Friction Read Free

Deansgate and Carly walked through it. Steve froze. Ambition puffed fart-like from his arse. He put down his drink and approached her. The conversation was twenty seconds old when Steve discovered that Carly had just one interest: money. He sighed, wafted the odour of his ambition from his nostrils and simply changed his mind, cancelled his MA and started independently investing on the stock market. So came style,the sixty-pound haircuts, the fajitas and the goats’ cheese, the lifting of weights and the financing of Carly’s sprees.
    To be a shagger of others, particularly a shagger of girls like Carly, demands sacrifice. So it is that Steve smiles carefully when she returns from town with numerous shopping bags, or when she points her finger at certain garments in various catalogues. He doesn’t complain. Carly is a choice: the glorious twenty-first-century choice between fantasy and mind. Carly makes Steve feel exactly like a man. Extremely like a man. A cock god, a swordsman, a sexpert, etc.
    â€˜How many times was it last night, Stevie?’
    Steve listens as the condoms titter below. ‘Twice,’ he says, turning away from Carly’s smoke and shutting his eyes tight.
    â€˜I could go all night. Really. I could fuck all day,’ says Carly, stubbing out her fag and reaching round Steve’s arse cheeks to where his cock and balls discuss the meaning of life. She gently jigs his webbed testicles, taps at his cock until it moves like a flag flown in mourning, to half-mast.
    â€˜I’m not going on top.’
    â€˜I’m too fucked.’
    â€˜Just wank me off.’
    This is life. This is glorious life. There is a burst of activity as Carly drags Steve on to his back and makes for his middle. She gets herself into a comfortable position and, with a soft grip, begins to wank him off, as agreed. One thing has been proved: boys love friction, and being wanked off by a girl is the easiest source of it. It’s stress free, guilt free, and needn’t be repaid. Unlike a blow job, which is worldsplittingly political and requires a measured, softly spoken diplomacy. Carly’s strokes begin to get more vigorous and Steve feels he owes her nothing.
    An area of the blue duvet is going up and down like a fast heart beating under thin skin. Steve’s eyes shut, capturing situations of sex inside his head. A mixture of fantasy and icicled reality: the begging eyes of a conquered female, the round African American arses he clocked on the web, the merits of globalisation, a pop star round his cock, a film star at his balls.
    It’s as if all Steve has are his looks, which are so good they virtually guarantee him intercourse with any girl in the Western world. Lots and lots of lifting weights occupy a great deal of Steve’s time on earth. Up and down, making his body bigger and bigger. He’s changing and, deep down, he blames Carly, he reckons she makes him less refined. Carly doesn’t give a shit.
    She thinks of products as her wrist moves up and down. She pictures clothes. She sees lifestyle in her hand: ripped jeans, stiletto heels, her tortilla palm wrapped round alert cock.
    There is a desperate silence in this room, broken only by Steve’s silly groans. He knows it. She knows it. The condoms beside the bed know it. The sewers are rising.

3
Only Joking
    SOUTH FROM CENTRAL Manchester down Oxford Road gets you to Fallowfield. Two gloriously young students, Johnny and Rebecca, enter Platt Fields Park with their arms loosely linked. They’re not lovers. Linking arms is very popular in the early twenty-first century, even amongst friends. Today the sun is scarlet and the sky seems almost green. A young man glides by on rollerblades, headphones in his ears, swaying from side to side. Rollerblading is getting less popular these days. Never trust a rollerblader. They’re a bunch of fucking nihilists. They don’t believe in anything.
    Johnny and Rebecca are