4
In later years, when I’m having a long lunch with some girlfriends, and we take it in turns to talk about the worst men in the world, they come up with a list of things that, if you see them in a man’s flat, tip you off that you are in the presence of a Bad Man.
As they point out, whilst drinking wine and howling, Jerry’s flat had the full set. A framed John Coltrane poster. A framed Betty Blue poster. A bookshelf filled with Hunter S. Thompson, Nietzsche, Jack Kerouac, Henry Miller, and books about the Third Reich. Several hats. A velvet frock coat. An angry-looking cat, and a litter tray full of cat shit. Some “ironic” Virgin Marys. A bodhran. The complete works of both The Fall and Frank Zappa, a pile of porn, a bottle of absinthe, and a coffee table with noticeable scratch lines—from chopping out coke.
“Any woman, when she sees those things, runs,” they conclude, laughing and crying, ruefully, at the same time. “For this is the house of a man who hates women.”
And they are correct.
However, I’m still only eighteen, and have yet to learn this—so I just think, “Cool! An edgy intellectual!”
“This is the Arena of My Broken Heart,” Jerry says, pouring me a drink, and sitting us both down on the sofa. “This apartment seems to have been built on some kind of Hell Mouth, that attracts every fucked-up girl in Britain. Every time I think I’ve found some brilliant, filthy, funny sorceress back here, to enchant me, BANG! This is where she reveals herself to be some broken lunatic, with daddy issues.”
His tone is conspiratorial—that he and I disdain these girls . . . that I am not like these girls.
“Are you the one to restore my faith in women?” he says, in a mocking way. “I’m just looking for that impossible thing—a brilliantly perverted woman who wants her brains fucked out, by an expert.”
He looks at me intently. He’s making things very clear—I just need to be a brilliantly perverted woman who wants her brains fucked out. And I can totally be that!
“Well, that sounds like a lot of fun,” I say.
“Oh, it is,” he says, starting to unbutton my dress, and kiss my neck.
“In terms of my qualifications as a pervert, I’m pretty sure I know my way around a penis,” I say, cheerfully. “I passed my Sex Driving License with flying colors!”
He keeps kissing my neck. I am officially turned on.
“I can even—ah! Oh, that’s good!—reverse one around corners,” I continue, squirming on the sofa. I am a Sassy Dame! And Jerry will love my humor! Because he is a comedian!
As it turned out, comedians don’t like humor. They like blow jobs, instead. I realize this when he doesn’t laugh at my joke—but lies back on the sofa, and angles his trousers at me in a way that I realize, after a moment of nonplussed staring, means, “Give me a blow job!”
Still on my noble tip, I bend over, and unzip his flies.
“What have we here?” I say, cheerfully, releasing his erection from his boxers. “An extra-long vehicle!”
I’m being polite—it’s perfectly average, very white, and a bit . . . thin. Like a witch’s finger. Stop describing a penis to yourself, Johanna! Concentrate!
I put the penis in my mouth, and look up, with an expression I have seen Alexis Carrington Colby use on Dynasty—so I know it must be of high sexual quality.
“Mmmmm,” Jerry says. “Keep going.”
I “do some more blow job”—I believe that’s the technical term—as Jerry starts to feel around, on the coffee table, for something. His hand eventually finds the remote, and he presses a button.
“Porn?” I say, in the way I imagine a funny, filthy sorceress would. “Great! Let’s make a night of it!” Because I am not like all those other girls.
I’m expecting the typical “sounds of porn”—some “ahhh,” some “oooooh”—to come from the TV.
Instead, there’s a click, and a hiss—and then I hear something that confuses me for a minute. A jaunty song. What is this?
“Jerry—why do you do the things you do?” a female chorus sings. “Jerrrrrry / Why do you do the things you do?”
It’s—this is—
“Is this your TV show?” I ask him, disengaging my mouth from his penis.
He automatically pushes the penis back toward me—eyes glued to the TV.
“Yes,” he says, shortly. “And, in a minute, you need to suck harder.”
He says it so urgently that, momentarily, my mouth obediently starts heading back to the penis—before the sound of applause makes me stop. I turn around. On the screen, Jerry has just made his entrance into his sitcom flat, to audience applause. He’s watching himself while I give him a blow job.
“Erm,” I say.
“Babe, now,” he says, pushing his crotch toward me, still staring at the TV.
I take a deep breath, sit back on my heels, and then pat his leg—consolingly, like you would a horse.
“I’m so sorry,” I say, “but my Sex License doesn’t cover this.”
I gently put his penis back in his boxer shorts, and stand up.
“This is a specialist job. You, are a specialist job. I think I should get a cab,” I say, looking for the telephone. “I need to leave.”
“You’re not serious?” Jerry says—staring first at me, and then his crotch, in disbelief. “You’re not seriously leaving?”
“Afraid so,” I say—delighted at how adult I am being.
Last year I turned down Tony Rich’s threesome, and this year I’m turning down Jerry Sharp’s TV dinner blow job. Maybe my whole “thing” will be sexually disappointing renowned men!
“Jesus. Tough crowd,” Jerry says, hoiking his deflating penis back into his trousers, and zipping them up. “I take it you’re not a comedy fan, then?”
“I just prefer Newman and Baddiel,” I say, trying to keep the tone humorous.
“Have you fucked them, then?” Jerry asks, unpleasantly.
I’ve found the phone. I dial for a cab.
“Not yet!” I say cheerfully. “What’s the address here?”
The ten minutes I have to wait for the cab are ten of the most awkward moments of my life.
For the first half, Jerry sits on the sofa, presses play on the video, and solidly ignores me whilst he watches himself, with the sound turned down, and drinks whisky. I sit on a chair by the door, dedicatedly smoking cigarettes.
“This was a good bit!” he says, at one point, gesturing to the TV. I laugh politely.
After six minutes, he seems to remember himself. Some notion of pride kicks in. He goes over to the bookshelf, and pulls out a notebook.
“So, I write poetry,” he says.
In the future, when I tell this to girlfriends, they scream laughing, and say, “Of course he does! Of course he writes poetry!”
He then reads me a poem. I’ll be honest; I’m not really focusing on it. I’m desperately listening out for the sound of a minicab outside—but the street is, sadly, silent.
The poem seems to be a furious meditation on unrequited love, dedicated to a mysterious and unkind woman who has used Jerry’s heart “like Raleigh’s cloak / Beneath her feet.”
Presumably fueled by his anger over his half-fellated penis, Jerry appears to be aiming the reading of this poem at me—taking particular delight in delivering the line, “In bed she lies / And lies” with side-eyed venom.
Having someone read bad poetry to you, angrily, is oddly sinister. I’m surprised people don’t get more baddies to do it in horror films—it’s quite chilling. Not so much from the power of the imagery. More because you really want to laugh—but know that, if you do, they will become even angrier, and maybe read you another one. In an even more furious way. And that would be the worst thing of all.
“That’s intense,” I say, every so often, to placate him. Or: “Oh, yeah—those are the right words.”
I nod a lot. That seems to be the best thing to do, to survive the poetry.
When I hear the minicab honk outside, I’ve never been more gla
d of a honking sound. It is the honk of freedom.
“Take care, Jerry,” I say, lightly, saluting at him, and running down the stairs.
The last thing I hear, as I let myself out of the front door, is his voice, floating down the hallway: “But that poem isn’t about you, of course,” he shouts. “I’m not in love with you.”
5
Waking, the next day—sleep-deprived, and with my boots still on—I was momentarily confused about what had happened the night before. This is one of the hazards of encountering famous people—when you’re used to seeing them on the TV, or in magazines, your memories of actually meeting them in real life seem vaguely surreal: did you really see the penis of the guy who was on the cover of Time Out last month?
I looked in the mirror, and saw the love bite Jerry had left there.
“Yes, Johanna,” I told myself, as I swung my legs out of bed. “You did see that penis. And it saw you. But only briefly.”
You must not despair, I consoled myself as I got dressed—you still have all the fun of telling Krissi about this insane encounter. He’s going to be both really impressed when you tell him you pulled that comedian that he fancies; and then amused when you tell him how bizarrely it ended. This is going to be fun!
I bounce upstairs, and find Dadda in the kitchen.
“All right, you dirty stop-out,” he says. He’s already very stoned, and it’s only 10:00 a.m. Dadda’s trip down Memory Lane is turning into quite the Long March.
Krissi is sitting at the table, looking very hungover, and eating a huge fried breakfast. My father appears to have used every single utensil in the house to cook it—the sink is full of dirty dishes.
“Tea?” Krissi says, pushing a cup over.
I take the cup, sit down, and prepare my best “I have news” face.
“So, you’ll never guess what! I did it! I pulled Jerry Sharp! Ask me any question you like!”
Krissi stares at me. There is a long, confused pause.
“Who’s Jerry Sharp?”
“Jerry Sharp! That comedian you fancy! I did it for you! I pulled him! Ask me anything you want!”
“Jerry Sharp?” Krissi says, again. “I don’t know who Jerry Sharp is.”
“That comedian—at the gig last night! The one you were freaking out over!”
“Oh,” Krissi says. “Oh dear. That was Jerry Sharp? Oh, I don’t fancy Jerry Sharp.”
He looks at me, clearly puzzled. “I saw him on Have I Got News for You, once . . . I thought he was a bit of a prick, to be honest,” Krissi shrugs. “I thought that guy last night was Denis Leary. Now him, I fancy. Oh God, I really was drunk.”
“Johanna, you want a sausage?” Dadda says, pushing a plate over.
I stare down at it.
All of last night suddenly seems like a very bad idea.
As it turns out, I have no idea just how bad.
Still, life goes on, doesn’t it? It really always does. It keeps bloody going on. I mean that in a good way, of course. However much you fuck things up, life just keeps going on, washing you downriver—even if you’re just floating there, like a listless dead thing, making no effort, mouthing “Oh God, oh God,” facedown underneath the water. The current bears you on until, soon, the awful events are just tiny specks, left far behind you, and you can say, “Oh well, it was just a bad sexual tussle. I barely remember it now.”
Today, I have to work; I have go into D&ME, to file my copy. After eating what I think of as, unfortunately, “Dad’s Bad Sex Consolation Sausage,” I have a bath, put on something that doesn’t smell of Jerry, or fags, clap on my hat, and get the bus.
Luckily, I don’t have a hangover. You don’t really have hangovers when you’re nineteen. Your liver and kidneys are young, and vigorous. They can process alcohol quite efficiently. You might feel a bit sleep-deprived, and more inclined to eat a whole loaf of bread, but it’s not really a “hangover” as older people know them: the pain, suffering, nausea, and terror.
In many ways, our laws around the vending and consumption of alcohol are all wrong. Teenagers are the best people to be drinking it. It doesn’t hurt them so much. By the time you’re of legal age to drink, you’ve only got a few years left before it starts to destroy you. Were I in charge, I would make it illegal to drink alcohol after the age of twenty-one. Teenagers can handle it. Anyone older can’t.
So, no. I’m not really physically suffering.
What I am experiencing is regret.
And if you have regret—which is just a thought—then, in order to feel better, all you have to do is crush the regretful thought with a bigger, non-regretful thought.
However, as I cast around for a thought that is bigger than my regret about Jerry Sharp, I come up against the biggest thought in my head: John Kite.
Oh, John Kite! Do you know how much I think of you? I sometimes think you do—and it’s what both gives me hope, and kills me. You are the first and third thought in any sequence—the fifth and the ninth. I think about you, on average, every seven minutes. That’s what love is, isn’t it? When you’ve met someone so exciting and endless that the whole world is simply, “things that are them,” and “things that are not them”?
This bus route is filled with “things that are John.” It’s like running through a tunnel of ghosts. Past the Good Mixer pub, where I sat and cried with him, brokenhearted, after I’d broken up with Tony Rich, and he roared “If any cunt has hurt you, he will RUE ME!”
Past the off-license where we bought cherry brandy, and walked down the street, while he showed me how to shape chords on the bottle neck.
Past the busker at the Tube station—the same one!—who John gave a twenty-pound note to, telling me, “You’ve got to pass it on, babe,” before asking the busker one favor: “Don’t play Nirvana, babe—it’s too sunny for a downer.”
And the trees of Regent’s Park . . . Regent’s Park, where I kissed John. It was definitely me, kissing him; he explained that I was too young to kiss back, but that we would kiss one day, as, “You’re a you, and I’m a me.”
And on this gentle, jokey promise—on this kind thing, said to a sad girl—I have moved down to London, because, one day, I will be old enough for him to want to kiss me back, and I want to make sure I’m standing right next to him when that happens. That’s why I’m here. That’s the basis of my whole life.
And this is a good, solid, sensible plan to have.
Other people might call it “unrequited love,” but I call it “everything to play for.” I am a grafter. I am unafraid of pain. I like just hanging out on my cross, here, for John. And, besides, it all worked out for Jesus. Pretty much.
There is a problem with my plan, however—to have John realize he’s in love with me, and for us to spend the rest of our lives together.
Because, in the three years that I have known him, John Kite has become very famous. His second album—which I call, in my head, Since I Met Johanna, but which everyone else refers to by its title, Everyone’s Wrong Except You—has seen him unbutton his shirt and let all his songs fly out, like birds from a cage, and they have migrated across the world, and landed on radio waves, and into bedrooms. They have done the unfortunate thing of sharing John with the world.
Now, he is known by hundreds of thousands—and this is my greatest possible sorrow. It is difficult enough to be seriously, officially in love with someone who still thinks you’re too young to be loved back. But it becomes whole fathoms harder when there are thousands of other young girls who are also in love with your love.
I hate every single one of his new fans, even as I admire their great taste. Part of the reason I fell in love with John is because no one else seemed to be in love with him; he was an unlikely heartthrob, and I applauded my rare good taste in wanting him, whilst also coldly calculating that my chances of having him were all the higher, given his bearlike shuffle, squashed face, and shabby suits.
But now, he’s famous for being an unlikely heartthrob—i-D had him on the cover, wi
th lipstick kisses on his face, and the headline “YOUR NEW CRUSH,” and every time John appears on the cover of a magazine, I feel like angrily hovering by the newsstand, and interrogating every girl who buys it: “Did you love him back in 1992, when no one cared? Did you love him when he wore that coat that was a bit too small, and his hair was still a bit shit? Did you? Then your love is invalid. GOOD DAY TO YOU, MADAM—GOOD DAY.”
The most fundamental thing about being famous—being known by hundreds of thousands of people—is that you become very busy. When John was just a cult figure, he lived the pleasingly low-key life of a dole bum. There would be whole weeks when he was doing nothing, except “writing,” which seemed to be a moveable feast—we would spend days in the pub, or walking around, or going to gigs, or watching TV while it rained outside: him with the dog draped, hugely, across his lap, occasionally being startled when John shouted out “CANDIDATE!” very loudly, at the Countdown conundrum.
Since this album came out, however, he is always away—touring, being interviewed, in the studio recording the endless B sides singles needed, in the nineties.
At first, he treated it like a Tommy, in the First World War: “I’m a flash in the pan,” he said, cheerfully, after his first Top of the Pops appearance. “I’ll be all over by Christmas.”
But as the album takes off in Italy, Australia, Sweden, the end point of the publicity campaign gets pushed further and further away. New tours are tacked onto the end of the itinerary, so he won’t be finished until September, November, March.
First weeks, and then months go by where I don’t see him. I watch Countdown on my own. I have the keys to his house—I go in, occasionally, to water his plants, stack up his post by the phone, and lie facedown on his dirty pillow for twenty minutes, breathing in his fading head-smell, sighing, “Your fading head grease is as opium to me,” then letting myself out of the house again.
We are phone friends, now—it will ring at 11:00 p.m., 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., and a drunken John will be on the other end, saying, “Sorry Dutch—I can’t work out what time it is there. Can you talk?”