What happens now?

It begins this evening the same way it had always began;

The Ark, arguing. 

Jimmy crouched in a corner of his childhood bedroom and crying. Rowan yelling and screaming at him through a creaky bolted door.

It fucking sucked , when they argued. 

Plus , there was a strange teenage girl who kept staring at us like we were dressed in clown outfits and doing a funny dance. Her name was Angel , apparently.  She seemed nice , and if it were not for the fact that she had creeped her stalky fan-self into Jimmy's already flakey life I feel we could have been friends. 

"Jimmy!" Rowan is screaming through the door , and I just know that Jimmy is having the breakdown of his life inside that room. That room that housed countless sleepovers and movie nights , and made our friendship grow from close acquaintances to brothers for life. A memory dances in my mind of being thirteen years old , of snuggling under Jimmy's blankets and having my bi awakening to Orelando Bloom kissing Kiera Nightly in the Black Pearl. Life seemed so simple then. "Alister!" Rowan yells at me , snapping me out of my nostalgia. He motions for me to open the door , to try and talk some sense into our friend , but I can't be arsed for this. Both of them deserved better than a screaming match in a childhood bedroom , and so I nod silently to Rowan , plod my way down Piero's carpeted stairs and retrieve the safety key from the kitchen cupboard. To my dismay , Piero has decided to camp watching TV in the kitchen too. He half smiles at me , but there's a sadness hidden in those crevices, too. "Last time I heard such shouting in this house" He tells me , his soft Italian accent skirting out of the bottle he was clutching. "Was when his parents got divorced. Big ol' shouting matches in my Joan's bedroom , over money and finance and our Jimmy's gender and all sorts. The poor boy's ears must have been shot , trying to sleep with all the aggravation going on" I instantly feel like shit at the mention of his parents because the last thing anyone wants is to remind Jimmy of his awful family history. So instead of adding to his pain , I say "So Piero , anything good on TV?" , Which was probably the most ridiculously out of place thing to say at this point , but to my suprise Piero pours me a glass of his Chardonnay and smiles "Italy's playing against India in the footy. Me and Nikhil would be up in arms about this" He grins at me , and I feel the ridiculous inclination to smile back , too. 

Half an hour , two Italian goals and four glasses of wine later , I head back to Jimmy's room. Only now , the stairs seem to be spinning and my ears seem to be filled with a shitone of water. Huh. That's.... strong. I didn't see Piero as a heavy drinker. The glass swells in my hand , and I feel substantially lighter. 

I think back to the last time I had a drink. This morning , 11am , back at our apartment. God , it feels so much longer. I can hear Rowan at the top of the stairs , yelling at Jimmy and then yelling at me when I come into his eyeline , angry that I stopped off for a drink because 'Of course you did. Of fuckin’ course’ , which , thanks. Really helps with self-esteem , that. 

When I eventually make my way up the stairs i’m greeted by the sight of Rowan’s shaking middle finger , protruding from his left hand , pointing at the keyhole. “Open it , then '' He instructs , and I'm thinking about telling him to stop being such a repressed dad when I realise he’s shaking. Like , everywhere. He’s scared. He’s probably worried Jimmy’s gonna try and hurt himself in there , and if i’m honest , I am too. Jimmy is a guy who feels more emotions than he knows what to do with , and one of these pesky emotions will get the better of him. I mean , I guess I feel an equal amount of emotions too , but I quieten mine with copious amounts of alcohol and weed. Everyone to their own , I guess.  I quietly open the locked door and peek my head inside , and there’s Jimmy , hunched up against the radiator with tears streaming down his sweet face and his whole body shaking with sweat , and I'm like. Oh God. Okay. So this is pretty bad. Rowan immediately barges his way into the room , pausing only momentarily to take in Jimmy’s current state , and then he’s off like a fucking Comet , rushing around the room to open the curtains and clean the room and do God knows what. Eventually , though , he crouches down next to Jimmy and holds him in his arms like a child , letting him cry and wail into his chest. And I just stand , because what the fuck can I do? What the fuck have I ever been able to do when it comes to Jimmy? As soon as the hug is over , however , Rowan is straight onto his Rowan-esque preaching , lecturing Jimmy profusely on how he screwed everything over when he ran and how he’s going to have to grovel at Cecila’s feet for weeks. Poor Jimmy looks on the verge of tears again. “Jesus Fucking Christ” I proclaim quite unexpectedly , and Jimmy glares at me like i’d just shot a puppy dog. “Lister '' He mutters through tears , but finds himself too distressed to say anything more. Rowan stares at me momentarily to shut the fuck up and then continues on with his ‘holier then thou’ routine. I can hear he’s saying something potentially nefarious about me , but I've already completely zoned out of the conversation , and have taken to staring at the room I spent so much time in as a child. It hasn’t changed at all. Paper bats that used to house fairy lights still hang above our heads , and the posters of Fall Out Boy and Mcfly and , inexplicably , Dan Howell , still stick to his white walls. God , I hadn’t been in this room for so long. We had so much fun here. Where did all that fun go?  I spot a guitar in the corner of Jimmy’s room , and a sudden memory pops into my brain. Fourteen year old me , that guitar around my body and Jimmy’s hands guiding mine onto the right chords. That was the day I realised , I think , how I felt about him. His soft hands brushed against mine. Back then , that feeling felt like the most wonderful thing ever. Now , it just feels like a curse. I take a swig of my white wine and walk over to the guitar , ignoring the stares I was blatantly getting from my friends. “Lister…” Rowan is saying a frown within a sentence , but I pick it up anyway and begin plucking at the strings. Immediately , a billion memories flicker into my brain; Our first concert at the 02 , and the screaming fans with phone lights ablaze. Glastonbury , and the people who spanned out to the abyss to watch us. Pride in London , the first Pride in which I had been openly out. I kissed the male host , and raised a bi flag above a screaming crowd. Thats what The Ark is about. Not tickets or articles or fucking Ceclia. It's about feeling like a family. Feeling like a someone. I only realised I’ve said all this aloud when both Jimmy and Rowan take to staring at me like I was a good case for a psych ward , but then Rowan smiles. Like , actually smiles. And then he says ‘You know what Lister , you're right. For once , you're actually right” , and I feel a hint of joy , because I’ve actually done something right. 

We talk , and I play , and my drink goes down alarmingly quickly. Rowan makes some surprisingly sensible points , but then Jimmy snivels something about his dislike of our current life and out of nowhere the shouting begins again and suddenly it's aimed at me and I very quickly decide that I don’t actually like being the butt of their anger and so I haul myself up off the bed and storm out of the room. Jimmy shouts a genuinely upset apology but I have too much drunken pride to go back in there and continue being a metaphorical punching bag , so I drag my way back down the open plan stairs and find myself back in the kitchen. Piero’s gone and the oven’s cold , so God knows how long we’ve been upstairs. Hours , maybe days. Maybe the whole world’s forgotten about us , or maybe The Ark’s the only known survivors of a natural disaster. Its tracks , I guess. But then I see Angel , that stalky fangirl , sitting patiently in the telly room , and I realise that my shitty little shitty is still the same shitty little life I was unfortunate enough to have an hour ago. I find the alcohol cabinet easy enough , and I pour myself some vodka. Thank you , Piero. The sooner I can get drunk , the better. I unscrew the bottle and think of all the parties in which I remember screwing a bottle and little else. Easy , drunk fun. A kiss with a stranger here , a little bump of something there. All good fun. Until it isn’t , I guess.  Until the want for a drink isn’t a want but a need , a craving for something you want but can’t have. Until getting blackout drunk is the only thing that brings you any peace. Until you get so drunk you kiss your best friend and ruin absolutely everything. 

Christ.

Maybe Jimmy’s right. Maybe I am an alcoholic. An alki at 20. Christ , mum’s gonna kill me.

But I drink , and I block out my friend’s screams , until everything goes that wonderfully familiar hazy sort of peace. Everything seems better when alcohol hits your throat. That warm sensation as the juice slides down your throat , and everything that seems bad is now a blissful ignorance. Probably not exactly a great coping mechanism but , hay , it's not gonna kill me. Not today , anyway. Because today , I have this moment of calm , and that might just be enough. And so I drink.

I don’t know how long I've been staring at Piero’s wall. 

There’s nothing particularly exciting about it , either , it's just a wall. But in my drunken wisdom , this wall is the Holy Scroll of God. It’s the Last Supper. It’s something that warrants a staring contest that has probably lasted ages. It lasts at least until that stalky fangirl taps me on the shoulder and says “You alright?” and I.. I don’t know what to say. I’m not alright , and I haven’t been for quite some time. Note the vodka surgically attached to my hand. But this girl is looking at me like I'm Jesus , or whatever the Muslim equivalent is. I don’t know. I failed R.E. But she’s looking at me like i’m famous. Maybe to her , I am. God , I hope I'm what she expected.