Wankers

Chapter 2

***

Speaking of feet in doors, Jennifer did call me just a couple of days after that, and she never commented, at all, on the name thing. I’ve been asked a few times – never, mind you, by Dougal, who wouldn’t – why all of my girlfriends happen to be Continentals. Well, it isn’t quite true, because the lovely and frustrating Sinéad was Irish, but it’s true I’ve never dated a Brit. I swear it isn’t on the grounds that they’re unlikely, then, to notice anything amiss about the old name – but well, who would I be to say it doesn’t help, eh? So I hope Jennifer knows I’m breaking the habit of 26 years in going out with her tonight. I have to admit that I did get the impression from the telephone conversation – short, sweet and unplaceably flirtatious – that she’d been trying to set us up on something of a date but no, it’s not looking that way as we’re sat, now, in the pub, me and a collection of types from the Institute. There’s an Anya, a Renée, a German named Anne (pronounced “Anna”, apparently – and I’ve been saying Anne Frank wrong for all these years!), a Yasmin, an Elena (Greek), an Elena (Bulgarian), a big creep leading them all named Florian, a more beautiful than I remember Jennifer, and next to her there’s me, and not knowing any German, French, Russian or Italian I feel there’s a lot of Institute gossip I must be missing out on. For instance, Institute of what? Apparently it’s West London’s major centre for modern European linguistic and cultural studies, which is all well and good, but I wish it had a name. Still, everyone who works there seems to be having a lot of fun with their speech, conversations switching pretty fluidly from language to language – several times within a sentence, some of the time. Occasionally Jennifer’ll turn to me and try to keep me engaged, translating what’s going on, she must think it’ll be fun for me if I pretend I’m an ambassador meeting some brave, new, post-linguistic society, and truth be told, it is how I feel – I feel outmoded, extinct. Everyone here is pan-European, post-post-Eurotrash, a culture vulture, a wine-drinking, theatre-appreciating, art-gallery-lifetime-membership-having, liberal, socialist, feminist, intellectual, child of the European Union and here am I – typical, big English stick in the mud. It’s no fun at all.

Still, bless Jennifer for trying. Occasionally she’ll look at me, her eyes filled, I suppose, with apology, smiling slightly too wide, slightly crooked, and she’ll just sort of squeeze my knee very, very gently and it’s so – is it reassuring? It must be reassuring. She’s the only thing I’m really enjoying here. I don’t want to come across like a big cunt, but I’m sort of used to hanging out with types who are – well, I suppose they’re the type of types I choose to bump into – twenty to twenty-five, arts degrees, pierced ears and noses, mostly starstruck. So ordinarily, when I say something like “Yeah, I’m a music journalist”, they say something like “Wow, that’s so cool!” but not here. No, here when I mentioned Belle and Sebastian I got some bollocks about some French children’s TV bollocks and the whole thing just pisses me off because – I mean honestly! The only reason you’d know about French children’s TV would be if you’d spent your childhood in France, and I just don’t think that’s a fair standard to hold people to at the pub. And when I can’t talk about music, and when people get snooty at the mere mention of the Bond films – “ugh, I do not care for them, so misogynistic”, “nothing but more British neo-imperialism” – then honestly the entire canon of my conversation is useless, because I’m hardly going to start on the s*x or drug anecdotes, am I?

Is it rude to go out for a cigarette during a date, if other people are there too? That’s the text I write out, and ponder to whom to send it. Dougal would be useless, of course, but who else is there? Donahue’s right out; I haven’t actually seen Laurie in an age; Rob is a cunt; Martin’s just a tad boring… s**t. I’ve never had loads and loads of friends – couldn’t say why, I suppose. Gosh, f**k it, I’ll send it to f*****g Martin, then – surely he’ll at least appreciate it, and it’s hardly as if he’s not the wisest person I know.

Jennifer’s away to the loo when I step back in and it looks like just as soon as I stepped out someone or other started a lively conversation about the Pixies, and all anyone has to say for them is unequivocal praise, which I sit through for a bit:

“It’s like, they are an American band with a – a European soul, you know?”

This inspires, apparently, universal agreement.

“More of a – an artistic project that – a literary project that happens to take the form of a rock band-”

“But without really being a rock band-”

Florian, at this point, obviously notices how bored I look by this sort of talk, because he meets my eye from the other end of the table. Good old Florian – maybe I can get in a moment with him at the bar, and it’ll turn out I’m not the only one not on board with all this pretension.

“Yes, exactly! If anything, more a spiritual – er, a following in the footsteps of The Velvet Underground…”

At that my ears prick up, because Hell if I’ll let my beloved Velvets be dragged into this, and first impressions be damned because by the time my thoughts catch up with me I’ve already too much momentum in the tirade:

“Look, bollocks! Pixies seem to be an act that, while little appreciated within their own lifetime, have retrospectively come to be seen as one of the greats, and while, in that respect, they can be compared to The Velvet Underground or even Joy Division, where they differ from the latter two acts is that, in spite of all that obfuscating acclaim, they never actually produced a full LP of unskippable tracks.” – good going Sooty actually, you can be so eloquent! – “Oh come on, you can sit there and frown at the notion, but it’s just rot to say that you sit through and enjoy ‘Crackity Jones’ every time, or ‘Tony’s Theme’, because none of us are 12. Everyone wants to like Doolittle because it starts off really well, but nobody will actually admit that Trompe le Monde was a considerably better record, just because it didn’t have any particular standout track. That’s what made it a better record! The fact you couldn’t say ‘Well, this here’s an essential track but the rest is take-or-leave sort of stuff’. Actually most of Frank Black’s solo career beats out Doolittle as well, but people want to look at the CD with ‘Debaser’ on it and say ‘That one’s the classic’. Buy the f*****g Greatest Hits then! And you know, they even had trouble filling a single disc with songs when they did release one!” – all good, it’s funny no-one’s mentioned the Nirvana connection yet but it’s OK, I can always pre-empt that argument – “and don’t get me started on the Nirvana connection, which, by the way, I mean – OK, when you look at the Velvets you can go ‘Well, they influenced Bowie, and Roxy Music, and R.E.M., and Belle and Sebastian’” – smug pause. Belle and Sebastian is a band, not a f*****g TV show, so there! – “and then you look at the Pixies and you go ‘Yeah, they influenced Nirvana’ – who were a better band! And anyway, Kurt used to give props to all of his indie contemporaries, so I don’t see where’s the great re-evaluation of Flipper or The Melvins or… The f*****g Knack! Why don’t we all sit around and stroke our chins and talk about The Knack, I mean after all it’s all power pop anyway!”

“Well, I don’t think most people have heard of this band – The Knack-”

“Bollocks. The Knack. ‘My Sharona’.” – blank look – “‘My little pretty one, oh my pretty one’ – no-? Look, it doesn’t matter, because that’s actually my point. When you’re really into music, you get into it, and you end up having these weird appreciations, like Kurt had – you might end up thinking that what to everyone else is a forgotten one-hit wonder deserves consideration with the rest of the greats. And you might look at the Pixies and decide they’re one of the greats, too, but when you come at it just having heard that they are great, then you’re not into it, and you don’t end up with a real love, just an appreciation. It’s why a fan of, you know, Mudhoney or… Pearl Jam’s going to be more passionate, because they’ve got something to prove. You haven’t got anything to prove, because you’ve never come to it that way.” – this is actually going really well. If I wrap up soon, I might actually win this one – “Look, if you’re going to sit there with your uncontroversial opinions where you just say that the same bands Q Magazine says are great, are, then you just look like a total…” – alright Sooty, go out on a high note here, and you’ll be invincible – “massive twat.” – f**k – “just a t**t. Probably a t**t with loads of unopened Pixies CDs on the shelf.”

And I’m out. Off to the bar before anyone can say I didn’t win both the moral and the actual victory on that one. I meet Jennifer on her way back from the loos and she says it doesn’t seem like I’m making many friends, do I want to ditch? Always, Jennifer. Christ, if she thinks these people are a bunch of bloody great bores also, then I think I might already have fallen in love with her.

***

Coming home, Jennifer wrapped her arm in mine – which was nice – and asked me why I’d started an argument – which wasn’t that nice. She said that whereas I hardly know these people and so have no real investment in them, they’re terribly important to her as colleagues. I said she wasn’t wrong about any of that, and she said I have to stop being such a wanker then. But she laughed as she said it, despite my great, hurt, punished-dog impression, and she stopped walking and put her hand on my chest. “I like you anyway”, she said, playing up a bashful, cute angle, and she kissed me, pushing her tongue right into my mouth, and for just a second I’m put in mind of the way Sinéad used to kiss me like that. The best part of kissing Jennifer is the way she moans just ever so slightly, and leans in to you. Of course, all of this cannot help but make me very hard. Shall we just get a taxi instead of walking? Yes, of course.

***

TRANSCRIPT

Sooty’s mobile – Dougal – September 19 22:12

SOOTY: Hello there Dougal, what’s up?

DOUGAL: Sooty, my old friend-

SOOTY: Yes, are you OK?

DOUGAL: Very well, very well. And yourself?

SOOTY: It’s “and you”. I’m fine, what do you want?

DOUGAL: Why, are you indisposed?

SOOTY: Yes, I’m somewhat indisposed. Can’t you text?

DOUGAL: No, I always call.

SOOTY: I know you do.

DOUGAL: I only text in an emergency.

SOOTY: That doesn’t make – that’s the opposite of-

DOUGAL: Now, listen, I’m at the club with an Old Boy who’s incredibly rich and very eccentric, or as you’d no doubt put it, “a massive wanker”.

SOOTY: That does sound like something I’d say, yeah.

DOUGAL: Well, he’s just bought us all an Imperial-

SOOTY: A what?

DOUGAL: It’s four Magnums.

SOOTY:-

DOUGAL: Of Champagne, I mean.

SOOTY: Is that a lot?

DOUGAL: Listen, it’s a ludicrous amount, so of course I thought “Who do I know who’s missing out on this?” and your name came to mind almost straight away.