Fecal Matters: Collected Musings

Dregs

On the wall to the left of the urinals in the Gent's lavatory of the Nowhere Inn at about eye level, scrawled in black marker ink, are the words:

Fuck Josh Edwards! He's a Cunt!

The handwriting is suspiciously reminiscent of my own and matches other sentiments littering the walls.

But that character assassination by the urinals is the graffiti my eye is drawn to whenever I enter the W.C. It is a beacon; a constant anchor I have to the place that was a communal living room for me and the people I cared about for a long time. The place where I played numerous gigs and watched substantially more. The place where I met most of my closest friends. The place I went to celebrate the birth of my daughter.

When I first wrote the incendiary statement about myself, I didn't tell anyone I'd written it. I simply waited for people to notice. Friends would ask me if I had seen it and I would look suitably disgruntled whilst inwardly loving the fact that I'd had some small hand in crafting my own mythology. Eventually, somebody (my best bet is Dave) added a little arrow between the words a and cunt and wrote underneath, in black biro scratched block capitals the word PREDICTABLE.
I had been rumbled and this filled me with joy. People there knew me and cared enough to take the time to scorn me, and in biro no less, which I'm sure you are aware does not readily lend itself to writing on walls.

Outside the toilet door, the Nowhere itself is not a huge pub. It's an old building and it feels old. Support beams line the main room, like a more homely Mine of Moria. There used to be a fireplace, but that was before my time. Oddly, the familiar warmth of burning wood still seems to fill the room on cold winter nights, but maybe that's just the booze.

The pool table is pushed back whenever bands play at the pub. The partition acts as the divide between band and audience, a border that is broken whenever a young lady needs to spend a penny.
Usually, for the bands I like, I park myself front and centre of the 'stage'. When I say park, I mean just that. I will sit at gigs, cross legged, watching the show at roughly groin level flanked by skyscraper bar stools and amateur whirling dervishes'. I sit admiring the bands at a level from which I can also see that the underside of the jukebox could do with a clean.

That position has been inverted a fair few times. I've done my fair share of both, singing and shouting and ranting and convulsing and occasionally bleeding to scratch that filthy itch I caught in my teens.
One of the most memorable instances was the last gig of Justin Credible and the Droogs. The name comes from the gang in Anthony Burgess' novel A Clockwork Orange and the ring name of a little known wrestler. I would introduce us often as Britain's second most popular quartet, named after a professional wrestler and a fictional gang of rapists, after Hulk Hogan and the Merry Men.
That night at the Nowhere, we had been playing live together for two years and six months. The reason I'd decided to call it off was simply frustration.

The Paul to my John, Phil had different ideas about what we wanted the band to sound like, and we'd clash over it. I was anti-pop for the most part. Phil wanted us to sound like Bon Jovi. It just seemed like the time to shelve it and move on.

We had played a few times at the Nowhere, not as many as some other venues, but my emotional ties to the pub were already strong and it's where my friends liked to go. The Fuck Josh Edwards graffiti didn't exist at that point because most people knew me as Justin. Indeed, all the pitches of woo in the Ladies are written to Justin, not Josh.

After the support bands had finished, I hastily smoked a cigarette. There were more people in front of me than there ever had been in that place before. It was confidence building, right up until the point I realized that I had to kill the band for this many people to want to see it.

I looked over at Phil who seemed hurt; like a clueless husband in a stagnant marriage, he was completely blindsided when I told him I wasn't happy in the Droogs anymore.

I walked over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. Every band I had ever been in, Phil had been with me. It was his bass amp that I had hidden behind at our first gig. We had toured Spain together with our school orchestra, accidentally singing a Spanish swear word across the loud speakers of a little Catholic village. He had helped me home the first time I'd concussed myself on stage, bleeding, crying and wearing a prom dress. Both of us had used Justin Credible and the Droogs as a way of finding our feet after the suicide of a dear friend. I had just told him that not only did I not want to do it anymore, but that I'd actively be looking to make music with someone else. I could understand his bad feelings.

"Pretty fucking big crowd tonight. Come on, they're not gonna disappoint themselves," I said to him.
He smiled back at me, "You disappoint them if you like. I'm gonna be awesome."
I probably said something self-deprecating and offensive before we launched into it.
I bled again from a self-inflicted mic wound to the skull. Later on, I remember singing upside down and balanced on my head, leaning on one of the support beams.

Friends joined us on-stage, band members swapped instruments, but throughout all of the hijinks, there was a sense of finality. At least I wouldn't be Justin Credible anymore. I'm Josh Edwards, even if he is a cunt.

We played the last song on the set list. I was again sat on the floor, but this time facing out. My breath was thick. Roars of appreciation descended upon us. I remember just sitting there, allowing it to wash over me. It was humbling. My eyes moistened quickly and I second guessed myself; perhaps I had been too hasty? Perhaps the band had more life in it.

"Encore?" I enquired into the microphone.