Finally, with Melissa’s sponsorship, help from Harriet, and advice from the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group, I managed to cohabitate with Melissa for the requisite two years and was granted indefinite leave to remain, permission to stay in the UK as her partner. Scratchella was still interested, and we made plans to record our first album in Germany, and then go on a short European tour that the label would promote. Melissa, who hadn’t been on holiday in ages, arranged to take time off from work to join us.
We had about a month before leaving for Germany. “Now you can go to your sister’s wedding,” Melissa said.
My stomach lurched and I had a feeling of dread. “Will you go with me?”
“Can’t,” she said, giving me a wistful, sympathetic smile. “Not if I’m traipsing around Europe with Lesbian Raincoat.”
I decided a week away from Melissa and Nick was all I could tolerate. I could already feel my OCD revving up as I contemplated spending time without them. At least the wedding coincided opportunely with Patti Smith’s current American tour and I got two tickets to see her in Los Angeles. My sister wasn’t leaving on her honeymoon right away, and I thought she’d go with me. I wished Melissa could come. We hadn’t gone to see Patti in London at the Union Chapel in 2002 or in 2003 at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire because we’d been too consumed by our own lives, as ridiculous as that sounds. But I’d downloaded those shows later on both audio and video. In Shepherd’s Bush, Patti Smith called for the abolishment of George W. Bush’s government and indicted him for crimes against humanity. It was her voice that got me through the Bush regime.
Carefully I picked out the CDs that would protect me on my trip and keep the plane aloft. These included live early Nirvana with Chad Channing on drums, live pre-1982 Pretenders, late-seventies Heart, and recording sessions from various Oasis albums. I was still trying to sing like Liam. Melissa drove me to Heathrow. I carried the Takamine with me in a neon-pink Dickies backpack guitar case of Jake’s. I tuned down the strings so they wouldn’t snap on the plane with changes in air pressure.
“How do you feel about seeing your family after all this time?” Melissa asked on the way to Heathrow.
“I don’t think I can regress too far in a week,” I said.
“Individuate,” Melissa said, and smiled.
My OCD kicked in, telling me not to leave. Now that I was finally happy, it would be awful to die too soon. Getting on a plane seemed like I was pushing my luck. But I couldn’t think of a rational reason—besides the obvious one that humans aren’t meant to fly—not to get on the plane. As I said goodbye to Melissa and headed for international departures, I felt my thoughts accelerate, all the old fears rising up.
As I waited for my plane to board, I listened to Killing Joke’s powerful 2003 CD, with Dave Grohl on drums, which raged against American empire building. I’d wanted an orange jumpsuit and black hood to wear on the plane to protest extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay, the use of torture, and CIA black sites, but contented myself with a bright orange sweatshirt on which I’d stenciled, “America Tortures—Get It Through Your Thick F**king Head and Rise Up.” I didn’t spell out the word “fucking” in case there were kids on the plane. I didn’t want anyone to be able to use obscenity as an excuse to tell me to take it off. With my regular anxiety and less oxygen circulating in the plane’s cabin, I didn’t think I’d do well with my face covered anyway. Airplanes are not good places for panic attacks. I sat and looked at the photos I’d brought along of Melissa and Nick and the three of us together and wanted to run screaming out of the airport.
My sister picked me up at LAX wearing large, assertive diamond earrings that made her whole head sparkle when she turned to talk to me. I didn’t like being back in post–Patriot Act America and immediately felt oppressed. “Don’t you think you’re being a little oversensitive?” my sister asked.
“Frankly, no,” I said.
After over two years, everybody’s American accent seemed ridiculously exaggerated, and my own accent was a source of amusement. I’d left my soul behind in England and missed Melissa and Nick so much it was a physical ache. Away from them, not hearing their voices, my OCD became more pronounced, and I looked forward to a week of ritualistic sentence repetition.
I was relieved when the ordeal of the wedding was over. Many of the guests were adorned in real furs and diamonds, and I had to keep mentally telling myself to shut up. I get uncomfortable in large herds of straight white people with money, and after two years of really coming into myself, I had even fewer adaptive social skills than usual. When the customs agent asked if I had anything to declare upon entering the United States, I should have said, “Yes, I have a really big mouth.” I desperately wanted to confront the women in fur and only contained myself by imagining Melissa and Chrissie Hynde crashing the wedding with cans of red spray paint. When I say “contained myself,” I mean I wasn’t as bad as I should have been.
I’d never been a huge fan of weddings—government and religion in the bedroom, the traffic in women—especially if gay people didn’t possess the same civil rights. I felt an appropriate wedding vow for women would be, “I do promise to be chattel.” I remembered how Melissa had automatically equated my sister’s engagement ring with blood diamonds and reminded myself there was a place on earth where I was considered sane.
Because my sister was still engaged with out-of-town guests for several days after the wedding, my dad, who listened to classical music his entire life and only evinced disinterest and distress when hearing rock and roll, volunteered to go to Los Angeles with me to see the Godmother of Punk so I wouldn’t have to go alone. I was excited we would be sharing such an unexpected, intimate and earth-shattering experience together.