Loaded Read Free

against it and put my bag on its roof. His parents bought it for him for his eighteenth birthday, and over the two years he has washed it religiously every Sunday; he even vacuums the back seat. I don’t drive. I don’t need to. Everyone I know has a car.
    â€“Take your fucking bag off my car. Joe comes over and searches the roof for any scratches. He glares at me as I get into the passenger seat. I take out the joint and offer him the first smoke. He takes it and lets out a long slow exhale of smoke.
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    Joe has got his world worked out, or so he likes to think he has. He’s got a job, got a girlfriend, got a car. Soon he wants to get married. I think it’s a mistake but I figure that it isn’t my business to tell him such things and I don’t. He’s an adult. But it seems to me that there are two things in this world guaranteed to make you old and flabby. Work and marriage. It is inevitable. The faces of all the workers and all the married people I see carry the strain of living a life of rules and regulations. Joe’s face is still young looking, he still has sharp bright eyes. But he’s changing. Doing the nine to five on weekdays. No dirty T-shirts but a shirt and tie and a briefcase by his side. He keeps his crew cut because he still wants to dip one foot into the pool of freedom, but even that will change once the wedding ring is slipped on. They won’t let him walk up the aisle without at least two inches of hair, not in a Greek church. It’s his cop-out.
    Unless you’re a smart thief everyone has to work, or scrounge around saying yes-sir-no-sir-can-I-have-a-raise-sir-can-I-have-the-day-off-sir-my-grandmother-is-sick-sir-dad-can-you-lend-me-twenty. We all have to sell ourselves. But you don’t have to get married, you don’t have to sell all of yourself. There is a small part of myself, deep inside of me, which I let no one touch. If I let it out, let someone have alook at it, brush their hands across that part of my soul, then they would want to have it, buy it, steal it, own it. Joe’s put that part of himself up for market and he would be the first to say it’s because he can’t put up with the demands. Parents, friends, bosses, girlfriends, girlfriends’ parents, cousins, aunts, uncles, even the fucking neighbours. They all want to sell, buy, invest in the future. And now he’s just waiting for the right bid, and I know what it is. Once his parents and her parents offer a house, or at least a hefty deposit, the deal will be clinched. The marriage will be arranged. Joe will have joined the other side, just another respectable wog on a mortgage. I look at him drawing on the joint and I turn away and make circles in the air with the smoke. Coward, I whisper. But he doesn’t hear me.
    â€“What you say? Nothing, I reply and he gives me the joint. We smoke it and he offers me a lift home but I prefer to walk. It is a good half-hour but I want to clear my head from the alcohol last night. I get out and confirm meeting at his place tonight. Joe waves me away and goes off to have a conversation with the security guard. I shuffle around my bag and find my Walkman.

Dad is in the garden watering the plants. The garden is the most important part of his life now. If he’s not among the plants, he’s asleep, or down at the coffee shop with his friends. That’s when he’s not working, but I don’t know what Dad is like at work. We don’t talk about it.
    I go up to him and gently touch his shoulder. He pulls away. Go see your mother, he says, she’s upset. He yanks the Walkman out of my hand. Where have you been you animal?
    â€“With Panayioti. He walks away and fiddles with some flowers. I hear him muttering about me, about my brother,about my sister. I expected his anger, I’m used to it, but at the same time the whole of my emotions, all the shit fluttering around my head, feels like it’s going to erupt