Chapter 3 Be Here Now

　
Sash lay in the bed staring at the wall, studying every part of it with intense scrutiny. The cracks in the beige wallpaper, the large metallic clock with ridiculously loud ticking, the painting which consisted of nothing more than psychedelic colours and looked more like a paint by numbers than a representation of whatever emotion the artist had thought it meant. She tried to move but the guys arm was heavy and he was in a deep sleep now. 'Why hadn't she left straight away?' she asked herself. It was such an easy process for her to follow. Flirt, Fuck, Fuck Off. To be fair this guy hadn't given her much of a chance. She was pretty sure he'd fallen unconcious as soon as the sperm hit her vagina and now she was trapped beneath a two ton arm that only gripped tighter whenever she moved like she was a fucking comfort blanket or something.

She attempted to move again, this time making as much noise as possible so as to hopefully wake him. This only resulted in him rolling his head over onto her long brown hair thus trapping her further. Now she was really in trouble. Milky would be picking her up from her house in about 15 minutes and she wasn't even sure how far away she was from the flat. She lay for a few more minutes before the radio alarm came on playing Avril Lavigne and she knew she couldn't stand the situation any longer. She spied her mobile on the floor. Her arms would no way be able to reach it with her hair and entire upper body trapped by the guy who she was now seriously regreting sleeping with. Most men were just happy that they had got to see her naked, so if she fucked off straight after the deed they still considered themselves to be up on the evening. Why did this prick think he had some right to spend time with her after he'd got his rocks off.

It hadnt even been that good. Sash generally made a rule only to have sex during the daytime. It made perfect sense. No-one was too drunk to perform, there were plenty of excuses to leave straight afterwards, and if it was shit you haven't wasted a night out. This guy however seemed to of wanted to talk about her job, life and stuff rather than just strip her off and fuck her like the rest of the human race. She knew he was up for it, as she had seen the bulge in his trousers and felt the pre-cum seep through onto her bare thigh when he kissed her. Once they'd started having sex however she had realised pretty quickly that this was going to be over rather quickly. In an effort to prolong him she moved on top so she could slow him down. She'd also refused to take her top off and he'd have to make do with kissing her tits through her satin bra and little black dress ( a little unsuitable for a Saturday morning she'd thought but fuck it). However this guy had clearly been in the sexual wilderness for a bit too long as no matter how much she tried to slow him down and cover herself up he was getting more and more excited and she could see the familiar expression of a very flustered polar bear trying to eat a jam doughnut that men make right before they release their population paste into you. 'Can I do it on your tits?' he'd asked her. 'No' she'd replied automatically before realising how deadpan her voice had sounded. Still if he didnt know sexual etiquette why should she pretend to be enjoying herself? No man who respected women would ask them to do anything like that before they were absolutley sure she was satisfied herself, and Sasha hadn't even begun to TRY and fake it yet. Still at least that meant it was almost over and she could go and see her friends. Then it actually had been over and she'd climbed of him before noticing that one of her earings had fallen onto the bed. She layed down to get it, he'd rolled over onto her asleep, and 25 minutes later she was still trapped under him trying to pick up a mobile phone with her feet without breaking a toenail.

She managed to flip the phone onto the bed. She sent two texts to the two people she knew with cars. Milky and Stokes. However she wasnt entirely sure where she was so she just asked Stokes his location and told Milky to call her. She then put her ringer as loud as possible and waited. She needed a wee now and considered pissing the bed just to teach the guy a lesson in manners. However she really liked this dress and it probably already had spaff on it which was bad enough, urine however was definately socially unacceptable. The phone rang loudly and her bedroom companion rolled over her more, grabbing her right tit and squeezing it tightly casuing her to yelp in pain. His cock was hard again and was now stabbing her painfully in the lower back. Sash sighed. She was in a worse position than before. She couldn't answer her mobile, her spine was being dry humped, and her breast was being ripped from her body by an overgrown baby. 'It's at times like this when i should probably think about settling down with a nice guy' she thought. Well, there was no way out now till the beast awoke and inevitably she would have to fuck him again (it would be rude not to.) This time she decided she would be fully naked and play with herself whilst doing it, just to hurry things along so she could get on with her day. She had plans after all and had only made room in her schedule for one sex session. The phone stopped ringing and Sash headbutted the bedside table so the radio fell off onto the wooden floor killing the insanely optimistic DJ. Sash felt the blood run down her face and wiped it on the beds pillow sheets and duvet. Teach you to try a steal my boob she thought and wished she was on her period. She closed her eyes and tried to get a bit of sleep before he woke up again. 'One to tell the GrandKids' she thought before laughing to herself about how stupid the idea of her with children let alone grandchildren seemed.

Chapter 2 - The New Fellas

Stokes had been up for so long he wasn’t sure what was real and was not anymore. People were blurring into one another and he was pretty sure he had already said hello to a post box, two lampposts and a pigeon. He kept looking round for Browny but every time he thought he saw him it turned out to be someone else. He never should have agreed to today but Leah had been so insistent they come and seeing as he was the only current student out of the group he would of felt pretty stupid if he’d no-showed.

The problem was that they had decided to hold the protest on a Saturday. Surely every other student in the country would have got as drunk as Stokes had last night/this morning? He sucked in the stale London air. It tasted of fags, smog and his own furry breath. He was not used to seeing this amount of people on a normal day let alone when he was still off his tits from the night before. He felt someone nearby grab his arm and start shouting. He jumped abruptly before realising that they weren’t shouting at him but chanting along with the rest of the thrall. From her voice he could tell she was a female (his sight was giving nothing away) and he hung on to her tightly, her thinking he was as livid about the tuition fee’s as she was, him just wanting to stay reasonably upright. She marched forward with him; chanting random comments and offensive remarks about MP’s, the monarchy and the government in general. Stokes pulled a can from his pocket, expertly opened it with one hand. Took a swig and just went along with the flow.

The thing was, Stokes just wasn’t that bothered about tuition fee’s rising until a few weeks ago, just as he wasn’t bothered about inflation, job cuts and who was winning in all the civil wars the African Nations were having with each other. He’d heard some people talking on his way down to where he thought the protests would be starting about how Osama Bin Laden had been killed; and frankly, he didn’t give a shit about that either. His parents would always have a job. They’d been clever enough to of made it through one recession and prepared well incase there was ever another one. His Dad was high up enough in his company to of survived the cuts and his Mums E-Bay business was booming at a time when everyone wanted to buy second hand goods. This meant that Stokes, as an only child hadn’t really needed to worry about anything. He was doing a degree in Sociology, something he cared fuck all about, and had never expected to graduate anyway. Nope he was here to have as good a time as possible before he inevitably failed or dropped out and got a job for his dads company or maybe even set up an E-Bay business of his own. He would word this to his parents by saying how he’d decided to follow in the family business and they would welcome it with open arms. Until then he’d have a messy 2-3 year holiday, drinking heavily, taking the strongest narcotics his Uni could provide and banging every 18 year old fresher with a mediocre face and/or body. Not a bad life he’d thought at the time.

But now the government were ruining it for him. All the students had no money. This meant no drugs, no wild parties and no drunken girls for Stokes to weave his magic on. On this premise he had been persuaded by Leah and Sash to come along to the march today. To be honest he probably would of declined or just gone off radar for a while if Leah had suggested it on her own but with Sash involved it was a different story altogether. To Stokes she was the Holy Grail. Twenty three, great body, great skin and one of the only girls he had ever met who made him laugh out loud. When she voiced her opinions during drunken pub discussions he actually listened as apposed to just pretending by putting on his ‘interested face’ like whenever Leah tried to convince him how Iraq was such a terrible idea or how he needed to keep his Carbon footprint down by buying organic butter. He knew it was mainly because she had turned him down in the past but he also knew that she had slept with tons of other guys so maybe she’d turned him down because secretly she REALLY liked him and didn’t want it to just be a fuck like all the others had. This was the conclusion he had come to in his head and no amount of talk from Browny, Leah or that cunt Milky was going to persuade him otherwise.

He snapped back to reality as the girl he had been clinging onto ran of to see a friend and he promptly fell sideways into the gutter spilling his can of pre mixed bourbon and coke all over himself. He faintly heard people muttering as they walked past saying it was people like him giving these demonstrations a bad name and how ‘the papers will only be showing pictures of that’ in the morning. Stokes just smiled to himself. He didn’t give a flying fuck what they thought. He was on holiday and had a cushy job lined up after it was over. What did they have? A lifetime of debt and a job selling mobile phones to pensioners.

He hoisted himself up onto the pavement and took his phone out. He had 3 missed calls from Browny and one from that cunt Milky. But he also had a text from Sash. He opened it as he always did, half expecting this to be the one where she confessed her undying love for him. Just two words and a punctuation symbol on the screen. ‘Where you?’ It still filled him with a happiness that made him rise to his feet, his eyesight suddenly back to 20/20 vision and he set off down the road with a jig in his step. She wanted to know where he was. That meant she missed him. That meant she was in love with him. Suddenly he knew he had to look good and caring when he saw her so he grabbed a placard off a nearby fresher by punching him in the groin and kneeing him onto the curb. It was actually quite a cool one ‘How will I pay for beer?’ it read. ‘Sums me up entirely’ Stokes thought. ‘She might even believe I wrote it myself.’ He picked up what derogatory chant about the Chancellor of the Exchequer was currently being sung and set off on ‘brisk stroll’ setting. One eye looking for Sash, the other something to drink, snort or potentially fuck.

Chapter One - Wake Up The Nation

　
　
How long had she been sitting there. An hour? 5 hours? 'Thats the trouble with 24 hour news coverage' Leah thought. It makes it hard to work out how many times you've seen the same footage and how long you've been watching various reporters go over the same scant pieces of information they have, desperately trying to make them sound more meaningful and more thought provoking each time.

Leah leant back in her chair and took a sip from her wine glass, recoiling in disgust as the cheap booze stung her lips and made her wretch. 'Note to self' she thought. 'Always spend £7 on a bottle. It's not worth the pain of saving 2 quid but having to drink floor cleaner'. It was still a celebration however and some god aweful wine was not going to change that. She hadn't celebrated anything in a long time so she was buggered if this was going to pass her by. The biggest terrorist in her lifetime and America's most wanted had been killed and the world was rejoicing. (Well the Western World was anyway). To be honest Leah was more celebrating the fact that she cared about this at all. One year ago she hadnt given the slightest shit about world politics and events. She had drifted past in her own little world happy and oblivious to all around her but since the split, well things were different. Maybe she had to care about something as she clearly didnt care much about herself anymore but she now had opinions on everything from global warming, to foreign politics to whether Kate Middleton looked good in her wedding dress or not.

Leah suspected that she, like everyone else of her generation was simply looking for someone to blame. They had been monumentally failed. By governments, by the education system, by the media who had promised they would all be made famous by the X Factor before their 21st birthday and she was pissed off with it. Mainly she thought because no-one else in her eyes seemed to care. Sure, most her friends pretended to if she raised an important subject in the pub but they all had their own issues, failings and addictions to deal with and were not prepared to discuss in any great depth how New Labour, Ben Elton and Noel Gallagher had failed them even though they knew it to be true.

In fairness Leah had her own addictions. She was addicted to men. Not like Sash was. Leah had only had sex with seven people whereas she was pretty sure Sash had once had seven in a week. No, she was addicted to boyfriends. To being with someone,and not being alone and unfortunately; needing to be with someone meant you were often with dickheads. Being addicted to Men would not kill her like Stokes or Craigs addictions might but it would do something much worse. She had depression and had had it for over a year. She now cared about every little thing in the news as if it was all some conspiracy which Simon had been part of and was now haunting her from beyond the relationship. An article about the rainforest could bring her to tears and her hatred of politicians and other world leaders was through the roof. The standard of living in this country was terrible at the moment. Leah felt herself lucky that she had a job, even if it was only bar work. However this meant she had to be sober for the majority of her life. Whereas her friends could drown their own social failings and frustrations in a sea of booze, pills, smoke and powder Leah could not afford that luxery. She didnt live at home, she had rent to pay, bills and debts coming out of her arse and she couldnt even drown her sorrows on a daily basis. It was making her eyes well up just thinking about it.

It also frustrated her that she was better off than most of her friends but they didnt seem to be as annoyed or fed up as her. So much so that some of them were vey upbeat annoyingly often. Could they not see how the country had gone to hell? Of course not. They were shit-faced and didnt ask questions; just as no-one else who might represent her age group ever did properly. 'If the last generation was called Generation X then there is no way this one was called Generation Y' thought Leah. It's the one thing we never ask. WHY? Why are University tuition fees so high that no-one can go? Why do we invade certain country's almost instantly whereas others are left to fight their own civil wars? Who actually listens to Michael Buble? All these questions. The answers unknown to Leah. Unknown to everyone her age. She was 23 and suppoosed to be a successful graduate by now, maybe looking towards settling down in a few years. Instead she was a heartbroken bar maid who was tipsy before midday on a Monday afternoon. Her head filled with the angst and frustrations of an angry nation. No wonder she suffered from migraines.

Still, at least now she was doing something. She had persuaded her closest friends that what they were about to do today was going to make a difference. Even if she didnt believe it entirely herself she felt that making them go with her was achievement enough. The door bell went. It was time. She grabbed her placard and turned off the Sky news footage of Americans burning Bin Laden pictures and made her way towards the door. She'd never been to a protest before but was excited. She would never of done something like this with Simon. he couldn't of given a fuck about anyones tuition fees. She was doing something different and making a stand and that felt good didnt it? Even if she hadn't managed to get a degree she was going to do her best to make damn sure the kids of the future didnt have it even worse than her. She looked into the mirror and raised the briefest, tiniest of smiles before heading out knowing she was kidding no-one but herself.