you give me fever….

Shit. I’m writing this two weeks later. Just finished an epic marathon of eight birthday blog specials, and realised there was over a week to fill. What have I been fucking doing? A lot of mourning, that’s what:

The Friday: crying at mr fish

The Saturday: supposed to grade for kick boxing. Feel like a piece of utter shit. In desperation end up in the bleak midsummer drinking free alcoholic ginger beer with a group of outsiders, then ready meal, whisky and tarot with my wife. Tarot as follows:

The fool
Seven pentacles
10 swords

Yes, a marvellous reading! The future is basically the most feared card in the pack. The future is fear. I fear the future. The advice? Lay down and take it. Accept defeat. I push this all aside, such is the wonder of interpretation. But it will bite me.

The Sunday: lay in bed till three. Get up, all gangly after not eating for about a week and walk over hill and vale to my mandolin player’s for a roast. Play a gig in a dark irish pub. Sing a song about doing it up the bum at some strange morose hippies; hailing originally from cornwall but now on a nationwide tour. To an open mic night. They now in London, and must have hit it big time. Forest hill. London? The boy pretends he’s coming down. I know I may never see him again.

The Monday: even bloody worse. What do I do? I decide by the end of the day I have to know. Yes, I have to see him. I text him to tell him I have to see him the next day. He doesn’t reply. Oh shit. I have to see him, this is horrible.

So I make a pact with myself. That even though it was the last thing I said I’d do, (no, not THAT), I’d text him in the evening if I had to. Samson soothed my troubled soul on the beach, and I dressed like a Russian prostitute for this last day. And then I bumped into obstrov. We cried in the Vodafone store. Another friend wounded by a past blog, though luckily redeemed in the next, and she invites me to an open mic night that evening. Had just been thinking a cup of tea with her would be nice. This must be destiny.

I go home. It’s time for the text. And that’s why I’ve been quiet. Such a sequence of non-happenings there never was. He’s a very clever one, that tricky fellow. Let’s not argue, hell, let’s not even talk. Let’s just make believe he’s letting me down gently.

Here we go with the texts:

G: something about being gallant and bidding my leave
J: something about pretending to be confused
G: don’t be. Something about screwing other people
J: understands. How very fucking kind of him.

So that’s it? I push my feet ahead of me and get out of the flat. To the open mic. A badly arranged huddle of people who look like someone’s died and play like someone’s about to. Sorry, can’t handle this. I’m off. Obstrov asks me why. Well, there’s a talented pianist who can sing, playing with a complete idiot of a man from Worthing who’s written tiresome songs and is croaking them out in a faux-madness style. What a fucking liberty.

Walking home I suddenly remember my usual haunt for a Monday, (oh how dangerous part-time working can be). I pop into the pub where a good friend of mine’s a musician running an open mic night.

And suddenly, I’m propped up on a stool, geetar in hand, half-baked, being begged for a song! I speak huskily into the microphone for the whole pub to hear.

‘I’ve just been dumped’. A wave of sympathy comes back at me. And I honk out a good un, oo yeah, a bittersweet one. The 26 year-old crumpet I’ve been harassing in preparation for the fall kisses me on the way out. Nothing like a bit of sympathy.…

Tuesday: I’m feeling pretty wretched. I’d stolen some of my mum’s codeine to get through my fever and emotional pain and I wanted more. The albino mork from downstairs has become my personal photographer, following my band around and getting some beauties.

Today he’s doing my portraits for his portfolio. I look godawful. Really bad. Dehydrated, old, post-fever and codeine. It’s the daytime. I don’t know what to wear. I decide destruction would be a good theme. Broken.

We smoke rollies and chat about stuff. It’s good to get an outsiders perspective. Then we snap away, lights and screens and all, chin down, eyes up, move to the left – a terrible version of Blow Up. With Freddie Krueger disguised as a young model.

Then kickboxing. I’m pretty ropey and gangly, oh yes, this grief thang is great for the weightloss. My instructor has me on my own at the end of class. She invites me to her wedding party. I want to cry. She asks how I’m feeling. I want to cry. I fake that it’s the fever, but it’s something far worse. She tells me the date of my first proper fight. How can good news sound so terrifying?

Wednesday: sometimes work has a purpose. A gauge of how you score against other people in the real world. By the end of the day I decide I’m ranking pretty high. Sweet distraction. Then I go to a party, my hips sticking out of my jeans. It’s hard to party when you’re sad, but we make a good job of it. Bump into an old mod friend of mine there from way back. It ends in amateur tarot, guitar lessons and the up-the-bum song.

All this time in limbo, not breathing. Not writing, not thinking. Frozen like a gnat in plastic.

The weekend brings my god-daughter’s first camping trip. A long train journey takes me through London where my feet feel good upon the grey pavements. God I love this city, it’s real, everyone’s on their own but bundled together. On a similar mental plane. Doing what they need to do to get through. Not wafting about taking pottery classes by the sea.

My best friendo’s read my last blog, as have a few others, so no need to bleat out the three-in-a-bin vignette. It’s raining. Everyone’s drinking apart from me. Six o’clock comes and I get on it. Thank god for other people feeding me. Slatherings of meat and half a bottle of vodka later, I’m feeling good around the soggy campfire. I didn’t bring my guitar, but never to be let down by my adoptive family, surrogate dad pulls one right out of the bag.

Turns out he was in a band when he was seventeen. Knows every single beatles harmony. So we crank up the ipod and have a good old go at it, letting off Chinese lanterns that burn and fade. The olds come to the rescue by telling me their failed dating stories. Aunty Maggie sits me on her knee in my now blim-burned mckenzie tracksuit bottoms, and tells me to talk to the boy, but not to sweep it under the carpet, or else in three months it’ll be the same.

I just want to sleep with him. I JUST WANT TO SLEEP WITH HIM. One worse thing than a woman scorned, and that’s a woman with her horn snubbed.

When I get home my wife tells me I must text the boy to find out the day of reckoning. We said we’d meet up to talk about it. We arrange thursday, the day before my stupendous birthday party. Not a good idea. But then, the whole thing was never such a great one….

Then, on the Monday whilst playing love exaltation songs with obstrov on the ukulele, he texts again. Wednesday. We have to both do open mic at a random pub on Wednesday. Is that a good idea? It will be late, and I’ll have been up at half six for work in London. To hell with it, go out with a bang, prepare a set of absolute disgrace and wail it at him. Then try and fuck him. Sorry, talk at him.

The thing is, what the hell are we meant to talk about? The fact he changed my world? That I’ll always be his cosmic friend to guide him? The day comes, and I have no words.

But I do have three songs. As follows:

1. Yoko. A song about laying him across my womanly knee cos he really brings out the cougar in me. Last played to him on mdma before we collapsed on the rug in fits of ecstasy and I lost my memory.
2. let’s follow that with ‘midnight’. A sweet, swing-style ditty about being in somebody’s arms at midnight, and baby, they’d better be mine.
3. Kiss. By prince. Country style. Come on!

What a trilogy! Though it’s the darkest, most macabre drinking establishment I have graced for many a year, the lesbians lap it up. I get offered a gig by the landlady. I feel petrified and terrible.

Now it’s his turn to blow me out of the water. Somehow he pulls off Amazing Grace and other such wonders, mumbling his name at the end like a true pro. The crowd want more. A short, fat, drunk, bald man with gout keeps touching me and saying if he was simon cowell the award would go to…..and it’s obviously fucking him, I mean, I can hardly play the guitar without smashing the windows, thank god for untrained ears. But no, fatty tells me, I have won. I slap him on the head and tell him it’s only because I’ve got tits.

So what now? Must be time for ‘the talk’. Hallelujah. But the boy is squirming, saying he’s supposed to meet a ‘friend’. Grrrrrrrrrr. No you fucking don’t. we go for a drink, guitars and all.

And he talks about strippers, books and other mundane shit, and I lap it up, every word like liquid gold falling short of my yearning body.

No talk. No chat. An episode in the toilet where I have a word with myself and my wife, results in my her telling me to walk away with a ‘fuck you, you can’t have me’ stance. But we’re together as we always are, and I can’t suddenly become this rooster.

We walk away together. There’s no cocky attitude, but there’s no cigar.

What is this? Where’s the elephant in the room gone? Are we supposed to be friends now? Not fricking likely.

Then the redemption. He’s coming to my birthday party on Friday. Yay! I can completely humiliate myself by trying to fuck him then too!

And he’s walked away from me, into the rain, into the park, and I onto the bus. Still feeling put out, but clinging desperately onto the fact that Friday I could be in love………….