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Fiction

Me, me, me?

Benjamin George Coles finds himself.

So I saw a guy on the bus who looked uncannily like me. Really exactly like me, in fact. I was kind of freaked out. What do you do in that situation? I think if I’d been in a better place mentally, or even just a bit more in the habit of talking to people, I would have approached the guy, remarked on the bizarre extent of our resemblance, maybe asked a few friendly questions. But I happened to be sitting at the back of the bus, and he was near the middle and hadn’t noticed me, and it was easier to just stay put, keep my head down, and stare at him as he got off by the town hall.

Then I saw a few more of them about – guys who looked exactly like me. One passed me in the street. I noticed him first because of his extraordinarily flamboyant clothing: purple bell bottoms and a tight, yellow V-neck, plus an orange, tie-dyed headband and a large dandelion behind one ear. He was on the phone and seemed irritated. Another doppelganger I found in the supermarket, looking through the ready meals section, this time dressed (mercifully) in a fairly standard suit. Then there were the two in the bar, deep in conversation over beers… I didn’t even notice what they were wearing, I just quietly left.

I did some research, and found there’s a company in South Korea that’s mass-producing me now. I won’t deny I was a bit perturbed upon making this discovery; but, well, I’m a fairly chill guy, and I didn’t have much get-up-and-go back then; and anyway, what can you do?

Of course I felt differently after my on-again-off-again girlfriend started dating one of them – although, in her defence, we were very definitely off again at that point. And then my acquiescence was tested yet further when I was sacked from my soul-destroying IT job and I found out a few weeks later that they’d employed one in my place! Then, not long after that, my parents arranged to go on holiday with one of them! Well, that really was the last straw.

I wrote a furious email to that company in South Korea. I didn’t get a reply. To be honest, I was rather rude. I wouldn’t have replied to such an email either.

For a while I had forlorn fantasies of leading the many mes on a great trip to Seoul to protest outside the company’s HQ, MLK-style. It was never gonna happen. How we would raise the money to get us all out there was one question; but also, the others didn’t show signs of being particularly discontented in their lives… So instead I just sort of moped about.

I was moping down by the quay on one occasion, and one of them jogged past me. He was kitted out in all the proper jogging gear, and he looked in great shape. I suppose I got a bit of a buzz from that – seeing myself looking so trim. So I called after him. Turned out he was serious about football – serious in a way I’d never been, despite my love of the game. I mean, he was a pro, had made it as far as the third division, and was playing centre mid for a club that was pushing for promotion. I’d always played centre mid too. Out of interest, I went along to one of his games. He absolutely bossed it, man. I went along to another, then another. Soon I was in with the ultras, happily screaming abuse at opposition players.

It was around then that I started receiving government benefits on mental health grounds, which meant I didn’t have the worry of finding work. So yeah, a space sort of opened up in my life, and I filled it with… well, with me, I guess. Ha ha. I mean I got interested in what all these other mes were up to. I started talking to them whenever I saw them. There was a me – one of the first ones I approached – who was doing a PhD in entomology. I didn’t even know what entomology was: the study of insects, apparently. This guy could talk for hours about how much we have to learn from termites. There was a paramedic me! Who, as he liked to emphasise and repeat a little more than was perhaps strictly necessary, saved lives day-in-day-out. Though I have to say he had an alarming habit of getting drunk whenever off duty – which I think explained, in part, that rather boastful streak.

I tracked down that flamboyantly dressed me. Wasn’t too difficult. He was running a struggling Sixties-themed café called Across the Universe. Part of the deal there was you were only allowed in if you were wearing flowers in your hair. I admired how he stuck with that policy, even though it cost him much-needed business. Then there was an accountant me, who, in his free time, worked with this group disrupting illegal fox hunts at country estates. You should have seen him, charging down gun-toting horse-riding plutocrats armed with nothing but a camera phone! When I asked him why he was an accountant, of all things, he said, “What can I say, I love numbers, it’s like doing sudoku puzzles for a living.” That made a lot of sense to me. Who doesn’t love a good sudoku? Oh, and there was an Uber driver me who also did early morning shifts at a bakery. He was a single father, struggling to provide for his three kids, who were simply the sweetest bunch you ever met. All doing so well at school and so supportive of their dad! Sometimes the oldest one would go and do the early bakery shift in his place – and she was only fifteen. Looked a lot like me, too.

And there was a tour guide me! And he was rubbish! Absolute rubbish! I kid you not. I went on one of his tours of the town centre: he had half his facts wrong, and hardly told any of the great stories about the plague years and the civil war and all that. He wouldn’t have got away with it if the other members of the tour group weren’t all clueless foreigners. I approached him about it afterwards, and he was initially quite angry and defensive, but then he changed tone, almost broke down, in fact, and said it wasn’t his bag at all, local history – he just couldn’t get any other job. I felt for the guy. I took him to the pub and started telling him some of the ghost stories about the old hospital building that’s now an upmarket apartment complex. We’ve kind of made a regular thing of it since then. We’ll meet up once or twice a week, and I’ll try to convey some bits of local folklore or trivia to him. He thinks I have it all in my head, but truth be told, I often do a bit of research in advance. And you know, I’ve always been an early riser, so I’ve also taken to sometimes helping out with the bakery shift for Uber driver me; or sometimes even, now that I’ve got the hang of it, just doing it myself – I mean, when it’s the daughter who turns up, I of course tell her to go home, get a bit more shut-eye before school. And from the bakery it seems natural enough to go on to Across the Universe with a batch of fresh rolls and pastries – which have, I think, started drawing a few more brunch customers, who thankfully seem more up for the flowers-in-your-hair thing than the after-work crowd. I’ve been introduced to so much great hippy music through that place. If you don’t know Tim Buckley’s second album Goodbye and Hello already, do yourself a favour, give it a listen! I tell you, they knew how to make music in those days.

I’m also trying to help the paramedic me get off the bottle. Feels like that should be a priority. I’ve tried various things – took him to a bunch of football games, an entomology conference, and on a couple of outings with the hunt-disrupting group. That’s the biggest winner so far. It appeals to the hero in him, I suppose. And he and accountant me have hit it off pretty well. In fact, paramedic me is also into his sudoku, and, in the back of the minibus on the way back from a disruption last weekend I had the two of them race to see who could finish five of the things first. I swear accountant me had it by only a matter of seconds in the end.

I recently bumped into my old girlfriend and the me she effectively left me for. We ended up having dinner together, the three of us, and by the end of it, I’d realised he’s probably a better fit for her. Certainly he’s a decent enough chap. At times, it was quite touching, seeing the way they were together. There was a lightness between them that maybe my poor mental health had made impossible with me.

Perhaps seeking some comfort, I went to visit my parents the next day. They were really sweet, and I think a bit less clingy and passive aggressive than they’ve been at times in the past. It appears that, serendipitously, the shamefully small amount of time I give them, and the small amounts of time various other mes give them, add up to about the level of contact with their son that they want. They asked about my search for a new job. I laughed. Told them I’m fucking crazy, thank God: no work for me. And anyway my benefits are supplemented by occasional tips I’m getting as business picks up at Across the Universe. Yeah, Mum didn’t appreciate the curse word or the criminally undeclared income for that matter, but what can you do?

I found myself writing another email to South Korea the other day, this time essentially expressing my gratitude. It’s amazing how transformative their work has been in my life. I’m meeting new mes all the time – getting to know them, lending a hand where I can. I find I enjoy that, and it almost invariably leads to a hand being lent in return sooner or later. And now, occasionally, I’m even helping out non-mes.

Didn’t get a response to that email either. But writing it felt like an important milestone for me. I’m a lot happier than I was before.

Benjamin George Coles’ essays have appeared in The Philosopher, Film International and Bright Lights Film Journal, while his short stories have appeared in The London Magazine, Hobart, Erotic Review and Every Day Fiction, as well as in Italian translation in Turchese. He won the 2022 Crème Fraîche screenwriting competition at the Luxembourg City Film Festival, and his winning entry was turned into the 2023 short film A Place to Be.