I started contributing a column for a British website that churned out clickbait. I
was soon sending over regular articles. The topics were bullshit but that was what
people wanted. Escapism, or to see themselves in the words of others. Ten Signs
You’re The Only Brit In The Room. Eight Ways To Tell If You’re James Bond Material.
Some pieces went viral and as I got paid per click I found I could live well. I started
drinking rum cocktails at home, and going online looking for dates.
There were things that were different in America in ways I couldn’t get used to. The
dimensions were huge. Oversize cars. Roads. Even the elevators. The whole place
glowed like it was made out of pixels and the women, well, they were in another
league. In America, when women saw me flicker into a room they paid attention.
They let me see parts of their bodies not even Candice had showed me. I’d say stuff to
them and they’d just do it. They had it down to an art. Spreading their legs. Making
startled noises. Sucking dick like lollipops. Ravenous and greedy and so fucking eager
to please. I remember thinking what a generous country to make women like this.
After a while I told mother I was staying put, that I was going to try and extend my
visa. That I didn’t want her to visit me either. Every so often she sent me packages of
underpants from Tesco, or fresh T-shirts. The occasional newspaper article, carefully
cut out with her pinking shears. Articles about
screen addiction or the benefits of exercise, or
spending time in nature, but she didn’t understand
my job in digital media, or the entertainment
industry. She didn’t understand how much of
living happened outside of life.
Rarer, she’d send a handwritten note saying if I wanted to talk she was always
‘here.’ And like I said, ‘here’ was no place I wanted to be.
Sometimes mother got mad. Sometimes she said I was crazy. Why would I live
in America? The kind of place where truth and illusion were too close to call? The
kind of place where people became deluded or simply sold out? Where people were
abandoned by the state to make it on their own? But I told her that for me, being in
America wasn’t like that. It was where everything was possible. And besides, it was
where I’d found Destiny, and once I’d found her I didn’t care about Candice anymore.
I could have dated someone close by, but it happened that I met Destiny online
and she was out of state. It suited my flatmates better anyway. They were uptight and
didn’t like houseguests. I barely spoke to my flatmates at all, passing them only in the
mornings to grab some cornflakes or a fresh glass of water. Sometimes they eyeballed
me or said things that didn’t need answers. Comments on the weather. News items.
I ignored them mostly. They had their own lives to be getting on with.
As for Destiny, she was curvaceous with dimples in the right places and a chesty
laugh that sounded like her lungs were lined with honey. We’d speak for hours,
telling each other about our lives. Where we began and all the places we wanted to
go someday. Pretty early I told her I was in love with her, that my job was kind of crap
but that it was going to get better, that soon I would have my own entertainment
site, and start cashing in. The best thing about Destiny was that she believed in me,
as much I believed in America.
She’d take me for walks around her neighbourhood and she would tell me about her
job – a Kindergarten assistant and her ambitions to set up a YouTube craft channel.
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