by Liam Livings
I shrugged, not wanting to say anything for fear of it all tumbling out. “The promo work is a fickle beast. It doesn’t exactly keep office hours. When he’s needed, he’s needed.”
“Quite.”
Roger picked up his menu. “Shall we order, or give him another fifteen minutes?”
It was already twenty minutes past the time he’d said he’d definitely, absolutely without fail be with us. I shrugged from both the inevitability of it all and not wanting to make a big scene with his parents. It would spoil their holiday, their chance to see their son.
The waiter arrived, asked us if we were ready to order.
“Not quite,” I replied tightly.
And so the evening rolled on, and on and on, without Paul, with just me and his parents.
It had all seemed so innocuous when we’d left our apartment together and Paul had said he needed to see a man about a club and he’d be twenty minutes, half an hour tops. After the performance he’d put on to make up for leaving them earlier, his parents had no reason to think otherwise. He’d been the very model son, telling them about his life on Ibiza with me: the DJing, the promoting, the friends he’d made, the beautiful sweeping long beaches, the sunsets and sunrises that he’d stopped photographing after a month because they just kept getting more and more beautiful, the Spanish food he loved so much he doubted he could eat at their favourite Spanish restaurant in Kensington again now he’d tried the real thing. They’d both laughed at that. They’d laughed a lot at what he’d said, while showing them the clubs we worked, the restaurants we ate at, the market we shopped in and the beach we flopped on.
It had all seemed like a long video for the Ibiza tourist board, and his parents had lapped it up, asking questions, turning to me, checking we really were this happy, did we really love it that much? I’d nodded, smiling, because mostly it was right. Except for one small matter he obviously failed to mention to his parents: his increasing appetite for party drugs and partying, to the exclusion of almost everything else—sleep, eating, work, friends and, it seemed, parents.
Now, I wished he’d bought one of those mobile phones that were starting to appear in some of the club managers’ hands. Maybe that would have been a good use of dear Aunt Luella’s money. At least I’d have known where he was, rather than him simply disappearing into the morass of Ibiza.
Marilyn folded her hands in her lap. “Is there no way of getting in touch with him? Roger has one of those mobile telephones. It’s marvellous for tracking him down. Finding out where he is. Expensive to use, or so I gather, but worth it for peace of mind, I feel.”
I shook my head, turned to the menu, blinked a tear from my eye. “Think we’d better go ahead without him or we’re never going to eat.” My stomach rumbled.
***
Later that evening, after a meal of elaborate tactfulness where none of us had mentioned Paul’s absence and instead had stuck to topics bound to cause less controversy—the poor summer weather in the UK, the strong Catholicism of the island and its effect on how Paul and I were received—we returned to our apartment to find him asleep on the sofa. He was lying on his back, his arms folded across his chest like he’d been laid out for a funeral viewing.
My heart jumped, thinking he’d done what I’d often warned him about: overdone it to such an extent his heart had just given up and stopped beating. But then I heard his familiar loud, gruff snoring; I breathed normally again and shook him awake.
Hand on hip, I said, “Where have you been? Did you forget the meal you booked with your parents?” I crouched in front of him and whispered, “They’re going the day after tomorrow and you’ve hardly seen them. Be fair. Make an effort, would you? I’m left entertaining them. Every. Bloody. Time.”
He yawned and stretched, chewed on nothing in particular, rubbed his eyes, then said, “I think I sort of lost track. One thing and another. Came back here for a rest. To, you know—” he stared at me “—get my head straight. I must have nodded off.”
Get my head straight meant one thing and only one thing. Yet again. “I’m going to bed.” Clenching my jaw, I hissed into his ear, “I’ve had enough. I am so done with tonight.”
“You handled it OK, didn’t you? You’re better at all that serious-parents thing. I fancied doing something else.”
Unbelievable. Sometimes Paul’s free spirit, playing things by ear, not being tied down nature was really bloody irritating. Still whispering, I said, “Something else other than being with your parents?”
“Yeah, and?”
There was no answer to that, and I didn’t want to have a massive row in front of Marilyn and Roger. Instead, I walked to our bedroom, calling back to his parents, “Paul’s going to make you drinks, anything you’d like, make up for lost time. You can fill him in on our dinner conversation. Night.” And I was gone, behind our bedroom door, only able to hear muffled voices, the clatter of cups and swoosh of water as Paul filled the kettle and played the doting son once again.
When he eventually came to bed, he said, “I’m—”
“Don’t say sorry. You say it like you’re breathing in and out. It’s meaningless. They’re your parents and I was left with them. You can be so selfish sometimes.”
He climbed into bed next to me. “I apologise. I was so tired when I came back here, I closed my eyes and then… I knew they’d be asking what my plans were, what we were going to do about staying out here. All that. Plans, commitment, being sure of the future—it gives me the creeps.”
Does that include our future? Us together? Keeping my back to him as he spooned me from behind and kissed my neck, I said, “You make it really hard to like you sometimes.”
But I still loved him. And I believed him. Which was why I forgave him. Again. Stupidly.
***
The final days of Marilyn and Roger’s visit passed in a miasma of tactfulness, neither of them broaching the topic of his disappearance and me biting my tongue so hard and for so long I drew blood when we finally dropped them at the airport two days later.
As they walked towards the departures entrance, Paul turned to me. “That went well, don’t you think?”
I swallowed the blood that had filled my mouth. “You are fucking joking, aren’t you?”
“No. Why?”
“You were hardly there. You disappeared at least four times in one week. Not just half an hour, but whole, entire, sprawling afternoons and evenings with you AWOL and me left playing the enter-fucking-tainer with your bloody parents.”
A horn beeped from behind the car.
“Best move on.” He tapped the dashboard.
I clasped the steering wheel tightly, my knuckles white. “I wonder myself if I should move on, you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Paul frowned.
“You must think I’ve got mug written across my forehead.”
The horn beeped again. Paul tapped the dashboard impatiently.
Swallowing the bitter bile that had risen up my throat into my mouth, I put the car into gear and nipped out into the flow of traffic outside the airport, narrowly missing an oncoming taxi.
Paul stamped the car’s floor with an imaginary brake pedal. “Watch out. You nearly killed us!”
“That makes two of us.” I stared straight ahead, concentrating on the traffic, trying to assemble the words carefully in my mind before releasing them.
Paul babbled on about how his parents wanted to return soon, and he’d told them we’d take them to the other side of the island to explore more of the scenery and culture, not just the restaurants and beaches, because there was much more to Ibiza than its reputation.
Finally, in a gap in his stream of consciousness, I said, “I think we should both take it easy for a bit on the old Persians.” Persian rugs—drugs.
He was staring out the window. He waved his hand dismissively. “Definitely. Besides, it’s the end of the season soon. Once we’ve got that big closing party over and done with, it’s blissed-out Balearic unt
il next May. Most of the clubs shut, or go down to one night a week. They’ve already said they won’t want me in low season. The DJing will be the same. Slinky Simon said it’s not like the UK where you can guarantee crap weather all year round. People come out here for the whole shebang—the weather, the beach, the dancing…and the Persians, obviously.”
I wanted him to have his say, to complete his reasoning, because we had already talked about the low season and what to do then. “You abandoned your parents. You abandoned me. Not once, but four times in a week. Can’t you see the problem here?”
“They’ll be back. You’re here still, aren’t you?”
“Your reasoning of more always being better is wearing a bit thin. Partying is taking over from everything—from you, from your personality.”
He patted his legs and smiled. “It’s all me. I’m still here. Very much so.”
“Can we just agree we’ll take it easy for the next few weeks? Both of us. I can’t remember the last time we had a drug-free week, can you?”
He shrugged. “Three weeks, six weeks, three months—what difference does it make? It’s not heroin. It’s not smack. It’s not doing anyone any harm. Relax, will you? It’s just a bit of fun. You wanted this lifestyle. That’s why we moved out here, isn’t it? Would you prefer to be back at the shops in cold, grey London, going out at the weekend to grab a little slice of fun between all the greyness?”
We’d arrived at our apartment. I turned off the engine, wondering if I could articulate how I felt, then thought fuck it, I’m gonna give it a try. I turned to face him. “Sometimes, yeah, I do.”
“What? Wanna go back to that?”
“Yep. We were different then.” I meant he was different but couldn’t quite allow the words to leave my brain through my mouth. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe if I said it out loud, it meant it was true, and the thought of me going out with a different Paul from the one I’d first fallen in love with was too much to cope with so I didn’t quite let that out of Pandora’s box.
“OK, we’ll take it easy on the Persians. Shall we go up? Nice to have the place to ourselves again, eh?” He winked. And smiled. And squeezed my leg.
I was in so much trouble. I was helpless to resist those three most Paulest of Paul gestures. Because, deep down, I still loved him. He was wonderful. We were wonderful together…most of the time. My life, our life, on paper sounded perfect. And a flash of his beautiful, wide, toothy smile made me forget all my worries because my heart had overtaken once again; my love for him overruled my head’s worries, my brain’s logic.
We slammed the car doors, walked upstairs to our apartment, holding hands as we climbed the three flights, and we made love for the first time since his parents had arrived. Then we tidied the apartment together, made a big pot of coffee and sat on the sofa and listened to the beautiful sounds of the town floating up to us through the open balcony doors. Once again, I told myself all would be well; all would work itself out in the end. There was nothing to worry about, nothing to discuss in that we have to talk, head angled to the side way I’d tried in the car.
CHAPTER 17
September 1996
THEN THERE WAS the straw that well and truly snapped the camel’s back in half after it had been strained for so long.
Unsurprisingly, despite the little conversation we’d had in the car on the way back from the airport, Paul hadn’t changed. Well, he had changed; difficult as it is to admit now, he actually became worse. He was partying longer and harder and disappearing more than he had before.
Despite me trying to talk to him about how I worried he was over-clubbing himself and disappearing into the scene, the drugs, the music and all that it entailed, Paul just waved it away like it was nothing. Kept telling me he’d be fine, that he had it under control; he wasn’t taking anything except party powder and disco biscuits, and I should stop worrying.
I didn’t know what to do, until The Straw happened, then I knew I had only one option.
We were headlining the end-of-season party at Space, and it was all going so well. We were the DJ pair in the main ten-thousand-strong dance floor, which, thanks to Paul’s party and promotional skills, was at capacity and full of sweating, dancing, hand-waving clubbers all screaming for us to play the last song again: Paul Van Dyke’s ‘For An Angel’. This song, as Paul and I had predicted, turned out to be the song of that summer, and we’d already played it twice.
As I mixed and blended so the track could start again, before it had faded to the end too dramatically, I turned to Paul. He had one ear covered by headphones, was nodding in time to the music and grinning widely.
“All right?” I asked.
“Wicked!” He nodded.
As the track began from the start, the crowd jumped up and down, clapping above their heads and screaming.
Paul said, into the mic, “Who’s ready to make this the closing party to end all closing parties? Who’s here to have a wicked time?”
The crowd replied with a shout and more jumping and dancing.
A few hours later—after we’d finished our set, and the manager had thanked us and asked us to stick around for an afterparty, and we’d said we might but we’d definitely call round later that week to see what their plans were for the low season—we left the club.
Leaning against the wall in the warm evening air, I was ready to go home, but Paul had disappeared, promising to be back in five minutes.
I lit a cigarette, closed my eyes and allowed myself to just experience everything around me: the chatter and shouts of clubbers; the music, the traffic noise; the smell of late-night restaurants, the whiff of diesel fumes from taxis.
Maybe it isn’t so bad. Maybe we’ll get through this season in one piece and then things will calm down. Paul will return to the man I first met, to the man I fell in love with, and we’ll go back to the less hectic lifestyle we had before we moved out here.
Right on cue, Paul arrived, arms around a woman and a man in swimming costumes, eyes wide, mouths chewing, glow sticks in both hands and said, “These guys know where the real party is moving to. We can tag along.”
“I thought we were going home. Said you were tired, didn’t you?” We’d deliberately not brought any of our own pills out with us, agreeing we’d do the closing party, stay to the end and then go home. Paul had stayed with me after our set, so I knew he hadn’t scored while in the club. It had all been worked out.
“I was, but then I met these guys. Well, him—” he nodded to the man to his left “—in the gents’ and he sorted me out. Us out. And now we’re all set for the afterparty.”
“Really?” I asked, thinking about our abandoned plan.
“Come on. It’s the last night. We won’t be doing this for another six months at least. You know you want to.”
And then—with an inevitability and a flow all of its own, enhanced by the man and woman next to Paul and their mates, and their mates’ mates who had gathered around us, all wanting to have our autograph—we piled into a few taxis and soon arrived at a white three-storey villa with a pool and a view of the beach on the edge of the town.
But that wasn’t The Straw.
That was actually good fun. I was talking to our new mates, who asked me how we’d started the DJing, what had made us come to Ibiza, why I wanted to go back home for winter, what I thought would be the next wave of dance trance songs for the next season, which artists to look out for.
I asked them where they’d come from—“Little village in Lincolnshire, mate”—what they did for work—“I’m in sales, mate”—if they’d been to Ibiza before—“First time and it’s well wicked, innit?”
We made all sorts of plans to see them when we came back to the UK, if we came back, because that hadn’t quite been decided between me and Paul, and in a moment of ecstasy-induced madness, I said they could stay at ours next season if they came back.
“Definitely, totally, absolutely, I’ll give you my number,” I said with a smile. And at the time, I real
ly meant it, like you do with everything you say when you’re banjaxed on the love drug.
Then, like the two sensible people that we were, high as kites that had been dropped from an aircraft, we tried to have a reasoned, sensible discussion about what to do now the season had ended. Because of the state we were both in, it was a somewhat circular argument. I’d been long campaigning for us to return to the UK, see friends and family, have a bit of normality back in our lives, just rest for a few months—“Take it easy, chill out, calm down.”
Paul wanted to stay in Ibiza—“Experience it from all four seasons, see what it’s like when the tourists fuck off and leave us locals to it.”
“What about your parents?”
“They’ll come back. They said so, didn’t they?”
“Not sure why, after your last little performance, but yeah, they did.”
“What’s that meant to mean?” He stared at me, chewing quickly.
“You know what it means. You disappeared into thin air four times while they were here. I was left making excuses, making awkward conversation about anything but you. And somehow they didn’t want to talk to you about it either. Do you have some sort of magic mind tricks on them or something?”
“They’ll come back. What other reasons are there for leaving all this beauty, this weather, this food, for cold grey London? Living with my parents or yours again, having to stick by their rules, telling them when we’re going to be home, if we want dinner or not. All that shit again. How can you want that?”
“I happen to think it’s not all that shit, actually. I think we could both do with a bit of structure, a bit of calm, after all this.”
“That’s where we don’t agree.” He folded his arms resolutely.
“That’s why we’re having this conversation.”
“Again and again and again.”
Desperate for us to move on when neither of us was prepared to compromise our position, I said, “I don’t want to lose you. And that’s what I’m worried will happen if we stay. You know why.”
