Chapter 16 Part 3-4

It wasn't like I wanted to, you know, grab life in a passionate embrace and vow never to let it go until it let go of me. In a way, it makes things worse, not better. Once you stop pretending that everything shitty and you cant wait to get out of it, which is the story Id been telling myself for a while, then it gets more painful, not less. Telling yourself life is shit is like an anesthetic, and when you stop taking the Advil, then you really can tell how much it hurts, and where, and its not like that kind of pain does anyone a whole lot of good. And it was kind of appropriate that I was with my ex-lover and my ex-brother at the precise moment I realized, because it was the same kind of thing. I loved them, and would always love them. But there was no place where they could fit any more, so I had nowhere to put all the things I felt. I didnt know what to do with them, and they didnt know what to do with me, and isnt that just like life?

I never said anything about finishing with you because you werent going to be a rock star, said Lizzie after a while. You know that really, dont you? I shook my head. I didnt know, did I? You guys can back me up on that. Not once in this story have I ever owned up to any kind of misunderstanding, deliberate or otherwise. So far as I was concerned, she was dumping me because I was a musical loser. So what did you say, then? Try again. And Ill listen real hard this time. Its not going to make any difference now, because weve all moved on, right? Kind of. I wasn't going to admit to standing still, or going backwards.

OK. What I said was, I couldn't be with you if you weren't a musician. It wasn't such a big deal to you at the time. You don't even like music that much. Youre not hearing me, JJ. Youre a musician. Its not just what you did. Its who you are. And Im not saying you are going to be a successful musician. I dont even know if youre a good one. It was just that I could see youd be no use to anyone if you stopped. And look what happened. You break the band up, and five minutes later you're standing on the top of a tower-block. You're stuck with it. And without it you're dead. Or you might as well be.

So... OK. Nothing to do with being unsuccessful. God, what do you take me for? But I wasn't talking about her; I was talking about me. I never looked at it that way before. I thought this whole thing had been about my failure, but that wasn't it. moment I felt like crying my fucking heart out, really. I felt like crying because I knew she was right, and sometimes the truth gets you like that. I felt like crying because I was going to make music again, and I missed it so much. And I felt like crying because I knew that making music was never going to make me successful, so Lizzie had just condemned me to another thirty-five years of poverty, rootlessness, despair, no health plan, cold-water motels and bad hamburgers. Its just that Id be eating the burgers, not flipping them.

I walked home, turned the phone off and spent the next forty-eight hours with the curtains drawn, drinking, sleeping and watching as many programs about antiques as I could find. During those forty-eight hours, I would say that I was in grave danger of turning into Marie Prevost, the Hollywood actress who was discovered some time after her death in a state of disorder, due to her corpse having been partially eaten by her dachshund. That I had no dachshund, or indeed any domestic pet, I can remember being a source of some consolation in those couple of days. I would certainly die alone, and my corpse would certainly be in a state of advanced decay by the time anyone found me, but I would be complete, apart from the bits that had dropped off through natural causes. So that was all right.

Heres the thing. The cause of my problems is located in my head, if my head is where my personality is located. (Cindy and others would argue that both my personality and the source of my troubles were located below rather than above my waist, but hear me out.) I had been given many opportunities in life, and I had thrown each of them away, one by one, through a series of catastrophically bad decisions, each one of which seemed like a good idea to me - to me and my head - at the time. And yet the only tool I had at my disposal to correct the disastrous course my life seemed to be taking was the very same head that had caused me to fuck up in the first place. What chance did I have?

A couple of weeks after Jesss Jerry Springer show, I read some notes Id made during that two-day period. It wouldnt be true to say that Id been so drunk Id forgotten Id ever made them, and in any case theyd been lying around the flat in plain view. But it was a fortnight before I possessed enough courage to read them, and once Id done so, I was almost compelled to draw the curtains and reach for the Glenmorangie once again. The object of the exercise was to analyze, with the only head I have available to me, why I had behaved so absurdly that afternoon, and to list all possible responses to that behavior. To give my head its due - to be fair to the lad, as sports pundits would say - it was at least capable of recognizing that the behavior had been absurd. It just wasn't capable of doing very much about it. Are all heads like this, or is it just mine?

Anyway, on the backs of several unopened envelopes, mostly bills, there was depressingly conclusive evidence of the circularity of human behavior. WHY HORRIBLE TO NURSE? I had written. And then, underneath: ) ARSEHOLE? HIM? ME? ) HITTING ON PENNY? ) GOOD-LOOKING AND YOUNG-PISSED ME OFF? ) ANNOYED BY PEOPLE. This last explanation, which may have meant something brilliantly precise when I hit on it, now seems startlingly candid in its vagueness. On another envelope, I had crawled COURSES OF ACTION (and please note, by the way, the switch from numbers to letters, a switch presumably meant to indicate the scientific nature of the work): a) KILL MYSELF?

b) ASK MAUREEN NOT TO USE THAT NURSE ANY MORE c) DONT And C stopped there, either because I fell into a stupor at that point, or because Dont was a concise way of expressing a profound solution to all my problems. : how much better things would be for me if I didnt, wouldnt and never had. Neither envelope inspired much confidence in my powers of cogitation. I could see that they had both been written by the man who had recently wanted to tell a select group of people - a group that included his own young daughters - that all male nurses were effeminate and self-righteous: the word ARSEHOLE would surely provide a forensic psychologist with all the evidence required for that deduction. And similarly, the man who had spent some of New Years Eve trying to work out whether to jump from the roof of a tower-block was exactly the sort of man who might jot down KILL MYSELF? in a Things To Do list. If thinking inside the box were an Olympic sport, I would have won more gold medals than Carl Lewis.

Quite clearly, I needed two heads, two heads being better than one and all that. One would have to be the old one, just because the old one knows peoples names and phone numbers, and which breakfast cereal I prefer, and so on; the second one would be able to observe and interpret the behavior of the first, in the manner of a television wildlife expert. Asking the head I have now to explain its own thinking is as pointless as dilling your own telephone number on your own telephone: Either way, you get an engaged signal. Or your own answer message, if you have that kind of phone system. It took me an embarrassing amount of time to realize that other people have heads, and that any one of these heads would do a better job of explaining what the purpose of my explosion might have been. This, I supposed, was why people persisted with the whole notion of friends. I seemed to have lost all mine around the time I went to prison, but I knew plenty of people who be prepared to tell me what they thought of me. In fact, it seemed that my propensity for letting people down and alienating them would actually serve me in good stead here. Friends and lovers might try to throw a kindly light on the episode, but because I had only ex-friends and ex-lovers, I was ideally placed. I only really knew people who would give it to me with both barrels.

I knew where to start, too. Indeed, so successful was my first phone call that I didnt really need to speak to anyone else. My ex-wife was perfect - direct, articulate and clear-sighted - and I actually ended up feeling sorry for people living with someone who loved them, when not living with someone who loathed you was so obviously the way to go. When you have a Cindy in your life, there arent even any pleasures to wade through: there are only unpleasantries, and unpleasantries are an essential part of the learning process. Where have you been? At home. Drunk. Have you listened to your messages? No. Why? Oh, I just left you a few thoughts about the other afternoon. Ah, now, you see thats exactly what I wanted to talk about. What do you think it was all about? Well, youre unbalanced, arent you? Unbalanced and poisonous. An unbalanced, poisonous tosser. This was a good start, I felt, but it lacked focus. Listen, I appreciate what you are saying, and I dont want to appear rude, but the unbalanced tosser part I find less interesting than the poisonous part. Could you talk more about that? Maybe you should pay someone to do this, said Cindy. You mean a therapist? She snorted. A therapist? No, I was thinking more of one of those women who will pee all over you if you pay her enough. Isnt that what you want? anything out of hand. I dont think so, I said. Its never appealed before. I was speaking metaphorically. Im sorry. I dont really understand. You clearly feel so awful about yourself that you dont mind being abused. Isnt that their problem? Whose problem? These men who need women to... Never mind. I was dimly beginning to perceive what she was driving at. It was true that being called names felt good. Or rather, it felt appropriate. You know why you turned on that poor guy, dont you? No! You see, thats precisely why I called you. If Cindy had known how much damage she could have done by stopping right there, the temptation would have been too much for her. Luckily, though, Cindy was determined to go all the way. I mean, he was fifteen years younger than you, and much better-looking. But it wasn't that. Hed done more with his life that afternoon than you've ever done with yours. Yes! Yes! You ponce around on television and screw schoolgirls, and he pushes disabled kids around in a wheelchair, probably for the minimum wage. Its no wonder Penny wanted to chat him up. For her, it was the moral equivalent of going from Frankensteins monster to Brad Pitt. Thank you. Thats great. Dont you dare put the phone down on me. Ive only just started. Ive got twelve years worth of this stuff. Oh, Ill be back for more, I promise. But thats plenty to be going on with. You see? Ex-wives: really, everybody should have at least one. MAUREEN I feel a bit daft explaining what happened at the end of the intervention day, because it all sounds like too much of a coincidence. But I think it probably only sounds like a coincidence to me. I know I said before that Im learning to feel the weight of things, which means learning what to say and what not to say in case you make people feel badly for you. So if I say that nothing happened in my life before I met the others, I dont want to make it sound as though Im grumbling. It was just how things were. If you spend all your time in a very quiet room and someone comes up behind you and says Boo!, you jump. If you spend all your time with short people, and you see a six-foot-tall policeman, he looks like a giant. And if nothing happens and then something happens, then the something seems to be peculiar, almost like an Act of God. The nothingness stretches the something, the happening, out of shape . Heres what happened. Stephen and Sean helped me get Matty home; we hailed a black cab, and the four of us just about squashed in, although the two nurses and I were pressed up against each other in the seat. something. A few months ago, I have gone home and told Matty about that, if he hadnt been there with me. But of course if he hadnt been there with me, thered have been nothing to tell. I wouldnt have needed Stephen and Sean , and we wouldn't have been there in a taxi. Id have been on a bus, on my own, even supposing Id gone anywhere. You see what I mean about something and nothing? Once we were all settled, Stephen said to Sean, Have you got anyone else yet? And Sean said, No, and I dont think Im going to be able to. And Stephen said, Its just the three of us, then? Well get slaughtered. And Sean just shrugged, and we all sat looking out of the window for a little while. I didnt know what theyd been talking about. And then Sean said, Any good at quizzes, Maureen? Fancy joining our team? It doesn't matter if you don't know anything. Were desperate. Now, thats not the most amazing story youve ever heard, is it? I listen to Jess and JJ and Martin, and that sort of things happens to them all the time. They meet someone in a lift or a bar, and that someone says, Would you like a drink?, or even, Would you like intercourse And perhaps they'd been thinking that theyd like intercourse, so it could seem to them that being offered intercourse, just when they'd been thinking they might like it, is the most amazing coincidence. But my impression is that this isn't how they think, or how many people think. Its just life. One person bumps into another person, and that person wants something, or knows someone else who wants something, and as a result, things happen. Or, to put it another way, if you dont go out, and never meet anyone, then nothing happens. How could it? But for a moment, I could hardly talk. Id wanted to take part in a quiz, and these people needed someone for their quiz team, and I felt a shiver go down my spine. So instead of going home, we took Matty to the respite home. Sean and Stephen werent working, but they were friends with all the people who were, so they just told their friends that Matty was staying there for the evening, and no one turned out. a hair. We arranged to meet in the pub where they do their quizzing, and I went home to get changed. I dont know which part of the story to tell you about next. Theres another coincidence involved, so I dont know whether to put it here, in the coincidences section, or later on, after Ive told you about the quiz. Maybe if I separate the coincidences out, push them further apart, you might believe them more. On the other hand, I dont care whether you believe them, because they are true. And in any case, I still cant decide whether they are coincidences or not, these things : perhaps getting something you want is never a coincidence. If you want a cheese sandwich and you get a cheese sandwich, that cant be a coincidence, can it? And by the same token, if you want a job and you get a job, that cant be a coincidence either. These things can only be coincidental if you think you have no power over your life at all. So Ill tell you here: the other person on the team was an older man called Jack, who has a newsagents just off Archway, and he offered me a job. Its not much of a job - three mornings a week. And it doesnt pay very well - £. an hour. And he told me Id be on probation at first. But hes getting on a bit, and he wants to go back to bed at nine, after hes opened the shop and sorted the papers and dealt with the early-morning rush. He offered me the job in the same way that Stephen and Sean had asked me whether I wanted to join the quiz team - as a joke, out of desperation. In between the TV round and the sport round, he asked me what I did, and I told him I didnt do anything much apart from look after Matty, and then he said, You dont want a job, do you? And a shiver went back up my spine. We didnt win the quiz. We came fourth out of eleven teams, but the boys were quite pleased with that. And I knew some things that they didnt know. I knew that the name of Mary Tyler Moores boss was Lou Grant, for example. I knew that John Majors son married Emma Noble, and I knew that Catherine Cookson had written about Tilly Trotter and Mary Ann Shaughnessy. So there were three points they wouldn't have got, right there, which might be why they said I could come again. The fourth chap is unreliable, apparently, because hes just got a girlfriend. I told them I was the most reliable person they could possibly hope to meet. A couple of months ago, I read a library book about a girl who found herself falling in love with her long-lost brother. But of course it turned out he wasn't her long-lost brother after all, and hed only told her that because he liked the look of her. Also it turned out that he wasn't poor. He was very rich. And on top of that, they found out that the bone marrow of his dog matched the bone marrow of her dog, who had leukemia, so his dog saved the life of her dog. It wasn't as good as Im making it sound, to tell you the truth. It was a bit soppy. But the point Im trying to make is that Im worried Im starting to sound like that book, what with the job, and the quiz team And if Im starting to sound like that to you, then Id like to point out two things. Firstly Id like to point out that getting care for Matty costs more than £. an hour, so Im not even as well off as I was, and a story that ends with you not as well off as you werent really a fairy-story , is it? Secondly Id like to point out that the fourth chap in the quiz team will turn up sometimes, so I wont be in every week. I was drinking gin and bitter lemons in the pub, and the others wouldn't even let me buy a round; they said I was a ringer, and had to be paid for. Maybe it was the drink that left me feeling so positive, but at the end of the evening, I knew that when we met again on March st, I wouldn't be wanting to throw myself off the roof, not for a while. And that feeling , the feeling that I could cope for now… I wanted to hang on to that for as long as possible. Its going all right so far. The morning after the quiz, I went back to the church. I hadnt been to any church since we were on holiday, and I hadnt been to mine for weeks and weeks, ever since Id met the others on the roof. But I could go back now because I didnt think Id be committing the sin of despair for a while, so I could go back and ask for Gods forgiveness. He can only help you if you have stopped despairing, which if you think about it… Well, its not my business to think about it. It was a quiet Friday morning, and there was hardly anybody in. The old Italian woman who never misses a Mass was there, and there were a couple of African ladies Id never seen before. There were no men, and there were no young people. I was nervous before I went to the confessional, but it was fine, really. I told the truth about how long it had been since my last confession, and I confessed to the sin of despair, and I was given fifteen Decades of the Rosary, which I thought seemed on the steep side, even for the sin of despair, but I wont complain. Sometimes you can forget that God is infinite in His mercy. He wouldn't have been infinite if Id jumped, mind you, but I hadnt. And then Father Anthony said, Can we help you with anything? Can we ease your burden in any way? Because you must remember that you part of a community here at the church, Maureen. And I said, Thank you, Father, but I have friends who are helping. I didnt tell him what sort of community these friends belonged to, though. Do you remember Psalm? Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me. I went to Toppers House because I had called and called and called, and there was no delivery, and my days of trouble seemed to have lasted too long, and showed no signs of ending. But He did hear me, in the end, and He sent me Martin and JJ and Jess, and then He sent me Stephen and Sean and the quiz, and then He sent me Jack and the newsagents. In other words, He proved to me that He was listening. How could I have carried on doubting Him, with all that evidence? So Id better glorify Him, as best I can. So this bloke with the dog didnt have a name. I mean, he must have had one at some stage, but he told me he didnt use it any more, because he didnt agree with names. wanted to be, and once hed explained it to me, I could sort of see what he meant. Say youre Tony, or Joanna. Well, you were Tony or Joanna yesterday, and youll be Tony or Joanna tomorrow. So youre fucked, really .People will always be able to say things like, Oh, thats so typical of Joanna. But this geezer, he could be like a hundred different people all in one day. He told me to call him whatever came into my head, so at first he was Dog, because of the dog, and then he was Nodog, because we went for a drink in a pub and he left the dog outside. So hed had two completely different personalities in the first hour we spent together, because Dog and Nodog are sort of opposite types, arent they? Bloke with dog is different from bloke with no dog. Bloke with dog has a different nt image from bloke in pub. And you cant say, Oh, thats so typical of Nodog to let his dog shit in someones garden. It wouldnt make sense, would it? How can Nodog have a dog that shits in someones garden, or any dog at all, come to that? And his point is, we can all be Dogs and Nodogs in a single day. Dad, for example, could be Notdad when hes at work, because when hes at work hes not Dad. is all pretty deep, but if you think about it hard, it makes sense. And in that same day he was Flower, because he picked me a flower when we were walking through the little park down near Southwark Bridge, and then Ashtray, because he tasted like one, and Flower is the opposite of Ashtray, too. how it works? Human beings are millions of things in one day, and his method understands that much better than like the Western way of thinking about it. I only called him one more name after that, and it was dirty, so that one will have to be a secret. When I say it was dirty, I mean it will sound dirty to you out of context sort of thing. Its only really dirty if you dont respect the male body, and that in my opinion would make you dirty, not us. So this bloke… Actually, I can see one advantage to the Western way of thinking, which is that if someone has a name, you know what to call them, dont you? Its only one small advantage, and there are millions of big disadvantages , including the biggest one of all, which is that names are really fascist and dont allow us to express ourselves as human beings, and turn us into one thing. But as Im talking about him a lot here, I think Ill call him just one name. Nodog will do, because its more unusual, and you'll know who Im talking about, and its better than Dog, because you might think Im talking about a fucking dog, which Im not. So Nodog took me back to his place after wed gone for a drink. I didnt think hed have a place, to be honest, what with the dog and everything. He looked like the sort of bloke who might be in between places, but I Obviously met him at a good time. It wasn't a normal sort of a place, though. He lived in a shop round the back of Rotherhithe station. It wasn't a converted shop, either - it was just a shop, although it didn't sell anything any more. It used to be like an old-fashioned corner shop thingy, so there were shelves, and counters, and there was a big shop window, which he kept covered with a sheet. Nodogs dog had his own bedroom at the back, which must have been a stockroom once upon a time. Shops are actually quite comfortable, if you can put up with a bit of discomfort. You can put your clothes up on the shelves, put your telly up on the counter where the cash register would have gone, put your mattress on the floor, and you are away. And shops have toilets, and water, although theydont have baths or showers. When we got there, we had sex straight off, to get it out of the way. I only had proper full-on sex with Chas before, and that wasn't any good, but it was all right with Nodog. A lot more things worked , if you know what I mean, because with Chas, his bits didnt really work and my bits didnt really work, so it was all a bit of an effort. Anyway, this time around, Nodogs bits worked fine, and so mine did too , and it was much easier to see why anyone would want to do it again. People go on about the first time being important, but its the second time that really matters. Or the second person, anyway. Look at what a fool I was the first time, all cut up and sobbing and obsessed. See, if Id been like that a second time, Id have known I was going to have problems. But I really didnt care if I saw Nodog again or not, so thats got to be progress, right? Thats much more the way things should be, if youre going to get on in life. After we finished, he turned his little black-and-white TV on, and we lay on his mattress watching whatever, and then we started to talk, and I ended up telling him about Jen, and Toppers House, and the others. And he wasn't surprised, or sympathetic, or anything like that. He just nodded, and then he goes, Oh, Im always trying to top myself. And I was like, Well, you cant be much good at it, and he went, Thats not the idea, though, is it? And I was like, Isn't it? And he said that the idea was to like constantly offer yourself up to the gods of Life and Death, who were pagan gods, so they were nothing to do with church. And if the god of Life wanted you, then you lived, and if the god of Death wanted you, you didnt. So he recckoned that on New Years Eve Id been chosen by the god of Life, and thats why I never jumped. And I was like, I never jumped because people sat on my head, and he explained that the god of Life was speaking through these people, and that made perfect sense to me. Because why else would they have bothered, unless they were like being guided by invisible forces? And then he told me that people who were brain-dead, like George Bush and Tony Blair, and the people who judged Pop Idol, never offered themselves up to the gods of Life and Death at all, and therefore could never prove that they had the right to live, and we shouldn't obey their laws or recognize their decisions (like the Pop Idol judges). So we dont have to bomb countries if they tell us to, and if they say that Fat Michelle or whoever has won Pop Idol, we dont have to listen to them. We can just say, No she didnt. And everything he said was so true that it sort of made me regret the last few weeks, because even though JJ and Maureen and Martin had been nice to me, sort of, you wouldn't really describe them as brainy, would you? Its not like they had any answers, in the way Nodog had answers. But the other way of looking at it is that without the others, Id never have met Nodog, because I wouldnt have bothered with the intervention, and thered have been nothing to walk out of. And I suppose thats the god of Life talking, too, if you think about it. When I went home, Mum and Dad wanted to speak to me. And at first I was like, Whatever, but they were really keen, and Mum made me a cup of tea, and sat me down at the kitchen table, and then she said that she wanted to apologize to me about the earrings, and that she knew who pinched them. So I went, Who? And she goes, Jen. And I stared at her. And she was like, Yeah, really. I said, So how does that work? And she went off on one about how Maureen had pointed out something that was actually blindingly obvious, if you thought about it. They were Jens favorite earrings, and if theyd gone and nothing else had, then that couldnt be a coincidence. And at first I couldnt see what difference it made, because Jen still wasn't around. But when I saw what difference it made to her, how much calmer it made her, I didnt care why. , she wanted to be nicer to me. And I was even more grateful to Nodog then. Because he had taught me this deep, clear way of thinking, the way that allowed me to see things as they really were. So even though Mum wasn't seeing things the way they really were, and she didnt know that for example the Pop Idol judges couldnt prove they had the right to live, she was seeing something that could work for her, and stop her from being such a bitch. And now because of Nodogs teachings, I had like the wiseness to accept it, and not tell her it was stupid or pointless. Who, you might want to ask, would call their child Pacino? Pacinos parents, Harry and Marcia Cox, thats who. May I ask how you got your name? I asked Pacino when I first made his acquaintance. He looked at me, baffled, although I should point out that just about any question baffled Pacino. He was large and buck-toothed, and he had a squint, so his lack of intelligence was particularly unfortunate. Charisma and good looks, it was Pacino. Howjer mean? Where did your name come from? Where did it come from? The idea that names came from anywhere was clearly a new one to him; I might as well have asked him where his toes came from. Theres a famous film actor called Pacino. He looked at me. Is there? You hadn't heard of him? Nope. So you dont think you were named after him? Dunno. You never asked? Nope. I dont ask about no ones name. Right. Where chorname come from? Martin? Yeah. Where did it come from? Yeah. I gaped at him for a moment. I was at a loss. Apart from the obvious answer - that it had come from my parents, just as Pacino had come from his (although even this piece of information might have amazed him) - I could only have told him that mine was French in origin - just as his was Italian. As a consequence, I would have found it hard to articulate why his name was comical and mine was not. See? Its a hard question. Dont mean Im thick, just because I cant answer it. No. Of course not. Otherwise you're thick, too. This was not a possibility that I felt I could rule out altogether. I was beginning to feel thick, for all sorts of reasons. Pacino was a year-eight pupil at a comprehensive school in my neighbourhood, and I was supposed to be helping him with his reading. I had volunteered to do so after my conversation with Cindy, and after seeing a small advertisement in the local newspaper: Pacino was my first stop on the road towards self-respect. Its a long road, I accept that, but I had somehow hoped that Pacino might have been positioned a little further along it. If we agree that self-respect is in, say , Sydney, and Id begun the journey at Holloway Road tube station, then Id imagined that Pacino would be my overnight stopover, the place where my plane could refuel. I was realistic enough to see that he wasnt going to get me all the way there , but volunteering to sit down with a stupid and unattractive child for an hour represented several thousand air-miles, surely? During our first session, however, as we stumbled over even the simplest words, I realized that he was more like Caledonian Road than Singapore, and it would be another twenty-odd tube stops before I even got to bloody Heathrow. We began with an appalling book he wanted to read about football, the large-print story of how a girl with one leg overcame her handicap and her team-mates sexism to become the captain of the school team. To be fair to Pacino, once he saw which way the wind was blowing, he was suitably contemptuous. Shes going to score the winning goal in a big match, innit? he asked with some disgust. I fear that might be the case, yes. But shes only got one leg. Indeed. Plus shes a girl. She is, yes. What school is this, then? You may well ask. Im asking. You want to know the name of the school? Yeah. I want to go up there with my mates and laugh at them for having a girl with one leg in their team. Im not sure its a real school. So its not even a true story? No. Im not fucking bothering with this, then. Good. Go and choose something else. He snuffled his way back to the library shelves, but could find nothing that might interest him. What are you interested in, actually? Nuffink, really. Nothing at all? I quite like fruit. My mum says Im a champion fruit-eater. Right. That gives us something to work on. There were forty-five minutes of our hour remaining. So what would you do? How does one begin to like oneself enough to want to live a little longer? And why didnt my hour with Pacino do the trick? I blamed him, partly. He didnt want to learn. And he wasnt the sort of child Id had in mind, either. Id hoped for someone who was remarkably intelligent, but disadvantaged by home circumstance, someone who only needed an hours extra tuition a week to become some kind of working-class prodigy. I wanted my hour a week to make the difference between a future addicted to heroin and a future studying English at Oxford. That was the sort of kid I wanted, and instead theyd given me someone whose chief interest was in eating fruit. I mean, what did he need to read for? Theres an international symbol for the gents toilets, and he could always get his mother to tell him what was on television. Perhaps that was the point, the sheer grinding uselessness of it. Perhaps if you knew you were doing something so obviously without value, you liked yourself more than someone who was indisputably helping people. Perhaps Id end up feeling better than the blond nurse, and I could taunt him again, but this time I would have righteousness on my side. Its a currency like any other, self-worth. You spend years saving up, and you can blow it all in an evening if you so choose. Id done forty-odd years worth in the space of a few months, and now I had to save up again. I reckoned that Pacino was worth about ten pence a week, so it would be a while before I could afford another night on the town. There you are. I can finish that sentence now: Hard is teaching Pacino to read. Or even, Hard is trying to rebuild yourself, piece by piece, with no instruction book, and no clue as to where all the important bits are supposed to go. JJ Lizzie and Ed bought me a guitar and a harp and a neck rack from one of those cool shops in Denmark Street; and when Ed and I were on the way to Heathrow, Ed told me he wanted to buy me a plane ticket home. I cant go home yet, man. I was going along to say goodbye, but the tube journey was so fucking long that we ended up talking about something other than which crappy magazine he was going to buy from the bookstall. Theres nothing here for you. Go home, get a band together. I got one here. Where? You know. The guys. You think of them as a band? Those losers and fucking perverts we met in Starbucks? I been in a band with losers and perverts before. Werent ever no perverts in my band. What about Dollar Bill? Dollar Bill was our first bass-player. He was older than the rest of us, and wed had to unload him after an incident with the high school janitors son. At least Dollar Bill could fucking play. What can your buddies do? Its not that kind of band. Its no kind of band. So, what, this is for ever? You got to hang out with those guys until they die? No, man. Just until everyones OK. Until everyones OK? That girl is deranged. The guy can never hold his head up in public again. And the old woman has a kid who can hardly fucking breathe. So when are they gonna be OK? Youd be better off hoping they all get worse. Then they can jump off the fucking building, and you can come home. Thats the only happy ending for you. What about you? What the fucks any of this got to do with me? Whats your happy ending going to be? What are you talking about? I want to know what kind of happy ending is available to the rest of the population. Tell me what the gap is. Cos Martin and Maureen and Jess are all fucked, but you… You got a job hooking people up with cable TV. Where you going with that? Im going where Im going. Yeah. Tell me where that is. Fuck you, man. Im just trying to make a point. Yeah. I get it. I got as good a shot at a happy ending as your friends. Thanks. Do you mind if I wait until I get home before I shoot myself? Or you want me to do it here? Hey, I didnt mean that. But I did, I guess. When you get yourself in that place, the place I was in on New Years Eve, you think people who arent up on the roof are a million miles away, all the way across the ocean, but theyre not. There is no sea. Pretty much all of them are on dry land, in touching distance. Im not trying to say thats how close happiness is, if we could only see it, or some bullshit like that. Im not telling you that suicidal people arent so far away from people who can get by; Im telling you that people who get by arent so far away from being suicidal. Maybe I shouldnt find that as comforting as I do. We were coming up to the end of our ninety days, and I guess Martins suicidologist guy knew what he was talking about. Things had changed. They hadnt changed very quickly, and they hadnt changed very dramatically, and maybe we hadnt even done much to make them change. And in my case anyway, they hadnt even changed for the better. I could honestly say that my circumstances and prospects would be even less enviable on March st than they had been on New Years Eve. You really going through with this? Ed asked me when we got to the airport. Through with what? I dont know. Life. I dont see why not. Really? Shit, man. You must be the only one who doesnt. I mean, wed all understand if you jumped. Seriously. No one would think, you know, What a waste. He threw it all away. Cos what are you throwing away? Nothing at all. Theres no waste involved. Thanks, man. Youre welcome. I just tell it like I see it. He was smiling and I was smiling, and we were just talking to each other the way weve always talked to each other about anything thats gone wrong in our lives; it just sounded a little meaner than usual, I guess. Back in the day hed be telling me that the girl whod just broken my heart preferred him anyway, or Id be telling him that the song hed just spent months working on was a piece of shit, but the stakes were higher now. He was right, though, probably more right than hed ever been. There would be no waste involved. The trick is to see that youre still entitled to your three-score years and ten anyway. Busking isnt so bad. OK, its bad, but its not terrible. Well, OK, its terrible, but its not… Ill come back and finish that sentence with something both life-affirming and true another time. First day out it felt fucking great, because I hadnt held a guitar in so long, and second day out was pretty good, too, because the rustiness had gone a little, and I could feel stuff coming back, chords and songs and confidence. After that, I guess it felt like busking, and busking felt better than delivering pizzas. And people do put money on the blanket. I got about ten pounds for playing Losing My Religion to a whole crowd of Spanish kids outside Madame Tussauds, and only a little less from a bunch of Swedes or whatever the next day (William, It Was Really Nothing, Tate Modern). If I could only kill this one guy, then busking would be the best job I could hope to find. Or at least, it would be the best job that involved playing guitar on a sidewalk, anyway. This guy calls himself Jerry Lee Pavement, and his thing is that he sets up right next to you, and plays exactly the same song as you, but like two bars later. So I start playing Losing My Religion, and he starts playing Losing My Religion, and I stop, because it sounds terrible, and then he stops, and then everyone laughs, because its so fucking funny ha ha ha, and so you move to a different spot, and he moves right along with you. And it doesnt matter what song you play, which I have to admit is kind of impressive. I thought Id throw him off with Skyway by the Replacements, which I worked simply to piss him off, and which maybe nineteen people in the world know, but he had it down. Oh, and everyone throws their coins at him, because hes the genius, obviously, not me. I took a pop at him once, in Leicester Square, and everyone started booing me, because they all love him. But I guess everyone has someone at work that they dont get along with. And if youre short on walking metaphors for the stupidity and futility of your working life - and I appreciate that not everyone is - then you have to admit that Jerry Lee Pavement is pretty hard to beat. MAUREEN We met in the pub opposite Toppers House for our Ninetieth Day party. The idea was to have a couple of drinks, go up on to the roof, have a little think about everything and then go off for a curry in the Indian Ocean on Holloway Road. I wasnt sure about the curry part, but the others said theyd choose something that would agree with me. I didnt want to go up on the roof, though. Why not? said Jess. Because people kill themselves up there, I said. Der, said Jess. Oh, so you enjoyed it on Valentines Day, did you? Martin asked her. No, I didnt enjoy it, exactly. But, you know. No, I dont know, said Martin. Its all part of life, isnt it? People always say that about unpleasant things. "Oh, this film shows someone getting his eyes pulled out with a corkscrew. But its all part of life." Ill tell you what else is all part of life: going for a crap. No one ever wants to see that, do they? No one ever puts that in a film. Lets go and watch people taking a dump this evening. Whod let us? said Jess. People lock the door. But youd watch if they didnt. If they didnt, it would be more a part of life, wouldnt it? So, yes, I would. Martin groaned and rolled his eyes. Youd have thought hed be much cleverer than Jess, but he never seemed to win an argument with her, and now shed got him again. But the reason people lock the door is they want privacy, said JJ. And maybe they want privacy when theyre thinking of killing themselves. So youre saying we should just let them get on with it? said Jess. Because I dont think thats right. Maybe tonight we can stop someone. And how does that fit in with your friends ideas? As far as I understand it, youre now of the opinion that when it comes to suicide you should let the market decide, said Martin. Wed just been talking about a man without a name called Nodog, who told Jess that thinking about killing yourself was perfectly healthy, and everyone should do it. I never said anything about any of thats— Im sorry. I was paraphrasing. I thought we werent allowed to interfere. No, no. We can interfere. Interfering is part of the process, see? All you have to do is think about it, and after that, whatever. If we stop someone, the gods have spoken. And if I were a god, said Martin, youre exactly the sort of person Id use as a mouthpiece. Are you being dirty? No. Im being complimentary. Jess looked pleased. So shall we look for someone? she said. How do you look for someone? JJ asked her. Theres probably someone in here, for a start. We looked around the pub. It was just after seven, and there werent many people in yet. In the corner by the gents, there were a couple of young fellas in suits looking at a mobile phone and laughing. At the table nearest the bar, there were three young women, looking at photographs and laughing. At the table next to us there was a young couple laughing about nothing, and sitting at the bar there was a middle-aged guy reading a newspaper. Too much laughing, said Jess. Anyone who thinks text messages are funny isnt going to kill himself, said JJ. There isnt enough going on internally. Ive seen some funny text messages, said Jess. Yeah, well, said Martin. Im not sure that really disproves JJs point. Shut up, said Jess. What about the bloke reading the paper? Hes on his own. Hes probably the best we can do. JJ and Martin looked at each other and laughed. The best we can do? said Martin. So what youre saying is that we have to dissuade someone in this room from killing themselves whether they were thinking of it or not? Yeah, well, the laughing cretins arent going to go up there, are they? He looks more, like, deep. Hes reading the racing page of the f— Sun, said Martin. In a moment his mates going to turn up, and theyll have fifteen pints and a curry. Snob. Oh, and whos the one who thinks you have to be deep to kill yourself? We all do, said JJ. Dont we? We had two drinks each. Martin drank large whiskies with water, JJ drank pints of Guinness, Jess drank Red Bull and vodka, and I drank white wine. Id probably have been dizzy three months ago, but I seem to drink a lot now, so when we got up to walk across the road, I just felt warm and friendly. The clocks had gone forward on the previous Sunday, and even though it seemed dark when we were down on the street, up on the roof it felt as though there were some light left somewhere in the city. We leaned on the wall, right next to the place where Martin had cut through the wire, and looked south towards the river. So, said Jess. Anyone up for going over? No one said anything, because it wasnt a serious question any more, so we just smiled. Its gotta be a good thing, right? That were still around? said JJ. Der, said Jess. No, said JJ. It wasnt a rhetorical question. Jess swore at him and asked him what that was supposed to mean. I mean, I really do want to know, said JJ. I really do want to know whether its… I dont know. Better that were here than that were not? said Martin. Yeah. That. I guess. Its better for your kids, said Jess. I suppose so, said Martin. Not that I ever see them. Its better for Matty, said JJ, and I didnt say anything, which reminded everyone else that it wasnt really better for Matty at all. Weve all got loved ones, anyway, said Martin. And our loved ones would rather we were alive than dead. On balance. You reckon? said Jess. Are you asking me whether I think your parents want you to live? Yes, Jess, your parents want you to live. Jess made a face, as though she didnt believe him. How come we didnt think of this before? said JJ. On New Years Eve? I never thought of my parents once. Because things were worse then, I suppose, said Martin. Familys like, I dont know. Gravity. Stronger at some times than others. Yup. Thats gravity for you. Thats why in the morning we can like float, and in the evening we cant hardly lift our feet. Tides, then. You dont notice the pull when its… Well, anyway. You know what I mean. If some guy came up here tonight, what would you tell him? said JJ. Id tell him about the ninety days, said Jess. Cos its true, isnt it? Yeah, said JJ. Its true that none of us feel like killing ourselves tonight. But like… If he asked us why, if he said to us, So tell me what great things have happened to you since you decided not to go over the edge… what would you tell him? Id tell him about my job in the newsagents, I said. And the quiz. The others looked at their feet. Jess thought about saying something, but JJ caught her eye, and she changed her mind. Yeah, well, you, youre doing OK, said JJ after a little while. But Im f— busking, man. Sorry, Maureen. And Im failing to help the dimmest child in the world with his reading, said Martin. Dont be so hard on yourself, said Jess. Youre failing at loads of different things. Youre failing with your kids, and your relationships… Oh, yes, whereas you, Jess… Youre such af— success. Youve got it all. Sorry, Maureen, said JJ. Yes, excuse me, Maureen. I didnt know Nodog ninety days ago, said Jess. Ah, yes, said Martin. Nodog. The one unqualified achievement any of us can boast of. Maureens quiz team excepted, of course. I didnt remind him about the newsagents. I know its not much, but it might have seemed as though I was rubbing it in a bit. Lets tell our suicidal friend about Nodog. "Oh, yes. Jess here has met a man who doesnt believe in names, and thinks we should all kill ourselves all the time." Thatll cheer him up. Thats not what he thinks. Youre just taking the p—. What did you want to bring all this up for, JJ? We were going to have a good night out, and now everyones all f— depressed. Yeah, said JJ. Im sorry. I was just wondering, you know. Why were all still here. Thanks, said Martin. Thanks for that. In the distance we could see the lights on that big wheel down by the river, the London Eye. We dont have to decide right now, anyway, do we? said JJ. Course we dont, said Martin. So how about we give it another six months? See how were doing? Is that thing actually going round? said Martin. I cant tell. We stared at it for a long time, trying to work it out. Martin was right. It didnt look as though it was moving, but it must have been, I suppose. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks to: Tony Lacey, Wendy Carlton, Helen Fraser, Susan Petersen, Joanna Prior, Zelda Turner, Eli Horowitz, Mary Cranitch, Caroline Dawnay, Alex Elam, John Hamilton.