Socksucker & Prostitot (2001)

Socksucker and Prostitot were modishly uncouth, irresistibly shaggable, permanently fucked, always up for a ruck. They had many hopes and plans for the future, but most of them could be summed up thus: Who gives a shit— let's get hammered.

Prostitot had been right up herself since she won Miss Gateshead (under 10s). With the makeup of a Regency slapper, antigravity bouffant and alarming array of junior whorewear she earned her name, her crown, sceptre and sash. She also garnered the unwelcome attention of Northern England's most reviled paedos and pervs, the Ian Brady Bunch. Prostitot's mother interpreted the demented collages and biroed romans á clef as vindication of her own bizarre and vicarious ambition. When the council had to rehouse them, she interpreted it as an unmistakable index of upward mobility.

Fewer years later than is legal, Prostitot gave birth to Baby Ronin. The proud grandmother started getting visions of Prostitot breeding an entire boy band for her. Perhaps the family talent hadn't been bestowed upon Prostitot after all. Instead it lurked in Baby Ronin, ready to blossom at one of the cheaper drama schools. Prostitot and boyfriend were summoned. They found themselves standing dazed outside the registry office before their cigarettes were down to the filter. Like the mediæval demon she so resembled (especially when she'd been under the sun bed), Prostitot's mother made it clear that she wanted first dibs on all her daughter's issue. And what's more, she expected Prostitot to get procreating chop chop.

There was only so much even an arrant moron like Prostitot could take. In less time than it took for the current Eastenders story arc to play out, Prostitot forsook Child Groom and Baby Ronin in favour of her life's true calling: sniffing car paint out of paper bags. All she took with her to the Crapital was her plastic crown and the never-to-be-paid-off catalogue clothes she could hardly stand up in.

This is what Prostitot scrawled on the miserable manila back of an unopened final demand:

Dear Child Groom
I spose every body is an addict in some way. Makes you feel more real and theres something worthwhile in your life. It takes you and you said that girls should be took.
And I do love yous. Nothing can change that apart from you being horribly scared in a car crash like what you is. I did gave you a chance until the bandages came off but I just cont not look at you like I did all those four months ago when we was married.
There I said it. I rote it in fact witch is not the same just a chickenshit way of saying it. Id like to but I cont.
Hope you will look after Baby Ronin + tell him I love too but whatever you do dont ask me mam you know she is quite mad and will make him into a coat like in that film.
Sorry
Good luck with GCSEs
Good by
Prostitot
X

Socksucker was a deracinated Scottish boy with split ends and a fat magic biro from which he could coax forth many colours. Crimson for irrational monographs sent to the local paper. Emerald for stories that probably never reached their destinations due to poor addressing (Pengwin Books, London). Violet for letters of complaint (I posted you a story reply or give it back it is my only story you bastards). Indigo for forging his dead grandad's signature on the pension book. Deepest black for toilet walls.

Weekdays he was working split shifts in the chicken hatchery. His job was to gas all the poor unwanted little boy chickens. Sometimes Socksucker had nightmares where the gas chamber chicks tried to get revenge on him for his part in their sexist holocaust. One night Socksucker dreamed thousands of them shivering in their primrose fluff, toes rigored into a spastic clutch. Their immobile faces and blank eyes seemed aggrieved, vicious but vague. He could do nothing to interpret their chirps and squeaks. The overall impression was of a world part Schindler's List, part Clangers.

The starting pay was usually infra-minimum because if you could legally drink in a pub you didn’t pass the so-called interview. In a few places like the hanging pen (very dark, very smelly, chickens still alive and screeching) and the kill room (very cold, very smelly, chickens headless and bleeding), the most desperate could earn nearly as much as they could from the dole. The gas chamber was next to the 4-D room, where all the Dead, Dying, Diseased and Disabled adult birds went to become reformed, bleached chickenoid foodstuffs. The more prestigious products, the ones that bore some resemblance to an animal, were processed on the opposite side of the building. Socksucker never went there. Mostly he just sat on a stool and drew on the back of his hand while he waited for the hatchlings to asphyxiate, but that was OK, that was his job.

Weekends Socksucker and his colleagues— greasy boys, opportunistic gropers, lazy slags— went up West and danced their legs down to the knees. They got down so far that they often forgot entirely how to get up again. Usually they started the whole ritual all over again before they had sobered up from the last time.

It was one Saturday at La Plague that Socksucker first gazed upon the love of his week. Of course it was Prostitot, flinging Archers, lemonade and straw aside, shouting TUNE like the twat she was, her aggressive elbows oblivious to the faces and tits they found with unerring accuracy, thrashing hands making childlike fists. Words were meaningless, inaudible. All Socksucker could do was move along with her. After ten minutes it felt as if they had been dancing together for decades.

In the park they found a mud-spattered baby doll, face down and naked, legs splayed like a dumped rohypnol victim. Prostitot contemplated the baby/doll for a few moments, then began to twist each plump plastic leg from its socket with intense determination. Baby Ronin, she murmured, loud enough for Socksucker to hear but not loud enough for him to ascertain what she was saying. Eventually she discarded most of the dismembered thing in the bin, keeping only the head for her and Socksucker to play one a side football with.
Afterwards they flopped onto the grass, heedless of dog shit and needles, exhausted and nauseated by all the unaccustomed fresh air, sunshine and happiness. For Socksucker and Prostitot, these three facts of life had yet to be devalued by overexposure. Mindful of an ancient public information film about forest fires, Prostitot carefully tapped her fag ash into Socksucker's shirt pocket. In return Socksucker nonchalantly slithered his hand into Prostitot's crotch, looking the other way as if he had no knowledge of his own limb’s wanderlust.

Prostitot was on fourteen year's suspension of benefit for telling the Employment Service Advisor to find a proper job himself before he got his shit out with her. Socksucker knew that the chicken factory was going to sack him when he turned sixteen anyway, if not sooner. Prostitot and Socksucker decided in their telepathic, unschooled way that it behoved them to become the Bonnie (Langford) and Clyde (Sinclair Spectrum) of the surveillance era. Next day Socksucker and Prostitot embarked on the deranged spree of ultra-lite crime that was to make them un-famous.

Monday afternoon: Prostitot in Top Shop womanhandling lots of clothes, always two sizes too small. Not buying anything. Walking around the store in acrylic coat and no knickers. Still not buying anything. Making the changing room communal with Socksucker, both of them trying on flimsy, microscopic dresses made for 5p in China. Hanging all the clothes in the wrong places, then leaving. Not buying anything.

Tuesday afternoon: Vandalising ad hoardings. Models sprouted speech bubbles in which they announced things like MMM TASTES LIKE SHITE and FUCK. Adding their own quotes to film posters (THIS FILMS BOLLOX — S&P), drawing bras on handsome go-getting business men, etc. Tuesday night: At the bus station, blocking the CCTV cameras with crude cardboard signs that said PRICK and IMA HORE. Writing NO 75- HELL (NORTH), ALSO AVALABEL IN RED and I WISH MI GIRLFREND WOZ THIS DIRTY on the flanks of idle buses as they hacked up diesel. When the bus arrived, showing the signs like OAP passes. Not having the correct change.

Wednesday morning: Helping themselves to all the 'free' CDs off the fronts of magazines. Wednesday night: Drunk and orderly, proceeding from pub to pub with mathematical exactitude. Socksucker pissing in the high street under the camera's bored gaze, then Prostitot doing the same, both running away laughing and flicking Vs.

Thursday afternoon: Stealing £3.84 from the fountain in the shopping centre. Dropping 97p's worth of it on motorists as they left the car park. Really eating as much as they liked from the £3.99 eat as much as you like buffet, which they had no intention of paying for anyway. Smoking in the non-smoking section. Thursday night: Bringing sandwiches, crisps and a flask of tea to McDonald’s. More smoking in the non-smoking section, this time wearing no shirts just because McDonald’s had taken the trouble to forbid it.

Friday morning: At the swimming pool, putting every external organ in each other's mouths, starting with the eyes and working downwards. Socksucker had promised Prostitot that she wouldn't have to see his dick until the weekend, so he had arguably been as good as his word. You've got lips like a girl, squawked Prostitot, you know that? Look, he's got lips like a girl! First we think exactly the same, now we've got the same mouths!

A beauteous man, his body gloating in its prime, toned and tanned and body hair kept to a tasteful minimum, waded past Socksucker and Prostitot as if they weren't really there. As usual Prostitot felt it necessary to point out the unavoidably obvious; that the man also had the tiniest dick in the world. I wouldn't even know when he'd put it in, she blurted, gleefully ramming her hand down Socksucker's boxers. If they ever planned more than thirty seconds ahead they could have shoplifted some swimwear. Poor bloke, hooted Prostitot. Poor me! The man climbed out of the pool, composure unbroken, Prostitot and Socksucker just parts of his id he would rather not encourage.

Friday afternoon: Arrested in the park, in their favourite location, right outside the gent's cottage. I don't know why anyone would want an Alsatian dog, said Socksucker. Unless they was a copper or in the bomb squad. This proved prescient, as he and Prostitot were almost immediately surrounded by uniformed missing links just gagging to use their pepper sprays. They never got the chance. For the first time in their short, shit lives, Prostitot and Socksucker came quietly.

It was a very long journey to the police station, roadworks, usual bad driving, idiots crashing into each other and/or getting horny just like in that film 'Crash' (but with less significant subtext). Prostitot had plenty of time to work her cuffed hands around from behind her. Only Socksucker was paying attention as she deftly went down her into her bag, then applied a full face of perfect makeup.

© Alistair Gentry 2001. From 'Uncanny Valley: Collected Short Stories'.