I Kissed a Narcissist

By Ben Smith

Ben is a sensible, hardworking, recreational drug user who can't believe his luck when he meets Joyce—beautiful, exotic and a little crazy. But Joyce proves to be more than just a bit crazy, and her erratic behaviour starts to make life more and more chaotic. Ben is sure that, with enough love, he can help Joyce overcome her demons, but when things really start to spin out of control, he steels himself to get her out of his life. However, Joyce has some news that puts them onto a rollercoaster from which there's no escape...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Aug 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9781786935281

Ben Smith

Ben Smith lives in Cornwall and is a lecturer in creative writing at Plymouth University, specializing in environmental literature and focusing particularly on oceans, climate change and the ‘Anthropocene’. His first poetry pamphlet, Sky Burials, was published by Worple Press and his poetry and criticism have appeared in various journals and anthologies. Doggerland is his first novel.

Book preview

Ben Smith grew up in Yorkshire but has lived and worked in South London for more than 30 years. He has three children and he works with autistic teenagers with challenging behaviour. I Kissed a Narcissist is his first novel.

For Vicki

Ben Smith

I Kissed a Narcissist

Copyright © Ben Smith (2017)

The right of Ben Smith to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-78693-527-4 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-78693-528-1 (E-Book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2017)

Austin Macauley Publishers™ Ltd.

25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Chapter 1

I’m starting my story at sea.

I’m up on the deck of a Monday lunchtime ferry from Dublin to Holyhead, with a brisk salty wind scraping my face and a badly rolled spliff in my hand.

It’s a glorious day in early September 2005 and in all directions there’s a horizon, where navy blue sea meets steely blue sky.

A gingery guy in his 30s is standing a couple of feet from me, leaning against the rail and looking down at the foamy water. Something makes me think he's a suicide risk. His hair is a mop, his leather jacket is scuffed, his jeans are dirty and torn and his right hand is badly scraped. It reminds me of my own hand after coming off my pushbike. He says is that a joint? and I pass it on.

I wanted to be just a little bit stoned because I had to drive as soon as the ferry docked and weed is my worst drug for driving. I once had a spliff before going out for the night and had to abandon the car further away from my destination than when I’d set off.

Ginger handed it back and said Thanks, man, I wasn’t really expecting that on the ferry. Makes me feel a bit better, y’know? in a heavy Scouse accent.

What did you do to your hand?

I fuckin’, aah Jesus, I’m fuckin’ on the edge, man. I jumped out of a fuckin’ car when it was moving, like really fast.

I was meant to be getting’ married in fuckin’ Dublin, fuckin’ Jesus Christ she told me it’s over… He went into a long explanation that was obviously very important to him, but I don’t remember it, except that he said he’d been thinking of jumping into the Irish Sea before I passed him the joint. And now life was looking marginally less hopeless.

Then a nice looking hippy white woman in her early 20s came towards us and asked if we were smoking weed.

On the warm and quiet deck below, with its faint smell of vomit, mums and dads were eating sandwiches they’d made earlier, telling the kids to come away from the slot machines and talking about property prices. And up here, three of the eight people on deck were smoking cannabis, which I’d carried all the way from London to Belfast and hadn’t touched because my son and daughter had been with me. I didn’t even smoke cigarettes in front of them.

The hippy woman had long straight brown hair, light blue eyes and porcelain for skin. She was wearing a crumpled white blouse and a big necklace thing. Ginger clearly made her nervous and she acted like he wasn’t there. She told me her name was Sophie and she wondered where I’d got the cannabis from, as if there might be a dealer hanging out on Deck C. I told her I was Ben from South London and travelling home after dropping my adult children at university in some massive people carrier I’d hired for the week.

Sophie tossed the charred remains of the crinkly spliff overboard and produced a shiny gold packet of Benson & Hedges. She boldly poked the open box towards Ginger, who gratefully took a cigarette in his unharmed, but quite grubby hand.

We took turns to light up with my lighter as the wind struggled to thwart us. Then Sophie spoke vigorously about the fabulous summer she’d just enjoyed. A festival in Wiltshire; the beach at Minehead; the pubs in Dublin.

Life’s a rollercoaster, I aimed at Ginger, who was staring at the metal deck. I’ve been Responsible Dad since I was 21, and now I can be totally irresponsible! I mean, I’ve been able to go out and party since the kids have been teenagers, but I’ve always had to be ready to put my Dad Hat back on… Yeah, I mean, we were poor enough to be washing terry nappies in the bath and couldn’t afford to rent a telly. Then their mum decided we’d got married too young and she just fucked off with some other guy called Ben. But, y’know, I’ve worked for everything I’ve got and, er, fuck, I’m a bit stoned. Yeah, I mean, I feel like I’ve lived a proper life and however hard it gets it’s always worth it. Something good can come out of everything that happens… Do you get me? I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d just said.

Where are your kids now then? asked Sophie, her pale eyes watering slightly. She drew heavily on her cigarette.

Well, Holly’s gone to Liverpool uni. We all drove there first. She’s 18. Then I took Alex to Queen’s in Belfast. He’s 19. He did a gap year and went to Mexico for a bit. I might sell my flat and go on a few gap years meself now.

The Welsh coast was coming into focus behind Sophie’s head. A voice sounded over the tannoy, but the words were lost in the wind. I guessed it must be time to get ready to disembark and we exchanged a few parting words. Ginger shook my right hand awkwardly with his left hand and managed a half-smile. And Sophie, no longer nervous about Ginger, eagerly hugged us both.

And now I’m alone in the people carrier on the car deck with the bow doors opening and engines running all around me. The toxic air shimmers. My brain’s running slowly thanks to the cannabis, as if my skull is packed with cotton wool. I need to start moving forward within two to three seconds after the car in front. Two to three seconds max.

I’ve got a cosy memory of the five-hour drive back to London. My newly acquired, second Gorillaz CD was on repeat and the cotton wool drifted slowly away. Shadows of clouds drifted over the hills and fields ahead of me as I looked forward idly to the next phase of my life.

I’m not sad about the kids leaving home. I’m happy that I’ve helped them become the lovely people they are, and now their lives can really begin. And I can think about jacking in my job and going off round the World. Perhaps.

I arrived back in South London at teatime, so I had to deal with some rush hour nonsense. What an excellent excuse to stop off at my spiritual home and enjoy a few beers. It had been raining earlier in this part of the world, so the air was fresh and it was going to be a nice clear evening. I felt exhilarated after my long drive and parked up near the Hobgoblin. This is a massive barn of a pub near Brixton with a concrete garden out front, surrounded by traffic, but with enough shrubs and plants that look like palm trees to make urban souls feel we’ve been whisked away to a far off tropical paradise... with the help of some Class As and a lot of squinting.

As I crossed the threshold of the busy garden, an 8-year-old girl called Esme happened to be running out of the main door of the pub covered in ketchup. Only a very drunk person could mistake it for blood, but it was a shocking image even so. She was crying and her cheeks were flushed. Her strawberry blond hair was matted with the red stuff. She was closely followed by her mum, Hannah, and some shouting.

There was a certain morbid inevitability about events in Hannah’s life: Hannah has affair with married man Mel - who looks like the shirtless, ponytailed geezer that spins the waltzers at the funfair as he drools over the screaming teenage girls – and does loads of crack with him. Then Mel’s wife – who seems to fancy herself as the meanest, butchest bitch in the playground and has an impressive gap between her two front teeth - finds out and throws a large jar full of ketchup at Hannah in the Hob, catching her long suffering daughter in the crossfire.

The pub was gloomy inside. A young barmaid dressed all in black was scooping up ketchup from the stone tiled floor, and propping up the bar behind her was Derek, who seemed to be laughing at her. Derek is ex-British Army. He once told me, in his flat Derby monotone, that he had been a sniper and that he shot Pablo Escobar dead in the jungle in Colombia. He went into great detail about the trajectory of the bullet and it was hard to believe that Derek was capable of making up such a story.

Close to Derek stood a sad looking West African man in his 30s who had borrowed a tenner off me more than a month previously. Despite several attempts to get my money back – including shouting loudly across the pub Have you got that tenner I lent you three weeks ago? in a vain attempt to shame him – I still hadn’t succeeded and was considering writing it off.

I bought Derek a pint and scanned our murky surroundings. The décor is brown and green. The large pillars that break up the enormous room are charcoal, and are decorated with stickers and small posters. The tables and chairs are all dark wood, but in a range of styles and scattered higgledy-piggledy across the floor. At the far end of the room there is a huge fireplace and, on a raised area, surrounded by a balustrade, is a hallowed piece of furniture with a green baize surface, known as the pool table.

And next to the pool table are the toilets. A narrow corridor leads past the Ladies – where one glimpses bright orange cubicle doors, shiny white tiles and hears the whirr of an efficient hand-dryer – to the Gents. The hand-dryer has never worked in the Gents. The two black cubicle doors have been gouged, scraped, engraved and kicked full of holes. There are two toilets but only one has a seat, and that is cracked and pocked with fag burns. The cubicle floors are littered with small, soggy squares of paper; empty wraps. And every inch of every wall is decorated with the red, black & green felt-tip musings of Tom, Dick & Harry.

I love the Hobgoblin because of the clientele. You might describe its punters as ‘alternative’ and perhaps what we most have in common is a love of narcotics. The pub boasts a heady mix of ‘colourful characters’ from around Brixton: white men and women in their 40s with dirty blond dreads, poor personal hygiene, living in squats and scraping-by on benefits; British Jamaican men in their 30s, with clean jeans, top-of-the range trainers and possibly a car, making a good living just selling cocaine; grey beardy Rastas in their 60s, wearing ancient Desmond Dekker t-shirts and baggy brown cords, topping up their pensions by selling a bit o’ weed; working class and middle class men and women in their 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s, many of them smartly dressed from their respectable day jobs, who want more than just a frisson of excitement at the weekend.

I’m aware that we’re all enjoying a brief moment in history. The make-up of London is evolving quickly – Inner London is being swamped by hordes of affluent white families who once occupied the Home Counties and would have been scared to venture into the riot-torn mean streets of Brixton. The squatters, the drug dealers, the ordinary black and white people, will be scattered to the suburbs and beyond.

The highlight of every week until recently had been Sunday evenings in the Hob, when a bald and virtually toothless, middle-aged Jamaican fella called Earl, who happened to be the main local weed-dealer, would bring out his collection of Trojan 45s from behind the bar and spin them on a cranky set of decks. Everyone wasted after two nights of partying; everyone skanking loosely with a fag in one hand and a glass spilling over in the other. DJ Earl guarantees a joyous, intimate, messy end to the weekend.

In addition to his records, Earl used to store his significant stash of cannabis in the pub with the landlord’s blessing. But the nosey, spoilsport police and a change of landlord had put paid to that convenient arrangement and, sadly, to the Sunday evening reggae. Times were a-changin’.

The pub was still full of drugs, but the scent of Mary-Jane was no longer overwhelming as you entered the bar. On that Monday evening in September 2005, there was a hazy tobacco fug in the air, and Josh and Xander were huddled round a small table next to one of the pillars.

Josh is the Artful Dodger of the 21st Century Hobgoblin, and Xander is Charley ‘Master’ Bates (the Dodger’s less than savvy sidekick in Oliver Twist, who ends up as a farm hand).

Josh glances up and seems to sigh with relief when he spots me, about to take the first sip of my well-earned pint of Stella at the bar. He beckons me over in a conspiratory manner.

Josh and me’ve got a proposition for you, Ben. Man. Bruv, Xander begins. He was born in Scotland and his daddy is a senior policeman up there, but Xander has lived down South long enough to have perfected, for reasons unknown, a ridiculous, nasal, transatlantic drawl. He’s a bit younger than me but his dry wispy hair is greying and his ashen face is deeply lined. There are huge black bags under his eyes.

Ben, mate, ‘ave yer got a fag to spare? Josh chips in.

Ben, listen; this is a real serious situation we’re facing here, Xander continues, as he takes one of my Marlboro Reds. Josh ‘ere is in some serious danger, bruv, and you’ve got a real opportunity to help him out if you can just lend him £100…

Oh, ok, look, lads, I’m sorry but I really can’t be lending…

Ben, bruv, I don’t think you really understand what I’m trying to say here… Listen, man; Joshua has got some heavy fuckin’ shit comin’ at him at the moment and if you don’t lend him the money right now he could be. A dead man. I mean, I’m not jokin’, bruv.

Josh is flicking ash onto the table and looking at me with puppy dog eyes. He’s a little fella who had a ruff tuff childhood and had to learn to charm his way through. His neatly barbered jet black hair and olive skin keep him looking young, but his