For a Song [#Wattys 2015]

Chapter 11

Dylan Dorian

Do you remember the first time you ever lied? As a child, maybe being accused of stuffing your pockets with sweets from the corner shop and denying any knowledge of it. Or trying to impress the kids at another new school and finding, before you know it, that you've told them that your dad races motorcycles for a living and you've wrestled crocodiles in Africa. It's like being given the cheat codes to the universe. Words are everything, the building blocks for pretty much all of society and suddenly you realize they can be whatever you want them to be. You can twist them up to get away with something, to get what you want, to get people to like you. And, importantly, they can protect you.

Omissions, keeping things hidden and, yeah, bald faced shameless lying goes pretty far after a number 1 single. And having a stage name really helps that too; at first I just thought it would be cool, I was sixteen and a prick and thought combining Bob Dylan and Dorian Grey made me seem the business, but then it got to be a lifeline. Dylan Dorian. You have to keep things back, or there will be people ready to tear it up and consume it. Dylan Dorian is different from Spirit in big ways I won't go into, and in tiny stupid ways that probably sound stupid out loud.

My favorite colour is not yellow, my favorite film is not Resevoir Dogs even though I told an interviewer it was. Shit like that seems to keep coming out of my mouth and I tell myself it's because I'm playing a character. Dylan Dorian the rockstar. And not just because I'm turning into a pathological liar. Or have always been one.

So honestly, Ladies and Gentlemen? No, I'm not an honest person. I don't even wish I was. It is not a trait that is desirable or useful to me at this point in my life. And I realise that this is probably the worst thing I could say right now, that it's not getting my story off to a great start. But I only mention in the hopes of getting it out in the open, that you'll genuinely believe me when I say that I never lied to Hilly.

Not about For A Song. And about a lot less than I would have done with most other people when it came to other stuff too.

Even in the beginning. I hadn't meant to tell her my name or the story of the night we wrote our new hit single but somehow she'd managed to weasel it out of me. It left me pretty thoroughly rattled, all through the drive home and then, back on Mum's boat, when I tossed the keys back into the pot, sat heavily at the table with a cigarette and my phone in front of me.

My inbox was full. My texts were bursting at the seams and I had no energy to tackle work related stuff yet. "It's done. I dropped her off. And Jon's coming up to pick me up soon. Shall I ask him if he wants lunch before we have to go?"

I was glad I'd managed to convince Jon to come pick me up from Bristol and pop in on Mum- if he was driving that meant he'd have to stay sober. Which was getting to be something of a rare occurrence.

A year ago if you'd told me that my cousin, the king of the land of intense, the sultan of professionalism, who took the band as seriously as a heart attack and that the rest of us always used to ask to lighten up would end up in the state he'd gotten himself into then I would have laughed in your face. But then he took our advice too far. He'd definitely lightened up.

Mostly because he'd pretty much stopped eating solids. Had to make room for more vodka after all.

"Mmm. There's a shit hot independant vegan place that only cooks with salvaged vegetables and the food other restaurants throw away," agreed Mum, lifting the cigarette out of my hand and putting it out in a half-melted candle that smelled kind of like a fart in a flower shop.

"Or some great processed meat from some fast food chicken place because we aren't tramps or rabbits," I suggested. Knowing of course that we'd end up in the trash can food place. She hadn't relented when I'd wanted my tenth birthday at McDonalds like all of the other kids at school, she wouldn't now. I didn't mind. After fetishizing Burger King, Subway and all the others when I was younger, I was getting sick of Pret Sandwiches and tin foil wrapped things eaten in airport waiting rooms and brought in by eager assistants for the record label.