On the wall above my bed, I start Blu-tacking up things I think will be useful in this task – a collection of attributes I would wish to gift myself, now I’m starting again. It will be like those scenes in detective shows, where they pin up all the clues on the wall, and then stare at it, whilst music swells, until – suddenly! They know who the murderer is, and grab their coat, and run out of the room.
I am going to put every clue I have about how to be a better me on this wall, and I will stare at it whilst listening to The Best Of The Hollies, until – suddenly! I will know who I am, grab my coat, and run out of the room, to have sex.
I cut the pictures out of the Radio Times, and from books, and magazines at jumble sales. The women: Barbra Streisand in Hello, Dolly!, Anne of Green Gables and Miranda Richardson as Queen Elizabeth I in Blackadder – a triumvirate of irrepressible gingers. Then the brunettes: Dorothy Parker, in her furs; Kate Bush, in her nightie; Elizabeth Taylor, in her excelsis. I appear to have no time for blondes – except for Bugs Bunny, dressed up as a woman, as he seduces the fool, Fudd. That is a woman I could be, definitely: a cartoon man-rabbit dressed up as a girl, trying to have sex with a stuttering bald man. I could definitely do that.
I assemble the men, on my wall: my imaginary coterie of brother-lovers. Dylan Thomas smoking a fag. The young Orson Welles, pranking the world with The War of the Worlds and not giving a shit. George Orwell – so noble! So clever! So dead so young! Tony Benn, inventing stamps and the Post Office Tower. Rik Mayall as Lord Flashheart in Blackadder, kicking the door in and shouting, ‘WOOF!’ A picture of Lenin when he was very young – I don’t know exactly what he went on to do, but I do know that he looks hot here – all brown eyes, natty scarf and floppy hair. No one this handsome could be that bad, surely.
And the words: the rest of the wall is words. The page from On The Road about the burning Roman candles. Scarlett O’Hara’s ‘With God as my witness, I will never go hungry again’ speech, which I stare at, thoughtfully, whilst eating cheese sandwiches. The lyrics to ‘Rebel Rebel’ and ‘Queen Bitch’. When Bowie yelps that he could do better than that, I hear another young person stuck somewhere, looking out of the window and imagining how much better they would invent the world, if they were just given the chance to lay their hands on the machinery. If they could just bust into the engine room for twenty-four hours, with a tool box.
Some of it, I write directly onto the paintwork, so it will never be lost, or blown away. I am collaging myself, here, on my wall.
And as I assemble the inside of my head, like a new hang-out, so I alter my appearance, too. At jumble sales I eschew my typical purchases: stuff that my parents would have described as ‘vibey’. As with most hippies, they love bright colours – a chunky, hand-knitted jumper with rainbows would be greeted with, ‘You’ll look fucking natty in that, son!’
But I am going to be wearing this stuff no more. No more colour.
I’m in black, now. Black, for business – like an evil highwayman. Boots, tights, shorts, blouse: all in black, with a black, tailed waiter’s jacket that’s slightly too tight over my tits, but no matter. I am Chick Turpin. I am Madame Ant. I’m planning to hold up some passing stagecoaches, heading towards London, and steal a new life from whoever’s inside.
I dye my hair black, too, with shoplifted Movida – security in the chemist’s appears to consist of the sign ‘Shoplifters: Will Be Prosecuted’ on the door. Winningly, someone has amended it by scribbling out letters with a black felt-tip, to read, ‘Hope: Be Cute’ – which I am now adapting as my new motto.
You can nick anything from the chemist’s. Like bright red lipstick, too – which I am splashing on like there’s no tomorrow.
When school starts again, in September, the reveal of my new, black hair gets several comments.
The best one, from Emma Pagett: ‘Aww, wicked – you look dead like Winona Ryder!’
The worst, from Craig Miller, who’s standing behind her: ‘You look like a dead Winona Ryder, more like. HA! HA!’
I am unperturbed by his comments. Craig Miller is a boy who makes girls he fancies smell farts that he does on his hand. He is not Giacomo Casanova (History of my Life, Longmans, 1967–72), who I know would fancy me, as he loves clever women; and, also, big arses.
A month after Midlands Weekend, I am coming downstairs to do my post-monitoring shift by the front door dressed like Edward Scissorhands, moonlighting as a waiter. I spend the hours embroidering (Traditional and Folk Designs, Alan & Gill Bridgewater, Search Press, 1990) my name, ‘Dolly Wilde’, onto all my clothes: across the breast of my jacket, on the turn-up of my shorts, across my thigh. I am branding me. I do not want to forget my name.
Making Dolly Wilde is my business, now. I enjoy the feeling that deciding who I am is work. I now have a career – the only person in our house to do so. I find my anxiety levels have dropped enormously
On this particular Tuesday, today’s project, I have decided, is ‘Networking’. I’m being very serious about the business of me. In business-bible The Practice of Management (Peter F. Drucker, Harper & Row, 1954), the advice is that you should ‘find other people in the same line of work, and make contact’.
Cousin Ali has recently reinvented herself – viz ‘going goth’ last year – so I’m going up town, to network her.
And I’m taking my business associate with me.
‘What do you want?’
I blink.
I’m standing at the Man On ’is ’Oss statue, with my cousin Ali and her gang of four goth boys – one of which I recognise from school. Oliver. I’m pretty sure he’s the only kid in Wolverhampton called Oliver. I remember him before he was a goth – every day, in the dinner hall, kids would stand around him in the queue saying ‘Please sir – I want some more!’ in quavering voices, and then pushing him into a wall. Really, with those kind of stats, it was just a matter of time before he went goth.
I say ‘Hola!’ in my most cheerful way, but it doesn’t seem to be working.
‘You want something?’ Ali says again.
I shift, awkwardly. I’m pretty sure I’ve read this correctly – that this is the outpost for loners. That, culturally, this is what I should be filed under: ‘Goths, sitting by statue/war memorial’. People with no upper-body strength, who read poetry. These are my people. I am wearing my black waiter’s jacket, black boots, black tights and so much eyeliner that I look like a puffin.
Given this effort, I thought the counter-culture would just … let you in. I didn’t know there was an interview process.
I blink again. ‘I’m your cousin. Johanna. Pat’s kid.’
Ali looks up for a minute – a hard, evaluating look.
‘You look like Fat Nanna,’ she says, eventually.
‘I got her bed!’
Ali’s lips thin: ‘I got the budgie cage. Gonna put a hamster in it.’
Silence.
Ten feet away, my business associate – Lupin – is chasing a pigeon. I’ve dressed him up brilliantly: he’s currently obsessed with tigers, and I’ve made him some tiger ears and a tiger tail, which is pinned to the back of his trousers. He’s chasing the pigeon whilst shouting ‘RARGH!’ at it.
A boy looks up: ‘Ali – is she with you?’ Ali shrugs. I shrug, too. The boy shrugs back. I shrug again.
Fucking hell – is this what being a teenager consists of? No offence, but I’ve had livelier days potty-training Lupin – during the phase he used to poo behind the sofa, then throw it into the potty and ask for a reward. Actually, that really was quite fun.
‘You a goth, then?’
The boy is talking. He’s looking at my outfit, which is all black.
‘Well – is being a goth really a straightforward, binary, “black or white” issue?’ I ask, in the manner of an elderly professor on The World at One, gesturing to their white faces, and black clothes.
Nothing.
Man, I have seen clips of Gilda Radner tearing up Saturday Night Live with this kind of shit. I don?
??t think anyone in this town is ever going to laugh at my jokes. They just don’t get semiotic deconstruction here. Maybe I will have to move to New York.
‘I’d say I’m … “goth-curious”?’
Still nothing.
‘What bands you into?’
The boy is talking again. Ali is utterly limp, letting him quiz me.
I think for a minute.
‘Well, Beatles, obviously. Zeppelin. The Best of Simon & Garfunkel. All that …’
I think.
‘… shit.’
The boy is staring at me. Clearly, this isn’t impressing him.
‘Don’t you like anything recent?’ he asks, eventually.
‘Of course!’ I say, confidently. ‘Roachford. Dire Straits. And Michael Jackson – even though he seems like a bit of a prat.’
I also like Tina Turner – I’ve worked out a whole dance routine to ‘Steamy Windows’, using a broom in lieu of a cane – but I’m not telling him that. He’s staring at me like this conversation is a game I’m losing badly.
‘… but mainly John Coltrane, and Charlie Mingus,’ I put in, quickly. ‘All the hot, bad jazzers.’
I’m lying. I hate jazz. I think it sounds like people being completely mad. But my dad plays it a lot, and I recall his sage advice: ‘Whenever you need to win a situation – talk about jazz, Johanna. It confuses people.’
The boy continues to stare. Ali moves slightly away from me. I wait for a minute, but it seems like this conversation is over.
‘Well,’ I say. I can’t believe jazz has failed me. I wonder what else my dad is wrong about.
‘Well, just gonna …’ I stand up. Lupin is twenty feet away, in pursuit of a hobbling pigeon that has only one foot. ‘Just … off now.’
Ali barely nods. The boy completely ignores me. This initial meeting with Wolverhampton’s counter-culture has gone badly. A proper 0/10. I have failed on preparation.
I’m going to need a much bigger boat. This is my recurrent problem.
I look across the square, to Record Locker – Wolverhampton’s independent record shop. I make a decision.
‘Come, Lupin,’ I say, standing up, and holding out my hand to him. ‘We must away – to pastures new.’
This was the traditional parting line of New Yorker critic Alexander Woollcott – traditionally uttered after some disaster, such as drunken collapse, or massive social faux-pas. Lupin takes my hand – still trying to kick the pigeon – and I walk across to the store.
I wish these cunts knew about Alexander Woollcott. They would respect me, even as I walked away. Instead, I can just hear them laughing:
Ali: ‘Oh, my God.’
I am about to do what is, undoubtedly, the bravest thing I have ever done. Record shops are not for womenfolk. This is a known fact. They are the gang treehouse with ‘No girls allowed’ written on the side – the young, music-loving person’s equivalent of the gentleman’s smoking room. In my most paranoid fantasy, when I open the door, all the music will stop, and everyone will look up – like in a Wild West saloon bar, when a stranger walks in.
When I open the door, the music does actually stop, and everyone looks up. The music stopping is just a coincidence – it’s the end of the record – but everyone looking up isn’t. The people here, hunched over the racks, are boys in army surplus jackets and Doc Martens, with long hair; a couple have tatty black leather jackets on. There’s a pair of Madchester flares by the seven-inches. They are all well-qualified members of the counter-culture. They are allowed to be here.
By way of contrast, I’m a fat girl in a black waiter’s jacket and a blouse, holding hands with a ginger six-year-old wearing tiger ears and a tiger tail, who is looking at a perambulating pigeon and shouting ‘THE EAGLE IS COMING!’ very loudly.
Side two of Bummed starts, and they all look away again. A couple are smirking. I don’t care. I have regular, fulfilling sex with a hair brush, and am the bastard son of a bastard son of Brendan Behan. They will all rue the day. Eventually.
‘Alright,’ the man behind the counter says. He has greasy black hair and is wearing a Sepultura t-shirt – which I can tell, merely from the logo, is an internationally recognised sign that he kills and eats women.
‘Just browsing!’ I say, cheerfully, and walk over to the first rack of records, looking purposeful. It’s the ‘M’s. I look at the record sleeves, in what I hope is a knowledgeable way, and try and work out what bands I would like, judging by the cover-art. Morrissey. Viva Hate. Bit gloomy. Mega City Four. Piercings. In the nose. That would hurt. I wonder if, when you blow your nose, bits emerge. From the hole.
Lupin picks up a Van Morrison record, then fumbles it, and drops it.
‘You looking for something in particular?’ the man behind the counter asks, shirtily. A couple of boys look up again. Shall I try jazz again?
‘Escalator over the Hill by Carla Bley,’ I say.
This is my dad’s worst record by a long chalk – an experimental double-album of free-form jazz opera that clears the front room every time he puts it on, pissed. Even he can’t listen to it for more than half an hour without making moaning noises, like he’s in pain. He moos.
‘It’s pretty obscure though, so you probably haven’t got it,’ I say, pityingly. Confuse them with jazz.
‘It’s jazz,’ I clarify, helpfully.
‘Johnny Hates Jazz?’ the man says, loudly. ‘No, we haven’t got any Johnny Hates Jazz.’
‘No,’ I say, slightly panicked. ‘Not Johnny Hates Jazz.’
Even I know Johnny Hates Jazz are shit. Girls with perms like them. Walking in this shop and asking for Johnny Hates Jazz is basically a death sentence.
But it’s too late – the boys are giggling now.
‘No – not Johnny Hates Jazz. Carla Bley,’ I try again, desperately. ‘It’s a jazz-opera, oh fuck it, look, I’ll try somewhere else.’
I prepare to sweep out of the shop, but Lupin’s holding a magazine.
Hurriedly, I try to wrestle it out of his hands.
The paper tears. I look up, stricken. If he’s going to charge me for the magazine, I have no money. I’ll have to … be killed and eaten by him in his backroom, repeatedly, until I’ve paid it off.
‘It’s free,’ the man says, gesturing us out of the shop with his hand. ‘It’s free. It’s a free magazine. Take it. Take it.’
‘Come, Lupin,’ I say, opening the door with as much dignity as I can muster. ‘Let’s go and see Alexander Woollcott. He’s waiting.’
The boy by the rack nearest the door bends over, and hands me something.
‘Your son’s tail,’ he says, handing me Lupin’s tiger tail.
Again with the ‘son’ thing. Jesus. He is NOT MY SON. I AM ACTUALLY A VIRGIN, ACTUALLY. Although I obviously don’t say this.
On the bus on the way home, Lupin lolls against the window, in some kind of daze, and I take the sticky, torn magazine from his hands, and flick through it. It’s a free musician’s monthly magazine called Making Music. The cover promises to take the eager reader through the entire back-line rig of Del Amitri’s current tour, reveal the ‘Mic Secrets’ of Midge Ure, and show us around the LA studio of legendary session bassist Pino Palladino. I’ve essentially found the contents of my dad’s head, printed out. Even though I’ll read anything – you can quiz me on the ingredients in Birds Strawberry Trifle all you like; I’ve read that packet – even I can’t read this.
But on page four, there’s a column called ‘J Arthur Rank’, which prints the ‘utter nonsense them magazine people write’. Angry musician readers send in lines from the music press, which they find vexingly pretentious.
Craig Ammett, reviewing The Touch in Melody Maker, claims, ‘This is the sound of God exploding – slowly. And the debris hitting Dali in the face.’
Ian Wilkinson in Disc & Music Echo, meanwhile, is denigrated for lauding Sore Throat’s LP as ‘… an overnight evolution from in-joking musical amoebas, to mighty sonic dolphins’.
And Dav
id Stubbs, again in Melody Maker, describes prog-rock band Henry Cow’s sound as ‘… dragging a moose around on stage, and sucking on it’.
‘Nobble these nerds!’ the J Arthur Rank column urges. ‘Go to work on the Bozos behind the Typewriters!’
This is, apparently, terrible writing. The music press is, obviously, some manner of Versailles, filled with decadent, lace-cuffed dandies typing grandiloquent nonsense about hard-working musicians in bands. These are puffed-up fop parasites, riding on the mighty back of the noble rock beast. Lollygaggers, poseurs – petit-maîtres riffing toss late into the night, making no sense, making the world an infinitely worse place. These people are, really, no better than scum.
And I think: I love this stuff. I could do this. Fuck writing a book about a fat girl and a dragon. I could be a music journalist, instead. I could easily write this stuff. It would be a doddle. This is better than poems about my dog, or my dad’s arse. This is what I’ve been waiting for.
This is my way out.
SEVEN
A week later, in Central Library. A beautiful Victorian building, filled with tatty eighties plastic shelving – and, now, me.
In the upstairs Audio-Visual Library, there’s a huge, wooden table, on which newspapers and magazines are laid out for everyone to read.
Previously, I’d always pitied the old blokes sitting at the table, reading The Sun. Looking at the tits on Page 3, in the library.
‘Oh, Nye Bevan,’ I would think. ‘That you would live to see social provision used for this!’
Now, however, I’m all over this facility – as the table also provides the week’s music press: Melody Maker, NME, Disc & Music Echo and Sounds.
Once I’ve stood watch over the door for the morning post, I walk into town and spend my weekend at this desk, reading the music press. No – studying the music press. This is my work, now. I am studying my future.
I still have my business associate with me – Lupin, sitting at the table, dressed as a tiger, reading books from the Children’s Library. Sometimes, if Mum’s having a bad day with the babies, I have to bring them with me, too – for ‘fresh air’.