‘Well, he deserved them.’ I grinned.
‘The story scared the shit out of me, and I’ve seen a real ghost.’
‘Have you really?’
‘Yeah. I was just sitting in the living room one evening, the only person home, and I saw a figure dressed in white cross through the kitchen and go upstairs.’
‘Did you check who it was?’
‘No. I knew it was a ghost.’
‘Did you shit yourself?’
‘Not at all.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘I felt calm. It just felt natural. Not all ghosts are nasty, you know.’
I enjoyed scaring people, but I also liked to make them laugh. So I leapt at the chance when my Drama teacher asked me to write a short comedy play. The play would feature as part of a variety show involving singing, dancing and all that theatrical jazz. I banged out a first draft within an hour.
The play, An Open Audition, concerned a lovesick teen named David, his deranged mother, Gina, and a Russian stripper who believed he was Superman. The audience loved the show and laughed at every corny pun. They especially loved the part when the Russian stripper hits on David’s mother. David roars, ‘If you carry on you’ll be in the crypt tonight!’ The stripper replies, ‘Yes, kryptonite is Superman’s weakness!’
The script is an interesting example of juvenilia, with some odd mixed metaphors, especially in the narrator and David’s moping dialogue, but I’m proud of it as a product of my youth.
My mother laughed along, so I knew the performance had been a success. But she noticed that my swagger was swaggerier than ever before.
‘You think life’s so easy, don’t you?’ She turned to me in the car on the night of the play.
‘Have I been smiling too much lately?’
‘Oh, you keep that cheesy smile as long as you can.’
‘Oh, I will.’ I beamed.
‘Enjoy it while it lasts, because you’ll soon realize that it’s a big world out there.’
‘I’ve heard. I was talking to Captain Cook the other day…’
‘You think you’re so funny.’ She cracked a smile. ‘Just make the most of it.’
‘My sense of humor?’
‘No. Your youth.’
I kept experimenting with poetry, using different forms and exploring fresh themes. I sent some of my new stuff to a publisher, but my previous book hadn’t made an impact on the shelves. I’d been stripped of my cape. I wondered if I’d be resigned to the heap pile of failed bards. My mother reminded me that writing could be a capricious line of work, but Michael and Lisa convinced me I had nothing to worry about. I’d been so naïve, expecting success to come my way without a battle. I look back at the way I was then and always snigger. I was a different person. So young and bloody fragile.
I knew nothing about the real world, the trials awaiting me and the inevitable tide of negativity. I’d spent my youth dreaming, but the realization would eventually dawn that in the real world it’s a struggle to keep your dreams afloat.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mates Forever
Lisa, Michael and I sat on an aniline leather sofa, on the upper balcony of a cavernous pub on St Mary Street. Michael had ordered a series of bizarre alcoholic combinations, mishmashes of spirits and all sorts.
‘You’re not gonna be able to stand up in an hour.’ I warned him.
‘Good.’ He sipped his latest drink. ‘Standing up is overrated.’
Lisa chuckled.
‘We’re gonna have a b-brilliant night tonight, dude and dudette. Let’s get on it!’ Michael’s breath reeked of alcohol and cigarettes.
We’d been drinking all day after watching a play Michael had disliked. He’d shared his view with the cast afterwards, engaging himself in a heated debate, which he’d won convincingly. The director had been most upset when Michael denounced the play’s poor attempt at realism, and asserted that the theatre practitioner Stanislavski would be turning in his grave.
‘I need to pop into the little boy’s room.’ Michael finished his drink and stumbled across the crimson carpet.
‘Yeah, me too. I’ll be back now in a minute,’ I told Lisa.
Michael flashed me a smile as we entered the bathroom.
‘What?’
‘Look what I’ve got.’ He revealed a small bag of cocaine in his hand.
‘Where’d you get that crap from?’
‘Some guy sold it to me earlier. Fancy some?’
‘Not particularly.’ I washed my hands and walked towards the door.
‘C’mon, it’ll give you a buzz. No? More for me then!’
He locked himself in a toilet cubicle, while I waited for him. After a moment, I decided to give the stuff a go. I knocked the cubicle door and Michael grinned at me.
‘It’s not something I do often,’ he said. ‘Just a sometimes treat.’
‘Do me a small line and don’t tell Lisa. She’d kill me.’
Michael told me to flush the toilet while he did a line, so nobody would hear the deplorable snorting sound.
My heart pounded as he prepared a line for me. I wiped my clammy hands on my jeans and snorted the cocaine with a twenty pound note.
‘Now, rub some of it on your gums.’
‘That tastes horrible!’ I grimaced.
‘This stuff is good. Sometimes you end up buying washing powder.’
‘Your eyes are dilated.’
‘Your eyes are the size of small moons. Lisa’s gonna be looking into those bad boys all night!’ He laughed.
‘Right, don’t be obvious in front of her.’
‘Don’t be so paranoid.’
‘I’m not paranoid. Who said I was paranoid? You’re the paranoid one!’ I joked.
Lisa observed us shrewdly as we returned to the sofa.
‘You’re looking very chirpy,’ she said.
‘It’s the drink.’ Michael rubbed his nose and fidgeted like an idiot.
‘Want another one?’ I asked Lisa.
‘Sure. A mojito, please.’
‘Coming right up.’
Michael stood next to me at the bar, speaking in an alarmingly loud voice, as if he were delivering a monologue at the Royal Variety Performance about how good the cocaine had been.
‘You’re gonna get us into trouble if you’re not careful.’
I ordered the round and went back to the sofa.
‘Right, I make it to be quarter to eleven,’ Michael said.
‘It’s quarter to ten.’ Lisa glanced at her watch.
‘Well, at quarter to eleven I reckon we should make our way to a club.’
‘Sounds good.’ I shifted in my seat to make myself comfortable.
We fell out of the pub an hour later, screaming with intoxicated laughter as Michael came out with his usual nonsensical aphorisms. We’d made half a dozen sneaky visits to the loo before we entered a club at the end of St Mary Street. Michael and I drifted through the bustling crowd of clubbers, desperate to take a leak.
‘It’s a bloody sausage fest in here.’ Michael glared at the queuing men in front of us. ‘Where are the ladies?’
‘This is the men’s toilets, you silly git!’ I laughed.
‘Play with it more than twice and you’re shaking it!’ He poked one of the men in the back.
‘You really are very drunk!’
‘C’mon, Tinky Winky. Hurry up.’
We pushed our way to the bar a moment later. I kissed Lisa’s eyelids and she giggled.
‘Are you okay?’ she asked.
‘Very drunk and hoping Michael doesn’t get into a fight.’
‘Yeah, I don’t think he knows his limitations.’
‘I don’t think he has any.’ I smirked.
I held Lisa in my arms and breathed in her sweet aroma. The club swirled around us as if the whole world were orbiting our embrace. The flashing lights cast capricious shadows across the dance floor and bodies swayed in time with the music. Through the haze I discerned Michael, arguing with a girl at the other side of the
bar.
‘My boyfriend’s over there!’ the girl snapped.
Michael had tried something he called ‘subliminal seduction,’ which involved making superficial conversation with a girl, like asking her how her night was going and then, midway through a sentence, saying something ridiculous like, ‘Touch my willy.’ He’d been caught out and made to look like an idiot as the voluptuous brunette barked at him.
‘Well, ditch him and come back to my place. I’ll fix us some eggs for breakfast.’ Michael grinned.
‘Piss off.’
I touched Michael’s arm and told him to leave her alone.
‘Yeah, you’re right, mate. This one looks like she’s done a bit of boxing!’
A fist hurtled through the darkness, colliding with my cheek. The girl’s boyfriend, a monstrous steroid freak with arms the width of pillars, knocked Michael to the floor and kicked him in the ribs.
‘Watch out.’ I gave Lisa’s hand a reassuring squeeze and charged towards the girl’s boyfriend, arms flaying. Two bouncers interrupted the tussle by knocking me to the sticky floor and dragging me outside. Michael soon followed, with Lisa in tow.
Michael held his nose, his hands covered in blood.
‘I need to go to hospital,’ he said.
We caught a taxi to the hospital, promising the driver extra cash if any blood stained his car. I’d received a couple of cuts and bruises, but nothing too bad. Michael looked horrendous though, with his nose completely deflated.
‘What a night.’ Lisa rested her head on my shoulder as we waited in the hospital foyer.
‘Yeah, I’m really sorry for what happened,’ I said.
‘What do you mean? I had a cracking night!’
‘You enjoyed it?’
‘Yeah. Best fight I’ve seen in a long time. But I was worried about you. I don’t want you to get hurt in some town brawl.’
‘You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I don’t know where I’d be without you,’ I murmured drunkenly.
‘You’ll always care for me?’ The bright hospital lighting revealed every detail of her prettiness.
‘Always,’ I whispered.
‘Even when I’m a pain?’
‘When are you ever a pain?’
‘I think I’m high maintenance!’ She giggled.
I pressed her hands against my chest so she could feel its rhythmic beat. We were young but I thought we’d be together for years to come. I couldn’t imagine myself with anyone else.
Michael came out of the hospital ward an hour later at 3:27, looking like a mummy with his heavily bandaged face.
‘I’ll keep my bloody nose out of people’s business from now on!’ He laughed.
*
I lit a cigarette with my car lighter and turned to Lisa. Two days had passed since our night out, and we’d just been to the cinema. We spoke about old times and I asked her if she’d seen her father recently. She’d passed him on a street, but hadn’t spoken to him.
A memory filtered through my thoughts of when we’d been children, splashing about in her inflatable swimming pool on a hot day. Streaks of sunlight diffused in the rippling water, and the garden trees pitched thick shadows across the lawn. Cut grass and blooming roses scented the air. But the kaleidoscopic moment and its shifting colors became engulfed by the figure of Lisa’s father. He arrived home, cursing Lisa’s mother. Then he stormed into the garden and dragged Lisa into the house.
He pinned her down on the carpeted floor and hit her in the face. Lisa’s mother cried in the corner of the room, incapable of doing anything. I ran into the house and grabbed a knife from the kitchen drawer. It didn’t matter that I was a child, threatening a monster. I couldn’t let him do this.
‘Get off her!’ I screamed.
He looked at me, his eyes lazy and drunk, and in that fractured moment he suddenly understood.
He packed his suitcases the following morning.
I let the memory fade away, dabbed my cigarette out and held Lisa’s hand.
‘I’ll always be here for you.’ I delved into her watery green eyes.
‘I know.’
She’d been thinking about the same moment. We’d stayed as friends through the good times and the not so good times. I thought we were meant to stay together, that our childhoods had prepared us and nothing could get in our way. But no, it had to end. There’s a lovely but poignant line in the song You’ve Got the Love that I’ve always felt defines what had to happen with that relationship: ‘Sooner or later in life the things you love you lose’.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Falling Rain
My time with Lisa hastened to its end. She’d been accepted at the University of Kent. I would attend Cardiff University. We wouldn’t be able to see enough of each other to maintain our relationship. We didn’t mention our impending break-up. It just hung over us, refusing to wander away like the proverbial cloud. I couldn’t imagine life without Lisa’s smile, her laugh.
I savored every moment with her, listening to the calm rhythm of her breathing when she slept and touching her soft hair. Her side of the bed would soon be empty, and the familiar scent of her hair would gradually leave her pillow. Our futures came first. She’d always wanted to study at Kent and I couldn’t hold her back.
We embraced each other in her garden, under an uncharacteristically grey sky, on an August afternoon. She smiled and told me she loved me, but sadness filled her eyes.
‘I love you too. You’ll never know how much,’ I said.
Soft rain fell from the heavy clouds. I wanted to hold her forever, to tell her to stay with me. The thought of being alone killed me inside.
‘It’s going to end, isn’t it?’ I looked up at the sky as a gust of wind scattered leaves across the turf.
‘What?’
‘Us…’
She didn’t say anything. She just placed her delicate fingers on my lips.
‘I’ll never care for another girl.’
‘You don’t know that,’ she whispered.
‘How could I, Lisa? How could I be happy in someone else’s arms, in someone else’s smile, when all I want to do is hold you and be with you? I love you more than I could ever love another girl.’
‘You’ll find someone else.’
‘How can you just stand there and say that?’ I snapped.
‘I don’t want you to be with someone else, but I want you to be happy. I can’t imagine life without you, but we have to get on with our lives.’
‘I know.’
‘We’re young. We have so much ahead of us. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. We can’t predict the future.’
‘I thought we’d always be together. We grew up together…’
‘And we spent some time apart until we went to college. Maybe this is just like that. Just a gap. You’re everything to me, Dan.’
‘No, I’m not. You have your future and your plans. We both do. We can’t hold each other back, no matter how much it hurts. It’s gonna be the hardest September ever without you.’
‘You’ll meet new people. You’ll have a great time and you’ll forget about me.’
‘Don’t say things like that,’ I said. ‘You’ll always be on my mind.’
For a while we held each other in silence, listened to the rain. I savored her warmth and kissed the tears on her cheeks.
‘I think we’d better go inside.’ I broke our silence. I wanted her to stay in my arms, even if it meant drowning in the rain, but it was over.
‘Wait a moment. Do you remember the last scene in Four Weddings And A Funeral?’
‘Well, that’s a non-sequitur! Yes, I do.’
‘They stand out in the rain and there’s that line…’
‘Andie MacDowell says she hadn’t noticed the rain, right?’
‘Yeah, that’s it. It’s like the worst delivered line in movie history!’ She snickered.
‘But I like that scene. Reminds me of when we first got together.’
The grey cl
ouds loomed over our heads, and I realized why she’d mentioned that scene. Our relationship was cyclical. As Lisa kissed me on both corners of my lips, the memory of our first kiss on that rainy night came back to me. Again, she looked gorgeous, her hair disheveled, and beads of rain dripping down her face.
‘It’s raining,’ I said.
‘Is it? I hadn’t noticed.’ She pressed her body closer to mine.
The rain fell heavier, hurting our skins.
‘Come on, babe. It’s time to go inside.’
I spent my first two weeks at Cardiff University feeling very depressed, struggling to make new friends. My mother found my heartbreak hilarious. She laughed hysterically and blasted sad Rod Stewart songs whenever I came home. But when she’d finally stifled her maniacal laughter, she gave me a hug and said, ‘There’ll be plenty more girls, plenty more times of feeling in love, of feeling heartbroken. The first cut is always the deepest…’
I tried to pick myself up and get on with things. Even though it was painful whenever Lisa text me, saying she missed me, I knew we’d both be okay.
The texts eventually stopped, and first love seemed so long ago. Some memories were distinct, but others were foggy and I had to work hard to make them real. It still hurt, a lot. The first cut is always the deepest: my mother and Rod were right.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
University and Promiscuity
I often mistook pretty girls studying at Cardiff University for Lisa. Each golden strand of hair, each smile, brought her back to mind. I saw her everywhere, especially when couples walked past, and I felt haunted. Even the lines of poetry I studied described lovesick youth.
But I didn’t go to Cardiff University just to read poetry and mope. My eyes had been opened to the multitude of student offers and, in particular, the cheap nights out. I stayed at my mother’s house instead of moving to student accommodation, and often stumbled home during daybreak after pissing on the neighbors’ flowers.
Michael also studied at Cardiff. He took Philosophy. From a vocational point of view, he was only interested in becoming a professional actor. But the likes of Aristotle and Socrates fascinated him, so he decided to stick with performing in local theatres during his first year. The girls loved him, and he’d had a very successful freshers’ week in the bedroom department, and many unfortunate visits to the sexual health clinic. His nose had become crooked after his fight in town, but that made him look more distinctive, and he had no reason to lose confidence in his looks.
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