by Frances Vick
They never ran out of things to say to each other. Most of it was puerile; a lot of it involved complicated games of ‘would you rather..?’ – ‘Would you rather fuck a midget or a dwarf?’ was one that ran for two days. Even Dougie joined in on that one. Eventually, Dougie relented and allowed them to play some of their music on the tape deck. A day went by without the Peter Loves Lydia thing. Then another. Perhaps all it had been was a display of that nervous energy and giddiness that Carl was prone to. His jokes and his needling sometimes crossed the line into childish cruelty, but only when he was ill at ease or bored. A week or so into the tour he had visibly relaxed. His skin was losing its inner city pallor, and he stood straighter, looser. He met your eye. The bouts of feverishly talking about nothing were lessening, as were the not-too-funny practical jokes. A quiet Carl was a happy Carl. A lot of people mistook the quietness for shyness, or resentment, but Peter knew that that wasn’t the truth. The truth was that Carl needed calm. He was a master at uncovering pent up rage during a performance, but he had to put a lid on it afterwards, or they’d all pay for it, because Carl, angry, wasn’t a great person to be around.
For now, though, they all thrived on the routine. Each day different, each day exactly the same. The hangover. The cramped space in the van. Celtic Frost. The disappearing road in the back window. The roofs of unfamiliar buildings. The unintelligible conversations of people in the streets, of the fans, of the promoter. Each dressing room was a variation on a theme. A strip light. A stained sofa. A zinc topped table fixed to the floor. The walls were scrawled with graffiti from all the other bands that had been through there before, with dates going back ten years. Every night they tacked up the running order for the night on the back of the door, then did the soundcheck. Carl would gaffer tape the set list next to his guitar pedals. The t-shirt stall was set up, they’d have a beer or two backstage, keeping it quiet, contemplative. And then the gig.
Peter would always glance at Carl once they came off stage, noting his mood, seeing if he needed to keep things calm. Everyone was happier this way. A few moments alone, a valuable break, and then all the clamour from outside could enter without any danger. Carl didn’t drink a lot after a gig, mostly giving his share of the rider to Dougie, which eventually eased the tensions between them. If they didn’t have to get back in the van and start driving immediately, Peter and Carl would have time to talk. One beautiful night, lying on the flat roof of a club/youth centre/nursery in Northern Germany, they lay down together looking at the stars, sharing a joint and talking about how far they’d come, what was going to happen next, and how it was all predestined. With the intense nostalgia peculiar to the very young, they marvelled at what might have been if fate hadn’t thrown them together. For years later, Peter looked back on this evening as the happiest of his life.
But as they made their way through Germany, and Lydia’s arrival drew closer, Carl became more subdued. He looked tired. He complained of colds, of sties in his eyes, ulcers in his mouth. One morning, after an uncomfortable night sleeping on the floor in a cramped squat, Peter found him sitting with his back to the open fridge, shivering, feverish. He fed him some strange tasting European milk and some communal stew he found congealed in a pan and then asked Dougie to open the van windows to get some fresh air in. Together, they put Carl carefully in the back, wrapping him up in some towels taken from the one hotel they’d stayed in so far. Carl lay quite still, a wan mummy, with his eyes open. He didn’t speak until they were discussing cancelling the next gig. Then he got up shakily and told them that the gig was still happening, he’d go on. He earned Dougie’s respect that day. He was even allowed to sit in the front and chose the music.
It would be simple to say that everything changed with the arrival of Lydia, but Peter, despite disliking her now, couldn’t in all honesty say that was true. At the beginning she had fitted in just fine, and Peter was relieved to have someone else there to keep an eye on Carl. Even Dougie was welcoming: now that he liked Carl, he was inclined to like Carl’s girlfriend. She also claimed to speak a bit of German, which was vastly impressive and useful. She manned the t-shirt stall, and also brought along stickers with the eye catching Chinaski design on them – the C in a bold black circle. They sold well, and ended up on hundreds of guitars, flightcases, and car windows, spreading the word far better than a t-shirt. She put up with sleeping on floors, at venues, even in the van. Only her slightly too loud voice was grating, and her assumption that she was always right. Soon, though, she began to lose her grip, she began to wear out. Then it got bad.
She wasn’t very good at playing the ‘would you rather’ game. She tried, but her effort took all the fun out of it, and so they stopped, and the long autobahn journeys began to drag. Lydia favoured more established party games, like Twenty Questions, the kind of games that she played with her family at Christmas time, but it was difficult to make a game like that smutty, although Dougie gave it his best shot, so it didn’t really take. And then there was Carl and his illnesses. She and Dougie strongly disagreed about how Carl should be cared for if he felt ill. Dougie was very much in the ‘fresh air cures all’ camp, while Lydia was a firm advocate of wrapping up warm and lying in a darkened room.
“Good luck finding a darkened room,” Dougie snorted, while Lydia countered that the gig ought to be cancelled, Carl needed to save his voice. Peter and John agreed privately that there was nothing wrong with Carl anyway. He had a cold? They all did. He was tired? He didn’t have much reason to be considering he made sure he always got any spare bed in any house they stayed in.
They were hitting the part of the tour that Dougie had dreaded. Jammed in the middle of the schedule, at the last minute, were five dates supporting The Jesus Lizard. His mental map of Germany was delineated by the venues he’d driven to dozens of times, but these dates were in new venues, unfamiliar places, and all of his irascible prejudice against Germany began to seep out: it was a fucking shithole; the roads were too straight; the beer was piss. It was full of fucking goth pricks, weed was too hard to get and shit when you got it. He got lost on the first stretch of the autobahn, and had to resort to map reading, something that hurt his pride. Eventually, after drifting over to the other side of the road into the path of a lorry, he agreed to let someone else read the map. Lydia volunteered. And that was the beginning of the end for her.
Minutes flew like hours while they listened to her confidently point the way, only to change her mind a few moments later. Or worse, not change her mind for hours, even when it was obvious they were going in the wrong direction. The van swung in loops and curves around the German countryside, Celtic Frost and invective pouring from the driver’s window. Lydia seemed to think it was hilarious, that was the worst thing. She’d just laugh, have another beer, and then insist that they turn off the road and find a service station so she could have a piss. Eventually, Dougie refused and told her she’d have to piss by the side of the road like a dog, but even that didn’t stop her. The arrival of Chris Harris seemed heaven sent, and, to this day, Peter was still thankful to him.
13
Chris had been on some vague and epic assignment over the last few months, sending back missives from the front line, Chicago, Austin, Seattle, crafting a scene and riding the wave of it back home. Now he was travelling with The Jesus Lizard, and, just for a change of scenery, invited himself along with Chinaski for a while. Amongst the generally favourable reviews Chinaski had enjoyed in the last six months, Chris Harris’ ecstatic, overblown pieces stood out. He’d made them Single of the Week, and the aggressive way he edged them into otherwise totally separate articles stirred up interest and controversy. By the time he was in Europe, NME had received so many letters about Chris Harris and his new obsession, that they had taken to publishing them separately in a little cordoned off section they called ‘The Chinaski Syndrome’ after one of his overwrought reviews. It was flattering, it was amazing really, that someone as talented as Chris would want to sit with a bunch of suburban ne
ar-teenagers in their shitty van, listening to Celtic Frost. He even got on with Dougie. And he was fun! He was really fun to be around. That time when he took over the bar in Berlin – everyone drank free and everyone seemed to love him for it! That time they took turns to stay standing on the top of the van, Dougie gradually speeding up, seeing who could last the longest. Peter had messed up his arm when he fell, but he didn’t mind so much. Buying that Prussian march tape and driving slowly through Bavaria with the windows down and the music blaring. Persuading Dougie to pick up those girl hitchers and conning them into taking their clothes off –that was once Lydia had left, so they could actually have a good time again. He took them to the best tattooist in Berlin and they all ended up with the same Chinaski symbol on their upper arms, except Chris, who told them at the last minute that he didn’t really approve of tattoos. John even tried to copy Chris’ trick of opening a bottle with his teeth, and snapped his molars in half. He didn’t realise the damage until the next day when he woke up with his tongue lacerated and a throat full of blood.
Chris was – to use the outdated expression – cool. Really, really cool, and they all fell over each other to impress him, to be his favourite. Peter remembered that now with some shame, but only a little. Chris had a way of making you feel so included, so valued, that when his attention shifted from you, it was as if the sun had gone out. Peter had been jealous – he could admit this to himself now – when Chris had taken Carl with him to travel with The Jesus Lizard those few days. Peter would have been incredibly intimidated to be with them himself, but he could have dined out on it for years. At the same time, he understood. It must have been painful for Carl to see the head-on collision between his messed up girlfriend, and his sleek new buddy.
The atmosphere in the van was wretched once Chris took Carl away. No-one else was speaking to Lydia any longer, and by now she had completely disintegrated. She couldn’t read a map, understand jokes, buy food, find a laundrette, or adequately sell t-shirts anymore. Once or twice she shook off her torpor and tried to muscle in, negotiate with the promoters, or try to get them somewhere to stay, but it was an embarrassing thing to witness. People smirked, or just looked right through her. Girls heading for Carl didn’t even glance at her anymore – she’d lost her girlfriend aura somewhere along the line. Not that Carl acted on anything – he couldn’t, anyway, with Lydia standing next to him all the time like a zombie, dampening down the fun, making people weary.
And then, finally, she made that terrible scene. Carl was alone with her, without protection, otherwise there was no way it could have happened. Peter didn’t know how long the argument had been going on, if it had all taken place in the tatty room backstage, or if it had been more protracted, more public and Carl had taken her there to keep it private. In any case they had been in that room for a long time. Sometimes he heard Lydia shrieking the way all women shriek when they’re in the wrong and know it. Carl was restrained, or sounded it. Once there was the sound of something being hit, a solid welt of a noise, and then a whimper, and a low response of some kind, but it was impossible to tell who had made which sound. Nobody wanted to know really. It was all so low class and adolescent; embarrassing. It went against Carl’s image, it went against their image as a band, and God knows what Chris Harris thought. The Jesus Lizard stayed away all day, forgoing their sound check, and their frowning silence when they all came back and saw the dressing room was still occupied made Peter cringe. In their eyes, Peter read their disappointment in him. It was his responsibility to sort this out. Carl couldn’t do it. Carl needed his help and all he’d done was stand about all day watching the door and clucking his tongue like a pensioner waiting for the post office to open.
So Peter strode purposefully forward just in time to get the dressing room door in the face. He had time to see both of them before he fell, Lydia’s mouth wide open in mid shriek and Carl slouched by the door, before the pain knocked him down and the blood pissed out of his eyebrow like a faulty tap.
He was knocked out for a minute, they told him, and the first thing he noticed when he came to was the thick coppery taste of blood in his mouth, the smell of it all around him. The right side of his face felt enormous and he touched it gingerly. It was enormous. His fingers came back sticky. Trying to get up, he fell back and someone caught his head and cradled it, asking for a cushion. Carl. Carl, white and sick looking, with blood on his hands, opening his mouth to speak, to ask something, to say something. Peter tried to smile at him reassuringly, but the nausea got the better of him and he was sick instead. Someone (Carl?) wiped his mouth for him. Someone heaved him up and propped him up on the sofa in the dressing room. Someone gave him brandy and someone else wiped his face, apologising in a foreign accent for the pain. Chris Harris was speaking in German, turning down the hospital idea, producing a professional looking medical kit and arranging fancy plasters about the small but deep cut that bisected Peter’s right eyebrow. They gave him more brandy once it was done, and Chris accepted compliments on the neatness of the job. He showed a scar on his leg he claimed he had to stitch himself, and this led to a slightly hysterical group discussion on horrible accidents, near misses, scars and tales of the emergency room. John showed his broken teeth, Dougie dislocated his shoulder and snapped it back into place with a grunt, David Yow shared his scarred scalp. Someone knew someone who’d been shot with a nail gun. Everyone had gone to school with someone who’d been shot in the eye with an air gun.
Throughout this, Lydia was kept at bay by the bar manager, crying and braying, scrambling to get to Carl, to Peter. Through the heightened noise, little tendrils of posh girl whining would float their way – she hadn’t done anything...she didn’t even see him there...she was sure she wasn’t the one who opened the door...she needed to explain. They all took turns to glance at Carl with sympathy whenever they heard Lydia’s voice, and Carl would look carefully and deliberately at the ground. Poor sod. Poor bastard with this nut job girlfriend who didn’t even acknowledge when she’d nearly killed someone. Trying to blame it on someone else, all the time. Always someone else’s fault, never hers.
Pretty soon the combination of brandy and unnamed painkillers set Peter on a little cloud of contentment. It was decided that The Jesus Lizard would go on first, to give him time to recover, and in the end they made an event of it. The crowd at the door were told that Chinaski were headlining from now on, that their album had gone gold, that they were about to tour with Nirvana – all lies of course, but all harmless, all good natured. And people believed it, it felt like a significant gig, something they all ought to remember. David Yow introduced them as The Greatest Band Since Pearl Jam, which could have been read as insulting, but Carl seemed happy with the comparison. Chris Harris, from God knows where, had got hold of some paper rose petals, buckets and buckets of them, and he picked the prettiest girls from an admittedly motley bunch to throw them in Carl’s path as he came on stage. The petals settled on Carl’s hair and shoulders like a halo of delicate butterflies. Some of them hit Peter in the face and stuck to his blood stained plaster.
The gig itself felt incredible. Maybe it was the pills and brandy, but Peter felt the tightness of the songs, the way that he, John and Carl, moved together smoothly. Each song, it seemed to him, had a perfection to it, a symmetry that looked all of a piece but was actually fitted together, constructed, intricately hinged. John’s dogged, dull bass loosened up a little, and Peter followed him to the point that they both relaxed and the rhythm section breathed smoothly, swiftly, like some sleek animal. Carl’s shattering, splintering guitar was the perfect counterpoint to that voice, that voice that begged, screamed and whispered at you to stop. Stop what you’re doing and listen. Listen to me. And he was listened to, breathed with.
Chris Harris led the applause, hustled them into an encore, and they kept on playing and the kids obligingly went nuts, the t-shirts sold out, they had their pick of places to stay. The bootleg tape of that night went on to sell thousands. After Carl die
d, there was talk of releasing it officially, but DCG never got round to it. Peter and John chatted up the previously disdainful girls behind the bar, Dougie finally scored some decent weed, Carl stayed on the stage, rolling about in the confetti and drinking vodka with Chris Harris. Lydia could be faintly heard talking – crying – to someone on the pay phone in the corridor, and later on asking Alexander, the manager, in shaky German where the station was. He put her to bed somewhere before loping to the stage to join Chris and Carl. He nodded at Chris – everyone knew Chris it seemed – told the bar girls to bring over some lagers, and, carefully brushing away the dirty confetti, sat down on the stage next to Carl.
“Your girlfriend is sad,” he sighed.
Peter edged over to Carl. It wouldn’t be fair for the evening to be ruined by this, by Lydia, again. “She’s drunk. She’s just hammered,” he said.
Alexander’s face arranged itself in a series of downward points. “She is sad. She is drunk too, yes. But first sad, I think.” He rolled a cigarette, lit it, and slowly peeled a thread of tobacco off his bottom lip. “Women get sad,” – he inhaled, exhaled – “when they have no place.”
