?’
He turns his head and looks back at me. ‘Do you even remember last night?’
‘Yeah.’ I feel my phone vibrate in my hand. A Facebook wall message. I don’t look at it. ‘A bit. I think I had too much chutney. And rum. There was definitely too much beer.’
‘Remember what you promised?’
‘Yeah. To forget about Rach, move on, stop whining about her and get some writing done.’
‘You kept going on about “keeping the wolf from the door”.’
‘Yeah. Money is fast running out, my friend.’
‘That’s not it,’ Aziz says, smiling.
I’m beginning to remember bits of last night: 4 big bottles of Budvar in, I was standing on our sofa, clutching 2 jars of chutney, while Aziz held my leg like he was Princess Leia on the cover of the
Star Wars
poster, and I was Luke Skywalker.
‘I am a golden god!’ I was shouting. ‘I am the golden god of literature. I am the golden god of this front room. I am the golden god of fucking chutneys.’
‘I thought you hated chutneys.’
‘I do, I fucking hate the white man’s chutney. CBE. Chutney of the British Empire. I’m going to get “I H8 CHUTNEY” tattooed on my arm so future girlfriends know where I stand on the chutney thing without even having to ask.’
‘Wait,’ Aziz had said. ‘You want a tattoo? I want a tattoo. Let’s get tattoos. We’re getting tattoos.’
‘Yes,’ I’d shouted back at him. ‘The golden god will get a tattoo. I want a tattoo. Right now, there is nothing I want in the world more than a tattoo.’
‘Maybe not “I H8 CHUTNEY”.’
‘No,’ I’d said. I hesitated and thought. In that second silence, Elvis Costello came on the iPod, on shuffle. Aziz joined me on the sofa. He was all the Attractions and I was Elvis, crooning through the gap in my front teeth.
‘Chapt-uhhhh waaaaa-hun … we didn’t really get along …’
‘I’m going to get “Everyday I write the book” on my forearm. All the way up. I bloody love this song. It’s perfect. It can be a reminder to do my job. And Rach hated that song,’ I said, turning to Aziz as he switched from bass to drums.
‘Me too. I prefer “Shipbuilding”
.
Remember “Shipbuilding”
.
Always remember it, man,’ he said, bopping his head, his hands tight in the air.
‘Chapter wuuuu-huuuun,’ I sang.
‘Do you even like that song?’