Page 4 of Ship of Fools

“The client will collect as planned. I can’t see a problem with that,” I mumble into my drawings, as he hands them back to me.

“It’s a lot of work. The chassis is in a state, there is extensive damp, the complete rewiring...”

He looks quite distraught, pulling out some photos from a leather binder. I look. I sigh. The car is a wreck, but I’ve seen worse. It’s doable. As long as the model is the correct one, and as long as my contacts deliver on the parts. We have three weeks.

“Can your people deliver?” I ask. They can. I have worked with them before.

“Can I trust you?” he asks back. Badly chosen words. He can trust me. Professionally? Yes. Emotionally? I’m a bit of a mess on the inside, but he doesn’t need to know that.

“I will deliver, as long as the photos and description of the work needed are correct.” I always do. My dad taught me not to make promises that I can’t deliver on, and this car? Piece of cake. I just need to see it first to calm the unease in my stomach.

“Welcome on board.” He grins and reaches his hand across the table.

I don’t take it, instead I just stuff my paperwork into the folder, more forcefully than I should. I nod. I leave.

I don’t need to have anything else to do with him from now on. I’ll just check in with the mechanics in the bay on my way out, and sort whatever workshop time I’ll need. It’s better if I don’t see Andreas Mitchell again. Saner. Safer.

Better.

It’s just a job after all.

Andreas

I haven’t been avoiding the workshops. Well, that’s what I keep telling myself. Instead, I have been trying to be good, by avoiding unnecessary drama. That’s an expression Charlie used a lot this weekend.

Mostly the unnecessary drama was other people’s fault. Perhaps equally mine, what do I know? I don’t remember much from Friday night—just that I woke up in a strange flat in the early hours of Saturday, with a dude I don’t remember snoring next to me, and bruises all down my legs.

I think I consented. I hope. I may have fallen over too, because my jeans are ripped on the left leg, and my right leg is still hurting. I remember Saturday morning with a pang of shame, because I have started to realise Charlie is right. I am right there with him, sailing the ship of bloody fools into the waterfall of doom, or whatever he was on about.

I don’t know when I stopped enjoying myself on our nights out, and when I went from being a party guy to a party pooper. I remember being called that, and I also remember being sick in the gutter at some point. Perhaps I was waiting for a ride. Perhaps not. It’s suddenly frightening how much I don’t remember, and how I seem to struggle to piece the weekend together. It’s almost like a large puzzle, with some of the pieces mysteriously missing.

There are patchy memories of arriving home on Sunday morning, and showering until my skin bled. I just felt dirty and out of it, and not at all in a good place. The bruises staring me in the face through the steamed-up mirror used to make me smile with pride. Now? Now I just feel disgusting. Saturday had ended in some kind of badly thought out threesome, with Charlie and a man who called himself Jazz, and whilst I liked the idea at the start... later, I found myself feeling out of control. Scared for my safety and my sanity, as the guy had Charlie tied up to the bedposts, and I realised I had drunk too much. Again. We had also shared some pills at some point and the whole thing was making my head feel too fuzzy for my liking. I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t make decisions, and my mouth was full of foam as the guy was pushing me down onto the bed, trying to make me suck Charlie’s dick. I didn’t want to. I still did it, I think, and then I did some other things, and I woke up with my heart racing out of my chest, and a condom still dangling from my limp penis.

It was what other people would have called a wake-up call. At least, it should have been, but instead, I felt disgusted and confused and angry. I felt mostly angry at Charlie for some unbelievable reason. Then I felt angry at myself, for not having said stop, and not having had the guts and strength to walk out and say no.

I was out of control. Or maybe not. I was depressed, and bored and done. Done with my life.

I just couldn’t figure it out. I had a great job, good money, a nice one-bed studio flat with a comfortable bed. What else did I need? If I wanted a hookup? They were all out there, lines of willing men to come and entertain me at a tap of a finger on an app. Or I could go out dancing. Flirt to my heart's content and have a bit of fun.

Fun. What a useless imbecilic word. Nothing was fun. Everything was simply hard work and effort, for nothing but pain and guilt, and bruises at the end of the day.

I told the people at work I had crashed out on my rollerblades, to explain the limp in my walk. I do actually own a pair, still in the box with the labels attached. Another lame attempt at finding a hobby. I liked cooking. I read books. I was damn good at playing Fortnite.

I still hobbled around the office with a fake smile on my face, only to burst into stupid tears when I took my clothes off at the end of the day. Black and yellow colours down my legs. Thumbprints on my hips. A slowly dulling ache on the inside where someone had been too rough with my body. I might have enjoyed it, had I remembered. Instead, I was riddled with nightmares, not at night, but in my head, trying not to think of what could have happened.

I was a grown-up, and this? This was the life of a reckless teenager, not of a young adult on the cusp of a midlife crisis. Because that was what this was. Wasn’t it?

If my sister had seen me, she would have dragged me off home and screamed at me. She might have suggested I report it all to the police. But I had nothing to tell. Nothing to show apart from a few fading bruises. I wasn’t assaulted. Well... and I had swallowed those pills myself, happily and willingly.

Maybe I brought it on myself. Maybe, just maybe, someone else could have said it for me. Just said, “Stop.”

I didn’t trust anyone anymore. Mostly? I raged on the inside. I raged at Charlie for not keeping his promise. We looked after each other, didn’t we? It had been mostly lip service, I knew that. How many times had I not even bothered to check in with him after a night out? How many times had I gone off with someone else, and left him to fend for himself? He owed me nothing. I owed him… nothing either.

Friends. We had never been friends, and now?

It was all me. Up to me. Me. Alone. It was coming up to Christmas and all I could think of was getting drunk. Just drunk home alone, so I could sleep myself right into the New Year. Because that was the adult thing to do, wasn’t it?

A few days later I had picked myself up. I felt better. Empty on the inside, but the bruises had faded away. The festive music in the showroom made me want to throw up. I even contemplated crashing my parents’ annual dinner party in Spain, but the thought of the journey to the airport and throwing myself on a packed easyJet plane, almost made me have a panic attack.

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