Sex, Drugs & No Idea

“There’s only one thing for it, lads,” Hugo said, turning his saucer-sized pupils on myself, Frenchy and Dang. We stopped milling about the lounge like four lab rats that’d reached the end of the maze.

“What? What the hell are you on about, man?” said French, who was sat, feverishly stroking his tiny moustache with finger and thumb.

“Let’s hit the town!” boomed Hugo in his deep, Australian voice.

“Hit the town? But it’s not even seven yet.”

“Exactly. Time enough to get into the swing of things. Get dressed up. Go round a few different spots to warm up. A proper lads’ night out, aye?”

“You’re jabberin’, man,” said French. “I’m so high I feel like I could bite your head clean off!”

Dang stepped forward. Despite the drugs that were surely surging through him and shaking his neurons by the shoulders he seemed almost as mellow as usual. “I think it’s a good idea. Early to head out, early to bed, and I’ve got work tomorrow morning so I can’t be having too big a night. Also, I have this.” With a flourish he pulled out another small baggy.

“Is that cocaine?” I asked.

“It is cocaine, Charlie,” Dang said. “It’ll take the edge off.”

“Lovely,” I said.

Uh oh, I thought.

“Lovely,” I said again.

What felt like moments later, we were standing at the bar of Betty’s; a snug little club that we all frequented.

I looked down and was surprised to find myself dressed quite smartly in chinos and a shirt and blazer. I was even wearing a pair of four-hundred dollar shoes from Portugal that I’d bought in a fit of mad consumerism. They were made from Portuguese pig leather, and I wondered why the hell that’d been such a selling point. I looked up and realised that Hugo, Dang and Frenchy had dissolved into the crowd, and I experienced a momentary pang of loneliness and had a sudden urge to bolt for the door. Instead I climbed the stairs to the second floor so that I might look down on the crowd and maybe enjoy a cigarette on the balcony.

Vulpine. Not often that you get to use a word like that, but there you have it. She was slim, with dainty, angled features and sly eyes; big, crazy-green and almond shaped. Her hair was long and a deep, dark copper and she’d let it fall down one shoulder. A red maxi dress clung artfully to her.

I wandered over, as the two girls she’d been talking to – one of whom was my good friend Bron, a fashion journalist, who never took her high-heels off for anything and was armed with a pair of legs capable of melting even a priest’s resolve like a chocolate fireguard – disappeared downstairs and onto the dance-floor.

“I’ve been told to watch out for you, Charlie Green,” she greeted me as I sidled up.

“Have you? What’s your name? I can’t think why.”.

“The girls told me that you can be very charming when you want to be. That I can’t take anything you say seriously,” she said, dodging my question. “That you’re trouble.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“No?”

“No. Not the charming bit, anyway.”

“All talk?”

“Well, I mean, I suppose I could probably come up with a few rubbish lines and pray that the girl in question found them endearing.”

“What kind of lines?”

“Well, I’d start with some careful flattery, I suppose.”

“Compliments? About how beautiful her eyes are? Or how she has a dazzling smile?”

“Nah, those are too tired, even for me. Besides she would’ve heard them a thousand times before. That sort of stuff wouldn’t do any good.” I took a sip of my gin mojito. People rarely dabbled outside of rum for their mojitos, but I loved the lightness of the gin and savoured it as it tickled the cocaine numb in the back of my throat.

“You don’t think so?”

“Nah. Even if she did have lovely eyes,” – my gaze flicked down to her mouth as she smiled and up to her eyes again – “and a fantastic set of gnashers.”

I turned to gaze down on the crowd milling around the bar below us and watched the dim lights catch and flash off cut glasses and jewellery, sequin-covered dresses and sanguine eyes.

“What would you say then?” asked the woman next to me.

“Well,” I said, without turning to her, “I suppose, hypothetically, I might remark on said girl’s excellent choice of lipstick – not enough women are brave enough to wear plum that dark.” I turned back to her then and looked into those formidable golden-green eyes and said in an innocent voice, “Or perhaps I’d mention that her hair reminds me of Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday.”

I’d never actually seen that movie. But I’d seen the cover online recently, and anyway, what woman wouldn’t like to be compared to Audrey Hepburn?

I took another sip of my drink but made sure to her hold her gaze over the rim of my tall glass.

She held my eye for a moment longer than was probably necessary, then looked at her perfectly chosen shoes and then up at me through long, mascara-free lashes.

“And then?” she asked.

“And then, trying to act the consummate gentleman, I’d offer to buy her a drink – which would give her time to ponder whether or not she’d like to continue the conversation out on the balcony, or make her excuses and vanish into the crowd. What are you drinking by the way?”

“Campari and soda.”

“I’ll be back in a minute.”

I found Dang at the bar, sipping on a fresh rum and coke. He was running his tongue over his teeth and there was a faint sheen of sweat on his brow.

“Hey, bro,” he greeted.

“Hey, Dang. Thanks for ditching me.”

“Cry me a river, bro. Where’d you slip off to?”

“Where the fuck d’you think, mate?”

“Bit of tail, mate?”

“Yeah, mate.”

“Who?”

“Lady in Red.” The cocaine supplied the capitals.

“Lady in red?”

“On the balcony. Try and be discreet.”

Dang’s eyes danced over my shoulder.

“Fuck off. You’re not into that.”

“Wanna stake that miniscule chode of yours on it? She’s drinking Campari and soda.”

“She must have had a shitload of them if she’s letting you run game on her.”

“Cheers, mate. But it can’t hurt.”

“Alcohol is our ally, bro,” Dang said sagely.

“Any idea where the other boys are?”

“Nah. Hugo might be in the loo. How’s Molly treating you?”

“She’s never bad,” I said. “I don’t think I want anymore if I’m trying to pick up though. You got any more coke?”

“Only a gram or so.”

“Can I buy it off you?”

“For sure.”

I turned so that my back was to the Lady in Red and Dang passed me the little plastic baggy and I put it in my inner jacket pocket. Then I ordered the Campari, a Death in the Gulf Stream and three shots of coffee Patrón.

“Look after my drinks will you? One – one, Dang – of those shots is for you. I’m just going to the little boy’s room.”

Ten minutes later I was sat next to the woman in the red dress with two drinks set before us, and a half-gram of marching powder thundering through my chest and sparking behind my eyeballs.

“So, I suppose I should know your name, now that we’re free from the realm of hypotheticals,” I said, resisting the urge to sniff the cocaine residue lining my nostrils deeper into my face and swallow hugely, as the anesthetizing chemical drip ran down the back of my throat.

“So we can be proper friends?”

“Heaven forbid anything more! I’m Charlie. Charlie Green.” I held out a hand and the girl took it. Her fingers were delicate and her skin soft.

“Genevieve – Gen – Masters,” she said and we shook.

“A pleasure.”

She laughed.

“What?”

“You’re like I expected you to be. Only, I thought I’d find you a lot more contemptible. From what the girls have told me.”

“I thought Bron and I were mates!” I affected a slightly aggrieved expression.

I held out one of the shots for her.

“To friends?” I suggested.

“To friends,” she agreed.

We knocked back the shots. It’s smooth stuff, Patrón, and delicious.

“So Bron warned you off me, huh?” I asked.

“She likes you. She thinks you’re great. She thinks you’re full of shit.”

“She could be right on that one.”

“She says that you only tell girls what they want to hear.”

“It’s a bloody shame that she hasn’t considered that it could be the truth, and that what girls want to hear is what I tell them, and it correlates. I wouldn’t compliment someone if I didn’t mean it.”

She gave me a dubious look then. “Guys tell girls that they’re beautiful all the time, Charlie Green.”

“Of course they do. And a lot of them lie.”

“Exactly.”

“There was this famous old French bloke who said – something along these lines anyway – that if you can make someone realise how fantastic they are and fill them with self-love, what spills over will be yours.”

Her eyebrows arched. “And that’s a philosophy you live by is it?”

“Look at it like this. Why would I lie to a girl and say to her, for instance, that she had phenomenal hair, if I didn’t mean it, or that I was attracted to her if I wasn’t? And why would a woman take so much time on her hair or her outfit if she didn’t want it to be appreciated? It’s a lot easier to compliment someone when you’re genuine. Women can sense that and are drawn to it, in the same way blokes are.”

“What if you just wanted to sleep with them?”

“Ah, you see, now we’re talking about something else entirely. Not about me being honest. That’s motive. If I wanted to sleep with a girl, and I was apathetic as to how her hair or dress or whatever looked, why would I compliment her on them? The very fact that I feel like I want to have sex with her surely denotes that I find something about her alluring, so why wouldn’t I compliment her on that, and tell the truth.”

“Bron seems to think you just wanted to sleep with her when you met her. Hence the one-night stand.”

“I did just want to sleep with her when I met her. Have you seen the legs on the woman? She’s gorgeous. Any bloke who said he wouldn’t want to sleep with her would be pulling your leg.”

“So, you’re saying that we’re all horrible vain creatures and that flattery is a propelling force in our society, something that makes the world’s wheels turn?”

I paused. “Yeah, but do I sound that pessimistic?”

She gave a small shake of her head and turned away, looked back and then smiled fully – one of those smiles that a poet would’ve said illuminated the room – or balcony. Smiles though, radiate intention rather than light. She finished her Campari and stood and held out her hand to me. Needless to say I took it. When a woman like that offers you her hand you toss your own grandmother off the balcony to take it.

“You’re bad news, Charlie Green.”

“You were warned.”

“Where are we off to?” I asked.

“Aren’t we leaving?”

“That’s awfully presumptuous of you, Genevieve.”

“Arrogant boy.”

“So, where to?”

Gen Masters tilted her head. Then she smiled an encouraging smile.

“Some place that isn’t here. Any ideas?”

“Don’t want to be seen with me at Betty’s?”

“It’s not that. I want to talk to you, and I don’t want to have to put up with my friends rolling their eyes, and your friends nudging each other and giggling.”

“You make us sound like a bunch of little boys.”

“Aren’t you?”

“Well… we’ve been alive for almost three decades each. People are normally happy enough to consider us grown-ups purely because of that.”

“It’s baffling that no one seems to have figured out that age has no influence whatsoever on maturity when it comes to men.”

“I know. Terrific isn’t it?”

I pulled out a cigarette and lit it and took a deep, satisfying drag and turned to see her regarding me critically.

“You smoke?”

“Despite what I’m sure the girls have told you about me, I’m not perfect.”

“I don’t usually go for guys that smoke.”

“Well, that’s good. I’d hate to be usual. And the fact that you reckon you’ve ‘gone’ for me has sort of made my evening.”

“Don’t be conceited, Charlie.”

“Never.”

We sat down at a table for two in the middle of the restaurant and it was of no surprise that it was almost empty at that time in the evening on a…

Shit. I don’t even know what day it is.

This was my local Italian, near my apartment on Melrose – a haunt you might say, although I hated that aphorism, even if I had been drifting about like a ghost that had fallen into a vat of moonshine recently. The atmosphere was relaxed, the food pretty bloody sensational and the wine list was decent but not enormous. It was the sort of establishment that you took a woman to when you wanted to make it clear what your intentions were, without actually having to voice them. It was the perfect date restaurant; decent but not flashy, intimate and yet relaxed. My mother would’ve said it was cosy.

“This is a bit romantic, don’t you think?” Gen asked, smiling suspiciously.

“Is it? I didn’t notice. There’s a gambling parlour and brothel upstairs, if that makes you feel more comfortable.”

“How many girls have you brought here?”

“Girls? I’ve never set foot in here in my life. Just heard about the place. Ah, Stefano, good to see you, mate.”

“Charlie Green, good to see you too, my man.”

I shook hands with the waiter-cum-proprietor who had sidled over from the bar; wiping his hands on the crisp white apron he wore. The beautiful woman opposite me was biting her lip and trying desperately not to smile.

“Stefano can I get a bottle of that pinot noir, the – what’s it called again?”

“Castle Bay?”

“That’s the boy, mate. Kiwi one, aye?”

“Si.”

“And two glasses, please? Grazi mille.”

Stefano walked away and I looked at Gen and raised my eyebrows innocently.

“What?”

“You’re an insolent asshole,” she said.

“I don’t mean to be.”

“Yes. You do.”

“How is it that when an Englishman or Kiwi or Aussie calls someone an arsehole it sounds so much more cutting than when a Yank says asshole?”

Gen’s eyes widened and she laughed. “Did you just call me a Yank?”

“Yes. Don’t be offended though. I could’ve called you a seppo like an Australian builder I met overseas does.”

“Seppo?”

“Yeah, I wasn’t sure what it was short for myself until he explained.”

“And?”

“It’s short for septic-tank. Yank. Septic-tank. Bit of cockney rhyming slang he picked up. And naturally he Australianised it by shortening it and putting an ‘o’ on the end. Aussie tradesmen love a nickname that ends in ‘o’.”

“But septic-tank…?”

“Well, it rhymes, doesn’t it? And I think it alludes to the fact that Americans are notoriously full of shit.”

The wine arrived and Stefano poured and then left with a sly look at me, which I pretended not to notice.

“Thank you, sir,” I said. Turning to Gen I said, “Excuse me whilst I just nip to the loo.”

“Be quick. I’m still deciding whether I like you or hate you after that septic-tank explanation.”

“Conjures the same sort of emotions those two opposites, I find. And I don’t call you lot seppos!”

“It’s love and hate I think you’re thinking of, Charlie.”

“Right. Back in two shakes of a duck’s tail.”

“Lamb’s.”

“Right.”

I forced myself to piss, although the MDMA and cocaine wrestled me for bladder-control. I felt reckless and did a couple more bumps of coke off the countertop and rubbed the residual crumbs on my gums.

She’s lovely, my brain shot at me as I inspected my eyes in the mirror.

She is. God, I want to fuck her.

Yes, but she’s actually quite nice, you know. You could try and not sleep with her. You could get to know her.

I don’t want to get to know her.

Don’t you?

Do I? You sound sober. You tell me. Actually, no. It’s too soon.

Who decides it’s too soon? You don’t meet girls like this every day. She’s got sass. She’s fascinating.

It was a battle between Morals and Ego, a post-pubescent conflict that had been waged in my mind over every girl I had ever been with, ever since I was fifteen and I’d fingered a girl on a New Zealand beach during a New Years Eve celebration because she thought that my accent was cute. Alcohol was usually the deciding catalyst, clubbing my morals into bloody submission so that my ego could run riot. It was the conviction I held to be a ‘good man’ – whatever the hell that actually entailed nowadays – versus my insatiable desire to make a conquest of any and every girl that I met. I felt my morals tugging on me now, a slowly fraying rope holding back the solipsistic tendencies of my own sexual narcissism. I put the baggy back in my pocket, wiped my nostril and went to sit back down.

My throat was dry and numb from the copious amount of narcotics that had been dribbling down it all evening, and so the wine felt wonderfully velvety, and across the table from me sat a woman who seemed to shimmer in her red dress. I had a sneaking suspicion that my pupils were contracting and expanding in a way that mirrored a camera lens when it’s trying to auto-focus. I hoped that they weren’t and, if they were mucking about like they felt like they were, I hoped Gen wouldn’t notice. I was struck once again that Genevieve was a genuine beauty, beautiful in a way that couldn’t be forced, made up, feigned or cobbled together. She was a delight to watch, captivating like two swallows chasing each other over water. Like Sophia.

I realised I had been staring and thinking, lost in thoughts clouded by the chemicals zipping about my brain. I blinked and smiled, tried to think of something to say and then took another sip of wine.

“You alright there, Charlie Green?” Gen asked.

“Yeah. Sorry. Yeah.”

“What’re you looking at?”

“Just you.”

She looked down at her lap and smiled.

“You know,” she said, regarding me from under heavy lids with those marvellous green eyes, “I’m starting to think you’re trying to seduce me.”

“I’d never dream of it,” I said, pulling myself together. “Now drink up. It’s so much more problematic enticing someone into bed when they’re sober. Damned integrity seems to get in the way of animal instinct.” I poured us more wine and then added, “That was more the sort of performance you were expecting, was it?”

“Much better. I was beginning to think it was all girl-talk.”

“It’s all about keeping up form,” I said, and drank some wine.

“So, what happened with Bron then?”

“Wow! Really?”

“Tell me.”

I ran my tongue over my teeth and swallowed the coke that was trickling down my gullet.

“I’m sure you got all the gory details.”

“Not really. She just said you guys slept together a while ago.”

“Bron’s a very assertive woman, you know.”

“I know.”

“You may find this hard to believe, but she seduced me.”

“Really?”

“You look unconvinced.”

“Well, your form book does reveal a certain pattern.”

“Fuck me! You make me sound like some bloody Lothario! I’m just a normal person.”

“You’ve just slept with quite a few of our mutual friends.”

“Right. Or you could say that a lot of our mutual friends have slept with me.”

“That’s what’s called splitting hairs.”

“I’m easily hoodwinked is the thing. Naïve.”

She eyed me levelly.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” I said. “I was out one night, on my way home from work, and she text me out of the blue seeing what I was up to. Turns out she was just around the corner from me, leaving a bar. I was tired and didn’t really much like the idea of being surrounded by a bunch of drunken idiots – I much prefer to be the one who is worse for wear – and said as much to her. She then told me – and you have to remember that I only met her a couple of weeks previously – that she was going home to have a bath and drink red wine and eat chocolate, and did I want to join her? Now, Gen, you have to appreciate that I work in feature film. This sort of scenario doesn’t ever happen to me in real-life. It would’ve been a bit remiss of me to turn it down, wouldn’t it?”

“Red wine and chocolate in the tub?” Gen said.

“There were candles too. She really did the thing properly. I’m just a man, for goodness sake! It was nearing wrap-time I remember. I don’t think I’d left work for more than four hours at a stretch.”

“Fuck, she is a funny woman,” Gen said with a little snort of laughter.

Thankfully the talk turned to her. Mostly, all blokes know that, if you want to get in the good graces of the lady you’re courting, then you show that you’re interested in more than just what’s in her undergarments – and there is a difference between listening and just shutting the fuck up, whilst she talks and you rack your brains for something witty to say when she next pauses for breath.

I’ve found being on illegal stimulants to be quite advantageous in these scenarios. They help you immerse yourself in the stories and, for me, bring all sorts of questions fizzling to the forefront of my mind that I’d never bother to voice when sober. Perhaps the drugs make you less selfish and imbue one with an unusual forbearance. Perhaps they make you less cynical when it comes to the bullshit-laced lunacy that is every day human interaction. Who can say?

She was twenty-three and was interning with a local fashion designer who specialised in wedding dresses. She had a father who owned a prominent construction company, a younger sister who was spending a year in France, and three dogs. She showed me a picture of them on her phone at this point and, although I made the expected agreeable noises when she asked me how fucking cute(!) they were, I noted they were of the small, fluffy, pointless variety that you fantasize about drop-kicking through the nearest shop window when they accost you on the street.

I poured the last of the pinot into our glasses and signalled for another of the same from Stefano.

“You want to order some food, my friend? The kitchen will close soon and I know how you like our gnocchi.” Stefano uncorked the bottle and placed it on the table.

“To be honest, mate, I think I’m fine for food. The lady, however…”

Gen rolled her eyes and smiled at me, and damn me that smile… I was like a possum in a spotlight in front of that thing.

“The lady is fine as well, thank you,” she said.

We drank our wine in silence and looked at each other, and she looked a marvel to me in the light of the flickering candle.

“At the still point, there the dance is,” I muttered distractedly, seeing a particular page from T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets float before my mind’s eye.

“What was that?” Gen asked.

I blinked and smiled stupidly and said, “Nothing.”

I’m a hopeless romantic at heart. Until I’m not. I savour that indefinable knot of tension that grows between two people. The palpable feeling you get as you fill up with unspoken words, refrained touches, and looks that go un-acted upon. That incomparable rush of emotion and adrenaline and lust when the tipping point comes and you both step into that red abyss. I’m captivated by the theatre of falling for someone. It’s like a high.

Then I lose interest. It has nothing to do with the girl. It’s not even about the sex. Sex is just a natural culmination of the game we play with one another, once all the pieces are moved. It’s a checkmate, and when it’s done you either reset the board and go again or you find someone else to play with. It’s about winning into another person’s insecurities and seeing how far and how fast they’ll trust you.

I was so out of touch with my own scruples it was fucking unbelievable.

We’d been talking of friends and dreams, future plans that we didn’t want to make and commitments that we didn’t want to keep, and the second bottle of wine was almost gone when Gen said, “Are you going to kiss me, or are we just going to keep eye-fucking across this table all night?”

I felt, briefly, that the ground had been cut neatly from underneath me.

I looked around. There were only two or three tables left now. Stefano was chatting animatedly with the two remaining waitresses.

I wanted to kiss her. Christ on a bike, I wanted to kiss her. But that insatiable, egotistical, Hyde-like fiend was prowling on the edges of my wine-sodden brain.

You might be able to have it all. Right now, said the fiend.

Kiss her. Kiss her and leave with her and go back to the bar and see the lads. Take her to lunch tomorrow. Get to know the woman.

I leaned towards her.

“I want to kiss you. But not here.” I raised my eyebrows conspiratorially and nodded to my right. “There’s the disabled toilet, right there.”

Gen raised a single sharp eyebrow in return.

“How old are you?” she asked.

I leaned back in my chair. “I apologise. I was just feeling a bit impulsive. All this sexual tension, I guess. If you’re not up for it…”

“You don’t think I’m up for it?”

“No, no, you’re a lady. Maybe, I’m not a gentleman. There are times in life when I know what I want, and I leap at it. I can be very rude. Shortest distance between two points is a straight line, etcetera, etcetera.”

“You’re not very patient.”

“No.”

She looked at me from under those incredible eyelids, and I wondered, momentarily, whether I had ever noticed how seductive a woman’s eyelids could be. There was a lot to be said for eyelid aperture.

“Lead the way then, Charlie Green.”

“Ladies first,” I said.

She looked intensely at me, her lips parted ever so slightly, and I looked innocently back.

A boy daring a girl in the playground.

She rose from the table and never broke my gaze as she picked up her glass and finished her wine. Then she walked away, her phenomenal arse moving hypnotically under her clinging red dress and I found myself following unthinkingly. It was a wonder I didn’t knock the table over. She walked out of sight of the remaining diners and into the carpeted corridor that led to the washrooms. Suddenly, I found the blood pounding in my ears and my breathing more hurried, and I walked quickly after her and caught the door before it could slide shut behind her.

She turned, and there was a hunger on her face. She was biting her lip and her chest rose and fell. I was next to her in two paces and then I surrendered to the drugs and booze and lust and ego, and I was lost. The bathroom became abstract colours as we kissed, the delicate lighting dimming. She bit my bottom lip and pulled on it and I picked her up, her legs wrapped around my waist, and sat her on the counter as we pawed at one another. I had a handful of her hair and her small hand gripped the back of my neck as our tongues investigated each other’s mouths.

Without thinking I pushed up her dress and pulled her underwear – and calling that tiny piece of cloth underwear was a touch on the generous side, they were the Lichtenstein of the underwear world – down to her knees.

My hand ran up the inside of her thigh, seemingly of its own accord, and my fingers slipped inside her. She moaned, and that sick bastard in the back of my head took note of the fact that she was as scrupulously shaved as I imagined she’d be.

Gen moaned again and fumbled with my chinos. I quickly unbuttoned them and she grabbed me roughly. We played with each other as we kissed more slowly, tongues dancing across lips and teeth, and then my blood surged and I tore her delicate G-string off, rather than muck about getting it off over her shoes, and then I was inside her. I slammed her up against the mirror that backed the sinks, and she gasped.

It was that sex which is all reckless abandonment, where nothing exists but the physical connection and the primal animal need for fulfilment. We fucked against the wall and then spun and I was holding her as she bucked down on me. Then we were up against the wall again and there was an emphatic crash as we ploughed into the hand-dryer and smashed it off the wall.

Twenty minutes later – and I’ll be honest and say I’m rounding up – we emerged from the sliding door – and found that it’d been ajar the entire time. I imagined we looked slightly dishevelled, but we probably weren’t all that bad. Gen’s hair was mussed and I guessed mine probably look similar. All our clothes were cum-free, which was agreeable. All our clothes, that is, except Gen’s ruined undies. She’d used them to clean herself up with, judged them to be superfluous to her needs and discarded in the toilet bin.

There was no one left in the restaurant, although there were the signs that the last table had just left. I imagined it’d been in a hurry. Maybe it’d been a family out celebrating Grandma’s birthday. The dawning comprehension amongst the adults as they realise what’s transpiring in the handicapped loo. The father, throwing down some cash, not waiting for change, and bustling Grandma out. Mother chivvying the kids along with her hands clasped over their ears.

I covered my mouth to hide the idiotic grin that threatened to turn into moronic laughter. Stefano had seemingly gone home, thank God. We returned to our seats and one of the waitresses came over. She stood behind Gen and gave me a look that said plainly, Nice one, asshole.

“Bill, please,” I said.

Of course, I didn’t just arrive in that Hollywood restaurant out of the blue, boozed up and whacked out, and neurotic as all hell. We all find ourselves down the roads of our lives for one reason or another, brought there by a convergence of decisions and luck and mistakes. Our lives are our own miniscule universes and, like the Universe, they’re full of chaos. And chance plays as significant a role in them as anything else.

It really began, for me, on my back, waking to another glorious, perfectly lonely and redundant Californian morning. Or maybe it was before that; climbing out of a buckled window – the day that Fate decided to bend me over the metaphorical barrel.