High Fidelity

by Nick Hornby

  I wake up around dawn, and I have the same feeling I had the other night, the night I caught on about Laura and Ray: that I’ve got no ballast, nothing to weigh me down, and if I don’t hang on, I’ll just float away. I like Marie a lot, she’s funny and smart and pretty and talented, but who the hell is she? I don’t mean that philosophically. I just mean, I don’t know her from Eve, so what am I doing in her bed? Surely there’s a better, safer, more friendly place for me than this? But I know there isn’t, not at the moment, and that scares me rigid.

  I get up, find my snazzy boxers and my T-shirt, go into the living room, fumble in my jacket pocket for my fags and sit in the dark smoking. After a little while Marie gets up, too, and sits down next to me.

  “You sitting here wondering what you’re doing?”

  “No. I’m just, you know…”

  “’Cause that’s why I’m sitting here, if it helps.”

  “I thought I’d woken you up.”

  “I ain’t even been to sleep yet.”

  “So you’ve been wondering for a lot longer than me. Worked anything out?”

  “Bits. I’ve worked out that I was real lonely, and I went and jumped into bed with the first person who’d have me. And I’ve also worked out that I was lucky it was you, and not somebody mean, or boring, or crazy.”

  “I’m not mean, anyway. And you wouldn’t have gone to bed with anyone who was any of those things.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I’ve had a bad week.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Nothing’s happened. I’ve had a bad week in my head, is all.”

  Before we slept together, there was at least some pretense that it was something we both wanted to do, that it was the healthy, strong beginning of an exciting new relationship. Now all the pretense seems to have gone, and we’re left to face the fact that we’re sitting here because we don’t know anybody else we could be sitting with.

  “I don’t care if you’ve got the blues,” Marie says. “It’s OK. And I wasn’t fooled by you acting all cool about…what’s her name?”

  “Laura.”

  “Laura, right. But people are allowed to feel horny and fucked-up at the same time. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about it. I don’t. Why should we be denied basic human rights just because we’ve messed up our relationships?”

  I’m beginning to feel more embarrassed about the conversation than about anything we’ve just done. Horny? They really use that word? Jesus. All my life I’ve wanted to go to bed with an American, and now I have, and I’m beginning to see why people don’t do it more often. Apart from Americans, that is, who probably go to bed with Americans all the time.

  “You think sex is a basic human right?”

  “You bet. And I’m not going to let that asshole stand between me and a fuck.”

  I try not to think about the peculiar anatomical diagram she has just drawn. And I also decide not to point out that though sex may well be a basic human right, it’s kind of hard to insist on that right if you keep on busting up with the people you want to have sex with.

  “Which arsehole?”

  She spits out the name of a fairly well-known American singer-songwriter, someone you might have heard of.

  “He’s the one you had to split the Patsy Cline records with?”

  She nods, and I can’t control my enthusiasm.

  “That’s amazing!”

  “What, that you’ve slept with someone who’s slept with…” (Here she repeats the name of the fairly well-known American singer-songwriter, whom I shall hereafter refer to as Steve.)

  She’s right! Exactly that! Exactly that! I’ve slept with someone who’s slept with…Steve! (That sentence sounds stupid without his real name in it. Like, I’ve danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with…Bob. But just imagine the name of someone, not really famous, but quite famous—Lyle Lovett, say, although I should point out, for legal reasons, that it’s not him—and you’ll get the idea.)

  “Don’t be daft, Marie. I’m not that crass. I just meant, you know, it’s amazing that someone who wrote—” (and here I name Steve’s greatest hit, a drippy and revoltingly sensitive ballad) “should be such a bastard.” I’m very pleased with this explanation for my amazement. Not only does it get me out of a hole, but it’s both sharp and relevant.

  “That song’s about his ex, you know, the one before me. It felt real good listening to him sing that night after night, I can tell you.”

  This is great. This is how I imagined it would be, going out with someone who had a recording contract.

  “And then I wrote ‘Patsy Cline Times Two,’ and he’s probably writing something about me writing a song about all that, and she’s probably writing a song about having a song written about her, and…”

  “That’s how it goes. We all do that.”

  “You all write songs about each other?”

  “No, but…”

  It would take too long to explain about Marco and Charlie, and how they wrote Sarah, in a way, because without Marco and Charlie there would have been no Sarah, and how Sarah and her ex, the one who wanted to be someone at the BBC, how they wrote me, and how Rosie the pain-in-the-arse simultaneous orgasm girl and I wrote Ian. It’s just that none of us had the wit or the talent to make them into songs. We made them into life, which is much messier, and more time-consuming, and leaves nothing for anybody to whistle.

  Marie stands up. “I’m about to do something terrible, so please forgive me.” She walks over to her audiocassette, ejects one tape, rummages around, and then puts in another, and the two of us sit in the dark and listen to the songs of Marie LaSalle. I think I can understand why, too; I think if I were homesick and lost and unsure of what I was playing at, I’d do the same. Fulfilling work is a great thing at times like these. What am I supposed to do? Go and unlock the shop and walk around it?

  “Is this gross or what?” she says after a little while. “It’s kind of like masturbation or something, listening to myself for pleasure. How d’you feel about that, Rob? Three hours after we made love and I’m already jerking off.”

  I wish she hadn’t said that. It kind of spoiled the moment.

  We get back to sleep, in the end, and we wake up late, and I look and perhaps even smell a bit grottier than she might have wanted, in an ideal world, and she’s friendly but distant; I get the feeling that last night is unlikely to be repeated. We go out for breakfast, to a place that is full of young couples who have spent the night together, and though we don’t look out of place, I know we are: everybody else seems happy and comfortable and established, not nervy, and new and sad, and Marie and I read our newspapers with an intensity that is designed to cut out any further intimacy. It’s only afterwards that we really set ourselves apart from the rest, though: a quick and rueful peck on the cheek, and I have the rest of Sunday to myself, whether I want it or not.

  What went wrong? Nothing and everything. Nothing: we had a nice evening, we had sex that humiliated neither of us, we even had a predawn conversation that I and maybe she will remember for ages and ages. Everything: all that stupid business when I couldn’t decide whether I was going home or not, and in the process giving her the impression that I was a halfwit; the way that we got on brilliantly and then had nothing much to say to each other; the manner of our parting; the fact that I’m no nearer to appearing in the record sleeve notes than I was before I met her. It’s not a case of the glass being half full or half empty; more that we tipped a whole half-pint into an empty pint pot. I had to see how much was there, though, and now I know.

  ELEVEN

  ALL my life I’ve hated Sundays, for the obvious British reasons (Songs of Praise, closed shops, congealing gravy that you don’t want to go near but no one’s going to let you escape from) and the obvious international reasons as well, but this Sunday is a corker. There are loads of things I could do; I’ve got tapes to make and videos to watch and phone calls to return. But I don’t want to do any of them. I
get back to the flat at one; by two, things have got so bad that I decide to go home—home home, Mum and Dad home, congealing gravy and Songs of Praise home. It was waking up in the middle of the night and wondering where I belonged that did it: I don’t belong at home, and I don’t want to belong at home, but at least home is somewhere I know.

  Home home is near Watford, a bus ride away from the Metropolitan Line station. It was a terrible place to grow up, I suppose, but I didn’t really mind. Until I was thirteen or so, it was just a place where I could ride my bike; between thirteen and seventeen a place where I could meet girls. And I moved when I was eighteen, so I only spent a year seeing the place for what it was—a suburban shit hole—and hating it. My mum and dad moved about ten years ago, when my mum reluctantly accepted that I had gone and wasn’t coming back, but they only moved around the corner, to a two-bedroom semi, and they kept their phone number and their friends and their life.

  In Bruce Springsteen songs, you can either stay and rot, or you can escape and burn. That’s OK; he’s a songwriter, after all, and he needs simple choices like that in his songs. But nobody ever writes about how it is possible to escape and rot—how escapes can go off at half-cock, how you can leave the suburbs for the city but end up living a limp suburban life anyway. That’s what happened to me; that’s what happens to most people.

  They’re OK, if you like that sort of thing, which I don’t. My dad is a bit dim but something of a know-all, which is a pretty fatal combination; you can tell from his silly, fussy beard that he’s going to be the sort who doesn’t talk much sense and won’t listen to any reason. My mum is just a mum, which is an unforgivable thing to say in any circumstance, except this one. She worries, she gives me a hard time about the shop, she gives me a hard time about my childlessness. I wish I wanted to see them more, but I don’t, and when I’ve got nothing else to feel bad about, I feel bad about that. They’ll be pleased to see me this afternoon, although my heart sinks when I see that fucking Genevieve is on TV this afternoon. (My dad’s top five films: Genevieve, The Cruel Sea, Zulu, Oh! Mr. Porter, which he thinks is hilarious, and The Guns of Navarone. My mum’s top five films: Genevieve, Gone With the Wind, The Way We Were, Funny Girl, and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. You get the idea, anyway, and you’ll get an even better idea when I tell you that going to the cinema is a waste of money, according to them, because sooner or later the films end up on television.)

  When I get there, the joke’s on me: they’re not in. I’ve come a million stops on the Metropolitan Line on a Sunday afternoon, I’ve waited eight years for a bus, fucking Genevieve is on the fucking television, and they’re not here. They didn’t even call to let me know they wouldn’t be here, not that I called to let them know I was coming. If I was at all prone to self-pity, which I am, I would feel bad about the terrible irony of finding your parents out when, finally, you need them.

  But just as I’m about to head back to the bus stop, my mum opens the window of the house opposite and yells at me.

  “Rob! Robert! Come in!”

  I’ve never met the people across the road, but it soon becomes obvious that I’m in a minority of one: the house is packed.

  “What’s the occasion?”

  “Wine tasting.”

  “Not Dad’s homemade?”

  “No. Proper wine. This afternoon, it’s Australian. We all chip in and a man comes and explains it all.”

  “I didn’t know you were interested in wine.”

  “Oh, yes. And your dad loves it.”

  Of course he does. He must be terrible to work with the morning after a wine-tasting session: not because of the reek of stale booze, or the bloodshot eyes, or the crabby behavior, but because of all the facts he has swallowed. He’d spend half the day telling people things they didn’t want to know. He’s over on the other side of the room, talking to a man in a suit—the visiting expert, presumably—who has a desperate look in his eye. Dad sees me, and mimes shock, but he won’t break off the conversation.

  The room is full of people I don’t recognize. I’ve missed the part where the guy talks and hands out samples; I’ve arrived during the part where wine tasting becomes wine drinking and, though every now and again I spot someone swilling the wine around in their mouth and talking bollocks, mostly they’re just pouring the stuff down their necks as fast as they can. I wasn’t expecting this. I came for an afternoon of silent misery, not wild partying; the one thing I wanted from the afternoon was incontrovertible proof that my life may be grim and empty, but not as grim and empty as life in Watford. Wrong again. Life in Watford is grim, yes; but grim and full. What right do parents have to go to parties on Sunday afternoons for no reason at all?

  “Genevieve is on the telly this afternoon, Mum.”

  “I know. We’re taping it.”

  “When did you get a VCR?”

  “Months ago.”

  “You never told me.”

  “You never asked.”

  “Is that what I’m supposed to do every week? Ask you whether you’ve bought any consumer durables?”

  A huge lady wearing what appears to be a yellow kaftan glides towards us.

  “You must be Robert.”

  “Rob, yeah. Hi.”

  “I’m Yvonne. Your host. Hostess.” She laughs insanely, for no discernible reason. I want to see Kenneth More. “You’re the one who works in the music industry, am I right?”

  I look at my mum, and she looks away. “Not really, no. I own a record shop.”

  “Oh, well. Same thing, more or less.” She laughs again, and though it would be consoling to think that she is drunk, I fear that this is not the case.

  “I guess so. And the woman who develops your photos at Boots works in the film industry.”

  “Would you like my keys, Rob? You can go home and put the kettle on.”

  “Sure. Heaven forbid that I should be allowed to stay here and have fun.”

  Yvonne mutters something and glides off. My mum’s too pleased to see me to give me a hard time, but even so I feel a bit ashamed of myself.

  “Perhaps it’s time I had a cup of tea, anyway.” She goes over to thank Yvonne, who looks at me, cocks her head on one side, and makes a sad face; Mum’s obviously telling her about Laura as an explanation for my rudeness. I don’t care. Maybe Yvonne will invite me to the next session.

  We go home and watch the rest of Genevieve.

  My dad comes back maybe an hour later. He’s drunk.

  “We’re all going to the pictures,” he says.

  This is too much.

  “You don’t approve of the pictures, Dad.”

  “I don’t approve of the rubbish you go to watch. I approve of nice well-made films. British films.”

  “What’s on?” my mum asks him.

  “Howard’s End. It’s the follow-up to A Room with a View.”

  “Oh, lovely,” my mum says. “Is anyone else going from across the road?”

  “Only Yvonne and Brian. But get a move on. It starts in half an hour.”

  “I’d better be going back,” I say. I have exchanged hardly a word with either of them all afternoon.

  “You’re going nowhere,” my dad says. “You’re coming with us. My treat.”

  “It’s not the money, Dad.” It’s Merchant and fucking Ivory. “It’s the time. I’m working tomorrow.”

  “Don’t be so feeble, man. You’ll still be in bed by eleven. It’ll do you good. Buck you up. Take your mind off things.” This is the first reference to the fact that I have things off which my mind needs taking.

  And, anyway, he’s wrong. Going to the pictures aged thirty-five with your mum and dad and their insane friends does not take your mind off things, I discover. It very much puts your mind on things. While we’re waiting for Yvonne and Brian to purchase the entire contents of the Pick’n’Mix counter, I have a terrible, chilling, bone-shaking experience: the most pathetic man in the world gives me a smile of recognition. The Most Pathetic Man In The World has huge horn-r
immed spectacles and buckteeth; he’s wearing a dirty fawn anorak and brown cord trousers which have been rubbed smooth at the knee; he, too, is being taken to see Howard’s End by his parents, despite the fact that he’s in his late twenties. And he gives me this terrible little smile because he has spotted a kindred spirit. It disturbs me so much that I can’t concentrate on Emma Thompson and Vanessa and the rest, and by the time I rally, it’s too late and the story’s too far on down the road for me to catch up. In the end, a bookcase falls on someone’s head.

  I would go so far as to say that TMPMITW’s smile has become one of my all-time top-five low points, the other four of which temporarily escape me. I know I’m not as pathetic as the most pathetic man in the world (Did he spend last night in an American recording artist’s bed? I very much doubt it.); the point is that the difference between us is not immediately obvious to him, and I can see why. This, really, is the bottom line, the chief attraction of the opposite sex for all of us, old and young, men and women: we need someone to save us from the sympathetic smiles in the Sunday-night cinema queue, someone who can stop us from falling down into the pit where the permanently single live with their mums and dads. I’m not going back there again; I’d rather stay in for the rest of my life than attract that kind of attention.

  TWELVE

  DURING the week, I think about Marie, and I think about The Most Pathetic Man In The World, and I think, at Barry’s command, about my all-time top five episodes of Cheers: (1) The one where Cliff found a potato that looked like Richard Nixon. (2) The one where John Cleese offered Sam and Diane counseling sessions. (3) The one where they thought that the chief of staff of the U.S. armed forces—played by the real-life admiral guy—had stolen Rebecca’s earrings. (4) The one where Sam got a job as a sports presenter on TV. (5) The one where Woody sang his stupid song about Kelly. (Barry said I was wrong about four of the five, that I had no sense of humor, and that he was going to ask Channel 4 to scramble my reception between nine-thirty and ten every Friday night because I was an undeserving and unappreciative viewer.) But I don’t think about anything Laura said that Saturday night until Wednesday, when I come home to find a message from her. It’s nothing much, a request for a copy of a bill in our household file, but the sound of her voice makes me realize that there are some things we talked about that should have upset me but somehow didn’t.