Stuff

  STUFF!

  “This is my story. This is my story. All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. All mistakes are intentional, except for those that aren’t” – Lucy

  Stuff is a story about stuff, and about Stuff. Told from the increasingly fragmented perspective of Lucy, a writer hopelessly adrift in her early twenties, it’s a story about confusion, loneliness, love and weird substances. About trying to choose your own adventure, and coming to terms with the possibility that you can’t. You think navigating life, love, sex, jobs, frustrated creativity, middle-class guilt, indifferent cities and the anticlimax of university graduation is hard? Try doing it while under the influence of a mysterious drug called Stuff, which may have psychic qualities and steadily blends the minds of you and your friends until you literally can’t tell where their thoughts end and yours begin. Then add social media and enjoy your very own personal apocalypse.

  Information overload; existential paranoia; telepathic love triangles; trying to find some sort of meaning in Britain in 2014. You know. Usual stuff.

  STEFAN MOHAMED is a 26-year-old author, poet and sometime journalist. He graduated from Kingston University in 2010 with a first class degree in creative writing and film studies, and later that year won the inaugural Reader Award, a category of the Dylan Thomas Prize, for his novel Bitter Sixteen. He lives in Bristol, where he works as an editorial assistant, writing stories and performing poetry in his spare time.

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  Stuff by Stefan Mohamed

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  Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

  12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © Stefan Mohamed, 2014

  The right of Stefan Mohamed to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

  Salt Publishing 2014

  Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

  This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  ISBN 978-1-78463-021-8 electronic

  STUFF

  ‘– promised so much.’ I think I was the first one of us to say it, leaning forwards from the depths of the beanbag, the walls of Lee’s room rippling, a cradle of shifted gravity, tendrils of incense and spliff smoke winding around our heads and necks, endless screens making me think of the word convexification, a low ambient drone and flutters of alien rainforest effects murmuring from flat speaker patches, or it might have been Lee himself speaking, or possibly Laika, it was already hard to tell them apart, to tell us apart, even though it was only the fourth third (maybe second?) time we’d taken Stuff as a group. ‘So much,’ I, or Lee, or Laika, said, and I either understood the meaning because I’d said it, or because of the connection; at any rate, I knew, and they knew. But either because I was only just articulating the thought, or because they were, I wanted to hear more, or to say more, and I leaned further forwards, and Lee shifted a little, wincing, because my movement made his back twinge, and I rearranged myself so that he would be more comfortable, and ran my fingers through my hair, and Laika shivered at that, and I felt her shiver, and it was almost another tunnel-visioning Russian doll game of chain reactions, as we’d had before, just triggering one another for hours, but someone said ‘so much’ again, and we all snapped back to that origin point, ground zero, and we began to talk. ‘All the things they promised us . . . that we could do, be, say whatever we wanted . . . choice.’

  Such a shifting bundle of thoughts.

  ‘When the towers fell . . . ’ They cast such a shadow, and it stretched out over our lives. We grew up in that shadow. ‘And it made everything else feel so trivial.’

  Memories of Trivial Pursuit at Christmas.

  Memories of Christmas carols.

  Memories of Carol, dying (who?).

  It’s so bloody hard to concentrate, to focus on one thing, not that you particularly mind at the time.

  ‘It feels so wrong to complain about it. I mean, there are children getting their legs blown off. Kids deformed from bad water, crawling with flies.’ Laika felt flies crawling on her and shivered again, and I wanted to imagine a spider to kill the flies but I knew she hated them too. She got the thought, though, or the essence at least, and managed to appreciate it, and we held a smile for a long time, even as one of us continued talking. ‘There are people who will never have any choice. We have some choice, at least . . . just not the choice we were promised. And in its own way, on its own terms, that’s fucked.’

  Fucked.

  Fuck.

  My mind unravelled, unspooling in a collapsing collage of fuck words.

  Fuckshaggropecomekisslick-

  ‘– that’s fucked. It’s not fair. It’s not fair that things aren’t the way they were promised us . . . promised us to be.’

  That doesn’t sound like me talking.

  Laika and I were staring at one another.

  At this point, I don’t think either of us was speaking.

  ‘There’s so much we were promised.’

  At this point, we were kissing.

  (It sounds selfish but we’re selfish beings)

  I think it was Lee talking, the entire time.

  (I’m not articulating this very well, I’m just trying to explain how I feel)

  It was definitely probably Lee.

  That’s not really the beginning, but it feels important. Important enough to begin with. There are probably multiple beginnings. There’s Lee being born to his hippie mum in some commune somewhere, and left to run riot, and never fitting in at school, and being beaten up so many times, and selling weed to finance his collection of reggae and drum and bass records, and buggering off to Goa, and meeting me there, and there’s Laika being born to her mum and dad on some grotty estate, born as Leah, that is, arguing with her brother for years and years, losing herself in books, until that first drink at age twelve, and then discovering so many other things far too early, and meeting Lee in Sixth Form and having so, so little interest in him, and then trying university and failing, and going elsewhere, and changing her name, and adding ever more colours and bits and pieces to her hair, and meeting Lee again, and it being different, and then meeting me, the first time we all took Stuff as a group.

  And there’s me, Lucy, born to perfectly pleasant and prosperous middle class parents, thank you very much, well brought up and content to be an only child, and barely being noticed at school until I hit puberty, which seemed to occur overnight, as many boys commented (thunderously un-subtly) at the time, not just boys actually, girls too (it’s weird
suddenly being a subject to be commented on, the high school equivalent of the red top gossip grapevine, ooh SPOTTED: Lucy talking to a boy by the locker rooms, showing a tantalising hint of bra strap under her polo shirt, is she a slut, a tease or a teasing slut), and excelling in English, and writing stories and writing stories and writing stories, and going to Goa and meeting Lee and hating and loving him, and coming back and going to university to study creative writing and excelling and being unceremoniously spat out the other side to work endless shitty little jobs in London, until I thought London was going to kill me, and running to Bristol with Chris, and realising what a horrible mistake that he was, and . . .

  And meeting Lee again.

  And meeting Laika.

  And . . . stuff. And Stuff.

  There’s other stuff, too. Like what Lee was saying, what we were all thinking (that happens a lot), that we were let down, that we were somehow owed something. That we grew up with those towers falling endlessly on a loop, reality rendered in hellish animated GIF form, divorced ever further from context with each repetition and spiced spliced with footage of tanks and turbaned people bleeding out on sandy floors, that somehow all of that revolved around us, that it began and ended with us. That everything kept collapsing around us, until it turned inside out and started again. The economy and shit. And then by the time we were old enough to think about doing anything about it, everything was so revolting and corrupt and screwed up, and we were so cynical, that . . . Jesus, what else would you do, except hide away, and take Stuff?

  Excuses excuses, we’re so good at excuses.

  There is all that, but it’s kind of problematic, because to be honest I never really thought about it, not extensively anyway, nowhere near as much as I should have. Not until I started hanging around with Lee and Laika. I never thought about politics. I was upset about the towers, of course. And the wars that followed. And the poverty, and how much rape goes on in the Democratic Republic of Congo, all of that, the endless badness, of course, of course. But it didn’t affect prey on me. It was just sort of there, in the background, while I twatted about and tried to write my play, and my epic novel about my struggle.

  It was more me walking and feeling simultaneously pissed off that I was going nowhere (I’m the protagonist, I’m the main character in this story, how come I’m being fired again and how come once again the actual chances I want are being snapped up by someone else or not even offered to me in the first place) and ashamed of feeling like that, because Christ, I had a bit of self-awareness. Listening to somebody else’s self-centred, self-pitying whinging is bad enough. At least you can smile politely and zone out, or just leave them to it, but when it’s all going on inside your own brain, like you’re locked in a room and a record’s playing from somewhere but you don’t know where, it just becomes . . . something. And imagine having two other people’s bullshit rattling around in there too. Even if you love them to the point of feeling suicidal sometimes there’s only so much you can take, know what I’m sayin’?

  Looking back at my old diaries, I’m struck by how coherent my writing used to be. You wouldn’t even believe it’s me:

  Unbelievable. That rancid little troll Ollie tried to kiss me after work, and I got sacked for kneeing him in the nuts. Little shitweasel.

  No . . . that’s Laika’s diary.

  You see why I might have trouble.

  One of the problems with trying to find yourself through other people . . . it’s kind of easy easier to lose yourself in them.

  On the plus side, they get to find you, sometimes.

  And you can ask them what you’re like.

  Because obviously you don’t have a clue.

  Why would you?

  DISCLAIMER

  This is my story. This is my story. All persons, living or dead, are purely coincidental. All mistakes are intentional, except for those that aren’t.

  THE FIRST COMPILATION CD I MADE FOR LAIKA

  Track 1) Clint Eastwood - Gorillaz

  Track 2) Let Me Blow Ya Mind – Eve

  Track 3) A Tune For Jack – Lemon Jelly

  Track 4) I Chase The Devil – Romeo and the Upsetters

  Track 5) Some random dub track with funny vocals

  Track 6) I Wish – Skee-Lo

  Track 7) Take Five – Dave Brubeck

  Track 8) Green Garden – Laura Mvula

  Track 9) Call Me – Blondie

  Track 10) There were more tracks but it got scratched and wouldn’t play beyond track 9

  STUFF

  I don’t know who named it Stuff. Or STUFF. We never really settled on which one was correct. I don’t even know where it came from. I mean, it kind of came from Lee, but he always said he just got it off “this guy”. Lee always got it. He liked being in charge of drugs. I didn’t mind at first, because I hated everything to do with drugs except for being on them, so I was happy for him to take care of all the boring bits, the coded phone calls and dodgy bus shelter meetings or whatever, and by the time that I, or maybe Laika, or maybe even Lee himself, realised that there was a dangerous power imbalance going on, it was kind of too late.

  When someone is sleep-Tweeting the sexual thoughts you’re currently having about them while you’re having sex with someone else, miles away, it’s kind of too late.

  When you’re getting fired because you fell over on someone’s table because you felt the pain of someone else’s nose being broken at the same time as you felt the jealous rage of the person who broke the other person’s nose, and it’s all too much, it’s kind of too late.

  When you’ve finally broken through the creative block, and are ready to really start kicking the arse of your magnum opus, but you’ve (sort of kind of) optionally swapped this new inspiration for someone else’s general personal contentment, which becomes more contented because they’re writing the stories you should be writing, and better than you would be writing them, it’s kind of too late.

  And so on.

  THE LAST COMPILATION CD I MADE FOR LAIKA

  Track 1) Retrograde – James Blake

  Track 2) Falling Away With You - Muse

  Track 3) Sexy Boy – Air

  Track 4) Garden (Calibre remix) – Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs

  Track 5) Hummingbird – Maya Jane Coles

  Track 6) Exit Music (For A Film) – Radiohead

  Track 7) Dear Prudence – The Beatles

  Track 8) Happy and Bleeding – PJ Harvey

  Track 9) Re: Stacks – Bon Iver

  Track 10) Hearts A Mess – Gotye

  Track 11) Blue – Joni Mitchell

  Track 12) Blue – Angie Hart

  Track 13) Mojo Pin – Jeff Buckley

  Track 14) Day Is Done – Nick Drake

  Track 15) Day Is Done – Nick Drake (accidentally put that on twice)

  Track 16) Remains - Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon

  THE SECOND TIME I MET LEE

  The first time I met Lee was in Goa, and after knowing each other for three days, most of which we spent realising just how little we had in common, we randomly ended up having sex in the sea. It was quite fun. And there were things about him that I loved. But more also things that I didn’t. And so I carried on, on my merry lost way. And then I met him again, at a party, a year (a year and a half maybe who cares) after I’d left university. The first party I went to in Bristol.

  It was after a psy-trance night that I’d been to with an old uni friend, who I’d sort of dumped myself on when things with Chris went up the spout. She’d been on my aborted theatre studies course, and although I’d fucked that off before first year had finished, we’d stayed friends. Her name was Izzy, and . . .

  No, it wasn’t.

  No.

  Her name was Penny, and she had been on my creative writing course, which I’d followed through to the end. I’d never studied theatre
studies. And I’d never fucked off a course or a subject in my life.

  Let’s start again, even though the faces of all the people I’m trying to describe are all Laika, like it’s Being John Malkovich all up in this bitch.

  Haha. That’s Lee talking. He loves saying things like that, because it’s not the kind of thing that he would say, because it makes us laugh, especially Laika, because she finds Lee really funny, in . . .

  God, Lucy. Shut up.

  IT WAS AFTER A TECHNO NIGHT THAT I’D BEEN TO WITH PENNY, AND SHE’D DRAGGED ME ALONG TO AN AFTER PARTY, which I was kind of half keen for because I was still buzzing, well not exactly buzzing, more like mildly but contentedly, well not really contentedly, just sort of neutrally vibrating off some weak, vaguely speedy pills that we’d shared, more because of old times than anything, and it was in a squat decorated with sheets of psychedelic drawings and graffiti, and there was a big cloud of dub billowing from some sixty-thousand-K rig or whatever, and Penny and I were rolling cigarettes and having a hopping conversation about what exactly the music had been at the night we’d been to, we figured it was techno but I’ve never really known the difference between techno and house, it all has that same going-on-and-on-and-on thump of a beat, but the thing is it’s important to know the difference in Bristol, you need to know these things, you need to know your industrial warehouse techno from your commercial tech house, and anyway so Penny finished rolling her spliff and I was just fishing in my bag for a lighter that I already knew I had given away at the techno house whatever night, and someone said my name.

  And I looked up.

  And knock me down with a really irritating pair of sandals worn by some annoying hippie in Goa, it was Lee.