Wankers

By Christian Robshaw

Wankers follows six months in the life of Sooty Stevens, music journalist and self-described “professional wanker”, navigating his way through a world of drugs, booze and Bond films. Sooty’s search for something better and higher in life takes him through a gallery of grotesques: his on-off girlfriend Jennifer, who finds Sooty alternately infuriating and endearing; his tolerant sister Angie; his flamboyant best friend Dougal; rich would-be eccentric Bastian; Bastian’s inscrutable wife Consolata; Sooty’s kind mentor Martin; bullying editor Donahue; and passive-aggressive DJ Tony Benson. Funny, sexually frank, and intermittently touching, the novel presents a portrait of a certain type of 21st-century extended adolescence, and its consequences.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ali Ribelli Edizioni
• Release date: Jan 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9788833462639

Book preview

Wankers

by Christian Robshaw

Graphic design and layout: Sara Calmosi

Publishing director: Jason R. Forbus

ISBN 978-88-33462-63-9

Published by Ali Ribelli Edizioni, 2018©

Fiction – Possible Worlds

www.aliribelli.com – [e-mail]

Any reproduction of this book is strictly forbidden, even partially, with means of

any kind, without the clear authorization of Editor.

Wankers

A novel

Christian Robshaw

Edizioni

Contents

Wankers

I should call Dougal and apologise.

Why? Fucked if I know. I tend to wake up most mornings with this immense guilt. I’d like to be able to say that when I was young I accidentally caused my father’s death in a boating accident, or something like that – the context would be nice, not that I’d like to kill my father – rotten old fucker that he is. No, this is a vague, directionless sort of guilt, like my brain assumes I’m hiding something from it. Sometimes it’s not wrong. Usually first thing I do is check my mobile, but it’s not on the bedside table, and this isn’t my bedroom either.

Like I said, I don’t remember that much of last night – not that I ever do when Dougal’s involved. I once told Dougal that if he didn’t exist, then somebody would have to create him, and he smiled at that, knowingly – he’s a smug cunt, after all. I think I tend to rationalise it as not really counting because he’s very knowing about the whole thing. Well, I assume it’s knowing. It’s got to be, the whole bit with the velvet waistcoats, and the moustache, and the pipe. The English accent is definitely a put-on, because he’s exactly as Scottish as his name indicates. That’s what I had to tell Gina – Julia – fuck it – to stop her from cooing over him. I’d be convinced he’s peacocking, but Laurie swears he’s gay and I suppose she’d know, and it’s not like it’d be too much of a stretch to believe. I don’t mind – girls always flock to him, especially if they’re twenty to twenty-five, liberal, nose piercings, books on their shelves they haven’t read. Fuck, that reminds me.

Father wrote an apparently excellent study of Weimar Germany which I promised Mum I’d read. And that was a few years ago now, and my intermittent returns to it before giving up in frustration have utterly failed in getting me any headway through the damned thing. But perhaps if I get back, then I might be able to make my way through one more chapter of it before giving up again. I wonder if I’d look any good with a moustache – definitely could. No mirror in here, strange for a bedroom. Wish I’d worn looser jeans last night, I don’t want to wake the girl or anything but I will leave my number. Plus she’ll presumably have to send a text saying Hi, this is _. I think I’d definitely really like to see her again, maybe she can even tell me what we actually did last night. I did wake up with boxers on, though, so that’s not a great sign but we’ll see. I’d better get a move on – probably going to throw up and really don’t want it to be in her toilet or on her doormat or in her stairwell or on her front porch so I’d better just swallow it back a few times.

Sooty.

Ring me.

x

And my number. That’ll do I reckon. For a fucking writer I could probably have written something a bit wittier or sexier than that, but at least it’s punchy. Rather than leave a kiss I should have just underlined my name. There’s politics with leaving a kiss and I reckon I just don’t want to come off desperate. Probably should have – oh shit, here we go.

And I vomit in somebody’s flowerbed.

Thank fuck everybody else has to work regular hours, I don’t think anyone’s seen and the only risk is if Julie – er, Jess? – goes out this way later and does some detective work, then I might be in trouble. But there are a lot of drunken yahoos out there in the world, aren’t there? She wouldn’t be able to prove anything. I’m glad, wiping my face, that I don’t have a moustache. It’s funny, Jem at uni was a medical student and he didn’t know anything about curing hangovers – vitamins, he said when I asked him. Waste of time and fucking money, getting a practical education. I could kiss my liberal arts diploma – worthless, my arse.

It’s not too bad, walking back as the sun rises and feeling a slight chill and smelling her on my clothes and seeing the many dragonflies at play. If Donahue’s sent the CDs this week he’ll have given me something really naff. Martin sends me the ones he likes so that we can exchange thoughts on them and he always looks so earnest when we do. Donahue, meanwhile, is the type of guy you imagine would quite like it if he found out everyone called him a wanker behind his back. Last time he gave me Drive Faster Cunt, Iron Maidenhead, and the soundtrack to the new Sooty movie. The joke’s on him there because he doesn’t even get witty reviews out of me for his effort; he’s just wasting inches reporting on CDs no-one could give a shit about. And I’m dreaming of coming home to find some haunting little slice of disaffected melancholedelia, because I know anything with a beat right now would rip my head in two. I feel like I could just get on a train and get off at some lost beautiful little town and fall asleep in a meadow. Everyone thinks I’m just a journalist and one day I’m going to prove them all wrong with a modest little volume of poems and they’ll all wonder at how I had all of that sensitivity and bollocks underneath it all, and they’ll say I wish he’d shown that side more often day to day. Well you’ve still got to shit eventually, no matter what.

So I don’t stop in a meadow, instead I go for the next-best thing and stop in Pret a Manger and look for their least demanding sandwich, and on to Boots – who are playing the Spice Girls for some fucking reason – for some alka-seltzer and some mineral water and some ibuprofen, and I don’t want any of it. I don’t want to eat and I don’t want to get better and I don’t want to go home and listen to an album or read a book, that fucking book.

Mum was always saying that I reminded her so much of Father when he was younger. Actually there’s a bit of something stern and macho in his book, I can’t imagine him anywhere near my sort of faux-Hunter Thompson lifestyle. I wonder if Dougal would snog me if he thought I was into it. I’m sure he wouldn’t go any further, the rotter. Sometimes I feel like giving him a ring just to tell him I think he’s sound, I don’t do that enough. Maybe if I grow that moustache he’ll see it as a, like, tribute.

Posty’s leaving the house with parcels under his arm when I get in and I have to chase after him. And he won’t give me the fucking CDs so I suppose I’ll be getting the day off work today – oh no, he’s said I can have them if he sees my ID.

I set some coffee brewing and think about having a look at that sandwich which I believe is full of shredded carrots and stuff. Donahue’s a prick and he’s given me The Warehouse Rave. They had a hit about six months ago and it was fairly OK, as I recall. The band are just engaging enough to stop me from being able to concentrate on the Weimar fucking Republic which, aside from the infamous decadence Father routinely ignores, seems like it was just as boring as any other republic and its internal politics certainly end up less gripping than any number of middlebrow novels I could be reading instead. Thank fuck for Hitler shaking things up a bit. I’m reviewing things in my head now. Arse.

Jennifer! Fucking Jennifer, her name was Jennifer because she inclined her head and gave that weird, erotic pout when I accidentally said Jessica. As much as I recall finding that ridiculously fucking sexy, in general my memory lets me down on recalling her face in total – more, I have a general impression of her with big, dark eyes, long hair, big tits and a short skirt. And of course it’s impossible to forget that sexy Scottish accent of hers. In all honesty, I’m sure there’s enough that I do remember, there, to suffice for a wank, but really, I should write this review first. The CD is actually not quite as tiresome as Donahue probably assumed I’d find it.

***

The Warehouse Rave, The Warehouse Rave

Review by Sooty Stevens

Originally published in Gentleman’s Relish 16/09/2015

FIRST THINGS FIRST, this isn’t rave music, or even particularly warehouse-y, so save it if that’s what you’re looking for. Band founder Archibald Deveraux claims the band are named that because they met at a warehouse rave and bonded over a shared enthusiasm for hard drugs and punk rock, but then he also claims to be named Archibald Deveraux, so you don’t have to take the whole thing very seriously.

I wouldn’t recommend taking this album even the slightest bit seriously. It has this shitty garage production that a fortune was probably spent on, because you can read in the liner notes that it was recorded at Abbey Road; every guitar solo is one-note, even when you can just tell it’s meant to resolve on something else, and, as a matter of fact, every solo is exactly ten seconds. It’s a version of punk that’s so strictly formulaic it almost feels like a statement against punk. But all of that silliness doesn’t disguise that Mr. Deveraux has a real sense of how to write a yearning melody. It’s hard to tell under the Misfits production, but his songwriting is much closer in spirit to, say, The Undertones or Buzzcocks, with songs like I Collapsed and A Sneaky Ciggie capturing the rebellion, heartache and melodrama of the teen age more perfectly than someone old enough to grow a slightly dodge beard ought to be able to.

***

Well, there’s your 250 words, Donahue – I almost feel smug about having actually come to like the record on the third listen. It’s only a small victory, but it feels like little moments like this are the things to cherish. Sometimes I think – oh, Hell, my mobile’s ringing – here’s hoping it’s Jennifer.

***

TRANSCRIPT

Sooty’s mobile – number withheld – September 16 15:37

SOOTY: Sooty Stevens, freelance music journalist-

OTHER: Sooty?

SOOTY: -professional wanker and all-around bellend. Yes. Sooty.

OTHER: I’m sorry, could you spell that for me, please?

SOOTY: I’m sorry, who is this?

OTHER: Is it Sooty like the cartoon character?

SOOTY: No. It’s a puppet. Who is this please?

OTHER: Like the puppet, then?

SOOTY: I suppose so, who is this?

OTHER: Oh. This is Jenna, calling from EE. I was just wondering if-

SOOTY: I’m not with EE.

JENNA: I’m sorry-?

SOOTY: I’m with Vodafone.

JENNA: Er-

SOOTY: OK ‘bye then… Jenna.

JENNA:‘bye, Sooty!

***

SIDEBAR

On how one comes to be named Sooty

I remember growing up that I never had any especial exposure to major works – or, indeed, minor works – of popular culture, not coming to Star Wars until I was ten, and only because Howard Daniels put it on at a sleepover, at that; not having even heard of The Lord of the Rings until the films started coming out; never discovering James Bond until long after I should’ve – but more on that later; and never reading the Harry Potter books until, in my late teens, I was pressurised to by Sinéad, my girlfriend at the time. We were all set for a dirty fortnight in her family hotel in Ireland, but it wasn’t until after arriving, shagging, showering, shaving, dressing (tweed, I recall), taking a long country walk, eating in the restaurant, drinking in the bar, coming upstairs, shagging again, and brushing my teeth that I realised she’d ditched all of my customary cool books – the Beat anthology, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 and Camus’ La Chute and come on, I was nineteen and new to all this cool stuff – and packed instead all seven Harry Potter books. She’d hardly speak to me until I’d made my way through them, since, she said, all she was really interested in talking about was the series. They were pretty OK, I guess, I told her when I’d finished. After that we only managed to stay together a further three weeks.

The point of all this is that my popcultural ignorance as a young person is entirely the result of my mother having the very same thing. Growing up, there was a television in the house, but it was only really used for Newsnight and foreign films. So when my mother named me Sooty, there’s a very decent chance that she had no idea that it was the name of a popular and enduring children’s television character. Considering Sooty’s been on television over fifty years now, I know it seems difficult to believe but then, that’s what she’s always told me and I can’t really prove otherwise. You know, I doubt she was secretly sneaking down to watch children’s television while Father was in the study, when she was pregnant with me. I think, rather, that to her Sooty just sounded, sort of, posh, modern, bohemian; and, I’m afraid to say, slightly feminine. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think my mother wanted a daughter or anything like that, but she wanted a son who was open-minded and in touch with his feelings and nonviolent and basically in tune with her own concerns. So she plucked the name of a popular children’s character out of the air, and fucked up my school life. Still, I think when it comes to my career it’s actually helped – one doesn’t want a bollocks name like James Davidson – helps to be memorable. Foot in the door. Thanks Mum.

***

Speaking of feet in doors, Jennifer did call me just a couple of days after that, and she never commented, at all, on the name thing. I’ve been asked a few times – never, mind you, by Dougal, who wouldn’t – why all of my girlfriends happen to be Continentals. Well, it isn’t quite true, because the lovely and frustrating Sinéad was Irish, but it’s true I’ve never dated a Brit. I swear it isn’t on the grounds that they’re unlikely, then, to notice anything amiss about the old name – but well, who would I be to say it doesn’t help, eh? So I hope Jennifer knows I’m breaking the habit of 26 years in going out with her tonight. I have to admit that I did get the impression from the telephone conversation – short, sweet and unplaceably flirtatious – that she’d been trying to set us up on something of a date but no, it’s not looking that way as we’re sat, now, in the pub, me and a collection of types from the Institute. There’s an Anya, a Renée, a German named Anne (pronounced Anna, apparently – and I’ve been saying Anne Frank wrong for all these years!), a Yasmin, an Elena (Greek), an Elena (Bulgarian), a big creep leading them all named Florian, a more beautiful than I remember Jennifer, and next to her there’s me, and not knowing any German, French, Russian or Italian I feel there’s a lot of Institute gossip I must be missing out on. For instance, Institute of what? Apparently it’s West London’s major centre for modern European linguistic and cultural studies, which is all well and good, but I wish it had a name. Still, everyone who works there seems to be having a lot of fun with their speech, conversations switching pretty fluidly from language to language – several times within a sentence, some of the time. Occasionally Jennifer’ll turn to me and try to keep me engaged, translating what’s going on, she must think it’ll be fun for me if I pretend I’m an ambassador meeting some brave, new, post-linguistic society, and truth be told, it is how I feel – I feel outmoded, extinct. Everyone here is pan-European, post-post-Eurotrash, a culture vulture, a wine-drinking, theatre-appreciating, art-gallery-lifetime-membership-having, liberal, socialist, feminist, intellectual, child of the European Union and here am I – typical, big English stick in the mud. It’s no fun at all.

Still, bless Jennifer for trying. Occasionally she’ll look at me, her eyes filled, I suppose, with apology, smiling slightly too wide, slightly crooked, and she’ll just sort of squeeze my knee very, very gently and it’s so – is it reassuring? It must be reassuring. She’s the only thing I’m really enjoying here. I don’t want to come across like a big cunt, but I’m sort of used to hanging out with types who