Back in 1989, I was fifteen. I lived with my mother, except every Sunday, when I rode a bike across Sheffield to have dinner at my father's place.
My mother and I lived in a small apartment above a convenience shop. My mother worked as a cashier in the shop below. Later that year, she had to take another job in the washing store so we could pay the rent plus my high school tuition. That year, my mother bought a small television. I treasured it because unlike my father's big black and white one, my mother's one was colored.
Every Thursday night, my mother and I would sit around the tele to watch Top of the Pops, while eating a full bag of crisps. My mother got into the habit of videotaping every single episode, so she could watch them over on the other days of the week. I became the only kid in class to know every single song on the chart, beating Jimmy Murphy, that bastard.
In that same year, I found the first love of my life, wearing a bright green low-cut blouse, twisting around on that very electric screen like a crazy person. He was called Jarvis, Jarvis Cocker.
In 1989, Jarvis Cocker was in a band called Arabicus Pulp. He was also the host of a show called Outdoor Art, where he appeared Monday and Wednesday in a bright-colored suit, walking around under Britain's gray sky, talking in a thick Sheffield accent. It was hard to explain what about him that got me. In the same sense, it's hard to explain what made me blush every time I saw his figure on the tele or his picture on a Magazine cover. It's even harder to explain what got me up late in the night, made me tiptoe over the living room, to find his bits in my mother's video tapes, and watch him as I touch myself silently.
Two years later, my mother engaged a man called Alan Robinson, a Bartender in the bar on our street. We moved out of the little apartment to live with him. He wasn't loaded, but just a little bit better than us. His apartment had two rooms. My mother and Alan shared one. The other one was for me. Nevertheless, quite often I had to share it with Alan's sister Molly, who was the owner of the room before me and still considered herself the owner. Molly was all right, except for the fact that she kept wearing my clothes, messing with my things, and tiring my Jarvis Cocker posters off the wall. As for Alan, we rarely talk to each other. Something in his manner always triggers a horrible tension in my body. He intimidated me.
Soon, my mother married Alan, and I moved to London by myself to study music management. I was nineteen by then, desperate to start my own life, while working every job I could to pay the price of my hunger.
Every Monday to Friday, I took classes in the day and worked the night shift at a record shop. I organized the vinyl, wiped the shelves, and kept an eye on the customers so no hooligans could steal a CD. I filed cassette after cassette. When there was no one around, I streamed Arabicus Pulp's album through the speakers.
Later that year, in the summer of 1992, Arabicus Pulp would go on to release their biggest hit yet. The song was called Underwear. It told a story of a girl standing semi-naked in a stranger's room and feeling regret. Underwear stayed number one on the chart for 6 weeks straight. The single sold for two hundred thousand copies in the UK alone. Jarvis's face appeared in every major press, with ridiculous title features like "Jarvis Cocker, the new Morrissey?", or "Is Underwear the Universal Portrayal of Modern Romance?".
Every Friday night, I sat in front of the tele in my new apartment and watched a TV series called Earth Angel, where Jarvis was cast as the new Captain Atradius of Submarine Stingray.
I bought every single magazine I could find. I tore down the cover and stuffed it inside my jumper. Occasionally, I wanked to it when I felt hollow inside.
At about the same time, my roommate became my boyfriend. He was an architecture student one year above me. He was tall and thin and had long hair. He didn't like going to the pubs, so we stayed in and talked through the long nights. We talked till I laughed and cried and felt like I'd found the right one. I loved him so much that I felt I was jumping off a building. He didn't drink, but he did drugs. One day, I came back to the apartment, and his injector was lying on the table. I didn't know what to do except to take a shot. I stuck the needles in my vein, and that drug never left me since. On other nights, we made out on the settee as Jarvis Cocker sang over us. I got distracted every time he tried to make me come.
"So why is it so hard for you to touch him? For you to go and give yourself to him or Jesus." Jarvis's voice echoed in the small room.
After the shag, I locked myself in the bathroom and vomited.
My boyfriend died on 1995, September 19th, a quarter before eleven pm. He fell out of the 4th-floor window and broke his skull. He climbed out of the window and tried to climb back in from the adjacent one. It was supposed to be an easy move. Yet, one wrong step led him to fall instantly to the ground like a giant missile. I called the ambulance, but he died the moment his body touched the ground.
Looking back on it, I could certainly see death lurking in the corners. We were almost always high on something, not always drugs, but always something equally destructive. Our neurons were always tense. Our veins throbbed on the side of our neck. Our hearts were beating way too fast. On September 19th, 1995, my boyfriend's neuron broke into a million pieces.
I moved out of the apartment one week later.
By 1998, the bassist of Arabicus Pulp died of a heart attack. He was called Steve Mackey. He was a tall man with a pointy nose, almost permanently standing behind Jarvis on the poster. I used to cut him out with a scissor, so no extra people were staring at me when I wank myself into a daze. Arabicus Pulp disbanded after Mackey's death.
I was twenty-five that year. With my newly cut hair and thick black eye shadows, I still couldn't find a proper job. I felt old for the first time.
A friend of a friend of a friend heard my situation and introduced me to a small label company. There I was assigned to hold out auditions and organize samples for new artists. I move to Colchester for it.
My office was a damp little room with no windows. My boss was a middle-aged man with an awkward cockney accent. He reminded me of Alan, with the same silence and intense stare. He also reminded me the music industry was coming to an end.
With that and a minimum wage, I worked endlessly for four years. I listened to thousands of cassettes sent by random kids across the country, seemed like thousands of desperate kids who dreamed of being the next Liam Gallagher, standing nervously before me, biting their nails. To be honest, most of them are as rubbish as they looked.
In 2004, before I noticed, I was thirty years old. I now lived in a small loft in the north of Colchester. Every morning, I rode the bus across the city to go to work. Every Tuesday, I go to the supermarket and buy everything I need for that week. I tried to buy the most niche veg I could find. I stacked them carefully in my small fridge beside all my cocaine injectors.
I also got a new boyfriend. His name was Neve. We met in a bar one night when I accidentally took his drink. He said he was an electrician. Later that night, he said he wanted to take me home. I didn't let him do that.
However, we did decide to meet up every Monday and Wednesday. We walked side by side under England's gray sky. Sometimes, we walk up a hill and shout our lungs out. I never understood any words he shouted. But that's all right.
After that, we found someplace and fuck. Two years later, we were married.
It wasn't after five more years that I finally met the front man of Araticus Pulp in person. It was on a Saturday, when I walked out of the subway station to go to the supermarket. As I walked across the road, I saw Jarvis Cocker standing on the other side of the street. He was wearing a set of antique pajamas.
He looked taller and thinner in person, and much older than when I watched him on TV. Surprisingly, he was incredibly nice and down to earth. He almost felt like a good-tempered neighbor I would meet on any given day. He said he came here to get some clothes from a washing store, yet he couldn't find the store anywhere.
I told him I was his fan when I was fifteen. He laughed and joked about those days being the peak of his career. I told him how I loved Earth Angel. He laughed again, and said it was good fun shooting it. When I asked for his autograph. He signed it on one of his jumpers and gave it to me. He said his mother made it, but it was in this horrible red color, so he almost never wears it. He hoped that I wouldn't find it too ugly. Finally, he said goodbye and left.
I went home and cried like a little girl that night. I was sitting in bed with Neve. Neve asked me what was the matter. I told him I was alright. I felt something inside my heart blossomed. Yet something bigger was quietly slipping away from me.
That year, I was thirty-seven, hoping and fearing the many more years yet to come.
