Two years later, Grant Lee Buffalo, having failed to achieve greater commercial success, broke up and Grant Lee Phillips, the singer and songwriter of the group, would launch a solo career. But his music on its own somehow never recaptured the intensity and gut wrenching impact of that initial year.
I never discovered where the bass player went or what he did. Another minor casualty of the rock and roll wars.
The French Lycée in London’s South Kensington was the first school I attended where the sexes were not segregated and my initial few months attending classes there proved highly distracting. I soon lost my fascination for the Tour de France and continental bicycle riders and discovered that new race: girls. Somehow they had never really meant too much to me before. They were just there, another gender, a mere curiosity.
To celebrate the end of the first term, the headmistress organized a small party where all final year students, of which I was one, were invited to sip soft drinks, mingle socially and even dance, albeit under the watchful eye of some of the staff.
Thinking back on the occasion, I reckon it must have been shortly before the Christmas break, when many of the students from France and overseas would return home for a couple of weeks or so. I was awkward, had no social graces, moving from group to group of students and not-quite-friends, making small talk and stealing furtive glances at Catherine, Rhoona, Elizabeth and the myriad girls who’d caught my attention during the course of the term. Some from my class, some from others in the same year. They were all supremely exotic, unreal in a strange sort of way, emerging from the cocoon of childhood into a chrysalis of womanhood, stirring new, unknown emotions inside me that I was irritated to find I couldn’t fully control. Creatures I wished to befriend, but knew not how, or even what to do with after the first insignificant conversation.
The headmistress worked the room, dispensing biscuits and cakes, helping to thaw out our shyness. Sensing failure, she finally signalled it was time for music. This was the year of the twist. Chubby Checker reigned supreme.
I hadn’t truly wanted to go to the school’s party but my mother had convinced me a change of atmosphere would do me good. I had fervently argued I couldn’t even dance, so she had given me a twist-made-easy lesson a week before and I had been practising my movements in the bathroom every day since, using a bath towel as the centre of gravity for my graceless movements.
Six months later, the cancer inside her would get the better of my mother and she would be dead.
But the Chubby Checker tune was the song I was prepared for that day and when the first strains of its melody sounded, I swiftly moved to the dance floor and studiously began dancing.
And, oh, how I danced, and Catherine even joined me, with a wry smile on her face which just melted me inside. We twisted again like we did that winter and it felt wonderful and at the old age of 16 I entered the world of women in earnest. For ever. Never to leave it again, for good, for bad, for joyful, for heartbreak.
Encouraged, I even invited Catherine out a few weeks later after classes resumed in the New Year. Short Catherine who looked like a bird and made my heart flutter. But that’s another story altogether. A sad one, of course but then it wasn’t Chubby Checker’s fault so hey ho let’s twist again in a circular motion, and close your eyes, and imagine you are drying yourself after a shower and your body gyrates against the soft contact of the bath towel against your skin. Oh yeah.
In Paris I finally drowned in the sea of sex.
It was a mixed soundtrack. There were the studious sounds of jazz my flatmate would play non-stop, making me feel so damn guilty I could find no pleasure, no celebration of the senses, in its arty tones. These blended together with the latest hits I would import from back home, early Beatles songs, the Stones’ “It’s All Over Now” which would start the adrenaline flowing inside me like few other rock tunes could. A feeling I would soon grow accustomed to, opening myself to the sheer emotional power of music and marvelling at the fact that some melodies could affect me inside so strongly and scar my soul for ever.
It was a time of folly, of foolishness and shattered ideals.
Lois had blonde hair the colour of straw and looked, to my inexpert eyes, like a svelte and beautiful model. Her breasts were slight but full and her skin the colour of porcelain and I would feel like fainting every time I entered her, believing it was all a dream and this was too good to last. Of course it wouldn’t and she quickly tired of me. When I remember her these days, it’s to the sound of the Four Tops’ “Reach Out and I’ll Be There”, the Tamla Motown hymn that kept on being played at the party at which we met.
Nicole and I never even had sex. We spent hours naked together on my bed, but never crossed that Rubicon. Did we have a song, a group? I hate myself now for not remembering the soundtrack of our relationship. She had high cheekbones, short, thick, light brown hair and a compact body. Her nipples hardened under the mere breeze of my breath. She was the first woman ever to say “I love you” to me.
And then there was the time I even went out with a singer on the folk circuit. When her career hit a roadblock in England, she decided to move to Nashville from where she would send me occasional demo tapes. She later married the much older owner of a Greenwich Village club and settled down to have kids before we lost touch. I still have her albums, gathering dust with the rest of my vinyl collection up in the attic.
With Natasha, we spent hours together listening to the fey but exotic sounds of the Incredible String Band on my deficient hi-fi and slowly falling in love in a quiet, unassuming way, later setting the seal on our relationship with a bus ride to the Hackney ABC to watch Franco Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet”.
Elaine was a classical buff, dressed most conservatively and sucked me off with the zeal of a common whore.
Tabitha liked Duran Duran and most of the New Romantic bands and liked to have her hands bound when we fucked.
Leonard Cohen’s melancholy tunes punctuated the long, on-off affair with Mimi, although she was also partial to Metallica and isolated opera arias, a woman of diverse tastes and moods and sexual cravings.
There is something about Cohen’s music, I suppose, that strikes a resonant chord inside my heart and my loins, as I would include many of his songs on the various compilation tapes I would record for her-who-must-not-be-named, alongside music by the Walkabouts, Counting Crows, Springsteen, Peter Gabriel, Oh Susannah, the Handsome Family, Matthew Ryan and, again, Grant Lee Buffalo.
Music, sex and heartbreak or the Reader’s Digest abridged (and expurgated) story of my life. The people at Sony, Virgin and other record companies must be laughing all the way to the bank at my excuses for keeping them in business.
But when I suddenly wake up at three in the morning in an alien hotel room in some American city or another, and the world outside is cold and silent, and the emptiness inside me is just too much to bear, random thoughts evoke faces, bodies and tunes from yesterday with uncanny poignance.
Mimi’s so pale blue eyes.
A tune from “Aida”.
Kate’s cunt. Her gash like a blooming flower of blood.
“Truly, truly, truly.”
Nicole’s uneven teeth. A smile designed to launch a thousand ships.
Gainsbourg’s “Melody Nelson”.
And on and on.
Maybe I’m just a sexual romantic who’s seen too many movies and feels that every life, every relationship requires a soundtrack?
Or a disgusting, self-deluded pornographer, who believes that the shocking intimacy of every act of sexual excess can somehow attain sheer beauty with the right musical accompaniment?
I can live with both theories I suppose.
And already my shameless mind is busy speculating on what Claudia’s soundtrack will be. Forget the hotel room, the railway station we meet at or the foreign city that will shelter our bodies, the colour of the wallpaper, whether she keeps her eyes open or not when we fuck, what I want to know is how I will remember her when it is all
over.
I vainly try to guess what sort of song will go with those breathless phone tones of hers, that unsaid longing, that sadness that is already bringing us together, despite all the obstacles.
A dance tune from Jamiroquai?
A melancholy dirge by Goldfrapp?
I do wonder if she’s ever listened to Grant Lee Buffalo in their glorious heyday, and whether she might fancy the bass player? Not that I have a threesome in mind, I assure you . . .
Look at Me
Riain Grey
Nick and I met in his store, a small place, tucked away in a corner of the Village, stacked high with dusty biographies and art history books. Not really my kind of bookstore, but I was forty-five minutes early for a visit with my cardiologist and I had nothing else to do.
Nick was leaning against the counter, his arms crossed in front of him, talking to a customer. I went and hid in the history section and spent fifteen minutes trying to think of something to say. Eventually I gave up and decided to go for the direct approach. I wandered back toward the counter and took a deep breath.
“I just spent fifteen minutes in the history section trying to think of something to say to you.”
His eyebrows rose.
“Come up with anything good?”
“No.”
“Too bad,” he answered pleasantly. “I think I would have enjoyed talking to you.”
“Hmm,” I said. “Well, if I think of anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Okay,” he said, and I thought I saw a tiny corner of a smile on his face.
“I’ll try Fiction,” I said. “There’s always a lot to think about in the Fiction section.”
“I’m Nick,” he said.
By this point in my life I had more or less given up on the idea of having a normal relationship. For the last three years I had been sharing company with a vague but life-threatening illness that left me exhausted and furious. My hospital stays became characterized by the intense, complicated fantasies I created, in which my body was the innocent but willing victim, and my illness the cruel, handsome lover who took me apart, piece by piece, only to put me back together again. As I drifted in and out of morphine-induced calm, I thought I saw shadows, felt them tie my wrists and ankles, felt my master pushing his way on top of me, a shining knife blooming in his hand.
Eventually I was free to go, though the doctors never figured out exactly what was wrong with me. They cautioned me against heavy exercise or sudden shocks, apparently unaware that sudden shocks had been the highlight of my hospital stays; just leaving the room slowed my heartbeat. I moved back into Chelsea and adopted a cat. I worked nights at Dino’s and tried not to behave self-destructively. I went to bed every night at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m. and watched the shadows of passing cars flicker across my wall. I lay awake and thought about things. As soon as the first smudges of light crawled through my window, I would feel something give way, loosening inside me, and I would fall into a helpless sleep.
My days became drowsy, hazy things, but my nights flickered into sharp focus. I felt myself moving into a higher gear. Things that had never made sense before were suddenly clear, like when your eyes get adjusted to the dark. At Dino’s I waited tables with an easy grace that I had never felt before: my body in smooth, constant motion, my smile flashing out into the darkness. I started walking home from the restaurant, some twenty blocks, and always late at night, but it felt good to be outside. The summer air was sweet and sticky and coated my throat like cotton candy. At home I closed my eyes and listened, stroking myself to the outside sounds, waiting for something to happen.
Nick was an unexpected surprise. The first time I saw him I felt the sleep crumble away from my eyes, leaving me fragile and bare. He made me want to tell him things. His gray eyes turned flashing silver when he smiled. He had beautiful hands and curly brown hair that tumbled around his face when he looked at me. I wanted to talk to him for hours and touch him for days. There was a silver ring on his left hand that left me hot with lust; when I looked at it, all I could think of was his fingers wrapped in mine.
Nick didn’t like to talk about himself, as a rule. Even after repeated visits to see him at the store, I knew almost nothing about him. “I’m a pretty boring guy,” he would say apologetically, though this was untrue, and while he avoided mentioning specifics of his life, he was fascinated by even the smallest details of mine. I would leave his store in the afternoons feeling dazed, like I had had too much sun. I spent a lot of subway rides speculating about his life, all the private time he kept hidden from me.
I tried to imagine Nick in his bedroom – what would he be doing? Reading? Writing? Jerking off to Hustler magazine? I imagined myself in his room, lying on his bed, listening to records and smoking endless cigarettes. I imagined myself kneeling beneath him, sucking him dry. I imagined him looking down at me, his cigarette burning away to nothing between his fingertips, a thoughtful expression on his face.
One night I surprised myself by allowing these thoughts into my head while I got myself off. Usually it was nameless, faceless men, doing unspeakable things to my body, but this time it was Nick, sweet Nick, kneeling over me with a beautiful, painful expression, watching my face as we fucked. What the hell? I thought to myself, but I went with it because I didn’t want it to stop, and Nick was there, touching my face and hair, holding me tight, his face buried into my neck. I rubbed myself until I came, twisting in my sheets, almost moaning out loud, and Nick’s name came rushing out of my mouth – Oh Nick, oh Nick, yes – and I fell asleep that way, with my hand between my legs and his name sweet on my breath.
We kissed for the first time almost a month after we met. I went to visit him at work and stayed until it was time for him to close up. We locked the door and shut the gates, and when I asked him what I could do he looked at me almost helplessly and pulled me down with him until we were both kneeling on the floor in the cookbook section.
“Can I . . .?”
“I wish you would.”
He laughed as he kissed me, the vibrations deep in our throats. I leaned into him, feeling my skirt ride up against my thighs as I pulled my body closer to his. We kissed breathlessly and his hand reached for my breast, his thumb rubbing my nipple absently.
“Is this okay?” he asked, his hand pausing against my chest.
“Christ, yes. Isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes,” he answered, seeming surprised.
“Well, don’t stop,” I said.
“No,” he promised, and bent to kiss me again.
The next time I visited Nick at work, I hung around trying to act casual and waited for it to be seven o’clock. Nick was full of secret smiles for me. I shelved books and helped clean up. We stole kisses in the narrow aisles. Looking at him left me shaking and lustful. His hands drew fire across my back. When Nick finally locked the door I felt a tingling rush of heat deep inside my belly. He turned to look at me and I felt something give way inside me. Holding his gaze, I walked backwards, step by careful step, until I was surrounded by bookshelves, covered in shadow and hidden from view. I dropped to my knees and waited.
When Nick knelt down next to me, I resisted the urge to kneel down even more. I wanted to lower myself, give my body up, give him everything. Instead I reached out to touch his face and we kissed, sweetly and then harder. My breath caught in my throat and he looked at me intently.
“I know what my girl needs,” he whispered, and I felt waves pulling me down, pulling me under, pulling me in.
He put his hand under my skirt, running his fingers up and down my inner thigh. I looked at him, feeling hot and liquid. Eyes locked on mine, he reached his hand up higher until his fingertips just grazed against my cunt. His surprised look turned to a hungry one when he realized I wasn’t wearing anything under my skirt.
“Did you walk around like this all day?” he asked, his voice low, one finger just barely touching me, flicking against my clit.
“Yes.”
“Were you wet like this
all day?”
“No.”
“Wet for me?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever touched a girl this wet.”
I could feel the blood rushing through my head, pounding, leaving me dizzy and breathless. My face burned bright red as I stared at the floor.
Nick laughed a little.
“I like seeing you like this,” he commented, “I really like you like this,” and he pushed his finger up inside me. I watched his hand moving under my skirt and felt myself falling into an ocean as he played with me, his thumb on my clit and his finger sliding up, slick and hot. “Lay down,” he said suddenly, and pushed me gently backwards. I leaned back until I felt the floor, hard and cool against my back.
Nick pushed up my skirt with one hand, his other still dipping and twisting in my cunt. He knelt over me, staring down at my face. I closed my eyes.
“No,” he said, “don’t close them. Look at me.”
I watched him silently.
“I want you to come,” he told me, “and I want to look at your cunt while you do.” I gasped as he slid another finger into me. He turned his gaze to my pussy, fascinated. He fucked me harder, bracing himself with one hand on the floor, and I arched my back, trying to push his fingers in deeper. Nick glanced up at me to see my reaction. When he saw me watching him, he caught his breath, his eyes turning liquid and still.
“My sweetheart,” he breathed, “my sweet girl,” and with that I was coming, hard, exploding into his hand, all sea water and salt, waves crashing against rocks in the tide.
The first time I went to my monthly doctor appointment after things started with Nick, I was flushed and out of breath. The nurse noted my elevated heartbeat with raised eyebrows. I sat in the examination room, almost dizzy, waiting for the doctor to come. The next month I was late – those fifteen minutes spent instead in Nick’s store, leaning across the counter, eyes shining. And the month after I told the doctor I didn’t need to see him any more.
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