by Dan Dalton
We went to university in the same city, different schools. We’d never met at the time. Turns out we’d been at some of the same gigs, stood in the same rooms. We had mutual friends on Facebook. I was at the more prestigious school. I’d remind her of this as often as possible. Sometimes she’d remind me that she got a first-class degree. That she also has a Masters. Sometimes I’d remind her that she thought black comedy meant Kenan and Kel.
The book I’m writing now is about a burned-out eighties rock star who by the mid-nineties is an addict with porcelain teeth and a deviated septum. After breaking out of rehab in LA, he sets out on a road trip back home to New Jersey. His name is Johnny Electric. The book is named after him.
Some prisons have wood chip. The house I grew up in had two floors, maybe fifty feet deep. Here the hallway stretches far enough to become a dot, a thousand doors and none of them an exit. Jon joins me in the hall, slamming a door behind him. I don’t know whose bathroom that is, but they’re out of paper, he says. He leans back against the door. You ever wipe your ass with a moist towelette. I don’t answer. Heaven, he says. I don’t have time. I try door after door: hotels, hovels, couches I’ve crashed on. The further I walk the more closed-in the hall feels. Suddenly I’m slamming doors with barely contained fury. Jon keeps pace behind me. I’m telling you, champ, you haven’t lived until you’ve cleaned your asshole with a wet wipe.
Jon is singing. He smells of whiskey. I ask if he’s going to help. Doing everything for you doesn’t help, he says. I ask if he’s drunk. He laughs. I mean, I’m not undrunk. I open a door, slam it. He tells me I take things too seriously. Well, at least I exist, I say. He goes quiet.
Hey man, he says. I exist.
I know, buddy, I say.
It turns out if you’re careless with your words you can hurt Jon Bon Jovi’s feelings after all.
I’m six years old, covering the walls of my room in rub-on transfer letters, the kind you buy in craft shops. It seems like a great idea. My parents don’t agree. They ground me for a month. I spend it scraping small black letters from the wood chip. Life is consequences.
Some doors demand to be opened. This door has a hand-drawn sign pinned to it. Leave me alone. My childhood bedroom. Inside the room is small, smaller, a single bed in the corner, two sash windows overlooking the back garden. I don’t remember what colour the carpet was. It keeps shifting under my feet, unable to place itself. I sit in the middle of the room, younger me, playing with toys. I must be eight, nine. My hair was still blond, then. I’m wearing four T-shirts, something I did when I was cold. I don’t know why I didn’t just wear a jumper. Without looking up, my younger self hands me a toy. Here, he says. It’s an anthropomorphic dog wearing futuristic battle armour. His name is Shakes, he’s a Tomorrow Knight. I sit with myself on the carpet. We’re making parachutes for them, he says. Suddenly I’m trying to tie knots with wet eyes.
Tomorrow Knights were teenage anthropomorphised dogs from the future who travelled back in time to present-day London in order to prevent global warming. They were knights, complete with swords and mechanical horses. Each had a distinct personality and a different fighting style. They listened to Punk and New Wave, which was the only music left in their time. They were named after famous English writers: Sir Shakespeare, Lady Austen, Sir Blake, Lady Woolf. Their mentor was an owl named Dante. It was much better than the other mutant animal shows – Biker Mice from Mars, Street Sharks, the Turtles – to me, at least. Corey Haim did one of the voices. The show ended in 1991. I got my first Bon Jovi record a year later.
I watch as he, younger me, cuts lengths of string from a spool, diligently lays them out next to his toy. He hands the spool to me. You have to cut them like this, he says. He ties a length of string to each corner of a handkerchief, and then ties the other end of the string to the wrists and knees of the toy. I follow his lead, fumbling with the knots, less because of the size of my hands, more because I’m out of practice. He shows me how to fold the handkerchief, how to hold it so it doesn’t tangle. My hands remember. Come on, he says, standing up, walking to the window. We open one each and lean out. I have to kneel. Throw it up, he says. As high as you can. Then the parachute has time to open. I nod. He counts. One. Two. Three. Our brave Knights tumble upward, the handkerchiefs unravelling, catching the air as the toys apex. Both slowly fall towards the back garden. We have to fetch them, he says. I look at Jon, standing in the doorway. He taps a watch he isn’t wearing. I apologise to myself, promise to come back. He sits on the carpet, nods. That’s okay, he says. I want to tell him I’ll stay longer next time, but I’ve already closed the door.
Cute kid, Jon says. Whatever happened to him.
I’m nine, on a family holiday. I leave my Tomorrow Knights on the beach overnight. They won’t be there tomorrow, Mum says. I don’t believe her. The next morning they’re gone. In the night the sea crept up and stole them. Life is consequences.
Five
Home, Part II
Jon makes a dramatic production of choosing a door, pressing his palms together and using his fingertips as a divining rod. He pushes it open and we step in. It’s my flat in London. My unconscious body lies in the middle of the studio, a single room that is the bedroom, living room and kitchen. The bathroom is separate. I moved here to get some space. To get some writing done. Turns out I didn’t get much of either.
He kicks my comatose form. I wince at the sight. I look terrible, like pizza dough left to prove. There is a wrap of Ketamine open on my desk. A blister pack of pills lies on the floor, the faux-wood laminate scattered with dishes, with my hulking frame. A half-finished bowl of cereal sits soggy on the counter. Sometimes I have as many as six suicidal thoughts before breakfast.
The flat is cramped, and there are books packed in anywhere they’ll fit. Two tall shelves filled to bursting. Books in drawers. Books in the kitchen cupboards. Books in the oven. I never used it. I joked about putting books in the bath for the same reason. It smells of freon and misery.
I say: I thought I’d be happy here.
Jon says: Happiness isn’t a place.
It’s my thirty-first birthday and we’re at karaoke, her treat. She set rules: Emo only, and you can’t choose your own song. We’re half a dozen drinks deep, voices shot. No sign of slowing down. It’s her turn. ‘You’re So Last Summer’ by Taking Back Sunday. Midway through a waiter arrives with our drinks. She takes a large white wine from the tray, downs it in the vocal break, sets the glass back down, calmly asks the waiter for another, picks up the song without missing a beat. I walk over, kiss her. I love you, I say. It’s the first time I’ve said that. She smiles, asks me to tell her again. I take the microphone. I love you, I say. I love you. I love you. I love you.
I tell people that’s when I realised I loved her but that isn’t true. The day I knew, she’d woken up sick, full of flu. I dressed her in my finest warmery, went out to get Lemsip, Sudafed, soup. She was so cute when she was sick. Things had been pretty casual between us, but suddenly all I wanted was to look after her. We binged on Parks and Rec. Read books. Napped. As she snuggled up, slept off the fever, I melted entirely, finally admitted to myself I was hopelessly in love.
On the wall of my one room home is a cork board with a US map pinned to it. The basic outline of my novel scrawled across in black marker pen, little more than a series of dots with a line between. Not much of a plan, Jon says, flipping through my notebook. I take it off him. It’ll get me where I need to go, I say. He walks to the bathroom, pisses with the door open. Speaking of needing to go, he says. Damn whiskey dropped right through me.
Johnny Electric is what Jon almost called his band, before he changed his name and used that. I’m glad he did. It’s an awful name for a band, but it’s a half-decent name for a book.
There are notes pinned to the board, too. Scene. Chunks of dialogue. Title ideas. Things she said. The latter notes aren’t for the novel. They’re there just to remind me not to text her. I love you. Don’t make this difficul
t. I’m not attracted to you any more. It doesn’t always work.
In the microwave are a stack of self-help books I hid when I had people over. I pick one up, thumb through it. Well-meaning words arranged in pleasing ways across the page. It’s not long before all you see are empty epithets, aphorisms that carry only the illusion of wisdom. Idioms with the nutritional value of a microwave meal. An apt hiding place, then.
Even before she left, I devoted a lot of time to wondering how to be. How to talk, how to dress. Do people laugh like this, and the way I’m sitting, is this one of the accepted ways. I bought books that promised to explain, to unlock secrets, truths. Books that would make me better. Everything studied. Every thought, every action interrogated. It never occurred to me to just be.
Novel idea: A gritty reboot of children’s classic, Not Now, Bernard.
Any book is a self-help book, if you read it right.
Jon takes a red pen from the jar on my desk. Having lots of pens makes me feel like a writer. He bites the cap off the marker, places a dot in California, another in Nevada, draws a line between the two. He looks at me, the coolest substitute teacher you never had. I said think of this place like a map, right. I nod. We started in California, drove clean across a desert, and now we’re here. He points to the Nevada dot. We had five days, he says. We’ve got four left. He slides his hand across the map, puts the pen down on the East Coast. New York. And this is where we have to get to. He points to my supine mass. Or the bunny gets it. He tosses the pen on the desk, bows. So what next, I say. He opens a single malt, fills his flask. Fucked if I know.
I’m fifteen, trying to write a novel. It’s a retelling of Robin Hood, but set in a Blade Runner-like future. I give up after the first paragraph. Years later I’ll read that a new Robin Hood film is in production, one set in the future. Like Blade Runner. I’ll tell everyone Hollywood is stealing my ideas. Eventually I realise an idea you don’t use doesn’t belong to you at all.
Novel idea: A man takes a road trip through his own mind with Jon Bon Jovi.
Where I’m from, if you want to insult a stranger, you call them Johnny Something. A guy with a Mohawk you’d say, Who does Johnny Haircut think he is. A guy who walks like he owns the street is Johnny Big Bollocks. A guy who fucks everything up, well. You get the idea.
If she were here now I’d apologise and I’d have no idea what for. I never listened. I’m sorry. Don’t make this difficult. I’m not attracted to you any more.
You never use her name, he says.
I know, I say. Hurts to say it.
I study the map, ask why we have four days. You know why, he says. You won’t last longer than that. I look at my body. Puffy, pale. I could be dead already. And New York, I say. He shrugs, pulls the door open. All I know is that’s where this ends, he says. Guess it’s just that kind of story.
My book is about a singer road-tripping across America in search of himself. Jon took a trip like that once, but the book isn’t about Jon. It’s about me, about a trip I took. Me and Paul and a minivan named Gary Busey. We never finished it.
Johnny See. Johnny Do. Johnny Ruin.
I follow Jon into the hall. The heels of his boots click like a metronome on the hardwood. I asked for this. To be here. But this isn’t home. It’s a storage unit, that’s all. A place I keep places. I do this when things get hard. Run, hide. But Jon’s right. I need to finish this. Even if I die trying.
I want to fix it, I say. Fix me.
To get her back, he says.
To get me back, I say.
Good. That’s good.
Shall we begin.
Already did.
The end of the hallway rushes to meet us, only it’s not an end. It’s a fire door, a red exit sign glows above it. Jon takes my arm. There are parts of your brain that’ll try to stop you, he says. Further we go, deeper we travel, harder this gets. He lets go. I know, I say.
I push the door open and step into the darkness beyond.
Six
Nevada / Lust
The dark carries an electric hum and the smell of rain. We step into an alley, a cavern of concrete and neon-bathed brick. Graffiti crawls across the stone: abandon all clothes, ye who enter. Vast buildings rise into the clouds, piercing the night. Phallic towers of glass clad in the kind of electronic billboards you’d find in Vegas. Here, they’re filled with filth. Everywhere I look is wall-to-wall smut, an array of single-minded depravity. All of it mine.
Jon points at a video screen hanging high above us. That your Johnson, he says. The screen broadcasts a dick pic, forty feet tall, in high definition. I nod. He stares a little longer. That angle does you a lot of favours.
I don’t remember my first hard-on. There must have been a first. No doubt triggered by something inappropriate. Hard-ons are mostly inappropriate, almost always inconvenient.
The first time I masturbated I thought I’d broken something. It was a willy, back then, when these things were discussed in whispers and euphemisms. I ran to the bathroom to check it wasn’t damaged, scared I’d have to tell my parents. I was ten. I’d just found my new favourite toy. I didn’t play with action figures much after that.
My twenty-two-year-old self walks past with a girl we’d just met. I turn to watch him, me, kissing her against a wall in the alley. I hitch her skirt up, pull down her tights, and push a hand into her knickers. She braces herself against the wall and groans loudly enough that I place my other hand over her mouth. She buries her face in my palm, comes, knees buckling slightly, before reaching for my belt. I don’t remember her name. I’m not sure I ever got it, but I remember her orgasm, her body shuddering against me. Katrina, maybe. I think I made a joke about waves.
We walk without purpose, eyes pulled in every direction. It’s an entire city of red lights. Flesh and vice and all things nice. A sprawl of smut set deep in the darkest seams of my subconscious. The streets are lined with floor-to-ceiling windows, lit by neon, each holding a memory, a fantasy, a kink. Glass-clad buildings scrape the sky, each room filled with lurid things I’ve seen and done. Others are empty, yet waiting for inspiration. This place is the product of every orgasm I’ve given, received, witnessed. These are temples. Shrines. Spank banks. I’ve made a lot of deposits. I don’t think this one needs an introduction, Jon says. No, I say. I know what this is.
Lust, the other four-letter word.
Is she in here, I say, unable to see the city for the skyscrapers. In here, he says. He points up. She has her own building. A block away, a single tower rises above the cloud line. A temple. A prison. The same thing, I suppose. Depends which side of the wall you’re on.
That night we met I really turned on the charm. I was warm, witty, thought I said a lot of clever things. She laughed along. Later she told me I was a bit much, but she really wanted to fuck me, so she put up with it. Don’t worry, she said, your bullshit is mostly bearable.
Sample tweet: Why impress others when you can impress your fence. Buy JoeSeal.
When we met I couldn’t believe she was interested. I waited for her to change her mind, was still surprised when she did. It’s not just lights that are extinguished by disbelief.
The worst thing you can say in an argument is whatever.
Rain now, dense and unrelenting. Movie rain. Jon and I shelter under the awning of one of the buildings. An electronic ticker runs along the side of the building opposite – the kind that would usually display stock prices or breaking news – thousands of red dots arranged to create a continuous stream of filth I’ve texted to various people over the years: What are you wearing. Where are your hands. Show me.
I’m twenty-two, on my road trip. I’ve been driving for sixteen hours, fuelled by Red Bull, gas-station bologna, wonder bread. Paul is asleep in back, seats folded into the floor so he can stretch out. It’s dark and my mind is racing. I don’t know what sets me off. It doesn’t take much. Up to now I’ve been sneaking cheeky wanks in motel showers, but we haven’t seen a motel in a week. No bed. No rooms. No pr
ivacy. Needs must. I’m doing eighty when I shift the car into cruise. After checking the rear view for signs of consciousness, I reach into my shorts, grab my cock, very slowly pulling and twisting around the head. Normally I’d use my whole hand, but my fingertips will do, focused in the right place, the right rhythm. In a minute I’m rock hard and throbbing, cock hot with blood, friction. I keep one hand on the wheel and two eyes on the road. It’s automatic. Auto-erotic. Within two minutes my whole body locks up and I struggle to keep the wheel straight as I come, the car drifting sideways across the blacktop. I pull over a few minutes later to change my boxers. It never occurred to me to pull over for a wank in the first place.
That thing where a loose paving slab splashes water all over your trailing foot.
Jesus-Fuck-Christmas is what Jon says, getting used to life with a wet boot.
The second worst thing you can do in an argument is laugh.
We step out into the street, narrowly avoiding a swerving minivan with my distracted twenty-one-year-old self at the wheel. Not the stupidest thing you’ve done with your dick, he says. Not even top three.