Free Beta Male by Iain Hollingshead Page B

Matt.
    â€˜Sure. If I get to thirty-five and I’m single and start going bald like Ed, I’m all yours.’
    â€˜And you’re all mine,’ said Matt, doing something with his beer bottle which I would blush to describe in full.
    â€˜Rank!’ protested Ed. ‘Anyway, Sam, aren’t you promised to Claire at thirty-five?’
    â€˜Yes, but it looks like she’s about to be made redundant, so a fat lot of use she’ll be to me then.’
    â€˜Sam only makes that sort of joke when he really likes someone,’ said Alan.
    â€˜Shut up.’
    â€˜Claire’s perfect for you, Sam,’ persisted Alan. ‘Why does it all have to come back to money with you?’
    â€˜Because we don’t have any. Because we’re in the middle of the worst recession for decades. That’s why. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t
like
money. Not one little bit. Numbers. Figures. Equations. Spreadsheets. It’s boring. People who work with money are boring. You, my friend, are boring. Money itself is boring.’ I fumbled around in my pocket in an attempt to make my point. All I could find was a two-pence coin. It was symbolic, in a way. ‘I mean, look at this. It’s a grubby piece of shit, isn’t it? Think how many hands it’s been through. No, for me, it comes down to what one can do with money. And that’s the problem with this country. All the wrong people have the money. What do bankers and lawyers and footballers do with theirs? They buy disgusting houses and two-bit whores, that’s what. I would spend it properly. Money would liberate me to do what I want to do.’
    â€˜Which is what?’ asked Ed.
    â€˜Oh, I don’t know. Act. Relax. Keep seeing you guys. Appreciate the good things. Live simply but well. Do a bit for charity.’ Ed feigned a yawn. I turned on him. ‘Have you everworked in an office, Ed?’ He shook his head; Ed had only ever been a teacher. ‘Let me tell you what working in an office is like, then. It is wank. You have to get up when you don’t want to, you have to iron collared shirts you’d never normally wear, you have to be polite to people you’d have bullied at school and you have to sit at a desk that is the wrong height, underneath lights that are too bright, near a radiator that is too hot, doing tasks that are boring and pointless. Your superiors are less intelligent than you, your inferiors are more ambitious than you and the only attractive girl in the office is already married and having an affair with the boss. So believe me when I say it’s wank. Wank is what it undoubtedly is. Wank, wankity wank wank.’ Ed still looked unmoved by the Ciceronian force of my rhetoric. I continued: ‘So that is why money is important. Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life chained to an office chair earning a pittance in order to support my ungrateful children and a wife who’s knocking off one of the neighbours. I don’t want to be a breadwinner, whatever that means. I don’t want to win bread. I want to win Oscars.’ Ed wasn’t the only one to guffaw at this point. ‘So let’s go out there and marry these rich, ambitious women. Let’s hang out where the rich hang out. Let’s go to City bars and art auctions and ski resorts. Let’s help ourselves to these rich pickings. Let’s snare these walking wallets. Let’s marry money. Let’s, in the immortal words of Al Green, stay together. Let’s stay close together. And then we can live long and happily and well instead of short and miserably and emasculated-ly.’
    My peroration was greeted with a quizzical eyebrow by Alan, a frown by Ed and a small cheer and a raised beer by Matt. Frankly, I think it deserved a little better. It was a good peroration.
    We sat in contented silence for a while and then Matt suddenly got down on the floor and started tearing bits of paper out