I Blame Morrissey

by Jamie Jones

  Matt: ‘Well, if you get bored with her, make sure you give her my number eh?’

  At that point I gave up on food and retreated to my Smiths comfort blanket.

  I wallowed in my room for most of the day reading Nick Hornby’s “High Fidelity”. I had read it so many times that the words had become as familiar and comforting as any Morrissey lyric. I wondered what my ex-girlfriends were up to, and made reams of Top 5 lists of everything from album covers to indie popsters haircuts just to stop me thinking about Amy. I cultivated a daydream about leaving university and heartbreak behind and opening my own 2nd hand music shop back home.

  Through the late afternoon gloom, I remembered that I had a ticket to see Pulp play at our SU Great Hall that night. Thanks to the success of “Common People” and their triumphant Glasto appearance, this was the ticket that everyone wanted and, being the indie geek that I was, I’d booked my ticket months previously. Like the rest of the UK, Amy had fallen under Jarvis Cocker’s spell so I had spent the last week trying desperately to get her a ticket for the gig, but so far without success. Instead, as I let the shower water finally wash the smell of her from my skin, I decided to use some of my closely guarded student grant money to buy her a t-shirt at the gig, in the hope that such an offering would help her fall in love with me.

  I went to the Talybont bar earlier than normal, in the hope that the fizz of the lager could make dormant the volcano of pity that was threatening to engulf my innards. Of course, when I walked into the bar, Amy was the first person I saw. As I sat down with her and Lou, she acted as if nothing had happened. She was giggly from the Southern Comfort and slapped my arm when I said something funny, which had become an endearing habit and one that in my desperate mind told me that she did care after all.

  I left them, halfway to steaming, at 7.30pm to walk to the SU, with strict instructions to ring the pay phone in the bar if I could get Amy a ticket from a tout.

  As it turned out, the touts, who were always scousers no matter where in the country the gig was, wanted an extortionate £30 for a ticket with a £12.50 face value. Just to put that into context, £30 was the equivalent of my supermarket “big shop” for two weeks. I loved this girl, and she had made me lose control of my mind, but not my wallet. I went into the Great Hall on my own.

  Pulp were on sparkling form that night and the crowd responded by jumping and dancing from the front to the back of the hall. Those were the very best gigs, where I removed myself from the real world for 90 minutes and revelled in the show this glorious band were putting on. I didn’t think about Amy, I didn’t think about missing home, I just got on with enjoying the tunes. This was the golden time to see Pulp, a band that were on the top of their game, flushed by their success but still playing in 800-1000 capacity venues.

  With the final chords to “Common People” bouncing off the walls, I made my way out to the merchandise stall and handed over a sweat drenched £10 note in exchange for Amys new Pulp t-shirt. After a quick pint in The Tavern for rehydration and Dutch courage purposes, I made my way back to the Talybont Bar to present Amy with the token of my affection.

  I got back to find Neil and Lou drinking Mad Dog 20:20 like it was water. In an attempt to set a Guinness World Record for the number of knackered livers in a single university, our SU had accepted Mad Dog’s offer to sponsor the union that year. This meant that bottles of 20:20 were only £1 each in any of our bars. They were plastered but I managed to get out of them that they had no idea where Amy was. I figured that I should go back to my room, take a quick shower and change out of my saturated t-shirt and jeans, before coming back to the bar, where hopefully Amy would have turned up. I floated the 100 yards back to my flat daydreaming about the magical effect that the t-shirt would have on her.

  As I turned the key in the front door of the flat, I was loudly whistling the tune to “Disco 2000”, but the breath stuck firmly in my throat as I took my first step inside. There, in the doorway of Matt’s flat was Amy. As she looked to the floor and darted into his room, Matt turned to me and said; ‘Just off to bed now, mate’, before letting out a rasping laugh, the likes of which I hadn’t heard since Sid James got his grubby mitts on Barbara Windsor in the Carry On films.

  I stood motionless, with my back pressed against the front door, trying to will my legs to move, to do something, to run before the noises began. The tears were rolling down my cheeks and I knew I probably had 30 seconds before one of my flatmates appeared in our communal corridor. I picked my heart and stomach up off the floor and staggered back to the bar to seek comfort with my mates.

  As I approached the bar, I could see Neil’s giant frame taking an unorthodox route back to his flat, like a drunk crab scuttling from left to right. When I went to open the bar door, Lou was stood in the doorway having a wrestling match with her jacket. She looked up at me and the twisted train wreck that was my face sobered her up in an instant; ‘Oh Shit, after you went, Neil remembered that she’d left with Matt. Oh shit, shit, shit. Don’t tell me that you have just gone back to your flat and seen them together?’

  With a drunken hug and a misjudged pat on the cheek which ended up being a slap, Lou came up with a cunning plan; ‘C’mon, let’s go back to my flat, nick all the booze from peoples cupboards and get hammered, that’ll help.’

  I knew in that instant that I would forever be grateful to her for inviting me back to her room for a peach schnapps and a shoulder to cry on. She knew that I couldn’t go back to my flat and listen to ‘the noises’, so I made a space on the floor and hunkered down in her old girl guides sleeping bag. The only problem with Lou’s hospitality was her insistence that she could only fall asleep if the Manic Street Preachers “The Holy Bible” album was playing on the stereo. That was a tough album to listen to at the best of times, with its tales of self-abuse, anorexia and serial killers but, heartbroken and drunk, it was agonising listening. Waking up at 4am, sweating peach schnapps with the track “4st 7lbs” playing is a form of mental torture that I wouldn’t have wished on my worst enemy.

  I’ve Tried Really Hard To Not Love You

  WHEN I woke again at 7am, my first instinct was to go back to my room, stick “Vauxhall & I” on at full blast to wake the exhausted lovers, pack a bag and go home once and for all. I had tried to keep going until the end of the song but it couldn’t carry on. Even Moz wouldn’t want me to keep putting myself through this emotional torture, would he?

  Whilst packing my rucksack, I remembered that my midday lecture was on Nye Bevan, so decided to attend one more session to say goodbye to university life before heading home. The last train out of Wales that would get me to Peterborough didn’t leave until 6pm so I knew I had time to go to the lecture and have a few final pints in The Tavern before beginning the journey back to the bosom of my loved ones. I got to the cavernous lecture theatre early, took a seat on the back row and tried to stop my schnapps addled and sleep deprived brain from wondering whether Amy would turn up.

  Just as the lecture began, she strolled in and, to my surprise, having looked around the room, bounded up the long staircase to sit next to me. Despite myself, my heart leapt as she sat down. I was dreading her not having had time to shower and smelling of “him”, all cheap aftershave and engine oil. Thankfully, she smelt her usual flowery self. After she got her breath back, she reached across and wrote on my pad of paper:

  “Sorry Jay, I didn’t want to hurt you. x”

  Being the eternal indie geek, I scribbled:

  “You’ve nicked that line from Teenage Fanclub’s “The Concept”.

  She responded with a hastily scrawled:

  “What, Teenage Fanclub have a lyric that says – Sorry Jay, I didn’t want to hurt you?”

  As we both burst out giggling and with the death stares of 200 students and 1 furious lecturer burning into our now bowed heads, I knew it would be ok. It would all work out between us one way or another.

  After the lecture ended we walked arm in arm to The Tavern. Neither of us had m
entioned going there, by now it was just the natural place for our legs to aim for. We stayed there for the rest of the afternoon having a battle of the jukebox. Her tune selections included Suede’s “The Wild Ones” and for 4 minutes and 50 seconds of gorgeousness, we sat and listened, no laughing, no joking, no talking. I had fallen hard and, for the first time, I wondered briefly if she had as well. As I wobbled from my seat to select The Stone Roses ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ I caught her looking over at me and smiling, the kind of smile you can only display when you’re drunk or are thinking; ‘Hmmm, maybe I do fancy him after all’.

  With Neil and Lou still recovering from their exploits with a MD 20:20 bottle the night before, the two of us eventually decided to head into town and found ourselves in Metros. It was a real old school indie night, £2 to get in, £1 a pint, carpet on the dance floor and The Smiths blasting out; it was a scuzzy shithole of a place that had fast become one of the highlights of Cardiff nightlife for us.

  After an hour on the dancefloor producing our best shapes to the likes of The Cure and The Bluetones, we collapsed into a booth, sweatily chugging on bottles of Becks. I decided to take that moment to tackle the motorcycle shaped elephant in the room and told her that I knew she really liked Matt and that I wouldn’t get in the way anymore and would just be her friend from hereon. She turned to me and shouted over the pounding beat to Pixies – ‘Debaser’:

  ‘You deserve better than me.’

  Me – ‘The problem is, I don’t want better than you… I want you.’

  For a second she resembled a 30 year old woman looking back at her wasted teenage years spent with a worthless tosspot who eventually upped and left her, before saying:

  ‘Oh you will Jay, trust me. One day you will want better than me, I know it.’

  This girl talked in more rhymes and riddles than a Morrissey song so, without saying another word, I went to the bar, grabbed us another drink and dragged her back onto the dance floor as Happy Mondays ‘Kinky Afro’ blasted from the speaker stacks.

  They finally threw us out of the club at 2am and we realised that we had to make the long walk home in the rain as we had pooled our resources to buy one last drink to share. I had suspended reality again and was living for the moment of sweaty joy that we found ourselves in. I gave up all ideas of leaving and went back to daydreaming about our first holiday together. When we got back to Talybont, it was a sodden hug and a lingering kiss on the cheek from her, then both back to our own rooms. I sat in the tiny en-suite shower in my room with the door open, ‘Sproston Green’ cranked up to 11 on the stereo, with the steam from the shower making the room resemble a scene from “Apocalypse Now” and allowed myself a little smile about the nights events. Huw hammering on the wall and howling; ‘Shut the fuck up Jay, I’ve got a lecture in the soddin’ morning’, broke the spell somewhat.

  The next two weeks were spent becoming engrossed in my course, missing home and falling ever more in love with Amy. We didn’t kiss again or even go to Metros and now appeared to be officially wearing the ‘just good friends’ badge, especially when we would meet new people who would usually assume that we were a couple until Amy put them right. I even offered to use some of my student grant to buy her a ticket to see Morrissey support Bowie at the Cardiff International Arena. My thinking was that if I could get her into the same room as Moz, his magic would put a spell on her and she would fall deliriously into my arms. She politely declined my offer and so missed a very odd gig. Moz walked out onto the stage at 7.30pm to only a smattering of us devotees scrunched against the crash barriers. He was on towering form and smashed into the “Southpaw Grammar” material that made up the majority of the set with his normal violent abandon. The 200 of us pogoing and applauding wildly tried to create an atmosphere whilst the other 5000 people in the Arena looked bored or bemused. It was only as Moz left the stage that I realised what a humongous opportunity I had just wasted. The opportunity to get up onto the stage, with an ideal set of conditions; only a small set of Moz fans, a bored and uninterested set of security coupled with a low stage. The chance had gone and I would never get a better one to achieve the ultimate fan moment of scaling the stage and hugging him.

  After that, Bowie seemed a terrible let down with a lumpen set of new songs and reworked inferior versions of the classics. It wasn’t the man that had inspired me just 5 years previously, I knew he was the chameleon of rock but this was ridiculous, he wasn’t meant to change from genius to dullard. By the time he was launching into his encore, I was already setting out on the 20 minute walk back to Talybont. Moz left the tour the next day.

  I didn’t see Amy in our flat again and didn’t ask if Matt was going to hers now but, from what I could gather, all was not well between the two of them. I tried to stay out of it as much as I could and spent the time she and I were together trying not to look into her eyes or at her bum as she walked to the bar.

  I never did find out exactly what went wrong between Amy and Matt but, one night in the depths of November, the pair of them had an ugly row, in front of an enthralled audience in the Talybont bar. Despite the rest of the room falling silent, I could only make out parts of the argument from 20 yards away. The words “arrogant wanker” and “dickhead” were screeched by her, with him responding with a rant about her being a “needy cow”. Eventually, he stormed out of the bar and she came back to sit down with Neil, Lou and I, who, in a traditional English manner attempted to act like we hadn’t seen or heard anything.

  An hour and a medicinal double Southern Comfort after her argument with Matt, and with Lou and Neil at the bar, without any warning, as I was singing along to New Order’s ‘Temptation’, Amy leant over the table and kissed me. Every molecule in my body wanted to kiss her back but even I had a modicum of self-worth remaining and pulled away. As she looked up at me with her big, confused eyes, I told her that I wasn’t sitting in this bar kissing her an hour after her argument with Matt, that I was worth more than that. I then instantly shot down my new tough guy stance by reminding her that I loved her. I was on a roll now so told that if she wanted to be with me, for us to be a couple, she should kiss me again. She sat in her chair dissecting what I had said before gently whispering “Ok”, then leaning over and kissing me again. My overriding emotion was one of relief. Moz had been right, I’d just had to hang in there and wait for her to realise that she wanted to be with me. The drama and heartbreak were over, we were a couple and would remain so forever, drinking Southern Comfort and listening to Suede. Of that I was certain.

  We collapsed into her bed that night emotionally exhausted, I suspected for very different reasons. I woke at 7am to find her hugging me very tightly, in the same way a boa constrictor holds its prey. I had the joy of a 9am lecture on the Russian revolution so had to get up and out of her room but, between the kissing and at least one more return to under the duvet, we made a plan to meet in town at midday for “something to eat”. This was getting refined, we had never been to a restaurant together before. It was bloody tough to leave the bed of the girl I loved to go and learn more about Lenin but I was determined to be seen to play it cool. I didn’t intend to get anywhere near the misogynistic wanker style that Matt had perfected but I also knew that I needed to be an equal partner in this blossoming romance.

  At 12.03pm I sprinted from Spillers Records (where I had been stocking up on more obscure and unwanted indie CD’s for £1 each) to Bella Pasta. Thanks to the constant Cardiff rain my jeans felt like they weighed a ton and with hair stuck to my forehead and glasses, I looked like I’d taken up competitive crying. I was almost overcome with emotion as I crashed through the doors to see this beautiful woman quietly chuckling at my bedraggled appearance. Over our shared starter of garlic bread (with cheese), we chatted and laughed as normal, though this time over a bottle of house white wine. When she ordered the wine, my first thought was; “I’ve only got £10 in my pocket thanks to my CD buying so I hope this is her treat.”

  After 3/4 of the bottle had been sunk and
my fringe had begun to dry, Amy went very quiet and bowed her head ever so slightly. A wave of panic washed over me as I thought the song was about to end in a way that Moz would love, with her announcing that last night had been another drunken mistake. Instead she took an audible deep breath and blurted out:

  ‘I love you, Jay. There I said it. I’ve tried really hard to not love you. I didn’t come to university to fall in love with anyone and, no offence, but certainly not with a Morrissey obsessive who would rather spend all his money on CD’s by bands nobody has ever heard of rather than pay for a decent bottle of wine. I came to enjoy student life, to go to cool clubs and see how different life could be, see where it could take me. Instead I fell in love with you. I know you Jay, I know all you want from life right now is your music, your football and me, but I want so much more. But anyway, as I said, there is no point denying it anymore, I am totally and utterly in love with you.’

  As declarations of love go, it wasn’t exactly up there with “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” or even Leia and Han in “Empire Strikes Back”. In fact, it had a distinct ring of Morrissey about it.

  I sat there with an inane grin on my face as we finished our penne pasta and Amy paid the bill. I used my tenner to treat us to a cab back to Talybont where we ran up the stairs to her 6th floor flat, crashed through the front door and spent the next 3 days and nights locked in her room. We were in a frenzied race to find out as much as we could about each other before the real world forced its way back into our lives. The only time I left the room was to pop out and get essential supplies (pizza, beer and CD’s).

  This was us now, we were a couple. She had written “Amy Loves Jay” on a piece of scrap paper and I would carry it round with me like an ID card, ready to show it to anyone that asked where I had been or what I was up to. With that feeling of desperation to know everything there is to know about the other, it was amazing how intimate we became in such a short space of time, from sharing tales of our childhood through to attempting to re-enact the More Magazine “Position of the Fortnight”. Try as we might, any position with a difficulty rating of 4 or over was just impossible for anyone but a pair of Olympic gymnasts.