Matthias Connor, aka Wolfboy, is a London-based writer who publishes fanzines that he gives to people for free. He has been doing this for more than 20 years. Currently, Ooga Booga in Los Angeles is the only store that has copies of his work for sale. An 18-year-old told him on New Year’s Eve a few years ago that one of his “books” was the only thing he had ever read twice. Hearing this satisfied every vain delusion Matthias had ever had about what it would mean to make it as a writer. We should mention now that his aforementioned reader is dyslexic, which may or may not explain why he decided to read it twice. Another thing worth mentioning is that the same reader had just taken ecstasy. Matthias works part-time in a bookshop. When he’s not there, parents pay him to look after their children. Last year he performed spoken word with musical backing from Gang Gang Dance (he also has a fanzine about Brian from the same band’s pet tarantula). Matthias’s fanzine house is called Poppy Books. It’s named after his goddaughter. There’ll be a stand at the Los Angeles Art Fair in January.
The inspiration for this story came from one of the people for whom Matthias babysits. “Matt,” he said, “you know it’s a bad idea to go jogging on a hangover.”
It seemed like yesterday when he would go to the pub and find himself surrounded by older people and feel mature in their company. But now, whenever he went out, it was the other way around. People his own age were supposed to have had children by now, and while there were pubs full of men older than himself, and sometimes he would pop into one of these pubs for a half by himself, he had no desire to join their ranks as a regular yet. For one, he was a bachelor, and the prospect of pulling in one of those pubs, as everybody knows, is slim. He had loved, and in the future he hoped to do so again, but by then, who would be able to tell what the outcome would be? He was optimistic. But then being a bachelor at his age had its frustrations. For one he was, by now, fed up with going into the same bars all the time. Whatever order he entered them, they all blurred together to become the same place in the end. If he were married, he sometimes reasoned, not taking into account all the married men to be found in pubs, he wouldn’t have to.
She approached him in a dance club, except he wasn’t dancing. “Approached” is the wrong word—she went straight up to him with a confidence that excited him. He couldn’t help but look. The sight of a pair of breasts pushed together under his face, and, taken by the atmosphere, he didn’t mind that she noticed this. In fact he hoped that she noticed him not minding that she did. She was doing the talking. Her words weaved in and out of the music until, listening to her, the two were inseparable. Saying she had seen him around for years, that she had always had a crush on him. That she wanted to get off her head and right fucked up, and how the music, honestly what was the DJ playing, had begun to do her head in. He was not so much taken aback as lifted off his feet by her brash honesty. Even though she was telling him she had always fancied him, he was convinced that he hadn’t seen her before. She wasn’t what you’d describe as being his type, and, when he stopped briefly to consider this dilemma, nor was he hers. This was why he was so enchanted by her attention. There are many types, but at this point in his life, he had become accustomed to it being always one particular type that seemed to suspend belief and find him charming. But this was the sort of girl that he imagined going out with a lower-league football player or a drug dealer. Someone with a nice motor; not a struggling poet in his late thirties who walked everywhere, who had recently had to switch from beer to neat vodka because standing naked, in front of the mirror, he had seen the outline of a beer belly. Fine if you’re already married, but a kiss of death if you’re still a bachelor looking for a wife. This is why he had taken to running alongside the canal each morning. But then a friend had informed him that it was dangerous to run the morning after you’ve been drinking, that you’re twice as likely to have a heart attack. And while he often had suicidal thoughts, he kept them at bay one day at a time—telling himself, “Not today, wait and see what happens tomorrow first”—and he didn’t want to die while jogging alongside the canal either. If his friend hadn’t told him about exercising with a hangover being dangerous, he might have continued, for he felt he was fighting pain with pain, and his face, red and contorted from the physical strain, was testimony to both the late night before and the next step. Completely wiped out after 40 minutes, he believed this was evidence that the exercise was working. But now that he knew that running with a hangover was potentially life-threatening, to continue doing so would be suicidal. Just for the sake of his reputation as a poet he could never envision committing suicide by going for a jog, not that anybody would ever know that it was suicide apart from him. “A terrible accident,” he imagined them saying. “How was he to know that you couldn’t sweat out a hangover by going for a jog the following morning?” “A terrible accident!” he imagined screaming in his grave. “It was no accident! Do I look so stupid that I didn’t know running with a hangover was potentially life-threatening?” It wouldn’t do; if he was going to top himself in such a way he would have to leave a note explaining that it was suicide and not an accident. But if he was to commit suicide, he of all people, nearly every single one of his favorite writers, musicians, and artists having taken their own lives, would have to choose a way that characterized his awareness of the form. The method of choice didn’t have to be overly fancy, but neither should it should be comic or flippant either, for death is a serious matter. But now he was 37, and no longer able to die young like he once imagined himself doing, and, as long as there was still a tomorrow, he would continue postponing further contemplation of the subject until then. And while he often found himself trying to hurry up the end of the present day by drinking, he still only ever woke up with a hangover. This simple wisdom alone would prevent him going any further when he had suicidal thoughts, but if he was to ever forget this simple truth, he reasoned then that he would have just reason to end it all. And after all that, he still wasn’t even sure if the actual jogging was having any effect on the shape of his belly. That night, before going out, he had stood in front of the mirror and studied its shape from as many angles as possible, including on his hands, and kneeled when it seemed to pull him toward the floor. Realizing the absurdity of studying his profile from this angle, he did a couple of push-ups, as if this was what he had meant to do in the first place, but then, after a couple more, his arms gave in, and he found himself lying on his front, out of the mirror’s view. Push-ups were better than jogging if you wanted to get rid of a belly. By jogging you would have to actually sweat the fat off, and how long would that take compared to just converting the fat to muscle? It was the difference between slow cooking and quick blast in the pan. Now that he had decided to postpone jogging, he was glad that he wouldn’t have to confront the geese on his journey again. The reason why he jogged alongside the canal was because you didn’t meet anybody walking along it in the morning. Compare this to his local park, which was full of bloody health fanatics. But then what he hadn’t foretold about running alongside the canal was the wild geese unaccustomed to the sight of humans, apart from those hell-bent on capturing one of them for a cheap dinner. Unlike the geese that lived along the canals that passed through nice middle-class environs, these geese had adopted the manners of their cruel human neighbors. It was all right if they were on the water, then they didn’t look twice at the sight of him running passed them. But whenever they were on the path ahead, however quietly and slowly he tried to tiptoe past them, they would turn their heads, parting their beaks, and hiss at him as if he were about to steal their eggs. He had tried talking, like one talks to a dog or a cat that you’re unsure of, but this had no effect on them and he would have to back away, as if having a gun pointed at him, and they only stopped their hissing when he was sufficiently out of their range. Then, defeated, he would turn around and resume the short run home again. This had been his original reason when he first began to question the effects of going jogging. With one reason, the other reasons seemed to come easier, until it had been six weeks since he last even set foot on the canal path.She was here on a hen night except, looking around, all of her mates must have gone on to the next club without her. Didn’t she want to follow them? She replied, “I love them, but hey, fuck them, what do you want to do?” Compare this to the type that would normally entertain a poet, who had recently reached the conclusion, after an arrogant start in his 20s and 30s, that trying to understand writing poetry was no easier than trying to study patterns made in sand by the wind blowing. A study, he had decided, that was doomed to no conclusion. He knew this, and yet he persisted, but he couldn’t understand other people like him knowing this and then being attracted to him. It seemed to be on the fringes of vulgar taste, yet aspiring poets, artists, and struggling singer-songwriters sustaining themselves by working shifts in bars or cafés seemed to be the only women who would ever want to know him. The prospect of settling down with someone like this depressed him as much as being on his own, and perhaps that was why he still cruised the city-center bars with one eye always on who was coming through the door next. If he wanted to talk about dead poets and doomed concept albums he could do that with one of his mates, but he didn’t want to marry them, and by now he was bored of sleeping with women who would have made better mates, except, now that he had slept with most of them, they couldn’t be that either.
But a girl like this, he thought, a quartet of empty shot glasses on the bar in front of them, I could marry her. Likes a drink, dresses in a manner that would provoke any of my sensitive poet mates, and—“Let’s go back to yours, it’s too loud in here”—doesn’t like to mince her words either. In the taxi she had fallen into a silence. Staring at her, sat there, he thought he recognized her, but he couldn’t place her. In the club she had pulled him onto the dance floor and kissed him with all her force. Afterward they went to the bar around the corner, their arms around each other for support. She asked, her voice beginning to slur, if he had any more drink at his place. The vodka would wake her up. He leaned over, his arms moving around her, and whispered what he intended to do to her. She turned and began to kiss him, awakened by his words, even if the exact meaning had made no sense to her. Back at the flat, he left her sat on the sofa. She kicked off her heels, declaring, “Bloody things: I never wear heels.” He prepared them drinks in the kitchen. When he returned she was removing her blond hair. “Fancy dress is quite the drain,” she remarked, standing up to examine herself in the mirror. While he had known that her hair had been styled in the manner deemed appropriate for a hen night, he still hadn’t expected it be to so different. It was short and brown like that of a fawn. Staring at her sat on the sofa, he thought he recognized her again. Seeing him look at her like this, she asked him if he wanted her to put the wig back on again? He felt foolish saying yes, now that he knew it was a wig. “I don’t mind,” she said scratching her head as she spoke. “Honestly, if you prefer me blond, I can be blond for you.” She was joking but he didn’t laugh. Instead he stared at her and slowly realized that he did remember her. Years ago, when he was still a student, he had worked in a café, and she sometimes used to come in with her mates. They were a few years younger than him, for they were still in school uniforms then, whereas he was in his second, maybe third year of his English degree. He recalled taking a shine to one of her mates, as he did with many young female customers, but nothing ever came of it. And occasionally, he had wondered for fleeting moments what had become of her pretty mate. But this girl, sat next to him now, she was one of the pretty girl’s two mates that she’d come in with. Gradually he recalled seeing her here and there, but without her mate, he hadn’t made the connection that she was one of them. Behind them the night sky was giving way to light. “I think I remember you,” he said, remembering the café, her mate and her plainer-looking mate, who probably wasn’t that plain, he rationalized. But at the time he had been so taken by her mate that until now he hadn’t really seen her. “You do?” she asked, her sprits lifting slightly as he spoke. “Sure, you used to come into the café I worked in with your mates years ago,” he tried to be causal. “Whatever happened to your mate?” “Which one?” she questioned him. “Becky? Dressed a bit slutty?” “I can’t remember,” he said, deliberately sounding vague, “I think so.” “Married a squaddie, lives on an army base with six screaming brats.” “Six?” he inquired. “Catholic,” she snorted. “I went to a Catholic six-form college in Stockport. Used to come into Manchester on Wednesdays when we had afternoons free. Hang around Affleck’s palace like you do. My mates never liked your café, but I always made them come back because I liked you. Then I didn’t see you for years. I lived in London for a bit,” she trailed off. He must have seen her occasionally, but never gave her any more thought than that. In the club, he had imagined this brazen young woman, with peroxide hair and a mouth to match, working behind one of the makeup counters in one of the big department stores that made people like him feel unwelcome. But now that she was here, in the dim light of his flat, getting up to scan his bookshelves, he realized that if she worked in a clothes shop she was more likely to be found in one of the secondhand ones he popped into periodically. That must have been where he had seen her. She had switched from being someone he imagined finding poets laughable to the sort of person who might fancy entertaining one. Because of the rising excitement he had felt before, he now felt as if he were coming down, and he felt despondent looking down at his feet. She was telling him about an idea she had for a short film. He poured them both more vodka, hoping that this would inspire him to be passionate about the situation. By now it was impractical for her to get back to her house. Later they would sleep together, and, as long as he was with her, he would try his best to imagine that he was in bed with the sort of woman who would never go to bed with him.
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