How to Build a Girl

  ‘Heya, Johan!’ he says, making room for me. ‘Good night?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, sitting next to him.

  I like us sitting together like this. When I was younger, I was Dadda’s Shopping Companion. He liked to be in the supermarket early, before anyone else was around, so we’d sit on the wall outside, waiting for it to open, and he’d tell me stories about what his life was like when he was a little boy, in a Shropshire village, with seven brothers and sisters.

  ‘There was no benefits then,’ he’d say, as we sat and waited – a teenage boy in a tabard rounding up last night’s abandoned trolleys from the car park, with a thunderous rattle. ‘The parish would come round and assess your needs, and if you had any furniture that could be sold – bang! Your parish money was gone. So when you got the knock on the door, your nanna would stall them at the door, and all the kids would grab the chairs and the tables, and go down the bottom of the garden and hand them over the wall, to the neighbours. And they’d do the same when the parish knocked on their doors. The whole street lumping mattresses over fences when the knock came. It would have looked fucking funny from an airplane. All this furniture, constantly emigrating, ahead of trouble.’

  ‘There must have been a great sense of community,’ I said, earnestly, swinging my legs in the early sun.

  ‘Oh no – it was fucking horrible,’ Dadda said, cheerfully. ‘The war had just finished, and half the men in the village were shell-shocked and on the beers. Men used to knock their missuses around, and no one would say anything. “I’ve walked into a door,” they’d say, with a black eye, at the butchers. It was grim, Johan. Everyone was a lot harder, back then. At school, the nuns would hit you with a ruler if you were left-handed.’

  ‘Did they hit you?’

  ‘Yeah! I was an angelic little thing. I was fucking gorgeous, love. And they’d have you up in front of the whole school – five whacks on the left palm – so you couldn’t hold your pencil in it any more. Fucking cows.’

  I think about Dadda’s handwriting. He writes with his right hand now, and we’ve always made fun of the spidery, slopey script, with the occasional backwards letter. One of his favourite things about being diagnosed disabled is that he doesn’t have to sign his full signature – ‘Just an X! Like a fucking spy!’

  ‘That’s why I ran away and joined the band,’ he said. ‘Get out of that poxy little place. I came back six months later in flares out to here, and my hair down to my arse, with the rest of the band. We came back with hashish pipes from Turkey, and incense from London. Blew everyone’s minds. They made the bass-player eat his tea sitting on the porch roof.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was black. They’d never seen a spade in Shropshire before.’

  ‘Where was he from?’ I asked.

  ‘Bilston,’ Dadda replied.

  I loved these conversations with Dadda. These stories of this utterly foreign place – here, right here, but twenty-five years before. So recent, but feeling as if it were nearer to medieval times than 1993, with its violent nuns, priests giving out money, hunger, rats, war and fear of dark-skinned men. It gave me the powerful sense that everything that made my world – benefits, multi-culturalism, rock ’n’ roll, even writing with your left hand – were quite recent inventions – a world so new, we’d only just torn the wrapping-paper off. I saw what an achievement it was – the will of a small, countable number of men and women, who wrote, and thought, and marched, and sang. If you’d killed the right 200 people, this future would never have come at all. Perhaps this future had come so late because, previously, they had killed the right 200 people – over and over, through history.

  Whenever Dadda tells me the stories of what it was like when he was young, I shiver again in relief and glee that I am here, now. I do not think I would have been me at any other time. I would not have been allowed. I know what happens to girls like me, in history. They are hard-handed, oily and unperfumed in manual labour. They drudge so hard they look fifty at thirty. I would have been in a factory, or a field, with no books, or music, or trains down to London. I would have been one of a million sad cattle, standing in the rain, wholly unrecorded. I would not have been trouble, in my top hat, in London.

  I let out a small, sympathetic ‘Mooooo’ to the Johanna of the sixteenth century.

  ‘You what, kid?’ Dadda says. I remember where I am: drunk, in the garden.

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just glad I’m here,’ I say, putting my head on his shoulder.

  ‘Kidder, we got to make a plan, yeah?’ Dadda says, kissing the top of my head, and rolling another ciggie. ‘Your mum’s on the warpath. We got a letter from the DHSS today. They’ve finished their in-vest-i-gation, and they are keeping the benefits as they are.’

  ‘Brilliant!’ I say. ‘Oh, thank God!’

  ‘No,’ Dadda says. ‘Keeping them as they are now. Cut.’

  ‘Why? Did they say why?’ Oh, please let it not be my fault.

  ‘Nah,’ he says, shiftily. ‘Just … one of them, innit. They found out they were over-paying us. So we are brassic.’

  ‘I can give you more money!’ I say. ‘If I don’t do the savings. Savings are stupid. We need the money now.’

  ‘Your mum’s not having that,’ Dadda says. ‘So we’ve got to box clever. We’re a family – we can’t depend on you. It’s not fair on you for a start, babba. Nah – we got to utilise our assets. Which is – me and you. You write about music. I make it.’

  He pauses, and lights his fag.

  ‘You’ve got to get me in there, kid. Get me a break. Get me in that paper. And we’ll be millionaires by Christmas.’

  Because I’m pissed, and I love him, and I’m excited about living in the twentieth century, I hug him.

  ‘It’s a deal,’ I say. And we shake on it.

  SEVENTEEN

  As I’m now a regular on the D&ME, Jiffy bags start arriving at the house – ten, fifteen, twenty a day. Every record released in Britain is being delivered to my house – the postman sweating, his bag newly pregnant with parcels. Where once the rattle of the post box meant only red bills and the threat of brown envelopes from the council, these tiny posts are now drowned out by CDs, seven-inches, twelve-inches and white, pre-release cassettes. It feels like Christmas, every day. It’s raining music.

  I gather them all in the washing-basket and take them to my room and listen to them, splitting them into two piles: ones I love, and therefore will not allow myself to write about (DON’T BE A FAN), and ones I can tear to bits in amusingly vituperative broadsides, against whichever bunch of foolhardy chancers are trying to waste the time and money of Britain’s youth.

  Three weeks into this new bounty, I go to the toilet halfway through an album, and come back to find an unexpected visitor in my room: Krissi. He’s sitting on floor, looking through the washing-basket.

  ‘Helloa,’ I say.

  This is a surprising development – Krissi has not set foot in my bedroom since SatanWankGate. Indeed, he hasn’t really talked to me since SatanWankGate – not even when I tried to jolly the situation along by referring to it as ‘SatanWankGate’. When I did that, he just put his Ready Brek down, sighed, and left the room.

  Another sad corollary of ‘SatanWankGate’ is that I’ve stopped being able to think of Satan while I wank. I now irrevocably associate The Great Lucifer with Krissi being tetchy – and that’s scary.

  ‘Hello, repulsive,’ Krissi replies, still looking through the washing basket.

  ‘What are you–’

  ‘Have you got any Bee Gees?’ Krissi asks.

  ‘I think there’s a Best Of over there …’ I say, pointing to my shelves: plank and bricks, like in Krissi’s room; but where he has seedlings, I have hundreds and hundreds of CDs. I stare at him as he wanders over.

  ‘I was watching Grease again yesterday, and remembered what a tune it is,’ Krissi says, examining the shelves. ‘I need some Grease.’

  I get the album out, and hold it near the stereo – shall I?
Krissi nods, and I put it on while he carries on rifling through the shelves.

  ‘And have you got any Velvet Underground?’ he says, as the ultra-slick, ultra-tight swoon of Grease fills the room, and I start hitch-hiking in the corner.

  ‘Well, they haven’t released anything recently, since they broke up in 1973 – so I’d have to ask for it,’ I say.

  ‘I’m aware they’re no longer touring,’ Krissi says, witheringly. ‘I had noted them not appearing on Going Live! recently, being back-announced by Gordon the Gopher.’

  ‘Gordon the Gopher couldn’t back-announce them – he’s mute.’

  ‘He could gesture,’ Krissi says, making a pile of CDs on my desk. ‘He could … point at Lou Reed.’

  ‘So – you’re into music, then?’ I say, lying casually on the bed.

  ‘I’ve always been into music, you div,’ Krissi says. I have a sudden flashback again to us doing ‘Sex Crime’ by the Eurythmics. On Boxing Day. For Fat Nanna. Before she died. He’s got a point. ‘Just different stuff from you. I’ve been going to the library too.’

  ‘OoooooOOoooooh, whatcha get?’ I ask. ‘Hey – you’re not the one who pre-ordered the Smashing Pumpkins album before me, are you? I’m still waiting for it.’

  ‘I eschew the Smashing Pumpkins,’ Krissi said. ‘You can’t do anything with it.’

  ‘What do you do with music?’

  ‘Dance,’ Krissi says. ‘The KLF, and Pet Shop Boys, and Public Enemy, and Ice T, and NWA.’

  ‘The hip-hop? You like the hip-hop? How do you know about the hip-hop?’

  ‘I read.’

  ‘You read the D&ME? Do you read my stuff?’

  This is an insanely exciting development. Krissi has never, once, referred to my job. The idea that he’s been secretly reading me for months fills me with joy – I feel like Bruce Wayne when Vicki Vale casually mentions she fancies Batman.

  ‘No, I don’t read the Dame,’ Krissi says, dismissively. ‘No offence, but it’s massively wanky – like sitting in a sixth-form common room with a dozen wannabe Fonzes, arguing over the stereo. I like music, Johanna. I read fanzines. I like Thank You.’

  Thank You is the Midlands’ premiere fanzine, written by ZZ Top – the one he runs on the side, that got him his job with the Dame in the first place. It’s 50p, and the latest edition has a thrilled, speeding, 2,000-word analysis of Ice T’s O.G. Original Gangster, which concludes that this is ‘Sour, furious, militarised funk – as if Bootsy Collins had been in a high-speed police-chase pile up, and emerged from the wreckage with his flares and fro burnt from his body, holding a machine gun, ready for warfare.’

  ZZ only writes about people he likes. Apart from Sting, with whom he has a long-running imaginary feud. ZZ writes like a fan. This is why he is still the lowliest writer on the Dame. I once heard Kenny refer to him, dismissively, as ‘the groupie’.

  ‘Thank You? No, thank you,’ he’d said, before laughing hysterically, and giving ZZ another tuppeny ha’penny shit-hole indie gig in Derby to review.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, now, to Krissi. I don’t really know how to respond. It had never occurred to me that I might not be my brother’s favourite writer. It’s a bit of an awkward moment. I consider apologising for SatanWankGate again, just for something to say – but Krissi, sensing it’s all become a bit sensitive, fixes me with a stare, and points at me, dramatically: ‘Staying Alive’ has come on.

  Krissi starts dancing towards me in a showy disco-jog. Still a bit hurt, I do vague, place-holding ‘Disco Fingers’ at him.

  Krissi reaches past me, and turns the light off. This is what we used to do when we were younger – have Dark Discos. Turn off all the lights and dance to Stevie Wonder’s Hotter Than July in the black-out, so that we could dance as dramatically as we wanted, without the embarrassment of seeing each other’s flailing limbs, and hopelessly unfunky bum-shakes.

  I will always dance in the dark with Krissi. He always has my dance-card filled. In less than thirty seconds, he funks me into a corner. By the green glow of the stereo light I find my bottle of MD 20/20, take a swig and offer it to Krissi – he pauses for a minute, and then takes a shot.

  ‘GARRRRRGH!’ he falsettos.

  ‘YAHHHH!’ I falsetto back.

  We dance and drink all the way through ‘Night Fever’, ‘Jive Talkin’’ and ‘Tragedy’, and then collapse onto the bed for ‘I’ve Got To Get A Message To You’, sweaty, and a bit pissed.

  ‘God, the Bee Gees are so gay,’ I say, in between singing the words. I’m lolling against Krissi the way we used to when we were very little – like puppies on a blanket. ‘I’d love to have a gay friend. I wonder if there’s anyone gay in Wolverhampton. I guess they’d probably be shot.’

  Krissi stiffens a bit, on the bed, then gives a huge sigh.

  ‘Isn’t Kenny gay? At the magazine?’ he says. ‘Isn’t he your friend?’

  I consider Kenny for a minute. Kenny, in his cut-off jogging-bottoms, doing his horrible sulphate, and secretly listening to Yes.

  ‘He’s the wrong kind of gay for me,’ I say.

  At that point, the lights suddenly come on, and Dadda comes into the room, furious.

  ‘What are you, thumping around like fucking heffalumps? The twins are trying to get to sleep,’ he says, staring at us on the bed.

  He takes in the stereo, and me lying on Krissi, and the bottle of MD 20/20 in my hand.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ he says – anger immediately dissipating. He puts out his hand towards me.

  ‘Corkage.’

  I pathetically try to hide the bottle of MD 20/20 under my jacket, but his hand remains out. I give him the bottle, and he knocks it back like a pro.

  ‘That looks like about 15 per cent,’ he says, holding up the bottle to the light and evaluating the new, low level. Then he takes another swig.

  ‘Plus tip, of course,’ he says, handing the bottle back.

  He comes and sits on the bed, making us shuffle up, and then takes the bottle back off me.

  ‘And VAT,’ he says, having another sip. There’s hardly any left.

  ‘So, what you doing?’ he says, looking at the CDs and Jiffy bags all over the floor.

  ‘Sorting out the post-bag,’ I say. ‘Being a rock critic. Those are the winners,’ I point to one pile, ‘and those are the losers, whom I smite.’

  Dadda looks at the pile of Jiffy bags, rather oddly. I can’t work out what his expression means, for a moment, and then I think: these are exactly like the ones he’s been sending off to London – only for them to be returned, with polite rejection notes: ‘Dear PAT MORRIGAN, Thank you for submitting to us for deliberation, but unfortunately …’

  There’s a long pause.

  ‘I’m going to review you soon, Dadda,’ I say. ‘Just got to choose my moment.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dadda says, nodding. ‘You’ve got to choose your moment. It’s all about timing. The rhythms of the universe. Wheels within wheels.’

  I look at him. His eyes are pinned. He’s clearly had quite a lot of his medicine today.

  EIGHTEEN

  It’s just … I’m kind of busy doing other things. With my mouth. Two months later, and I’ve got off with Tony Rich six times. The last is back at his flat, where I ‘crash’ for the night: three long, slow, wet hours kissing by the light of his computer which glows, green, in the corner – showing a half-written essay on My Bloody Valentine, until I climb on top of him, and put his face into shadow.

  He won’t fuck me that night, as he’s ‘kind of seeing someone’, but the ‘someone’ has gone by the next time I come down to London:

  ‘I’m single, now,’ he says, in the pub, after the editorial meeting, before pulling me outside and kissing me in the hot summer doorway. When I look up, half the editorial staff are looking out of the window, and cheering sarcastically. I wave like the Queen, and Rich gives them a V sign, before we start kissing again, and they eventually lose interest and melt away.

  We go back inside, and try to re-join the conver
sation – but we’re both so fuck-drunk it gradually becomes untenable: his hands are on my thigh, under my skirt, and sitting next to him, leaning against him, I can feel his heart booming under his shirt.

  ‘Don’t you think we should leave the pandas to breed in private?’ Kenny asks the table, eventually, when my dilated pupils and Rich’s increasingly distracted answers make it clear we’re not really capable of socialising right now.

  I take Rich by the hand and take him outside again, and this, now, is amazing kissing. This is not like The Kisser. This is … thrilling. Rich’s mouth is so huge and billowy – it’s like an endless feast, a banquet of man that I have finally been invited to. He’s kissing me in a way that could save the lives of the dying. He has my face in his hands, and there’s a lazy, urgent joy in the way he moves – I’m pretty sure there can’t ever have been any kissing better than this. There can’t ever have been any kissing before. We are inventing it, in these last ten minutes. If you follow all the kissing in the world upstream, you will, eventually, end up here – in the doorway of a pizza place opposite Waterloo Station, with the taxis and the people passing, feet away, oblivious, and Tony Rich kissing the corners of my mouth – slowly, thoughtfully – before falling back into me again. The first two people to ever think of doing this. Ever.

  And when you are being kissed like this, you are Christmas Day; you are the Moon Shot; you are field larks. My shoes were suddenly worth a million pounds, and my breath was the ethyl in champagne. When someone kisses you like this, you are the point of everything.

  I was the one who suggested the cab – I was the one who undid the first button, as we went over Waterloo Bridge. In books, a gallant man always says, ‘Are you sure?’ before they open their front door, but Tony didn’t ask that, because it would have been a sad waste of time. I was exhaling so much desire that we were both dizzy – and when you’ve had a man’s hard-on pressed against you for nearly an hour, it’s not a question you need to ask in return.

  And we got into his bed, and we fucked.