Mr. Commitment

by Mike Gayle

  I stood in front of a pair of speakers that had received a five-star rating in What Hi-Fi? and gazed at them longingly. A sales assistant, roughly my age, approached me, wearing a crumpled gray suit, ill-fitting shirt and really bad shoes. It was as if he didn’t care about how he looked because there were so many other more important things in life than clothes. Like hi-fi equipment.

  “Nice speakers,” he said reverentially. “Really nice speakers.”

  The people who run these kinds of shops were no fools. They employed people who thought like me to sell to people like me. This sales assistant knew exactly what to say, which buttons to press. It was like being seduced by the most beautiful woman in the world—with the worst dress sense in history. I was powerless to resist his charms.

  “Yeah,” I said, acknowledging his point. “They are.”

  “They came in late yesterday afternoon. We’ve been so busy I haven’t even had a chance to listen to them myself.”

  “Really?”

  He nodded. “What system have you got at home?”

  I hadn’t got a “system.” What I had was a massive, matte black all-in-one thing that I’d bought off Charlie years ago; I wasn’t going to tell him that, though. Instead I lied and said I couldn’t remember, and then added casually, as if possessed by the spirit of a high-rolling playboy, “I might as well get a new CD player and amplifier while I’m here.”

  “How much are you looking to spend?” he asked.

  I shrugged and gave him a figure off the top of my head that in no way bore any resemblance to anything I could afford.

  “Right,” he said, barely able to contain his excitement. “Hang on a sec, and I’ll make sure the listening room is vacant and then I’ll wire up the speakers to the perfect CD player and amplifier. You’ll love it.” He returned moments later carrying a bundle of wires and beckoned me to the glass-walled room at the back of the shop. It had a large worn brown leather sofa in the middle of it, perfectly positioned to optimize the acoustics of the room (apparently). While he matched up the wires with the sockets he gave me a rundown on the entire system. It was beautiful. There are few things in life more enticing than the sound of men talking hi-fi specifications. It put my world into perspective. The real world was a bad place where crappy things happened to me all the time, but this sales assistant was offering a way out, to a world of perfection, a place where every woofer, tweeter and bass note made sense. We both listened and spoke with awe when talking about the equipment. I didn’t know as much as he did, but he wasn’t condescending—he just wanted to share. The assumed knowledge. The attention to detail. It all brought us closer.

  Once the speakers were wired up he asked me if there was anything in particular I wanted to listen to so that we could really put the speakers through their paces. It was then that I disappointed him. Refusing all manner of dance tracks, classic rock, soul, hip-hop, jazz, guitar rock or pop, I handed him a compilation CD from the box on the floor, entitled For Lovers Only. It had a black-and-white picture of a preposterously attractive couple kissing in the rain.

  “Track seven,” I said desperately. “Play track seven.”

  He looked at me incredulously. “Are you sure, mate? I’ve got some banging techno that will sound brilliant through these.”

  “Yes.” I nodded, no longer caring about what he thought of me. “I know it’s cheesy but it was my . . . it was my . . . a friend of mine wasn’t going to have it played at her wedding.”

  “You’re the boss,” he said, raising his eyebrows. He placed the shiny silver disc carefully in the drawer, pushed it shut and pressed PLAY. Out of the speakers, crystal clear, as if the legendary ensemble were playing live right in front of me, came the rich vocal tones of the Commodores singing “Three Times a Lady.”

  Trudging through the pouring rain, weighed down by my brand-new speakers, amplifier and CD player, I was already losing any sense of well-being my purchases had given me. I needed help. I needed my friends. I called Charlie on his mobile. He and Dan were holed up in the Shakespeare in Covent Garden watching the football because the TV in the Haversham had broken down. As I put down the phone, my spirits picked up from their downward spiral. Charlie and Dan were just what I needed. Why? Because they were my people.

  People who talked about anything as long as it wasn’t serious.

  People who weren’t constantly asking what I was thinking.

  People who followed the rules of logic.

  People who didn’t talk when the TV was on unless it was to shout imaginative abuse at it.

  People who thought red satin underwear looked great on the opposite sex.

  Anyone see that Lassie film last night?” said Charlie, absentmindedly dismantling a beer mat. “I think it was Lassie Come Home.”

  The match had long since finished, a 0–0 draw and a typically dull performance from both teams, epitomizing just about everything that was wrong with modern football. It had been such a tedious game that instead of discussing the highlights we were reduced to talking about what we’d got up to the night before. Well, as I’d spent Saturday night in my darkened bedroom ruminating on the Ikea episode, I lied and told everyone I’d gone to bed early because I was knackered. Dan announced that he’d spent his evening in the company of Lana, a rather attractive heckler who’d harangued him for most of his set at the Happy House in New Cross; and Charlie, rather bizarrely, had apparently spent his evening watching Lassie Come Home.

  “They’re all the same,” said Dan, dismissing the entire Lassie genre glibly. “Small kid finds dog. Oh, Dad, can we keep dog? No. Please. No. Please. All right, go on, then. Small kid finds himself in danger. Lassie to the rescue. Happy ending.” He clapped his hands and shrugged like a cross between an East End barrow boy and a New York Jewish intellectual. “All variations on a theme, mate.”

  I didn’t join in the banter because something about Charlie’s evening activities didn’t add up. “Weren’t you supposed to be out with Vernie last night? She said she’d booked you a table at some hideously expensive restaurant in Hampstead.”

  “Yeah, she did,” said Charlie dejectedly. From the way he spoke it was obvious that their posh night out had been something of a disaster. “We had a great time,” he added flatly.

  “So how come you got to watch Lassie?” I asked.

  “I taped it,” he said defensively, the tone of his voice defying us to mock him, which we of course did anyway.

  “Do you know how sad that is, Charlie?” I said, laughing. “I can’t believe you taped a Lassie film. What kind of a depraved pervert does something like that in the privacy of his own home?”

  Relaxing visibly, now that the topic of his night out with Vernie had been left behind, he bowed his head in mock shame. “They were classics of their time,” he protested. “One day they’ll be up there with The Godfather Part II, Les Enfants du Paradis and Digby—The Biggest Dog in the World as the greatest films ever made.” He paused, chuckling into his beer. “Now, what was I going to say before I was so rudely interrupted? Oh yeah, in all the Lassie films, he always has to save a child from being mauled to death by some sort of vicious cougar-type animal . . .”

  “Don’t you mean she?” I prompted. “Lassie was a bird.”

  Charlie threw a puzzled glance at me, unsure if I was making this up. “Lassie was a bloke, wasn’t he?”

  “Of course Lassie was a she,” chipped in Dan. “Otherwise they’d be called Laddie films.”

  “Good point,” said Charlie, nodding. “All right, then. Well, in Lassie films she always has to save a child from being mauled to death by a cougar or something.” Dan and I nodded, wondering where this was going. “Well how did they do that? Surely they didn’t use real dogs to fight cougars?”

  “Yeah,” said Dan. “I once read in a magazine that they went through about eight stunt Lassies per film trying to get those cougar fights right.”

  My mind was obviously somewhere else because I was just about to say how outrageous this
was and shouldn’t the anti-animal-cruelty societies have done something, when Dan nearly choked himself to death with laughter. “They took the cougar’s teeth out,” he said, semi-convulsed. “I found out all about it on a documentary on the Discovery Channel.”

  I loved it—what I was experiencing at that very second. To me it was what life was all about; having a laugh and hanging out with my mates. It was the easy life incarnate. It was the way things were meant to be.

  As late afternoon turned into early evening our inanity knew no bounds. Between us there was a degree in drama and English (Dan’s), an MA in town planning (Charlie’s) and an inordinate amount of “A” levels (some of which were mine) and yet this was the furthest you could get from intelligent dialogue. But the subjects we spoke about felt important. More important than anything else in our lives. Inspired by Lassie, topics of conversation covered the following, which despite long and often heated arguments boiled down to the following basic questions and answers:

  Q: Could Batman beat Spiderman in a straight fight?

  A: Not really. Spiderman has superhuman strength whereas Batman is just a bloke in a romper suit with some gadgets.

  For the record: Charlie wanted it noted that he thought Batman would win because the likelihood of someone actually being bitten by a radioactive spider in real life was extremely small, whereas the odds of a bloke dressing up as a bat armed with a variety of crime-busting gadgets were slightly more realistic.

  Q: Who weighs the most?

  A: Me: 13 stone 5, Charlie: 14 stone 2, Dan: 12 stone 4.

  For the record: Charlie insisted that it wasn’t about weight per se, as about “muscle-to-fat ratio.”

  Q: Woody Allen’s best film is . . . ?

  A: Manhattan (two votes: Charlie and me), Shadows and Fog (one vote: Dan).

  For the record: Dan refused to accept the judgment and insisted we institute a points system (i.e., three points for our favorite, two for the next one, etc.) and demanded we all voted again.

  Overall winner under new system: Annie Hall.

  I disappeared to the gent’s at the back of the pub and as I took a leak, checked my watch. It was eight o’clock. Thanks to our concentrated drinking efforts and the eight million packets of crisps I’d consumed as a replacement for Sunday lunch I was inebriated enough not to try and work out how long it had been since I’d last seen Mel but sober enough not to fall into the urinal.

  Returning from the toilet I recalled a good anecdote that would embarrass Dan. It was the story of how he’d once confessed to having a bizarre crush on Elizabeth from The Waltons. Walking back to the table, desperately troubled by TV trivia (“Just what was the name of the actress who played Elizabeth?”) I noticed that an extra person was sitting at our table talking to Dan and Charlie. It was only when he turned and waved to me that I realized it was Greg Bennet, a mate of mine and Dan’s who was also a stand-up comic.

  Greg wasn’t really part of our inner circle—he was actually more of an associate, someone to drink with when there wasn’t anyone else, and an alternative source of comedy-circuit gossip. The thing was, none of us really liked him. He was the sort of person who would make inflammatory comments in the name of humor—usually about women, but animals, asylum seekers and religious groups were often thrown into the bargain—in the hope that his “on the edge” wit would impress us. What he failed to realize was that in his case, opposing “the overbearing arm of political correctness” and just being a git were one and the same thing. He was, however, harmless in an odd sort of way and we tolerated him for this reason and this reason only.

  “Guess what?” said Greg to all of us as I reached the table and sat down.

  For a laugh we all had a guess at Greg’s expense. Mine was, “You’ve decided to admit that ‘high foreheadedness’ and ‘balding’ are one and the same thing.”

  Charlie’s was, “You’ve discovered that you’re not funny.”

  Dan, however, got it right first time: “You’re getting married.”

  “Yeah,” said Greg with a perplexed look on his face. “How did you guess?”

  I looked at Dan and could see that the news quite saddened him, as it had me. Dan had been on the same drama course at college with Greg’s girlfriend—“the lovely Anne” as we called her—and had nearly got it together with her, but for one reason or another it never worked out and she’d ended up with Greg. Dan always said she was the kind of woman he could’ve fallen in love with because she was an incredibly genuine person whose only flaw, it seemed, was that she couldn’t see how much of a tosser Greg really was.

  “It’s like that joke,” Dan replied languidly. “Why did the monkey fall out of the tree?”

  “Dunno,” said Greg.

  “Because it was dead.” He paused for a moment, letting the punch line soak in. “Why did the second monkey fall out of the tree?”

  “Dunno,” repeated Greg self-consciously.

  “Because he thought it was a new game and didn’t want to be left out.”

  “And your point is?” said Greg, the only one of us not laughing.

  “Well, this one here’s already married.” Dan pointed to Charlie. “This one here’s getting married.” He pointed to me. “It was only going to be a matter of time before another monkey thought it was a good idea, and it’s not exactly going to be me, is it?”

  “Are you calling me a monkey?” said Greg, working himself up to a point beyond indignation but just outside anger.

  “No, Greg. I’m not,” said Dan, deflating a potentially combative situation. He’d drunk too much and Greg’s presence was bringing out the more antagonistic side of his nature. He offered his hand in congratulation. “I’m pleased for you, mate.”

  “Cheers,” said Greg, shaking Dan’s hand warily.

  “Married, eh?” said Charlie, offering Greg a handful of dry-roasted peanuts. “When did you ask her?”

  “Last night,” said Greg, accepting the peanuts. “I’d been thinking about it for a while now and I just thought why not?” He turned to me. “How about a double wedding, then? You and me, Anne and Mel. It’ll cut costs in half!”

  I didn’t laugh. I didn’t grin. I didn’t even shrug my shoulders. I didn’t do any of the things I was supposed to do. Instead I cried. Big fat tears by the bucketload. Everybody has a few really embarrassing moments in their lives. Well, I decided to have all mine and somebody else’s right there in the pub. I honestly couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried. Mel used to joke that I’d had my tear ducts removed, but the truth is, I think I just forgot how to. And now she had reminded me.

  No one spoke. Instead they stared emptily into their pints. I think even the jukebox stopped playing, although that could’ve been my overactive imagination. I’d let myself down. Badly. There was a time and place for emotions and this wasn’t either of them. Not here in a bar, with my mates watching me like I was some sort of freak show, and not now over Mel. All my tears did was point out the obvious—that whatever I did to avoid or escape it, real life would ultimately rear its ugly head. Everyone around the table knew real life existed—we also knew that was why after Stone Age man invented the wheel, the very next thing he did was invent the pub.

  After some moments of awkward silence so painful that I strongly believe they’ll scar me for my duration on this planet I reasoned that perhaps I owed my friends an explanation, which would perhaps make me feel better but would without a doubt only serve to make the situation worse. “Mel and I have split up,” I confessed. “She said I wasn’t sure about getting married. Which is true. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love her . . .” Overcome with emotion I failed to finish the sentence. The heavy sense of despair that had been bearing down on my shoulders since this morning finally crushed me. “My life has turned to arse. Somebody, anybody, tell me how to be sure.”

  There was a huge silence. A tall, wiry-looking bar man with spiky blond hair came over and collected our empty glasses. I wiped my eyes and attempted to clear t
he snot from my sinuses. Still no one uttered a single word.

  A few moments passed and then as if he’d just woken up Charlie said quietly, “Vernie’s pregnant. She told me yesterday at that restaurant she took me to. I knew something was up. We never go out for posh meals without a reason . . . I thought I was ready . . . I thought I’d get used to the idea but I haven’t and now it’s happened I . . . I don’t want to be a dad.”

  Silence.

  Dan coughed loudly and we all looked at him. “You all know about Meena’s wedding invitation. Well, last night, as I sat chatting up that girl I met after my gig even though I knew my heart wasn’t in it, it dawned on me that I made the biggest mistake of my life splitting up with Meena. I think she was . . . you know . . . The One.”

  We all exchanged glances and then stared at our pints and then at our laps and nobody said a word.

  After a few minutes of contemplative silence, Greg sniffed nervously, lit up a Silk Cut and offered them round the table. We all took one, waiting to hear whether he too had had a shock revelation that would gain him membership to the inaugural meeting of Emotional Losers Anonymous.

  “Right,” he said, settling down in his seat and holding his cigarette nervously, “did anyone see that Lassie film last night?”

  I am committed to

  non-commitment.