Wildlife (7 page)

As she enters her corridor Anka sees a postman knocking on the door opposite hers, a large parcel at his feet. Through the wall a recorded voice is looped and screaming: ‘Whatever it is, just leave it by the door!'

The postman turns away in frustration. Anka smiles as their paths cross.

‘He's a lunatic,' says the postman, in an old Northern accent. ‘Wants locking up. Would you mind?' The postman hands Anka a biro and gestures that she sign for the parcel.

‘You should hear his music,' says Anka, smiling, signing then printing her name. ‘Nothing but
Les Misérables
.'

‘Nice one, love.'

Anka has never seen the occupant of Flat 126. Judging by his behaviour, she's glad.

Once inside her flat, Anka switches on her computer and then lies on the bed as it boots up. She's tired. So tired that she yawns. She takes a picture frame from her bedside table and holds it in front of her sleepy eyes. Inside the frame are the mantras her therapist gave her on the last day of her treatment.
Anka
, it reads,
love yourself. You are talented and
wonderful. You are beautiful. Feed yourself. You deserve food. Love yourself
.

At first, when she got given this, Anka thought it was a load of bollocks. She didn't go in for the ‘love yourself' approach to survival. Her therapist used to force her to tap each of her scrawny limbs for minutes on end, chanting ‘I love you' as she did so. Anka felt like a tit. But lately, she has begun to take a shine to herself. As instructed, she has read these mantras to herself each day. At first, her voice was full of irony as she told herself that she was beautiful and talented. But nowadays, she succeeds in reading the words with some conviction.

‘You are talented and wonderful.' She spies her reflection in the glass of the frame. She smiles and her eyes shine. ‘You are beautiful. Feed yourself. You deserve food. Love yourself.'

Chaperoned by employment here in Manchester, it's hard for Anka to believe in her memories of Goldsmiths and London. Two years ago, she was thrashing around with other thrashing young on loud streets and in crowded bars that rattled with ambition. She wore difficult clothes, rebelliously wrapped around her body. Her outfits all uniforms for a fantastic future. She called herself an artist. She blagged invites to exhibition openings in Hoxton Square and walked with a confidence that made a Xanadu of all her destinations. The lives of others were bad TV; woozy bollocks that could be scoffed and sneered at by Anka and her friends, all of whom had fresh brains inside their new skulls and light in the palms of their hands. But youth is a journey with no destination; its road trails off to dust and early nights. Perfect certainty gives way to cautious missions through empty towns of empty bars and empty clubs where
you stand, motionless, and wonder, quite reasonably, when was it lost? When did it all go wrong?

My brain tried to starve me, thinks Anka. It wanted me dead. Maybe ambition is unnecessary. I wanted to be Jackson Pollock. I am not Jackson Pollock. Maybe craving success is slightly pathetic and, in any case, it's become a bit like shitting. Whatever makes us happy makes us happy. Whatever turns you on turns you on. There is either more to life than being brilliant or there is less. Hedge your bets. Anka sighs. She squeezes out a trump.

She climbs off her bed and moves in on her PC. Her room is bare, save for the old desk and its computer and for the wardrobe that explodes with clothes. Two large windows look out over Victoria Station and the various tracks that fan from it in the direction of Rochdale, Clitheroe and Leeds.

First she checks her personal emails. She replies to the pornographers, saying she will strip for the mobile phone porn site providing she is taken to lunch afterwards. She writes a quick email to her mother detailing her eating habits and mentioning that she intends to get in touch with Life, a contact she's made in the Wild World. Next she writes to Life herself:
Hey Life, I'm a friend of Nic's. She says you're making it in the Wild World. Congratulations! I'm still taking my clothes off in the old world. Can you help me? Anka Kudolski.
Anka clicks to send then turns from the computer screen and looks out of the window. She can see Strangeways Prison in the distance. The Boddingtons Chimney. The Manchester Evening News Arena. In the foreground a tram is pulling out of Victoria, aimed at the brand-new and instantly old apartment buildings of the Green Quarter.

Life replies almost immediately:
Sure. I might be able to
help you, Anka. Meet me in Wow-Bang any night this week around 10. Come to the Real Arms. X

Next Anka logs on to her
QUIZ TV
account. She has received a long list of emails. Some people complain about her bad language and the insulting tone she adopted on last night's show. These are the minority. Most people pay her compliments. They request stained underwear, signed photos, stool samples, her home address and clumps of her pubes. Many request that she continue to insult them via email.
Call me hopeless. Tell me I should've been born cock-less. Really hurt my feelings. Stamp on my balls. Say you'll cut my penis into manageable chunks.

El Rogerio has only sent her a web link. Anka follows it to the El Rogerio blog spot and finds a detailed description of a man wanking over her. At first, this seems weird. A bit disgusting. Anka feels a very traditional anger tickling her throat and aggressively moving her features around her face. But as she reads about the semen that leapt onto her televised body, she feels dirty and cheeky. She likes the way it's written. Arty. Fucked up. A small amount of red pride grows on each of her cheeks. ‘You are beautiful,' she reasons. ‘Feed yourself.' She reads on a little further but El Rogerio quickly changes his subject and Anka realises that she's extremely anxious to return to the topic of herself. She experiences a rush of guilt. She rides the rush. She reads ten more emails in which men and women have written accounts of how they wanked over her last night. Anka giggles audibly at each one then returns to El Rogerio's blog to reread it. The information age, thinks Anka, is a fucking flirt. My knickers, she realises, are a little moist.

Wow-Bang, it turns out, is the latest in a series of
Internet-based virtual worlds. Anka runs a search on it and then begins to download it onto her hard drive. Crucially, simulated environments like Wow-Bang and Second Life have got little to do with wearing electronic underpants and receiving alarming blow jobs from famous women. No, these places are convincing worlds containing continents, cities, mountains, shops and bars. They are communities. People participate in these virtual worlds in order to enjoy themselves, meet new people, play with existing friends and family and take time out from reality, that is to say, from planet earth, yes, planet earth, where people sob, where sexual organs pong and where you only die once.

Anka registers on Wow-Bang and finds Life's profile without much trouble. It says that Life has been a citizen for around a month and can usually be found in the Real Arms in the late evening. The Real Arms is described as ‘one of the coolest bars, popular with media types'. It can be found on Wow-Bang's west side.

The graphics of Wow-Bang are good, but not quite up to reality's standards. Not far off though. The buildings, roads and shrubs of Wow-Bang look reasonably real to the eye.

Anka types ‘El Rogerio' into the Wow-Bang search engine. He, too, is a full citizen and, like Life, is currently offline. He also seems to have a very large head, Anka notes, staring at his pixelated avatar. El Rogerio is often found in the Rib Cage, which is described as ‘an EMO dive'. Users are warned that the Rib Cage is a hot spot for ‘the Dead Animals', a terrorist organisation intent on ruining Wow-Bang and encouraging people to return to reality to do real things.

Anka sneers at the screen. For Anka there is something
overwhelmingly geeky about Wow-Bang. There was a time, only recently, when a virtual world would have been nothing but a nest for the nerds, a base for the bullied. But things change. Or rather rules get forgotten. And computer technology is a fucking flirt. It's embarrassing, thinks Anka. I'm full of myself. My knickers are moist.

She spends fifteen minutes designing her Wow-Bang appearance and identity: her avatar. This involves uploading photos of herself from her hard drive, choosing clothes, recording standard greeting phrases. She is pleased with the results. Her 3-D avatar rotates on the screen in front of her, its arms reaching sideways into the black background. I feel like a nerd. With a smile spread thoughtlessly across her face, Anka submits her application to become a citizen of Wow-Bang.

She returns to El Rogerio's blog and leaves a comment below the description of his wank:
See you in Wow-Bang, wanker. Anka x
. She returns to her bed and begins to undress. She lifts her legs into the air in order to peel off her jeans. She's wearing silk red knickers. And they're moist! Oh, Jesus and God, bless the moist knickers and tented kecks of civilisation.

It is clear, thinks Anka, closing her eyes slowly and relaxing into the cushions, that my knickers are moist. A finger travels down her tummy then swims under the red silk like a child seeking solitude under bedclothes. I have become a girl in moist knickers, she thinks, and I wanted to be Jackson Pollock. I wasn't entirely sure moist-knickered girls existed. But obviously they do. I am one.

I was young and ambitious, then, from nowhere, came the disease. Anorexia. And now, she thinks, and now the recovery is coming at a cost. First came self-acceptance,
then came . . . not self-love, as such. How can I put this? What has occurred inside my mind? First came self-acceptance and then came many people who masturbated to my movements and my sounds. That's about it, she thinks. Old world or Wild World? No idea. Anka's finger starts to move quickly inside her knickers. Her other hand is pinching her left nipple through her T-shirt and her bra.

Minds are not empty. That's exactly the problem. Minds are crammed and detailed. The individual is a dropped vase. I'm so complex, it's disgusting, thinks Anka, eyes shut, picturing the wankers typing with fast fingertips. We are becoming very technical. The humans, she means. Skins and veins pulled into shapes. A cool identity for every square inch of organ, pipe and blood. We are things, detailed and unique, we must love ourselves. That's the trick, thinks Anka. Have time. Be complex. Fuck yourself. Tenderly.

Anka is approaching orgasm. She is remembering the descriptions. She is imagining the moments the descriptions describe. She can't fight the urge any longer. She climaxes. She is thinking. I love you. You are beautiful. I love you. Feed yourself.

AFTER THREE DAYS
of constant shagging in the Columbia Hotel near Hyde Park, Life left Janek Freeman playing bass guitar alone in the devastated bed. He'd received a phone call from his aunt Sophie telling him that his mum was dead. He told Life about his mother's breathlessness and about her very shallow lungs. Life got a bit depressed and decided to leave.

‘It's a bit too soon,' said Life before she left. ‘I feel a bit guilty about Joe.'

This seemed a bit rich to Janek and even a little heartless, however breathless and doomed his mother might have been. She'd just died. And it seemed a little late in the day for Life to be feeling sorry for the ex-boyfriend with the bottom complex. And after all, things were starting to matter. My life the Fuck Festival. My brilliant life the Fuck Festival.

But nevertheless Janek was polite. He didn't kick up a fuss. Nothing matters again, he reasons in the bed. Mum is dead. Life is feeling guilty about her ex-boyfriend who,
so she says, tried to build a nest in her arse. Nothing matters. Janek had told Life that he understood. They exchanged numbers and then had distracted sex before she finally walked out of the room.

Janek lies on the sheetless mattress playing chords on his bass, thinking about his poor mum. You need to have a neat technique to play chords on a bass. You need to have strong fingers and tough skin. The sound you create is strange, somehow unmusical.

‘Poor Mum,' he murmurs. ‘Oh dear.'

It's been four days since Janek met Life at Reel World Studio. His bass guitar was plugged into an amplifier. A signal from this amplifier was plugged into a neuro-monitoring unit. A wire ran from the neuro-monitoring unit to a contraption that Life wore like a hat. Her wavy gold hair flowed from the machinery. The bossbitch from the Wild World was searching for the A-HA moment.

The A-HA moment is discovered early in the twenty-first century. It relates to certain activities in the roof of the brain, caused when certain words and certain music are combined together perfectly. Advertisers discovered that if you could generate an A-HA moment during an advert, you were virtually guaranteed to sell a product. They researched the moment when a brand is identified, understood and desired and called it the A-HA moment. It's hard to predict. But with the right technology, we can now detail such irrational instances of desire. The scruffs from the Wild World are convinced that bass lines are the key to unlocking it.

Janek was instructed by Bossbitch to play all sorts of different genres of bass line into Life's brain. Jazz. Rock. Hip hop. R 'n' B. Meanwhile, boards with different coloured text on them were held up for Life to stare at while she listened.
They searched all day for the A-HA moment. Life stared at the word ‘LOVE' as Janek drilled his bass in an array of styles. Nothing happened. Life stared at the word ‘BEAUTY'. Janek plucked. Nothing happened. Word after word. ‘SEX', ‘COOL', ‘DREAM', ‘FUTURE'. Fuck all. Nothing like an AHA. Finally, they tried the word ‘LIFE'. Janek started moving through the styles. First rock, then hip hop, then R 'n' B. Nothing. Then he tried funk. He slapped his way through the funkiest of bass lines and Life's brain went crazy.

‘A-HA,' cried the guys at the neuro-monitor. ‘Got it!'