High Fidelity

Seventeen

She’s easy. I don’t mean, you know, easy (if I meant that, I wouldn’t have to meet up with her and talk about knobbing and Chris Thomson, because I would have knobbed her first and he wouldn’t have been able to shoot his mouth off in the classroom that morning); I mean she’s easy to track down. My mum sees her mum quite often, and a while back Mum gave me her phone number and told me to get in touch, and Pe

The film’s OK, better than I thought it would be—it’s about this woman who’s sent off to live with this guy, and he’s already got loads of wives, so it’s about how he gets on with her rivals, and it all goes horribly wrong. Of course. But Pe

We go to this Italian place she knows, and they know her, too, and they do vulgar things with the pepper grinder that seem to amuse her. It’s often the way that people who take their work seriously laugh at stupid jokes; it’s as if they are under-humored and, as a consequence, suffer from premature laugh-ejaculation. But she’s OK, really. She’s a good sort, a good sport, and it’s easy to talk about Chris Thomson and knobbing. I just launch into it, with no real explanation.

I try to tell the story in a lighthearted, self-deprecatory way (it’s about me, not him and her), but she’s appalled, really disgusted: she puts her knife and fork down and looks away, and I can see that she’s close to tears.

“Bastard,” she says. “I wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought, you know, long time ago and all that.”

“Well, it obviously doesn’t seem that long ago to you.”

Fair point.

“No. But I just thought I was weird.”

“Why this sudden need to tell me about it, anyway?”

I shrug. “Du

And then I show her that, on the contrary, I do know: I tell her about Laura and Ian (although I don’t tell her about Marie or money or abortions or pain-in-the-arse Rosie) and about Charlie, maybe more about Charlie than she wants to know; and I try to explain to her that I feel like the Rejection Man, and that Charlie wanted to sleep with Marco and not me, and Laura wanted to sleep with Ian and not me, and Alison Ashworth, even all those years ago, wanted to snog with Kevin Ba

And she tells me, with great force, with venom, frankly speaking, about what she remembers: that she was mad about me, that she wanted to sleep with me, one day, but not when she was sixteen, and that when I packed her in—“When you packed me in,” she repeats, furiously, “because I was, to use your charming expression, ‘tight,’ I cried and cried, and I hated you. And then that little shitbag asked me out, and I was too tired to fight him off, and it wasn’t rape, because I said OK, but it wasn’t far off. And I didn’t have sex with anyone else until after university because I hated it so much. And now you want to have a chat about rejection. Well, fuck you, Rob.”

So that’s another one I don’t have to worry about. I should have done this years ago.

Eighteen

Sellotaped to the inside of the shop door is a handwritten notice, yellowed and faded with age. It reads as follows:

HIP YOUNG SINGERS WANTED (BASS, DRUMS GUITAR) FOR NEW BAND. MUST BE INTO REM, PRIMAL SCREAM, FANCLUB ETC. CONTACT BARRY IN THE SHOP.

The advertisement used to end with the intimidating postscript ‘no slackers please,’ but after a disappointing response during the first couple of years of the recruitment drive, Barry decided that slackers were welcome after all, to no noticeable effect; perhaps they couldn’t get it together to walk from the door to the counter. A while back, a guy with a set of drums made inquiries, and though this minimalist vocal/drums two-piece did rehearse a few times (no tapes survive, sadly), Barry eventually and perhaps wisely decided that he needed a fuller sound.

Since then, though, nothing … until today. Dick sees him first, he nudges me, and we watch fascinated as this guy stares at the notice, although when he turns round to see which of us might be Barry, we quickly get on with what we were doing. He’s neither hip, nor young—he looks more like a Status Quo roadie than a Smash Hits cover star hopeful. He has long, lank dark hair tied back in a ponytail and a stomach that has wriggled over his belt to give itself a bit more room. Eventually he comes up to the counter and gestures back toward the door.

“Is this Barry geezer around?”

“I’ll get him for you.”

I go into the stockroom, where Barry is having a lie-down.

“Oi, Barry. There’s someone come to see you about your ad.”

“What ad?”

“For the band.”

He opens his eyes and looks at me. “Fuck off.”

“Seriously. He wants to talk to you.”

He gets to his feet and walks through to the shop.

“Yeah?”

“You put that ad up?”

“That’s right.”

“What can you play?”

“Nothing.” Barry’s all-consuming desire to play at Madison Square Garden has never driven him to do anything as mundane as learn an instrument.

“But you can sing, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We’re looking for a singer.”

“What sort of stuff are you into?”

“Yeah, the kind of stuff you, you know, mentioned. But we want to be a bit more experimental than that. We want to retain our pop sensibilities, but kind of stretch them a bit.”

God help us.

“Sounds great.”

“We haven’t got any gigs or anything. We’ve only just got together. For a laugh, like. But we’ll see how we go, yeah?”

“Fine.”

The Quo roadie jots down an address, shakes Barry’s hand, and leaves. Dick and I gape at his back view, just in case he self-combusts, or disappears, or sprouts angel’s wings; Barry just tucks the address into his jeans pocket and looks for a record to put on, as if what has just happened—a mysterious stranger walking in and granting him one of his dearest wishes—were not the kind of little miracle that most of us wait for in vain.

“What?” he says. “What’s up with you two? It’s just a poxy little garage band. Nothing special.”

Jackie lives in Pi