And that is what happened, until 2am. I leave the bathroom door open, and am a fairly lively member of the party, even though I say so myself. Like that film where Glynis Johns is a mermaid that someone keeps in their bath, I, too, am an enticing siren, who must be kept wet at all times – but who, nonetheless, charms all who meet her.
At first, the men stay in the front room, and I shout witticisms as and when I see gaps in the conversation – pausing only to occasionally get out of the bath, and stand on the landing, in Al’s towelling robe, while they use the toilet – door coyly locked.
By the end of the evening, however, everyone’s so drunk that all the boundaries have dissolved: those social ones between men and mermaids; those physical ones between someone using the toilet, and the people standing outside. The party moves first to the landing, and then into the bathroom – I partake of Plume’s bottle of Polish vodka (‘It’s a clear liquid – it’ll clean yer insides out, love’) whilst they sit on the radiator, or on the windowsill – window open onto the rooftops, and the stars. Everyone pisses in front of each other, and I make one of Plume and Al kiss each other, because these are the days of Suede, and everyone’s pretending to be a little bit bisexual between 11pm and 4am.
Finally, at 4am, the pain passed enough for me to crawl out of the bath, drape my wet petticoat over the radiator, wrap a towel around myself, and fall asleep at the bottom of Al’s bed, like a dog.
The next morning, I feel amazing – that clean, light rebirth feeling you have when pain finally lifts, and you have slept. I have clearly pissed out my infection. I’m up first, and tip-toe past the living room – where all of Plume sleep on the floor, covered in old blankets – and into the kitchen.
The room is a pig-sty – empty cans and vodka-bottles, ashtrays humped, Pompeii-like, with ash and dead stubs, and a broken wine bottle in the sink: the wine splashed over the stacked plates, like blood.
Pain has made me older and wiser. Yesterday, when I found this house messy, I cleaned it from top to bottom, like a good girl.
Today, they can all go fuck themselves. Housework is endless. I am never opting in again.
I make myself a cup of tea, roll a fag, open the window, and sit on the windowsill – looking at Brighton across, and below. The way I sit, in my petticoat, anyone in the street can see my cunt – but I don’t care. After the day it’s had, it’s a miracle it’s still there. I’m proud of it. Passers-by should acknowledge its survival. And besides, the breeze on it feels soothing.
I’m gently squawking back at the seagulls – kwaa, kwaa – when I hear a rattling behind me. It’s one of the Plume boys, looking very dishevelled, searching for fags.
‘Do you want a rollie?’ I say, offering him Al’s tobacco pouch.
He blearily accepts it, and sits at the table by the window, going about the process of assembling a cigarette, and himself, for the morning.
‘Good night,’ he offers, eventually, after the first dry drag, and cough.
‘Yes!’ I say, brightly. ‘It’s the best bath party I’ve ever been to.’
‘You feeling okay?’ he asks, looking up from under his hair. ‘You looked really rough.’
‘I thought I looked lusciously opiated – like Stevie Nicks,’ I say.
‘Nah. Rough,’ he says, taking another drag. The CD player is on, in the corner – still playing, quietly, from last night, on endless repeat. It’s Serge Gainsbourg’s Melody Nelson. I had insisted they put it on – ‘This album is amazing! It’s like – eating a sexy kaleidoscope!’ – while I told them all about John Kite – ‘I ended up in his bath, too! This is not my first time at a rock star bath-party!’
‘It’s amazing that this album’s about a ginger girl from Newcastle,’ I say.
‘Is it?’ the boy asks.
‘Yes. If you listen, in a minute, he goes “blah blah blah French French Newcastle”,’ I say.
We listen, in silence, as the strings become tidal, and wash the song along.
‘See!’ I say, when Serge sings it. ‘See! Newcastle!’
The boy makes tea, and we spend the next hour talking about what we know about Serge Gainsbourg. In the days before the internet, this is how you found out things about music – there was nowhere all the facts were kept. You learned things piecemeal, in conversations, instead – sometimes having to go all the way to a bar in New York, at 3am, to find out something that twenty years later, you could have just discovered using an iPhone, on a bus. We share all our knowledge about Serge like it’s thrilling village gossip – ‘Well, I heard …’
At one point as the boy – his name is Rob – rolls another fag, he looks up and says, ‘You know, you’re not a thing like I thought you’d be.’
‘You thought I’d be like a thing?’ I ask, pleased. I have a reputation! ‘What thing did you think I’d be like?’
‘You know. The way you write. I thought you’d be …’ he struggles to choose the right words. ‘Scary. But you’re alright.’
‘Scary?’
‘Yeah. You know.’
I think, for a moment, about the things I’ve written recently. The review of C+C Music Factory’s ‘Gonna Make You Sweat’, with a joke about how one of the band – ‘+C’ – had recently had meningitis: ‘And that will make you sweat when your temperature hits 102. Unlike this hateful piece of house music, designed solely and only to make secretaries get dry-humped by their bosses at Christmas parties.’
The review of the Inspiral Carpets, where I spend the whole thing repeatedly going on about how they’re all too ugly to be popstars – ‘Popstars should look like David Bowie: all ice and bone and imperiously-shouldered furs. To buy one of Bowie’s singles is like walking into Tiffany’s, and treating yourself to a tiara whenever you get the Mean Blues. By way of contrast, whenever the Inspiral Carpets release a single, it’s like that awkward day a week before Christmas when the bin men ring on your doorbell and say “Happy Christmas, missus”, waiting for a tip. They’re too ugly to be a band. They are, instead, a bad.’
Or, indeed, the review of U2, where I refer to The Edge throughout, simply, as ‘The Cunt’ – even though, as I’ve said before, I secretly love U2.
‘All the bands I know are scared of you. Here – don’t come and review us,’ Rob says – with the half-joking, half-serious look of a man who worries he might have said too much.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t review you! I like you!’ I say. ‘These days, I only review bands I don’t like.’
‘Bands you don’t like?’ Rob asks. ‘Why?’
Why?
Because I believe pop music is too important to be left to the leaden, dullardly and unambitious. Because rich people, powerful people, cool people or the kind of swaggering men that form these bands, are the kind of people who would usually look down on a fat teenage girl from a council estate, and in the one place I am more powerful than them – the pages of D&ME – I want my revenge – revenge on behalf of all the millions of girls like me. Because when I sit at my half-a-table in my house, at my laptop, with the smell of the chip-fryer still lingering on the curtains and the twins wailing downstairs, I want to pretend I’m those other lady-journalists – Dorothy Parker and Julie Burchill – and they would have wielded their stiletto daggers in the same way I wield mine, before draining their martinis, and hailing a cab. Because I get paid by the word, and it’s a thrill when that word is ‘cunt’. Because I don’t run or swim or cycle, and I only dance in the dark, and so the adrenalin I get from hating these bands is the nearest I get to physical exercise. Because I wrote John Kite a proposal in a feature and he notably never married me. Because Kenny told me to.
Because I’m the weakest, youngest one in the gang at the D&ME, and need to kill to prove my loyalty. Because I am still learning to walk and talk, and it is a million times easier to be cynical, and wield a sword, than it is to be open-hearted, and stand there, holding a balloon and a birthday cake, with the infinite potential to look foolish. Because I still don’t know what I really t
hink or feel, and I’m throwing grenades and filling the air with smoke while I desperately, desperately try to get off the ground: to get elevation. Because I haven’t yet learned the simplest and most important thing of all: the world is difficult, and we are all breakable. So just be kind.
At the time, I think of my own, new pugilistic air as utterly righteous. I am a lone gunslinger, come to town. I am Travis Bickle, taking the scum off the streets. If someone has the right to do something, then I have the right to try and undo it. Every time I shoot down some no-hoper band, I leave a little more room for the new David Bowie to appear.
Of course, the thing about Travis Bickle, and lone gunslingers, is that they’re not really the kind of people you want to invite to parties. For if your self-appointed role is coming into the party, late, dressed in black, and shooting over everyone’s head towards the stage, the party will begin to … sour. People who have quieter voices, or who aren’t so sure of themselves, do not want to speak up any more. They will not take to the stage. Only the more confident, and boisterous, will want to address the crowd.
The atmosphere changes – for now, it’s just the extroverts left, shouting each other down. The introverts have gone back underground – taking with them the quieter notes, the minor chords. The playlist constricts, stultifies: people only play old favourites. Everyone is too scared to stand up and risk something new, that might sound odd to impatient ears.
For when cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like a bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas. Cynicism means your automatic answer becomes ‘No’. Cynicism means you presume everything will end in disappointment. And this is, ultimately, why anyone becomes cynical. Because they are scared of disappointment. Because they are scared someone will take advantage of them. Because they are fearful their innocence will be used against them – that when they run around gleefully trying to cram the whole world in their mouth, someone will try to poison them.
Cynicism is, ultimately, fear. Cynicism makes contact with your skin, and a thick black carapace begins to grow – like insect armour. This armour will protect your heart, from disappointment – but it leaves you almost unable to walk. You cannot dance, in this armour. Cynicism keeps you pinned to the spot, in the same posture, forever.
And, of course, the deepest irony about the young being cynical is that they are the ones that need to move, and dance, and trust the most. They need to cartwheel through a freshly burst galaxy of still-forming but glowing ideas, never scared to say ‘Yes! Why not!’ – or their generation’s culture will be nothing but the blandest, and most aggressive, or most-defended of old tropes. When young people are cynical, and snarky, they shoot down their own future. When you keep saying ‘No’ all that’s left is what other people said ‘Yes’ to, before you were born. Really, ‘No’ is no choice at all.
When other people begin to bring their guns to the party, it’s not a party any more. It’s a battle. Without realising it, I have become a self-defeating mercenary in a pointless war. I’m shooting my own future.
But it’s okay – I’ve got plenty of time to be nice … later on. Plenty of time. When you’re seventeen, the days are like years. You’ve got a billion lifetimes to live and die and live again before you’re twenty. That’s the one positive thing about being so young. You’ve got plenty of time left to make things right.
Except, as it turns out, I haven’t got plenty of time.
TWENTY-ONE
So, a couple of months ago, it really was fun being me. I would turn up at the D&ME and ‘Morning Cruella de Ville!’ the men would cry, fondly. I would sit on their desks, smoking fags, and telling stories about all the rock stars I’d got off with.
My colleagues love these stories – my recounting of my night with Big Cock Al brings the office to a halt. Sometimes, I get off with rock stars just so I can come back and tell the stories – I think of myself as a little drone robot, going off and accumulating samples of sexual behaviour, then bringing them back here, to the lab, for everyone to analyse. This is my unique contribution to the gang: if this were Dungeon Master, and we were assembling a crew, then Rob’s talent would be ‘Drunken havoc-making, 7’, Kenny’s would be ‘Drunken bitchery, 8’ and mine would be ‘Sexual Raconteuring, 10’.
In interviews, I get songwriters hopelessly drunk and make them tell me what their sexual fantasies are – ‘Off the record! I just want to know! It … informs your beautiful songs!’
When the lead singer of one band tells me that his fantasy is getting a nun wearing lipstick to give him a blow job – ‘So there’s lipstick all over … it’ – I go straight from the interview, in a taxi, to the office, to tell everyone.
‘A nun,’ Rob boggles. ‘That’s these Catholics for you.’
‘Jews aren’t perverted like that,’ Rich says, in one of his rare, light-hearted moods. ‘We never imagine getting blow jobs from rabbis.’
Eventually, after a couple of stories, Kenny will shout, ‘Chop chop. The freak-parade is over. Everyone start writing,’ and I’ll go over to a spare computer and start writing up that day’s work – taking all the things I’ve test-run in front of my try-out audience, and putting them into copy, for the paper. Carefully crafted bitchiness.
Today, I’m 600 words into a feature when I suddenly remember something: my dad’s demo, in my bag. He’d put it in there this morning, as I left the house: ‘Get your dadda a million quid. Just one million. It’s all I want,’ he’d said, standing on the front doorstep holding a pint of milk. ‘Just play it to someone. Get my foot in the door.’
I looked down at his feet. He was wearing my mother’s slippers, which are novelty bee ones.
‘Rightio!’ I said, waving goodbye.
‘Kenny,’ I say, going over to his desk. His computer has a sticker on it which reads ‘Just FUCK OFF (who are you?)’ on it, which he points to, whilst still typing. I ignore it. ‘I’ve got a demo of a band. Can I play it to you?’
He doesn’t look up from his computer screen, and holds his hand out: ‘Fifty quid.’
‘What?’
‘To listen to a new band. Fifty quid.’
He looks up at me.
‘I’m too old for all that “new band” shit, darling,’ he sighs. ‘I’m still reeling over Genesis P. Orridge leaving Throbbing Gristle. I still think they could have been the biggest band in the world. Play it to one of the younger boys. One who still has hope.’
I go into the Meeting Room, where Rob and Zee are doing the crossword in the NME.
‘Five down has to be Iggy Pop,’ Rob is saying, sitting on the windowsill and smoking a fag.
‘I’ve already got Status Quo on 17 across,’ Zee says, doubtfully. ‘It would make him Iggy Poo.’
‘That could still work,’ Rob says, musingly.
‘Hey you blokes,’ I say, knocking on the door, coming in and going over to the stereo in one move. ‘I’ve got a demo.’
‘Hit it with the Bible. In the morning, if it hasn’t gone down, see a doctor,’ Rob says.
‘What is it?’ Zee asks. Zee has started up his own, tiny record label – also called ‘Thank You’ – on which he presses flexi-discs, and sells them with his fanzine. In honour of the big independent labels – Factory and Creation – Zee’s record label is referred to in the office as, variously, ‘Zeeation’ or ‘Cacktory’, depending on how much the speaker likes Zee.
‘It’s a mystery,’ I say, mysteriously, putting the cassette in the stereo. ‘A new band. From the Midlands. See what you think.’
There’s a hiss and clunk, as the cassette spools on. Then the unmistakable sounds of James’s Sit Down blares out.
‘There could be some copyright issues,’ Rob says. ‘It’s quite derivative. Of “Sit Down” by James.’
‘He – they – have obviously recorded it on an old tape,’ I say, stopping it and fast-forwarding it. ‘The stupid bastard.’
‘Is this some ho
rrible goth band?’ Rob asks. Rob is convinced I’m a goth.
‘I’m not a goth,’ I say, pressing the button on the stereo, to make it re-wind faster. ‘I just like wearing black. Like the Beatles in Hamburg. You wouldn’t say they were goths.’
‘Do you write poetry?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you danced to “Temple of Love” by Sisters of Mercy?’
‘Well, who hasn’t?’
‘Have you imagined Robert Smith from The Cure is your big brother?’
‘That’s a very common–’
‘Would you leave the house without eyeliner?’
‘I made a decision–’
‘When you doodle, do you draw a picture of a sad willow tree, with all the leaves falling off?’
‘You saw my pad!’
‘You know what I’ve noticed?’ Rob says, thinking. ‘You actually can’t help it if you’re a goth. It’s in your genes. You’re born that way – it’s like being black. I reckon you could identify goths if they were naked, in a line, God forbid. ’Cos your goth birds – they all have a bit of chubble, don’t they? They’re all a bit fat – no offence, Dolly. They gone goth because black’s slimming, innit? And the make-up’s because they’re insecure, so they try and look scary, to frighten off the … predators. And your goth boys, meanwhile, without exception, are fucking short-arses – because they can wear those brothel-creeper shoes if they’re goth. Get a bit of elevation. When two goths mate, it’s fucking hilarious. A goth couple coming down the street looks like a number “10”, perambulating. It’s in their genes.’
Briskly thanking ex-punk Rob for his thoughts on goth body-dysmorphia – and pointing out all ex-punks I’ve ever met only appear to have nine teeth left, ‘From a combination of bad sulphate and getting punched in the mouth for being incredibly fucking offensive’ – something which clearly wounds Rob, who has teeth like fragments of cheese – I fast-forward the cassette to the bit where my dad’s songs are. I press ‘play’, and ‘Dropping Bombs’ plays, tinnily, in the room.