I Wish I Could Be Like...

“I mean, it starts with that fucking great riff... Then the drums kick in. Then the singing starts. The lyrics give it its meaning but it’s the backing vocals that give it the emotion. Y’know what I mean? Just that one syllable repeated over and over...

”FA FA FA FA FA FA FA FA

“David Watts is perfect. Yeah, it was written by someone else but The Jam brought it to life. It’s The One. And there are enough of them around. Smug bastards. Golden Boys. Mind, I don't want to be sexist about this. There are Golden Girls as well. But whatever their gender, they’ve got one thing in common. They’ve got this… perfection… that just comes so fucking easily. And they fucking know it.”

He heard Hannah sigh but chose to ignore it. She once said she wondered if he had Tourettes. Or if he just talked shite. Whatever. He knew he was right. And she had insisted that he come out tonight. She said that they had been together for nearly five months now and her friends really wanted to meet him.

He wasn’t that hot on the idea to begin with and, after meeting them, he knew he was right. When one of those friends – Carrie? – came giggling back from the jukebox, he knew something was up. It wasn’t until Club fucking Tropicana started that he really knew these people for what they were. They were laughing and singing along to it, for fuck’s sake. He had been polite while they spouted shite throughout dinner, but that was it. Enough was e-fucking-nough.

Walking home was not great. Hannah stalked ahead of him, ignoring his attempts at starting a conversation. But he was really far too pissed to care about anything. He knew, vaguely, that Hannah was annoyed with him and that it was probably something to do with his spouting off. But, hell, that was who he was and if her friends couldn’t handle it, then tough shit. If she moaned, he’d tell her, as well.

At that moment, though, he was content to walk along behind her and marvel how incredibly fucking sexy she was. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her long, slender legs, encased in opaque tights, sweeping up from the DM boots and climbing into the loose black cotton mini skirt, swaying back and forth, hinting at her perfect arse.

They usually ended up at Hannah’s flat. It was closer than his and tidier. In a vaguely perverse way, he always found it kind of sad that she never left a single pair of panties lying around.

Even when they were in the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil, Hannah was still ignoring him. He started to paw at her backside in a sort of half-determined, half-pissed, fancy-a-shag kind of way. She pushed him away.

“What’s wrong, pet?” he asked, slurring slightly.

“I’m not in the mood,” she told him after a few seconds.

“Ahh, go on.”

This time, she didn’t reply, just looked, eyebrow raised.

“What’s wrong? In a bad mood? Why?”

Hannah sighed deeply and looked at him that, even in the state he was in, told him that she didn’t want to get into this.

“Well, perhaps calling Carrie an ‘idiotic bint’ may have something to do with it.”

“What? I was joking…”

“Really? You could have fooled me. That was some shaggy dog story you told. It must have gone on for five minutes. You didn’t even stop when the fucking song ended!”

“Aye. Well. She deserved it. I mean, Wham should be fucking shot. Anyone who plays that sort of fucking music deserves everything they get. Bunch of ignorant, fuck-witted industry arselickers.”

“Have you seen my CD collection?”

“What d’you mean?”

She turned and walked out, ignoring the click of the kettle as it boiled. He was about to follow her when she returned, carrying a small stack of jewel cases.

“Look... Wham, Take That, Avril Lavigne. Also, surprisingly enough, The Clash, The Jam and Radiohead.”

“Radiohead… bunch of fucking wankers.”

“Shut up. Not everyone thinks that music died when Stock, Aitken and Waterman started. NO! Don’t interrupt. This is my turn to rant. Some people like music to be fun. Wham isn’t as good as ‘your’ bands, but it’s a laugh.”

This time, he couldn’t be stopped.

“Wham is not ‘a laugh’. It’s shite. Not fit to clean dogshit off my shoes. People who think that music is just for fun shouldn’t be fucking allowed to listen to music. They…”

His voice died as he saw her expression. He replayed his words, focussing on the bright, perky covers she held.

“I didn’t mean…”

“Don’t even try. Just go home.”

“But…”

“I said, go home.”

Somehow, whispering made it harsher. It slid through the alcohol haze surrounding his brain, waking up areas that had been put to sleep. They overrode the rest, which was desperately trying to find something to say.

It wasn’t until he was outside and half way down the street that he could mutter to himself “but some of your CDs are really good.” It didn’t help.

It took a lot of effort to pick up the phone and dial Hannah’s work number. When Carrie answered, he nearly put it down.

“Hi,” he said, after a moment. “Can I speak to Hannah, please?”

There was another, even longer pause before Carrie replied.

“Hannah doesn’t want to talk to you. If I wasn’t getting the chance to tell you what an unpleasant, miserable prick you are, I wouldn’t be talking to you either. Do you know how unhappy you make her? I may only be an idiotic bint” – he winced – “but I am also one of Hannah’s friends. Which you would realise if you ever listened to her. I’ve been telling her to dump you for ages. I think… I hope… she’s realised what’s best for her now. Don’t bother ringing again. She’ll ring you if she ever wants to talk to you.”

The line went dead, although he remained there, listening to the buzz for a while afterwards.

It took four days to decide that she probably wasn’t going to ring, although he still didn’t want to go out. However, he was running out of food. And he had had enough of melancholy music. After all, once you got past The Smiths and Joy Division, most of that sort of music was pre-digested pop-pap for the unenlightened masses. Like fucking Wham… No, he wouldn’t go there again, it only led to Hatful of Hollow. If Hannah wanted to defend her idiot friends then, fine. He was well shot of her.

Maybe he’d go and wait outside the General for her.

It was, of course, pissing down. Standing in the bus shelter didn’t help either. Some bastard kids had kicked the windows out, letting the rain blow in. But it was quarter to five, Hannah finished in fifteen minutes and this was where she caught the 38. When she got there, he’d be surprised to see her. He’d say that he’d just been to see Bruce about the article he was writing for the next issue of Anarchy in The NE. It’d be natural to get the bus together. Hopefully, the next step would be her complete contrition and then bed. Or, at the very least, a cup of tea.

He looked at his watch again. It had just gone five. He went across to the railings that marked the hospital boundaries and stared at the door, like a mother awaiting her child.

A few more minutes passed. The rain started to dribble down his back and drip from the tip of his nose. At long last the door squealed open and she was there.

Hannah really confused him. Firstly, she was a bloody NHS administrator, which was just totally wrong. And then, there was what she called her ‘work uniform’. She looked completely different from her usual Indie Chick style, but still utterly fucking gorgeous. He didn’t go for ‘office girls’ normally, it was far too Establishment. But with Hannah, he felt even more lustful than when she wore her tight minis and The The tour t shirt. Today, she was wearing a dark blue, knee-length skirt and a cream blouse. Instead of her favourite opaque black tights, she had a pair of smoky grey-black tights that caught the glow from the early-evening street lamps, making her legs shimmer sensually. Through the translucent material of her blouse, he could see a faint outline of the lace on her camisole and, although he was twenty feet away and the wind was blowing a gale, he swore that he caught a faint hint of her perfume. Fuck, she was sexy.

She paused, slid her suit jacket on and unfurled her umbrella. Behind her, Carrie and a few other men and women he recognised from that disastrous night out emerged. One of the men – Tom? – said something that he couldn’t quite catch, but which was obviously hilarious as all the others burst out laughing. Including Hannah. And this was no Tears Of A Clown laugh. This was genuine. He didn’t think she’d laughed like that at his jokes. And he was funny. Bruce was always in stitches when he read his reviews.

One of the best was of the band that had helped him split up with his girlfriend before Hannah – Alice. What had they called themselves? Dark Star. She’d dumped him when he forgot her birthday and went with Bruce to see Dark Star. He hadn’t even enjoyed himself. It was two seventeen-year-old boys – guitarist and singer. The guitarist needed the singer to tune his guitar. And how anyone could fuck up a Sex Pistols number, he didn’t know, but they managed it. In the review, he compared their ability to torture music to Laurence Olivier’s dentistry in Marathon Man. He was proud of that analogy.

He suddenly realised that Hannah had disappeared. Looking around to see if she was coming along the road, he noticed a car pulling up to the traffic lights, playing some desperate MOR rubbish – Simply Red or Dire Straits or Genesis. It all sounded the same. Whatever. It was…

Hannah was in the car. And the guy who told the joke – he was sure it was Tom – was driving. And Hannah was still laughing. That fucker in his silver-grey, Big Dick Mobile with his MOR Cock Rock fixation was making a move on his girlfriend. And the bitch was falling for it!

Before he could shout, the lights changed to green and the car pulled smoothly and swiftly away.

The bus home was a long, damp, miserable experience. Obviously, Hannah had set the whole thing up. God knows how long she’d be fucking that prick. It should have been obvious. She was one of Them. A ‘David Watts’. She tried to hide it by wearing the right clothes and saying the right things but it was just a thin veneer. He could tell by looking at her, in her ‘uniform’, fitting in with Carrie and Tom and the others. It was so obviously right while he was so obviously wrong.

He suddenly realised what Tom’s joke had been. Hannah had been slumming. Reporting to her shining, golden, perfect friends. And, not understanding, they laughed.

That was okay, though. Everyone laughed sooner or later. No-one understood him. He thought that to be understood by a David Watts-run world, would be hell. He’d rather be alone – he’d rather be dead – than for that to happen.

Draining the last dregs of whisky, he considered his stereo. Turning the volume to maximum, he slid in All Mod Cons, forwarded it to the right track and put it on repeat.

Screaming the words helped a little. They knew then what he knew now. What it meant to want to be a part of something bigger and better; on the outside, looking in. Fuck it, he did wish he could be like David Watts. To be part of Hannah’s world, not just something to be misunderstood and laughed at. But that would never happen. He couldn’t change who he was. It could never happen and trying would be futile.

A hammering on the door interrupted his screaming. Answering he discovered his down-stairs neighbour – a yobbish twat called Jeff.

“Turn that fuckin’ racket off, ye cunt,” Jeff told him.

“Fuck off,” he suggested.

Jeff didn’t have the word ‘negotiation’ in his vocabulary. What he did have were big fists, which he used with expert malice.

“Keep it fuckin’ off, or I’ll throw it out the fuckin’ window.”

He hardly felt the rain. He didn’t feel anything. He didn’t see the people avoiding the lunatic with blood dripping from his nose, yelling at the top of his voice. He hardly saw the cars and buses. He only returned when he found himself standing on the Tyne Bridge.

Stopping his iPod, he slowly walked out to the middle. Pressing against the railings, he looked down at the river, brown and sluggish. He knew how it felt.

Carefully, he climbed over the side, holding on with one hand, the other feeling for his iPod. Finding play, he pressed it. The riff started. As the drums kicked in, he squeezed his eyes shut. Then the backing vocals began.

FA FA FA FA FA FA FA FA