Free Noughties by Ben Masters

meet the babe’s in the mirror. We share a reflection and I watch in astonishment as large, bulbous bags begin developing beneath his eyes. His hair thins and recedes slightly, like something in a time-lapse movie. I urgently need to go for a slash … I feel like I’m gonna split if I don’t get out of here soon.
    “Here, how does the color look, fella?
    I’ve had bare blonde put in it
    innit.”
    says the babe,
    his speech turning colloquial,
    the accent all chavved up.
    “Gonna look proper phat.”
        “Huh?”
    “Gosh, Eliot, don’t irk me with your
ghastly false ignorance, okay?”
    he says,
posh as a swan.
    “It proper fucks me off. This one
    finks everyfink’s so
    polarized. He can be a
   frightful old bore.”
    “Which plays did you look at?” asks the trainee.
    “Sorry?” I mumble, not knowing where to look or what to think.
    “Which plays did you write on … for your Shakespeare thesis?”
    “Oh.
Henry IV
mainly.”
    “One or two?”
    “One.”
    “Hotspur as Hal’s double?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Makes sense. Hotspur being the dutiful son that Hal should be … And then I guess you have Falstaff representing the opposite possibility available to him. Two poles of being: the ambitious and the waster; the worldly and the simplistic; the aristocrat and the lowly fool.”
    “Well yeah.”
    “Things aren’t that transparent though,
      are they, Eliot?”
         says the babe.
    “It
    just ain’t as fucking easy-peasy-
    lemon-squeazy as you’re tryina tell
    yourself. It ain’t so black and
    white, boss.”
    “What are you
talking about?”
I ask.
    “Pardon the equivocality
      for a second—”
    “Stop punning!”
I scream.
“It’s
linguistic onanism!”
    “—but ain’t you being a bit
    of a wanker?”
    Do you ever feel like your life is in a constant state of rehearsal? Like you’re always wondering when the clinch is going to come? I feel like an eternal sub. “Late?” exclaims a customer to my left. “What do you mean,
late
?”
    “I’m sorry,” says the stylist hovering above him—the stylist who has broken the rules. “We should have washed that off five minutes ago. The timer didn’t sound, I’m afraid. I apologize … it’s entirely my fault.”
    “I do believe that’s your alarum,
    Eliot.
    Wake the fuck up.”

It’s a most twenty-first-century scene, here in the King’s Arms, here in our twenty-first-century scene.
    The start of a century, it’s a nothing phase; those first two decades a lacuna in the hundred-year sweep. It’s a nominal dilemma born of numerical obstinacy: the ’40s are the forties and the ’80s the eighties, sure, of course, but this here decade is nothing but the slops of numerous misfits. Some settle for the noughties, smacking as it does of nihilism and reprobates. But that’s rather dismissive, is it not? The next decade doesn’t get much better: the teens? Sounds like some crappy American high-school flick. And what about 2011 and 2012, those big uncooperators? Shall we reformulate and go for a duodecade and octennial followed by eight decades? Shoot me for being pedantic, but I have had a few pints.
    What we are facing here is a problem of—
    “
Would
,” says Jack, watching a tall brunette walk past with her friends. She notices his attention and looks at the ground, smiling. All the girls spin to grab a peek, but I continue doing what I’m doing, drink in hand, dreaming. My bladder is starting to fidget.
    “You’d do anything?” says Abi, always resistant to the notion of another girl being considered attractive.
    “Yeah, but he’s mad for it,” Scott says, harping on Jack’s Mancunian roots.
    “Lad!” remarks Jack, qualifying himself. Ella doesn’t appear to be enjoying the tone of the conversation, picking a crusty old coaster to pieces. Scott, greatly excited, is fiddling about in his trouser pockets. He’s playing with his touchy-feelies: softened washing labels cut from