Love on the Dancefloor

by Liam Livings

“And you go to his record shop too?” She was shaking her head now and tutting very loudly between sucking on the cigarette as if her life depended on it.

  I nodded. “But it’s surfacey. Just nothing talk. Clubs, music, films we like, who we know from the clubs—a lot of the same people, actually. Nothing much.”

  “What sort of nothing much? Give me a for instance.”

  So, as the pans bubbled, and the meat roasted, and the potatoes did whatever it is potatoes do when you have them in a roast dinner, I told her about the last time when I’d gone to Paul’s record shop, pretending not to know which songs I needed for my big set at the enormous warehouse nightclub behind King’s Cross station, and how Paul had spent almost an hour with me, going through the DJ extended mixes of all the best trance songs, cos he knew that’s what I liked playing, that was my thing as far as a DJ went.

  ***

  “How’d you feel about bouncy house, or is it just trance you want?” Paul said, his hands hovering above a twelve-inch single version of ‘Return To Innocence’ by Enigma which had just been released.

  “Think I’d better stick with what I’m building as my sound. If that’s all right.”

  “No problem, but you might want to check this out, just for yourself. Here—” he handed me the record “—I’ll throw it in with the rest. Call it mates’ rates discount or some shit.” He smiled. “I’m assuming you’ve already got the classics—the tracks where it all started?”

  I knew my trance but not as well as Paul did. I thought I had a good variety in my record collection for the shows; I’d gradually worked my way from little pub back rooms to bigger venues, to some warehouses at orbital parties, to the proper London venue I’d told Paul I was playing that weekend.

  “Jam & Spoon, ‘The Age of Love’?”

  “Hum it.” I said, still staring at his beautiful blue eyes.

  “Piss off, hum it. I’ve got it.” With a few deft finger movements between the wooden trays of records, he pulled one out and put it on the record player, nodding his head in time with the music, closing his eyes as it built to a crescendo.

  Allowing the silence while the song was at its best, I eventually said, “I’ll take it. Any other essentials?”

  Over the course of the next hour, he played me what he considered the essential trance songs right from the start, up to now, 1993, before adding one more essential track.

  “‘Love U More’ by Sunscreem. It. Is. A. Tuuuunnnneee! Heard it?”

  I had, but seeing as I was enjoying the attention and didn’t have my own copy yet, I asked him to play it. He put the record on, then did the eyes shut, head nodding, hands dancing thing he’d done to the other songs, this time a bit deeper. He was really getting lost in the music.

  We waited right to the end of the four-minute song.

  I don’t know if you’ve ever listened to a song in a record shop, right to the end, when there’s others in the shop, clutching their records and eager to have a listen. Well, it’s a long time.

  It felt like another hour, but it was worth it to see Paul’s face at the end. He lifted the record off the turntable, wiped it gently with a cloth, and replaced it in its sleeve. “Having it?”

  I took it and added it to the pile of other records I’d agreed to buy, based on Paul’s advice and music-playing temptation.

  As he handed my change and the bag, heavy with records, he smiled and said, “’Love U More’. It doesn’t get better than that, I reckon.”

  I told him, again, about where I was playing that Saturday night, and said he could come along; it’d be good for him to hear the songs I’d bought cos of him.

  He looked away, with a smile, and said, “Yeah, sounds wicked. Cool. Yeah. Enjoy!”

  I left, clutching the bag to my chest and replaying the bit of the conversation by the till.

  ***

  Now, as I came to the end of telling Mum, I shook my head. “Still can’t understand why he didn’t come.”

  She snapped her fingers, stood to check the pans on the hob, then returned, lighting one more cigarette and offering me another one. “That, my dear, sweet innocent and naïve boy, is where you’re going fantastically wrong. That’s not surfacey, that’s small talk. That’s what most of us do most of our lives. Who wants to talk about politics or religion when you can chew the fat with someone about some film or other you liked, or hated, or thought was pretty painfully shit? That, right there, is the basis of a relationship. It’s something more than passing moments over the tills at work. That is a relationship. Almost.”

  “Then why’s he not come to the places I say I’m going to be at?”

  “He doesn’t know if you’re into boys too. And love, although this may not be physically possible, he sounds to me like he’s more shy than you are. Bless him, giving you the song about love, saying it was his favourite one, and letting you have it for free. Bless him. Bless you. Bless the bloody pair of you.”

  “It was, it’s been everywhere, It’s essential for me to have in my record collection.”

  “All right, love, you tell yourself that.” She shook her head. “Like I said, that, my love, is almost, nearly, within a gnat’s snatch of being the beginnings of a relationship.”

  “If he’s into boys.”

  “True enough. So, sweetie, love, my darling, beautiful son, please can you promise me one thing?”

  “Yes.” I took a drag on the cigarette, flicking the ash at my end of the table into the basket on the back of the china donkey she’d brought back from her last Spanish holiday with Dad.

  “Ask him the fuck for a drink.”

  “Understood.” I shook my head, knowing it would be pointless. If he even wanted to go for a drink, Paul wouldn’t want to go out with me. Useless. When someone tells you something often enough, you start to believe it. Useless. When it’s all you hear about yourself for almost a year, it’s how you start to think everyone sees you. Useless.

  CHAPTER 3

  MONDAY, AS PREDICTED, rolled round in all its horrific, dragging-on-for-the-whole-week glory. But fortunately, as I’d avoided going back to Slinky Simon’s, I was able to do more than just stand by the rewinder machine because I was too banjaxed to do anything else.

  No, this Monday, I took old films out of rental, priced them up in the for-sale section and checked in a load of new films. Some of them looked good, others looked terrible, and I knew which ones would walk out every week as if they had legs of their own. They didn’t stand much chance against Jurassic Park, Mrs. Doubtfire and Sleepless in Seattle, which were on at the cinema.

  I willed with my whole, slightly crumpled but not as bad as it could have been, body for Paul to arrive, with his broad smile and his twinkling blue eyes, so I could ask where he was on Saturday night when I had been making my largish-club DJing debut, and we could joke about how there was always next time, and he’d say he couldn’t come because something had happened and he’d meant to leave a message at the door but he’d forgotten that too, and I wouldn’t mind because he’d be standing, smiling, in front of me and I would have forgiven him anything.

  Sadly, none of that little rom com actually happened. Not a sign of Paul for the whole day. I debated with myself about calling into his shop during my lunch break, but the bus journey across three high streets would have taken the whole hour, and I couldn’t bear the thought of the smell of summer sweaty bus people on a minor comedown. Instead, I sat in the staffroom, hiding from the bright sunlight and read a copy of the Daily Mirror, which had a two-page article about the acid house scene and how it had changed, and how the world as we knew it was going to come to an end because young people were dancing to repetitive fast music and taking ecstasy like generations before them had done with different drugs and music in the sixties, seventies and eighties, but for some reason now signalled the end of the world.

  Minor rant coming up, so brace yourself.

  People don’t glass each other in nightclubs on ecstasy. People don’t fight about getting a drin
k at the bar if they’re on a decent Mitsubishi turbo. No, that’s the reserve of pissed-up people in pubs and clubs having drunk their body weight in alcohol. But because you can’t tax and regulate ecstasy, this is why the papers see it as the end of the world as they know it.

  When I returned to work, I pottered about, tidying up stray videos that had been put in the wrong sections and serving a few customers. The thought of flicking through the Yellow Pages to find the phone number for Paul’s record shop escaped my mind right until the end of the day, when I checked the time and knew, by six o’clock, he’d be closing just like I was.

  ***

  Life and time rolled on. I didn’t call Paul and he didn’t come to my shop. I didn’t bump into him at any of the club nights I’d played, having been asked to return to the King’s Cross warehouse for the next three weeks, gradually getting a bigger and bigger crowd until on the third week I was given the slightly larger room, usually reserved for the soaring melodies of house music, but they wanted to give me a try.

  On a high from how well it had gone, and of course the two halves of a Mitsi I’d necked before and during my set, I threw caution to the winds when Slinky Simon asked if I wanted to come back to his to carry on partying, to celebrate the night, and agreed.

  That was when, after we’d all piled into Slinky Simon’s house—a fake-bay-windowed two-storey new-build semi in a close in some part of North London I neither knew nor cared where but somewhere north of Hampstead Heath with a lot of Turkish shops along the main road…

  …once Slinky Simon had put a track on the record player, closed the curtains, made a round of teas and coffees for everyone, showed us where the toilet and sofa were and asked who wanted a little something to keep us going…

  …that was when I noticed a familiar face, mug of tea in one hand, cigarette in the other, trying to concentrate on not chewing his face off as his eyes, widened, and he bobbed his head around in time to the music.

  Paul bloody Stockton.

  It was now or never. Remembering Mum’s sage advice, I took my mug of tea, as much confidence as I could muster and a pack of cigarettes and plonked myself next to Paul on the wide arm of the low, slouchy leather chair in which he sat. “Fancy seeing you here!” I put my cigarette in my mouth and held out my hand for him to shake.

  He turned to face me, spilling a bit of tea on his white combat trousers and very tight grey T-shirt covered in glowing pieces of fake computer circuit board. “Shit! It’s you, I didn’t… Do you know Slinky Simon?”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  He squished himself over in the chair, leaving a space to his side, and gestured for me to join him properly in the seat. “I saw you, you know.”

  “Here? I was in the kitchen helping Slinky Simon with drinks, then I needed some water. Gotta rehydrate after dancing and sweating all night.”

  “Yep. No, I saw you in the club. Doing your set. You were wicked. Wi. Ked.” He gave a broad grin, showing all his teeth. I could see he was concentrating with his whole mind to not chew, chew, chew.

  “Want a Juicy Fruit?”

  He put his hand to his face. “Soz. Didn’t realise. Thought I wasn’t too bad.”

  I handed him a stick of gum. “Occupational hazard.”

  He put it in his mouth and chewed with a look of perfect satisfaction. “Cheers. Yeah, you were wicked. Best I’ve seen in ages in that room. I was proper flying. When that song in the middle of the set got to the best bit, I thought the whole club was gonna, I dunno, fly. Everyone with their hands in the air, in time with the music. It was like some religious shit or something, weren’t it?” He looked away. “I dunno.”

  “Don’t stop, don’t be embarrassed, I was enjoying that. Don’t get people come up to me in the DJ booth telling me how much they love it. I’m not quite at Slinky Simon’s stage just yet.” I laughed to myself.

  Paul grabbed my hand and massaged it with both of his, starting at my palm, moving outwards along my fingers, then up my arm and down towards my hand again.

  The squeezing pulsed through my body, from my fingertips up my arms into my chest, and out the other arm—the one that wasn’t getting any attention. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Fuck me. I’m fucked, and I love it!

  We sat, snuggled up to each other as he massaged my hand, then the other, then I offered to do his, copying how he’d done it to me, staring at him as he sat, eyes closed, chewing slowly in time with the music, taking a sip of water every now and then.

  I was the first to break the comfortable silence we’d fallen into. As I felt the courage building inside, I grabbed it with both freshly massaged hands and said it before I bottled it. Again.

  “Wanna go for a drink sometime?”

  There. That wasn’t the end of the world. That was actually quite easy, short, simple. If he’s not interested, no harm done. I’ll make my excuses, nip to the kitchen for a drink and slip out before anyone notices.

  “Yeah. That’d be wicked.” He smiled.

  Wi. Ked. I swear I heard a chorus of hallelujah above the music and a round of trumpets accompanying my thoughts.

  “Really? A ‘drink’ drink, me and you, no one else? That sort of drink?”

  “Yep, just us two.”

  “But I didn’t… You didn’t… We haven’t… Have we?”

  “No. I hoped the ‘Love U More’ record would make you ask me. About as subtle as a steamroller in a pub car park. Not that I love you…but I like you. Fancied some fun with you.”

  “Why didn’t you ask me?” I was still trying to piece together all that this meant in my mind. It was, as they say, all new ground for me.

  He shook his head. “Shy, in’t I?” He looked away. “’Sides, at work. ’S not the sort a thing you come out with over the choice for a video weekend, is it?”

  “Or while there’s a queue for the record player.”

  “Exactly!”

  Still trying to arrange all the new pieces of information in an orderly line, fighting with my floaty mind that just wanted me to stand and dance to the music, never mind sitting still, I said, “Can I kiss you?”

  “Thought you’d never ask. C’mere.” He leaned forward, spilling the last few drops of tea onto his trousers, his lips met mine and we kissed, squashed together in that slouchy leather chair in Slinky Simon’s living room, kissing, exploring with our tongues, licking each other’s lips, moving back to kiss each other’s necks, returning for more kissing, but always, still, continuing with the kissing, losing track of how long we’d been kissing, breathing with our noses so we didn’t have to come up for air, until, after a while, we pulled back from the kiss.

  “That was worth the wait,” he said.

  “Yep.”

  The room filled with applause as everyone stood clapping in harmony, above the noise of the music, the room a fog of cigarette smoke and half light as a few streams of sunlight from the reality of the day outside streamed through the gaps in the curtains.

  Slinky Simon said, “All right, you two? About fucking time! We’d started taking bets, how long before you came up for air.”

  “Who won?” I asked, squeezing Paul’s hand, cuddling up closer to him, wishing I could meld with him like molten metal reforming in a mould, to become one person, a mixture of the two of us.

  “Me, of course!”

  ***

  Our first date—the second time we’d seen each other outside of our shops—we went for a curry in Brick Lane. We arrived at the decision after both of us had been noncommittal, saying we weren’t bothered and didn’t mind if it was a pizza or pasta or in Chinatown or just a pub, until Paul had said, with a pause and a quiet kissing noise made down the phone while I stood in the hall at home, “Fuck it. Let’s get a curry down Brick Lane. Can’t go wrong with a ruby, can you?”

  “You weren’t born in the East End, were you?” I asked.

  “Don’t think you can stretch Chelmsford to the East End, no.”

  “No.” And so it was agreed. A ruby mur
ray in the best Indian restaurant in Brick Lane, a road where the smell of turmeric and curry and smoke wafted along with the breeze as you moved from one curry house to the next, with barely any space between them, each with an Asian man standing outside, waving the menu and beckoning you in.

  We walked past the parade of tempting Asian restaurateurs and arrived at the place Paul had booked.

  “Sorry,” he said once we were seated and the waiter had brought us poppadums and chutney.

  “What for?”

  “Being so crap. Taking so long. Not turning up to any of the nights you told me you were gonna be at. Everything, really. I thought I’d play it by ear. Take it easy.”

  I shook my head and gently rubbed his hand on the table. “Don’t be so stupid. We’re both as bad as each other. All that banter and small talk, and the whole time both of us wanted the same thing.”

  “Suppose so.”

  “I know so.” I paused, breaking a poppadum with a satisfying crack and dipping it into the sweet sauce. “’Course, now you’ve got to come to see me playing. DJing. To the biggest room in the club. On stage at the front. The whole nine yards. Or it looks a bit funny.” I wanted to see how he reacted to my statement that jumped ahead a lot of steps.

  “That’s what I thought. That’s what I wanted to ask you. I’ve heard you chatting about it, but now you’re going somewhere with it, I want to see it, hear it, dance to it for real. Your own stage, your own room. You know? It’ll be a laugh.”

  Christ alive! This is getting pretty serious, pretty quickly. Is this normal? Am I making it go too fast? Or is he putting his foot on the accelerator and I’m not sure what to do? Do I want to go this fast? Or am I just wanting to pause on principle? It’s not like we just met each other; we’re practically friends, in a sense, so this is like date six or seven, isn’t it?

  “Yeah. I do,” I said, thinking I’d just go with it at the moment. It had taken so much to get us to this point, I didn’t want to bugger it all up by running scared.

  “Sorry.” Paul said again, and this time, he rubbed my hand under the table, squeezing my knee.