Size 22
Ivory Pijin

We wanted life to be epic and he showed us.
We didn’t want to believe we could die, so when he died,
for a while, we never discussed it because we couldn’t believe that he could.
It was the longest summer and we all became single, so we were alone together.
We travelled as far east as we could.
Which, given our jobs, was Greece.

We knew nothing about his family. We met him at a hostel.
You couldn’t miss him, he was over seven feet and he carried himself like an angel.

We used to play this game where we’d try to find The Big Dipper wherever we went. And on this beach stop in Kalamata we pinned our fingers to the sky. He was on the deck watching us. His face was angular, he had lowered eyes and there was something domestic about his beauty. We could all admit, as guys, that he was beautiful. He might have been the most beautiful human we had ever seen. He pointed out The Big Dipper with a smile and we stared at his arm touching the Dubhe, as if he was cracking an egg into the bowl. Cats also loved him. A black stray cuddled up to him as he spoke.

By the time we got to our rooms, we had all booked our flights to Béziers.
He was smart about the whole thing. And we were scared by that. His name was Janus.
He had worked out when we’d all want to be back in London, and what kind of parties we liked. Then he told us about the Féria.

Our 6pm bodies approached the 4pm ground like time travellers. All our problems were cured after the third drink, so we kept drinking. The terminal was tiny. We went online to read the history, as we had done in previous places, and found that in 1209 the town was a victim of the Crusades, 20,000 killed like dogs, and the legate had said God would know his own.

Béziers was and is a shit town. A house costs two hundred thousand euros. There were only North African kebab shops and private bistros that charged a fortune for wine (boxed, most likely) and burgers. There was nothing between the two, the same way there was nothing between the derelict blocks stickered for demolition and the chateaux. There was no public transport. All the posters were AI slop, so the food looked wormy and seedy.
For France, it was gormless.

Years later we'd grow anxious, searching the town for statues, monuments, anything to pin us to the place. There were none. It was nothing. All we remembered were the parties.
And he was right, it was epic.
How had Janus roped us here, as by this point we had all split up. What were we looking for?

On the beach in Kalamata, we were arguing about dinner that night as we fished for The Big Dipper. We were on the last of our Camels. Janus didn’t smoke. He also didn’t drink. So our last Mythos sat on the deck slats. At the store, we had debated whether to get three individual beers or get a four-pack. We were arguing whether to get a gyro or go to a wine bar, attended by Marriott resort exiles and horny locals.
Janus put a hand on our shoulders and said simply, ‘I’ve got a great idea’.
And he took all his clothes off, and jumped in the water.
He waded patiently in the black foam below.
And in a trance, we each took an article off.
And dived in.

Dripping on the pier, Janus limbered out last, popped the cap on the beer and poured it out into the water.
“It’s an offering.”

We didn’t know how we were meant to find Janus.
He didn’t give us his phone number and when we asked, he laughed,
saying, “You’ll find me”. And so we did, the streets were packed from corner to corner with French revellers, dressed in white and red. Bull horns sprang from the sea of people. Dust and smoke plumes from IQOS and vapes and joints moved sharply across the crowd, and in one draft of smoke, there he was.
When he spotted us, he flashed a grin and kept dancing.

Their lipstick was red and applied carefully. And under the strobe lights, we noticed their imperfections, which only made them more interesting, to the more confident of us who could see past such things and the less confident, who resonated with them. The DJ played a disco song. They ran their fingers through their hair and extended their gaze around the room. The eyes trained on them looked away.
And in the corner of their eye, they couldn’t miss him. They walked slowly and as they stepped, the crowd gave room.
They nodded slowly to the drums, and moved their fingers to the singer’s crooning voice.
Janus danced alone.
They joined his orbit and flung their hair in his direction. And he with no hair, did the same.
The saxophones got louder. And the crowd picked up, jumping from one end to the other.
And he danced like a mad man.

We didn’t attend his funeral. We heard it was small and private, attended by loved ones in his local town.
Janus’ friend from the party was there. They were in the photographs.
But we had breakfast that day, in a small café in Bloomsbury. Sunday morning, so it was empty. Sweat flowed freely under our shirts. We had all dressed up, though we didn’t assign a dress code. We spoke about the weather and the heatwaves. That one heatwave. And when Janus finally came up, all we could talk about was his dancing.
None of us could describe it. It was like watching a building come down.

“If you can dance with me, then you can see all of me.”
That night at the Féria, we watched our guy as he hopped and shook, spellbinding the French partiers.
At the end of our drinks lay three bad decisions.
The first good decision was buying a pitcher of white sangria.
The first bad decision was trying to outdrink a Frenchman.
The second good decision was letting him take us, including Janus and his group of friends, a motley crew of Spaniards, French, Moroccans, Germans, Portuguese and one Indonesian to the stadium to watch toro piscine.
The bull zipped from one end of the arena to the other in a second. Lads in Speedos tumbled into the pool and the seventy-odd people ducked and ran, some lucky, most of them getting a clipping that ranged from a light tap to a bad goring, their blood spilling out on the sand, and the hapless limped out, drunk but defeated.
The second bad decision was jumping inside the ring.

“How did you look before the surgery?”
We didn’t really expect Janus to answer.
“I was a monster.”

The police station had a single ceiling fan whirring, and the flies rode it round.
We were handcuffed and sitting on the floor as the chief stepped over our legs, asking questions.
Our bodies dripped, and the sweat mixed with the dust and sand in our laps. And the feathers.
There were pigeon feathers on every inch of the street in Béziers. We woke up with them at our feet in the hostel, and when we got back to our flats in London we found small ones in our pockets and in our shoes.

In the ring there was a man in a chicken costume. He had led the chant that brought the bull out, and in a stadium full of drunk Frenchmen he was the orchestrator of all that followed, jumping over the bull, doing somersaults, lying down in front of the charging animal. We got in on the third round. In one corner the paramedics stood and attended to the previous victims, minor gorings and the like. And in the centre we huddled up and waited, and the bull came.

We scattered and ran. Blood pumped through us and we felt no tiredness at all as we ran laps with the others, fear and excitement together, adrenaline and alcohol. Dust went up as it charged, darting from one end to the other, sending boys tumbling and scrambling back over the barricade.
We ran as a group and found ourselves caught behind the Chickenman, or Le Pollo Homme, as the Spaniards had it. This was our third good decision.
Le Pollo Homme was tired. He was soaked through with water and mud and whatever else, so the suit hung heavy on him and every small movement came out enormous and disgusting. He held his sides and panted.
It made an excellent cover. Too excellent, in fact. It was a human shield.
From the far end of the arena we felt the hooves come down on the sand, and we quickened, because we knew it was coming straight at us. Le Pollo Homme lagged and cursed at us in a drunken mix of Occitan and French. We chuckled. He put his hands on his knees. It was one of those things you do on instinct, almost uncontrollable.
We could count the seconds in our heads. And the bull knew this was it.

Three awful seconds and we held our breath. Imagining the horns catching the lower part of his back, dragging his spine. A ragdoll thrown in the air, crumpling under its own flesh. A stretcher, a tube, the rest of a life.

The third bad decision was Janus stepping in front of the bull.
You would want something to stand on, talking to him. That was the first thing about Janus. His hands were the size of dinner plates and his feet were a size 22, which we did not know then and would not know for years.
Back in London we found his obituary page, and under his name it said he had been a recipient of the O’Neal Foundation. Shaquille O’Neal wears a 22. After games he sent his shoes on to the few thousand men on earth whose feet were the same, because there is nothing on a shelf anywhere that fits them. Janus was one of those men. As far as we know, he never met Shaq. But every day, he had worn his shoes.
He stood in front of the bull and one of the Jordans came off his foot and went up like a meteor and landed in the crowd on the far side.
When the dust cleared he was still standing, and the place went up.
Le Pollo Homme let out a shrieking merde and went over the barricade.
The bull, like all of us, was confused. Have you ever seen a bull confused?
Miura had terrorised Béziers for two seasons. Gorings, a hospital budget that went up year on year. He was fast, and clever, and the thing people said about him was that he could smell fear. The smell-fear rumour is what brought the crowds that year. There were Miura shirts and hats for sale outside the stadium. A local celebrity who knew three things, which were running, fighting and fucking.
He was not just a beast. He was the town’s beast, and the town was proud of him. Now he looked depressed.
And Janus had embarrassed him.
Miura ran headfirst into the wall. The crack came up through the seats. His neck was broken.
The arena went quiet. We had just watched an animal kill itself.

*

For 8am, it was scorching outside. The handcuffs had stayed cool through the night. As free men, we found the sun aggressive and we took off our tops and lay sprawled on the grass. One of us got a beer and ritually, we applied the cool can on the back of our necks and foreheads.
The town was completely deserted. The debris of the party was gone. A statue at a roundabout depicted a lion roaring and Janus rubbed its balls for good luck or something.
We spent the afternoon attending to our very basic needs: drinking light beers, smoking, making small trips to the toilet to shit or puke and staring at cute tourists who walked by. In the haze, we didn’t register that we were surrounded by inflatables. They were replicas of major tourist attractions. There was the Statue of Liberty, the Taj Mahal, a Sphinx and of course Big Ben which felt ominous and dark and scary and we avoided it, not even bearing to crack a joke.
We showered off the pigeon feathers that evening, leaving grime on the edges of the tub. The toilet had its own smell. We had drunk more in the past six hours than at any other point of the trip but our minds could not escape.
We also didn’t talk about what happened. Janus didn’t talk.
Everyone has their story of Janus.
We agreed to meet at L’Ambassade the next day. He winked on his way out. It was the first time he ever did that.
And we fell asleep.
When he didn’t show, we knew we’d never see him again.
In Clerkenwell, an angel appeared with a devious grin.
Fifty-seven days without rain, isn’t that magical?
At 3.30am, the sky opened up and spat water that trickled over London. And so he said again, I love the rain.

I can’t see what trains we’re passing.
We put too much in our eyes and ears.
And thus we entered real life.
We outgrew the years and forgot them.
We forgot ourselves.
They’re playing our favourite song on the speakers.