Half life

A unique experience

Carole Morin

Soon after arriving at UEA for the spring semester as Writing Fellow, a muti- lated photograph of me wearing shorts in Barcelona was pinned to the door of the office I'd inherited from Malcolm Brad= bury. On the back, an academic nutcase had written, 'I hate you.' A lot of people hate writers, usually because they want to be one. Everyone has a book 'in them' along with their liver and kidneys.

This gesture of ill will gave me an excuse democratically to dislike everybody. Aca- demics for being frighteningly similar to the socially autistic neurotics who taught me: and students for being narcissistic greasy teenagers who snog at the lunch table. Now that I'm escaping campus life forever, I can indulge the delusion that 90s' youth is idealistic and sexy and unique. Drinking champagne in the afternoon with a graduating Johnny Depp look-alike helps.

Gulping his third Car Crash, Alistair confessed: I'm living with a rat.'

`New girlfriend?' I asked, mixing more iced vodka into the champagne. 'No a real rat. It moved in last week.' Alistair crawled under the table looking for Alice Cooper.

`Where does it come from?'

`Harrods, originally. My friend's gran bought it for his 21st but now he's in Thai- land so it's living with me.' He couldn't find School's Out so he put on my husband's Tindersticks CD, saying sadly, 'This music is so depressing it cheers everybody up.' I considered telling him about San Francisco Ken, a guy who recently called me long dis- tance to explain about the rabbit he was sharing his bedroom with. 'It just sits there staring — know what I mean?' Ken asked.

'No.' I said, 'I've never fornicated in front of a rabbit.' This rabbit was really strange, and the 'friend' who'd left it with Ken never came to fetch it. Ken can't stop thinking about converting it into stew, though — as a sensitive man — feels bad about these thoughts.

'Is your rat expensive to feed?' I asked Alistair.

`It's not my rat. It eats pasta and choco- late. Costs £3 a week. The money isn't the problem.'

`Does it watch you shagging?'

'I don't know. I keep my eyes shut.' Boys these days are romantic. Their ideal girl- friend has the allure of Lolita and the puri- ty of the Virgin Mary. Alistair was disillusioned because his gorgeous girl- friend with the seven inch thighs just want- ed sex all the time, he expected it to be 'more like love'. The liberal-feminist moth- ers of rave boys have convinced them that women are morally superior. The love gen- eration have swallowed this cliché: then vomited out their disappointment over slut- ty, flawed girls.

'Is your rat a man or a woman?'

'Haven't checked. I dread going home knowing it's going to be there waiting for me to feed it.'

'Like a kid that doesn't talk.'

'I am never having children.' Drunken- ness provokes these jolly confessions. Even though there are millions of children about already, people are programmed to want more. And there's no excuse for breeding rats as pets when there's plenty of real rats prepared to demolish your leftover fries.

'At least the rat isn't going to hang around with you until it's 16 expecting you to pay for the ice-cream.'

'My dad thought he wasn't going to have children,' Alistair admitted. His dad's a vasectomy surgeon. 'but you go metric at 22 — becoming the person you're going to be for the next 20 years.'

'Right,' I said. We shared a paralytic silence. Come to think of it, I gave up nightclubs when I was 22 — terrified of turning into one of those old swingers everybody sniggers at. 'Do you want anoth- er Car Crash?'

Alistair couldn't make up his mind. 'Doubt,' he confided, 'is chemical.' (Sound- ed good at the time, AL) 'What if Tiny doesn't come back from Thailand?' `He's bound to.' I said, trying to act casu- al — well aware that anyone called Tiny is not to be trusted.