capitalism.txt

Caspar

London, UK

Income: $2700; avg. last two calendar months

Debt: $33,000

He was making a mix tape for her. He was thirty; she was twenty one and probably had only the vaguest idea of what an audio cassette was.

How did they meet? One could stick to the facts here, be crassly narrative - Stacy was a cashier in the convenience store where Caspar bought the ready meals he dined off most days. Concise enough. But this would elide the mess of confusing perplexities and unanswered questions that surrounded the matter and clouded his head. For instance, why had she even started talking to him? Not to mention those all ridiculous signals; head on one side, laughing at his bad jokes. They were all real, they were all directed his way, and he understood none of them in the slightest.

Caspar had recently lost forty pounds from his gut and started paying forty pounds for his haircuts. Could that make so much of a difference? She was slim and blonde and fulfilled so many stereotypes, of the Unattainable Girl. What on earth drew her to a prematurely balding IT administrator with thick clown lips and the stubborn ghost of a double chin?

He was almost as dumbstruck at his attraction to her, and quite flabbergasted when the words came spilling out of his mouth: "Would" followed Markovianly by a "you" whereupon the dreadful "like to go for..." opened the route to the rest of it, a dreary cliché that had never happened to him before. And then her phone was out of her pocket and his fingers were punching his number into it. He could smell passive aggression mounting from the line of customers behind him. It was hard not to sympathize. "Sorry. Sorry. It won't happen again." he almost turned and said to them all.

There were audio tapes in Poundland still. Dust lay thick on their plastic shrouds. You could buy five stacks of the useless things for a quid. The tantalizing specter of meager profit; the only reason they weren't in the landfill already. Made in Indonesia and unwanted there, because even the wretched of the earth had better things to play their songs off. Was that factory set up by a prescient scam artist, a peddler of audio-tape-making-equipment dumping his inventory before getting the hell out of the dying business? Did it even work like that? They were probably still churning out blank VHSes and floppy disks in godforsaken corners of the world. Poor buggers.

He checked his reflection in the darkness of the shop window; the tight fuzz on his scalp was receding comically, the hairline far beyond his forehead. He needed to shave his head like his brothers. He needed to bulk these skinny arms up, he needed better fitting suits, he needed a better name than the ones his shamefully Evangelical Jamaican parents had given him. He needed to at least be able to do a convincingly fake patois some of the time. He needed Cordell and Weston to stop playfully saying "Get out of Hackney bruv, go on, get out. Richmond's over there, bruv."

Now Caspar climbed the stairs to his fourth floor flat. The rain seeping through the perished caulk around the windows had reinvigorated the mildew and the whole stairwell was perfumed with its stink. He tried not to remember that he spent just over half his income on such quarters, and moreover he could count himself lucky to get them.

He had an ancient stereo, dragged from his parents' loft, and this he plugged into the jack on his ancient phone using a 99p male to male cable. He didn't have the knowledge or resources for anything more professional, but it didn't matter. The manky buzz of static was now going to be "warm crunchy fuzz" and it would make everything authentic. Make her nostalgic for a time she'd never known. He thought for a second on what songs to pick - it was Radio 4 when he woke up in morning, so he had no idea what was popular these days. He hoped to God she wasn't into dubstep or whatever.

He scrolled anxiously through his list wondering what could go on it. Embarrassing amounts of Iron Maiden. What kind of self respecting black man listens to Iron Maiden? he perennially scolded himself. He thought of the fleeting yet clear looks of astonishment on the faces of the indie kids in the Camden clubs. No, something sweet and touching. Had to be Belle and Sebastian. A little early Kanye for a quixotically urban edge. He flicked through the tunes, avoiding conscientiously those with too male an appeal, waiting through each one. He made a game of it, trying to choose the next song soon enough that he wouldn't have to stop the tape. Constraint breeds artistry, he thought, before feeling sick at his own pretentiousness.

The button abruptly clicked halfway through I Am The Resurrection; the tape had run out. He cursed and reached for the rewind button; then cursed again when the lights went out. The electric meter was out of money! Even the fridge was no longer humming.

On the verge of tears, Caspar contemplated the blind grope through cluttered drawers, whichever one the smartcard was in; then the struggle to find his clothes and his coat. Then of braving the mostly-imaginary horrors of the warren of ex-council flats he lived in, bypassing the nearby corner shop that had closed at 10pm, and heading in search of another shop where he could load the card; he had only a hazy idea of where to go. Then he gave up and went to bed.

It was really too early still, and he lay wide awake for a long time listening to the soft, menacing sounds of the city and the burbling trill of someone's TV filtering through the ceiling. He calculated, without worry or emotion, how much of his severance package was left. Enough to pay rent for another month, he was certain; but he'd have to tighten his belt, which wouldn't help him impress Stacy. Well, if she appreciated mix tapes she certainly didn't have expensive taste. And one of the IT job applications might bear fruit, and if not he had the forms for Homebase and PC World. Life couldn't be so bad with a new and beautiful girl in it. 

He wondered if she would still be interested in him once he moved back in with his parents.