I scoured the gay and punk clubs of East London. Then one evening, at the end of my list with no joy, I ended up in the West End in Chelsea near the Sloane Square tube because I’d remembered a lesbian pub I’d been to there once donkey’s ages ago, an oasis in a desert of posh called Gateways. It was the oldest continuously running lesbian pub in London. I wasn’t sure exactly where it had been, but I remembered which side of the street it had been on. I walked down trendy King’s Road, which still had some historic punk left in it. I passed the black shopfront and green letters of BOY, the punk shop that made the neon-striped shirts Melissa sometimes wore. She’d gotten them before BOY became such a designer thing. I had a yellow leopard T-shirt from there, the only thing I could afford.
After I found the building I thought had been Gateways but wasn’t, and had exhausted all other possibilities, I turned off the King’s Road and went to the Chelsea embankment. I passed Vivienne Westwood’s World’s End, the shop that had once been the legendary SEX where the Sex Pistols were born. Knackered, I sat on a bench above the Thames, looking out at wrought-iron lamp posts strung with white fairy lights. It started to rain. I zipped up my green army-surplus jacket, put up the hood, and headed for the tube, singing the Elvis Costello song “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea” under my breath. Back at mine, I rang up Melissa from the communal payphone in the entranceway outside my room. When the line beeped, I pushed in a 10p coin.
“How you doin’ darlin’, alright?” Melissa’s familiar voice made me feel warmer and drier already. She had reached the end of her half of the list and hadn’t come up with anything either. She gave me Nick’s address and warned me not to walk there alone late at night because the area could be a bit dodgy. I told her I’d been there before. It was one of the areas I’d lurked in when I’d been at university looking for the people in my head.
The next day, I walked down Old Bethnal Green Road past council estates with tower blocks shooting up into the sky and peace-sign graffiti. For a change, it was damp and chilly. I was wearing a woolly gray Doc Martens beanie. It had “Dr Martens Air Cushioned Sole” and the Dr Martens cross logo embroidered in bright yellow thread in a circle on the front. I pulled it down over my cold ears and it caught on my copper-colored eyebrow ring. By the time I’d got it sorted, it was raining bullets. I walked past blackened brick terraces, past a school, and down Pollards Row. The large, bleak Westminster Arms looked like a ship against the gray sky. I found Nick’s Victorian and pressed the buzzer. Melissa had told me Nick lived on the first floor facing out, so I called up to the window that was hers. I lingered in front of her building, hoping she’d come home. When I got hungry, I wandered down a desolate side street to the Sky Blue Fish Bar for cod and chips.
I didn’t want to go back to my lonely room, so I drifted aimlessly around the area. I pushed open the yellow door of a pub called the Hope, but Nick wasn’t inside playing on any of the fruit machines. In my head, “Pretty Green” by the Jam began to play, “I’ve got a pocket full of pretty green. / I’m gonna put it in the fruit machine.” I strolled past a faded, green shopfront that said “Holloways” next to a billboard advertising liquor and a poster proclaiming “London Flooding is a Real Danger.” I turned onto Pollard Street with its corrugated metal barriers and old cars parked by the side of the road.
I roamed the streets of plain brown terraces—Quilter, Barnet, Wimbolt—their names adhering to my brain and becoming part of the legend of my quest like I was a character in an epic novel. I passed the blue sign of Imperial Van Hire, churches, dead white curtains in flat windows, so much corrugated silver fencing I thought I was inside a Coke can, more housing estates, green wrought-iron fencing around dead brown grass, and the London Picture Centre. My shoes slid on wet cobblestone roads piled with rubbish.
I moved further out of Nick’s neighborhood, going all the way to Brick Lane in Banglatown. The Brick Lane Market was now closed, and I breathed in the warm, spicy smells emanating from the curry houses. I felt empty. To cheer myself up I sang “Wasteland” by the Jam under my breath. “‘Meet me on the wastelands, the ones behind / the old houses, the ones left standing prewar / the ones overshadowed by the monolith monstrosities councils call homes.’”
It was dark, but I couldn’t make myself head for home. I went down Brady Street all the way to Whitechapel and ended up at the street market on Whitechapel Road. I browsed through stalls of fruit and vegetables, clothes and household items illuminated by bare white light bulbs. Across the road, the gold letters of London Hospital were visible above the pitches. The rain slowed to a drizzle. I looked at lit-up dead chickens hanging in rows beneath green awnings. I slogged through cardboard boxes, broken wooden crates and onion sacks, pretending to be interested in grapes, oranges, tomatoes, potatoes and fuzzy pink jumpers. I watched women in saris and dresses with their blue-and-white-striped Tesco’s bags hurrying toward the tube.
I huddled deeper in my coat. Too cold to loiter any longer, I took the tube all the way to Hampstead because I didn’t want to go back to my room alone. By the time I reached Melissa’s flat, I was almost in tears. Upset at not finding Nick and feeling so bloody lonely I ached, I hoped Melissa was home and not otherwise engaged. The lights were off in the front room and she didn’t answer my knock. I argued with myself that it was ridiculous to stand outside and wait for her. I was an adult. I was being too needy.
I walked to where she kept her car and it was there. I went up the road to the Old Orleans, sat at one of the green outdoor tables and ate a small white pizza, hoping she’d stroll right past me if she were coming home on the tube. When I’d been at university, the Old Orleans had been a Pizza Pizza Express, a pretty, white building with blue neon. When it started to pour, I abandoned my table and ducked into the local pub, a tall, brown-and-white-striped brick building with “The Horse and Groom” in big gold letters on the front. I sat on a barstool in the window and drank a warm pint, continuing to watch the street. At least the pub had remained the same.
When I was too restless to sit any longer, I walked the long way round to Melissa’s flat, past gray, red, and white terraces and flashy, brightly painted shops. Pretty lights glowed softly from inside and I felt very much on the outside, watching my breath turn white. It seemed gentle and quiet here, but I felt as empty as I had in Bethnal Green. Melissa still wasn’t home. Exhausted from walking in circles all day, I leaned against her door. I told myself I’d only stay ten minutes, randomly deciding ten minutes, though bordering on needy, wasn’t actually criminally pathetic. The rain pelted the petals off the last of the roses in her front garden. It went through me like silver darts. I moved some wet leaves around with the toe of my shoe.
I couldn’t help it. I started writing a tune about Melissa.
I can lie like denial here at your feet,
but I think you’re entitled to see through me.
When the angels fall I will be ready,
sometimes when I look around there aren’t any.
When the angels fall there will be plenty,
but you see right now there aren’t that many.
I’m afraid it sounded a bit like the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.”
Finally I saw Melissa coming down the lane from the tube in her long, beige raincoat. I was relieved she was alone. “Come inside, misery-guts,” Melissa said, putting her key in the latch.“Why the sad face? What’s happened? Did you find Nick? You’ll catch your death.” She closed her umbrella and I followed her into the warm flat. “Get out of those wet things.” She took my parka and wool hat and hung them in the entranceway. I pulled off my gray fingerless gloves. Melissa felt my green army-surplus jumper from Portobello Road. “Love, you’re soaked through. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.” I hung my head in shame.
“You’re freezing.” She took me upstairs and ran hot water into the large bathtub. I stood there limply, morale depleted, watching it fill. When Melissa went downstairs, I peeled off my jeans and black trainers and stepped into the tub. The hot water was soothing on my aching muscles. I had a bit of a scratchy throat and a headache. Melissa knocked and asked if she should come in or leave the dry clothes she’d brought me outside the door. I told her, what the hell, come in. Normally I’m squeamish about my body, but she was a doctor. She saw naked women every day without being allowed to judge them. At least that’s what I told myself. Melissa perched on the rim of the tub and dipped her hand in the water. “Stay here tonight. It’s raining. It’s late. Why’d you want to see me?”
“To say hi.”
She arched her eyebrows, waiting for me to say more. But I didn’t know what to say or how not to say it. “I’m sorry you had to wait for me,” she said finally.
“Don’t be silly. It was rude of me to just barge over. You’ve got better things to do than look after me.”
“I’m sure Nick’ll turn up,” Melissa said to make me feel better. “I’m probably just overreacting.”
I asked, “Did you have a nice time, wherever you were?”
“I was out with Martin.”
“That bloke you’ve been seeing?” I sounded like it was the best news I’d heard all year. It was pitiful.
“Yeah. Went for a meal then to the cinema. Butterfly Kiss. Weird, religious, lesbian serial-killer film.”
Great, I thought, lesbians as crazy murderers. “Did you enjoy yourself?”
“It was alright. Had a lovely vegetable curry with pappadams and aloo matar paratha.” Melissa shook her hand dry.
“Is that bread stuffed with potatoes and peas? You look nice.”
She was wearing a silky, maroon-and-turquoise-striped shirt over a black-and-red Stiff Little Fingers “Inflammable Material” T-shirt. Through the picture of the cover of my favorite SLF record album, I saw the delicate arc of her breasts. She had two silver rings on her fingers. A plain band and a rose that accentuated the graceful way she moved her hands. She smelled good. Melissa looked surprised by my comment. “Ta, love.” She pulled off her sexy, black fake-suede boots, slid off the vegan green studded bracelet fastened around her wrist with little handcuffs and left the bathroom. She returned and put a mug of hot tea on the plastic soap holder that stretched across the tub.
After a good long soak, I put on the black sweatshirt, blue flannel pajama bottoms and thick socks Melissa had left me to wear. Then I took the medication wrapped in cling film from my damp jeans pocket and swallowed it with the dregs of the tea. Melissa had already gone to bed. I stuck my head inside her bedroom to say goodnight. “I’m sorry I can’t stay up and chat, love,” Melissa said. “I’ve got an early start tomorrow.” She was covering an extra surgery session for one of her partners who was out ill. As I turned to go downstairs, Melissa groaned, “Wait. I took the sheets off the bed.”
“That’s okay. I’ll sleep on the settee.”
“And you don’t have enough blankets.” She sighed. “It’s cold tonight. Crawl in here with me where it’s warm. There’s plenty of room.”
“Okay.” I climbed gingerly into her bed, making sure not to crowd her. The rose-colored duvet was heavy and soothing.
She turned off the bedside lamp. “Goodnight, love.” Melissa rolled over to sleep.
“Ta for the hot bath and for letting me stay,” I said.
“No worries, love,” Melissa murmured. In a few minutes, I heard her breathing slow down.
I stared at the back of her head. The Oasis song “Don’t Go Away” was playing in my brain with Liam singing, “Damn my education, I can’t find the words to say / with all the things caught in my mind.” Those lines stayed wedged in my thoughts because it was how I felt around Melissa. But when I wasn’t paying attention, my mind played the first verse of the song as,
Cold and frosty morning, there’s not a lot to say
about the things caught in my mind.
And as the day was dawning, my brain flew away
with all the things caught in my mind.
It was supposed to be “plane”—“my plane flew away.” But when I was near Melissa, it was like my brain flew away, and my reaction to her beauty made me nervous. Now I held as still as possible, terrified of fidgeting and disturbing her. I held my breath and tried letting it out silently. I was afraid of accidentally moving too close to her in my sleep. But you can clearly see she isn’t bothered you’re a lesbian, I told myself. She doesn’t treat you any differently.
Usually I repeated my prayers of protection for hours because my brain never got the message I’d completed them, like intellectually knowing I’d just eaten and remaining viscerally famished. But lying in the dark, peaceful next to Melissa’s warmth, I fell asleep painlessly, my OCD more like a residue, an echo.