The Grip, The Pint

The neck thing. That's what I keep coming back to. Pryce crossed the room, hand out like he was going for the shoulder, and then it wasn't the shoulder — it was the back of my neck, and he held me there for two seconds, three, and I didn't pull away because you don't pull away from a man who has just killed in front of you. Frog and Bucket boy, you're going to have to write something new. Said it loud enough for the back row. Friendly. Friendly the way a headmaster is friendly.

Then the grip released and he bought me a pint and asked about my mum and I sat there trying to work out if I'd just been taken on or just been told off. By the second sip I decided it was the first one. Pryce doesn't buy pints out of pity. Pryce buys pints because he's decided you're worth the round. I know this because I have catalogued every pint Marcus Pryce has ever bought a younger comic, which is a worse sentence than anything I wrote tonight.

The waffles bit landed at Old Street. The panic attack bit did not. I got about forty seconds in and could feel the room shift — not hostile, just gone, the way a room goes when it realises the comic isn't joking any more. I pulled the chute and did a worse bit about my landlord and got three laughs and walked off feeling like I'd shown everyone exactly where the bruise is.

Mum asked me on the phone if I was eating. I said yes. I am eating pasta I cooked angry, five new bits in a notebook on the table, and the specific taste of a man's thumb on the back of my neck.