‘This your place then? Bit of a mess. What is all this shit? Are you going to get me a cup of tea or what?’
He was already past me and sitting on the sofa, shuffling my job applications to one side.
‘After another job? It’s all fucking go in the software world. What’s those magazines, porn?’
They were computer magazines, mostly about games but with a couple of grown-up ones thrown in.
‘You can’t get any good games on computers,’ he said. ‘You want to get a Megadrive or something. I’ve got a Megadrive, smashing thing. Where’s your computer then?’
It was in the bedroom, on a small table next to the bed. It was a 486DX, whizzy for the time. It was still running Wolfenstein 3D.
‘What’s this?’ Dermot asked.
‘It’s a 486,’ I told him.
‘Not the fucking computer you dickhead. What’s the game?’
‘Wolfenstein. It’s a free one.’
‘You’re fucking joking. They’re giving this away?’
‘Only the first part. You have to pay to get the rest of it.’
‘Where’ve you had it from?’
‘Off a magazine. They have disks on the covers.’
‘How do you work it? Where’s the controller?’
I showed him the keys to use and he took over. He was a little outfaced by the keyboard, but soon learned the game-player’s way around it: ignore all of the ones with letters on.
‘I haven’t seen that tea yet,’ he said. ‘Is this that virtual reality, then? Is this what it’s like?’
It would be another five years before it turned out that virtual reality hadn’t been the next big thing after all.
‘No,’ I told him. ‘In virtual reality you wear goggles. They project an image into each lens, and you see it in real 3D. And they use motion sensors, so when you move in real life you move in the virtual world.’
‘So this is what?’
‘There isn’t a name for it yet.’
‘They can name it after me then. Dermot reality. That’s what this is. I know it isn’t the real world. Because if it was the real world I’d have had a cup of fucking tea.’
I made him a cup of tea. He couldn’t control the game one-handed, so he looked around the flat while he drank it.
‘Fucking hell, mate,’ he said. ‘What is all this shit? Don’t you ever throw anything away?’
I didn’t, as it happened. The flat was crowded with old clothes, old magazines, books, CDs, and old vinyl albums. I didn’t like to throw anything away. I always had the feeling that it’d turn out to be useful sooner or later. I still listened to some of the records. I might reread some of the books.
‘I might have to get one of these. How much do they go for?’ he asked, back at the keyboard.
‘You’d get one for twelve hundred.’
‘Fucking hell, they’re paying you too much. I don’t know what you’re filling in job applications for. You’ve got a good enough job now. I can’t afford twelve hundred for a fucking computer. You coming out?’
‘Where?’
‘See the sights of Dudley. And bring a coat, it’s fucking cold out there.’
II
We went for a walk through Dudley. The market was doing a roaring trade despite not selling anything you’d want to buy. The Merry Hill centre had opened a few miles away, a shiny mall with all of the shops you needed. Dudley had competed by curling up and dying. The strange thing was, Dudley was still crowded on Saturdays. What shops there were, were packed. People gathered around the market stalls, picking up tea towels and misprinted greetings cards.
‘What are they all after?’ Dermot asked. ‘What do they come here for? I mean, I came here to see you and that’s hardly the most important thing I could be doing with my day.’
‘How did you know where I lived?’
‘You told me, you piss-head. You were drunk at the time. I said I’d come round. Are there any real shops here?’
‘Not as such. They’re all closing.’
‘So what are this lot buying? Scotch fucking mist?’
I shrugged.
‘We’ve got two choices then. As I see it. We can walk around looking at this fucking market all afternoon, or we can go to the pub. They still have pubs here don’t they? Or, third choice, we can go in the amusements. I’d like to see what amuses these weird fuckers. Public executions? Badger baiting? So, pub or amusements?’
‘It’s a bit early for the pubs.’
‘Oh, let’s not wake the poor sleepy fuckers up, shall we? It’s only half past eleven and they’re still in bed. Shipleys it is then. How much money have you got? Well there’s a cashpoint over there look, get yourself another twenty. Call it thirty. Amusements don’t come cheap these days.’
There was a small queue at the cashpoint, headed by a woman who didn’t know which way up her card went. The machine kept rejecting it. She’d look at it, and put it in the wrong way up again.
Dermot had long since got bored and gone into the amusement arcade by the time I got some money. I found him by the video games, which were at the back. There was a booth containing a middle-aged woman, who looked to be the same one that had been in the booth in Borth thirteen years earlier. There was a machine that gave change in exchange for coins and notes, except for all bank notes and most coins. Those it rejected.
There were rows of fruit machines, now mostly in software. One or two still only cost five pence a play and paid out in pocket money. Most took twenty pence pieces and had alleged jackpots around the fifteen pound mark. A handful of young men walked around the machines, clocking the reels, shaking handfuls of loose change. There were small tinfoil ashtrays resting on every level surface.
The video games were much larger than they used to be. They had appendages: steering wheels, guns, skis, periscopes.
You didn’t have to go out to play video games any more. You could play them at home. Video games had to do more work to get any attention at all, like old pop stars. Hence the guns and steering wheels.
‘Check them out,’ said Dermot. ‘See why they’re called Space Invaders? Because they’re taking up half the fucking space. Give it another six years and these fuckers will be playing each other.’
He picked on the machine with the largest gun.
‘Stick a couple of quid in then,’ he said. ‘Let’s mow down a few innocent bystanders.’
III
After that, I saw him about once or twice a week. He always came to see me. He lived in a small house on the outskirts of West Bromwich and said that I wouldn’t want to meet him there.
‘You think Dudley’s bad, you should see West Brom mate,’ he used to say.
After I’d known him for about a year, I invited him to meet Tina and Roger.
‘Roger?’ he said. ‘You mean that’s