Three days ago, on a Zoom call from her book-lined office in Kensington, agent Su suggested, as she’d first suggested 11 years ago, when I was sat in the mid-century Danish armchair of that book-lined office in Kensington, and has suggested several times since that reupholstered day, that I should write more about all my years in advertising, given that the recent and first story culled from that time, the one about the skin falling off from my hands and feet, had made it out into the world, online, but still, people had said nice things about it, Su told me, though she wouldn’t, when I asked, tell me specifically who’d done the saying, which made me think that it had been Su’s intern who’d said it, the intern who’d been hired mostly to pick-axe and pressure-hose the fatberg of Su’s slush pile, if being paid in travelcards and meeting leftovers can constitute being hired.
I agreed with Su, you’re right, Su, there is so much to excavate from those advertising years, and I thought Su would be happy, even excited about our accord, back-street buskers of discord as the two of us so often have been, in our decade and more of working together, but she seemed exasperated, Su, stricken, as I added caveats, doubts, as I peered without wanting to seem to peer into the pixels of my screen. I remembered another Zoom, during Berlin’s first lockdown, with Otto Grölk, Creative Director of T/T/B/F.
Otto had Covid, had told us this diagnosis in Slack minutes before our Monday daily stand-up, but when I saw on my laptop this pallid Otto Grölk, this sweaty Otto Grölk, this normally so composed but on my retina display utterly dishevelled Otto Grölk, I felt a kind of pity akin to that which I feel for the impetigo-pocked, abscessed and amputated heroin addicts of Berlin’s south-eastern districts, then he coughed, Otto Grölk, with barely a token fist, a tissue paper manhole cover of a barrier, and every one of us tiled across that Zoom wall flinched or ducked as if teleported goggleless into some frantic paintball shoot-out. And then I thought of Dimitri Demopoulos, Senior Full-Stack Engineer, actual angel, who asked, in another Zoom call during that same fraught period, if anyone would mind if he smoked.
As she began to two-finger rub her forehead, I suspected that Su might have forgotten her camera was on, or was beyond care that it remained so, as I continued to explain, as I had 11 years before, as I had those several times since, that while I agree with her, that readers really could be drawn to that particular world, as she always referred to it, it just takes me so long, to process things, to get over them enough that I can write about them, to then work out what the meanings or textures might be, rubbing like she’d accidentally smeared oil from the chain of an old and unloved bicycle across her forehead and was determined to use those same two fingers to rub it away, the oil, and I wanted, as I often want with Su, for Su, when I witness the effect that I’m having on her, to tell her that it’s okay, it’s okay if you want to ditch me, Su, I would not just understand, Su, I would support your decision to offload me, like some troublesome asylum seeker on the hard shoulder of an A-road barely a mile from Felixstowe, not even at the nearest service station, Su, picking me up was already beneficence itself, and you seem so intensely triggered, Su, ever more so every time we speak, and even when I tried to balm my own head with the idea that she might have other things going on in her life, all those blood and money debacles that dictate and devastate every waking and sleeping hour of ourselves, your triggers only trigger mine, Su, we are a catastrophe of misaligned Jägerbombs, a house of cards constructed in an overly-fracked postcode with critical subsidence, my balloon animal traumas are the tango partners to your prickly pear traumas, and yet together, Su, in lieu even of a contract, we remain trapped in this clumsy choreography, ocho, parada, barrida, Su, so if you need for your own sake to just shove me away then do it, Su. Via a ChatGPT-written email. As a comment in a Word document. In a strip of WhatsApp emojis, a printed letter, I’ll buy a fax machine, Su, I support you and will always and forever believe in your insights, your edits, your career, the ebullience and consequence of your stable.
Needing to speak, I spoke, you’re right though, you’re right, Suhana Whiteside-Fahey, you almost always are, perhaps not that time, I didn’t say, you suggested the protagonist in my first failed novel should reach up with her spray-can and show some belly, some body, some skin, I can’t remember which word you used now, Su, but you saw my reaction, we were sat among the limp daisies and crumpled Pret wrappers of Kensington Gardens, you saw my face and never went there again, even though I suspected then, more so now, that you might have been right, and so what I told Su, three days ago, in that most recent Zoom call was yes, Su, I will, I will write another story about the butchery and havoc of my time in advertising, and I go on to tell her again the idea I’ve had about writing a campus novel, I’ve outlined my thoughts on this a few times now, have done nothing about it, she probably suspects I never will, she’s so wise, Su, she really should leave me, I felt like her mood, her agitation, as she kneaded the frontal bone of her skull, must be affecting the many plants around her book-lined office – I believed I could see, as she rubbed, rubbed, the wilting of the peace lily on her desk as if irradiated – but I explained again that I might get to, will really try my very best to write a novel, or at least a novel-sized collection of connected stories, which seem very popular at the moment, that will position the advertising agency as a form of campus, I repeated, because there’s a market for you, Su, something for all those readers who love the Tartts and the Taylors, the Amises and the Coetzees.
Because an agency is a contained world in the way that a university is, I repeated for Su, with its ID card-enforced borders, the intrigues and back-stabbings of its microcosmical politics, the argots and castes of the various departments, from venerated creatives to condescended receptionists, proletarian studio producers to the lordly C-suite, that belief, shared by most within the agency, that what they’re doing is important, has meaning, informs and inflects culture, while the rest of the population considers them, when they consider them at all, a gaggle of pretentious wankers who wear ridiculous clothes and should get a proper job.
Su nodded, seemed to be soothed by my intentions, ceased rubbing her head, though she looked hungry, I felt guilty about the ras el hanout-spiced cous-cous, Ottolenghi, which I’d been picking at, pushed it further out of shot, remembered as I did so a meeting with Nokia, 2007, one of the first meetings held over their new Halo-System, five of us from A.R.T. sat around a half boardroom table in Spitalfields, four from the Nokia team sat around a matching half table in Espoo, all of us gawping at each other through those giant connected screens, and just after the meeting started, our new Account Manager, Gabriella de Holza, reached for a Diet Coke that was on the Finland side of things, and we could barely keep it together, took the piss all afternoon in the office, over pints in the Golden Heart, even though the teasing seemed to be getting to her, Gabriella, who’d been with us for only a few weeks, who would be one of the first to be sacked, along with 40% of the agency, when we lost the Nokia account three months later.
I remembered why Su had arranged our Zoom, told her again that yes, yes she should feel free to send the story about the skin of my hands and feet falling off to Nicholas Royle, why not, I thanked her again for all her support and she started kneading her head again, and so I said thank you, Su, I’ll let you get back to it then, haha, I bet it’s busy right now, haha, what with Frankfurt coming up, ha, of course it’s busy, anyway, here I go, back to the grindstone, and you to yours, ha, sorry, yes, I will, and same to yours, I hope he’s – yes, bye, yes, bye, yeah, yeah, no, of course, haha, okay, bye then ciao-ciao, ha, bye.
And here three days later – I had to drink after that, what else could I do – here only three days later we are and I’ve started the next story from that particular world, I’ve made this introduction far too long, over-explaining, as always, never getting to the point, as always, but the conniving Berlin bonobo in me, the Bleckley jackal of me looks back over the above and thinks you know what, Jackson, fuck it, there are 1,300 words here, and you’ve already mentioned the Nokia / Halo thing, and that’s an advertising story, plus the idea of a book about an ad agency being a campus, that’s two things, I could add in Otto, that’s 1,500 words, and Dimitri, I’ve remembered Gabriella’s name, a bit more about Otto, Espoo, 1,600, 1,700, and people always are telling me to rein it in, to fling fewer ideas at the reader, and I’ve no handle on plot at the best of times, I don’t believe in it, texture and style, gravity and light, blood and money and fucking, that’s all we need, stories are for children, and I agree with all these fanciful animals that this is story enough, I’m calling it, I’ll get to the weeks of work-induced vomiting in the next one, I’m done, I’m so done, and I’m sorry, Su, I really have no idea at all how to write a novel, but I hope you are doing well and this is for you and I hope you found room for the parlour palm I sent in your book-lined office, your really quite lovely office just off the Kensington High Street.
Martin Jackson is a UK-born, Germany-based writer of poetry, fiction, and art texts. His short fiction can be found in Stand [forthcoming, 2024], The Lincoln Review, The London Magazine, Hotel, and as part of the Unreal Estates project.
minor literature[s] 