Handshakes will follow, and possibly awkward hugs given that the lines between formality and friendship have been blurred by our pretence of banter. Do I shake a man’s hand but kiss a woman or do I shake every-body’s hand? If I kiss a woman then am I not sexualising a business occasion and therefore subconsciously undermining it? How many times do I meet a man before we do an awkward lean-in and touch shoulders handshake? Is a high five a suitable end to a meeting? So many questions!
The meeting will almost always be fine and as usual the people involved will all agree that if we were to make something really good, then that would be good. No one will know what the thing should be or how we go about making it, but the consensus will be that good things can happen and are good. At times like this I try to repress my cynicism but it’s so hard to have any confidence in what you are doing in a city so large.
But today’s different. For a start my agent is here at the meeting, and I never see my agent – I don’t mean ‘I never usually see my agent’, I mean ‘I have never before seen my agent.’ We generally communicate, if at all, by phone, email, text and of course post, with my fees clearly billed minus expenses and agency percentage. Yet here he is – I know it’s him because I once saw a photo – along with some people from the publisher – a director of some sort and an editor, a publicist and a couple more suits. Everyone’s beaming, hands are shaken, coffees all round.
‘And the idea is that you’re single – and your … personality issues … make it impossible for you to form lasting relationships?’
‘Mmm, can’t get a girlfriend for love or money.’
‘Love it. Crippling self-doubt, is it?’
‘Haha. Sure.’
‘And of course it will obviously be a very funny book – just like your stand-up …?’
‘Well, yes, though it does have its serious side –’
‘But the book will be funny?’
‘Hilarious.’
‘Well, I think that’s all we need to know. We’ve got a contract ready for you to sign … Jasper?’
‘I have it here, Toby.’
The contract is handed to me.
I almost start to write the name Gemma, then quickly change the G to a J and hope that no one has noticed.
G for Gemma.
J for Jon … and of course for Judas.
* * *
Back out onto the streets, future jeopardised, career secured.
I have certainly achieved a lot in my twenties, but at what cost? I mean everything that I say when I say it, but then I look back and wonder how I became who I am.
This is the place to be if you feel insecure about what you are, since nothing is real here in London. It is as if everyone out in the streets has agreed to frown and move quickly to cover up the fact that no one quite knows how we ended up this way. No sooner have I exited the building than I am already getting in the way of people far busier and more important than myself hurrying along the bustling Soho street on which I find myself.
In order not to annoy anybody else I pick a direction and start walking in it, quickly. I’m not sure whether this is the way to where I need to be or not but if I turn around abruptly there will be a pile-up of hundreds of people which could threaten to kill dozens of innocent men, women and children. Or so it seems.
I should stop and make sure I am heading in the right direction but I don’t. If I keep on walking then eventually I am bound to end up somewhere – this feels right to me. What are all these people doing? How can there be so many of them? If London is the capital of the United Kingdom then how is it functioning with this many people not in offices doing work? There are just so many people and I am starting to feel a little claustrophobic. I wish I was back at home but I can’t just click my fingers and be there; in fact I doubt I could even try without looking absolutely insane. They don’t make ruby slippers for the modern man, more to the pity.
Next on my imaginary death row, following in the footsteps of the spitter, is a heavy-set, crop-haired man, all alone in a brand-new Jeep Cherokee, stranded in a bottleneck in the road and unable for legal reasons to off-road his way out of trouble through the front of Marks & Spencer, down the escalators from lingerie to homewares, past gentlemen’s slacks and out of its rear entrance, as befits a human piece of shit. All he knows for sure is that he is in a queue of at least seven cars, but it is impossible to tell for sure how far this tailback reaches as the jam stretches out at least to the end of the road and then off into obscurity as the road sweeps to the left.
What is clear to this man, however, as he smokes a cigarette and leans out of his window to get a better view of what he can already see from inside the car, is that of all the people waiting it is he who is inconvenienced the most. He can tell this because nobody else is doing anything to ameliorate the situation. No acceptance of fate for him, not in such a big important machine, for he has finally worked out that traffic jams only exist because nobody has thought to blast their horn at one before.
The leader of the pack, in his superior tank of a vehicle, need only assert his dominance and the cars ahead will dissipate like so many terrified mice. I cannot help but wonder if any part of him honestly believed that after a long, deep belch of his horn the person at the front of the queue might be jolted into the realisation that they actually could have moved forward hours ago. I suspect not.
He hasn’t tried swearing yet but I won’t be around to hear phase two, though I am certain it will follow as surely as cold, frosty night follows drab, rainy day. A meteor strike for him, driving his body down and down into the bowels of the earth in a mess of flames, rock fragments and twisted metal. Very creative.
Then I see something that makes my entire day take a complete U-turn, just the kind I need to head in what I am now sure would be the right direction! A dippy-looking moron in a pork-pie hat with big hair sticking out from all sides of it, wearing skinny jeans that are neither wide enough nor long enough for his wiry frame and a green vest despite the appalling conditions, drifts out of a McDonald’s, holding a small brown bag, the kind hobos drink from in American movies, save for the corporate logo on the side.
He catches my attention primarily because he fails to hold the door for the child running merrily behind him, whose infectiously radiant, gap-toothed grin proves that whatever other crimes McDonald’s may be guilty of, falsely advertising their ‘Happy Meals’ is not one of them.
This flouncing wastrel focusses immediately on greedily extricating a paper-wrapped burger from his goody bag, which he tosses into the wind, Mother Nature’s street sweeper. In his haste, he inexplicably seems to be tearing at the wrapping with both hands and by the time he realises that he has failed to allot any of his digits to the task of holding on to the burger itself, it is already too late. The golden, sesame-seed-coated bun is free and seems to fall in slow motion, performing a neatly tucked triple pike with toe loop, before hitting the ground with an immensely satisfying thud.
For a moment or two our man simply stands frozen to the spot as if still struggling to come to terms with the physics of what just happened, then he slowly removes his thick-rimmed eighties NHS-style glasses without altering his gaze, the way people do in films to deliver a blood-curdling death threat with full eye-contact to their sworn enemies, and stares down at what thirty seconds ago was his dinner, which now looks like hideous roadkill, ketchup and mayonnaise arcing out like blood and guts into the road from the impact.
He looks pathetic now, all the arrogance faded but sure to return as quickly as it left. Because I know it could so easily have been me (but mainly because he was wearing a stupid hat) I start laughing and do not stop – in fact getting louder and louder – until I arrive back at the underground station some fifteen minutes later, ending up in the right place as much by luck as good judgement.
These are truly the precious moments and simply recalling this memory later as I try to sleep will, I know very well, provide me with ten more minutes of glorious, uproarious laughter.
&
nbsp; I once read that there are three types of laughter. The first is laughter at someone else’s expense – this is the laugh you do when someone walks into a flawlessly polished glass door at the supermarket and spills their shopping all over the floor – which is very unhealthy in terms of your inner psychological balance.
The second kind of laughter is that which comes at your own expense – this is a laugh which might accompany the phrase, ‘I’m such an arsehole sometimes!’ as the realisation hits you that you have been unable to find your glasses anywhere in the house simply because you are wearing them to facilitate a more accurate search – this is mildly unhealthy.
The third and final type of laughter, the healthy kind, comes at no one’s expense at all, and I genuinely cannot think of a single example of how this might come to be. Perhaps there are people out there who are able to drive themselves to the point of incontinence by looking at a spoon, or thinking of the word ‘bumbag’, but I can’t claim to have met one. If I did, I would probably laugh at how simple they were, which would make them a laugh-type one enabler and no different to a heroin dealer in my eyes.
If I didn’t laugh at the misfortunes that befell other people, then there would be only tragedy and injustice, and with them a life not worth living. I have spent long enough not laughing. Despite the laughter I am already desperate to leave this city and never speak to anyone again. This extreme probably won’t be necessary, but coming to London has served one purpose in that it has made me miss the sanctuary of Swindon. I want to go home. Then I remember that home is no longer a place of sanctuary, home is where I have to start getting ready for my evening with Gemma.
17.48
MY DINNER WITH GEMMA
Perhaps I will go to dinner with Gemma and then cancel the book deal in the morning. Even if it turns out to be a mistake it will have been made with good intentions and I can stop doubting myself. I want to believe that she is the one because I want to believe that there was a reason I have waited eight years, a story to tell our grandchildren, but she probably isn’t. Life doesn’t work like that. I read an article recently about a separated father and daughter who reunited and then fell in love with one another. ‘We’re soulmates,’ the caption read beneath a picture dominated by his smiling face and her pregnant belly. No you aren’t, I thought, there’s no such thing. Like all ideas, the idea of soulmates was created at a time when the world wasn’t so big. Religion prospered when it didn’t have to deal with multiculturalism, now it is drowning.
Staring at my face in the bathroom mirror I cannot help but pull faces at myself. It starts when I raise my eyebrows to see how wrinkled my forehead is becoming, which I can never do without contorting the rest of my face into an expression of mock surprise, something like Edvard Munch’s The Scream. The lines I have are there to stay, obviously, but they seem to be growing deeper at an unfair rate. I am not a particularly vain person but it seems unfair that someone who cannot step on a crack in the pavement without shuddering slightly should have to confront a future with several of them etched deep into his own face.
Then I scrunch up my eyes and nose like an angry rabbit to note the damage that time is doing to these areas and by now the gate is blown wide open and madness rushes out into the world. Sticking my tongue out, blowing up my cheeks, pulling out my ears, I do it all, never breaking a smile because I have seen it all so many times, until I start to brush my teeth. Even here the ritual includes a sketch in which I hold the paste-laden toothbrush firm in my hands and move my head around it to get the job done. It’s not that I still find it funny, just that like so many things I can’t stop doing it. Brushing my teeth is good thinking time because, like anything you have to do twice a day, I have my technique down to a fine art allowing my mind to wander free.
Only two hours ago I signed a contract to write a book about the impossibility of my having any kind of relationship, lasting or otherwise, and in just a couple more hours Gemma and I will be on our first date. I haven’t yet sorted out a restaurant, since the short notice means we will be just ‘playing it by ear’, though I would be much more comfortable had we been able to book a table somewhere. I would go so far as to say that I would prefer to know in advance the restaurant we will be going to, so that I can look at the menu online and even decide what I will order in advance. This will help me to look like I know what I want when we get there and more importantly will eliminate any possible errors.
Yes, of course some of the excitement will have gone also, but this is a price I am willing to pay. Meal mistakes include not ordering enough food and feeling agitated for the rest of evening, ordering something which might lead to later problems (bad breath, upset stomach and so on) or, worst of all, ordering something you do not like. There is a pressure to look as if you know a lot about food on a date and to show a willingness to try new things – this should be avoided at all costs!
The last time I took a girl to dinner she ordered something flamboyant and subsequently spent the rest of the meal picking at it with a fork and looking over sadly towards my own flawless, if slightly less swash-buckling, selection. Maybe she thought I would offer to share with her. Whoops, hungry and wrong!
That was a date which came about as a result of my being a comedian, something I learned very early on to avoid. People who find me attractive as a result of what I do for a living are to be avoided at all costs, in order to perpetuate their affection for me. When all someone has seen of you is a powerful and confident twenty-minute précis of your life, with all the boring bits removed and replaced by the witty punchlines you weren’t quick enough to think of at the time, all you can really do is let them down. The person I am in real life, while connected to my on-stage persona, remains basically my act with hours and hours of sighing, tutting and genuine anger at inconsequential events put in between the jokes.
This is the person awaiting Gemma, beautiful and giggly Gemma. Why can’t our potential last for ever? Now things will come to a head, one way or another, and the perfect anticipation will die. The odds of our succeeding together in the world are stacked so heavily against us. Faint heart ne’er won fair maiden, but it never lost her for good either. The nerves I get before a gig are nothing compared to the nerves I get before meeting someone I like, as so much more is at stake. I can always get another job if I need to, as the criteria I look for in employment are much more straightforward than in love. Real life is so much more scary than the dream.
I am now not only divided between Public Jon and Private Johnny but between my new contractual obligations and my old dreams of everlasting happiness. Earning money from my compulsions and perfectionism make even me question whether or not I have somehow subconsciously and not a little cynically cultivated such a persona from the beginning. Would I really have been so stupid as to spend eight years in misery for this moment of brief professional success? Or has it been more than that? If I can work out when I started to feel like I do then I can decide once and for all whether or not this is a temporary affectation or a deeper problem that should preclude me from spending time with someone on a more intimate basis.
There is no way I can meet Gemma like this, but I know that if I cancel she will be disappointed. I can hardly tell her it’s because I have to write a book instead but then nor can I explain that delving into my past has revealed that I was always destined to be disappointed with the world and I don’t feel as though it would be fair to drag her down with me. When my life flashes before my eyes, my aim is to make sure there are no scenes to rival those in horror films where the girl enters the room knowing that something is in there. I don’t want to be screaming at myself not to go in when I know it was a mistake. People say you only live to regret the things you didn’t do, not the things you did, but I disagree.
At some point I will explain everything to her and she will understand that in becoming another one of my ‘Near Mrs’ she has had a considerable escape, but for now I just need to tell her. I pull my phone from my pocket but it is switch
ed off. I haven’t had it on since my meeting, or was it already off before that? When it flashes and buzzes into life I see that I have a voicemail message, and listening to it I hear a voice I only faintly recognise.
‘So, your name is Jon, is it? I just want you to know I’ve got your number you stupid fuck, and if you pull any more shit like that last text message I’ll get this number traced and find you and come and break your fucking legs.’
Ah, yes. The Terminator. Charming man. I must admit when I realised he had got my name from my answerphone message my stomach dropped a yard or two – that was careless. He can’t really do anything, probably won’t do anything. Time to start typing – do it fast before you can change your mind.
Gemma. I’m so sorry to do this to you, but I don’t think I can make dinner tonight. I will explain everything soon, but for now please know just one thing: It’s not you, it’s me. x
Oh.
All I can do now is plan for tomorrow. Wiping my face on a towel, I come out of the bathroom and then, sitting down at my desk I begin another list, taking not just one day at a time, but breaking each day down into its requisite tasks. By compartmentalising life as I do I can tell myself that by executing each task perfectly I am living a perfect life. The problem is that sometimes when you put your head down and focus intently on each tiny step, making sure not to fall or step in anything unpleasant, by the time you eventually think to look up you realise that you have been walking for miles in completely the wrong direction. Could I find contentment in a kind of perfect misery?
In the end I know that I am married to my solitude, but I am oddly relieved by the thought of not having to look after Gemma, or anyone else for that matter, and that I will never again be able to let her down. This cowardice is simply how it is for me, the life I have chosen. I am not a pathetic figure, not lusting after love unrequited, but travelling alone, with my eye on the milometer – 60,000 miles coming soon to a dashboard near you.
It's Not Me, It's You Page 18
