lolitas

“It’s been six months,” Brad says, calmly.

I hoped no one was going to mention it but I knew as the evening wore on that someone would. I just hoped it wouldn't be me. The five of us are at Lolitas, a Mexican spot in the West End we’ve come to every Summer since we left college - a memento mori to the end of innocence and slow corruption of adulthood. Maybe it’s the time of year or the Aztec decor, but over the years this dinner has become a kind of log book for each of our life awakenings. Three years ago it was Brad quitting accounting to study zoology. The year after it was Jack discovering fashion and starting a handbags business in Montezuma. Last year it was Richie giving up weed. Even in the times where nothing had been announced - no pattern broken, no half-baked plan hatched - a whole year had passed, our lives one solar return wiser, and witnessed by the same Mexican totem statues - their faces wide and uninterested.

“Six months,” Brad says again. 

“Since what?” Jack says.

Richie is waving our server over who seems not the least bit interested in serving us. 

“Since…” Brad begins but stops as Pat rejoins the table. 

Something, someone nearby smells of weed and reminds me that last year we each drank five margaritas and spent the dinner in a competition of who’s self-defeating habits were most fucking up their lives. High up the list was Richie’s marijuana addiction which was so bad he was smoking on all three of his coffee, lunch and afternoon breaks to cope with his soul-sucking boss and then having to orchestrate an intricate routine of mouth wash, fabric freshener, eye drops and air freshener to conceal it. It wouldn’t be so bad if he had a bum job or worked outside but as a junior attorney for one the country’s top law firms there was a standard he probably had to but was unfussed about upholding. The penny dropped for him after being caught on a day without any aerosol and trying to fumigate his suit jacket with toilet cleaner. Then there was Brad who far from being too busy in his auditing job had lost his mind to office boredom and found salvation in fantasy football, his weekends and financial situation routinely ruined by mounting tantrums and excessive betting. Jack had confessed to a moderate problem with masturbation which turned out to be just a fetish for Japanese porn, one video in particular, of a man pretending to be a buddhist monk before having sex with one of his students. This would seem innocuous, boring even, but for the news Jack was currently studying on the side to become a meditation teacher. 

Our waiter appears and we order five beers for the table. The guy - a thin, morose-looking Eastern European man in his thirties - notes it down quickly and disappears.

“I have some news.” Pat says, clearing his throat. “Well, potentially news.”

“It’s either news or not news Pat. There’s no half-news unless you count Jack’s hair.” Richie says, pointing at Jack’s head. Jack’s sister cuts hair and as a trainee once cut Richie’s into something resembling a cereal bowl that years later he’s still not forgiven her for.

“I’m a bit embarrassed,” Pat says, smiling at me.

“Why?” Jack replies, leaning forward.

Nobody has talked to Pat for at least three months - except maybe Brad - despite the fact we all live in the same neighbourhood, take the same tube line to work, and committed to have dinner together at least once a month since graduation. On the tube this morning I listened to a podcast about major life events and how they can be kind of initiations, like the ones we had in tribes in ancient times like when your balls dropped you’d go up to the mountains for a week or when you became a protector of the village you’d be locked in a cage with hornets until you passed out. On the show they were saying how modern life has lost rites of passage. Guys graduate school or college or military academy and then spend the rest of their lives stumbling into other things to learn what it means to be a man.

“Well…” Pat says.

“I’m thinking about doing the thing…” he says.

“The thing?” Jack says.

“What thing?” Richie says.

“You know…” Pat says, sheepishly, and looks at me intensely. 

“Mushrooms?” Jack asks. 

“No.” Pat says, shaking his head. “Bigger than that.” 

“DMT?” Richie says. 

Brad is looking at me making a face I can’t understand, and something equally incoherent with his hands.

“I’ve - well - we’ve been thinking…” Pat says.

“Yes…” Jack says, “thinking about what?”

“What are you talking about?” Richie says, annoyed that his DMT trip is off the table. 

“Who’s we?” I ask stupidly.

“I think we means…” Jack says.

“I’m going to ask Gemma to marry me.” Pat says at last, triumphantly. 

“Holy shit!” Richie shouts across the table. A couple nearby look up, annoyed, then go back to their fajitas.

Brad is looking at me as if I should have decoded his hand signal by now but instead I’m inexplicably wondering what my face looks like, if I'm actually invisible and if now is the right time to take my jacket off. 

“Wow” Jack says.

“Congratulations” Brad says, raising his glass. 

“Yeah, congrats.” Jack says, picking up his drink. I raise mine.

“How long’s that been? With Gemma I mean?” I ask.

“Six months” Pat and Brad say in unison. 

“But when you know, you know. You know?” Pat laughs.

Richie grunts something inaudible but sounds a lot like “fuck”.

“When?” Jack asks.

“Next month,” Pat says and launches into a scheme to go hiking up the three peaks and at the top of Ben Nevis - the last one - he plans to pop the question. Afterwards he wants everyone - us included - to meet them off the mountain for a surprise party at a local pub.

“But why?” Richie says.

“To celebrate…” Pat says, nervously. 

On the podcast they were talking about how 90% of the mind is actually unconscious and we spend most of our lives trying to figure out who we are by projecting our desires onto other things and other people. 

“No, why Gemma?” Richie says. 

“Why not? And fuck you!” Pat snaps.

Nobody says a thing in the long, ensuing silence. Our waiter arrives with our beers and lays them out methodically around the table with a strange attention to detail. I watch him wondering why he’s taking such care. Perhaps he’s suddenly decided he’s working in a much better restaurant - Tunnel or the Mandarin - or perhaps he thinks it will land a bigger tip or most likely he's hanging in to listen to the conversation. He lingers on the fifth beer, looks at our blank faces, and leaves. 

“Every girlfriend I get you say I should dump her because ‘she’s a bitch’” Pat says, the last words in an exaggerated but elegant impression of Richie’s northern accent.

“Well, that’s because they are,” Richie says.

“Fuck you” Pat snaps.

“That’s a bit harsh” Brad says to Richie, though we all know he’s lying.

Perhaps bitches is a bit harsh, but I’ve long suspected something is seriously amiss in Pat’s dating department. His first girlfriend - Rachel Marsh or ‘The Farce’ as we called her - who he was with before we arrived at college and who was enrolled two hundred miles away at Cardiff instead turned up every week, sometimes twice, on campus, at lectures and seminars and then at the clubs to make sure he didn’t drink too much and he could take her to ride ponies on the weekends. We all thought it was cute to begin with, school sweet hearts and all that, but then she asked if he’d leave a webcam in his room so she could watch him fall asleep at night. Then she asked if he’d take one away with him on our ski holiday. Next was Sam Morgan (the ‘Demagorgan’) who appeared just a week after the end of Farce and moved the following week into his single-bedroom so she could make him breakfast every morning. I don’t think he’d eaten better before or since. The only problem was she wouldn’t let him leave after, except to go to class and bring her more food, and then he’d disappear back into his 10 by 6 container slowly becoming enormous. Richie’s lazy but ingenious solution to the predicament was to go on washing strike, letting the dishes pile so high in the communal sink that not only did she refuse to cook or clean any more, but forcibly ran away in tears after she found a huge rat in the downstairs cupboard. 

After graduation there was Victoria Brombauer - an insanely hot, German ex-child model turned military HR manager who after ten hours a day of telling her co-workers what they needed to know, spent the rest of it telling Pat what books and websites he should be reading . Sure we thought it was weird he suddenly became fascinated with post-modernism and art-deco buildings but none of us really cared. It wasn’t until Brad was over Victoria’s for the holidays and found his Christmas present to Pat - a copy of Alex Ferguson’s autobiography - lying torn to pieces in the bin. Then there was Jess Lace, the worst of all because she at least made an effort to be friends with us all but six months in began lying to Pat about things we said, events we planned, even things we said about her, and then using this to distance him from the group - all to spend time in bed watching marathon repeats of Friends. At some point Jack’s car broke down round the corner and he called in, catching them in the living room, Pat being forced to audition lines with her.

Last but not least was the current girlfriend and soon to be fiance, Gemma Page - tall, milk skinned, a doctor - everything you could want if what you wanted was 24/7 worry about what food is good enough to eat and how many vaccines to get this week. Four months ago the four of us had gone to a garden party to meet her which was going well until Brad mentioned his cousin was having a rough time on anxiety meds and Richie launched an invective about how the whole pharma industrial complex wants young people on drugs so they become dependent for life and anyone that was not completely brainwashed by the pharma elite would not give Sertraline to a twelve year old. Turns out Dr Gemma’s been on the same meds since she was seventeen and her Dad died and according to Pat it’s a miracle she’s still here. Over dinner, the last time I saw him I now recall, he told me the meds are a life-saver, better than therapy apparently - because Gemma didn’t want to open all of that up again - and really Richie shouldn’t talk about medication when he’s not a doctor and hasn’t trained to be a doctor and can’t understand what it means to be a doctor. Or even have anxiety for that matter. And don’t I agree?

“Nobody thinks you're a retard. In fact, you’re a smart guy.” Richie says. 

“Err.. thanks” Pat says, taking a mouthful of his fahita. 

“So when exactly are you going to draw a line from Rachel The Farce to Sam Demagorgan to whoever that German chick was…”

“Victoria” Brad chimes in.

“To Bomb-bowser” - Richie nods appreciatively at Brad - “to psycho Jess Lace and now Dr Strange.” 

Pat puts his beer down, his face dismayed with the realization that Richie didn’t come up with any of these names on the spot. 

“A line…?” Pat says limply.

“And connect the dots…” Richie says.

“To what?” Pat says, shrugging his shoulders.

“To the news you're catnip for psychos.” Richie announces somewhat proudly. The server arrives looking to take our food order. I shake my head and wave him away.  

“She’s not a psycho.” Pat says defiantly. “And what would you know? You never see us together.” He continues.

“Precisely” Richie says. 

Pat looks at me, mystified by the response.

“None of us see you.” I say limply. 

“You haven’t been to a game in months” Brad says, referring to Chelsea for which they are both season ticket holders and have been going - on and off - for years.

“Gem thinks crowds are super spreaders and I don’t want to be the reason she can’t go to work.” He says. 

Jack gestures his hands around the room, packed with diners. “We’re in London.” 

Pat falls quiet. Brad looks upset. My mind is blank except for wishing that I went first this evening and announced I’m giving up wanking for a month. 

“Her work’s important." Pat says at last.

“Jey-sus.” Richie explodes “She’s a fucking GP not an orthopedic surgeon.” He sips his drink “So she gets sick? Someone goes without happy pills for a day. Big deal.” 

Brad starts laughing and all of a sudden I can’t help too because whenever Brad laughs it sounds like a camel giving a mating call. Pat glares at me.

“What would you know? You haven’t had a girlfriend in years.” Pat says angrily. 

“Can someone else help here?” Richie says, looking at the rest of us.

Nobody says anything for a while and we sit and eat in silence, the music alternating between Mexican jazz and Spanish pop, the waiting staff drifting in and out of the kitchen, the ceiling fan slowly pushing air over the table. I think about the first day I met Pat at a BBQ in freshers week, waiting in line for drinks. He asked me if I worked out. I told him I hadn’t stepped foot inside a gym in eighteen years but before I could finish he was already laughing, ignoring my answer, pointing at my chicken-wing arms. I think about graduation and Jack’s face seeing Pat’s crocodile tie and another one he’d had made, custom printed with the face of Desmond Tutu to honour Richie’s final degree grade. I think about fragments of old nights out. A boat trip. Smoking cigars at Brad’s old place. Waking up naked in a field at Glastonbury. Then my Dad’s 60th, where everyone got wasted, especially Pat, and him telling me by the lake that he loved my parents - he really did - but he never got on with his own, his mum in particular, and he felt terrible for saying so. 

“We care about you, that's all.” Jack says at last and in a lowered voice.

“Maybe you could give it some more time? It’s only been six months.” Brad says. 

“I love her.” Pay says, emphatically.

“We’re just worried…” Jack begins and stops abruptly and looks droopily at his glass. 

The music changes again, this time to something more garish and in the quiet I notice Pat’s face is sad, desperately sad, that no one seems to celebrate his happiness.

“We’re worried,” I say, tentatively, “that maybe what you think is love, is something else.” 

“What would you know?” Pat says, suddenly terse. Aside from Brad, I’m the only one who’s in anything near a relationship. Samantha and I met in the last year of college and though we hit some bumps after graduation, particularly after she changed jobs and her brother became ill, it’s been smooth sailing. I popped the question on vacation in Spain and last summer we tied the knot. Jack was the best man and though he doesn’t care much for weddings or commitments, he did a good speech. It was Pat though who came up to me after - pretty drunk - to tell me of all the friends he most wanted to be, it was me.

The smell of weed hits me again and I realize it’s not somewhere else, it’s Richie. Richie who told us he was quitting because after he got a disciplinary and almost a P45 he fell asleep the following weekend, stoned, and nearly burnt his parents house down. Richie who’s still turning up to work 70 hours a week for an asshole of a boss that hasn’t said a good word about him in three years. Richie who of all us probably knows the most about repeating mistakes. 

On the episode they said life orchestrates circumstances they need to be to change, even if those circumstances don’t look like it at the time.  

“You don’t understand.” Pat says. “None of you do.” Picking at the label on his bottle to avoid looking at any of us.

Pat’s cheeks are red. The rest of the group are waiting for me to say something. Everything has the sense of a train going in the direction it’s supposed to even if its final destination is an abyss. The music coming through the speakers changes to a low rub guitar number that makes me study the impenetrable ancient faces. 

“Congrats” I say. “---”