“Yes?” I said, as I closed the dressing room door behind me. The “click” sound seemed to instantly activate some latent “Enraged Fucker” mode in Andy.
“What the fuck are you doing, getting my artist this drunk?” he hissed.
“What?”
“He’s onstage in half an hour, and he’s so drunk he can barely stand up.”
I was so surprised, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I’m going to give you some advice, sweetheart. If you want to stay in this industry, don’t hang around in an artist’s dressing room getting drunk, punching him, and acting like a fucking competition winner, okay?”
“But . . . we’re friends. We’re just joking. It’s what we do.”
“Well I’m sure—as his friend—you won’t want to make his evening more difficult,” Andy said. “He’s at work. If you want to have an attention-seeking pretend argument with him, I’m sure you can have it in the cab, going home with him.”
Oh, there was so much spite in the sentence—the presumption I will not be in a cab with John, as I don’t really know him that well; the slight inference of whorishness. My face went red. I felt like a messy child, making things difficult for the grown-ups.
John poked his head out of the door, banging it on the frame.
“Shit!” he said. “This door needs to slow down.”
“I’m just going to make you a big, black coffee, John,” Andy said, going into the dressing room, and shooting a hateful look at me.
“And I’d best be going, too,” I said, dutifully.
John came out into the corridor, and closed the door behind him.
“You’re going?” he said, beaming but confused.
I considered telling him about Andy, but nobly decided, in the end, to suck it up. John is, after all, just about to go to work. And at nineteen, I already have the sense that it is the job of women to simply absorb the unpleasantness that bad men dole out to us. If we stopped doing this—revealing all the awfulness sloshing around—then all the good men would become sad, and anxious, on our behalves, and the world would consist only of bad men, and sad men, and be no fun at all. It’s the work of mere seconds to simply cut the unhappiness, and keep the world more joyful. It’s no effort at all!
“I just want to get down the front . . . get a good spot,” I said.
“But I’ll see you later, yes?” Kite said, urgently, grabbing my hands. “We have to celebrate my becoming richer than God.”
“I’m always up for a party,” I said.
“No. Not a party. Bored of parties. Just you. Let’s fuck off somewhere, quiet, and talk balls all night.”
He looked at me—pissed, and warm.
“I’ve missed you,” he said, urgently. “Really missed you.”
“I’ve missed you,” I said.
And he leant forward, and for the second time in my life, kissed me on the mouth—a good-bye kiss, but a more-than-good-bye kiss; mouth closed, heart open; a kiss that changed the whole corridor, and made it the most important place in the world—better than the Taj Mahal, or . . . or other places that were built out of love, that I can’t think of right now.
“I’m just going to play fourteen smash hits in a row, and then I’m all yours,” he said.
The gig started well. I bumped into Suzanne in the toilets—she came out of a cubicle, drunk, and laughing so hard I presumed she was in there with a friend.
“No,” she said, when I looked inside, and found it empty. “I was just remembering how funny Ian Astbury’s hat is.”
We got drinks, and flashed our AAA passes at the guy on the sound desk, so we could climb up onto his little stage and see the whole gig. John came onstage to an escalating “WhooooOOOOO!,” and everyone stood a little taller, to see how he looked: expansive, in his usual shabby suit, with his hair already stuck to his forehead with sweat. He threw his arms open wide, like a loving bear, miming how much he’d had to drink: “Good evening! I appear to have accidentally got drunk—has anyone else done that tonight?”
The crowd cheered. Suzanne and I raised our glasses.
He started putting on his guitar. “But luckily, I’ve noticed, over the years, that my hands are like the hero’s horse, in a film—they always seem to know the way home. Let’s see if they still do tonight. Giddy-up, hands!”
He started playing the opening chords to “Count to Ten”—the audience cheered, and John looked at his hands with joy.
“Good boys!” he shouted, before starting to sing. “Good boys!”
The first half of the show was a joy—John rattling through the new album, whilst basically doing stand-up in between each song, as was his wont.
“Ah, look at him,” I say to Suzanne, at one point, just after he’d made the whole audience do a Mexican wave in time to his first verse. “He’s just the best thing.”
She swiveled to look at me.
“Do you fancy him?”
“No,” I said, my face like a lantern. I could feel her side-eyeing me, with a knowing look on her face.
The song ended.
“Give yourselves a round of applause for your superlative Mexican waving,” John said. “We always have problems trying to do the Mexican wave in Mexico—because we don’t know what to call it. They all just end up waving at us. Which is quite nice, really. Hands across the water, and all that. Anyway, time for a bit of an emotional handbrake-turn,” he continued, tuning up his guitar. “This song is about my mother dying.”
Because John’s mood had been so jocular all evening, and because it was such an unexpected thing for him to say, a group of teenage girls down the front laughed. Instantly, a group of older, disapproving men booed them.
“Hey, hey, now,” John said now, looking down the front. “No booing. Some people don’t know the older songs, and my tragic backstory, and that’s fine. It’s good to make new friends. Everyone is welcome here. Hello, girls. You were probably only, like, ten when that song came out. You don’t know about my classically troubled past. You are blissfully ignorant of my formative tumult.”
John took a swig of his whisky, tentatively played another chord, looked at the girls at the front, and then stopped.
“Hmmm. Maybe the dead mum song would be a bit of a downer,” he mused. “Shall we leave the ghost of Old Ma Kite off the stage, for now, and play a hit, instead? A new song? A Number Five smash hit—as seen on Top of the Pops? Do you want to boogie, girls?”
The girls whooped. John gave them the thumbs-up. But, from the back, one man shouted, loudly, “JUDAS!”
This threw the crowd into confusion. Some people booed the “JUDAS!” man, some laughed at the reference, and all the naturally appeasing Neville Chamberlains in the audience started applauding, to try and smooth everything over. The girls down the front, meanwhile, waited for a pause, then screamed “WE LOVE YOU, JOHN!”
In reply, the “Judas” man shouted “WE LOVE YOU—WHEN YOU PLAY SOMETHING GOOD!”
Now the atmosphere began to splinter—between the new fans, and the old. Between the old indie men, and the new teenage girls.
In his drunken state—and unable to see who was shouting what, and why—John was thrown.
“Well, now,” he said, looking down at his guitar. “It seems the audience is divided in what it wants tonight. What do you want to play, hands?”
His hands were still for a moment—thinking—then played the intro to his first single, “Wine Teeth.” As the older fans in the audience roared, John looked up, beamed, and then stomped on the FX pedal that switched everything to furious feedback.
I could see what he was doing—he was too pissed to think, and so had fallen back on noise: like a Snow Queen conjuring up a blizzard, to bring a battle to a halt. He played the long version, and then slid straight into another, old, loud song—“Castling”—head down, hands a blur.
When the song finished—with its queasy, looping feedback sounding like the still-turning engine of a plane that was nose-down, and sinking
fast in the sea—he lit a fag, took another swig of whisky, and began, conversationally, “I don’t know if any of you saw the D&ME a couple of weeks ago.”
“Oh no. No no no. Don’t do this,” Suzanne murmured.
The audience booed at the mention of the D&ME.
“They discussed the matter of my new audience,” he continued, rubbing his forehead, as if trying to get blood to it. “They presented a rather . . . acidulous view of my career, suggesting I’ve ‘sold out.’ Do you—ignoring the inconvenient fact that this gig has literally sold out—think I’ve sold out?” he asked the crowd.
“NO!” they shouted.
“Ah, Tony Rich. You should be here tonight. I’m playing all your favorite songs. All the old ones,” John continued, still smoking his fag. “Old songs, and young girls. That’s what you like, I’m led to believe. This set list and the front row of this audience would be your idea of heaven.”
“He means me!” I told Suzanne, excitedly. “He’s referring to my inappropriate and possibly abusive sexual relationship there!”
“I’m proud of you, kid,” Suzanne said, bemused.
“Truth be told, this has been a rum evening,” John continued, leaning against the mic. “We’re all friends here, so I can share with you this odd fact: tonight, I put my card into the hole-in-the-wall, checked my balance—found out that I am, apparently, now, a millionaire. A MILLIONAIRE! I think that calls for a celebratory drink. I’m buying all the front row a drink.”
He got his whisky bottle, went to the front of the stage, knelt, and started splashing whisky into people’s glasses. This got a round of applause. One very young girl held up her glass.
“Sorry—I’m going to have to ask you for ID,” John said. Laughter. Then: “Fuck it. Underage drinking at gigs was the making of me,” and topped up her glass. More cheers.
“I have to admit now, I’m pretty fucked-up tonight,” he said, still on his knees, and lighting a fag. “Do you want to get fucked-up with me?”
“YES!”
“Then—LET’S GO, MOTHERFUCKERS!”
He played the first four chords of “Everyone’s Wrong—Except You,” to delighted cheers—the hit!—and then slid into an old B side. This was exactly what most of the room did not want. There was a restlessness—and then the slow, noticeable drift to the bar, and toilets. This gig had struggled, and now this gig was over. The vibe had died.
“Oh my God—he’s fucking it,” Suzanne said, with horrified delight. “What’s he doing? He’s losing them. He’s playing all the not-hits. He’s . . . playing this set at Tony Rich. What a fucking pointless thing to do.”
I looked at John, staggering around the stage, head down, seemingly oblivious to the fact half his audience had disappeared, and that he was snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.
“Man, he needs an intervention,” Suzanne says.
John finished the song, and looked up at the audience. There was applause, but it had an odd sound to it. I don’t know how “clapping hands” can sound so different, when it’s just hands, clapping, but this applause felt . . . sympathetic. Pitying.
“I can’t watch this anymore,” Suzanne said, getting down from the sound mixer. “It’s like someone committing career suicide. In a bad way.” I followed her.
“I’ll talk to him, after,” I said, as we went to the toilets. “He’s just had a weird night.”
I felt very protective of him. “I think he just needs a bit of time—to process it all.”
“For fuck’s sake, I could process it all in less than a minute,” Suzanne said, briskly, eyes shining. “‘Oh, I’ve got loads of hot new fans, and now I’m a millionaire. Great!’ Bang. Done. I’m all over it.”
“It’s different for him,” I said. “You want to be famous. He never has.”
“Balls,” Suzanne said. “Everyone wants to be famous.”
“I really don’t think John does,” I said. “For him, it’s just . . . a by-product of his job.”
“Exactly!” Suzanne said, furiously. “It’s a job—so treat it like one. Come on, make an effort, and fuck off again.”
I was surprised she was this angry about it.
“It’s just . . . sloppy,” Suzanne continued, firmly. “It’s ungrateful. I would never waste an opportunity like this. Never.”
I thought of Zee—fretting over Suzanne not turning up to recording sessions, re-mortgaging his parents’ house—but said nothing.
19
We stayed in the toilets until the gig ended, and then went to the aftershow. John clearly needed someone to talk to, but I wasn’t going to go back to his dressing room, and have Andy Wolf tutting at me again. I would wait, at this party, until he arrived. What could go wrong? Except me getting very drunk. But that is one of the things about being friends with someone famous. They have so many people they have to talk to before they get to you . . . you are often very drunk by the time they finally materialize.
Suzanne and I were attending to all the business of an aftershow—smoking cigarettes, chatting balls, waiting for John to rock up—when I looked over to the bar, and nudged her.
“Look!” I said. “It’s me, but a month ago!”
Waiting to be served—looking, as always, quite peevish—was Jerry Sharp. I had no idea he was a fan of John Kite! He was with a round-faced girl with a nose piercing, and a short skirt. She couldn’t be any more than seventeen.
Jerry was looming over her, in a possessive way, and she was staring up at him in a way that said, “It looks like I will end the evening having sex with this famous comedian! Wow!”
“He chatted me up at an aftershow! This is exactly what happened to me! It’s like Crimewatch is re-creating the incident!” I said to Suzanne. “What a blast from the past! I wonder if Nick Ross will say, at the end of it, ‘Sleep well—don’t have nightmares.’”
“Let’s observe his seduction technique from a distance, and critique it,” Suzanne said, cheerfully sipping her vodka and cranberry.
We watched for a while—the ping-pong match of seduction. He said something—she lobbed it back. He moved closer.
“The predator has locked onto its prey now,” Suzanne said, in a David Attenborough voice, as Jerry lit a cigarette, and blew the smoke above the girl’s head.
It was weird, watching someone who once chatted you up, chatting up someone else. When it was happening to me—when Jerry was looking into my eyes, and talking to me, at a party just like this—it felt we were improvising some unique sexual magic, like lubricous jazz geniuses. That we were the first people to be quite this sexy and amazing.
However, the same scenario, viewed from fifteen feet away, and without the benefit of dialogue, all seemed so much . . . thinner. More obvious. Jerry and his girl were just two drunk horny people, playing out a scene that had been staged a million times before. From a distance, the shimmering sheen of golden lust had turned to tin.
Still, it was all quite entertaining, and we were happily providing an alternate voice-over, until Jerry said something to the girl, and she suddenly looked uncomfortable, and tried to pull her skirt back down her thighs. Jerry laughed, and then—as she still looked flustered—leant over, and touched her face. She looked confused.
This tiny moment made me very unhappy. I remembered something.
“I bet he just said something about how fat her thighs are,” I said. “He said that to me. ‘I love a sturdy girl who wears clothes she really shouldn’t.’”
“Ugh,” Suzanne said.
“Then he said, ‘The great thing is, that uncomfortable skirt will be on the floor soon. The only question is—your floor, or mine?’”
“Do you think, now he’s tactically belittled her, he’ll use her dented confidence as an opportunity to try and have anal sex?” Suzanne asked, amusedly.
“Is that what he did to you?”
“Yeah. I told him to stop. I said, ‘If my clitoris is there, I’ll give you the money myself.’ He withdrew. What did he do to you?”
<
br /> “Ha! You’ll never guess what I did!” I said eagerly. I was now so drunk, I was suddenly darkly excited to tell her my news. It seemed like the best joke I could ever tell. Suzanne was going to love this!
“Wo, you know how awful he was the first time?” I started. “Well, I bumped into him again, last month—and I had sex with him!”
I did jazz hands—to amplify the entrance of this appalling fact.
“WHAT?” Suzanne wailed.
“I know! Ludicrous! But Michael Stipe thought we were a couple.” I shrugged. “I didn’t want to let Michael Stipe down.”
“And?” Suzanne asked, meaning: “Give me the whole encyclopedia entry on this surely doomed fuck.”
I’m prepared to say the words. For the first time.
“Well, we kissed for a bit, and then—he started to film it.”
I had hoped saying it would magically turn it into an amusing anecdote.
“He filmed you? Having sex?”
I nodded.
Suzanne’s face made it clear that this was not an amusing anecdote.
“Oh, no. That’s horrible,” Suzanne said. “He porned you. Did you want him to?”
I was surprised to find that I was, suddenly, out of nowhere, feeling a bit wobbly-lipped. Saying the words out loud made it all sound a far, far darker, and colder, event than I had pretended it was, for months, in my head. It made me sound very . . . small. A small, crushed thing. Suzanne put her arm around me.
“I don’t think I was a particularly talented first-time performer,” I said, attempting cheer. “My filmic debut will not be considered the moment a star is born, such as was the case with e.g.: Debbie Reynolds’s cameo in Three Little Words.”
Suzanne sighed.
“I think, at one point—startled by a penis-angle—I mooed. He filmed me having moo-sex, Suzanne.”
“You couldn’t tell him to turn the camera off?”
“I didn’t want to crush his creativity! And, besides—how do you know whether or not you’re into being filmed, unless you give it a try? I’m not a natural naysayer, Suzanne. I say nay to naysayers. That’s my thing.”