This Modern Love – Part Two

Greg wasn’t incredibly surprised that Grace had disappeared, but he was relieved. If he was in the same situation, though having Charlie as a best friend he knew he never would be, Greg thought he would leave as soon as possible to avoid the embarrassment of having to thank a total stranger for making sure he didn’t choke on his own vomit whilst simultaneously freezing to death in a town centre gutter. And while most of the women Charlie shouldered home graciously slipped out into the pre-dawn light as soon as they were sober enough to walk in a straight line and figure out where they were, some stayed. These women Greg thought of as stray cats. You brought them in weak and fed them up till they were strong and well enough to go back out on their own, and then their catty nature would kick in and they’d act like they owned the place. As soon as Greg saw one come down the stairs and shakily ask if there was any chance of a cup of tea he’d know they had another one.

The last one had been the worst yet. Maxine. When she came downstairs she asked for herbal tea and then burst into huge racking sobs when Charlie apologetically told her they didn’t have any. For the first week he knew her, Greg doubted that Maxine made it through even one conversation without bursting into tears. And not just crying, hysterical wailing that penetrated every wall of the house like a sonic nuclear assault, physical tantrums where she would throw herself onto the floor and convulse in frenetic bouts of epileptic twitching that left her limbs and head splattered with deep bruising. When not crying Maxine would mentally withdraw into herself and sit unmoving and uncommunicative for hours, screaming and lashing out if anyone tried to pull her out of it. Greg was convinced she was schizophrenic or bipolar but in her composed times she would deny it fervently. She’d just been through a hard time, her boyfriend had left her for her best friend, the two getting married so quickly that Maxine was forced to confront the fact that they’d been going behind her back for quite some time.

Which to Greg’s mind wasn’t quite bad enough to have brought on the tsunami of emotion that had swept into their house. He didn’t say so though, because once she’d come out of her depressive crying phase she’d moved into her aggressive fighting phase. She spat orders and abuse and turned the self-flagellation of her writhing on the floor into a flail of fists and teeth that would lash out at the slightest provocation. But only when Charlie wasn’t around. When he was she would have frozen any butter you cared to place in her mouth such was her easy nature and sunny disposition. She was suddenly everyone’s best friend, sickly sweet in her happiness and enthusiasm about everything. Her moods might have been predictable, but that made them no easier to live with. And Greg literally had to live with them. Charlie had managed to persuade him to let her stay and for the next four months he regretted it every day. It’s hard in a small two-bedroom terrace with a cramped kitchen and cosy living room to avoid another person. Greg spent those months voluntarily locked into his bedroom emerging only to cook and shower or to leave, a prisoner of conscience. His long vigil only came to an end when the Iron Curtain that had separated the flatmates crashed down in spectacular fashion with Maxine storming out screaming of multiple affairs and Charlie weeping in his room.

Charlie fell in love easily and deeply so breakups were always hard for him. Especially when infidelity was involved. Charlie would give a person every break, was sympathetic to every character flaw, but he was a romantic through-and-through. There were certain things you just did not do and chief among them was cheating. The following month had been almost as hard as the months that preceded it for Greg. There wasn’t the constant crying or hitting that had come with Maxine, more a quiet depression and a complete lack of enthusiasm, but with Charlie he actually cared. Luckily Greg wasn’t the only one who cared. Most people would agree that no matter how many people they call friends and would call them friend in return, there were only a few they could truly rely on to be there in the worst times. Greg had known which few to ring and they’d all answered the call.

They were all here now, much in the same way as they had been when they were rehabilitating Charlie. He couldn’t be motivated to go anywhere or do anything then and so they’d all crowd into his room and just be there. Their seating positions indicated the friendships. Danny would always claim Charlie’s big comfortable chair for himself, refusing to consider any complaints about the unfairness of this but never offering any reasonable responses as to why this might be so. Most of the time Twat would sit up against one of the arms, arranged at his master’s feet like the big dumb obedient dog he was, ready to snap at any one who argued with Danny’s divine right to comfort. It would be Greg or Jules who would challenge the status quo but only because they refused to let Danny to have it all his own way without at least a bit of a fight. Really, they were happier to be together on the bed where they lay with a close but platonic arrangement. Charlie sat in the far corner of the room, propping a cushion against each of the two white walls and cocoon himself into it, never thinking to unseat someone else and take a more comfortable position.

“Anyone want a drink?” Charlie levered himself up and moved across the head of the bed towards the door. He had suggested going out earlier that day to Greg, who had been delighted. It had been a week since the house party and he had been worried that Charlie was going to regress back into a depressive state. In the build-up to the party and during its’ early hours he had seemed almost back to his cheerful self. But when Grace had disappeared in the following morning it was almost as if Maxine had left him all over again. He had retreated back into his room and Greg had been on the point of sending an SOS out to the group when Charlie had suggested they all go out. It was a Saturday night, so the others had been right up for it.

“Have we got any of that gin left?” A G&T would be bang on.” Greg heard Jules snort beside him.

“What?” He playfully pushed her leg that was stretched out next to him.

“That’s a well gay drink for a man to order.” Jules put her leg back closer to Greg, kicking him slightly less playfully in the ribs.

“Ow! Fucker that really hurt! Doesn’t using ‘gay’ in that context make you a traitor to homosexuals?”

“Doesn’t ordering such a gay drink make you a traitor to heterosexuals?”

They looked at each other and laughed. From the chair beside the bed they heard the sounds of barely muffled laughing, laughter that shared malice where theirs was warm. They both looked over and saw Danny quietly saying something in Twat’s ear, both of them peering over at the bed as they conversed.

All groups larger than two people are inevitably closer to an alliance than a friendship. One person will be incredibly close to another but hate the third person who is close to the second person. Person A and C then get on only for the sake of person B, who will dislike person D but have to accept them because they are dating C and the two are practically bound at the hip. A can’t stand D either and so will become closer to B which will later require gestures from A to C to return them to the fold when they breakup with D. Unfortunately, C broke up with D because D cheated on them with B, who blamed drink if you’re interested, and they don’t want anything to do with B and keep telling A that unless A no longer sees B, A and C can’t be friends any more. Grudges, animosity and loving loyalty bind people together in tangled strings that require constant attention to keep them from strangling all the participants in their own backstabbing and bitching.

The group crowded into Charlie’s bedroom was no less afflicted by this. Charlie and Greg were the foundations, both symbolically and chronologically. They had been friends from an early age and had been closer to each other than they had been to their other siblings, probably helped by the fact that unlike with their siblings they were never forced to live in close proximity with each other, and stayed that way through life. They attended all the same schools and even went to the same university. Whilst both men could give perfectly logical and practical reasons behind their choices that had nothing to do with the other being there, it had been an unspoken fundamental priority. They did however concede to living apart in their first year, which gave Greg the chance to meet Jules.

It was perfectly possible that Greg and Jules could have met and become friends even if Charlie had been living with him, but it was unlikely they would have become as close as they did. Greg had a miserable living situation, hating and being equally and reciprocally hated by his five other flatmates who were all the bestest of bestest friends. Therefore when he met and became friendly with Jules, who lived in the flat above his and also had unlimited reserves of disdain for her bedfellows, they clung to each other like the only sane people left on earth. For the rest of their first year they were in and out of each others rooms so often that the standing joke was that Greg was trying to turn Jules straight.

The first words Jules had spoken to Greg had been “I’m gay, so don’t even fucking bother alright?” Greg hadn’t needed to be told. Jules’ look was so lesbian that other members of her LGBT group at uni had considered kicking her out for furthering stereotypes. Her dyed red hair was cut short and left to riff up on top in a mini-mohican which she would periodically ruffle to ensure it stayed spiky. She had stubby manly features on a cramped face, wore plaid shirts and baggy jeans which spilled over her desert sand coloured workboats so often that it might as well have been a uniform. Her voice was low and deep and was used mostly for swearing, which along with her macho swagger made her pretty intimidating. It was something Jules knew and loved. She was very self aware and equally intelligent, able to win an argument through fierce debate on a range of topics. She and Greg spent virtually their entire first meeting, a boring party at a neighbouring flat, arguing about Ayn Rand over vodka with both of them claiming to have won the discussion when in fact neither of them had any real claim to victory.

“Either way, G&T is vile. I’ll have a lager if you’ve got one Chaz?” Jules asked politely. Charlie nodded and went to get the drinks.

Jules also got on well with Charlie, which was a quick way to become a great friend of Greg’s. She appreciated his ability to listen as a man. Women listened differently from men and Jules found an intimate conversation with a woman to be unsettling. They picked up on too much, would could cut right to the heart of the matter and then expect to talk about it in great detail. Charlie was a better listener than most men but even he lacked the intuition and perceptiveness to be able to see what was really wrong and to expose it in such a way that made not talking about it impossible. With him Jules was able to discuss matters at a superficial level which left all the worst bits dark and secret but still made you feel better for having talked about it. When Greg suggested that the three of them should find a place to live for the last years of their degree both Charlie and Jules were all for it.

It was at the house warming for the place they rented that Jules and Greg first met Danny. Charlie had been talking about a mate he had met at the pub for a couple of weeks, someone who apparently was a bit of a character, always full of stories about naughty things he had been up to and ready for a laugh. Charlie saw him as a rough diamond, a bit of a geezer who might play at the larrikin but underneath was a good guy. He did feel that at times Danny could take it a bit too far but he saw it as an extension of Danny’s vulnerabilities that he felt the need to cover up with bravado. After five minutes Jules and Greg both thought that Danny was all bravado and forever after never took to his chippy nature. Danny in turn never liked their pretensions and saw them as upper class snobs. He might have played the lad persona a bit, but at heart and in background that was what he was. Born into a family who put the work into working class he had been lucky enough to attend a good state secondary school which showed him that it was possible to be successful without a polished accent. Attending university might have stopped being the act of a class traitor in Danny’s town but it was still noted. You were something if you kept going at 16 rather than getting a job and depending on who you talked to that something was either good or bad. It was little wonder that Danny felt the need to play to his roots, to overplay his roots. He felt the need to remind everyone constantly of where he was from so they knew straight from the outset what to expect, so they could treat him as such from the start.

It was why he got on so badly with Jules and Greg. In their dislike of him he saw the manifestation of the entire class struggle that meant that anyone with a regional accent would never get anywhere but fundamentally useless people would become important through sheer dint of having a suitably reputable background. It was a sad fact that he never gave them anything but both barrels of the suppressed minority and they never treated him as anything but a dodgy chancer who used people. Their main evidence for this was Twat.

Twat’s real name was almost lost in the mists of time. His parents may have possibly still called him by it but he had lost contact with them and everyone else just called him Twat. Even Danny, who was easily his closest friend called him by it. The origins of the name had been long forgotten but it had stuck, mostly due to him being the absolute personification of what people meant when they used the term. This was built up through a long list of character faults, but chief among them was his aggression. He liked a fight the way alcoholics like drink, it goes beyond pleasure and into pure necessity. At some point in his life some caring soul had tried to give him a chance in life by channelling his rage through sport and had introduced him to rugby. It should have been perfect, the game for hooligans played by gentlemen, a chance for him to cathartically release his anger in an environment that would condition him to be disciplined with it’s release. The problem was that Twat wasn’t competitive, just angry. Being competitive might often be mistook for being aggressive but the difference is that a competitor has to win. Aggressiveness is for its own sake whilst competitiveness is because someone is keeping score. The issue was that Twat didn’t care at all for the score. Rugby for him was an excuse to use his body as a weapon against other people in a situation where the police were unlikely to be involved. He rarely finished a game and was kept on by his club only because his fearsome reputation for violence was enough to cause even the hardest opposition player to shit himself when Twat looked at him.

This was the reason Danny and Twat were such good friends. Danny had quickly recognised that to be a friend of Twat’s was to never have to fear physical retribution ever again. Danny’s cheeky-chappy attitude and eye for a good figure often got him into trouble with boyfriends, husbands and people bigger than him who he’d pissed off, and having Twat around was good for his looks. He was a nuclear deterrent in a Stone Age world, standing 6″4′ with biceps the size of Jersey and no imagination for the consequences of beating a man’s head into a pulp. Which funnily enough was how Danny and Twat had met. Danny and several friends had taken a special trip to a pub which was known locally as ‘The Wild West’ for how rough and ready it was. Danny and his mates thought they were pretty rough and ready themselves. They quickly found out how wrong they were. Within a minute of entering one of his friends had knocked into Twat at the bar. By the end of the minute Danny found himself the group’s official spokesperson, by dint of neither of his friend’s having sufficiently movement in their jaw bones or teeth in their mouths to be able to complete sentences. Luckily for him, Danny had a quick enough tongue and an understanding of what amused a man like Twat to soon have him eating out of his hand. They quickly became inseparable.

Charlie and Danny had never reached the level of friendship that the former shared with Greg. The two of them were closer to brothers than friends, and even that possibly underestimated the bond they shared. They had the history of siblings but without having lived together during their formative years they didn’t have the memories of being under each other’s feet or competing for resources and affection. They had though grown through their formative years together which had led to them sharing many of the same opinions and tastes. Danny, to his credit and contrary to much of his nature, didn’t try to emulate this closeness. Instead he played to his strengths and was the jester who said the things Charlie never would and did the things he definitely never would. In Danny he was able to experience the life of a rogue vicariously and to enjoy the highs and lows that came with it whilst maintaining the distance to be able to morally shake his head at the extremes of Danny’s behaviour. Twat was one of the things he disagreed with. He recognised that they had a symbiotic friendship, one that had mostly developed out of mutual need. Danny was like the birds that sat on the back of hippo’s and ate the parasites off their skin. He kept the hulking Twat out of trouble by being able to keep him distracted and diverted from things that would otherwise anger him. Charlie saw that this was a good thing for Twat as Danny had so far proved to be the only person who had ever managed to keep him under control. But at the same time, Danny was happy to let him off the lead if it would be to his benefit. Charlie thought that having Twat around brought out the worst in Danny.

Charlie came back into the room with drinks, a weak G&T for Greg as there had been very little gin left and ice cold cans of lager for Jules Danny and Twat, which he distributed to them and then went back for his own.

“So where are we going tonight?” Greg looked over at him and only him, but it was still Danny who answered.

“Let’s go to Twingo’s.”

Beside him Twat nodded like he was on a string. “Yeah yeah, quality tail in there.”

Beside Greg Jules reluctantly also nodded. “He’s fucking right.”

“Fuck yes I’m right. Better leave them to me though little girlie.”

“Suck my dick.”

In a different world, a world where the laws of romantic comedies ran things instead of physics, Twat and Jules would have eventually fallen in love. From different backgrounds they nevertheless had a lot in common. They both liked a scrap, they both liked girls until they woke up the next day and had both played rugby. And like most rom-com love interests, they loathed each other and would constantly insult and demean each other verbally. But the loathing between them wasn’t the kind that came from a passionate frisson, it came from a deep and abiding dislike that meant that if they ever were to lean their heads in towards each other it was more likely they’d go for each other’s throats rather than kiss. It was safest not to leave the two of them alone for longer than a minute or two. Even letting them talk within the confines of a group was still a bit risky.

Jules had tensed up on the bed and Twat was quite clearly making to get up. Greg saw Danny move his legs from across the arm of the chair so they gently rested against the big man’s shoulder. He tried to move the conversation on with a tone that indicated that he hadn’t noticed any of it.

“Nah, it’s crap in there. Let’s go to Hang the DJ.” Greg looked over at Charlie expectantly even as he heard the groans from the others.

Charlie loved Hang the DJ, it played his kind of music, which was quite obvious if The Smith’s reference in the club’s title was considered alongside the posters that hung in Charlie’s bedroom. It was wall-to-wall Morrissey, with his quiffy self-satisfied holier-than-God-himself revolting bloody face staring down morosely. Or so Greg thought. Charlie had discovered his music during a tender period in his life when a girl he desperately loved was paying no attention to him and the self-pitying lyrics of the Mozfather really talked to him. Even now ‘Please, please, please, let me get what I want this time’ was Charlie’s grief song, the track that he would play and Greg would hear wailing through the walls when upset. Greg had heard it so often recently that he had found himself humming it to himself, which had made him instantly angry with himself. He hated The Smiths. He hated their lyrics, their boring music, the way Morrissey talked absolute shit constantly and how Charlie treasured their self-pity as wisdom. He hated Hang the DJ for its’ mere association with the band even though he liked quite a lot of the music the club played.

Charlie blushed and shook his head. “No, let’s go to Twingo.” Greg was shocked. Charlie would always jump at any suggestion to go to Hang the DJ and his exuberance would be reluctantly persuade the others to come along, as he would rarely ask for anything. Greg gave him a silent questioning look which Charlie looked away from.

“Damn right.” Twat pulled himself off the floor and drained his beer in one massive gulp. “Let’s go ladies.” He crumpled his can with one hand and dismissively tossed it onto Charlie’s cupboard before walking out of the room. “Come on, let’s go let’s go let’s go!”