TRACK 33 Capitalism Stole My Virginity

I was awake when Melissa got up for work, having hardly slept. All night I obsessively went over everything I’d told her. And now I was apprehensive—well, scared shitless—about my visa as well.

“How you doing, love?” Melissa said, as I quietly nursed a panic attack. “How are you feeling? Alright?” Melissa sat on the edge of the bed and put her hand on my forehead.

I tried to smile, but my anxiety was pushed up against my teeth like a wave. I struggled to hold it in. I didn’t want to appear too needy so early in the relationship. Let her get used to me before I become a human barnacle, I thought.

“Are you unwell?” She looked at me with concern. I couldn’t answer because I didn’t know what to say and I was trying to keep my heart from projectile vomiting out of my throat. “What’s the matter?” She felt my pulse. “What are you anxious about? Calm down,” she said gently, resting her hand on my head. “Everything’s alright. Are you upset about what you told me last night? You needn’t be. I can’t talk about it now ’cos I’m late, but we’ll talk when I get home, yeah? Don’t worry. We’re still mates. I hate to leave you like this, but I’m sorry love, I’ve really got to go.”

When she left, I was beside myself. What did she mean we were still mates? I was so distraught I thought I was going to pass out. So I did the one thing I knew how to do under extreme circumstances. I went to a record shop. I took the tube to Leicester Square because that required no thought. It was on the northern line, a straight shot from Hampstead station. I walked across the road to the big Tower Records at Piccadilly where I did my underground busking. Piccadilly Circus was bright even during the day with its red, blue, and green Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Foster’s, and TDK neon signs. The streets were full of black cabs, people and noise, but I was in my own lonely capsule, shut off from the world.

I spent hours looking at every single punk CD in the huge shop. That usually soothed me, but I agonized over the one perfect thing to get Melissa so she wouldn’t hate me and chuck me out of her life. With my anxiety at a dangerous level, my OCD went berserk. My brain spat out intrusive thoughts faster than I could neutralize them. I would have given just about anything if I could have unscrewed my own head and taken it off for a few minutes. Was that too much to ask? It was so bad I was whispering under my breath. But I tapped my foot and pretended to be singing along with the music that was blaring throughout the shop.

I looked at Power of the Press by the Angelic Upstarts because it has the song “Brighton Bomb” on it, which is worth the entire price of admission. But I’d heard it on Melissa’s computer and was sure she had the album. I considered the Eyes Adrift CD, which had just come out. That was the band with Krist Noveselic, Nirvana’s bass player, and Curt Kirkwood from the Meat Puppets. I loved the versions of Meat Puppets tunes from Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged concert. I’d seen Eyes Adrift perform in the States, and Krist had played his familiar black bass through a Hiwatt amp.

Krist and I had a mutual friend, Danny, who owned a guitar shop outside Seattle. I’d found Danny while shopping online for guitars. Both Heart and Nirvana bought instruments from him. He had given me a piece of red wire from a switch on the black “Vandalism: Beautiful as a Rock in a Cop’s Face” Strat Kurt Cobain had smashed. I’d had it made into a ring, which I only took off when I boxed. Danny had donated the remains of Kurt’s guitar to Seattle’s Experience Music Project. It had been put back together by Kurt’s guitar tech, Earnie Bailey. I’d always meant to tell Nick why that guitar meant so much to me, but she’d thrown away her Nirvana T-shirt, the one with its picture, because of the blood that got on it when she was attacked.

After much consideration, I bought Melissa the Stiff Little Fingers Complete John Peel Sessions that had just been released and two Kurt Cobain calendars for myself. I knew Melissa would let me make a copy of the Complete Sessions before she kicked me to the curb, and I could use the new Kurt pictures to weep over.

As I walked back through the rounded passageways of Leicester Square station looking at graffitied MTV posters, I was so nervous my head felt numb. Melissa wasn’t home. I waited upstairs for her, sitting on Jake’s bed with the Kurt Cobain calendars in my lap, pretending I was looking at them when all I could see was Melissa’s face. When I heard her key in the lock, my heart beat so fast I felt dizzy and shut my eyes.

“Where are you?” She came upstairs, still in her beige raincoat. “What are you doing?” Melissa took off her scarf and fingerless gloves. She sat down beside me. “I was worried about you. What have you got there?”

I looked down at her heavy black shoes and dropped the Kurt Cobain calendars on the floor. Then I put a finger tentatively on the knee of her jeans, handed her the Tower Records bag and burst into tears.

“Oh my God.” Melissa put aside the plastic bag and leaned toward me. “What is it, kid?”

Whenever Melissa called me “kid” it reminded me of the Pretenders song “Kid” and always sounded affectionate. I clutched at her black jumper.

“Can’t you talk?” She put her arms around me, and I sobbed.

“You scared me to death this morning when you said we were still mates,” I mumbled into her thick sweater.

“What? I’m sorry, love. I can’t hear you. I’m not trying to make it worse.” She lifted up my head with her hand beneath my chin. “Say it again.”

“You scared me to death when you said we were still mates,” I enunciated more carefully through my tears.

“Oh dear, is that it?” Melissa pulled her sleeve down over her hand and tried to mop my face. “I’m so, so sorry, love. Wait a minute.” She untangled herself and got off the bed. “Here.” She handed me a box of tissues.

I blew my nose and blinked at her. “I’ve got you all wet.” There was a head-sized water stain on her jumper.

“This morning,” she said softly. “That was me being awkward and unsure of our relationship. I don’t know what our relationship is. I wanted to reassure you, but I didn’t want to be presumptuous. I was sleepy, it was late, my brain wasn’t working, and I didn’t know what to say. I was afraid.” She hesitated. “I was afraid of rejection, of saying something out of order, of scaring you away. What you told me last night, love. It makes fuck all difference to me.”

I wiped my eyes with a Kleenex and looked at her doubtfully. “Are you winding me up?”

“No,” Melissa said fervently. “Honestly, I couldn’t give a toss. I knew I’d said the wrong thing as soon as I heard it coming out of my mouth.” Melissa held me out by the shoulders so she could look in my eyes. “And I wanted to say something else, something that would signify our relationship, whatever that is. But I feel uncomfortable because I haven’t been able to—well, you know. I’m so sorry that I hurt you.”

I put my head on her shoulder.

“Do you want to go back to America?” she asked.

“Are you barking mad?”

“Do you?”

“No. No, no, no. I want to stay here in England even if it means sleeping in shop doorways. Just let me come in and take a hot bath once in a while.”

“Stop being so dramatic and give up your bedsit and come live with me,” Melissa blurted out. I was shocked into silence. “Say something.”

“I’m fucking gobsmacked, Melissa.”

“It’ll make your money last longer. And it will look better for your visa application.”

“Melissa, I would love to live with you, and I’m chuffed you’d ask, but—”

“But?” Melissa’s eyes brightened, translucent like two warm pints of bitter.

“Melissa, I can’t live off you.”

Melissa started singing the X-Ray Spex song “I Live Off You.”

“But I can’t.”

“Why shouldn’t you?” Melissa insisted. “It’s not even an added cost. I’ve already got the flat, and there’s plenty of room. I won’t support you. You can pay for your own food and contribute to household expenses. The only difference’ll be you won’t pay rent for a bedsit which you’re never in anymore anyway.”

My heart swelled with gratitude and joy. “But you just said you don’t even know what our relationship is yet. I don’t want to spoil it by moving too fast.”

“We won’t. You can have your own space in Jake’s room, come and go as you like. Things will be exactly the same as they are now except you won’t go skint paying rent, you won’t be cold, and we’ll be flatmates. If Harriet says it’s best, will you?”

“I can’t just move in with you because it’s convenient. Can I? Has Harriet rung you yet?”

“Not yet. Don’t you think I would have said?” Melissa rested her cheek on top of my head. “You know, love, I was really gutted by what you’d been through. And I’m a bit gutted you thought it could make any difference to me.”

“Telling someone you’re crazy can be a big deal,” I said. “It wasn’t anything negative about you.”

Melissa roughed up my hair. “You’re not mad. Your lift is only stuck on the ground floor, remember?”

“Aren’t you going to look at your present?”

“A pressie? For me?” Melissa opened the Tower Records bag and pulled out the CD. “The Complete John Peel Sessions. Oh, cheers, love. Nice one. This is brilliant.”

“I figured you’d let me make a copy of it,” I murmured, feeling glittery inside because she liked it.

“Silly git. You won’t need a copy of it. Not if you move in here with me.”

That night as we lay in bed kissing, the turntable in my head played “Just the Wine” by Heart. I felt Melissa so deeply even my feet trembled. I knew she wasn’t ready for sex, so I tried squashing my desire just a little. I touched her breast lightly through the material of her T-shirt and shuddered. She put her hand on my breast, and I moaned softly, unable to help myself.

Melissa felt me shifting my feet uncomfortably. “Is anything the matter, love?”

“You are so sexy I think I’m going to burst.”

She blushed.

In a raspy voice, I recited what I’d heard Patti Smith say during her rendition of “Gloria” in a 1979 concert I’d recently listened to. “‘Oh, I would like to see you some morning. I would like to talk this over very sincere. Maybe we could meet in this life or after . . . There was only one layer covering the garden. I don’t know when we’ll get there again.’”

Melissa sighed deeply, and I could feel her body giving way to mine, moving more deeply into me. And I thought, we’ve got to get back into that garden.