I’d only seen him like two months before, so of course I remembered him. And I went, No, and laughed, which was supposed to be a joke, but which couldn’t have come across as a joke, because then he goes, still in this whispery voice, I’m Colin Wearing, and I used to teach you at art college. And I go, Yeah, yeah, and he goes, No, I am, and then I see that he thought my Yeah, yeah was like Yeah, right, but it wasn’t that sort of Yeah, yeah. All I was doing with the two Yeahs was trying to tell him that I’d only been joking before, but I only made it worse. I made it look like I thought he was pretending to be Colin Wearing, which would be an utterly insane thing to do. So the whole conversation is going right off course. It’s like a supermarket trolley with a wonky wheel, because all the time I’m thinking, this should be easy to push along, and everything I say just takes me in the wrong direction.
And he goes, Why are you here, sitting on the path? And I tell him that I’d had a row with my fucking mother about some earrings, and he was like, And now you can’t go home? And I said that I could if I wanted to. I could just get on the Northern Line back to Angel and then jump on a bus. But I didn’t want to. And he went, Well, I don’t think you should sit here. Is there anywhere you can go? And then I realized that he thought I had turned into like a nutter, so I stood up quickly, which made him jump, and I gave him a mouthful and walked away.
But then I did think, as opposed to swear mentally. And the first thing I thought was that it would be very easy for me to be a nutter. I’m not saying it would be a piece of piss, living that life—I don’t mean that. I just mean that I had a lot in common with some of the people you see sitting on pavements swearing and rolling cigarettes. Some of them seemed to hate people, and I hated just about everyone. They must have pissed off their friends and family, and I’d pretty much done that. And who knows whether Jen’s a nutter now? Maybe it runs in the genes, although with my dad being a junior Education minister, maybe it’s one of those things that skips a generation.
And I didn’t know where all this thinking was leading to, but I could see suddenly that I was in more trouble than I had thought. I know that sounds stupid, considering I’d thought about killing myself, but that was all just for a laugh, and if I’d jumped it would have been for a laugh, too. What if I had a future on this planet, though? What then? How many people could I piss off, and how many places could I run away from, before I found myself sitting by the river and swearing externally 4 real? Not many more, was the answer.
So the thing to do was to go back—to Starbucks, or home, to somewhere—anywhere that wasn’t forward. If you’re walking somewhere, and you come up against a brick wall, then you have to retrace your steps.
But then I sort of found a way of climbing over the wall. Or I found a little hole in the wall I could crawl through, or whatever. I met this geezer with a really nice dog, and I went and slept with him instead.
JJ
So I just stood there on the sidewalk and told Ed to take a swing at me if it would make him feel any better.
“I don’t want to hit you unless you hit me,” he said.
There was a guy selling that homeless magazine standing watching us.
“Hit him,” he said to me.
“You shut the fuck up,” said Ed.
“I was only trying to get things started,” said the homeless guy.
“You flew across the bloody Atlantic because JJ was in trouble,” Lizzie said to Ed. “And now look at you. One conversation and you want to punch him.”
“Things have to go the way they have to go,” said Ed.
“Is that like «A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do»? Because it sounds utterly meaningless to us, I’m afraid,” said Lizzie. She was leaning against the window of a thrift shop, making out like she was bored, but I knew she wasn’t. She was angry too, but she didn’t want to show it.
“He’s on my side,” said Ed. “So it doesn’t matter what it sounds like to you. He understands.”
“No I don’t,” I said. “Lizzie’s right. Why would you come all this way to punch me?”
“It’s a Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid thing, surely?” said Lizzie. “You want to sleep with each other, but you can’t, because you’re both so straight.”
This really tickled the homeless guy. He laughed like a hyena. “Did you ever read Pauline Kael on Butch Cassidy ! God, she hated it,” he said.
Neither Lizzie nor Ed would have had a fucking clue who Pauline Kael was, but I got two or three of her collections. I used to keep them by the toilet, because they’re great for dipping into when you’re on the can. Anyway, hers wasn’t a name I was necessarily expecting to hear from that particular guy at that particular moment. I looked at him.
“Oh, I know who Pauline Kael is,” he said. “I wasn’t born homeless, you know.”
“I really, really don’t want to sleep with him,” said Ed. “I really want to punch him. But he has to punch me first.”
“You see?” said Lizzie. “Homo-erotic, with a bit of sado-masochism thrown in. Just kiss him, and be done with it.”
“Kiss him,” the homeless guy said to Ed. “Kiss him or punch him. But let’s get something going, for God’s sake.”
Ed’s ears couldn’t have gotten any redder, so I was wondering whether they might just burst into flame and then turn black. At least then I could say that I’d seen something new.
“You trying to get me killed?” I said to her.
“Why don’t you just get back together?” said Lizzie. “At least you’ve got all that mike-sharing and those great big electric penis substitutes.”
“Oh, so that’s why you didn’t want him to be in a band,” said Ed. “You were jealous.”
“Who said I didn’t want him to be in a band?” Lizzie asked him.
“Yeah, you got that dead wrong, Ed,” I said. “She wasn’t that deep. She dumped me precisely because I wasn’t in a band. She wasn’t interested in being with me unless I became a rock star and made a shitload of money.”
“Is that what you think I meant?” said Lizzie.
I could suddenly see my life being put back together before my eyes. It had all been a terrible misunderstanding, which was now about to be cleared up, with much laughter and many tears. Lizzie never wanted to break up with me. Ed never wanted to break up with me. I’d come out on to the sidewalk to get my ass kicked, and instead, I was going to get everything I ever wanted.
“There isn’t going to be a fight, is there?” said the homeless guy sadly.
“Unless we all beat the shit out of you,” said Ed.
“Just let me hear the end of this,” said the homeless guy. “Don’t go back inside. I never get the fucking ending of a story, stuck out here.”
It was going to be a happy ending, I could feel it coming. And it was going to involve all four of us. The first show we played when we got back together, we could dedicate a song to Homeless Guy. Hey—he could maybe even be our road manager. Plus, he could make one of the toasts at the wedding. “Everyone should get back with everyone,” I said, and I meant it. This was my big closing speech. “Every band that has ever come apart, every couple . . There’s too much unhappiness in the world as it is, without people splitting up every ten seconds.”
Ed looked at me as if I had gone nuts.
“You’re not serious,” said Lizzie.
Maybe I’d misjudged the mood and the moment. The world wasn’t ready for my big closing speech.
“Naaah,” I said. “Well. You know. It’s just… an idea I had. A theory I was working on. I hadn’t ironed out all the kinks in it, yet.”
“Look at his face,” said Homeless Guy. “Oh, he’s serious, all right.”