SUGGESTED LISTENING: Dinosaur Jr., “Freak Scene” (SST, 1988 Single)
You’re completely
mental
Come on—you know how tricky life can be.
It’s a Friday. You’ve had a bloody hard week at work. Hard in the sense that it’s been hard to maintain your enthusiasm for something as monotonous as arranging insurance for nine hours each day. A minor stab of variety has invaded the tedium today as the firm has spent the whole day packing for the office move tomorrow. For reasons you’ve not bothered to contemplate—though cost-cutting must be somewhere fairly close to the centre—the bosses have put you in charge of picking up a hire van the next morning, entrusting you with their driving licences and appropriate hard currency. You plough through the afternoon, shifting boxes of lever-arch files, finding to your surprise that something approaching physical labour feels oddly pleasant after months, nay years, of sitting on your arse making phone calls, drinking too much coffee, eating endless packets of sandwiches and downloading crap off the Internet.
Evening arrives. At seven the phones and computers are switched off and, unusually, everyone hits the pub together. Something about the camaraderie of the day has made the collection of motleys who’ve ended up working for this small but perfectly dysfunctional organisation behave, for once, in a normal, even wholesome manner.
Someone fires in the first round and you nail your pint quickly, partly because you’re damn thirsty but also it’s your favourite little trick: neck the first and immediately buy the second round, so it’s only you and that fat dude from accounts who need a refill. Six quid, and your round-reputation is still spotless. Needs must when Satan vomits into your bank account. You kick back, quite content for the moment to play the part of the Friday-night office drinker in the rowdy Friday-night pub. Some show-off from customer service decides to get everyone a shot of sambuca. Well, why not? That boring girl who sits next to the shredder doesn’t want hers, but would you like it? Of course you would. Coffee bean and all.
Third pint, and by now it’s all getting nicely merry and the banter flows. You remember you’ve got Ron’s and Michael’s driving licences in your bag. You dig them out and hold a small contest with everyone: who can guess their year of birth? Everyone aims too low for Michael, but too high for Ron, miserable git that he is. Then you pass round the licences so everyone can laugh at the photographs.
Remember that, Clive? Shall we say it again?
You pass round the licences so everyone can laugh at the photographs.
Got it.
You’re fully aware that you have to be up at the crack of arse tomorrow morning and off to some f*cking cheapo van-hire place near the Holloway Road, but hell, it’s only eight thirty, most of the crew are still out and that fourth pint is sorting you right out.
Right out.
Right … out.
Finally you’re on the bus. Going home at what must be a nice sensible time. You even manage to read a bit of your book. Strange how most of the books you’ve read have entire chapters you don’t recall, characters that materialise without adequate explanation as to who they are, plot points that are somehow missing. Bizarre, because you’re certainly taking everything in right now. A text message bleeps. Who could it be? Polly, of course. “Fancy lasties?” Well, why not? “Wot u having, the bar’s about to close.” The bar’s about to close? It can’t be midnight already. But it is. Where did those hours go? Shit. Well … you’ll be okay. It’s not like you have to do real work tomorrow, just, erm … driving.
You barge into the pub. Polly laughs heartily at your predicament. She’s obviously been swigging red wine all night, as her teeth are black. You listen to her latest disastrous date encounter—“a surgeon from Durham, for God’s sake”—with wavering attention, your lubricated mind now beginning to float back towards a certain ex-alternative rock star you’ve been trying to meet. Let’s be brutally frank: it’s not going terribly well, is it? Three weeks and all you’ve had is a two-minute exchange in a vet’s waiting room about hormones that stop cats pissing on the bed. You’ve soundly failed to pinpoint any of the man’s other haunts, and any other sparks of genius are sadly unforthcoming. Alan’s scrapbook remains on top of your record player, unbothered by any of its central players, still wrapped in its industrial-plastic legal sheath. Sod it. You have to do something. This is fast turning into one of those painfully unsurprising Ideas of Clive’s that amount to absolutely f*ck all.
“… so in the end,” Polly blethers, sloshing red wine into the ashtray as you briefly tune in, “I just told him it simply wasn’t going anywhere. I had no interest in surgery, or Durham, or any of his opinions really … I was honest with him … and he was fine about it, really … even paid for dinner … It’s amazing what you can achieve when you’re just honest with someone …”
Suddenly a cartoon lightbulb appears above your head. You’re only halfway through your pint but something compels you to rise, apologise to your companion and lurch off in the direction of your flat. With a certainty that only vast quantities of beer can provide, you’ve rarely been more sure of what you need to do. Be honest. Enough of this tomfoolery, skirting around the issue. Just be honest.
You stop off at the Turkish shop for a couple of beers (you’re not sure how long this will take, after all), pass by the abode of the man himself (no lights are on, but that doesn’t matter), descend the steps to your own flat, let yourself in, crack open a beer and settle at the kitchen table. This is the right thing. It has to be. The magic solution. The key to the lock, the long-sought combination code. The turning point, frankly. The pivot on which everything else swivels. That Zane Lowe moment. “It was really that simple, you see, Zane … all I had to do was be honest.”
And now you’re outside again.
And now you’re standing in front of a large black door.
And now you’re walking.
And now you’ve forgotten your keys.
And now you’re looking at the moon.
And now … Polly. In her dressing gown.
“Clive, what the f*ck are you doing?”
“Sorry. Left my keys.”
“Why’d you leave me in the pub like that?”
“Sorry, just needed to … you know.”
“You’re completely mental. And I thought I was drunk. Where’ve you been? What time you gotta be up?”
You manage to focus on your watch. Someone must be mucking around with it. Why the hell is time going so quickly?
“In about five hours.”
“Ouch.”
“Sorry, Polly. Better go to bed.”
Bed. Now there’s a bit of rational, reasonable thinking. Bed. See, there’s still sense somewhere in that brain of yours. Amazing. It continues to operate, even at this drunken juncture. The last thought it processes before you fall into a leaden, exhausting sleep, is that you’re somehow missing something—but you can’t imagine what it could be.
Never mind.
You’re sure it’ll come to you in the morning.