Authors: Nikesh Shukla
That night, I don’t sleep.
I stare at the wall above my laptop, which lies on the bed next to me. The screen eventually goes to sleep and I’m left in a cocoon of semi-darkness. I have no plan. I don’t know how to deal with this. This is certainly new. This is not where I expected my week in a fortress of solitude to lead me.
My room feels like a cage. I can hear the opening chords of a Jimi Hendrix song. In my head, Kitab 2’s penis is the head of the axeman, thrashing away at Foxy Lady. I open my eyes and turn all the lights on. I feel unnerved.
When I can’t sleep, I scan through unopened emails. I find a job advert for a freelance journalist required to write blogs for a waste management site. To distract myself, I pull together a covering letter to go with my one page CV, the one that basically says I’m unhireable because all I’ve done is write a book.
I send the application off, thinking good karma thoughts to myself about getting something constructive done.
I check my interactions.
The final word on my Twitter scandal comes from Mitch, who has signed up for an account and so far only follows me and @guardianbooks.
‘Saw you left me in the pub so thought I’d see what all the fuss was about. Apparently, it was your cock. What a shitpickle.’
My dad phones me 4 hours later. It’s 6 a.m. – his usual wake-up time. I answer the phone on the first ring.
‘Kitab, beta,’ he says. ‘Is this what it takes to sell books? Nude media? Why can’t you just be an accountant like your good old Dad?’
‘Thanks, Dad.’
‘No, thank you. You made me laugh more than anyone in the last year.’
‘Well, I’m glad you got a kick out of it. How did you see it? Are you on Twitter?’
‘I have a look now and again to see what my son does. He never calls me. Now … whose willy was that, son?’
Bless you, Dad. For you can tell my penis apart from a stranger on the internet. At least I know you care.
I’m distracted in my search for Kitab 2 the next morning by emails. This is what popularity must feel like. My search has been fruitless. It’s been online. I haven’t found him. I’m about to contact the university when I notice my broadband hub is flashing that it’s down. I reach over to reset it.
My phone rings, shocking me. All my interactions have been online. The number isn’t in my contact list but I recognise the last 3 digits from the amount of times I dialled them. It’s Rach. It’s been 6 months and not a word then 2 phone calls in a week?
I answer wincing, like she’s already telling me off, ‘Hello?’
‘Hey Kitab, how are you? I thought I’d check in on you. Nancy, you remember Nancy?’ (Of course I remember your lairy-when-drunk sidekick.) ‘Well, Nancy said you’ve been sending people pictures of your penis on Twitter. Why are you doing that? Is everything okay? I know things are tough …’
I pause. ‘Hey Rach, lovely to hear from you. How are you?’
‘Are you having a breakdown?’
‘Of course I’m having a breakdown. Someone hacked my account and put a picture of their tiny cock on my Twitter feed.’
‘I couldn’t believe it so I had a look for myself.’
‘Rach …’
‘I’d recognise your penis anywhere, honey.’
‘I don’t have time for this right now.’
‘Please don’t say it’s to do with grief. You can’t live off that excuse and a ridiculous inheritance for ever.’
‘Rachel. Please. I need to go.’
‘I’m glad you’re proud of yourself. Stuff like that makes it very easy to get over you, Kitab. Which hasn’t been easy. Now, though, it suddenly feels like the right decision.’
She hangs up.
She obviously doesn’t remember my penis that well, which is darker and less ball-heavy than Kitab 2’s. Which begs the question, who takes stock of each phallus they come into contact with? Could you match the boobs and face of everyone you’ve slept with, Kit? No, probably not.
I’m mentioned in a flurry of comments on the
Guardian
, where commentators mock my tactics for getting noticed for a book that was okay. Nothing special. Not Hollinghurst or Rushdie. Just funny and twee and harmless. They didn’t know who I was yesterday. Now they’re experts. The commentators discuss the lengths authors go to for attention now they have the channels to take control of their own promotion and be responsible for their own content, bypassing a previously successful vetting process by a publicity team, and is that a good thing? The final comment before discussion peters out wonders whether Dickens himself would have been more famous in his lifetime if he’d printed a picture of his Dick[ens] next to installments of
The Pickwick Papers
, which is a stupid comparison. He was famous in his lifetime. And probably had a massive penis.
I wake up to the same number of followers on Twitter as I did last night but 50 new ‘is now following’ emails. At least I’m gaining at the same rate I’m losing. Which means I’m still losing. Luckily this hasn’t really exploded on my Facebook profile yet, so my family is blissfully unaware of my shortcomings as a man.
It’s not like I’ve been punched. It’s not like it’s been a physical public shaming. These pixels carry weight.
I need to find him. I have to ensure he has no other passwords of mine, work out why he did what he did. I can’t access his Facebook. He hasn’t accepted my too little too late friend request. He’s not obvious on Twitter. I’ve searched through all my followers hoping to spot him but I can’t. He’s a digital ghost all of a sudden. Google searches only bring up me and I drill down to the 20th page, and there’s nothing about him. The only result that comes up is the search for his Facebook page. He obviously doesn’t care about privacy that much, or prospective employees only finding his Facebook during the inevitable Google check.
To the university.
I run to the train station, panting with months and years of inactivity sending my heart rate into conniptions. I flick through a free newspaper, trying to calm myself down, but every word seen burns away on my retina and I take nothing in. I check my phone, knowing there’s no signal in these tunnels. I scroll the screen down to refresh, like a tic, knowing that there’s no reception. I need to be plugged in. I need to know what’s going on. I wonder how our brains function in these short bursts of signal outage. How do the commuting masses cope when their 3G signal drops in and out and they have to either read or listen to music or converse? I’m trembling, desperate to check my Twitter and see if I’ve been replaced by something of actual worth as a literary news story in my little ghetto of the internet, something bigger than my penis. I can’t cope with this black hole of no information.
Arriving at the university, I keep an eye out for Kitab 2. Maybe skulking in doorways, following me, shopping for food. He’s Single Brown Male-ing me.
At the administration office, I ask after him and no one has heard of him. Or me. But that’s fine. It’s not important right now. No one remembers administering medical attention to a passed out single brown male yesterday morning, which makes me wonder whether it happened. I trace our steps back to the stairs leading up to the housing office and look down at the linoleum, hoping for blood traces like I’m a TV detective and this is the crime I need to solve the day before I retire.
I chase the trail up the stairs to the housing office. It’s closed for lunch. I allow myself a Twitter break, plug my phone into an unused electrical socket and sit down on the floor.
Twitter has moved on to Prime Minister’s Question Time and reality television. I am officially yesterday’s news. I break my Twitter silence with a tweet about sitting on linoleum being bad for my piles.
I send it into the ether and click on refresh till I get a reply.
‘Send us a picture of your piles next to your massive bollocks, mate. #themostpointlessnovelistinBritain.’
I sigh and ask him not to flirt with me in public, breaking the cardinal rule of the internet: ‘Do not feed the internet troll’ – whatever sarcastic comment you make they will deconstruct and make you feel stupid within 5 seconds. Don’t even think about it, mate.
‘Why do you want to see my bollocks so much, “mate”?’
‘I don’t. I want you to fuck off and die.’
‘Why don’t you fuck off?’
‘With this witty banter, I’m surprised you haven’t won a Booker.’
During this back and forth, I leave my own body and watch myself from the outside, laughing at my own brilliant putdowns and snorting at his. After 7 minutes of a back and forth, I come to my senses and stop saying anything. I can feel my heart racing. I feel no better than before. No more vindicated or venerated. I’m still the guy who put a picture of my penis on the internet.
I wish Aziz was here. He’d know what to do.
An hour later, a harassed-looking lady with glasses and middle-aged spread opens the door to the housing office, wolfing down the last 2 bites of a sandwich.
‘Yes,’ she says with a voice that says I have 30 seconds to catch her attention.
I decide that asking after Kitab 2 is pointless because bureaucracy’s favourite policy is hiding behind confidentiality. If I ask for Kitab 2’s contact details, I’ll be fobbed off before I finish my query. A 29-second shutdown. That’s what she wants.
I share his name. I have the bankcard to prove it. I channel his accent, which is Americanised Indianised Queen’s English, not too comedy, not too international, and say, ‘Hi, I’m Kitab Balasubramanyam. I wanted to look into perhaps enquiring into my accommodation for the term.’
‘You know term doesn’t start for a week.’
‘I know. I want to know where to send my boxes.’
I realise the mistake I’ve made. If she’s already seen Kitab 2, then maybe she’ll recognise my name. She doesn’t. Not a Twitter follower either then. She’s probably definitely not seen my penis picture.
She sits down at her computer and licks the remnants of pickle off her fingers before logging into her desktop. I thank her and she asks me to spell my name, which I do. She searches. I can’t see the screen. But a warning ‘urrr’ stab keeps sounding through the PC speakers every time she hits ‘Enter’ on the keyboard.
‘Is there a problem?’ I ask, forgetting my accent. She looks up at me and then back at the screen.
‘You’re not a student here.’
‘I’m what?’
‘I don’t have you registered as a student.’
‘But I am a student here. I’ve travelled all the way from Bangalore to be a student here.’
‘Honestly, I have no record of you on the system. Are you sure you’re at the right university?’ She pauses. ‘It happens a lot with foreign students.’
This goes on for a few more minutes, a circular conversation where I qualify my name and she insists she has no record of it. I say my name louder and slower and she insists louder and firmer. Either way, we don’t get anywhere so I thank her for her time and leave the office.
Outside, I retrieve the iPhone I’ve left charging in the wall by accident and sit back down.
Before processing what I’ve just learnt, I check my email, Facebook and Twitter …
I’ve been asked to no longer contribute a short story to an installation at a gallery, one that required 4 hour-long coffees to discuss, as my inappropriate online behaviour makes me less than family friendly. This is £250 for 4 hours of my time I won’t see.
On Twitter, the references to my penis picture have slowed. People are talking about something else now. Which is fine by me. I want to jump in and have my say on what’s now the water cooler topic but I don’t dare. My fingers try to betray me.
On Facebook, my cousin posts a picture of his baby’s first birthday party, a video of her babbling something incomprehensible but cute. I ‘like’ it. Out of obligation. I ‘like’ a few more things hoping the goodwill will bestow some karma on me.
There is no reply from Kitab 2.
Kitab 2 who doesn’t even go to the university.
I leave the accommodation building and decide to walk along the canal running behind the university buildings back towards the general direction of my flat so I can think.
I remember when Twitter was fun.
*
A couple of weeks after Rach moved out, Aziz took it upon himself to get me to leave the flat. I resisted but he’s one big war of attrition. He wore me down and we spent a night walking the length of the canal looking for adventures. Our mission was to live-tweet the journey and drink as many cans of beer as we could find. I was feeling cavalier with Aziz next to me. I didn’t care how I came across online. We started at 9 o’clock, having decided to embark on this grand journey at 8.50 p.m. instead of going home. We’d gone to the pub for a quiet drink but had forgotten the pub was having its monthly poetry night and thirsty for good times, we decided to bail and do something stupid instead of listen to autumnal turgid couplets.
Along the walk, we saw 17 different graffiti artists, 24 runners, 2 cyclists, 12 homeless people and an arguing couple. No one wanted to talk to us and no one would take us on an adventure. When we walked past a row of occupied canal boats where couples and singles were settling in for the evening, we fantasised that we might accidentally walk in on orgies. Instead we walked in silence the whole time, complaining about the cold and the lack of people to talk to and needing the loo. We’d been together all day and had nothing to say to each other. In lieu of adventures, we decided to make them up. We made up a story about how we had met a series of costumed and cloaked men and women on their way to a houseboat sex party and somehow, because we had a blue plastic bag full of beer cans, we were allowed to come with them. We tweeted about the weird people we came across, the weird made-up people and their priapic expectations for a sexual healing of an evening. We made up horny housewives, impotent bankers who liked to watch, and Gary – everyone’s mate Gary who loved doing everything and thought everything was well funny, in a proper Essex accent, like ‘that’s well funny’ because everything was well funny. And he was going along for some sexy shits and giggles. We had a lot of fun doing it and it probably caught the imagination of 5 people who kept asking us weird things to ask the weird people we’d made up we were with. We soon became the mystique of the evening. Real life didn’t matter as much as the claim of a life better than the one everyone else was having, i.e., pressing refresh on Twitter instead of talking or absorbing or having adventures of their own. We had the smugness of being 2 people who were inventing a life more interesting than a life spent on Twitter, on Twitter.