thirty-six

Half-past-nine and the club was still virtually deserted. There was meant to have been some trashy band from Croydon playing that night. However, they'd pulled out at the last minute (their van having broken down on the M25). The words sorry cancelled, which had been hastily scrawled across the posters outside the club, put most people off before they'd even made it to the bar. And although, from time to time, faces did peer hopefully around the open door, the emptiness inside caused them to be rapidly withdrawn with a muttering of, 'It's totally dead in there, let's go down the Cross Keys,' or some similar remark. As a result, we virtually had the place to ourselves. And, for the first time in living memory, we had managed to acquire a table and the requisite number of chairs for us all to be seated (us all being me Tony, Stewy and his new girlfriend who - when Stewy had eventually got around to introducing us - turned out to be called Shaz).

Debbie should have been there as well that evening, but in the end she'd decided not to come with us. On the way to the club, I'd given her a call from the phone box at the end of the road.

"I thought you were coming over to see me this afternoon," she'd said.

"Well I didn't finish work till late," I'd lied.

"But you said you were coming over."

"Did I? When?"

"Last night!"

"Did I?"

"Yea! "

"Well, sorry, but there's not much I could do about it. I can't just walk out of work when I feel like it."

"You could have phoned."

"Yea, sorry. I never thought."

Debbie'd wanted me to go and see her then. He parents were out, she'd said, a thinly veiled euphemism meaning, 'so we can have that shag we didn't have time for this morning.' At one time, the promise of an illicit love making session on her bedroom floor would have been irresistible. But having the freedom of my own rented room (complete with luxury double bed) I couldn't care less where her parents were!

"I'm not going to be out very late," I'd said. "Why don't I come and pick you up later on."

"No, come over now," she'd urged.

I'd smiled apologetically at Stewy and Shaz through the scratched and fag-burnt windows of the phone box, as they'd shuffled in the cold outside.

"I can't now," I'd said. "I've arranged to meet Tony."

"So?" she'd said dismissively. She was always a little jealous of the time I spent with Tony.

"He left a message," I'd said. "He's expecting me to turn up."

"So was I," she'd said, and put the phone down.

I was going to call her back. But, as I'd replaced the receiver, Stewy had tugged opened the door to the phone box and yanked me out onto the street, with a cry of, "Come on. It's fucking freezing out here." And I'd let the door swing slowly shut.

Sat there in the club, slowly sipping my pint, I was beginning to wish I had gone to see Debbie. There was something slightly ominous about the way she'd put the phone down (and the fact that I hadn't called her back was unlikely to help matters). Besides which, I felt like shit. And Tony was really 'doing my head in' over that sound check business at the Exeter gig.

"The thing is," said Tony for the umpteenth time. "You've got to get the sound right. It's getting the depth, that's the thing. You say it doesn't matter, but music's more than just a few notes or a few chords on a piece of paper. They're only symbols. They're only a two dimensional code. When you play as a band you've got to create that third dimension. You've got to create layers like a cake, like the icing and the cream in the middle. And unless you do that, unless you try and create that depth you end up with something like a wafer, a shallow sound. Now, a lot of bands can't see that. They just play as fast as they can or as loud as they can. But speed and volume are two dimensional. Playing faster or louder just adds a few more symbols to the paper, it doesn't add to the depth. And that's why you have to spend time getting the mix right. It's like the cake you see. You've got to blend the ingredients right, to get the right taste, and it's just the same with sound. If all you do is add more ingredients, all you end up with is a bigger cake. It's the blend that's important."

"Yea, great. Just great," I said.

Normally, I can listen to Tony prattling on for hours. I just switch off and nod my head in the right places. But the empty brightness of the Asylum (all those reflected, white surfaces) somehow seemed to make me focus with the cruellest clarity on just how shit I felt. In fact, I felt much worse than I would have done had the place been full, with the sense-blanketing distraction of a hundred people chatting and drinking, and the pain-pillowing thump of music from the next room. In that awkward quietness (the drone of Tony's voice and background jazz, punctuated only by the cutting in and out of heater fans) I felt as if my arms and legs had turned to foam rubber, my head was in the spin cycle of a washing machine and all my internal organs had collapsed into a mushy korma, alive with the squirm of shrimps (a feeling which all Tony's talk of cream cakes did nothing to appease).

Stewy and Shaz didn't look much happier than I was. They were sitting close together but not actually touching, reluctant to behave too romantically in front of me and Tony. I guess it would have been different if there'd been lots of other people in the bar. Then they could have behaved as new lovers do - with little hand touches, giggled compliments and deep blushes.

They could have gazed into each others eyes as they shared exotically flavoured crisps and unexpected memories of childhood incidents - seemingly irrelevant episodes which, in the first moments of intimacy, become suddenly significant, scattered in the conversation to subconsciously stimulate maternal and paternal instincts, the stuff of which love is formed.

However, such intimacies are only possible within the anonymity of a large crowd or the privacy of a table for two. So, not really knowing each other well enough to comfortably make inconsequential small talk, Stewy and Shaz sat in awkward silence like cement waiting to dry, whilst Tony, like some out-of-control computer, continued to spew out ream after ream of irrelevant information.

"Anyone fancy a game of pool?" I asked.

Stewy and Shaz shook their heads. Tony looked up, paused and (perhaps realising, with unusual sensitivity for him, that the love birds might like to be left in peace for a while) he nodded.

Playing 'eight ball' didn't stop Tony from talking (unfortunately) but at least it gave me something to concentrate on other than how shit I felt and how pissed off with me Debbie was. I obviously wasn't concentrating that hard as Tony actually took a couple of games off me - a rare occurrence (even though I say so myself).

After a bit, Stewy came up and offered to buy us both another pint.

I declined his offer.

"Actually," I said. "I'm not feeling too good. I might head back home when we've finished this frame and watch that Hendrix video your brother was on about."

"Yea," said Stewy. "I'll just let Shaz finish her drink and then we'll be with you."

It took Shaz (who was obviously bored shitless) about ten seconds to drain her glass.

"We might as well make a move," said Stewy, pulling on his jacket, and returning to the table. "If that's all right with you boys."

"Yea," I said laying my cue down among the unpotted balls. "Great, just great."

On the way home we met Terri and another girl (who I'd never spoken to but had seen a few times at gigs and in Reckless Records). Despite the cold, Terri was wearing a pale blue mini-dress (an original sixties number she'd undoubtedly discovered in one of the charity shops where she bought all her clothes).

The dress was so short it was difficult to tell if the hazy darkness at the top of her white-stockinged thighs, was a street-lit shadow cast by the dress's hem, or the lacy edge of her knickers. What else she was wearing I couldn't say (my eyes being too busy trying to solve that knicker/shadow mystery), but she looked (as I think I may have already mentioned) fucking gorgeous.

It turned out that Terri and this other girl knew Shaz quite well. As we stood there shuffling and shivering in the cold for a few moments exchanging pleasantries, I was almost tempted to suggest we should go back to the club. But Tony was keen to see Stewy's brother's Hendrix video, and so we ended up going our separate ways.

As we walked away, I looked back over my shoulder (to be honest for another quick look at Terri's bum in that short blue dress) and was rewarded by a smile from Terri (who was also looking back over her shoulder). It was a moment of near-cinematic sentimentality, the memory of which I still sometimes wallow in when something sad happens.

At any time after seven o'clock at night it was a physical impossibility for Stewy (or his brother) to walk past the Golden Dragon without going in to buy something to eat. So, inevitably, before we got home, I found myself sitting on a blue plastic chair beside Tony trying to ignore the oily aroma of fried noodles, whilst Stewy and Shaz leaned over a plastic coated menu debating whether to go halves on Special Chicken Chow Mein or a cheaper 'meat' curry of unspecified origin (a mixture of seagull and rabbit according to certain rumours).

The Golden Dragon was decorated with the same flair and finesse as Antonio's hair salon - its design dominated by pine-effect veneer (that and bamboo wallpaper, various shades of pondwater grey). On the wall above a shelf of soy sauce bottles and jars of pickled eggs (stocked at the personal request of Stewy's brother) was the 'Golden Dragon' itself. It was a huge beast, three feet long with a back like the Loch Ness monster, a clock ticking in it's bloated belly and a long red tongue. The tongue snaked out of a mouthful of fangs beneath a couple of bulbous, gold-lashed eyes (not dissimilar in shape and size to the pickled eggs) with bright red irises that stared down hungrily at the chips and battered sausages in the steaming glass counter above the deep fat friers.

"What are you having?" asked Stewy, turning to me as Lee, the skinny, perpetually smiling assistant (who seemed to happily work in the take-away all day everyday) took his order.

"I'm all right," I said.

"But you ain't had no tea," said Stewy with concern (not personal concern for my welfare, you understand, just general concern that anyone should have to go for more than two hours without so much as a pound of fried potato passing their starving lips).

"I'm still feeling a bit iffy," I explained.

"Go on, have some chips," insisted Stewy. "It'll make you feel better."

Maybe he was right I thought. The walk in the cold air had cleared my head and guts a bit. And I hadn't eaten anything since my bowl of cornflakes early that afternoon.

"OK then," I relented. "Just a small bag."

I think it was probably the dope that finally did it (although the chips, the wailing feedback of Jimi's guitar and my anxiety about Debbie all undoubtedly played their parts). It was about eleven o'clock and we'd just finished watching the Hendrix video down in the basement (Jimi having finally embedded the smouldering remains of his Strat in the face of a Sunn PA stack), when - through the mist of scented smoke - this advert for synthetic cream came on the TV - great blobs of the stuff being squirted onto trifles and cakes. I just couldn't hold it back any more. I rushed up the stairs, my stomach churning like a crowded swamp, and reached the kitchen sink just in time.

With splashes of ice water still running down my face, I looked down to where the contents of my gut had emptied over Stewy's week-old washing up and couldn't resist an unrepentant smile.

Feeling much better, I stumbled back downstairs.

"How do you feel," asked Tony, as I slumped back into my chair.

"Great," I said. "Just great."