CREATINE

The air in the college canteen is thick with testosterone, like a pea soup mixed with a tub-load of creatine powder. My best mate Richard, Mo, Gareth and me are all sat around a table, on which sit seven empty Coke cans and a whole load of sweetie wrappers, the contents of which are not digesting in my stomach; they’re lodged in between the train tracks and rubber-band contraptions that make my mouth look like an aerial shot of a twenty-five-car pile-up on the M1.

We’re all students here, studying GNVQs, yet none of us knows what it stands for, and there’s not a great deal of studying going on, ’cause there’s a pool table and a Time Crisis arcade machine in the canteen and an alleyway round the back of the college where we smoke weed, getting hot rock burns in our hoodies, identified by the colour of the stripes on our Reebok Classics, regularly comparing notes on who got kicked in, who got fingered and who got what robbed when they were silly enough to put on a house party when their parents went away for the weekend, inviting what were the popular kids back in year 11 at school, until the choice between college and sixth form redefined the social hierarchies, and now here we all are, unlikely to ever pursue careers in IT or leisure and tourism, but we’re all doing the course.

Wearing a grubby white Nike hat, Mo is talking about 2Pac. Now, I love music, I like hip-hop, but I don’t have MTV, so I don’t know that many of 2Pac’s tunes, and I know for a fact that my best mate Richard knows fuck-all. And I know that he knows that I know. He has seven CDs in his collection and most of those are Now compilations, he buys them with the WH Smith vouchers he gets every Christmas from his nan, and the only CD in that malnourished collection of his that even comes close to 2Pac is a single of ‘Boom! Shake the Room’ by Will Smith. Despite that, every time Mo mentions a particular 2Pac track, Gareth, Richard and me all chime in in unison with the well-rehearsed chorus of:

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah.’

We don’t ask questions here, we just agree. Gareth takes a last-ditch swig on his Coke and swirls it round his mouth, letting out a large burp that I can smell, and it smells of McDonald’s cheeseburgers. He then reaches down into his World Dance record bag, pulling out the latest copy of Max Power magazine, skimming a few pages until he lands on the featured article on a souped-up maroon Vauxhall Cavalier with possibly the biggest exhaust I’ve ever seen.

‘It’s full bore,’ Gareth says.

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah,’ we all say.

And Mo does that finger snap, which I know for a fact that Richard can’t do, but I know he’s been practising in his bedroom and I notice his right hand twitch on the table as if he wants to, but he can’t, and I wanna laugh. Gareth then goes on to tell us about his older brother’s Ford Escort XR3i, which has a two-litre engine, lowered suspension and a dump valve.

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah,’ we all say.

I don’t even know what a dump valve is. Now Mo’s telling us about his cousin’s Clio, with a Kenwood subwoofer in the back, just like the name on the back of Gareth’s black bomber jacket.

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah,’ we all say.

Hold on, wait a minute, Richard’s now talking?! He’s saying he’s rewired the stereo in his car?!

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah,’ we all say.

No he hasn’t! All he’s done is change the default radio setting from Radio 2, ’cause it’s not his car! It’s his mum’s Nissan Micra! And now he’s saying he’s playing this sick new tape from this sick new Garage Nation tape pack he bought, EZ and MC Dapper.

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah,’ we all say.

It’s not a tape pack! He taped it off Kiss 100, because I told him to!

‘It’s got bare dubplates,’ he says.

Bare dubplates?! Since when did Richard talk like that?! He doesn’t even know what a dubplate is!

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah,’ we all say.

No, no, no yeah! He’s not worthy of the yeah, yeah, sick, yeah. He’s talking bollocks! But oh no, he doesn’t stop, he carries on, his mouth opens and words come out.

‘Oi, boys,’ he says.

‘Heard this sick new tune on the radio this week… it’s by Travis.’

‘… … … …’

‘… … … …’

‘… … … …’

Like a sound system limiter kicking in the conversation peaks, then with an ear-splitting frequency it suddenly cuts out! And we’re left with no sound. And that silent moment quickly becomes a fast-moving dark cloud about to shroud us all in shadow and we begin to twitch, ready to whip out Nokia pay-as-you-go phones to distract ourselves , (from ourselves).

‘What?’ says Gareth.

Travis?! I’m thinking, Shit, Rich, what have you just gone and done? I can’t look at him, but I notice Gareth has this angry stare. My mouth is open, revealing the managed Weapon X spectacle that is my teeth. Mo shimmies in his seat, puts his chin to his chest, then Richard speaks again.

‘Yeah, you know, Travis, that tune, on the radio, it’s sick, yeah? Yeah…?’

Richard pauses, then stares at the empty Coke cans. Mo pulls out his phone, but Gareth doesn’t let it go.

‘Travis? What, like, the indie band, with guitars and that? Don’t those pussies back in sixth form listen to that?’

Now, I quite like some guitar bands, but I tend to keep that quiet unless I’m talking to my dad. Though I don’t have MTV, I do know one or two of Travis’s tunes, my little sister likes them, she’s probably gonna go to sixth form, so I decide to throw Richard a rope. Well, more like a shoelace.

‘What track is it, Rich?’

‘I dunno. I think it’s called, like, “Twist” or something.’

And I notice his eyes open up, a little bit, as if he’s sensed a small slice of hope, but then out of nowhere Mo suddenly looks up from playing Snake on his phone and lets out an involuntary

‘Turn?’

‘Yeah, “Turn”, that’s it, that’s the one!’ says Richard, sitting up a little straighter now.

Surprisingly, Mo is right; there is a track called ‘Turn’ by Travis. I know that track, I quite like that track, it’s alright.

‘Yeah, I’ve heard that that track, Rich… quite like that track, it’s alright.’

‘Yeah, I’ve heard it too, it’s alright,’ says Mo.

And then all the attention turns to Gareth, who takes a brief moment before he speaks.

‘Hold tight, does it go turn turn tu-ur-ur urn-urn-ur?’

‘Yeah!’ says Richard.

‘Yeah, yeah… I’ve heard that track… it’s alright… it’s pretty sick actually, yeah, yeah, that track’s sick.’

‘Yeah, yeah, it is sick,’ says Mo.

‘Yeah! Really sick!’ Richard replies.

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah,’ we all say.

And for a brief and beautiful moment, all the bravado that exists between us becomes like bubbles being blown by five-year-olds at a summer garden party, and it feels like my dad’s big hand rubbing my hair when I first fell off my bike and I realised everything was gonna be alright… until another dark cloud threatens to rain on the children’s party in the garden, and the conversation is then very carefully manoeuvred to DJ Hype and Kenny Ken, and who our favourite jungle MCs are. And before I know it, we’re back to talking about cars again, and I’m back to agreeing on things I know nothing about, and could be well be complete bullshit, and probably are bullshit, and speaking of bullshit, Richard’s bullshitting again! He reckons he’s getting seventeen-inch alloy wheels fitted, to his mum’s Nissan Micra, which, he fails to mention to the rest of the boys, has a big National Trust sticker in the back window.

‘Yeah, yeah, sick, yeah,’ we all say, including me.