Meatspace. Nikesh Shukla
Beer. Cheese. And the chutneys. Those fucking chutneys. Aziz eats all his meals out. He doesn’t have anything I can steal.
I notice that Rach has decided to join Facebook. And add me, I might add. I look through her feed. There are a few photos and I’m in attendance at all the events they were taken at; they were when we were together. We look happy. We’re smiling, laughing, dancing, cuddling, in one we’re kissing, but this captured intimacy doesn’t feel like something I’ve experienced. I stare at the photo of me kissing her and it doesn’t look like me. For one, this Kitab looks happy. I remember that night. It was my birthday 3 years ago and we had ended up at our flat, shoes off, dancing to reggae. There was a limbo competition. I won. I’m surprisingly good at the limbo. I think about tweeting ‘I’m surprisingly good at limbo’, but I don’t.
There’s a few comments from people welcoming her: ‘finally?!?!>>!’. That’s it. She has made no declaration of her reasons for joining or what she likes or dislikes. She is simply there. Lurking. Watching. It’s weird that she’s on here. One of our main arguments was her ‘Black Ops’ aversion to technology, meaning she didn’t have a mobile phone. She couldn’t understand why we couldn’t make a plan and stick to it; she wasn’t signed up to any social networking site. She didn’t have email or Facebook. ‘Why can’t we just phone each other on a landline and make an arrangement and keep to it?’ she would say. She worked in a job that didn’t require constant email access. You had to be present with her. And bloody hell, that was hard.
I go into my Documents folder, into Admin, and then into CV. In CV there’s another folder called D323. It’s got all my camera phone nude photos of Rach that I promised I’d deleted. I look at the one of her with her bra hanging off her knee, her foot up on the bed. It’s a sideways shot. She covers her right breast and down bits with this angle. I zoom in until the pixels blur into flesh-coloured squares.
I get a Facebook event invite from Rach reminding me about her birthday then a private message from her apologising for including me in it. She asks me ‘How are you?’, and even written down I can hear the emphasis on the are. I don’t reply because fuck her for not understanding how social media works. She was constantly irritated that I spent my time self-promoting on the internet and living off my inheritance instead of giving her any attention.
She once told me, ‘I hate how you’re never in the room with me. Even when you’re in the room. You’re just on that bloody phone making lazy self-obsessed quips about nothing.’
‘It’s just fun, this big online conversation.’
‘What about our conversation? I’m in the room.’
‘I just think it’s amazing, having this global audience to interact with.’
‘What? And tell them all the stupid things I say?’
‘You are funny.’
I used to mock her on Twitter. I thought she didn’t mind. People found it funny.
Example tweet: ‘My girlfriend pronounces the B in subtle but calls submarine sumarines.’
I had changed the focus of the tweet slightly to make her look stupid. At the time we had been walking through a village in Devon, making fun of words with silent letters, saying them to each other slowly, like ‘E-NOO-GUH-HUH’ and ‘GA-HOST’. We were falling about laughing, and it kept up for another hour till during lunch, when, while Rach slowly finished her sandwich – she was such a slow eater, it was almost cute – I tweeted.
My dad replies to my text asking if he’s okay, saying: ‘Of course Im ok. seeing you tonight. Please shave. I would like to see my son’s face.’
Aziz, sensing my inert hangover, emails me a motivational message to get me writing. ‘If you are the Captain of a sinking ship, the best example you can set is to get off that ship as soon as you can. Really, you should be the first off.’
I shave. As my stubble comes off, I remember why I’ve kept it thick in recent months: it’s to disguise the bloating of beer and pizza in my cheeks. I look at myself in the mirror. Apart from the bags under my eyes and the beer gut, I’m doing okay, I think. I compose an email to Rach. I don’t send it.
Eventually, I’ve wasted enough time to justify opening a beer. As I close the fridge, I see another chutney that I’ve never opened before. It has Rach’s handwriting on it. It says mango, lime and cumin chutney. I close the fridge on it.
aZiZWILLKILLYOU episode 2 Aziz vs Tattoos [posted 8 September, 11:02]
People, there are 3 rules that apply to all tattoos …
1 If you get the name of a loved one tattooed on your body, you will break up with each other.
2 If you design the tattoo yourself, chances are it’s not good enough to go on your body.
3 If you think your tattoo is unique, it definitely isn’t. If your tattoo is unique, it’s most likely shit.
AMIRIGHT?
Take it from Aziz. This shit is gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and AZIZWILLKILLYOU gospel.
So guys, something weird happened last night. I was talking to my brother, Kit, about getting a tattoo. I want one. I’ve never had one before. I’m definitely the kind of crazy motherfucker who needs a crazy motherfucker tattoo to make him look like a crazy motherfucker. But those 3 rules I listed, they always stopped me. And, why mess with perfection? Innit? My bro Kit’s already declared he’s going to get an ironic ‘job description’ tattooed on his forearm, the sensitive artist. But anyway, we were chatting.
I was saying I should get a random word like ‘sparrow’ or ‘erudite’ tattooed on my bicep as a talking point. Conversational lull? Wanna mystify some beanie in the pub with something vague but talking-pointy? Flex your biceps and wait for the enquiries to pour in.
Because, then people’ll be like … why does it say that word? And I’ll have this amazing story prepared for them. So, Kit and I are discussing words.
‘Sparrow,’ I was like, yeah, weird word.
And he was like, ‘Why?’
And I was like, ‘It doesn’t matter. That’s not the point. It’s a talking point.’
‘Yeah, but neither of us know what to say about it.’
‘True. Erudite?’
Then Kit was like, ‘And what?’
‘And what what?’
‘No … and what?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean … and what?’
‘What the words … “and what?”?’
‘Yeah …’
‘That’s pretty cool. What about an ampersand and a question mark?’
‘Pretty cool.’
‘Not cool enough.’
And then, it hit me. When he came back from the fridge, I was like, ‘I have the answer.’
‘Hit me,’ Kit said.
‘I’ll get my favourite t-shirt. On my chest. That way I’ll never lose it, shrink it, or ruin it. Think about it, I’ll always be dressed. In my favourite t-shirt.’
Kit laughed.
‘Imagine,’ I said. ‘People who confine their tattoos to where they can’t be seen when you’re wearing a suit – what if they got a tattoo that smartened them up?’
‘Like workwear tatts?’
‘Exactly. You gotta be smart for work, right?’
Kit said, ‘I