Truths, Half Truths and Little White Lies

by Nick Frost

  They sniffed the food with suspicion while me and Stevie hungrily tucked in. The conversation gradually turned to the future, our future, a future that included our forthcoming trip to Israel. We’d mentioned it in passing the day before, enough time for the parents to cogitate the information. I was now grilled about my time there and the current security situation, I could tell they weren’t happy.

  They put their collective feet down and insist Stevie would not be going to Israel with me. A loud argument begins between Stevie and her parents. I’m blamed for this, this change in her. I’m the scapegoat. At some point Mum pushes her chair back and storms upstairs. Dad stands.

  ‘See what you’ve done?’

  I try and make it right but my flustered assurances about terrorism and separate beds only seem to make things worse. Mum’s upstairs crying, Dad is fuming. It’s then I notice his left fist is clenched and leaning in the rice, poor Stevie is in tears. This is terrible.

  Father’s last words to me as he thunders up to bed were these: ‘I want you gone first thing.’

  I think I’d be out with a rice-fist in my ear that night if Stevie hadn’t liked me so much. Why did parents hate me so?

  The next morning a cab arrives at 8 a.m. After much arguing Stevie insists on coming home with me. Her parents are angry about this. I want her to stay, I think this would be for the best but still we leave together. I could see she was sad and I regretted this. There were tearful hugs on the doorstep for Stevie, she breaks away and walks to the cab, I smile weakly and look doe-eyed, maybe we can salvage something from this. I hold out my hand, the front door is slammed in my face.

  I lean down, open the letterbox and shout through, ‘Bye then!’

  This does not go down well. Dad opens the door and thunders out. I leg it into the car. It was only Stevie’s plea for leniency that stops me eating a gob full of his angry rice-covered fist. Why was it still covered in rice?

  At some point over the next few weeks I move in with her, much to the annoyance of her flatmate Edna. At first we’re blissfully happy, at least I was blissfully happy. Sometimes Simon would ring me from Australia and we’d bullshit and talk and it’d remind me how much I missed him. He wrote me a really long letter once but customs opened it and took out several pages so it made little or no sense.

  Things had got past the honeymoon stage and Stevie was in class at uni more often than not. I hated not seeing her but we were arguing a bit and my policy of non-drinking was really beginning to put a strain on our relationship. She and her best friend Tim would spend more and more time drinking together. I grew jealous and suspicious.

  Being forty-three now I look back at that time and curse myself for being such an idiot, for not seeing the signs, the blatantly obvious signs. I was blinded by love. If someone I was seeing spent the night out with a boy I think I’d be very cross and absolutely suspect the worst. Then I was just desperate to keep hold of her. I wrote her a book for fucksakes, a really terrible book. God, I fell hard for her. Often the compulsion to hang onto something so badly leads it to slip through your fingers like a separated egg yolk, indeed this was the case here.

  Stevie had gone to a weird science camp in Surrey to study worms. I was invited to spend a night there. It was awkward and she was a bit cold but then so was I, I think fearing the worst. I’d drawn back a little bit. I watched her drunkenly flirt with Tim all night. You know when you watch two people and can just tell something has been shared. A line has been crossed. If not physically then certainly emotionally. We argue and I leave the next day.

  When she gets back it’s pretty awful. She says she wants to move out, even though it’s her place. We agree I’ll take the flat over. That said, I didn’t think she meant moving out that day. Her ‘friend’ Tim comes to help her. After a bit of persuasion I get her to admit to me that she’d been having an affair. Heart. Crushed. I was so sad I wasn’t even sad. Again I was numb.

  With tears in my eyes I sniffled out a final thought: ‘Just fucking leave, take everything but my books and go.’

  What a pretentious art-helmet I was. I had about ten books. I stormed out to work and when I arrived home six hours later she was gone. She’d literally taken everything in the flat except my ten books which were in a neat pile in the bedroom. I cried as I made a cup of tea in a wok. It was the last time I ever saw or heard of Stevie.

  I was left in that flat on my own. I hated that place, you had to walk through the communal downstairs hall to get to my front door. The place stank and a drunken, aggressive Irish loony lived there. He frightened the shit out of me. Creeping in late at night was the worst. The lights would be off and the hall illuminated by the silent TV that was still on, flickering. If you were lucky you’d hear him snoring. Perfect, unlock the door and go home. If you were unlucky he’d stumble into the hall and threaten you with his thick, Irish Hulk hands. My mate Dion got hold of him one night and threatened to fuck him up. He slumped to the floor, terrified. Good. I hate bullies.

  The other downside of Stevie leaving was our trip to Israel. I’d booked our tickets and I couldn’t get them refunded. I was still keen to go. Ten nights in the sun was exactly what I needed right now so fuck it, I went.

  I’ve got a lot of thoughts about this holiday. Maybe holiday’s the wrong term, I went there to mentally convalesce. I decided to keep a journal and get down all my thoughts and feelings about what happened between Stevie and me. Being alone was tough, I loved and missed her so much, and Israel wasn’t how I remembered it but that was my problem not Israel’s. I went up to the old kibbutz. It was nice to hang out with some old Israeli friends but my heart hurt and I felt really lonely. After a couple of days I said goodbye and bussed it down to Tel Aviv.

  The rest of my time in Israel was spent walking around the city, trudging down the beach to the Arab section in old Jaffa. It was nice and cool down there near the sea. I’d sit in a café and write my journal for most of the day. As ever I was pretty much skint. At lunch I’d walk over to the bus station and have a falafel. Fortunately they were still offering that great deal – if the pitta was intact then you could get it refilled with fresh, hot falafel as much as you liked. Remember, the key was to keep the first couple relatively dry. Once you reached the ultimate tummy fullness you could moisten (sorry) the whole thing up a bit with tahini and other exotic Middle Eastern sauces.

  Falafel aside, I was sad and skint and bored. My diary however makes for very interesting reading. I looked at it fairly recently and was surprised by the amount I wrote. I filled up a whole book with my filthy melancholy. You can see as it grinds on how my emotions change. The first half of the book is me, grief stricken and broken physically and spiritually. Then there are some juvenile ramblings about life and love. Then about halfway through there’s a passage where I break away from my sadness and ogle at a passing girl’s lovely bum. Naughty. My spirit picks up from there. I begin to write about other things not connected to Stevie.

  When you split up from a girlfriend or boyfriend, things like life tend to get in the way of truly understanding what’s just happened to you. It slows the healing process. I found the good thing about being away and alone was I had time to think about Stevie and us and the break-up. I had time to work it all out. And as a result I think I got over it pretty quickly. Don’t think for a second that was that. It still hurt like fuck but I could see a way out.

  My boredom and depression and no fucking shekels got the better of me however. I go to a travel agent on Dizengoff Street and tell them, using some fabulous acting, that my grandmother has died and I need to get back home immediately. They couldn’t be more helpful. They mistake my tired eyes, light beard and the shadow on my spirit for actual grief. The next day I am on a flight.

  Years later not long after my dad died I went away on holiday. I thought it would help. It didn’t. It was a terrible mistake. I wasn’t ready for it. Me and Chris (Baby Momma) argue terribly – completely my fault – and we decide to go home early. Before changi
ng our flights the airline insists upon seeing my dad’s death certificate. Karma in action maybe, too many Herberts pretending Granny has died. Still, heartless pricks, also who carries their dad’s death certificate with them on holibobs?

  I get home from Israel and go back to the empty house with no furniture in it. I boil a wok, sit on the floor and decide what to do next.

  ***

  My first brush with House music had been as a sixteen-year-old. Basically, apart from the odd flirt with indie, metal and alternative styles, it lasts a lifetime. Don’t get me wrong, I love all types of music except ragtime but House music, and in particular Hard House, is something that has stayed with me until now. While at Chiquito and through my friendship with Tony and Dion I hung out with a lot of South Africans and Kiwis. We all had a shared interest in Hard House. These were Tony and Dion’s mates from back home, all in all a good bunch of girls and boys. We started clubbing a lot. It was the boom time for Hard House in the summer of 1997 and I was there at the front blowing my little horn. Hard House was everywhere and I had no idea after my first brush with the embryonic scene back in 88/89 that it was still happening – not just happening, but absolutely going off.

  Dion and Tony started going out almost every weekend after shifts in the bar at Chiquito. At first, and I’m not sure why, I didn’t really fancy going clubbing. I think I had a weird kind of agoraphobia. Simon was still away in Australia on tour but I was happy in Cricklewood and the thought of leaving it and going into London put the willies up me. Still, after hearing about this thing happening my curiosity eventually got the better of me. It was safe to say I was hooked from the start.

  The first place I went to was a club called Sunny Side Up. It was set in a long wet tunnel under a viaduct in Vauxhall. It was frightening and amazing in equal measure. This was not strictly my first brush with HaHa beans but it was close. I never had it during the Second Summer of Love, too expensive back then for me. The sum of £25 for one dose seemed like lunacy. No, back then you needed something weird and long lasting. Lysergic acid diethylamide. Cheap and cheerful.

  A few months before my first Sunny Side Up I went out with a mate of mine called Sean. He was tall and impossibly thin with long glossy black hair. He looked like a Navajo. We puffed a bit together and he suggested we go to the Ministry of Sound. I was nervous but thought fuckit, why not. While in the massive queue to get in he gave me a small glowing pebble. I take it and, using my watering fear-spit that was pooling in the depression under my tongue, swallowed it down.

  I was so frightened about taking this new rave canape, after hearing bad things about them on London Tonight, I thought my heart might explode there and then. By the time we got to the front my feet were tingling. The security apes look us over and tell us to fuck off. Oh. There’s clearly no waggle-room in this statement. We trudge away disappointed. Sean knows another place but I feel sick and trembly so I decide to head back. It’s still early to hook up with the team at the Pink Rupee.

  I’m sitting on a night bus passing through Kilburn when something strange happens to me. The ‘thing’ has dissolved inside my tummy and is now giving my brain a gentle massage. I rush as it jets up from my feet and into my brain so hard it makes my eyes roll backwards. It was like someone had flayed me alive and was blowing a fan over my freshly exposed nervous system. The old fella next to me shifts nervously. He gets up and stands by the door. It was my stop too so I get up and stand next to him.

  He’s a small well-dressed Indian man, I begin to notice the jacket he’s wearing, it’s so nice, a soft brown tweed-like fabric. Really lovely and so inviting. It pulses and throbs at me. I rush again slightly and I realise I have this man by the arm and I’m rubbing my face on his shoulder. My eyes are as wide as bin lids. He’s frightened and I’m horrified and apologetic. I let go of him and he jumps off the bus and runs up the street. I follow briefly but my heart’s not in it. Instead I cross the street and stumble into the Pink Rupee. It’s bright and people look afraid of me.

  That was then. Things felt differently now. I’m not on a bus on Kilburn High Road, I’m here at Sunny Side Up under a viaduct in a drippy tunnel. It felt right. It felt like home. That night on the bus opened my eyes. It was the beginning of a long relationship with that scene with its smiling people and the myriad possibilities that mind-altering things propose at three in the morning: world peace, laughter collectives the government couldn’t touch, chemical stasis and what have you. It started off great. I wanted to be frozen in these moments. Eyes rolling, cuddling strangers to the most amazing music imaginable. We were the few. Our scene was underground and people were afraid of it and, by association, us. Me.

  This was a dangerous time for me. It’d be my undoing. Not just yet but eventually. Tony, Dion and me would work our arses off in the week, skimming a little off the top here and there, at weekends we’d smash it up. The whole gang. We’d start Saturday night, then onto Sunnies at eight o’clock Sunday morning. After that we’d maybe head into Soho or go back to 142 Cricklewood Lane.

  The girls would have baths or showers and change into warm, fresh clothes and the boys would smoke and continue to greedily ingest powerful chemicals. Sometimes we’d go to the Spotted Dog in Willesden and I’d watch them drink the edge away, usually though we’d just lie around talking and trembling. The girls would look after us and play with our hair, give us massages, feed us orange juice. It was nice. I used to sit, eyes wide, and watch the juice inside the glass transform into a pint of rice.

  The spirit liberators always made me see the weirdest things, things civilians would’ve found frightening. I wasn’t frightened. I liked it. I yearned for it, yearned to be in that place where anything and everything happens. I embraced it fully. At the height of the lunacy I’d often get a thing where everyone I looked at would be wearing glasses. I’d have to run my hand over their faces to know if they were real or not. People didn’t mind, they knew what was happening. Unless they were real glasses and then I’d have to apologise profusely.

  Once I saw a hot glow like a laser or a spot welding arc under a man’s skin in the middle of his forehead. It just hummed and crackled while I looked at him. Another time a beam actually broke through and shone an intense light out of a man’s back. I followed him. The thin beam moved across his shoulders, slowly tracing a shape I couldn’t make out at first. The faster it got the easier it was to see as an image. Have you ever seen pictures of the Nazca Lines in Peru? It was that. It was one of the hummingbirds drawn on the floor of the desert, so big they can only be seen from the air. It didn’t freak me out. I considered it a spirit guide. I smiled and it told me I should eat another peanut. So I did.

  These were my weekends. It wasn’t just Sunny Side Up either. We went to a place called Sunflowers, we went to the Aquarium in Old Street, a club with a swimming pool in it! Disgusting. We went to the O bar in Soho and on and on and on. My favourite DJs were Tony De Vit, Pete Wardman, Skol, Roosta, Darren Poole, Darren Pearce, BK, The Tidy Boys, The Sharp Boys, John ‘OO’ Fleming, Tall Paul and Luke Brancaccio. These were the gods on the scene at the time. You didn’t just go to specific clubs, you followed the DJs around. Wherever they played we went.

  Tony and Dion decide they want to go to the States, that was always their plan from the start but the mayhem and the rut one inevitably gets into working in the food service industry meant they’d been here longer than they’d envisaged.

  They left and went to live in Huntington Beach, California. Shit, I missed those jerk-offs. I enjoyed hearing of their exploits and was jealous I couldn’t be there. Girls, surfing and getting high seemed to be the order of the day. Simon had left Australia and had gone to spend some time with Tony and Dion over there, then travelling around on his own and getting his shit together.

  When Simon got back we begin our lifelong ‘I love Agent Dana Scully’ phase. God we loved that woman. By this time I’d sourced a TV and a cupboard and we were pretty happy with this. Simon and I would lie around watching en
dless X-Files box sets dreaming and hoping that one day we’d watch Mulder and Scully kiss. That’s all we wanted.

  This was the time of the infamous Piegate drama. Piegate’s something bad I did to Simon. Something I regret. Even though he says it’s cool I know deep down he’s never forgiven me, probably never will.

  We’d spent the day puffin it up. We’re at a point, between episodes of the X-Files, where we get the munchies something rotten. I’d invented a meal, which, apart from the staff food at Chiquito, was the only thing I seemed to eat for years. It was called simply, Pies in a Bowl. It consisted of two Findus chicken and vegetable pies, cooked, in a bowl. I’d then mash the pies up, add Bisto gravy, lashings of white pepper and ketchup. It was fucking lovely. I miss Pies in a Bowl. It was a big hit, it was cheap, nutritious, and suited my lifestyle perfectly. We were Pies in a Bowl kinda guys back then.

  I don’t know what made me say the thing to Simon that I said. I think it was the Devil or Hitler. Yeah, that’s it, it was Hitler. I found myself taking a loud breath like I’d just remembered the most important thing in the world, his ears pricked up!

  ‘What?’ Simon was mine.

  Slowly I drop my knowledge bomb on him . . .

  ‘I’ve got chicken fucking pies in the freezer!!!’

  His eyes widen. We both cheer! What was I doing? Stop this now. I didn’t stop. We got to the kitchen and we pause, harvesting the anticipation. In forty-five short minutes – just enough time for another X-File – we’d be feasting on Pies in a Bowl. Simon looked at me. I egged him on.