Joe Dunthorne

Oliver, we__e got something to tell you,_ Dad says, dumping a cardboard box full of garden waste into a toad green mangler. Unlike the doctor, when Dad says we, he means we because Mum is omnipotent. __ho__ dead?_ I ask, shot-putting a bottle of Richebourg. __o one__ dead._ __ou__e getting a divorce?_ __liver._ __um__ preggers?_ __o, we__ ____ adopted._ __liver! Please, shit up!

Depression comes in bouts. Like boxing. Dad is in the blue corner.

We asked our Welsh teacher, Mr Llewellyn _ who is young, to tell us the Welsh sex words. The Welsh word for sex is __hyw_. It sounds like coughing. He said that, in general, Welsh-speakers use English words. When pressed, he gave us a couple of examples to show us why this might be. __lawes goch_ means __ed sleeve_. __oes fach_ means __mall leg_. The phrase would be: __ut your small leg in my red sleeve_.

Seducing Jordana was solid _ she's got such high standards _ but when I finally got the snogs in it was all worth it." I transform Jordana's blather into high-level discourse: Lounging in a post-osculatory glow, I knew that all those months of hard chivalry had been worthwhile.

I want the evening upon which we lose our collective virginities to be special. I'm no parthenologist but I suspect that Jordana's virginity is still intact. Her biological knowledge is minimal. She thinks that a perineum is to do with glacial moraine.

My mother tells me I do not chew my food enough; she says I am making it harder for my body to get the essential nutrients it needs. If she were here, I would remind her that I am eating a blueberry Pop-Tart.

I am one of those servants _ butlers usually _ who respectfully points out when their master is about to do something stupid: "You should probably only burn the document once the blackmail has been completed, m' lady.

I was camped at the same site as her: Broughton Farm. She came over to my tent and showed me her blisters. She asked me whether I knew the reason why a blister can keep on producing fluid ad infinitum. I said that I had always wondered the same thing about mucus. One of the reasons we are together is because we have similar interests.

After that, we had a short conversation about how your body can sometimes seem totally separate. She said her body can feel like a distant bureaucracy controlled by telegrams from her brain, and I said my body is sometimes like that of Mario Mario, being controlled with a Nintendo joypad. Mario's surname is Mario.

Thursday morning. I usually let my Mum wake me up but today I have set my alarm for seven. Even from under my duvet, I can hear it bleating on the other side of my room. I hid it inside my plastic crate for faulty joysticks so that I would have to get out of bed, walk across the room, yank it out of the box by its lead and, only then, jab the snooze button. This was a tactical manoeuvre by my previous self. He can be very cruel.

For my last birthday, Dad bought me a pocket-sized Collins English Dictionary. It would only fit in a pocket that had been specially designed.

Are we making a bomb?" "This is a trust exercise, like in drama," she says. "Are we making a bomb as a trust exercise?

I bought a packet of Trojan® Ultra Pleasure Extra Sensitive condoms: __o. 1 in AMERICA_. They smell nothing like a positive first sexual experience.

She whispers in my ear: _"Tell me that you wan' fuck me hard, make me sweat." In the excitement, she misses out a word. "I want to fuck you so hard that your body drips with sweat," I say, grammatically.

I would never say snog. I would say osculate." She looks at me as if to say: why do you exist?

I would never say snog. I would say osculate._ She looks at me as if to say: why do you exist?

Jordana is in the umpire's highchair.I walk under the rugby posts and on to the tennis courts, stopping a few metres in front of her, in the service box.Her legs are crossed.I wait for her to speak.'I have two special skills,' she says.She pulls a sheaf of papers from under her bum. I recognize the font and the text boxes. It's my pamphlet.'Blackmail,' she says.She holds up her Zippo in the other hand. I can tell that she has been practising this.'And pyromania.'I am impressed that Jordana knows this word.'Right,' I say.'I'm going to blackmail you, Ol.'I feel powerless. She is in a throne.'Okay,' I say.

The ocean is six miles deep.