“I’m not going to be examining her at all. I can’t perform that kind of examination here, let alone on someone I’m close to. She doesn’t need to feel violated by me. I’ll just be there for support.”
I followed them outside and got into the small backseat of Melissa’s sports car. “You’ve got a fab motor,” I said. It was an old MGB GT in British racing green. Nick was crying a little, and no one talked on the way to hospital.
At A and E Melissa spoke to the triage nurse then disappeared with Nick. My potentially broken fingers weren’t priority next to shootings and stabbings, so I was in the waiting room a while. After the nurse took me to be examined and have my hands x-rayed, I waited another eternity for the result. When I got back into the sitting area, there was no sign of Melissa or Nick. I worried that they’d gone and I would never see them again. I tried to ask the charge nurse if she’d seen them, but she was too busy to talk with me, so I parked my arse into another chair.
Melissa finally came to get me, and I could have wept with gratitude.
“Where’s Nick?” I stood up.
“In the car. She’s been sedated. Come on, let’s get you back to yours.”
“Is she alright?”
“The physical damage wasn’t substantial,” Melissa said, as I followed her out into the cold night air. “How about you? How do you feel?”
“I’m completely fine.” I held out my hands. “Nothing’s broken.”
“Not just that. This must’ve been quite traumatic for you.”
I shrugged. “Whatever. I’m not the one who was attacked.” I didn’t even know what my feelings were. I still felt numb. But I wanted Melissa to think of me as courageous.
When we reached the car, Nick was hunched over in the passenger seat. I climbed in back. Melissa turned on the heat and made it nice and warm. My heart sped up as we neared my bedsit. What am I going to do? I’ve got to get to know these women, I thought. I‘ve got to see them again. Melissa pulled over to the curb. I was so relieved when she invited me round for tea the following day and gave me her address in the West End, I nearly fainted dead away on the pavement. It started raining, just light slivers, as if God was shivering.
“Are you sure you’re alright, love?” Melissa asked as I lingered by her window, leaning against the cold, wet metal of her car. “Do you want me to help you find someone to stay with you?”
“I told you.” I smeared the drops of water on the green skin of her car roof like I was finger painting. “I’m perfectly okay.” I waved goodbye as she drove off.
I lay in bed not sleeping, awash in strong emotions. I wished I had an old electric fire in a fake fireplace like the ones we’d had at Exeter instead of the more impersonal radiators. The soothing orange bars would have made good company. Now that the shock of what had happened wore off, I was aware of each swollen knuckle and every bruise. My head, neck, and arms hurt. I couldn’t sleep. I spent hours with my brain on rapid fire, breathlessly repeating prayers of protection as fast as I could to neutralize the bad thoughts about rape that kept popping into my head.
I sobbed in frustration as my anxiety expanded, filling the entire room. My head pounded like a percussive bass riff. I wished Melissa would suddenly appear on the edge of the bed. My heart ached, and at that moment, I would have given anything to feel her sitting beside me, stroking my hair, though even my hair hurt. The Police song about inappropriate sexual attraction that had been so popular among the girls on my hall at Exeter when I was young, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” started playing inside my head.
TRACK 17 Shot by Both Sides
I slept badly and awoke with the biggest headache of my life. I took a bunch of paracetamol and stayed in bed. In the late afternoon, I took another handful of paracetamol, grabbed my London A-Z and took the tube to Hampstead station. It was a far shout from where I lived. Outside the pubs, window boxes exploded with flowers and it was dead posh, the atmosphere far more tranquil than Hackney’s. I’d been in this neighborhood before on one of my many searches for the women in my head. But of course I’d been everywhere in London. It doesn’t mean anything, I admonished myself.
Melissa’s flat was a cheerful-looking, yellow brick building on a cobblestone lane with old-fashioned street lamps and black iron posts. Before I knocked on the black door with the fancy knocker, I said some quick, urgent prayers to get them out of my system. “Melissa safe, Nick safe, me safe,” I whispered because it would be my last chance to say my protective prayers out loud. For the next several hours, everything had to stay strictly in my head, and I couldn’t move my lips. That was the hardest part, not moving my lips. I’m sure I wasn’t always successful and seemed like a crazy person mumbling to myself.
I rapped on the door with outward confidence, though my mind was skidding everywhere, and Melissa let me in. She was in socks and green corduroy trousers, and a gray jumper over an untucked white shirt. Her eyes were an even richer brown than I’d remembered, and I felt myself dissolve into them. Melissa hung up my coat and scarf. I handed her my black bucket hat with Kurt Cobain’s signature embroidered on the front in red thinking, please be Melissa, please be my Melissa, please be my Melissa.
Nick padded down the hall, her hair sticking up like she’d been lying down. She hugged me and held on long enough for me to rest my head on her shoulder. She smelled nice, like London in the rain. “I honestly don’t know what to say. What you did—it was wicked. You saved my life.” She had a black eye, swollen lip, and assorted bruises. “I thought I was going to die.”
Something in the kitchen smelled gorgeous. Melissa opened up cartons of Indian takeaway and put the kettle on. “How do you take your tea?” she asked me.
“White with six sugars,” I said, with as much dignity as possible. Melissa started laughing. “Ta, Dr. Jones,” I murmured, as she handed me my cup.
“Please call me Melissa,” she said. “And you’re welcome. Sit down and have a Ruby.” When I looked confused, she added, “‘Ruby’ means ‘curry’ in Cockney rhyming slang. Ruby Murray was a popular Irish singer of the fifties. I thought you’d like that.” She knows I’m an Anglophile, I realized. I could hear a twinge of posh in her accent, but she downplayed it.
I bathed my face in the steam of my perfumed Earl Grey tea and felt my head clear for the first time all day. The hot, spicy food made all the difference. I was so tired the curry made me feel high. I felt my forehead thaw. Nick acted subdued but managed to eat a vegetable samosa, a little biryani rice, and some naan. I could tell that pleased Melissa.
“So, what are you doing this side of the pond then?” Melissa asked me. “Besides rescuing damsels, I mean.”
“I hate the American flag and everything it stands for,” I said then smiled to make my tone seem less heavy. “Every time I turned around in America, someone was shoving Jesus Christ and the flag down my throat. Sorry.”
“My sister’s name’s Amanda, too,” Melissa said, “but everyone calls her Jake after Jake Burns from Stiff Little Fingers. When she started playing guitar, she’d only play Fingers songs. The name just stuck.”
“That’s one of my favorite bands,” I said eagerly. “My favorite bands are Nirvana, the Clash, the Jam, Stiff Little Fingers, Therapy?, the Pretenders, and Patti Smith.”
“Spot on. Those are pretty much the same as mine. Except I’d list the Clash first and add the Ruts.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I can’t live without the Ruts either.”
“I see we speak the same language.”
Her approval made me feel bright and shiny inside. And Nick perked up a bit when we talked about music.
Melissa put the kettle on again and asked me, “How do you take your coffee?”
I hesitated. “White, eight sugars,” I said, and Melissa looked amused. “I’m glad you’re having a laugh. Why do people think it’s immature to ask for lots of sugar?”
“Why don’t we go into the sitting room?” Melissa suggested. “You can see my records.”
The front room was airy and bright, with pale yellow walls, bright pink moldings, and white lace curtains in the window. I saw a turntable in one corner and a row of record albums that stretched along one whole side of the wall. I immediately dropped to my knees in front of them and, since my back was turned, took the opportunity to say the prayer that had been welling up inside me, putting enormous pressure on my brain. Please let Melissa love me. Though I recited it in silence, I felt relieved at the chance to move my lips.
“Everything by the Clash and the Jam,” I announced, delightedly flipping through vinyl. She had everything, from Wreckless Eric and Peter and the Test Tube Babies to the Vibrators and the Adverts. She had the first two XTC albums, a huge collection of Sham 69 and the Damned, the Wall’s Personal Troubles & Public Issues, and the first Killing Joke LP. I also found the really important singles like “City of the Dead” and “The Prisoner” by the Clash, the Jam’s “Dreams of Children,” and Magazine’s “Shot By Both Sides.” “Magic,” I said, “the history of punk in vinyl.”
“You’re into all the old British punk?” Melissa asked, smiling.
“Each new punk record that arrived from England was like manna from heaven. You have no idea how much it meant. Those fourteen songs from the original Clash album are embedded permanently in my heart. Along with This Is the Modern World.” I had a vivid recollection of my younger self listening to the second Jam album, reading the lyrics, and staring at the pen-and-ink drawings on the record sleeve for hours, days, weeks. It was a whole new world, like somebody had opened up a window and let the air in.
“Whenever I meet someone who seems about my age,” Melissa said, “I want to know—where were you in 1977?”
I knew exactly what she meant.
“Things were different then,” she added wistfully. “We were the original punks. The political, intellectual punks.”
“Everything new’s not shite or without intellect.” Nick couldn’t help herself and finally got involved in the conversation. “A lot of it’s got politics and ethics. Not everyone under forty has forgotten what punk means.” She seemed about five years younger than I was.
“Ouch,” Melissa said.
“What about American bands like Rancid, Anti-Flag, and Bad Religion?” Nick spoke up again, forgetting her pain for a moment.
“I love Rancid, as they model themselves after the Clash, but I can’t listen to them endlessly,” I said. “I can’t get excited about most current bands. I like what they’re saying, but it’s not my sound.”
“Yeah, I know. I’ll listen to anything that reminds me of the Clash,” Nick admitted. “What about AFI? Now’s there’s an awesome Yank band.” Nick pronounced the word “awesome” with an American accent.
“I don’t really listen to them,” I said.
“Oh mate, well, you’ve got to.”
“If you’ve got some you could lend us,” I said, “I’ll give them a serious listen. What about your bands I might not have heard about on my sorry side of the pond?”
“I like Capdown and Mouthwash,” Melissa said. “Punk ska.” When she said that I pictured her dancing. I thought she would look dead sexy.
Nick said, “I like the Mingers and Bug Central.”
“I love the reissues and old bands’ new releases on Captain Oi!,” Melissa said. “Have you seen their catalogue, Amanda? I only let myself order from it once a month.”
“Captain Oi! is my savior,” I said. “I wish I could buy everything on that label, but I can’t afford it.”
“I like going to see bands that do animal-rights gigs,” Melissa said, “like Active Slaughter, Dog on a Rope, and Smiling with Semtex. And I like to support antiracism and antifascism benefit gigs.”
“I love your band Hole. And I like the Distillers,” Nick said. “Brody rocks.”
“First she sounded like her ex,” I said, meaning Tim Armstrong from Rancid. “And now she sounds like Courtney Love from Hole. Which brings up somebody—” Of course I meant Kurt Cobain, who’d been married to Courtney Love, and his band Nirvana.
“Oh, aye,” Nick said, “Kurt’s magic.” She smiled for the first time without wincing. “Patron saint of losers like me.”
“You’re not a loser and neither was he,” Melissa said.
“No, really. It’s okay. I don’t feel bad about myself when I listen to him. Even when he’s screaming, he cradles my brain gently, like it’s a precious bird’s egg or something.”
“That’s really good,” I said, impressed by her imagery. “That’s exactly how it feels.”
“The best band since the Clash,” Melissa agreed.
“The only band since the Clash.” I lifted up my trouser leg to show off my “Kurt” tattoo. “I’m the only lesbian I know with a man’s name engraved on her leg.”
“I worship at the church of Saint Kurt too,” Nick confessed. “And I’m Catholic.”
“I can’t help it, but I get Kurt confused with Jesus,” I said. “He looks so much like those racist blonde, blue-eyed renditions of our Lord.”
“Yes, he fits in so well with all the other albino peoples of the Middle East,” Melissa said. She and I laughed, but Nick went quiet.
“God,” I said, suddenly registering the fact that she said she was Catholic, “have I upset you? I’m so sorry. My mouth is forever going off without my brain.”
“No, you didn’t,” Nick assured me, but she had tears on her face. “I think Kurt makes a lovely Jesus. I just feel completely shattered all of a sudden.”
Melissa looked at her quickly. “Are you in pain, love?”
Nick shook her head. “I should just go to bed. Am I going to see you again?” she asked me.
“Sure,” I said.
“We owe her a meal at the Iskem,” Melissa said. “She used her falafel as a hand grenade.”
“I must’ve missed that,” Nick said. “I was a bit out of it, me.”
I shrugged. “I threw my dinner at his head to distract him. No big deal. And you’ve already fed me.”
Nick kissed my cheek, said, “Be lucky,” and went into the room where she was sleeping.
“Hang on half a mo.” Melissa followed her.
Alone I thought, keep Nick safe, keep Nick safe, please let Melissa love me, this time keeping my mouth still, something I practiced rigorously as a survival tactic.
Melissa returned about twenty minutes later. “I wanted to tuck her in with a Valium and some pain medication.”
“How is she really?” I asked.
“I sat up with her last night. And I buggered off work today and took her to see a rape-crisis counselor.”
“Maybe I should go so you can sit with her.” I felt bad, imagining Nick too scared to fall asleep.
“I’ll check on her. She wants to try and sleep. I think she feels safe with us right outside the door.”
“Was she badly hurt? Is she going to be okay?”
“She has a bit of vaginal tearing. And the bruises you can see. Of course the emotional damage is more significant. But it could have been much worse. Without your intervention.” Melissa smiled. “Thank God the physical wounds will heal quickly. I’m just so grateful that I didn’t have to talk to her about an HIV test or tests for pregnancy and other sexually transmitted diseases. I’m grateful to you.”
“I should be getting back to mine,” I said awkwardly, blushing, thinking that Melissa probably did want me to leave now that Nick had gone to bed.
“Have another cuppa before you go.” Melissa got up and switched on the electric kettle.
“Ta very much.”
“I’m glad you didn’t bugger up your hands. You’ve got that lovely Gibson SG.”
“You know about guitars? You’re a perfect person.”
/> “I told you, my sister’s a musician. She plays with a punk band in Canada.”
I could feel the effects of landing on my head returning but figured I could suppress them with another cup of tea. “What’s your sister’s band called? Does she have anything out I can listen to?”
“Bow Wow Mao,” Melissa laughed. “She met them while they were touring the UK. They took her on as second guitar for their European tour to enlarge their sound, then asked her to stay on. Their original guitar player quit, and now my sister writes most of their music. She keeps promising to send me a copy of their self-released CD but hasn’t come across with it yet. And they’re supposed to be building a website and Myspace page for the band, but I think they’re on tour in Asia now.”
I thought about Ann and Nancy Wilson moving up to Canada from Seattle so the men in the group could stay out of the Vietnam War. “She sounds smashing.”
“She is, rather. I’ve got a ton of music gear upstairs. Nick and Jake are best mates. I worry about Nick now that she’s gone. She doesn’t trust that many people. She likes you, though. I can tell.”
“Really?” My heart leaped. Then I wondered aloud, “Is she afraid of the police? Did you call them?”
“She didn’t want to report it. And I’m not going to push her.”
“Why? Don’t you think someone should? Report it, I mean.”
Melissa shrugged. “I know we’re all responsible for getting rapists off the streets and that, but sometimes the whole ordeal is just too much for someone. And since it wasn’t what a lot of people still would call a successful rape, and he didn’t leave behind DNA, I doubt he would be caught or that it would be a top priority for the police. He doesn’t know who she is or where she lives.” She frowned, deep in thought, then tried to lighten the mood by saying wryly, “Besides, people have a nasty habit of dying in police custody in Hackney and falling down stairs when there aren’t any, if you know what I mean. A bloke died just the other week in Stoke Newington station.”
“Fuck me, are you serious? That’s where I tried to take her.”
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