I moved into a room that was more or less identical to the one I’d been staying in, except I treated myself to a sea view and a balcony. And I sat on the balcony for two solid days, staring at the sea view and being introspective. I can’t say that I was particularly inventive in my introspection; the conclusions I drew on the first day were that I’d made a pig’s ear of just about everything, and that I’d be better off dead, and if I died no one would miss me or feel bad about my death. And then I got drunk.
The second day was only very slightly more constructive; having reached the conclusion the previous evening that no one would miss me if I died, I realized belatedly that most of my woes were someone else’s fault: I was estranged from my children because of Cindy, and Cindy was also responsible for the end of my marriage. I made one mistake! OK, nine mistakes. Nine mistakes out of say a hundred opportunities! I got 91 per cent and I still failed the test! I was imprisoned a) due to entrapment, and b) because society’s attitudes to teenage sexuality are outmoded. I lost my job because of the hypocrisy and disloyalty of my bosses. So at the end of the second day, I wanted to kill other people, rather than kill myself, and that’s got to be healthier, surely?
Jess found me on the third day. I was sitting in a cafe reading a two-day-old Daily Express and drinking cafe con leche, and she sat down opposite me.
“Anything about us in there?” she said.
“I expect so,” I said. “But I’ve only read the sport and the horoscopes so far. Haven’t looked at the front page yet.”
“Fun-nee. Can I sit with you?”
“No.”
She sat down anyway.
“What’s all this about, then?”
“All what?”
“This… big sulk.”
“You think I’m sulking?”
“What would you call it, then?”
“I’m sick to death of you.”
“What have we done?”
“Not you plural. You singular. Toi, notvous .”
“Because of the other night?”
“Yes, because of the other night.”
“You just didn’t like me saying you were my dad, did you? You’re old enough to be.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Yeah. So get over it. Take a chill pill.”
“I’m over it. I’ve taken one.”
“Looks like it.”
“Jess, I’m not sulking. You think I moved out of a hotel because you said I was your father?”
“I would.”
“Because you hate him? Or because you’d be ashamed of your daughter?”
“Both.”
This is what happens with Jess. When she thinks you’re withdrawing, she pretends to be thoughtful (and by thoughtful, I mean “self-loathing”, which to me is the only possible outcome of any prolonged thought on her part). I decided I wasn’t going to be taken in.
“I’m not going to be taken in. Get lost.”
“What have I done now? Fucking hell.”
“You’re pretending to be a remorseful human being.”
“What does «remorseful» mean?”
“It means you’re sorry.”
“For what?”
“Go away.”
“For what?”
“Jess, I want a holiday. Most of all, I want a holiday from you.”
“So you want me to get pissed up and take drugs.”
“Yes. I want that very much.”
“Yeah, right. And if I do I’ll get a bollocking.”
“Nope. No bollocking. Just go away.”
“I’m bored.”
“So go and find JJ or Maureen.”
“They’re boring.”
“And I’m not?”
“Which celebrities have you met? Have you met Eminem?”
“No.”
“You have, but you won’t tell me.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
I left some money on the table, got up and walked out. Jess followed me down the street. “What about a game of pool?”
“No.”
“Sex?”
“No.”
“You don’t fancy me?”
“No,”
“Some men do.”
“Have sex with them, then. Jess, I’m sorry to say it, but I think our relationship is over.”
“Not if I just follow you around all day it isn’t.”
“And you think that would work in the long term?”
“I don’t care about the long term. What about what my dad said about looking out for me? And I’d have thought you’d want to. I could replace the daughters you’ve lost. And that way you could find inner peace, see? There are loads of films like that.”
She offered this last observation matter-of-factly, as if it were somehow indicative of the truth of the scenario she’d imagined, rather than the opposite.
“What about the sex you were offering? How would that fit in with you replacing the daughters I’ve lost?”
“This would be a different, you know, thing. Route. A different way to go.”
We passed a ghastly looking bar called “New York City”.
“Thats where I got thrown out for fighting,” said Jess proudly. “They’ll kill me if I try to go in again.”
As if to illustrate the point, a grizzled-looking owner was standing in the doorway with a murderous look on his face.
“I need a pee. Don’t go anywhere.”
I walked into New York City, found a lavatory somewhere in the Lower East Side, put the TV pages of the Express over the seat, sat down and bolted the door. For the next hour or two I could hear her yelling at me through the wall, but eventually the yelling stopped; I presumed she’d gone, but I stayed in there anyway, just in case. It was eleven in the morning when I bolted the door, and three in the afternoon when I came out. I didn’t resent the time. It was that sort of holiday.
JJ
The last band I was in broke up after a show at the Hope and Anchor in Islington, just a few blocks from where my apartment is now. We knew we were breaking up before we went on stage, but we hadn’t talked about it. We’d played in Manchester the night before, to a very small crowd, and on the way down to London we’d all been a little snappy, but mostly just morose and quiet. It felt exactly the same as when you break up with a woman you love—the sick feeling in the stomach, the knowledge that nothing you can say will make any fucking difference—or, if it does, it won’t make any difference for any longer than like five minutes. It’s weirder with a band, because you kind of know that you won’t lose touch with the people the way you lose touch with a girlfriend. I could have sat in a bar with all three of them the next night without arguing, but the band would still have ceased to exist. It was more than the four of us; it was a house, and we were the people in it, and we’d sold it, so it wasn’t ours any more. I’m talking metaphorically here, obviously, because no one would have given us a fucking dime for it.
Anyway, after the show at the Hope and Anchor—and the show had an unhappy intensity to it, like a desperate break-up fuck—we walked into this shitty little dressing room, and sat down in a line, and then Eddie said, “That feels like it.” And he did this thing that was so unlike him, so not just like Eddie: he reached out either side, and took my hand and Jesse’s hand, and squeezed. And Jesse took Billy’s hand, just so that we’d all be joined for one last time, and Billy said, “Fuck you, queer boy,” and stood up real quick, which kind of tells you all you need to know about drummers.
I had only known my holiday companions for a few weeks, but there was the same kind of sick feeling on the way from the hotel to the airport. There was a break-up coming, you could smell it, and no one was saying anything. And it was for the same reason, which was that we’d taken things as far as we could, and there was nowhere for us to go. That’s why everyone breaks up, I guess, bands, friends, marriages, whatever. Parties, weddings, anything.
It’s funny, but when the band split, one of the reasons I felt sick was because I was worried about the other guys. What the fuck were they going to do, you know? None of us were over-qualified. Billy wasn’t real big on reading and writing, if you hear what I’m saying, and Eddie was too, like, pugilistic to hold down a job for long, and Jesse liked his spliff… The one person I had no real concerns about was me. I was going to be OK. I was smart, and stable, and I had a girlfriend, even though I knew I’d miss making music every fucking day of my life, I could still be something and someone without it. So what happens? A few weeks later, Billy and Jesse get a gig with a band back home whose rhythm section had walked out on them, Eddie goes to work for his dad, and I’m delivering pizzas and nearly jumping off a fucking roof.