I couldn’t understand that. There must have been better places. Even in Dudley.
The Messy Duck was a quiet pub. I’d been in louder monasteries. You often got the impression that you were keeping the landlord up. He was a thin man with sad eyes and an off-putting manner. At around ten he’d switch off the jukebox and unplug the fruit machine. Between ten and half past he’d yawn pointedly. After that he’d just turn off the lights and stand by the door, holding it open. I would feel uncomfortable and intrusive, but it didn’t bother Jack. He seemed to like being in uncomfortable situations. That helped to explain his hobby, I suppose. He would have to enjoy being uncomfortable. How else could you explain his piercings? They were all about discomfort. If they didn’t bother him, they bothered the people around him.
Jack was coloured and studded. I didn’t know the full extent of it – I didn’t want to know, there were parts of him I wouldn’t want to see in any condition, with or without rivets – but I knew that it was extensive. I imagined bolts and studs connected by chains. I imagined nails driven into areas of unnatural colour. I didn’t know what sort of tattoos he had. I doubted whether he went for the old-fashioned tigers and hearts with daggers. He’d prefer something more modern, like Celtic twiddles and spirals, or perhaps barcodes.
I could have been wrong. For all I knew he had a portrait of Britney across his pectorals and Made In England etched across his scalp. I found out what he actually had much later, under distressing circumstances.
We’ll get to that later.
‘Why?’ I once asked him. ‘Why go through all the pain and risk? All those stories you hear about people getting tattoos at little shops then going down with leprosy and melting into their cornflakes. Why not stick with jigsaws?’
‘It’s not that painful mate,’ he said. ‘Not as bad as going to the dentist.’
‘I thought you enjoyed going to the dentist.’
‘I do,’ he said, surprised. ‘Except the noise of the drill.’
‘So you like being hurt? It’s a masochism thing?’
‘No. It hurts, but that’s not all of it. That’s the start. You break your arm, you’ve got a bond with any other bloke with a broken arm. Start a conversation like that.’ He clicked his fingers without making a noise. He’d never got the hang of it. ‘Everyone pierced is with you. Everyone else is waiting to come in. It’s a ritual thing isn’t it? I don’t know, mate. You’re the fucking graduate. Why do you think I do it?’
‘Because you’re unstable.’
‘Could be that, granted.’
He had a mouthful of beer and looked thoughtful. At that time the eyebrow ring was new, and he was swollen and intrusively red. I couldn’t look him in the eye. I had to look at the wound.
‘You do it for attention,’ I thought out loud.
‘Course I don’t. What about all the stuff you can’t see? How’s that attracting attention? Take away the stuff in my face and I’m normal.’
‘I wouldn’t say you were normal.’
‘I wouldn’t say you were.’
‘At least I don’t set alarms off at airports.’
‘You don’t go to airports. You don’t go anywhere. That’s what this is. That’s why you don’t get it. I’ve gone somewhere else. I’ve become someone else. I’ve taken my body and changed it.’
I wasn’t sure about that. The more I knew about body modification, the more I thought it was all to do with filling in blanks. If you weren’t complete, if your identity wasn’t fully drawn, then you coloured yourself in or nailed a new identity to yourself. It was all about superheroes. Outwardly, they were normal, but under the clothes someone else, run through with metalwork, extravagantly tinted.
‘I set off alarms,’ he said, ‘because I transmit. I have wires and connections. I’m a radio. I pick up traffic reports. I pick up messages people like you don’t get. I send out signals.’
‘You’re sending some out now,’ I said. I’d known Jack for many years but I wasn’t one hundred per cent sure that he wouldn’t produce a knife and lay waste to the local population. Which, at the moment, was me. I looked for help. There was the landlord. He would be useless. It was down to me to deal with Jack’s insanity. I’d always thought he might have a screw loose. Possibly an actual screw, somewhere around his genitals. So I did what I had to do. I let Jack carry on, and I nodded from time to time. I can’t help it. I’m British.
‘Different signals,’ Jack was saying. I’d missed something.
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘very true.’
‘I’ve become a matrix,’ he said.
‘Spin used to say there were matrices at building sites,’ I said.
‘The scaffolding?’
I nodded.
‘I wouldn’t know about that,’ said Jack.
That had been a month ago, in the same pub, at about the same time of night. Since then Jack had had the bodywork touched up in a few new places. He turned up late, halfway through my second pint. I knew he’d had something new pierced, because he was walking as though he had a porcupine between his thighs. He was wearing a jumper that had been washed on the incorrect cycle. The sleeves ended inches before his hands began. His wrists were covered in bright swirls and healing scabs. He bought us a pint each and sat, wincing.
‘Oof,’ he said, reaching under the table and tugging at something.
‘Do you mind?’
‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Ow. Ow. I don’t think that’s where you belong, is it?’
He fidgeted and fiddled and finally settled, nicely uncomfortable.
‘What’s it this time?’ I asked. I had to know, even though I didn’t really want to. It was like watching operations on television. I’d want to switch channels or put my hands over my eyes. Instead I’d sit and watch, horrified. He shuffled carefully. When he winced, his eyebrow ring stood straight out from his brow.
‘Perineum ring,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Perineum. It’s the hairy bit at the back of your bollocks.’
‘I know what it is. I meant, “What?”’
‘I hadn’t had it done yet.’ As if that explained it. ‘These stools are a bit hard, aren’t they?’ He adjusted himself indecorously.
‘Not really, no. Perhaps having your perineum pierced has made you sensitive.’
‘I won’t be riding my bike for a couple of weeks, that’s fucking certain.’
‘So it’s the bus, is it?’
‘It will be this week. Perhaps I’ll catch you on your way home. Everything nice at the office, is it? No sudden shortages of pens or anything?’
Jack