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.