Actually, round about that time we were at a loss as to what music to listen to. We couldn’t be bothered with the old stuff any more, but we didn’t really get any of the things that Neil had got Thomas and Jase into. So there was grunge, and I experimented with the Wonder Stuff and the Senseless Things and bands like that. I went to my first gig sometime around then. FMB, stood for ‘Fuck Me Backwards’ or something. They were a band off a TV show that followed them round as they tried to make it big in the music world. They never did, but they did play a gig in Sholeham in its only proper music venue. We weren’t really old enough to get in, but none of the audience was. I remember somebody’s mum came in and pulled her fourteen-year-old daughter out from the mosh pit. Funny to think I’d played a gig before even going to one. None of that music was really me, but it filled a gap.
But I suppose I was just at a loss generally. I hadn’t really thought hard when I chose what A-levels to do, because I was in that weird dream state at the time when we believed it didn’t really matter because all we were going to do was the band anyway. But now the band didn’t exist, and I was stuck doing subjects that meant nothing to me. French, because it’s always good to have a language, so my dad said; something called Communication Studies, the point of which I never quite understood, so a bit of a breakdown in communication there, I suppose; and English Literature, which was a laugh really, just reading books for two years. I wish I’d kept it up, to be honest. I guess it was a shock to the system for all of us in some way. We’d lost the band, and Thomas had lost his gang, so we were all pretty aimless for a bit. But the one who really couldn’t handle it was Neil. Neil changed.
I found that out that beautiful first day in early autumn. The trees were beginning to turn golden on the Fields, the sunlight was incredible and the air felt fresh as I cycled through. I passed loads of other kids, and if they were walking and I knew them I said hello, and if they were on their bikes then I rode with them. Everyone was really excited. When we got there we found this crazily modern-looking building, with loads of unusual round windows, and light fittings that looked like flaming torches and stuff. We all waited outside for the big welcome speech and, OK, I was feeling a bit stupid about the metal gear, but other than that, I was hyped up like everybody else, when, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a figure I vaguely recognised, standing on his own. He was wearing a black polo neck, his hair shaved to a number two, with thick-rimmed glasses that wouldn’t stay on his face properly, through which he was looking about as if everything around him was vomit. Then I realised. It couldn’t have been, but it was. It was Neil. And then he was gone.
We were all ushered into the main hall for the speech. All very liberal. You’re adults, we will treat you as adults, we respect you, we won’t discriminate, please don’t bring a knife in, blah, blah, blah. Then we were given a map and a welcome pack of various bits of crap, and sent off to out first tutorials. After wandering round the maze of a spaceship that was the college, I finally found the right room. I waited outside for about five minutes, until some townie oik barged past me and walked straight in.
‘You can just go in,’ he said.
There were a load of chairs in a circle. Quite comfy ones with padding, not like the old stacking chairs that really hurt your arse in school. The oik was already slouched down in one. I sat on the other side, careful not to face him directly. Neither of us said anything. He exhaled long and loudly, turning it into a tune at the end. More townie oiks, girls and boys, fresh from schools the other side of the city, came in, wearing their Naf Naf jackets that made them all look like the Michelin Man. The sitting oik knew most of them already, and he called the boys ‘mate’ and the girls ‘babe’. Oumumbered, I thought I was going to be the social outcast of the tutor group. Until Neil turned up.
He poked his head round the door. He sighed when he saw all the townies. Then he saw me and sighed some more. He realised that the only way he was going to get a seat was if he sat near me, and sighed yet again. He sat down.
‘Hi, Neil,’ I said.
‘All right,’ he mumbled, almost inaudibly.
‘What do you think of this place, then?’ I said. ‘Pretty crazy building, huh?’
‘Postmodern crap,’ he sneered.
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really,’ he replied, as if I was retarded.
Fortunately at that moment I was saved because Will, still hobbling slightly from being pushed down the slope at the bonnie by Thomas, and one of the Jameses came in. Neil saw them and sighed.
They sat either side of me and we chatted for a bit, until our tutor arrived with a register. Middle-aged woman in casual clothes. Jeans and a woolly jumper. Bad, scraggly hair. She sat down in a spare seat, one exactly the same as ours, not a proper teacher’s chair or anything, and let us talk loudly and eff and blind to our heart’s content until she was ready to start.
She asked for our attention in a little meek voice, and by the third time of asking, she had just about got it, the townies shushing each other as loudly as they talked. She introduced herself by her first name and then went through some clarification of what the tutor group was for, and how often we were meant to turn up and stuff like that. And then she said, ‘Right, what I’d like us to do now is a little exercise to help us get to know each other better. What I want you to do is to pair up, and I want each of you to tell your partner who you are and a few things about yourself, such as your hobbies, what music you like, or films, things like that. And what I also want you to do is to say something about what you want to do in the future. Where you would like your life to be headed. Then I want each of you to report back to the group what it was your partner told you. OK, let’s go!’
I paired with Will because it was easy. I already knew him. James didn’t want to work with Neil because he’d always thought he was a bit weird, even before the whole gig thing, so he ended up with some townie girl, which I don’t think he minded because she had big tits and a low-cut top, and Neil was with some poor Asian lad. We had about five minutes to do it. The room was a pit of townie noise as they discussed their love of banging techno and street comets.
‘All right! All right!’ shrilled the tutor. ‘Let’s stop now!’ Another round of loud shushing followed, and eventually the last townie was silenced. ‘Now what I want us to do is to go round the room and each of us tell the group what they found out about their partner. We’ll start from my left.’
The townies all pretty much told the same story about how their partner liked rave and/or hip-hop and just liked ‘hanging out with their mates’, which of course meant taking drugs and vandalising bus shelters. I told them about Will’s swimming trophies, and Will told them about … what could he tell them? About the band? Or about the bonnie and dunking Napalm? No, I just told him to say that I was about to start Venture Scouts, which was like Scouts but for older kids and loads harder, with mountaineering and stuff, and girls were allowed to do it and everything, and that I liked to ‘hang out’. I didn’t even try to claim I ‘hung out’ with anyone I could call a ‘mate’. The big-titted townie, meanwhile, liked ten-pin bowling and ‘hanging out’. James liked watching The Mary Whitehouse Experience and doing tae kwon do. I knew full well he hadn’t been for two years.
Then it was the Asian lad’s turn to describe Neil. He didn’t look as if he wanted to do it. ‘He said his name was Neil,’ he began. ‘That he likes being in a band but his band doesn’t want to play with him any more. His favourite music is someone called, uh, Throbbing Gristle? And I think …’ There was a long pause. ‘I think he wants to … blow things up.’
The tutor’s mouth fell open, revealing a good few fillings in her bottom teeth. ‘Blow. Things. Up?’ she said.
‘Yeah, is that what you meant?’ asked the Asian kid of Neil.
Neil said nothing.
‘What … kind of things does he want to blow up?’ asked the tutor, looking very, very concerned.
‘Um. I think …’ Another long pause from
the Asian kid. ‘Everything, really. I think he wants to blow up everything.’
‘You mean, buildings, property, even people?’
‘Uhhhh … yeah. Yeah, that’s pretty much what he said.’
‘I see,’ said the tutor, quietly. ‘Neil, what did your partner tell you about himself?’
‘He told me his name was Sanjit and that he was a sheep.’
‘I didn’t!’ protested the Asian kid. ‘Miss, I didn’t say that.’
‘Not “Miss”,’ said the tutor. ‘Please, call me Hilary. Neil, Sanjit says that he didn’t say that.’
‘He didn’t say it,’ said Neil.
‘But you said that he did. Are you not taking this seriously?’
‘He didn’t say he was one. But you asked me what he told me, and what he said about his silly, boring life and his silly, boring way of looking at things told me that he was a sheep. A total, stupid idiot who was going to do exactly what he was told to by his parents, by the government, the media and by the multinational company he’ll no doubt end up working for. A perfect son, a model employee and a happy consumer. A sheep. Not even that. A robot. A robot sheep! Look in his head and there’s nothing there! Nothing—’
‘Neil, that’s enough.’
‘Nothing to indicate he even has a brain to think for himself and question what he’s—’
‘Neil, that’s enough!’
Neil stopped and sighed. ‘What’s the point?’ he muttered. ‘You don’t want real answers, you just want sugary crap.’
Sanjit was crying. ‘OK, I think we’d better stop there,’ said the tutor. No one moved. ‘You can go!’ The townies shuffled out, their Naf Naf jackets rustling as thcy giggled. Neil had just earned himself a whole new set of enemies.
The tutor went to sit by Sanjit and offered him a tissue.
‘Neil,’ she said as he got up, ‘could I see you in five minutes, please?’
He shrugged and left the room.
2
It was tough adapting to the new Neil, not just for me, but for everybody. Kids from school would go up to him, expecting him to go on about fish and lard and all that surrealist crap, and he’d just tell them to get a lobotomy because it would make them more intelligent. And if you ever reminded him of something he said or did not so long ago, like the screaming at the talent show, he’d just shake his head and turn his face away as if it was too painful to deal with.
He was in my English class. He’d sit there, looking bored, as if he knew it all already, and fair enough, he had read more books than the rest of the class combined, but if anybody said anything, like the book made them sad, or they didn’t understand it, he’d tut loudly and roll his eyes behind his new glasses. Sometimes he’d just lay into some poor soul, usually a sweet bookish girl, and accuse them of being ‘naive’, or ‘semimental’, or ‘brainwashed’. The English teacher tried to put a lid on it, but she didn’t want to restrain him too much as he was the only person in the class who ever said anything intelligent. Often he’d be the only person in the class who’d read the book.
I didn’t go out of my way to speak to him any more, but just the mildest greeting would result in a torrent of interrogation and accusations. I remember once I was talking about getting the new Senseless Things album, and he just had a go at me about it. Well, about rock music in general. He said something like, ‘Rock music is the result of the appropriation by white people of musical forms developed by blacks whilst enslaved and socially degraded. Without slavery and segregation, rock music would not exist. What would you rather, a world in which slavery never existed, but as a consequence also no rock music, or one with both?’
‘Well, I suppose it would have to be the one without the slave trade,’ I said, finding it a bit of a chore to think about it, truth be told.
‘So then you wouldn’t have your wonderful new Senseless Things album. Would you be happy about that?’
‘Uh, I guess …’
‘What, no rock music at all? No Hendrix, no Metallica, no Motörhead, no Napalm Death, nothing?’ It was quite hurtful that he’d mentally been keeping a list of all the music I’d been into over the past year or two seemingly just to throw it back in my face now. But what was my answer?
‘It’s a stupid question,’ I said, ‘because you can’t turn back time. It’s all already happened.’
‘Yes, it’s what’s called a hy-po-thet-ic-al question,’ he said, breaking down each syllable of the word for me to digest with my feeble mind. He shook his head and sighed. ‘Never mind. You don’t get it, do you?’
‘No, I guess I don’t.’
Another time I got one over on him, though. He was having a go at some lad who was doing Business Studies as one of his subjects. ‘Why do you want to sully your soul like that?’ he was saying. ‘An A-level in Oppression Studies!’
I couldn’t take any more of this crap. ‘Neil,’ I said, ‘if it wasn’t for people setting up businesses and employing people, you wouldn’t be able to listen to any of the music you like, not the Velvet Underground, not Iggy and the Stooges, not your precious Throbbing Gristle, or read any of your clever books. You wouldn’t have your sodding polo neck or your lovely glasses. They were all made and sold to you by businesses and business people. So fucking lay off.’
‘I’m not asking people not to use businesses,’ he replied. ‘You can’t escape them. But what I do think is that people should stop being so fucking dense and unquestioning about it all and think about what’s going on!’
‘Of course, because nobody else thinks but you. It’s just you who’s worked it all out. And everybody else is a stupid sheep who never questions anything. Has it ever occured to you that maybe sometimes other people do think about it all, and maybe they don’t like it, but they have to get by, and live their lives, and provide for their family? So they compromise, because unlike you, they’re not just locked up in their own little worlds, and have responsibilities and some desire to actually connect with people?’
I had no idea I had that inside me. Neil said nothing. For a second I thought he was going to cry. It nearly made me cry too. Because this was all beneath him. It was as if he’d become less intelligent now that he was bitter. What had happened to him in those two weeks between that final phone call to Jase and the first day of term? The horrible wake-up to reality he must have experienced in order to pick up that telephone in the first place must have been overwhelming. All the things that he’d been denying for all that time would have hit him at once. The fact that all his friends, his band, had shafted him. That someone wanted to see him hurt so much they broke a poor girl’s spirit just to do it. The fact that I didn’t stop it. The grim reality that regardless of whatever conceptual spin he tried to put on it, what he did at the gig hadn’t really worked. The way he really felt about his mum being such a weirdo. And where had his dad been all those years anyway? And most importantly, the realisation that even though he’d pretended on a day-to-day basis, year in, year out, for as long as I'd known him, that he didn't give a shit what people thought of him, he really did. Christ. It must have been devastating.
What he never understood, though, was that at college it was different. Nobody was thinking about the summer any more. He could have made a new start and it would have been fine. New friends. New opportunities. Parties. Beer. Girls. He could have had it all if he’d reached out for it. It was there for the taking. No one would have stopped him. And he nearly did have it, a taste of happiness, not long before. But we’d stomped all over it, gleefully, maliciously. No wonder he had no faith left.
But one thing I will say for Neil during that time. He was the only one who saw through Spencer Macleavy for the poser he was from the off. Spencer Macleavy was the college punk. He had a very mild Mohican dyed green, a safety pin through a gangrenous hole in his left ear, a rucksack with an anarchy symbol painted in Tipp-Ex, a leather jacket and tartan bondage trousers. He used to wander round, shouting ‘Pogue mahone!’ at random people. They’d just look at hi
m funny and carry on doing what they were doing. Then one day he did it to Neil while he was in the dinner queue. Neil just gave him a withering look and said, ‘Yes, I know it’s Gaelic for “kiss my arse”. Every Pogues fan knows that, because that’s where they got their name from. The entire population of Ireland also knows that, because they speak Gaelic there. You’re about as subversive as Tesco’s. Try harder.’
Spencer ran off with his bondage strap between his legs and you never heard him say ‘Pogue mahone!’ again.
Unfortunately I heard him say a whole load of other stuff, and sing it. I was in the smoking sheds one day, not smoking, when Ben came up to me. ‘We’ve found a new singer for the band!’ he said. The band. I didn’t even know the band was meant to continue. I hadn’t wanted to think about it at all, although having Neil’s glaring presence around me practically every day made that difficult.
Flying Saucer Rock & Roll Page 19
