by Bishop, John
So I took the girl to the canteen. I bought two coffees, and we began to talk. Quickly the bravado of our body language relaxed and the conversation flowed, and then she laughed. It has often been said that if you can make a girl laugh, you can win her over. What is not often said is that when you hear a girl laugh for the first time it can become a sound that you find yourself chasing for ever.
At one point during the coffee she took her glasses off and I finally saw her whole face for the first time. I had seen her chin, her mouth, and most of her nose and her hair, but the rest of her face had been hidden under those glasses the size of bin lids. But now I saw her smile properly for the first time. I heard her laugh properly for the first time. I heard her speak properly for the first time. All those things I grew to know like second nature in years to come first happened across that table.
In every relationship, there is always the first time you see something.
This is how I look when I laugh.
This is how I look when I smile.
This is how I look when I kiss you.
This is how I look when we make love.
This is how I look when my heart is ready to burst with love.
This is how I look when I say ‘I do.’
This is how I look when I give birth.
This is how I look as an exhausted mother of three.
This is how I look when I am sitting alone because you are away.
This is how I look when I know you failed me.
This is how I look when you know I failed you.
This is how I look when I hate you.
This is how I look when I am lost.
This is how I look as I leave you.
This is how I look when I know I have broken your heart.
This is how I look when you don’t know me.
This is how I look when I wipe away your tears.
This is how I look when you are the loneliest man in the world.
This is how I look when you can dream no more.
This is how I look when we both say sorry.
Across the table, I knew nothing of the faces to come. I just knew I liked the one in front of me. Her name was Melanie, and we arranged to meet later that evening at the cinema known locally as the fleapit to watch The Last Emperor.
It was now getting late because of the time I had wasted in trying to be cool and waiting to regain my composure in the tracksuit region, so I had to get pedalling home to change. There was no way I was going to risk tracksuit attire for a first date. I already knew that would be a disaster.
I rode the 40 minutes or so home and, after leaving my bike in the hall, bounded up the stairs in the way you do when you’re 21 and are about to meet a girl you fancy. At that moment one of my house mates, Harvey, came out of his room.
‘What’s your rush?’
‘I’m going to the pictures with the girl I’m going to marry.’
BOOM! That is what I said. I know that, reading this, many women will think, ‘Oh, isn’t that beautiful,’ and many men will think, ‘What a cock.’ The truth is, that is what I said.
Harvey duly responded with the supportive comment of ‘Bollocks,’ and I could hardly blame him. I was not in the habit of making such grand statements. In fact, I was very much enjoying my student life and was at the top of the chart we kept in our communal kitchen indicating success with the opposite sex, as measured by a complicated algorithm calculating everything from love bites to home runs. As the kitchen was the room where we also brought our girlfriends, we had disguised it as a job application chart with each conquest appearing to be another job application. Any girl coming to our house would have thought us the most enthusiastic job seekers in the world.
Truth is, I meant it. Something about Melanie hit me that day and has never left me. With all of my failings and indiscretions along the pathway of our relationship, she has always had one thing over me that nobody else has ever managed: she has always felt out of my league.
I rushed to change and, no doubt, put on some Amaris to enhance my appeal before quickly jumping on the bus to the end of Burton Road and the cinema. Unfortunately for me, the cinema was around the corner from a pub. I got off the bus to see two further house mates, John and Sergei, emerging from said establishment. John and Sergei remain two of my closest friends but, at that moment, I would rather have bumped into any two people on the planet than those two clowns.
John is six foot three inches tall (three and a half inches taller than me, as he has continued to tell me for 28 years) and, being from Belfast, spent a large part of his student days believing most situations were resolvable by a drink or a fight. Basically, if he wasn’t drinking with you, he was arguing with you as to why he wasn’t drinking with you. Sergei, on the other hand, has the aura of sophistication granted to him by his Russian descent and the poshest accent I had ever heard, which contrasted with the blond, tight curly hair that made him look like a fat Art Garfunkel.
Within the community of our house they were inseparable, because one of them was always ready to accompany the other to the pub. So it was that at seven o’clock on a mid-week night they stumbled out of the pub to greet me as I stepped off the bus in my cleanest clothes and smelling of Amaris – the aroma of desperate men the world over. Very anxious not to be late, I tried as hard as I could to get past them without being noticed, with no success.
John:
‘Where are you going?’
Me:
‘Nowhere.’
John:
‘Sergei, where are we going?’
Sergei:
‘Nowhere.’
John:
‘Good. Let’s all go nowhere together.’
Me:
‘No, I want to go somewhere.’
Sergei:
‘Good. I’d rather go somewhere than nowhere. Wouldn’t you, John?’
John:
‘Yes, I would, Sergei.’
Sergei:
‘Good. Let’s all go somewhere because nowhere is shit.’
They fell about laughing, and I knew I had no choice but to confess all to get rid of them.
Me:
‘I’m meeting my sister at the flea pit.’
John:
‘Sergei, he’s meeting his sister at the cinema.’
Sergei:
‘That’s what he said.’
John:
‘Have you met his sister?’
Sergei:
‘I don’t know. Bish, have I met your sister?’
Me:
‘No.’
Sergei:
‘No, I haven’t met his sister.’
John:
‘Well, I think we should meet your sister.’
Me:
‘It’s not my sister, it’s a girl.’
Sergei:
‘Is your sister not a girl?’
At this point they nearly collapsed laughing, and I had to join in. I agreed they could meet Melanie and say hello, but on strict instructions that they kept their manners and left after two minutes.
As first meetings go, it was, I suppose, an honest representation of what she was letting herself in for: Sergei nearly climbed into Melanie’s bra with his eyes, and John thought it was sensible to mention that rattling noises woke him at night. I have been apologising to Melanie for my choice of friends ever since.
The first date was as all first dates should be. The film was long, so there was plenty of time to do the obligatory arm-over-the-shoulder thing. This was also aided by the fact that the flea pit had ‘love seats’. These brilliant things were double seats at the back so that courting couples could cuddle without the discomfort of a middle armrest. The cinema is now a supermarket, and I always regret not buying one of those chairs for memory’s sake.
The relationship I had with Melanie was very much as it is with everyone around that age and that stage in their life. She was due to graduate that summer; I had another year left. She had a boyfriend she was breaking up wit
h in stages, and I had my mates I wanted to spend time with. So, it was a stop-start thing, until I graduated the following summer and was given the offer of a lifetime – which I had to refuse.
CHAPTER 11
THE GREAT U S OF A
When I graduated in 1989, I had the usual picture taken with the rented cap and gown, which my mum and dad still have on their wall, and I felt some sense of achievement. However, I knew that the biggest change in me had come from mixing with people from different backgrounds more than from the lectures. Perhaps that is the most important aspect of a degree course: to learn who you are.
I knew I would have to find work but I had one more trip to America planned and I couldn’t wait for another summer in the US. I flew to America in June 1989 to once again join the North American Soccer Camps. This time I was going to work exclusively in California, and I immediately fell in love with the place. I spent the summer working with Ged McCann, a teacher from Liverpool who, like a Scouse Cinderella, managed to leave one of his shoes behind when he left. I said I would post it to him although I kept forgetting, so the shoe joined me as a sort of mascot when I decided to stay in Los Angeles after the summer soccer camps had ended.
I began working on building sites, living in a shared house in Redondo Beach, just outside LA. My ability to work on a building site had not improved since the dump-in-the-mix incident, and I was once again chased off the site by an irate co-worker when I nearly blinded him with a nail gun by mistake.
After a few weeks scrambling around for jobs, I decided that with no work, and rent to pay, I should return home to England before my plane ticket went beyond its six months’ validity period. The small problem was that the plane ticket was from New York to London, and New York was 3,000 miles away.
The only way to get across the country economically was either to hitch, which basically meant standing on the side of the road and hoping a psycho was not about; get a bus, which took for ever and was again limited in its appeal as the psycho you had avoided by hitchhiking could easily be seated next to you; or take a drive-away.
A drive-away was a scheme where people who were moving from coast to coast would have their car driven across for them, rather than face the exorbitant cost of shipping it, or the effort of having to drive it themselves. All you had to do to qualify as a driver was to have a valid driving licence, pay a $100 deposit and give them your passport details. The only problem was that, I was told, you had to register at a drive-away office and inform them which direction you wanted to go and sit waiting till a car became available. Sometimes that wait could take weeks, but I didn’t have weeks; November was approaching and I had rent due too, so I visited the office in downtown LA every day and sat waiting.
One day I arrived and there were four English lads in the line in front of me. We got talking and I found that they were friends from Cambridge University who had also just graduated and spent the summer travelling around America. They still had a few months left before they each had to return home for their new positions and internships awaiting them in January. They had no agenda and were just waiting for whatever car came in that was going a long way. It was all just a bit of a wheeze to them, and if they didn’t get a car it didn’t matter, as they would get to where they were going anyway. I told them that I had been coming in every day looking for a car to New York as I had to catch a flight home by November.
We were the only five English people in the building and, as we sat and waited, I began to realise I had nothing in common with them. They were rude to the staff in a very subtle way, the way that makes you know that they think they are better than you, but not to the extent that you can justify punching them in the face. They were full of in-jokes, which is what happens when you are friends, but it seemed more than that: it seemed like they were all part of the same club before they had even met.
They carried the sense of assurance that comes with entitlement. Some people are told early in life that the world is for them, while the rest of us spend forever trying to find our place in it. To them, I was as foreign as the Puerto Rican man, Pedro, who I had got to know as he had been there, like me, on a daily basis hoping for a ride to Alaska. I never imagined Alaska having a large Puerto Rican community, and I never found out if he got a ride because my car came first, although not until the Cambridge boys had provided me with more reasons to dislike them.
A car became available for New York. Those boys, who had arrived in the office a fraction before me that morning, jumped.
The Cambridge Boys:
‘We’ll take it.’
The Man from the Office:
‘But this guy has been waiting for days for a New York car.’
One Cambridge Boy (with a shit American accent):
‘But your sign says, “Cars will not be reserved and they are allocated on a first come, first served basis.”’
The Man from the Office:
‘I guess so.’ (To me.) ‘Sorry, buddy.’
The Cambridge Boys to Me:
‘Yer, sorry, mate. No hard feelings and all that.’
Me to the Cambridge Boys:
‘Fuck off, you twats.’
The last line is a lie. I am not sure I said ‘fuck off’, but I did make it clear they could have chosen any car, and after a week of waiting they had now taken what might be my last chance to make my plane home.
They conferred and decided to take the car anyway, so I called them twats again and we went our separate ways.
Within minutes, the man from the office returned. ‘Man, am I glad they’ve gone. This is your car. You have to collect it at this address and deliver it in New York in eight days. I think you’ll be pleased.’
I didn’t understand his wink as he handed me the address. I thanked the guy, wished Pedro luck and walked out into the LA sunshine. There, I saw a small brown car that looked like it could not get around the block, or even splutter out of the parking lot.
The Cambridge boys were crammed inside looking uncomfortable and unhappy. I held up the sheet of paper, smiled and waved. They didn’t wave back, but I didn’t need them to. I didn’t need anything from them and gladly knew I never would.
I had instructions about what bus to take across town to the address in Lynwood, and boarded the first bus that was heading in the right direction. The driver was a huge black woman who looked like she would not be out of place singing in a smoky blues bar somewhere else in the world, rather than driving a bus in central Los Angeles.
‘One to Central and Florence, please,’ I said.
‘Whaaat you say, boy?’
‘Erm … one to Central and Florence, please,’ I repeated.
I thought I must have pronounced it wrongly, as she just shook her head, making an ‘Urrgh, urrgh’ sound. Then she looked down the aisle of the bus and shouted: ‘There’s a white boy here wanting to go to Central and Florence.’
I followed her eye line to see that, although the bus was almost full, I was the only white person on it, with the passengers coming from every other possible ethnic group. It was as if they were being driven to a Benetton advert shoot. The whole bus started laughing, along with the jovial driver who resolved the situation by informing me: ‘Ain’t no way I am dropping a white boy at Central and Florence. No way, sugar. Your ticket’s $2.’
As I paid the $2, she started to move the bus, but kept on talking. ‘I’ll drop you somewhere better. Where do you need to go?’
‘Lynwood.’
‘Whaat?’ she exclaimed, again turning to everyone down the bus. Whilst still driving. ‘This boy … where you from boy, Germany?’
‘No, England.’
‘Same thing.’ (To the rest of the bus.) ‘This German boy is going to Lynwood!’
Again an eruption of laughter, and I suddenly felt I was in the oddest sitcom ever. What I didn’t know was that I was going to an area in East LA known as Compton. That area is now synonymous with the LA riots; gang violence due to the turf wars that have been well documented in n
ews stories; and movies and gangster rap music that really put Compton on the map for the rest of the world. My kids know Compton is not a place for a white German boy to hang around because they have an impression of the place from the songs they have heard. In the mid-eighties my only reference point was a bus driver who looked like she should have been singing ‘Sweet Home Alabama’.
When I got off the bus – under instructions from the driver to change onto another bus – I had to wait for around 15 minutes. I would say it may have been the longest 15 minutes of my life as I suddenly found myself in an area where nobody wanted to look me in the eye. I stood at the bus stop and a car drove past, then suddenly did a U-turn and drove past me again, very slowly. I looked inside at the passengers, all Hispanic men ranging from 16 to about 25. They were each wearing bandannas of the same colour, either on their heads, around their neck or tied around their wrist.
Within minutes, the same thing happened again but with a different car. I don’t care who you are – you only need two different cars to drive past you, windows down, all occupants looking at you without the glimpse of a smile, to begin to think that if this was better than Central and Florence I should have hitchhiked to New York and taken my chances with the psycho!
To try to look nonchalant, I called my mate, Jimmy, in England. One thing that amazed me about America was that you could call England from a pay phone. I am not sure if you could do the same at that time in England – I had never tried, as I would never have enough coins and in England the ‘magic number’ I had would not have worked.
The magic number allowed me to make free calls and had been given to me by Ged, he of the lost shoe fame. He had memorised the number the previous year while working for North American Soccer Camps: it was an account number that all phone calls related to the soccer camps could be charged to. He had been told by one of the other coaches that the account was closed, but if the phone company had not deactivated it there was a chance you could make calls for free. This advice was to get me into serious trouble, but at that moment in time it allowed me to make a call to a friend just when I needed to do it most.