"_fat mark_"

Fat Mark’s such a dishevelled trunk – always looks like he’s fallen into his clothes at the end of a slip. His printed name in emboldened sans serif font on his office door always looks like a stone cold threat. Makes me shit myself when I’m covering the lates. Just shut your beard and let it go slag. Fat Mark’s Home for Shirts for Large Children and Men. He should’ve fired up the camping grill, got some sausage patties a-sizzling. It’s a bleat a minute back there. I keep hearing what sounds like a woman laughing, then realise it’s Fat Mark. Mrs Fat Mark must've fingered him last night. In an office full of ladies with his cheap instant coffee in hand looking like a retarded teenager trapped in a hen-do and forced to tearfully strip before the baying mockery of a sloshed troupe. Fat Mark’s all double thumbs up, a peddler of meaty brekkies, terrine pallor, tired eyes, blokes projects. Lazy eye always slips in photographs. The things I’ve seen. Mopping his brow with a tissue on the Jet garage forecourt. Wife pens self-help stuff with a Christian bent. Fat Mark does a few church groups. Church groups for underrepresented lads – his boy’s X-Box, crisps and Swizzels, tepid Tizer, muted footie tapes, the season highlights he’d collected when you still did that, low-level chatting in supermarket garb, checked shirts, massive t-shirts of licensed cartoon characters. Sorry clutch of saps even god can’t be fucked with. Wife was a looker, still is really. Fat Mark never could believe his luck. Was the uniform as did it. He’s former Forces. Even a patty-faced lump out of the Riding gets them creaming when fastened into twill. He’d made a scale model Landy for her, 1:10, painted it Air Force Blue and etched Mark ‘n’ Jane on the windscreen in minute hand, so small he had to tell her it was there after he’d popped the question, which he’d framed like a joke so when she rejected him he could pretend he’d never meant it anyway. Near shat himself when she agreed. First time she held his balls he blew his sauce all over her within seconds. Her wrists dripped with the foul stuff. Took months to get things going in the bedroom. He tried to quip his way around his failings but she was losing interest quick. He really had to concentrate to get there, to keep it in long enough, to get it in. Was fucking shattered by the end, like a special needs kids at the end of a school day. All the trying. They’d gone the distance though, Jane and he, where so many of his pals hadn’t. Put it down to separate interests. And separate bedrooms. He had a phone shaped like Garfield in his. A giant coke bottle for coins. A shelf full of the old children’s books his mother had insisted he finally take away when his father died, or else that she’d take to the charity shop. He couldn’t bear to open them, always made him cry to see the illustrations. She was gone too now, of course. Had a suitcase full of her clothes on the top shelf of his wardrobe. His daughter was grown up, quite something, got her mother’s looks thank fuck. He hardly spoke to her – had found himself accidentally lusting after her when she was about fifteen, peering at her for that bit too long when she strode around in just a towel or in little short shorts, found himself outside her room at night just wondering what would happen if. Never did anything, of course not, she’s his daughter, but the thought was there. Are we culpable for our thoughts? Should we be held to account for the workings of our minds if those workings don’t translate to terrible action? Fat Mark had no idea, thought it best to shut it down, to become the distant father he’d always wanted not to be. He didn’t think much about younger ladies. No point. He’d still be him. His mid-life crisis had consisted of some Converse and a vat of ill-advised hair gel. Scrunched his thatch into a limp peak once or twice then couldn’t be bothered again. The smell of it gave him a headache. Maybe his three-quarter life crisis would yield a Honda Goldwing. He and Jane might tour the byways. Who was he kidding. Savings were long since pumped into the kids’ education. Nothing left for us. Jane did monies separate – she had the eye for it. Besides, what did he want for? In truth he’d been terrified of motorcycles since his 30s when he came off a 600cc at speed and sheared the skin off his back at a family day at Silverstone. Was supposed to be fun. He was an inpatient for a week while they grafted from both buttocks. Arse like a pizza. Skid-Mark, sniggered all. Kids didn’t visit. Boring for the kids, a hospital. Jane neither. Boring, a hospital. He read Len Deighton and felt teary and looked forward to the attention of the nurse emptying his bedpan. But you put a face on don’t you, for the world. That’s all any of us can do, is put a face on. Put a face on and pretend a bit.