Free Wildlife by Joe Stretch

matters in the most perfect way. Janek felt like he was on his way.
    Back in the hotel room, Janek is preparing to leave. Jews bury each other quickly and his aunt Sophie wants him back in Bristol by this afternoon.
    Before she left, he and Life arranged to meet in Wow-Bang during the week. The Real Arms. For Janek, the idea of meeting Life in a virtual world is a little distressing. A virtual world strikes him as even more awkward, embarrassing and difficult to be in than this one. But who truly knows the way to the Fuck Festival?
    It was a psychotherapist called Melanie who had told Janek, at the age of six, to learn to play a musical instrument. Music, she told the young man, will help you bridge the gap between yourself and the world around you. Janek agreed. ‘Will it make stuff fun?’ he asked, in an unbroken voice. ‘Yes,’ his psychotherapist had replied. ‘It should do.’ So Janek dutifully borrowed his father’s bass guitar and practised every day for hours. He performed midday concerts for hisbreathless mother and entertained her fully. It worked. I suppose it worked. Nothing matters, sure, but Janek has led a fairly decent life. Bass nerds all over the world worship him and attempt to emulate his playing technique. American rap stars touch fists with him when they meet and offer him gifts of diamond-encrusted crucifixes. Janek pulls his beanie down over his head and constantly survives.
    Until the glut of sex he’s just had with Life, Janek’s had an indifferent relationship with intercourse. He attributes this, and his general sense of apathy and detachment, to the circumcision of his penis at the age of zero. Eight days into his life, the operation was performed without anaesthetic. People think the baby doesn’t give a shit. This, thinks Janek, is bollocks. Janek recalls an invisible and silent trauma. He remembers shock. He remembers being comatose. Janek believes the removal of his foreskin has left a negative imprint on his brain. He feels he was painfully robbed of the small flesh interface that would have helped him connect to the world of touch. He feels like the link between his innards and the air has been severed.
    A couple of years ago in California he got a blow job off his cellist girlfriend, Judy. She closed her eyes and Janek had never felt so alone. It felt like an unnecessarily sexual form of waiting. But with Life it was different. Life doesn’t
have
sex. She
does
sex. As long as they were sweating and panting, moving in and out of each other, it seemed she was overjoyed and satisfied. This attitude rubbed off on Janek. Sex didn’t feel like such a quest. Just fuck. Now keep fucking. The festival is coming to a city near you.
    Back in the hotel room, Janek is packing his suitcase. Beside it lies a blue duffel bag that Life left behind for him. It’s some sort of Wild World goodie bag and there are fewthings more depressing than a goodie bag. One day you will saunter into a cool hell, the walls all finally burnt; you’ll be greeted by a bending devil and a bulging goodie bag. ‘Great,’ you’ll say.
    Janek shuts his suitcase with a click. He looks into the goodie bag and pulls out an MP3 player. It’s tiny. The size of a coin. It’s bright red. Small black lettering reads ‘N-Prang’. Other than the N-Prang, the bag contains a Wild World make-up case and some stickers. One sticker reads ‘I AM WILD WORLD’.
    It’s another bright winter’s day. Light reflects off the cars and off the white-brick buildings of Lancaster Gate. Janek crosses Bayswater Road and walks into Hyde Park. He takes a copy of the
London Paper
from a small man with a hidden face and a puffy, dirty yellow coat.
    On the front page of the
London Paper
there is a picture of Asa Gunn. ‘Reality-TV star Asa Gunn has retired, citing certain complications involving the Wild World.’ On page 5 the story continues with the popular