Teepee: A Short Story

I am drinking in the Turf, where I always come after finishing an essay. As usual, my drinking partner is Henry. He’s a Blues Footballer from Cheltenham, a snide Wyckhamist, a second year Classicist, a tireless rake, a banned OUCA member, a future Petrochemicals ‘recruiter’, a swallow-it all pillhead and an unflinching liar. He sits opposite me in the library, under a shelf dedicated to ‘Soft-Musculation’. He wears a violet Jordanian Kaffiyeh made of fine cloth that juts out of the collar of a Christchurch hoodie.

A year ago Henry went to Cornwall to stay in a teepee with his friends. His girlfriend was angry with him. So she cheated on him. With his best friend and on his birthday. They even did it up the arse. The day after he had comedown from his 2CB trip she told him all about it on the phone. The line crackled. It was raining.

It was morning, dawn and stoned-sleep sighed in the drizzle. Henry began to walk to the village. He went into the SPA and brought three packs of Dunhills, two bottles of whiskey and a lighter. He was wearing his cricket jumper. MDMA dribble was coming out of his nose. He came back and spoke to his friends one by one, inspecting their consolations. In his teepee he found his Nike sports bag, his ex-girlfriends black g-string, his Ketamine folded in glossy Elle paper and his cricket bat. His friends sat around a campfire and smoked skunk from a bong. They had thrown a beer into it that soon boiled. Then exploded everywhere. They watched him from a distance and listened to their I-pods. Henry drank the first bottle of whiskey. When he had finished he took her pants, smelt them and wiped his nose into the fabric. He sat there all afternoon and drank, sang, cried and began to whack down the tent-poles with his Lords bat.

On that second morning his friends saw smoke rising from the wreck. Stoned and gashed, he came out staggering, hauling his sports bag and wielding his weapon. A class-mate tried to stop him. And he punched him right on the nose. The plastic fabric of the teepee was burning, releasing a stinging noxious gas. Their eyes all watered. And the fire was as bright as a blank white screen. Henry walked out of the encampment, threw the string into the flames and began to dissapear.