I hate those old songs they play on the radio. Not old music, but old-ish music, the stuff that’s rotated like the line up of a circus. Love in an Elevator, Hotel California, Addicted to Love, anything by the Bangles, early Madonna, 1999, happy Bob Marley. Love songs that can’t move you, rock that doesn’t excite, because you know every chord, every high pitched scream. Like we’ve agreed to this crap, and they’ve agreed to play it, because we all prefer it this way.
–
A long tunnel, and a train coming up to the platform. Big wheels turning, sparks. It’s one of those new ones they’ve been talking about; looks like something from France.
–
The other day, on the phone, an ex-girlfriend, a one from a long time ago, a seriously long time actually, started remembering some other ex-boyfriend. His surname was Tweeg, and she laughed, fondly, “He was even better than you, actually”. She paused, like she was realising something, even a sudden sadness. “Yeah, he was great”… I had no idea I might have even qualified as her best. If I’d known, maybe I would have tried harder.
I didn’t ask what had happened to Tweeg, even though obviously, something had. Something happened to everyone, sooner or later; did it matter what?
–
This woman laughs, cross legged in a bar stool, in the bar of this big, blood coloured carpet hotel. “Love in an Elevator? But that’s a great song”! She’s interesting, and interested, too. I’ve been on this circuit for a while, I don’t doubt these guesses anymore. She’s nice looking: a dark slim skirt suit, a red top under the black jacket, dark tights. Very attractive thin legs, red lips.
–
Is there anything more pure than a one night stand? I’m being serious – that’s my question. A mature one, of course, a relationship that develops over one night, with the promise of a repeat perhaps, rather than drunken pick ups in bars, the sex always like a naked decathlon. The girl looking up at you, or down at you, as if to say, “Impressed by my versatility”?
–
The dark haired woman asks, “Is it just the song, or Aerosmith’s whole oeuvre that you dislike”?
“I used to like it, when I was younger. I liked most of their singles. I think I even bought one of their albums once. I’ve just heard it so many times now, so many repeats, it couldn’t survive. It’s part of the canon”.
She’s interesting, less interested in nice words than the usual. “I used to like a lot of things when I was younger. Some things I still do”. She even looks me in the eye when she says it. This does feel interesting.
–
To wake up next to someone is the sweetest thing in life. The sense of comfort, even in a strange bed, two people joining together in the night, and waking up together. It’s everything else that I hate. You want to claim me as yours, hold my hand in public, you want to tell me your fears (it was your strength I liked), you expect things.
–
I’m on a train, rolling past the countryside, listening to PJ Harvey. The first time I heard her sing, I was shocked at the emotion she broke out of herself, even for the silly numbers. She put more feeling into a song about postcards than the whole of the current top 40. I was shocked at how limp all the music I’d been listening to had been, it got me searching for more real stuff.
I stopped watching TV a year or so later, too. Couldn’t bear being told what jokes to laugh at.
–
“Addicted to Love?” the blonde woman asks.
“No, but I try not to go without for long”.
“That’s like me, too”, she says, adjusting her hair.
“So, I love these business trips”, I explain, “lots of women feeling lonely”.
She’s a little startled by this, too direct perhaps, but she’s supposed to be Sex and City, supposed to be all self-aware and hip, so she nods and smiles. She even winks, painfully awkward. I pretend not to notice.
She was hardly pure, in bed – like she couldn’t stop thinking. For a second, her breath escaped her, flew around the room for a moment, but even then, I guessed she was planning her description of her naughty night to her friends, or worrying about tomorrow’s sales write up. Frustrating.
–
A bus finally gets going, a plane taking off in a heavy storm. Hotel key cards, forgetting to hand one of them back in, then getting confused in three different towns, trying to jam open locks, frustrated.
–
Somehow, I’ve got myself talking to a businessman from India. He’s wearing a bulging white shirt, and his face looks titanically dark against it. He’s funny, got his name badge still pinned on, although they’ve abbreviated it so much it’s unintelligible.
“Thunder!” he remarks, meaning the storm going on outside. “Thunder reminds me of home. What thunder we have in Goa”.
I smile.
“Makes me miss my wife, you know? I can imagine her running around in all this rain”.
I like the flawed logic of his home sickness. The rain keeps hitting the small windows of this hotel bar.
He gestures at me with his glass of coca cola: “Are you married”?
“No. Never have been”.
“Ahh! That’s terrible. No wife, no life”! This forces a smile from me, and my smile prompts him to keep going: “No honey, no money”!
After several more of these couplets, he seems to be exhausted, almost apologetic that India has not produced more of these banal rhymes.
I speak. “I once knew someone, a woman in a town on the coast. I went to her house during a thunderstorm, and we made love”.
“She took pity on you?” He chortles, making perhaps too close a connection between the storm and the sex. Still, he’s probably right.
“Maybe. I’m not sure why else she’d spend all that time with me. She lived in this house full of tall plants, plants that were climbing into each other’s pots. She was very slim, with really dark blonde hair. She had two or three kids”.
“Two or three? You didn’t count”?
“Well, she said that she was married. The kids were always sleeping by the time I came round. That’s why I remember the thunderstorm night. We could be a lot more noisy”.
–
On a particularly frustrating train journey, kids everywhere, repetitive buildings out the window, I try out something I downloaded ages ago: whale songs. There’s a lot of silence, static, while I hear the real noise of the kids, then a building roar of the whales calling each other. They call for a long time, then there’s silence again. I like it, enjoy the idea of the whales crying to each other in the ocean’s night, like distance doesn’t matter to them.
–
It’s a new place, as always, but it’s the same woman from before, dark curly hair. I feel kind of strange. I think about making a joke about Love and Elevators, but I decide not to. She feels the air between us too, so we just sip our drinks for a moment, smiling at each other.
–
A while ago, I believed in finding a pure relationship, a true one. I wasn’t naïve, I could see that most women out there wouldn’t be right, but I figured it was just a question of locating the one that was.
If I tell a funny story to a few people, getting it better and tighter, then come home and tell you the same tale, give you the best version of it, why can’t I do that for sex?
If I invite a woman for coffee because I’m attracted to her, is that any different to fucking her, right in front of you? Should I be less ashamed of the coffee, should I need fewer explanations?
Why don’t we eat whale-meat? This is killing me at the moment. Was it ok to do it when there were lots of them? Were they always beautiful? Maybe if we could talk to them, we’d see what bastards they all are.
–
She asks me, “What do you do? Selling”?
“Yes, that’s why I come to these things”.
“What do you sell”?
“Products mostly, occasionally services”.
“You must be very successful. Otherwise they wouldn’t keep paying for you to go to places”.
“Not really. I just like to travel. Everyone else in the company hates it, says it screws up their lives, their marriages, so eventually, in a flash of inspiration, they allocated all the travel to me”.
–
Some times I spend ages at the machine in the station, pulling out bits of change, then look at my hand and see I’ve already bought my ticket.
–
She asks, “So you’re not married”?
“No. Not even close. Are you”?
She replies, “I’m thinking about it”.
I don’t know what that means, but figure it’s not something I need to worry about.
“So”, she goes on, as I’ve gone a bit quiet, “how’s this event working out for you? Stressful”?
“Not really. I explain things to people, chat with suppliers. The time passes pretty quickly”.
I ask her, “What kind of music do you like”?
“I like all kinds of music”, she says.
I hate people who say that. Everyone does though, nowadays, don’t they, as if it was something to be proud of. But then I realise she’s playing with me.
She gets down from the bar stool. “Come on, I’ll play you something”.
–
An ex- girlfriend has come round to my house, she’s caught me one of the few times I’m home, and now she’s lying on my bed. I’m standing, watching her, wondering what she wants.
“Why did you want to meet up, gorgeous?” I’m quite gentle with my voice.
She says, “Heard your name through a photograph”. She’s lying on her stomach, propping up her head with her hands. The glass of whisky I poured for her is already finished, on the floor by the bed. Small denim skirt, dyed light hair, very young looking, today.
“Dangerous”, as I sit down with her, my glass in one hand, “To look through old snaps. You’ll get too much false nostalgia”.
I lower the cup to where her mouth is, and she tips her head back a little, sipping. She asks, “So, are you still a slut”?
I’m the same, I say, just more hurt. I run my hand down the back of her leg.
Maybe it was the right answer, maybe not. She leaves the next day. I wonder why she came round, maybe just to bulk up her story – to add in someone she still sees and wonders about.
–
In the dark haired woman’s room, on a different floor of the hotel, but identical to mine, she bends over a laptop. There’s a pair of white little speakers wired in, and now a song’s starting, that old standard Autumn Leaves, the Miles Davis version.
“Hope you’re not fussy about music hardware”.
“No, I don’t care about that. I just listen to the words”.
She faces me, an awkward space between us, the second time we’re going to sleep together. “Oh. This one doesn’t have any words in it”.
“That’s the best kind”.
We smile at each other for a second, and I go over to her, unsure for a moment, then I put my hands on her waist, like we’re dancing.
“Mmmm”, she sighs, and puts her head on my shoulder. I do little steps, a little mum and dad dance really, as the piano part of the song begins. Her body feels warm on mine.
“Why… why don’t you like words in songs?”, her voice soft. The pianist’s solo is over, the audience claps, and Miles takes up the tune again.
“It’s like, listening to most music is like having to hear someone promise thing after thing. I finished this line on “baby”, so I promise the next line will end on “maybe”, or “crazy”. It’s either going to be disappointing, or expected”.
“Promises… I’m very bad at them”. She says it in the flippant tone that people reserve for confessions.
She asks, “So, you like jazz because it doesn’t make promises”?
“I like Miles Davis’ music. The word Jazz has too many odd associations. “Jazz” is another “Love in an Elevator”. And I don’t like much saxophone music – it usually sounds like someone trying to press all the buttons on their instrument as quickly as possible”.
The song ends, the audience claps, she pushes herself into me closer. I wonder what’s coming next, then “Solea” starts on the speakers. “Now this one”, I say, “is really beautiful”.
“Yes”.
She must have a kind of Miles Davis playlist going here. The band sticks to a light, soft beat, and Davis’ horn calls out, fades away, comes back in. Like utter sadness, a sadness that makes distance meaningless.
“So much music”, I go on, “is like a story of something. Telling a story about being in love, or being sad. But music like this isn’t a story of anything, it is sadness. People listen to jazz like this, and they’re like, “Where’s the story, man?”. They don’t get that they are the story”.
“I feel like this song a lot of the time”, she says.
I don’t know what to say to that. She moves her mouth just slightly, and kisses my face.
–
I’m in a hotel bar, and explaining the rest of the story to a businessman from Asia. He looks Chinese, but I don’t remember what country exactly he’s from. Makes computer parts. In a badly fitting black suit, glasses, drinking whisky with me.
My fingers move on the wood of the table.
“I would go to her whenever they sent me down to the coast, and whenever she could see me. Usually that was always, as if her husband was always away. Once, they sent me to a town near hers, and she said that she was going to leave the children with someone else, and come to visit me. She appeared at my hotel, and we made love, and she was just as silent as she was at home, among all the plants”.
The Chinese man smiles, a little uncomfortable maybe, but trying to go along with this strange guy who’s talking to him.
“But, I began to get angry at her. It was like, when we were cheating together, I could understand it, but when she started making plans to visit me, I became… righteous. Like how could she keep cheating on her husband? Not the sex, that wasn’t important, but wasn’t there a limit?
“I started getting ruder towards her, and well, we had problems. She called me while I had someone else in my room, and started crying. I was laughing at her, asking how she could be upset I was sleeping around – compared to her”?
I looked down at the shine of the table. The man offered, “Women always want a lot from men. Especially if they like you”.
Ha ha. Exactly. “Exactly. It took me ages to figure out, and this was much later, that there hadn’t ever been a husband. I wonder now if even the kids were hers. Maybe she was looking after them for someone when I was coming round, or something, or who knows? I only saw them once or twice, you know”?
“But… Women’s bodies change, change after pregnancy”. He said it like it was something he had been told about once.
“I guess so, maybe. Maybe they were hers, I didn’t find out. I was stupid, of course. So fucking stupid”.
“Why did she make up the story”?
“I don’t know. Maybe she understood something about me”.
The man smiled, helpfully, “She fell in love with you – go back to her”.
“This was years ago. Ha, years. And, love doesn’t last. It’s like an elevator: after the doors close, you move on”.
He frowned at this idea, but was too polite to reply.
–
I have this wonder about poison. Say you drink a poison that’s going to kill you, or drink some polluted water which is going to paralyse half your body, can you tell at the moment you swallow? You can’t, of course. Probably you just swallow it down, unthinking, not realising what terrible thing you’ve just done until later. Even, maybe, some poisons are supposed to taste sweet, so you feel kind of happy as you do it, you feel impressed with yourself for choosing such a great flavour.
–
I found myself in a very expensive hotel, one day, the company upgrading me. The air conditioning was really cold, but it didn’t worthwhile to get up and change it. Is comfortable better than uncomfortable?
I lay on the bed, mouth open, wondering, can a person still be walking around, talking to people, but not really be alive? Is all this just going to keep happening?
I started looking for a Internet room in the hotel, because the sensation of pain was getting too great. This huge urge to see a new message from someone. I pace the grey carpeting, and find the business suite. Inside, a fetching girl in a grey suit jacket smiles at me. She told me the price for an hour’s internet, and the minimum fee; both extraordinary amounts. I started to pull notes out of my back pocket, but she stops me, “No, sir, it will just be added to your bill after you finish”.
Logging in, there was something: a message from the ex-girlfriend who had came round that day and talked on my bed. She said a few things about herself, a few questions, then a question that was supposed to be hidden among the others, questions about me and what I was doing. And could we meet up again? Wasn’t it great when we were together?
The false nostalgia… Maybe I should tell you a bit more about this girl. Pretty face, great lower half, very contradictory in what she said and what she really wanted. Always complaining about me, when we were together. Then after the break-up (initiated by me) she took to emailing me my faults. Only now was she coming round for sex and suggesting how great it had been.
Was this it? You dated a certain number of people in your late teens and twenties, and then spent the rest of your life circling around them, dreaming only of them, unable to imagine yourself with anyone but them? Did you get so clogged up with ghosts that going to someone new just felt impossible?
I didn’t bother replying.
–
I travelled on, but now I was checking attendance lists.
My work called me, a little confused, “Hi, we see you’ve been making some changes to the schedule. It’s cool, but what’s the reason”?
I produced some bullshit.
–
She was alone at her stand, in a dark red skirt and jacket.
I said, “Wow, this is a coincidence”.
She seemed happy to see me, “Yes! But, not really – you go to all of these events, right”?
“Most of them”.
She flicked some dark hair back, smiling. “Hey, let’s meet up after this ends, ok? My boss will be coming back here soon”.
I grinned, wondering why I wasn’t someone your boss would want to meet.
–
Knocking on her door. She opened, hair wet from a shower, in a red, tight t-shirt. Her little room exactly the same as mine. She took my hand, closed the door, kissed me, and went away to the corner. I watched her go, her waist slender, undeniably largeness around her hips. Her hair looked great wet. She clicked some music – not jazz this time. The Spanish guitar twanging opening of that Jay-Z single – Bonnie and Clyde… Oh, why this? She raised an eyebrow at me as the beat began; Jay-Z’s stage coughs. She did that swaying mini dance that woman can do to hip hop. On her little speakers, the bass sounded tinny.
I laughed, “Very modern”.
“You don’t mind”?
“Of course not. I’m a big fan”. I approached her, running hands down her arms, sliding them on to her rib cage. She kept rotating her back side – she was good at this, and my worries cheered up, a little. “So… We keep meeting like this”.
She giggled. I didn’t know what to say. Like I had too many things to try to say, and the right ones were hiding. Maybe because what I wanted to say wasn’t right. No, because what I wanted to say was nothing to do with seemingless words. I was edging into that messy place, where things hurt and people misunderstood you. God, I hated it.
She whispered, “It’s nice to meet a man who can dance”.
“I’m not exactly dancing”…
The song ended, with Beyonce’s plaintive cries fading away. A moment of silence, and another Jay-Z number beginning. Jesus. “That’s the point. Most men try too hard”.
“Point out the bounce!” shouted Jay-Z, then the rest was lost.
She was getting tired of this half dance, with nothing that arse shake to do. I asked, “Well… Are you ever passing through my neck of the woods”?
She looked up at me, “And where’s that”?
I told her, as we manoeuvred her a bit closer to the laptop. She said, “Let me just switch this to something slower”.
A song I didn’t recognise came on. She came back into my arms. She sighed, feeling the back of my shirt, my trousers. “Do you ever wonder…”, she sighed, “Just all these people, wanting things from you? Like it’s so hard to be a person. Just a person. So complicated”…
“Yes. I try to keep people from getting too much on me. I try to evade their well meaning knots”. Then the new part of my brain warned me, and I had to add, “Unless they become really special”.
She said, “Hmm. I’m not so good at that. And it only takes one person, to get you really tangled up”.
I knew she wasn’t talking about me. “Is that a bad thing”?
“Maybe not… But, if you don’t know, if you thought it was all over, and they’re suddenly certain”…
She squeezed my waist, playfully, “Hey, no more talking about that. Tell me something about music”.
I spoke, and a while later, our clothes mingling on the floor, I came inside her. She seemed beautiful in the darkness.
–
Probably the most anti-jazz song I know, apart from not serious stuff like Country and Western music, is that old Stereophonics hit, “Maybe Tomorrow”. A song that’s so close to being great, yet it sucks itself, trying to tell a story about wanting to go home, find peace. The chorus: the repetition of the key line, the mournful “ooooo” again and again, that’s the song, guys! Cut the cheesy poetry in the verses, please.
Still, it sounded good once in a while. Jazz didn’t have all the answers, after all.
It played in my living room while I tried to tidy the place up. My flat had white walls that were just about Ok, a big black sofa and a black armchair – it was a set. I had a huge TV facing the sofa, which I hadn’t watched in years, but I didn’t know what I’d put in the space without it. A painting from a distant artist friend, some books, some whisky bottles.
I sat on the sofa and waited for her, my face reflected strangely in the blackness of the television screen. Should I call? No, it wasn’t late. We hadn’t fixed a time, anyway. I found myself coming up with all kinds of possibilities, both of her not showing up and us together in different places. All kinds of crazy dreams.
I waited.
–
There’s a feeling, and it’s not thunder, and it’s not a sweet wrong as you sip poison.
–
I lifted myself up from the sofa, and went to look down at the street from my front window. I saw her, standing on the corner of my street. She was standing, in that black number I first seen her in, looking around. She had the look of someone who had been standing on that spot for a long time.
I thought about calling her, laughing and asking if she’d forgotten my house number. But… I knew she hadn’t. She wasn’t standing like that.
She stood in the street, her weight on one foot sometimes, her hand brushing her hair. It almost looked like she was talking to herself. Then, she seemed to have decided something, and turned around, and walked away from my street. I didn’t need to see if she ever looked back.
I stood by the window, no emotion at all. I wondered what this meant, what feeling was working through my system. Probably the feeling that yes, I was going to be doing exactly this forever.
Daniel
