chloeveltman.com

Chat room
for Julian

He could only guess where he was going. The aim, he thought, was to get away from the flat as fast as he could, spend the night somewhere else - who knows where - and come back tomorrow smiling when everything was settled. Or at least, he would be out of the way, so that by the time Lo had come to her senses, she would realize the full extent, the complete comedy, of the mess they had made, do the decent thing and pack a suitcase immediately. Lo would definitely leave, he projected, pouting earnestly in agreement with himself as he bunched his bony shoulders, trying to keep the February chill off his ears and back, but not really doing a very good job on either count.

It had been a rush, getting out. All he could remember was tripping over Mikey's fetid football boots in the hall, and how the light bulb had gone at the very moment he slammed the door, rushing down the dark hallway, nearly smashing into the handlebars of Joan's BMX and barging out the gate. It was cold and he wished he had remembered his bus-pass and his coat. So where to now? Somewhere within walking distance, he thought.

Lo could hazard a pretty good guess as to where Dee had gone. He always went to the same place when he experienced what Lo liked to describe to her female friends as Dee-menstrual mention. Slumping on the sofa with Mikey, eating pizza-style snacks from a Tupperware box and picking periodically at a mole on his upper lip, was a sign that he was about to take off - triggered no doubt by Chelsea losing to Arsenal, a bad day at work or, most often, frustration at spending three hours trying to download music off the internet with a prehistoric modem. "Life would be swell with DSL," he would utter on such occasions in a choked-up imitation of Frank Sinatra, before grabbing his MP3 player and running out of the flat to Daniel's.

Peeling herself off the rug upon which she had passed out some time before with some unfurling yogic breathing sequence, Lo uncurled gradually into a full standing position. She had a headache and could taste yesterday's lunchtime sushi. It was Sunday afternoon and, normally speaking, the four of them would have gathered in the lounge by now, contemplating a bout of Frisbee in the park, an afternoon pint or a trip to the flicks.

"Joan-y," said Lo in a pasty voice, draping herself across the banisters alongside a football scarf, a greying Wonderbra and assorted damp towels. "Lo, you're awake," echoed a gurgly voice from the kitchen. "Coffee in the kitchen."

"Where's our little Dee-Dee?" said Joan, a small girl in big heels, as she poured a mug of coffee for her groggy flat mate. "I think he's gone to Daniel's," answered Lo, dipping her aquiline nose into the mug. Steam flew up her nostrils, momentarily clearing her fuzzy head. Joan flapped a hand dismissively. The metal teaspoon made a loud clanging noise as Lo stirred the pale brown liquid, frowning. "No, but this time I don't think he'll be back," she said.

"Come on, Lolo. You know what he's like. He legs it over to Our Saviour's every time he gets a bit emotional. You can't talk to Mikey about anything except sport, and you and I are barely ever here. If some girl doesn't return his calls, or his Internet stock takes a tumble, there's only darling Daniel to talk to." Dubbed by Lo, Mikey and Joan as 'Our Saviour' for his unrivalled ability to yank the peevish Dee out of his numerous slumps, Daniel, hairdresser to soap opera celebrities by day, rampant cyber geek by night and virtual shrink to a certain erratic youth, was tolerated and almost liked by the other three tenants at 59 Ermine Street. But on this occasion, the mention of Daniel provoked little admiration from Lo: Dee and Daniel sitting over a box of Kleenex and Campari. Smoking a little dope and playing a little Sega. "He'll get comfortable and not bother coming back," muttered Lo, making a vehement wish.

Dee liked to tell his mates that Daniel changed the course of pop history the day he gave Limahl from Kajagoogoo a pink and white mullet. The 80s singer walked into Daniel's salon sometime before the song "Too Shy" hit the charts, (a good long while before going solo with the theme from "Never Ending Story,") and said he needed something eye-catching. It was raining outside and the sloppy drizzle from Streatham High Street had left bruise-like blotches of black hair dye all over the pop singer's face and neck. At the time, all the girls were going mad for Nick Rhodes and even for that preppy Howard Jones. He was feeling a bit left out and anyway, he was ready for a change. As Daniel tells the story, Kajagoogoo's front man slumped straight into Daniel's chair and gave the surprised hairdresser the go ahead to do what he wanted with his long, straggly tresses, only please could he (the hairdresser) do it quickly, as he (the pop singer) was expected in the studio by noon. Daniel whipped out his pinking shears, a vat of bleach and some L'Oreal Raunchy Raspberry conditioning hair colour, and within two hours, had created the year's defining look and had made a new acquaintance.

In dawn-of-the-twenty-first-century terms, Dee thought Daniel surpassed all notions of cool. The Limahl thing had catapulted Daniel into celebrity hairdressing. Daniel had served for a year on Top of the Pops and, when the mullet look and all its eccentricities was forgotten one day like a vaguely tasteless joke, Daniel settled into a pleasant if less adventurous life of freelancing on various soap operas, mainly on Welsh TV.

His not-quite-hairdresser-to-the-stars status gave him special caché in Dee's eyes. He was the older, richer friend with the kitschy past and a flat worthy of any Wallpaper magazine bachelor. Daniel was a gadget-slag. He had it all: the WAP phone and the T3 Internet connection. He made regular trips to Tokyo to buy the latest thing - a new infrared coffee percolator or an updated e-book that could store 60 novels rather than 55. (He had bought the earlier model on a whim a few months earlier, but being unimpressed by the range of books available to download from the Barnes & Noble website, he had shoved the object back into its packaging in a huff and had never since been back to look if the book selection had improved.) He was a voracious cyber shopper, his lifestyle shipped in at no extra cost from Bloomingdales.com and Bang&Olufsen.com.

But a little of the sheen wore off Daniel the day he introduced Dee to chat room etiquette. "I mean what kind of saddo are you?" said Dee incredulously. Daniel just smiled and logged on to Chatroom.com.

By the end of the evening Dee was a convert. He had his own username (D-licious) and a password (*****). He had laughed at Daniel's chat-up lines in the "BoyzWithToyz" chat room…

#28796 SMALL P Are you out there, Mr. Fuzzy?

#20951 MULLET-KING Hello there, little friend peewee. Got any sugar for Daddy?

#28796 SMALL P Hi big fella. Plenty sugar for you. Want me to sprinkle some in between your great hairy toes?

#20951 MULLET-KING Yes, let's have some of that famous sprinkle. Mind you fill all the cracks… …and messed around with some anaemic-sounding girl from Milwaukee in the "SinglesWithAnAttitude" room…

#12127 RENATA hello. I'm Renata from Milwaukee. If there's anyone out there who thinks Santana is simply the bomb, then come and say hi please…

#56666 D-LICIOUS Dearest Renata. I hardly know you but already I feel we have some connection. Santana rocks.

#12127 RENATA How wonderful. Did you know he's set up his own line in comfort footwear?

#56666 D-LICIOUS No kidding? Really? You're having me on.

#12127 RENATA No, really. He's doing it through Brown's in St. Louis and he's giving all proceeds to charity… (A seven-minute intermission while Dee and Daniel share a spliff and drink espresso from Daniel's new percolator…)

#12127 RENATA Are you still there, D-licious?

#56666 D-LICIOUS Absolutely. I was just thinking about how great Santana is.

#12127 RENATA How old are you, what do you look like and what do you do?

#56666 D-LICIOUS Well, I'm 35 years old, I'm told I look like Cary Grant but with blonde hair. I'm quite a lot taller than the film star actually. I run a sanctuary for blind farm-animals and I like to write poetry in my spare time. And listen to the king of pop, Santana.

#12127 RENATA You sound like a fun guy. Fancy a milkshake sometime?

#56666 D-LICIOUS I'd love to, but I couldn't desert my short-sighted chickens and goats. They depend upon me. I'm all they've got. Some other time, perhaps. Take care, Renata. …and had taken a tour around six other chatters' paradises before settling in to a conversation with someone who called themselves Gina L.

#56666 D-LICIOUS I'm bored.

#56677 GINA L Only boring people are bored.

#56666 D-LICIOUS You sound like my primary school teacher.

#56677 GINA L A rolling stone gathers no moss. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Do your homework, you naughty boy.

#56666 D-LICIOUS It's my lucky day; I seem to have stumbled upon the master and slave department. Beat me, nanny. Mmm, that's good. #56677 GINA L Don't like this game. What are you doing here?

#56666 D-LICIOUS Where are you from? Please don't say Milwaukee.

#56677 GINA L I asked you first.

#56666 D-LICIOUS It's the witching hour over here in merry olde Englande. I'm out looking for victims. Now it's your turn to answer both questions.

#56677 GINA L Ich bin ein Englander. Or should I say, Englanderin? But if I say that, then I think the 'ein' is wrong. Shouldn't I say, "Ich bin einer Englanderin"? Or maybe it's "einen". I can never remember. Probably there should be an umlaut lover the middle "a". Fuck it.

#56666 D-LICIOUS Yeah. Fuck it. You didn't answer the other question.

#56677 GINA L Which one was that again? #56666 D-LICIOUS Why do I sense you aren't a regular participant in the delightful world of cyber chat?

#56677 GINA L Little do you know I've been coming here every evening for the past week. I'm a stalker. I've frightened some very nice people out of their wits. There was a florist called JeSuisSimone from Alsace and a guy called Regbopper who was American and ran a sort of Red Cross outfit for sick animals.

"You've been coming to my apartment almost every evening for the past two months," remarked Daniel a little condescendingly one night, observing Dee twitching an uncooperative mouse over the greying Tony the Tiger mouse mat. "You pour yourself a Manhattan, whack a Nick Cave CD into the stereo, turn the lights down to Decidedly Dim and switch on the computer. And I don't hear a squeak from you for at least an hour."

"So?" said Dee, poking the ball-bearing underbelly of the mouse with a long, brown finger. He looked at his mentor with vague irritation.

"I'm bored. Pay me some attention," snapped Daniel.

"Only boring people are bored," said Dee, turning back to the consul. Gina L had disappeared for a few days. Now she was back and for reasons he couldn't easily come to terms with, Dee was happy. "What if Gina Lolabrigida isn't a she but a he?" leered Daniel spitefully. He knew the inside story. He was a hair-stylist baying for blood.

"Never cross a coiffeur," Dee reminded himself, interrupting a feisty chat room tryst with Gina L, to appease his tetchy host.

All the way back to Ermine Street, Dee was becoming obsessed with the gender of his virtual acquaintance. Gina L had a woman's name, but she possessed - what might be considered by the less politically correct among us - mannish attributes. She had playfully told him that she liked to smoke Cuban cigars before and after sex. She said she had shares in two West Coast tech firms. He asked her which ones and she had coyly replied it was a secret. She thought one day she might get a huge windfall and she didn't want anyone to know that she hadn't earned the money herself - an advance on a best-selling novel or something. She hadn't written a novel yet, best-selling or otherwise. But she thought she would write one, one day. "She's definitely a girl," thought Dee.

But he couldn't be sure. He picked at the mole on his upper lip as he strode across the park. Dee was becoming anxious about Gina L. Under normal circumstances, he would have legged it across the park in the opposite direction towards Daniel's house. But considering the fact that Daniel himself was the perpetrator of his disgruntlement, Dee had no choice but to lollop back home. In some small way, it would be comforting to hang out with his gang. At least he knew what sex they all were. For the first time in at least a couple of weeks, he was looking forward to playing scrabble with Joan, slouching in front of the television with Mikey and sampling some of Lo's daft tofu stew. Joan had left a sweet message on his mobile phone: "Where are you Dee-Dee?" said the voice, an appealing mixture of friend and matron. There was a pause while Joan took a drag of her cigarette. "It's nine o'clock. Lo-Lo's making one of her charming tofu concoctions. She'll be annoyed if you aren't here to complement her on her culinary skills. Be a good boy and get here by ten. Love to Our Saviour and to you of course. Bye, honey." The phone beeped to a halt and he snapped the mouthpiece shut. Marching purposefully towards the idea of tofu, coriander and bell peppers, Dee thought perhaps he should try to meet his correspondent.

Gina L could have been from Milwaukee. She (as opposed to he, for the sake of argument) could have been Milwaukinese. She could have come from anywhere on the planet, the two of them chatting to each other across the void of thousands of miles as if they had been neighbours. But Gina declared herself a Londoner (at least she had lived in London for the past three years), and Dee attributed their flowing online banter to the fact that they shared the common experience of coping with life in London. So why not meet and settle the gender question once and for all? Dee thought Gina might be nice. If she were female, he thought he might like to take her out. If she were a he, there might be wistful regrets. She or he might not be his type. There might be embarrassing silences. She - yes, she - might have one of those piercing voices. How easy it is to become hooked on the concept of a person.

#56666 D-LICIOUS What's your voice like?

#56677 GINA L I wail like a banshee and grunt like a bear.

#56666 D-LICIOUS hmm. Let me hear you on the phone. Unless you've downloaded ICQ on to your hard-drive. Wait a sec. It doesn't look like this computer's got it. Crap. What's your number? I'll call you.

#56677 GINA L Sod that. Let's be daredevilish and meet. Face to face. Mano a mano.

#56666 D-LICIOUS I love it when you talk tough, Gina L. Can I call you Gina?

Dee was very, very nervous when it came to the Spitalfields assignation. The whole chat room thing made him feel sick. What on earth was he doing sitting at a marble-topped table outside a creperie, waiting for someone of undisclosed gender to turn up for a blind date, the result of two months of sometimes lewd and often meaningless exchange across the ether. It wasn't in the least bit romantic, yet a well-hidden streak inside him surfaced violently at that moment, giving him a Barbara-Cartland-tinged craving for something extraordinary to happen. He sat there in his clean green cords and Björk T-shirt, watching the red double-deckers dieseling past and feeling for all the world like a man in a dirty anorak or a pimp.

It was early evening and the covered market was quiet. The vendors had all packed up and gone away. A man in a navy suit was reading The Standard at an adjacent table over a freshly-squeezed grapefruit juice. Dee was half reading the back of the man's newspaper and half wondering how a glass of grapefruit juice could cost four pounds fifty. "Rent Rage: Nurses and Teachers Forced Out of the City" ran the headline. London was becoming impossible to live in. Or even near. The city was like an old acquaintance that, gone up in the world, was trying to shake off hangers-on from the suburbs. Let bygones be bygones tolled the bells, from Bow to Notting Hill and from Hampstead to Southwark. Escalating rents, earnings barely covering the cost of a carton of Kia-Ora, let alone freshly-squeezed, lightly chilled grapefruit juice in a tall glass at a Spitalfields creperie. He was thinking he could barely afford the five-hundred pounds he was paying per month in zone three when a figure rounded the corner, shaking a polka-dot splattered umbrella.

It was a woman. His initial curiosity satisfied, Dee's first impulse was to run away. But it was too late; she was looking at him. Something felt wrong though. She had stopped still. He dared to snatch a glance at her, now feeling properly uncomfortable. And rightly so: it was Lo. Just bloody typical that his holistic house-mate should be shopping for quorn and beansprouts in the very vicinity of his own intimate liaison. "Hello Dee. Nice T-shirt." Flustered, Lo drew up a chair beside him, looking about her wildly. "What are you doing here, then?" For some reason, laughter was out of the question.

Herne Hill, London