He puts his arm around me.
“Are you okay, honey? I’ve heard a lot of weird stuff tonight. There’s a bad buzz going round.”
I am just about to reply to John, when the compere starts introducing the next award.
“Now it’s time for Video of the Year. Women in the audience—and you know who you are—rumor has it, this could be won by any of a number of you.”
There’s a small pause, and a gasp—and then the kind of laughter that I thought only existed as a sound effect when all the evil goblins laughed in Labyrinth. It has a particular tone to it—when men know they’re laughing at something wrong, it sounds a little like wolves. It is not a kind sound. And I know they are laughing at me. Dozens of them have turned to stare at me.
I bury my face in John’s jacket—I want to hold my face from them, somewhere safe—only to hear the laughter change, suddenly, into a confused, baying, “Oooooooooh!”
There is an almighty kerfuffle, down the front. I look up—and see that a furious-looking Suzanne is now climbing, effortfully, onto the stage—knickers flashing, although she clearly doesn’t care.
“Ah, I see Suzanne Banks has not had enough attention tonight. Big round of applause for Suzanne Banks, everyone!” the compere shouts.
Suzanne gains the stage, pulls her dress down with a sexy wiggle, lights a fag, and walks casually over to the microphone.
“Would you like me to adjust the mic stand for you, Suzanne?” the compere asks, patronizingly.
“Well, given that it appears to have been positioned so low down it’s broadcasting whatever your penis is thinking, yes,” Suzanne says, expertly adjusting the mic herself, to laughter, and then staring out at the audience.
“So, guys, guys, literally guys,” she says, over occasional shouts, “I thought I would come up here—in case you’d forgotten that women can actually talk?”
There is uncomfortable laughter.
“I am a physical reminder that we do still exist? That we are fifty-two percent of the population—that we are fifty-two percent of your consumer base, music industry,” she continues, squinting out into the crowd.
“I just asked one of the staff here how many people are here tonight. Two hundred and fifty-eight, apparently. Of which, approximately, sixty are women. Or seventy, if you include the waiting staff. All the ladies in aprons having men click their fingers at them, give me a ‘Fuck you, assholes!’”
The room remains silent. No waitress in the world will shout, “Fuck you, assholes” until her paycheck is cashed. Waitresses aren’t stupid.
“Tough crowd. But then, that’s the problem, isn’t it? In a room full of powerful men, lesser-paid women tend to stay silent. Look, I’m too loaded to be nuanced about this. I just took some coke from a wrapper with my face on, so I’m kind of quite high right now, which is cool. Although I can see my label manager saying, ‘Don’t say that, Suzanne!’ Hi, Zee!”
She waves at Zee, who arrived five minutes ago—just in time to watch his key artist slag off the entire music industry from the stage. He has his head in his hands.
“Don’t do drugs, kids,” Suzanne says. There’s more laughter. “And here’s another thing not to do—don’t be a cunt, yeah?” The room goes silent. “Do you know how fucking exhausting it is being a woman? Every woman here—we’ve had to fight four times as hard to get here, we’ve spent five times longer than you getting dressed, our feet already hurt because of our fucking shoes”—here, Suzanne takes off one of her shoes, and throws it into the audience—“and then, when we finally get in the room—when we get to be in the room where all the winners are; where all the deals are being made—we find that all women seem to be good for is winning a prize for ‘Most Wanked Over’—no offense, Kylie; I’ve flicked one off thinking about you too, babe. Or being Hester Prynned by gossip. This is a classic hostile work environment. You,” she says, turning to the compere, who looks genuinely discomforted, “have created a classic hostile work environment. You know, you’re not cheekily referring to the ‘elephant in the room’ when you talk about the ‘Video of the Year.’ You brought it up. You just brought the elephant into the room. You’re an . . . elephant pimp, you dick.”
She takes a swig of her drink, and stumbles a bit. She is absolutely trashed. By this point, I’ve run to Zee, who is quietly wailing, “What should I do? As her friend, I think I should get her down now. But a man can’t remove a woman from the stage when she’s talking about the patriarchy!”
Julia sighs, and walks over to the stage.
“Suzanne!” she calls, loudly.
“My colleague wants to talk to me. Hang on a minute. Just be cunts amongst yourselves,” Suzanne says into the mic—then bends down to listen to Julia. Julia speaks to her for thirty seconds, and then Suzanne comes back to the mic.
“Julia wants to remind you all our debut album, God Is a Girl, is out next month on Jubilee Records, and that she thinks you’re all cunts too. I’m Suzanne Banks, fuck you all very, very much. Good night!”
Suzanne carefully climbs back down from the stage, as the compere walks back to the mic, and says, “It’s so embarrassing when your mum turns up at work, drunk,” to explosive laughter, and relieved cheers.
Suzanne—not breaking her stride—kicks her other shoe off and up, into her hand, turns, throws it at the compere’s face, and carries on walking out, whilst shouting, “I AM TWENTY-FIVE!”
As she leaves the room—us running in her wake—half the photographers are photographing her, and half are photographing the host, standing onstage, bleeding profusely from his nose, as the glamour girls stare at him with a cold, hard blankness.
We stand outside the venue for a minute—Suzanne, Zee, Julia, John, and I—not knowing what to do. I have a ringing in my ears—like when you’ve been hit on the side of the head. The others look similarly stunned. Except Suzanne. She lights a cigarette and stands there, shoeless, looking unperturbed.
“Well, I think that went well,” she says, leaning against the wall.
I don’t know what to say. On the one hand, my dear friend has just got up in front of a room of people and defended me—whilst, in the process, losing two good shoes. So I feel very loved.
But on the other hand, by defending me against a couple of dicks, she has—of course—ensured that everyone in that room will now be talking about me.
Gossip is a virus, for which there is no treatment, and contact serves to spread it. If there was anyone in that room who had not known what the compere was insinuating, they would—even now—be asking the person next to them. “Video—what video? What woman was he talking about? Dolly Wilde? No!”
And then, later, they will tell others, and others, and others. I can imagine London lighting up with this story—the computer circuits running overtime. And then—the printer springing into action. For this is, now, surely, going to be written about, in reports of the night.
“Suzanne,” I begin. “What you just did there was amazing—don’t get me wrong—but I think maybe talking about it was the wrong thing?”
“I’m an ENTJ,” Suzanne shrugs. “My personality type is all about getting things done. Lance the boil!”
“I think Dolly’s personality type is more ‘never complain, never explain,’” Julia says. “Silent, dignified suffering—like Jesus.”
“You know how much I love you, don’t you, babe?” Suzanne says, ignoring Julia. “Something had to be done. You know what Audre Lorde says.”
I do not know what Audre Lorde says.
“‘Your silence will not protect you.’” She kisses me. I’m still stunned.
Julia takes over.
“I think Suzanne is very high right now,” she says, matter-of-factly, “so I’m going to take her back to the Phantom Zone, like Zod, to have a little think about what she’s done.”
She puts her arm out, for a cab, and bundles Suzanne into it. “You, come,” she says to Zee, who is still standing there, looking helpless. “We’re going to get
the press calling us—we need to talk strategy. John—look after Dolly.”
The cab disappears up Parkway, with Suzanne hollering, from the window, “THIS TOWN IS RUN BY SEXUAL CRIMINALS” until it disappears from view.
So—I have an unsolvable problem.
I have just had the horrible realization that it doesn’t matter how noble I am, or how much I know I’m a good person—because I must now walk around in a city where to hundreds—maybe thousands, I don’t know—of people, I am the punch line to a joke. It’s all very well saying that it doesn’t matter what other people think of you—because the simple truth is, it really does matter.
The category of humanity I have just been placed in is: “A thing to make comments about; to have opinions about; to be pointed at.” You always wonder, when you’re growing up, what your “thing” will be—what people will remember you for, what you’ll be the shorthand of. You live your life, and you work hard, always wondering, “Is this my defining moment? Is this the first thing someone would say about me? ‘She was a really kind person.’ ‘She was really funny.’ ‘She was a great writer.’ ‘She was a true friend.’”
And all of that has gone by the wayside now—because, all the time I was working hard, and trying to be decent, Jerry was waiting in the wings, to steal the idea of me. To most people, I’m not “me” anymore. I’m just a thing that happened in his life, instead. I’m a dirty footnote. I’m the beginning of the salacious sentence, “Did you hear?”
And that is devastating, because: all I have is me. I have no money, or powerful friends, or well-connected family, or status. All I ever had was the idea of me. That was all I had to invest. All I had to live off. My creation of me had been so painstaking—so hard-won. I have tried, so hard, to be good! And now Jerry—Jerry has stolen it.
I see what he did, that night, when Suzanne and I confronted him at the John Kite gig. Even as I walked away, he jumped on my back, and now he won’t let go. I will have to carry him around forever. He’s hijacked me.
This is what I try to say to John, in between all the crying, as John offers increasingly violent ideas for solving the problem: “I’ll do an interview, where I tell the truth. I’ll break into his house, and steal the video, and smash it to bits. I’ll hit him, Dutch. I’ll break his fucking neck. I’ll do time for you.”
And even as I laugh-cry at his increasing, desperate fury, I explain to him that there’s nothing he can do, because the problem is that story is now spreading, like a plague, and the only way to defeat it would be to set fire to this entire city, and kill everyone in it.
John immediately takes his lighter out. “Say the word, babe, and I’m good to go. I’ll burn this fucker to the ground.”
“Oh, I can never leave the house again,” I wail, hysterically. “People are out there, rating my sexual performance—like I’m Fuckoslavakia in the Eurovision Song Contest. I shall have to become a hermit, and communicate only by phone and letter. I can never look another person in the eye again—in case I look at them, and know they know.”
“Or,” John says, grabbing me by the shoulders, “you could just . . . come with me.”
“What—to your house?” I ask.
“No—America,” he replies. “I am getting onto a plane in seven hours, to a country where no one knows who you are. Come with me. It would be such a delight to have you. I want you with me. Sometimes, the only, best thing to do is just—run away.”
“I can’t just go to America,” I say—even as I fill with absolute joy at the idea of it.
“Of course you fucking can. Andy! ANDY!”
John’s PR, Andy Wolf, emerges from the shadows, where he’s been lurking.
“Andy, you can sort this, can’t you? Bring the duchess to America with me?”
“I would be absolutely fucking delighted to,” Andy says, with the air of someone who would like to kill everyone in the world, one by one, starting with me.
“First class, yeah?” John continues. “No small seats. We don’t do small seats,” he says, putting his arm around me. “Always evacuate a burning life in style.”
Part IV
29
It’s amazing how quick money makes things happen. Seven hours later, I am on a plane to New York—suitcase stowed above, rucksack under the chair in front, and Kite in the big seat next to me.
I look at him. He is wearing his usual shabby suit; cheap gold signet ring flashing on his finger. His hair is still wet from the shower—early-morning comb marks through it, like neat furrows in a field. He’s not a person—he’s a place you travel to. Everything changes when you’re with him. He is the mayor of good times.
I remember a quote I read: “It was no man you wanted, believe me—it was a world.” I have always, unreasonably, wanted a whole world. And there he is.
As soon as we got on the plane, we were offered champagne with orange juice in. I’d never seen it before.
“What is it?” I asked John.
“Buck’s Fizz. Breakfast alcohol,” he said, taking one. “They invented that, the fucking geniuses.”
“Then I would love some—yes.”
I drink my breakfast champagne—looking around at all the other people in first class, settling in their seats. Everyone else is a white man, in a suit. Businessmen. First class is a simple visual representation of who has all the money in the world: guys who look like this. When John told me how much this flight cost—£4,000—I couldn’t believe it.
“Just to sit in a chair for ten hours? You could buy our house in Wolvo for ten grand. Who can afford that?”
“Well, them—” John says, nodding at all the businessmen. “And me. The music industry is the third-biggest industry in the UK, babe.”
“Is it?” I had no idea.
“Yeah. The only two ways to get into first class is either set fire to the rain forest, or sing sad songs. Everyone else sits in the Losers’ Cupboard at the back.” And he jerks his ringed thumb toward coach.
In the air, I take a second proffered breakfast champagne, and then a third. John—who is still sipping his first—looks at me, askance, as the bottle comes round again.
“Babe—you’re drinking like you think it’ll make you better,” he says, wonderingly.
“Maybe it will,” I say, with bravado. Last night has rattled me to my bones—I feel a palpable need to change the chemistry in my body, which is toxic with adrenaline, and I can’t walk up a hill, or jump into a lake, to work it off. Alcohol is the only drug I have access to. I explain this to John.
“I hear you. I have an alternative,” John says, rootling around in his rucksack. “Here.”
And he hands me a Walkman—a chunky, clunky yellow Walkman, with scratches on the side.
“You ever had one of these?” he asks.
I haven’t.
“This can change your chemistry, too. This is a portable crucible for the heart,” he says, looking at the cassette inside. “Ah, Joni. Do you know Joni Mitchell?”
I shake my head.
“Perfect. Dolly Wilde—I want you to meet Joni Mitchell. Joni Mitchell—meet Dolly Wilde. I think you’re going to get on.”
He puts the headphones on my head—carefully moving my hair out of the way—and nods.
“Hit it,” he says.
I press the “play” button. There is the clunk, and hiss, of header tape, and then—as Britain falls away behind us, and we head out over Ireland—my head fills with Joni Mitchell’s silvered spiraling carol, singing about wanting a river, that she can skate away on.
It is perfectly beautiful and painful—like pulling a long, black thorn from your palm in one easy move, and having a shiny barb in one hand, and a small, empty hole in the other. It is the right time to cry, now, so I wrap my scarf around my head, so I am hidden, and cry.
John nods.
“Joni will see you right,” he whispers.
After a minute or two, I put my Buck’s Fizz down, and lean my head on John’s shoulder, still quietly crying. He
reclines our seats, and spreads a blanket over me, and I eventually fall asleep, curled up against John, flying over the Atlantic, with Joni’s voice in my head. If I could have stayed up here forever, I would have been perfectly happy. I had found a river to skate away on.
As a child, when I saw New York on my TV, or in the cinema, I’d just presumed it was a film set—a dream-imagining of a city. No one actually lived somewhere that looked like that. The city of Ghostbusters; the Sharks and the Jets; Fame.
But—there it is, as we come in to land. I see the water towers, fire escapes, intersections, and blocks—just as they are, in movies. Fire hydrants, steam escaping from vents, and the skyscrapers—the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the World Trade Center—standing there, as tall, handsome, and famous as a cocktail party consisting of Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Humphrey Bogart.
As we shuffle through security, and then into a cab—John managing to smoke three cigarettes between getting through Customs and into the car—I can’t stop exclaiming at all the America-ness: the flags, the pretzels, the New Jersey accents, the businesswomen in immaculate skirt suits, wearing trainers—just like in Working Girl!
There is no Britpop here—no Adidas, no tracksuit tops, no lads, no parkas. London—Camden—suddenly seems like a very small, limited dream, in the heads of a half a dozen people. Here, you can feel that you’re on the edge of a vast continent, full of kids in the Midwest who are into metal, and country, and Michael Jackson, and who would simply boggle if you shouted “PARKLIFE!” at them.
No one here will ever care who I am, or what I have done. I have run away from terrible persecution in the Old World to start, anew, here—like the Pilgrim Fathers, but with a sex tape.
In the cab—face pressed against the window, so I don’t miss a second of America—I think of how everyone knows New York is one of the best places in the world, “up there” with the modernist hustle of Berlin, the cobbles of Prague, and the sheer, raw power of Mumbai. It’s known it’s one of the best places.