Over the days that followed, Gordy wrote loads of letters to record companies, both big and small, from the likes of EMI, Polydor and Sony right down to much smaller Indie labels - many of whom he’d never heard of - but it didn’t matter, as long as they were prepared to give him a chance.
He wrote letters to companies in London, Manchester and Liverpool - he even sent them to LA, New York, Detroit and Seattle, because who knew, one of them might just be looking for an eager, willing-to-learn, music mad young man like him.
On the following Saturday morning, he tootled off down to the Post Office and sent all the letters off, keeping his fingers crossed that one of them might lead to his big break.
The way back led him passed the turning for Trevor’s house and, on whim, Gordy decided to go and knock on his door.
***
The front door opened and Trevor sheepishly poked his head around it.
He had not really changed much from how Gordy remembered him; taller, of course, and looking a bit older, but he still had the same curly mop of blonde hair, albeit currently a bit dishevelled, and the round, moon face that was presently registering shock.
“Blimey! Gordy.” He said, clearly a little surprised to see him.
“Hiya, Trev! You okay?”
“Er, yeah, great - fine thanks,” He replied, sounding almost guilty of some unknown charge, “You?”
“Yeah, fine.” Gordy said, although he thought Trevor was acting oddly, as if maybe he’d arrived at an inopportune moment.
Suddenly it felt a bit awkward. Trevor was hiding behind the door for some reason, clearly unwilling to step properly into view, with only his head sticking out from around it - as if he had been disturbed, caught in the act of doing something he shouldn’t and trying to conceal the evidence.
Unpleasant thoughts of what it was Trevor might have been doing flooded Gordy’s imagination. “Listen, if it’s a bad time, then I can easily—”
“No, no. It’s fine. It’s just that, well - I wasn’t expecting anyone - my parents are away and I’ve got the house to myself so I’ve been, erm—”
“Honestly Trev, you don’t have to explain - it’s your business.”
“Hey, no, it’s okay. You might as well know. It doesn’t matter - it’s just that you’re gonna think I’m a bit weird, that’s all.”
“Course I won’t. I mean everybody does it, it’s perfectly normal—”
“I’m not really sure that it is,” said Trevor, suddenly stepping out from behind the door and standing in full view of Gordy, letting him finally see what he’d obviously been trying to conceal.
Gordy tried to shield his eyes at first, terrified by what he might witness, but then as he looked at his old friend, he smiled with immense relief.
And then he started to laugh. “That’s great, Trev. Really bloody great. I love it!”
“You do?” Trevor said, incredulously. “Really?”
“Yeah, really!
And then Trevor started to laugh too, all the awkwardness, all the tension immediately melting away as he stood there in his skin tight, bright blue and red Spider-man suit, holding a TV remote in one hand and the floppy mask that accompanied his spandex outfit in the other, which he’d clearly pulled off his head moments before opening the door.
“I’m just in the middle of watching a superhero marathon on video.” He said, “Wanna come in?”
“Love to,” replied Gordy.
***
Eight hours later, Gordy was sitting next to Trevor on the settee wearing a borrowed Wolverine outfit of Trevor’s and feeling completely relaxed about it.
They had watched six episodes of the 1970s TV series’, The Amazing Spider-Man, starring Nicholas Hammond and three episodes of The Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno. They had also consumed a whole box of Kellog’s Honey Smacks, four packets of Fruit Toffos, two sherbet Dib Dabs and half a Wham bar (sharing half each).
Being a superhero was hungry work.
It was just like old times, back when they were kids.
Over the course of the day, Gordy had apologised for not being a better friend to Trevor when they were younger, for putting his desire to be cool ahead of their friendship and for maybe not including him more when he and Daisy were working together at Bailey’s Bandstand even though it wasn’t intentional.
Trevor said that he understood and could see why Gordy had perhaps wanted to distance himself from him. “Let’s face it, mate, it perhaps wasn’t the coolest thing in the world to go down the town dressed as c-3po - even I cringe when I think about it now - especially that bloody ‘Fonz’ outfit - what the hell was I thinking?”
Gordy smiled at the memory.
“But I think I just wasn’t ready to grow up yet,” Trevor continued, “and you clearly were. Then, by the time I was, you had already moved on - and I don’t blame you in the slightest.”
“I did come round and call for you, though, Trev, for a long time,” Gordy said, “but you never came to the door - never came out. Then I started going out with Pippa and that was it - I was lost for a while - madly in love if I remember rightly.”
It was Trevor’s turn to smile, “Yeah, she was a bit of a stunner, wasn’t she?”
“She was at that. But after it fizzled out, you were away from school for ages and I just sort of got in with a different crowd.”
“I know, I was an idiot.”
“Why did you have all that time off school anyway - something wrong with your leg wasn’t it?”
Trevor squirmed slightly with embarrassment, “Well, not really, but let’s not go into that - let’s just say it wasn’t my finest hour, but I think mainly it was because I was confused and, like I said before, not ready to grow up. But it was a turning point.
“I knew I couldn’t go out dressed up any more, particularly after that disastrous ‘Fonzie’ outfit. I knew, too, that collecting comics and being a sci-fi geek wasn’t exactly the best thing to be if I ever hoped to be accepted, or get a girlfriend for that matter - so I sort of suppressed it.
“I put all my toys and clothes and comics away in a cupboard and tried to be like everyone else.
“It sort of worked, too. I left school with lots of friends but they didn’t really know the real me - no one did - except you, I suppose.
“But then I went off to uni and all of a sudden I met loads of people who liked comics and sci-fi and movies and all the TV shows you and me used to watch as kids - and it became kind of ‘cool’, you know? Like being a geek - being a nerd - was actually okay.
“So I embraced it again. It’s who I am, what I am. But back here in Bradley, I prefer to keep it to myself.”
Gordy was amazed. Everything Trevor had said resonated with him, too. The need to suppress his inner nerd and present an image of himself to others that was not necessarily the true one.
Gordy had become ‘cool’. He did wear the coolest clothes, did love the coolest music, he genuinely was obsessed with fashion and he could now undo a bra strap one-handed as he had set out to do all those years ago when he’d drawn up The Cool List (Item Number 15).
All those things were him now. But they weren’t all that he was. He, like Trevor, also loved comics, movies, sci-fi - even musicals for Christ sake yet he, too, had suppressed those things for so long and ultimately it had made him unhappy.
Being ‘cool’ wasn’t the sum total of who he was, it was merely a facet. He was cool and he was a nerd and a whole lot of other things in between and it was about time that he started to accept it.
Sitting there with Trevor, watching superhero videos, dressed as Wolverine, was the best time he’d had in ages, aside from the night he’d spent with Daisy in Magaluf. It was certainly more him than hanging out with The Desert Rats and getting pissed.
It seemed that Trevor and Gordy were on exactly the same page and
over the next few weeks, they saw each other a great deal.
Trevor was currently out of work, looking for a career in which to use his degree in Media Studies and, like Gordy, busy applying for various jobs.
Gordy had confided to Trevor his feelings about Daisy and told him of his desire to start afresh, somewhere new - doing a job that he was actually interested in.
Trevor said he completely understood and wished him well.
“And let’s both embrace our inner nerd shall we?” He said.
“Yes, lets.” Gordy agreed.
Chapter Twenty-Two
By the end of July, nearly six weeks after quitting her job at the beach bar and moving in with Mandy and Tricia, Daisy had very nearly come to terms with what had happened in Magaluf with Gordy.
At first she had been an absolute wreck, unable to understand how it had happened to her again - were all men the same?
Maybe Mandy and Tricia had the right idea, perhaps being a ‘lezzie’ - as Steve Cool so succinctly put it - was the way to go.
Indeed, Daisy felt almost guilty now for being so offended by Steve Cool’s ‘lezzie’ jibe as actually, if all lesbians were like Mandy and Tricia, then they were extremely kind, very loyal people and she would have happily joined their muff munching masses if only she was so inclined. But alas, she was not.
Daisy was not a lesbian, no matter how much she wished she was and remained steadfastly stuck in the heterosexual hell of her very own Heartbreak Hotel where men treated her like dirt and she continuously got hurt.
She could easily believe Steve Cool of being a bastard - indeed, she had known he was all along, but Gordy Brewer? She would never have seen that coming in a month of Sundays.
Yet now, six weeks on, the hurt she had felt by his abrupt departure had eased and she felt ready to get on with the rest of her life.
In that time, she had been working constant double shifts at Pistol Pete’s, an English pub far enough away from both ‘The Tosser and The Tart’ (Steve and Loz) to make the likelihood of running into either of them fairly remote.
She had been saving madly - preferring to stay in instead of going out, so that she could afford a flight back to England, far away from her personal purgatory that was Lloret de Mar.
And now, three months ahead of schedule, she finally had enough saved up.
But whereas Bradley was once the rose-tinted destination of her dreams, she now had serious misgivings about going back there.
Once again, Mandy and Tricia came to her rescue. Like two, loved-up, lesbian Lancelots they were her knights in shining armour.
They, too, were heading home; fed up with life on the Costa Brava and looking forward to getting back to Manchester, where they were from, and where they were now itching to set up home together.
Mandy’s mum had found them a place in Stockport - a two bed semi on a quiet little street not too far from the city centre. However, it was a bit pricey and was going to stretch them financially - but with a third person sharing it would make it a whole lot more affordable.
Daisy was their first choice and although she had never been to Manchester in her life, it seemed as good a place as any to make a fresh start - so she willingly said ‘yes’.
Glynn and Lynn Flynn, Daisy’s hippy, trippy, very bohemian parents, wouldn’t be home until Christmas, when they would be renting a house in Bradley for the short term - at least until they answered ‘the call of God’ once more and headed off on yet another evangelical escapade which, Daisy suspected, would not be too long.
With parents such as hers, it never ceased to amaze Daisy how she had turned out to be so straight-laced and starched. Even though Glynn and Lynn were fiercely religious they were anything but dull - maybe it was because they had always been such free-spirits that Daisy, herself, had unconsciously become the opposite.
Nevertheless, it would be good to visit them in Bradley at Christmas, but for the time being, Manchester would suit her just fine.
***
Unbelievably, by the second week in August, Daisy was safely ensconced in her new room at hers, Mandy’s and Tricia’s newly rented house in Stockport; Lloret de Mar and the Costa Brava thankfully feeling like a whole life time away.
She loved her attic bedroom at the top of the house, with it’s dorma window and sloping walls - which she had covered with band posters, handbills for various gigs and photographs of the many people she had met and places she had seen on her travels.
Against the far wall, on several crammed shelves, were rows and rows of albums, all carefully indexed and alphabetised which, with her dad’s permission, she had reclaimed from storage along with his trusty Dynatron record player.
Under the dorma window, she had a second-hand desk and on top of that she had set a battered old typewriter which she had salvaged from a junk shop - but it worked just fine.
Against the back wall, under the eaves, was her small, single bed, made-up with a new duvet and pillow set, with a girlie pink pattern, which she had bought from Debenhams with the remainder of her savings.
In all it didn’t amount to much, but to Daisy it was home.
Being at the top of the house, away from Mandy and Tricia, who spent most of their time downstairs in the lounge or kitchen, meant that Daisy could play her music as loudly as she liked without fear of disturbing her two housemates.
Invariably, she would have the record player blasting as she tippety-tap-tapped away on her typewriter, writing articles about music, or upcoming bands or various gigs she’d seen. Indeed, even though Daisy did not socialise regularly, she did find that Manchester was absolutely bursting at the seams with great music and brilliant new bands. Mandy and Tricia had taken her to places like The Tropicana, The Berlin and, best of all, The Hacienda and they all inspired her to write.
Once again, she had begun to send her efforts off to magazines such as Smash Hits, NME and The Face, and already she had been successful in getting a few published.
She was earning money from her writing, which was the ultimate dream, but it was not enough to make ends meet, so to boost her earnings she took a job in a little cafe a short distance away, working there several mornings a week which gave her some much needed additional income.
It was also good fun and got her out of the house and into the community which was what she needed. It helped, too, that her boss was extremely lenient and let her do pretty much what she wanted, which was ideal.
Working at the cafe on one particularly sunny morning towards the end of September, Daisy was collecting cups from the few tables that were situated outside on the street, where customers could enjoy the sunshine whilst sipping their lattes and cappuccinos, when she noticed someone who looked very familiar.
The woman was dressed to the nines with bleach-blonde hair, sculpted, gelled and hair-sprayed to within an inch of its life so that she resembled a more edgy, sexier version of ‘Krystle Carrington’ from Dynasty.
The clothes were not too dissimilar to Krystle’s either, albeit with a slightly more pornographic twist. On her top half she was wearing a white buttoned-up bolero jacket with impossibly wide shoulder pads and nothing underneath (except maybe a bra) and on her lower half, she wore skin tight leather trousers in neon blue and matching knee boots with killer heels. All very expensive - and all very excessive and over-the-top for a cup of coffee in a crappy cafe in Cheadle.
Beside her, the woman had a pushchair with a little boy sitting in it who looked to be about one; the resemblance to his handsome, yet wayward father unmistakable.
Daisy couldn’t believe it. Pippa Wilson was sitting in her cafe - a million miles from Bradley - a million miles from Glasgow - or wherever it was in Scotland that Daisy had previously thought her to be - looking like a high-class hooker with a Dynasty fetish.
All of which begged the question, what the hell was she doing there?
Which
, in turn, begged the secondary, rather more pressing question of, was Steve bloody Cool lurking somewhere nearby too?
Suddenly Daisy was conscious of her appearance - her school days, when she had felt so in adequate in Pippa’s presence, coming back to haunt her.
She was presently dressed in T-shirt, jeans and Converse; wearing a stained pinny - which was about as far from glamorous as she could possibly get.
Daisy nervously stroked the mop of curly auburn hair that was tied in a messy pony-tail at the back of her head; unruly strands hanging down around her ears.
In fact, to Daisy at that precise moment, it felt not like the glossy auburn mane that it was but like the bright ginger frizz of her youth - and she was completely convinced that in comparison to Pippa she looked more like ‘Crystal Tips’ than the preened and perfect matriarch of the Carrington clan (the hooker heels and the whole porno vibe notwithstanding).
Why was it that Pippa always managed to make her feel like crap without actually saying a word? Indeed, as it was, Pippa hadn’t even noticed Daisy, who was seriously contemplating doing a runner - hot-footing it back inside and hiding behind the counter until the tormentor of her teens had tottered off to wherever it was she had come from.
But, just as Daisy turned to flee, Pippa said, “Excuse me?”
For a moment Daisy froze.
“I’d like to order please!” Continued Pippa, a little louder, just in case Daisy hadn’t heard.
Daisy’s heart sank, having no other choice but to turn back and face her.
“Of course,” she said with a smile, hoping to God that Pippa wouldn’t recognise her. “What would you like?”
“Oh, you can hear me. Yeah, well, in that case I’d like a coffee - black, no sug—” Suddenly she stopped and blinked, then leaned a little closer. “Hold on,” she said, “Aren’t you, Thingy? - you know, Whatsername, from school?”
Jam Tops, the Fonz and the Pursuit of Cool Page 27