Meatspace. Nikesh Shukla

a laugh. I haven’t had a holiday in for ever. I’ve never been to New York. Mimi lives there now and I’ve got unfinished business in her pants. Why the why not?’ Aziz says, opening the drawer where the painkillers are. ‘New York’s the dream.’

      ‘I dunno. I’ll miss you. You never go away.’

      ‘Bruv, if I’m not around, you can’t use me as an excuse to not write. I’m going. It’s for both of our goods. I get to bang Mimi and have the most legendary time, and you get silence. No distractions.’

      I cover my nose and mouth with my hands so Aziz can’t see I’m frowning.

      ‘When you going?’ I ask, wondering how I can talk Aziz out of it.

      ‘This week. After I’ve got my new tat. I’m getting the bow tie.’

      I look at Aziz with a mixture of pity and confusion. ‘Why? Man, it’s not a good look.’

      ‘Buddy, it’s the one. It’s the one of ones. It’s the one most toppermost of the poppermost. I want it. I want to turn up at Teddy Baker’s yard with a matching tattoo pulling the same shit-eating grin and I want to film his reaction. Wanna be my camera man?’

      ‘I can’t, man. No money,’ I say, hoping my financial plight will cause him to stay. I can’t afford flights to New York. How else will I be able to afford beers and frozen pizzas?

      ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy starting to feel the pinch?’

      ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy needs to put his CV together today so he could find some B2B journalism soon just to keep steady income coming in.’

      ‘Sorry, man,’ Aziz says, rubbing me on the back. I stand up and walk to the open drawer with the painkillers. I take 2 out and dry-swallow them, hoping they’ll kick in with immediate effect.

      ‘It’s alright. I should have written something better.’

      Aziz claps his hands to signal the moving on of the conversation.

      ‘Well, remember to finalise your tattoo designs. I booked you in.’

      ‘I don’t think I want a tattoo.’

      ‘I hate your hangovers, they’re always so full of regret. You’re so boring. This is why I need to get away. This funk. This funky stench. This funkington manor.’

      I’m walking down our local high street staring at the gentrified ghetto of vintage shops, hipster bars and pound shops, marvelling at the busyness and bustle of 10 a.m. on an unseasonably chilly early autumn morning. Who are all these people and why aren’t they at work? Part of me realises that the innate nature of the hipster is not being in gainful employment but running about sorting out installations, video shoots and drinking coffee and talking about meta-collaborations. None of these have any place in a conventional office.

      I tweet: ‘If the innate nature of the hipster is to avoid jobs, what do they do for money when there’s no installations to be done?’

      @kitab: ‘They all suck each other off and roll around in piles of their parents money’

      @kitab: ‘burn socks’

      @kitab: ‘Develop Eating Disorders ;)’

      I record constructions of a series of nothings in either chronological or flashback order. I string together a few similes like a hack and I send it to my agent and they will either ‘like’ it and ‘share’ it or unfollow me. Either way, I’m stuck in a rut of nothing. I don’t really appreciate what I do, why should anyone else? I used to read so much. I used to sit in cafés and read. I’d struggle to eat with a knife and fork or with my hands as I navigated sentences on a page. Now that’s all been replaced with thinking of arch things to tweet, twitpic’ing my lunch or making up overheard conversations that might make people laugh.

      I tweet: ‘Im in a café & this girls like to her boyfriend “Jamie, I wish you hadn’t fucked me in the arse so hard. I cant stop shitting myself.” ZOMG.’

      @kitab: ‘LOLZ’

      I get 13 retweets and it didn’t even happen. It gets 4 favourites. Even Hayley tweets me to say: ‘We’re reading together this week! Haven’t seen you in ages, blud. See you at @welovebooksbitches!’

      I think I see someone I know sitting in an internet café. I realise it’s just another Indian guy with an oily side-parting.

      It’s inevitable I will get ‘Everyday I write the book’ tattooed on my forearm. Maybe drunk me knows me better than real me.

       aZiZWILLKILLYOU episode 3 Aziz vs Ink [posted 10 September, 00:21]

      I got a tattoo of a bow tie on my neck today.

      My brother, Kitab. He got a job description on his forearm. He’s a writer so ‘Everyday I write the book’. It’s so analogue. It’s so meatspace, innit.

      Anyways, I woke up my man Kit with some Buck’s Fizz. Got the guy proper high so he don’t back out. Then I did some push-ups to really tone up my neck and chest, because if man has a neck tattoo, man needs to rep it proper, seen. So anyways, anyways, anyways, I passed out. Don’t mix alcohol and weightlifting, my friends. It’s a dangerous business. I’m finally getting rid of this ugly stupid thing on my neck. This scar from when I was a kid.

      We headed to Sick Charlie’s for the tattoos. This guy is a proper swagatha. I argued with Kit all the way cos the dickhead wanted to pay with a cheque. He’s got some royalties due but still, act like you know, you know? Wear this process with pride.

      ‘Chequebook?’ I scoffed.

      ‘Yeah, I need it to clear in 5 days. I get some money in about 5 days.’

      ‘What money?’

      ‘I get that 80 quid from the Guardian for the best Asians in fiction article.’

      ‘Sell-out.’

      ‘Yeah, I know.’

      ‘Still? A cheque? You’re so 1997 about things.’

      ‘1997? That’s the advent of the cheque in your brain?’

      ‘No, well … you know … chequebooks. It just looks a bit lame. Charlie, the tattoo artist’ll think you’re a mug.’

      ‘Oh right, so you’re worried about me looking uncool in front of a tattoo artist.’

      ‘Hey, the cooler you are, the more likely they are to do a good job.’ That right, right? Tattoo artists have to do a lot of work. Imagine if they think you’re cool, they’ll put in the extra 10% to make it 120%.

      Sick Charlie’s tattoo parlour is too cool for school, my friends. Picture a tattoo parlour in your head. What you’re imagining resembles the outhouse of a biker gang’s gang hut. Where all the crystal meth and bukkake happens. This place was like a hipster design studio, innit. Everything was angular. There were so many angles, you’d think it was an isosceles triangle. There were iPads to read or watch the iPlayer on while you wait. The magazines in the iPad newsstand were Playboy and GQ. The music playing was loud, up-tempo high-pitched hipster indie … you know the song … nee-nee-nee-nee-nee-noo-noo-noo-noo riffs, thumping kick drums. White boy tunes. There was one chair for the one tattoo artist and the mirror was lit by a floating orb, suspended from the ceiling on a transparent string. The chair itself looked straight off the set of Sweeney Todd. Meat. Meat. Meat. Branding meat.

      Sick Charlie, he was malnourished thin, no arse to speak of, no visible tattoos, a pointed floppy fringe and dead eyes that told you whatever you’re thinking, he was ‘already over it’. Every time I see a white boy like this, I always wonder how he balances on a toilet with no bot-bot. What do the girls have to stare at when he walks away?

      I Instagrammed the place and added ‘Double virgin skin with