Now that I can see his body fully, the rest of our physical similarities come fast. He’s the same height, he’s the same build.

But even so, he seems to take up more space than I do.

And even though you can’t see it, you can sense this invisible forcefield around him, and it gives him this power, this authority.

At this rate, I could be standing here all day.

So I walk up to him.

And I say, That looks like an interesting book.

T

HIRTY

-S

EVEN

Me and Erin, we used to take it in turns to go around each other’s houses after college. This was when we were around sixteen.

Erin was this blonde-haired, blue-eyed metalhead, with pale white skin, who was constantly twirling her hair round and round, round and round.

The first day we met she was slacking off in art class, doodling on a piece of paper and rocking backwards and forwards on her chair, while Mr Hallam was talking to us about composition in photography and the golden mean.

When I turned to see what this penduluming thing in my peripheral vision three desks down was, I was smacked in the face with a scrunched-up piece of paper.

The face on me must have been funny, because she was creasing up silently.

Outside, she told me she was sick of her mum and dad fighting all the time.

I told her my dad had cancer.

We’d hang out in our bedrooms, listen to music, watch films.

Spend hours snogging, nothing else. Partly because at least one of our parents was always at home, and partly because I’d never had sex before, and to be honest I’d never even had this kind of thing with a girl before.

I was just amazed she didn’t find me and my slanted eyes ugly.

One afternoon, this was in the summer, just as we were about to finish our first year of college, we’re outside the main building and she says, Hey, my parents are out tonight. Wanna come round?

And I say, Sure.

We ride the bus to her house, and at this point we’ve been going out for a few months already, so we’ve got into a kind of easy rhythm.

She opens the front door, I kick off my shoes, and we go up to her bedroom.

Same as usual.

But after we make out to a soundtrack of Incubus for a little bit, she reaches down my body and grabs my dick, a first for us.

And instead of fist pumping the air and shouting in my head, GET IN THERE MY SON, all I can think of is this article I read in Loaded magazine, illustrated with a bar chart and everything, that ranked guys’ penis lengths by race.

And how the men with the smallest dicks in the world were Asian men.

And I’m thinking, Shit, what if she pulls my trousers and my boxers down and sees what’s under there and laughs?

What if she says, Is that it? So what they say about Asian guys is right, after all.

I’m thinking, How am I ever going to be able to live up to this girl’s expectations?

I’m also thinking, What if I jizz too quick, and all over her duvet and her sheets – how are we gonna clean that up?

And before I know it, I’ve lost my wood. Erin pulls back to look at me.

She says, What’s wrong?

And I say, Nothing. Absolutely nothing is wrong. Everything is fine, I am having an amazing time.

She says, Then why aren’t you hard anymore?

And I say, I think I’m just tired. Do you wanna make out some more?

She says, Let’s just listen to the music, and she cranks up the volume on the stereo before lying down with her hands behind her head.

Cold as a motherfucker, this one.

I think about lying down, squeezing next to her on the single bed, but she looks pissed off, so I just sit there at the end of the bed, listening to an angry song about how it’s nice to know you.

And that is the last time we hang out in her bedroom, or my bedroom, because a couple days later she tells me she doesn’t think it’s working, and I am dumped for Gaz, the knob who wears chunky silver chains around his neck and wrists, and drives a white fucking Vauxhall Nova.

T

HIRTY

-E

IGHT

This? he says, turning the book around to look at the cover. Yeah, it is good.

There’s a story in it, he says, about a dude and his doppelgänger – which I really like.

Even his voice and accent are exactly like mine.

Although the delivery – it’s more assured.

I say, A doppelgänger? Like a double?