Them Is - By Joe Kennedy

He knew it was what they did, them, people grew beards and never bought lager again and dressed serious and gave up Marlboro lights for reds or roll-ups, and then they, them, pretended not to love it and complained. Never directly. Object of ire was always the younger ones, the happy looking girls dressed for hundreds of pounds and the stylish talented-looking young men. They were cunts, the lot of them. And they were all stupid.

Now he was losing track of he, I, them. Them were the young-ones (as he’d heard them described by a reputable man at a party weeks ago when he still felt like one, young-one that is), but weren’t them (or they?) a bunch of beards straggling into ales with old world names and crushing roll-ups under their old smart shoes that they’d hidden under a bed for years and only came out for weddings and agency interviews, if it was a good agency.

Reflects on his own lack of eloquence, waiting for a bus on the Earlham Road. Them (one of them) knew all the words there was to know. The other them were kind of uncauterized, enraptured, speaking in sex. Them said that them’s language had an “erotics”.

He still thinks “erotics” are those books you find under your dad’s bed.

Or when he was with them pretended it was French films with Distel or Fontaine on the soundtrack. How could you set the mood with them?

In eloquence, then, them and them are the same but different.

There was another them, out of all the above circles now, but they had an easy eloquence about them and used words culled from the pub and the pitch and the office. He used to be able to speak like them but he’d been back with them and observing them for too long, so he was starting to speak like a mix of them and them and them but never with the right them and he’d drink the wrong drink when he was with them and smoke the wrong cigarettes when he was with them and get bored when he was with them.

So that was them, and this is now, and them, them and them is now. Honestly, the only hope is a she.