Smoking Kippers
Kippers is a fucking nightmare.
Everyone calls him Kippers, most people didn’t even know why. It apparently went back to his school days and had something to do with scampi fries but the details are fairly hazy. However, the name stuck and somehow fitted.
It was six on Monday morning, I didn’t have to open the pub until twelve but Kippers had to be at work for nine.
'Right, I'm going to bed.' I slapped my knees and sat forward with a sense of what felt like purpose.
Kippers didn’t listen. 'I'll roll another bifter.'
‘Fuck off man Kip, you've got work in three hours man.'
'There's no point in bed then is there? I'll skin up.'
'I'm going to bed.'
'Bifter then bed.'
'Bed.'
'Bifter then bed.'
And so it went on. By the time I'd announced for the tenth time that I was definitely going to bed, Kippers had rolled the joint and sparked it up. Fucks sake.
I told everyone the next day that I'd set off with all the good intentions in the world but then, is that not how all the messy nights really begin? The story I'd told was that I'd foregone the usual all day Sunday cider drinking marathon in favour of an extended session on Grand Theft Auto, hadn’t had a drink and hardly even a smoke and was all set to turn in once Match of the Day was finished, when there was a tentative knock on the door.
'Now then lad, how you diddling?' Kippers was standing at the door with his trademark cheesy grin and that glint in his eye that always spells trouble.
'Hey up mate, how's things.' I tried to mask my lack of enthusiasm at receiving my unexpected guest.
'What you up to?' Kippers was already settling himself into the comfy chair in the corner.
'Just watching Match of the Day, why like, what's the crack?'
'Fancy a line?'
'I don't mate, I kinda fancy my bed.'
'We'll have a line.'
He never fucking listens and at the end of the day, my weak willed personality is never going to hold out for long when someone's offering free Charlie, regardless of the time of day.
'Go on then. But just the one, it’s a school night.'
And then it was six in the morning.
We'd been sitting talking bollocks, snorting coke, drinking vodka and watching DVDs for hours and totally lost track of time when Kippers had rolled that spliff. As he leaned over and passed me the jazz cigarette there was a noise upstairs. Kippers slowly rolled his eyes to the ceiling and exhaled slowly as a smile gradually spread across his round face.
'You got someone upstairs?' He asked with his eyebrows raised.
'No.' My abruptly defensive reply gave me away but not completely.
'You fucking have, haven’t you?'
'Have I fuck.' I handed the spliff back and there was the definite sounds of footsteps across the bedroom floor.
'Who is it you sly bastard?'
'I don’t know what you're on about mate.' Despite the damming evidence, I was still refuting it. I had my reasons.
'Why are you denying it?'
'Denying what?'
'Is it a bloke?'
'Get fucked.'
'Well who is it then?'
'Just someone.'
'Just someone? Bollocks! Just tell me who it is.'
'You wouldn’t know her even if I told you.'
'I'm going up to say hello.' Kippers was on his feet and his hand was already on the door handle.
'You'll sit the fuck back down.' My voice was level and stern and the look in my eye let him know that I wasn’t fucking about. Kippers sat back down but the mischief was still in his eyes.
'Who are you poking that you shouldn’t be?'
'No-one alright, lets just leave it at that.'
'Is she married?'
'No.'
'Has she got a bloke? She has, hasn’t she?'
'She might.'
'You sly cunt. I'll find out, I only live next door.'
'Fair enough mate but I'm definitely going to bed now.'
'Suit yourself you mardy fucker. Give her one for me when you get up there.'
We shook hands and embraced as is our way and Kippers stumbled into the breaking dawn to get ready for work.
'Take it easy mate.'
When I made it upstairs, the object of Kippers curiosity was sat up in my bed with her arms folded and a look on her face that made me wish I'd stopped downstairs.
'What the fuck have you been doing?'
'Kippers came round to say hello and we lost track of time.' Telling the truth to women is never a good thing in my experience and I was proven to be correct again.
'You let him in the house? With me up here? You sit getting high with him for hours with me alone in bed? Wanker!' She wasn’t too happy.
'Its my fucking house.'
'But fucking Kippers? For Christ's sake, are you completely mental.'
'Hey! He's a fucking good mate of mine. What am I supposed to do? Tell him to fuck off? You could have come down to say hello.'
'He's my fucking boyfriend!'
'You should have thought of that before you came round here then shouldn’t you?'
I'd been shagging Flick (the foul mouthed harpy currently giving me hell for socialising with HER boyfriend) for a couple of weeks. You can tell from the eyes when a girl wants you and I'd been getting those eyes off Flick for ages. I knew that she was a grade A mentalist from what Kippers has told me but I also knew how dirty she was, and there was the attraction. A couple of Thursday nights ago, once the poker school had finished, Flick and I were the last left in the bar. I'd locked the door, abolished the smoking ban, opened the juke box and lined up the tequilas.
After about half an hour of drunken flirting and a couple of lines each, we'd ended up screwing on the pool table. And in the back room. And in the bar. And in the toilets. And under the archway on the way back to my pad. And all night and most of the next day at my place. The thing was, despite my close relationship with Kippers, both socially and geographically, I didn’t feel the least bit bad about it. Flick on the other hand has been walking on eggshells, to the point where she smothers her face with a pillow when she comes for fear that the sound of her breathless orgasms from our frantic fucking carries next door.
'He's going to find out now isn't he?' Her eyes were wide with the realisation.
'Not if we knock it on the head.' I was enjoying the sex and the danger but Kippers was more important to me than his straying missus.
'But we can't knock it on the head babe.' She had abandoned her defensive stance and was crawling across the bed towards me, biting her lower lip.
'Don't call me babe. I'm not your babe.' I hate being called babe even when the relationship is legitimate.
'But you are a spectacular shag and I can't get enough of you.' She had undone my jeans and taken my quickly stiffening dick in her mouth. I decided not to knock it on the head just yet.
My shift finished at six and I couldn’t wait. Flick had left my place at about eleven that morning. She always insisted on sneaking out the back door with her hood up but truth be told, anyone seeing her would just assume that she'd come from Kippers' place. I'd had no sleep and a quiet day in the bar, my head felt several sizes too big and liable to drop off at any moment. At about half five Kippers walked in hand in hand with Flick and took up residence at the corner of the bar. Kippers always came in for a pint after work and Flick would invariably be with him, trying not to get too close to his dusty clothes from the building site. I nodded hello, poured a pint, a JD and coke and a Guinness for me.
I took a deep intake of breath, stretched, rubbed my temples and looked at them through blood shot eyes. 'Get to work then?'
'Aye, no bother at all lad. Full days graft, feel champion now man.'
'You've got no fucking right to be, I feel like death.'
'Ah but you went to bed though didn’t you?' My eyes met with Flick's and she gave me a sly wink.
'That'll have been it mate, I should have listened to your sound counsel.'
'You certainly should have done mate.'
'Your other half didn’t leave my place till gone six this morning.' I said looking at Flick.
'So I hear, you boys should learn to behave yourselves.' She was stroking Kippers arm but looking directly at me.
'Sean's poking someone he shouldn’t be.' Kippers was grinning away.
'Is he?' Flicks melodramatic shock almost made me cringe. 'Who?'
'Oh, he won't fucking tell me. At least he hasn’t told me yet. If he's being this secretive about it, I reckon it must be a bloke. Have you started puddle jumping, you dirty fecker?'
Accusations of homosexuality are commonplace and I just laughed it off but the conversation was getting uncomfortable for two of its participants.
'I'm not so sure it's worth it to be fair mate.' The comment drew a flash of daggers from Flick.
'Tell us who it is and I’ll be able to advise you on it.' Kippers was laughing but he was desperate to know.
'Well I'm sure that whoever it is can't believe their luck that they're sleeping with you.' Kippers looked at his beau with complete disapproval.
'Why don’t you two get a room. Its not you he's shagging is it?' Kippers wasn’t serious with his accusation and he didn’t have a clue about how right he was, but Flick flew off the handle.
'Fuck off! How can you accuse me of that you fucking prick? I'm going home, I don’t want to look at you. Wanker!'
Kippers looked at me shaking his head and rolled his eyes, with a "here we go again" look on his face.
'You not gonna go after her?'
'No, fuck her. By the time I've had another pint she'll be thinking about cock again, the dirty bitch. You having another?'
'Aye.'
Maybe this was why I had a complete lack of guilt about what I was doing. Kippers ambivalent attitude towards his girlfriend and her obvious nymphomania combine to make me conclude that this sort of thing was bound to happen sometime and why shouldn’t I be the one enjoying myself while it happened? I still wasn’t looking forward to him finding out mind.
Three in the morning and the earth shattering noise of my phone vibrating against the unprotected wood of the bedside table shocked me out of my slumber. I blindly patted about with my out stretched hand, knocking over the lamp and half a glass of water.
'Fucks sake, bollocks, I'll sort it tomorrow.'
I finally locate my phone and after dropping it twice, I read the text through bleary eyes.
C u 2moro @ 11 sxy xxx.
Why can't she write in English like a normal person?
The thing was, I knew for a fact that she had memorised my shift pattern so that she could be round mine while Kippers was at work and I wasn’t. Don’t think that I don’t perceive this kind of behaviour as stalker-like but, as any bloke will tell you, great sex after a barren spell is hard to turn down, regardless of the circumstances. It also appealed to my self-destructive personality. I am ritually addicted to things that are bad for me and can only end in tears. Smoking, alcohol, gambling, cocaine, best mate's girlfriend, the list is apparently endless.
At 2pm the next day and I walk into my bedroom with a towel around my waist having spent the last 15 minutes washing the smell of sex off my body. I'm looking around the room for a cleanish shirt to wear for work when two soft hands appear gently at my waist and move provocatively round, the fingers sliding under the loosely tied towel. I feel the hard nipples of Flick's breasts brushing against my back and her warm breath in my ear.
'You're not leaving me now are you?' Her hair still held the sweet, sickly smell that I'd been washing off myself.
'I've got work in half an hour, I've got to be making tracks.'
'But I'm not finished with you yet.' There was nothing I wanted more than to whip round and screw her hard against the wall.
'I've got work and you need to wash.'
'But I'm still feeling very dirty.' Her hands had moved further south and she was slowly caressing my neck with her lips and tongue.
'Listen Flick, stop fucking about, we're just having fun remember. I'm not losing my job over this.' The towel had fallen to the floor and, despite my words, I was doing nothing to stop her.
'You'll be fine, we can enjoy ourselves a bit more can't we?'
I turned around, grabbing her wrists, lifting her arms above her head and pinned her against the wall.
That night in the pub was slow, it always was on a Tuesday. All I'd had in was the usual after work rush and the stragglers it inevitably left behind. There'd been no-one in for an hour, since I'd got sick of the turgid, drunken, sweaty drone of Dan the blacksmith andand his bullshit stories and told him to fuck off somewhere else, when Kippers walked in, looking dejected.
'Alright mate, what's up?'
'You closing.' I'd already tidied the bar and closed the curtains.
'Was just about to lock the front door.'
'Good. Pour us a couple of drinks and some of that single malt. Can we smoke?'
'Yeah, no bother mate.' I put the deadlocks in the front door and placed an ashtray I kept under the counter on the bar. I pulled two pints of lager and poured two healthy measures of whiskey straight from the bottle. When Kippers wanted whiskey he was always feeling pensive, to put it mildly.
'Cheers mate.' We clinked glasses, Kippers downed his malt in one and slammed it back on the bar. I filled it up without being asked. 'Flick's shagging someone else.'
His words were like being smashed in the gut by a cricket bat.
'What makes you think that?' I had to play the innocent. If he knew, then he knew, but if he didn’t then I wasn’t going to give myself away. Maybe this was why he was here now, alone in a locked pub, where neither of us could leave in a hurry? He was a dangerous bastard when he was pissed, don’t get me wrong, I can hold my own but I wasn’t going to fight a mate when I was quite clearly in the wrong.
'I've caught her texting someone in the middle of the night a few times now. She was at it again last night.'
'What did she say?'
'I've said fuck all, she waits until she thinks I'm asleep and then she does it. I give her no reason to think that I'm awake.'
'She could be texting anyone though.'
'In the middle of the fucking night?'
'Well it is kinda suspect but its hardly solid grounds to think she's playing away.'
'I can tell by the look on her face man.'
'The look on her face?'
'When she's writing, the look on her face is exactly the same as when she's having sex.' I knew the look, I'd been feasting on it myself just hours earlier.
'Uh huh.'
'And she doesn’t want sex as much.'
'Well she was bound to slow down at some point mate.' Kippers constant struggle to keep up with Flick's sexual appetite had been a constant source of piss taking ammunition during the early days of their demise.
'It dropped right off a couple of weeks ago and then she starts texting in the middle of the night. She's fucking someone else and I want to know who it is!' I refilled all four glasses and lit up two cigarettes, passing one to Kippers.
'Have you tried looking at her phone?'
'No fucking chance of that happening, she's surgically attached to the fucking thing, even takes it to the bathroom with her.'
'Have you talked to her about it?'
'Kind of.'
'What do you mean, kind of?'
'I asked her who she was fucking, how long she's been doing it and whether or not it was good.'
'Fucking hell. When was this?'
'About half an hour ago.'
'And what did she say to that?'
'Oh she went absolutely fucking light. Started chucking things about the room, threatened to chop off my balls and stormed off in the huff.'
'Did she deny it?'
'No.'
It was then that my phone started to buzz. A message from you know who.
Kip noz cn a cm rnd? A wnt u xxx
I deleted the message and put the phone back in my pocket.
'Who was that?'
'Just Vinny asking if I can sort him some Charlie.' I lied.
'Fuck Vinny, I've got plenty, lets get fucked.' Kippers drained his whisky. 'Your gaff?'
I couldn’t say no to the bloke could I? We always got caned at my place and what the man needed was a mate to take his mind off things. I accept that given the circumstances, I was hardly doing a bang up job of being a mate at the moment but at least he didn’t suspect me of any wrong doing yet. I could only hope that by not replying to her text, that Flick would take my silence as rejection but I often didn’t reply to them for fear of Kippers seeing them. I took a bottle of vodka from underneath the bar, turned out the lights and left through the back door.
I never lock my front door because I hate carrying keys around with me and I'm arrogant enough to think that no-one is going to rob my place anyway. The flip side is that all my mates never knock on the door, they just walk straight in. I would often come home from a late shift to find a front room full of people smoking and drinking and that’s what I half expected tonight.
I walked through the front door to the sight of Flick sprawled across the couch wearing the lingerie that Kippers had bought for her birthday, which she had proudly pulled out the bag and showed to a pub full of people. Before I could turn round and stop him, Kippers came in behind me.
'I hope that new bird of yours aint gonna to come round and spoil the party lad……Oh...'
(c) G Mews 2009