up2u

up2u

up2u exists only online. Hasn't been outside for weeks, months,
possibly years, it doesn't know any more, its moments are jerking hands
around a Poundland clock. Might loose time, gain time, be fast, slow,
stopped. Doesn't matter, the clock's only hanging there to keep the
walls from collapsing in.
Blocked out the sun ages ago, with a wardrobe across the window, soiled
socks stuffed in the gaps. Didn't miss the day and night. Likes fizz of
strip light. Who'd put strip lights in a bedroom? up2u's landlady, the
Whore from the North. Likes to put on a show, bet she does. Shudder to
think how many young men she's offered a rent reduction to.
Disappointed, she was, when she saw under up2u's baggy brown knitwear,
a pair of saggy tits. Left up2u to its own devices, its wires and
flashing lights, complained about the phone company - who doesn't? -
but then, when up2u shut up shop, she didn't come knocking with the
questions the last landlady died of.
up2u likes the quiet, left-aloneness, just the hum of neon, blue glow
from the screen and click-click-clickety-click of softtouch?
keys.

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In virtuality, up2u is beautiful, a point of intense light, white and
multi-coloured. In virtuality there is no need for the conventions of
ugly sex, or decayed flesh. It can float without gravity, sweeping
through chatrooms, posting, playing, laughing, squeaking, lower-cased
and pretty. Here, where there are no demands, 'it' flowers into she.
She takes of her clothes, watches them plop like fat rain on the crispy
carpet.

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frenchforaday and number429 are ranting on mugstop.com about the price
of beer in bars they've never been to. up2u hasn't been to a bar for so
long she's forgotten what beer smells like. She stretches her arms
above her head, leans back and lets the web-cam flash across her scars
again.
frenchforaday stops ranting and start replying.
i want 2 touch u
wer?
all ovr
shw me
Pause.
up2u pushes her chair back, and runs her fingers over tight, shiny,
hairless skin. This is where she wants to imagine frenchforaday's
fingers. F5. F5. F5. F5.
Then the reply comes, her picture, white circles around her precious,
secret parts.
When she sees that image, up2u knows frenchforaday is the man, woman,
thing, that she will be with for the rest of her life.

------------------------------------

'No, no, no.'
This isn't going well. It was never going to be easy, but so far, as
arguments go, this is verging on disastrous.
'Pussy, darling, try and understand.'
He puts an arm to her shoulder. She shakes it off.
'No. No. How can I understand? What you're telling me doesn't make any
sense. How can you be in love with somebody else? How dare you be? You
love me. Remember? You love me. It doesn't fade. It doesn't ebb. It
doesn't go. You said that.'
'I was mistaken. It was a mistake. I should never have said that. I had
no right to, I couldn't know. I'm sorry, I was wrong about that.'
'Why should be sorry? How can you be sorry? Sorry means you feel
remorse, and you don't do you?'
'I have to go now.'
'How can you be in love with somebody else? Just switch. It isn't like
changing your car.'
'It's complicated.'
'Simple. It's always much more simple that you think.'
'I can't argue with you.'
'Won't. Why won't you?'
'You wouldn't understand, because you can't comprehend, because you
don't know, because you're not?'
He looks at the wall. On the wall is a mirror. He can see the
reflection of a clock and a picture. The clock says six fifteen, which
means it's quarter to seven. Time travel in a mirror. He promised Steve
he'd be around by six, and now it's quarter to seven.
'I have to go.'
'Tell me who she is.'
'I can't.'
'If I don't know, how am I going to kill her?'
'Pussy!'
'I'm asking for a chance, that's all. Let me meet her, talk to her. Let
me hear she loves you from her own lips. Let me tell her that I love
you, that nobody will love you more. Let me shred her heart.'
'You can't meet her.'
'I know her don't I? Kathryn Phillips, isn't it? When I saw you kissing
her at the party, I knew.'
'Never kissed.'
'Saw it.'
'No, it's not Kath. Christ Pussy, Steve's my best mate. What kind of
man do you think I am? I mean, I've never kissed her.'
'Liar.'
'I've never met her.'
'Liar. Liar.'
'I have to go.'
'Give me the key,' Pussy says, and she kisses his face, halfway between
lips and cheek, as if she'll never kiss him again.

------------------------------------

'I don't understand it Ronnie,' says Steve, juggling the neck of a
bottle and a cigarette in his fingers. 'She's beautiful. Kath, isn't
Pussy beautiful?'
'Love her to pieces,' calls Kath from the bedroom.
'Don't understand it at all. Don't know what you're doing mate. Don't
think you do either.'
On the telly, there's a program about people who were in an air crash.
They show pictures of how they looked before the crash, and how they
look now. He looks a man's face, clouded in shadows, a tear forming in
the eye Ronnie can see. They make him hold a photograph of how he used
to look towards the camera and he cries.
up2u never cries. up2u holds her scars out to the world, and lets the
world stroke them.
'I've met a girl.'
'It's the mid-life. Kath, Ronnie's having a mid-life.'
'Divvy Donny Davidson had one last year. He's got a Filipino bride and
a mortgage the size of Australia now.'
'I met her in a chat room.'
'Oh God.'
'She's, she? there's something wrong with her.'
'Listen to me Ronnie, you've got one last chance to be a man. Out to
the 24-hour garage, buy the last bucket of flowers, and beg on the
floor. It works.'
'She shows me her scars.'
'You're sick.'
'No, it isn't like that. When she does, it's the most intimate I've
ever been with anyone. We chat, for hours, about nothing. Just patterns
of letters sometimes. I know her better than I know myself.'
'She'll be some fat, frumpy, single mother with five kids and a QVC
habit.'
'I love her.'
'You're mad.'
'I haven't even seen her face. Can I borrow your laptop?'
'Help yourself.'

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Mugstop.com is quiet, a couple of lurkers, the administrator, who never
sleeps, and number429, who flames frenchforaday on entry. Words are
exchanged, then they settle down.
seen hr 2nt?
rd her blg looser.

up2u's blog server is so damn slow on dial-up, the home page takes a
decade to load. Of course, he hasn't got his links on Steve's laptop,
so he has to do everything manually.
Finally, today's blog, posted four-thirty, titled: Living in a fish
tank, with people watching.

Loves me. Not. Loves me. Not. Loves me. Not. Loves me? Not.
Thk u 4 tryng. It made it hrt less in th end. Can't tpe any lngr.
Wnt to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

------------------------------------

'Ronnie? Ronnie?' Kath is inches away, shouting, but he grips the sides
of the laptop as if they were the arms of a rollercoaster armchair. He
doesn't know what it means. up2u never sleeps, just snaps eyes between
the jerking hands of a Poundland clock.

Somewhere in this world, she lies, stripped, scars oxidising, lips
blue, not a peek from her landlady, and there's nothing he can do to
reach her. Can't phone for an ambulance, he doesn't know the country,
let alone a street.
Maybe she never existed, that would be better, then her photos were
just static, and her scars were never wounds, and she was never
hurt.