The soreness in my shoulder had dwindled to a dull ache, and I was playing guitar again. I dipped the large headstock of my Super-Sonic, swinging it around as I played “Working for the Jihad.” I was using the Super-Sonic as my backup guitar and had a custom pickguard made for it out of the same pattern as the Fender pink-paisley guitars. The design was bright pink and green on a silver-sparkle background. When I put it on my guitar, it looked psychedelic and overwhelmingly glorious.
“I’m glad to see you playing again. I missed that.” Melissa was curled up on the settee reading a medical journal.
Putting down my guitar, I signed onto eBay to relax and scrolled through photos of blue, solid-body electric guitars. I had an obsession with them and felt I could be trusted just to look. But I accidentally fell in love with a Lake Placid blue “Partscaster” Strat, a Mexican Standard Strat body with a vibrant finish, tortoiseshell pickguard, black pickup covers, black control knobs, Protone rosewood neck from Korea, no wear on the frets, individual tuners and pickups from a left-handed guitar. Instinctively I knew it was meant for me, so my immediate impulse was to buy it. But I didn’t have enough money.
Melissa, finished with her article, stood behind me. She slid her reading glasses down her nose and peered over the top of them at the computer. “That’s lovely.”
I bid what I could afford, but my bid was rejected as being too low.
Nick came by around teatime to tell me I had to stop waiting for a band to come along. She put an acoustic guitar in my hands and said, “Think of yourself as The Indigo Girl.”
I rehearsed my songs on the acoustic guitar and figured out ways to sing them solo that still incorporated some of my harmonic ideas. At the first pub I played in, the audience consisted of two white women in their fifties with enormous, bleached-blond hair. They wore tiny black dresses and go-go boots. Once I pulled out the chair and sat down with my guitar in my lap, I felt okay. I adjusted one microphone for my guitar and one for my vocals. I liked the way my guitar and voice came out sounding big. I hadn’t let Melissa accompany me because I was too nervous, but Nick stood at the back of the pub, nodding her head in approval while I played. It felt different from busking, more on purpose, more intense.
About two weeks later, a box addressed to Melissa arrived. When she came home she said, “Open it. It’s for you.”
“For me?” I hopped up and down. There was another more slender box inside the first one, and it had the Fender logo on it. I pulled out a black Fender gig bag. “Oh my God,” I said.
“Go on,” Melissa said, smiling at me.
I unzipped the bag, and inside was my guitar in totally riveting, almost shocking, blue.
Melissa said, “It’s bloody gorgeous.”
“But how?” I picked up the guitar and held it in my lap. The smooth body curved into me just right.
“I knew how much you wanted that guitar. So I bought it for you.”
“How much?”
“One hundred and twenty-five pounds.”
“That’s good. But—”
“Because I wanted to.” Melissa put her arms around me and kissed the top of my head. “And because I could.”
The neck was fast and perfect for my hands. “Playing a guitar with a great neck is like touching a beautiful woman,” I said. “This plays better than those Strats that cost a bomb.” And that night, I moved all three electric guitars, the Gibson SG, Super-Sonic, and Partscaster, into the bedroom.
At my second gig, I played in a pub to one person with his back to me playing darts. Finally I coaxed Nick, who had a Mick-Jones-like singing voice, into learning the harmonies to my songs. I taught her the rest of the bass lines she didn’t know, and she picked them up quickly. “Shite, you’re a natural,” I praised her. She developed her own melodic, Pete-Farndon-early-Pretenders-esque bass style.
We started performing songs together on both acoustic and electric guitar. It was reassuring to look over at Nick, her shaggy dark hair in her face, while I played. She swung the cream-colored bass around and paced the stage in her red-and-black T-shirt that said, “Anyone Can Be a Sex Pistol but You’re All Too Fucking Lazy.” I amped in the sampler for the beats, reminding myself that Echo and the Bunnymen had started out with a drum machine and Ann and Nancy Wilson had used one on their solo tour.
I loved doing my old song “Automatic Rifle Dance” with her. I’d written a melodic, beautiful bass line for it and a wild electric-guitar lead. And I wallowed in the harmonies when Nick was singing with me.
Get ready get ready get ready get ready
get ready see you in paradise
I’ve found everyone but Abu Nidal
Hamas, Hezbollah, the IRA
Loyalist Paramilitary, USA
when there’s a bomb in Portadown
get out of town
when bricks fly thick through the Belfast sky
hug the ground.
We put up ads for a drummer in music shops and live-music venues. Sometimes we played under different names, like Sudanese Pharmacy, Baghdad Triage, It’s Raining Bastards, the Water Boarders, Hen and Radio Teeth. We had as much fun coming up with band names as we did writing lyrics together. It was heaven playing music with my best mate.
“We’re in a band,” I said to Nick. “That’s the same as being married.”
Nick smiled. “But not in a heterosexual way.”
“No, of course not. Don’t take anything I say heterosexually.”
“And Melissa won’t mind?”
“No,” I said. “We have an open relationship that includes you.”
After one of our sparsely attended pub gigs, a woman approached us as we were packing up our gear and asked if we needed a drummer. Nick was rolling up the guitar and bass cords while I was unplugging my effects pedals and putting them in a case. I looked up and Nick walked over. The woman looked about twenty-five, with black curls bleached to a burnt orange and dyed purple and a pierced nose.
“I’m Adele.” She shook our hands soberly. “I saw your advert a while back and decided to check you out.”
I pulled the black-and-white ACT UP bandana out of my back pocket and wiped my sweaty hair.
“I like your songs. Kind of feminist, yeah? Political lyrics. I’m into that. Poly Styrene is kind of my muse, like,” Adele named the front-woman for X-Ray Spex. “She’s kind of my archetype, you know. The archetypal feminist punk. She’s also of mixed race. Like me. Somali and British.”
“I don’t know what your sexuality is, right?” Nick said. “But we’re a lesbian band. Do you have a problem with that?”
“I’m bisexual.” Adele had smooth, dark skin and high cheekbones. “I don’t care what you do in bed. Are you two—?” she gestured, asking if we were a couple, and Nick shook her head. “As long as personal drama stays at a minimum in the band, I honestly don’t give a fuck.”
Adele lived in Brixton but kept her drum kit at her mum’s house in Islington because she didn’t have room for it in her one-room flat. We arranged for Adele to bring over her snare drum and hi-hat cymbals to Melissa’s flat the following day just to give us a taste of what she could do.
“If we play anywhere that doesn’t have a PA system and have to bring our own amps, we’re fucked,” Nick said above the noise of the tube train as we rode home. “Your Vox amp alone will barely fit in Melissa’s car. The instruments won’t fit at all with us in it. We’ll have to hire a van.”
By the time we reached the flat, Melissa was asleep. I knew she had an early start the next morning, so Nick and I took our tea and biscuits into her room. We sat up on Nick’s bed half the night talking about our show, speculating about Adele and working on some song ideas. I ended up falling asleep right there beside her.
In the afternoon, Nick and I waited for Adele to come, listening to a southern California punk band called the Scarred because Nick liked the female drummer. Adele showed up in her mum’s car with her drum and cymbals. She put a silencer on her snare and a mute on her hi-hat so she wouldn’t make too much noise.
We were playing in the sitting room, me on acoustic guitar and Nick with the bass turned down low. Adele smacked her snare drum and cymbals, banging out the beat to a new song I’d just written and wanted to try out called “Pour.”
“It’s a top fucking tune, that,” Nick said when we finished. “Is it about Melissa?”
Just then Meilssa walked in and I blushed. I kissed Melissa and introduced her to Adele. Melissa went into the kitchen to get something to eat. She sat and listened to us for a while then went upstairs.
Adele was a good drummer and we quickly decided to take her on. She had the finesse of Chad Channing from the first Nirvana album. I’d always loved that album best. She could hit hard but was also delicate, and I thought she’d work well with my music. She was versatile and could play in different styles. We made plans to meet up in Islington later that week. Adele said we could practice temporarily in her mum’s garage until we sorted out a proper place to rehearse.
When it got a bit late and I thought Melissa might be trying to sleep, we ended up drinking multiple cups of tea and discussing how to get a rehearsal space where we could play at full volume with the entire drum kit. Adele used to have a place in Camden Town with her old band, Menstrual Palace. Just like the Clash, I thought. This is a dream. This is my dream.
“You coming, mate?” Nick called from the door. She and Adele were going to continue their discussion of favorite tunes and rehearsal opportunities down the pub.
“Naw, you go on, mate. I’m going to spend some time with Melissa.”
“Alright, luv. Be back later.” She helped Adele carry her gear out to the car.
I washed up, brushed my teeth, and went into the bedroom. Melissa was reading Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. I thought she’d like it because of the way Gertrude Stein talks about all the painters she knew, like Picasso and Matisse, and their paintings. I got in next to her.
“This part about Gertrude Stein being bored in medical school is so funny,” Melissa said, putting the book on the night table. She was wearing a red-and-black flannel nightshirt. I had on a pair of knickers and my “I Was Arrested By A Lesbian Cop” T-shirt that one of the ACT UP blokes had made up especially for me and my ACT UP friend Margaret because of the way we used to taunt the lines of riot police. “So, you’ve got a new drummer then? You sounded tight. I can’t wait until I get to hear you loud. Nick sounds brilliant on bass and backing vocals. Are you going to start letting me come see you play? I’d really like to, you know. Or would you be too nervous?”
“I think I’ll be okay now. I feel bolder with a band behind me. You look knackered.”
“It was a long day.” She took off her round, tortoiseshell reading glasses and rubbed her eyes.
“What’s the matter?” I caressed her soft, tartan sleeve.
“Oh, I had to examine a rape victim today. Something meant for pleasure just shouldn’t be used as torture.”
“I just want to kiss you until all your bad feelings go away. You know, like I’m sucking out the poison after you’ve been bitten by a snake.”
“Oh my God, you’re not going to start rabbiting on about the bloody Garden of Eden again, are you?” Melissa gave me a humorous look.
“Well . . .” I shrugged, about to say something poignant about the serpent and bring up Lilith, the lesbian in midrashic literature who came before Eve and refused to have sex with Adam. But before I could, she kissed me deeply, pulling me into her lap.
“Melissa,” I said, when we paused, “your latest paintings are incredible.” She’d finished her series of acrylic paintings about rape. One of her paintings was a study in Gauguin-like pink, and all were unified by the thick, passionate texture of her brushstrokes. “I’ve been thinking about it, and if I ever get the chance to play real gigs where people actually turn up to see us on purpose, I want you to come with me.”
“Well, of course, I’d love to. If I can.”
“No, I mean I want you as the other act, like the support band. Not that you’re in a supporting role to me or anyone. But I want people to see your paintings. It’s time,” I insisted, as she started to protest, “for you to show your work. And not just to me. It’s brilliant, man. I mean it. And I’m not just saying that because I want to shag you,” I teased her. “I want you to take a break from your practice and work as an artist for a while. You’re really good, Melissa. Would you do the artwork for my albums? Even if I have to make, release, and distribute them myself?”
“That’s a promise,” Melissa said. Soon our knickers were on the floor. Then I was kissing her inner thighs while she shivered, and I couldn’t think of anything else except moving more deeply into the center of her.