"FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!!!!!!"
"Fucking fucking fuck cunt fuck fuck fuck! Fucking fuckity fuckcunting pissbubbles!"
I'm stood on Waterloo Bridge screaming out at the Thames. It's November of 2004 and I've just a few weeks back started university at the Hole in the Strand. "Fuck! Jesus Fuck Christfucking Cuntfuck!" I breathe. I slowly bring my hands up to my face. Why am I like this. Why am I such a fuck-up. I'm a wanker, I really am. I'm the winner of the Golden Dislocated Wrist. That's how much of a wanker I am. A woman comes up to me. She's middle aged and by her voice middle class. "Are you alright dear?" she asks me. "Yes, I'm fine," I snap at her and stomp around in a small circle. "Are you sure?" she says. "Yes, I am sure. Please leave me alone." I snap again. She scuttles off. I wish people would leave me alone.
You may wonder, gentle reader, why I'm stood on Waterloo Bridge at 11.30 am screaming expletives at the river. I will tell you. It all happened the previous evening, in the Commonwealth Hall dining room. In the basement. A somewhat dilapidated eatery of magnolia painted walls with wood halfway up then and chipped plaster. Orange and red tiled floor. The smell of commercial cleaning materials. I'm waiting in the queue for today's delicacy, which is "spaghetti bolognese" but looks and tastes more like Campbell's oxtail soup thrown at boiled knicker elastic. I bet the fat bint who runs the kitchen behind here probably saved up and defaced several of her biggest and most industrial pairs to make that dinner. As I'm waiting in the queue a girl comes up to me. I've known her by sight and name - Katy - but not really spoken to her all that much. It's only a few weeks into term so I don't know absolutely everyone in the hall. This place changes every year anyway. Katy says to me, her eyes all downcast a bit. "Hi. Michael*?"
"Yes, that's me," I reply. She's a medical student, I understand. She's cute in that short, rosy-cheeked, thin, ash-blonde hair kind of way. She looks up and catches my eye. Holds it for just a tiny moment.
"I'm told you're good with computers," she says. I'm not totally useless though my degree is law. I say as much to her. "I don't suppose you can help me, erm, fix my laptop? It's all full of weird adverts for casinos and things I didn't download." Ahh, that's right up my alley. Spyware. The curse of the 2000s web. I say that I can do this. Should I come up right after dinner?
"I've got an assignment I need to prepare for tomorrow," she says, "but if you come around 8.30 or so? I'll let you in and you can see what needs doing. It's room 247." I'm in 448 so that's just two floors down and a little to the left.
"Agreed," I said. "I'll see you then."
She wanders off to eat her helping of knicker bolognese. I go and sit with Stew and Ben. They're two friends of mine. They're doing Comp Sci. They're second years and I'm often in their double room at the end of the floor. We call it the Virgin Megastore. The other students claim it was because they could get any pirated music they wanted on CD-R from us (which they could) for a pound a throw but I'm pretty sure it is for other reasons. They're cool lads. Stew is telling us about this really hideous chain e-mail someone's sent him that's the gooshiest one yet. I tell him I have already heard the one about the lesbian lobster lover. It certainly makes a change from Stew's obvious bullshit story about how last year he fucked a girl who was dressed as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle at the time. Ben says he might actually have a date tonight. I wish him good luck. Stew shouts, "give her one for me!" as Ben leaves the hall. I return to my room, get stuck in to preparation for tomorrow's tutorial. That's today's tutorial as at the time I'm shouting at the Thames, but at this time it was tomorrow's. Look. At the time I prepared for it, it was in the future. Okay? That's close enough. Eight thirty rolls around so I slip out, lock up, trundle down two flights of echoing concrete stairs, and knock on Katy's door.
"Come in, it's unlocked," she says.
I do. The laptop is on her desk. Her room is the same shape as mine and the same layout as well. Katy herself is on her bed. She is lying, or rather reclining, against a stack of three pillows. Her hands are behind her head. She is wearing a very translucent pale blue babydoll nightie and nothing else which is short enough that her muff is peeking out the bottom and filmy enough that her nipples are poking through the fabric, and is bearing a slightly nervous smile. One leg is slightly cocked up on the other.
"The laptop's over there when you're ready to look at it," she purrs.
I decide I'm not going to risk getting accused of sexual harassment so I fire up the laptop. It's not bad. Same sort as mine. Fujitsu Siemens "Amilo." Silver. It runs Windows XP, and straight away I see that's the problem. She's still using service pack 1. It's locked but she's put her password on a post it on the wall. It is, of course, that meme one. I know this because the little tabs that scroll across under the Windows logo are green and it says "Home Edition" under it. The desktop is all sluggish and I open Internet Explorer and find that the usable window space is half the screen. There's about eleven toolbars stuck above it. Popups for casinos, herbal viagra, and pornography litter the screen whenever I try to do anything. With some exasperation I set to work. I download Ad-Aware and Spybot and run scans in them. I download HijackThis and run it and its report is pretty gruesome reading. CoolWebSearch? Ouch.
"Will this take long?" she says, in a languid yet a little bit put out manner.
"Not really, the longest bit is installing Service Pack 2," I say.
"Oh good," she replies. "I like a good servicing." Her accent is slipping from RP into South Yorkshire. I don't know why. I happen to know she's from Woking in Surrey.
Don't we all, love. But I'm here to do a job. I download and run and install SP2. After a while but not as long as I hope it's in so I reboot it. It's right as rain. Snappy as a piece of elastic - though not the ones used to make tonight's spag bol. "There we go," I say and shut it down. "Good as new." I smile, allow my gaze to linger just a moment, then leave. "Thanks," she says as I shut the door. I return to my room. She seems nice, I think. I'll see if I can sit with her at breakfast tomorrow. As I shut it down I think that the shutdown noise in XP sounds a bit like it's saying "Fuck off you cunt."
I try to meet her at breakfast tomorrow. She ignores me and won't talk to me. Maybe I was ogling a little too much, I think. I'm wrong, but I don't know that at the time.
I go off to Waterloo Campus and have the tutorial. It's about Schedule 1 of the Housing Act 1988 and the ways you can have your home nicked off you for rent arrears. I of course wallop it. It's after that and I'm crossing the bridge back to the Strand for the next lecture that I realise just how fucking oblivious I've been. She didn't want me to service her laptop. She wanted me to service her. She'd probably insisted I wait until 8.30 so she could get changed, perfect her pose, and similar. And I was just 20 seconds away from finding out what a winsome-cheeked medical student's thighs feel like clamped around my ears. I recall another thing. When I overheard her snorting that a mnemonic for the cranial nerves was "Oh oh oh, to touch and feel virgin girls' vaginas and hymens" to her friend the other day, she was looking at me when she said it. She's probably fancied me for ages. And now that's completely and utterly fucked. Like a whore on payday, as Stew would say it.
Why do I do this. Why do I torture myself at my own ineptitude.
I walk on over the bridge. The bleeping of Four and Twenty Virgins comes from the Nokia 3210i in my pocket. I pull out my phone and answer it. It's Stew.
"Oi oi!" he says. "There's a hall party tonight by the way. You coming? Ben isn't. He's off with that Emily who studies history. Speaking of which, you were in that lil' Katy's room last night. Wahey?"
"Wahoo," I say, which is the opposite of wahey. It's with a certain finality to it. I'm not discussing this with anyone ever again.
"Ahhh never mind," says Stew. "So, about that hall party? Want to come? I bet you'll be able to make up lost time. Show her what she's missing, eh? And Ben's got out his CD decks for it as well." Ben fancies himself as a DJ. Everyone claims they're a DJ though.
"Oh nice," I say. Actually meaning it. "One pound a pint** snakebite? Yeah, I'm game. Seven thirty kick off?"
It is.
I go and have my lectures. I skip dinner that evening because no doubt Katy, she of the filmy babydoll and the inviting smile, will have told all her girl mates about my obliviousness and they'll all have a good giggle at my expense when they see me walk in the dining hall. I go and get ready for the party. I can't wear this T-shirt, it has a stain on it that looks like a cock. I change for a clean Judas Priest one. It has the cover art to Unleashed in the East on it. I wonder how people didn't realise Rob Halford was gay when he dressed like that on stage. I wonder maybe if I go gay, I might actually get laid for once. I then realise that I don't think I could possibly take another man's John Thomas up my dogblossom. Looks and sounds awfully painful. I have a shower before changing and spray myself with exactly one sixth of a can of Lynx Apollo. That was the one they used to advertise with a tribe of nude amazons taking out a hydra using their fur bikinis as slings, if you remember that. I do. I was 13 when it aired on Channel 5 in between Fort Boyard with Melinda Messenger and Xena, Warrior Princess with Lucy Lawless.
There's still a bit of time before the party kicks off.
Got to be done really, if only for tactical purposes.
I told you I was a wanker.
* = No, that's not my name. Names have changed to protect the blushes of anyone who would read this and think it's about them and cringe horribly.
** = There was a time, dear reader, when student parties in London were at a pound a pint. I feel old.
(IN25 no. 8)