Swan Songs, page 21
She paused and considered her words before answering. “Not exactly,” she said, taking a thoughtful breath of air. “I, I wasn’t supposed to be but I just couldn’t do it.”
I knew what she meant. “Didn’t want to disappear into thin air nah? I don’t blame you like,” I shrugged.
She wiped away the tears forming in the corners of her eyes and shook her head.
“So, er, what happened to the Tamara from this reality?” I wondered, feeling slightly more at ease, willing to consider the possibility that she may not actually be an assassin sent to kill me on behalf of those Bestard bastards.
Tamara was from a different point on the line. She jumped here with Tamara Number Thirty-something and was edging closer to her end. Although if you asked a different Tamara, they might have attempted to convince you it was not really the end, as they will live on through all the other Tamaras. But whatever, those Tamaras were irrelevant now, this Tamara just didn’t want to go through with it.
She let her line-hopping companion jump into the square-shaped black hole first before stepping back and coldly resting her hand on the shoulder of this reality’s Tamara to comfort her. “I’ll be right behind you,” she whispered, giving her a gentle nudge. She of course didn’t keep her word. The black hole vanished after a couple of minutes and she put a regular sim card into the thingy-doodah and used it as a phone. The one thing that definitely did remain the same was our signing-on times.
“So,” I cocked my head, crossed my arms and held my chin, “what was I like in your original reality? Am I as good a rapper as I am in this one and that?”
Tamara laughed quietly at my question. “Yea,” she said, “you are, you’re pretty much exactly the same to be honest.”
That was good, I thought. Leonard Swanson is a strong character.
I edged closer to her, “Well I’m sorry you like… killed yourself… or selves, err… but yeah, I mean, I’m just glad you weren’t sent by PEEPHOLE, that’s what I thought,” I said with an exaggerated sigh of relief.
“PEEPHOLE?” she enquired.
I stopped to study her face, to check for subtle clues, was this was a genuine clueless response and not just an act by a really good undercover agent? My mind made itself up for me, I decided she really was as clueless as she looked and I told her everything: the blurry-faced green bastards, my brief foray into the world of GENPHARM and subsequent discovery of what they were really up to, concluding with my paid Rich VIII aka V3 collaboration in order to rent the flat we were in.
“V3?!” she suddenly piped up, “Wow.”
“Wow?” I asked, tone dipping an octave, unsure whether offence was to be taken.
“Well you never got to collaborate with V3 in my former reality!” she said smiling, impressed.
“Hold on, what? You know V3? You do know he’s the spoilt-rich little blurry-faced green fucker that tried to steal my identity right?”
“Oh, so there’s still some things that are the same,” and there was no longer a tear in sight, at least not a sad one. My outburst was humorous to her and it frustrated me.
“This happened in your reality too?”
“Well, my former reality’s Leonard used to go mad if I played any of V3’s music, ‘fuck that guy, he bit my whole style,’” she said, mimicking my voice and throwing her arms around.
Her impression was terrible and I tutted loudly. “Bit my fucking style? Well, I’ve never heard him rap like, but he stole my beats man! I mean, he literally stole them, same samples and everything! The guy was living in my head for… well, for God knows how long… but… yeah, I mean, he was fully about to take over my body, like full control, leaving his own useless wart-ridden shell behind!” I said, remembering I had very nearly lost myself.
Back to Church.
One day I woke up and Tamara had gone. I creeped out and knocked next door but someone that definitely wasn’t her answered. I played it off as though I had knocked to welcome them to the building and they looked at me through their empty stranger’s eyes and told me they’d been there for a while but thanked me anyway. Deflated, I took a single side step to my flat and went inside. “Tamara,” I whispered under my breath. I felt sad that she had disappeared and hoped it wasn’t literally into thin air. Maybe that’s what happens to all of us eventually?
I managed to drag myself to the odd show with DJ Sadsack and at some point a small record label was stupid enough to release some of my old songs on vinyl. As far as I know the majority of the fine wax discs are still in boxes in some cold storage unit somewhere collecting dust. The company definitely did disappear into thin air before I got paid in full. Attempts to hunt down and kill those responsible were in vain as I gave up hope before I even left my flat to find them.
Time was mostly spent deep in a sort of surface-level meditation I had invented. A spliff would be rolled and puffed on, a can drunk — the usual. If there was an effect I had desired, it surely wouldn’t have been to intermittently draw a blank, mid-thought, causing me to constantly have to wade through the darkness, re-filling the blank canvas of my mind with colourful illustrative works of fiction. Themes ranged from the creation of my future classic rap album to the release of my future classic rap album. But outside my head I had failed to make any major progress.
Eventually, London had decided it would attempt to force me into a job for the privilege of living in it. So, before the inevitable, I packed up my things and headed for the hills. Back to Church Town I went, where I played the same trick I had pulled on the capital. Only this time, rather than use a hostel for my address, I used my mum’s house, where I was allowed to stay on a very temporary basis, providing I chipped in half of my dole towards rent and the odd egg and chips.
At some point I received another email from the drunk publisher. He told me my story was good but he ended on a “but,” after which read something along the lines of “perhaps you could write something more personal? Something about your music career maybe?” I feel like he wrote “music career” in quotation marks but perhaps that is just my insecurities getting the better of me, and to check would require more energy than I am willing to exude at this moment. I guess I can come back and edit this part at a later date but I probably won’t do that either. Anyway, he seemed besotted with the idea of my music career being the subject of my first foray into real writing, firmly believing this was something the people would be interested in.
I don’t know who “the people” he was referring to were and I don’t care what they are interested in. But I do admit, it was at that point I decided to write everything you have just read. If I can’t make this album, I can at least write about making it!
The only way I could see to prevent this potential greatest book of all time from suffering the same fate as my album was to simply write the words “fuck it” and leave it at that. The problem is, these words I am writing now mean that the plan has failed. I could delete them all but it wouldn’t seem right; there are too many loose ends that need to be left untied while I move on blindly into the mysteries that lie ahead.
It is now the day after I wrote about my failure to end the book. The reason I decided to keep going is because sometime between then and writing this, I received a voicemail from Big John. He was a free man again and, via some sort of tiny feathered beast, had heard I was back in Church Town. He told me he had a friend looking for a housemate over in Liverpool. It was more a friend of a friend but a friend of a friend of Big John’s is a friend of a friend of a friend of mine. I got in touch with this distant acquaintance and agreed to take the room right there over the phone.
And I know I should probably end the book here in case something bad happens preventing me from finishing it but I hate goodbyes.
Jay.
The bus pulled into the stop I was to alight at. “Nice one,” I said to the bus driver as I hopped onto the pavement. The day was bright and the air was thick with pollen. Opposite the bus stop was the address I had written down on the piece of paper in my hand. I waited for a break in the traffic and ran across with my trusty holdall bouncing up and down on my back.
32 Stanley Road — a black door sandwiched between an old bookshop that opened once in a blue moon and an abandoned salon. On my tip-toes I rang the bell looking through the half-moon window into the enclosed staircase. “Come on, come on,” I hit the bell again and again. The door at the top of the stairs flung open and a body came tumbling down.
“Come in!” said Jay enthusiastically, hugging me like an old friend.
“OK,” I said as he patted me on the back, turning to lead me up the stairs.
“Close the door, make sure it’s shut properly,” he shouted. I glanced back idly. He held the door open at the top and I stepped in.
“Nice one laa,” I thanked him and looked up and down the hallway.
He locked the door with the key already in the keyhole.
“Don’t move this key from this door, OK?” he said with a sudden seriousness.
I told him I understood and awaited further instruction.
“Right then, OK, so!” he said, his previous enthusiasm returning. “Kitchen down there, bathroom there, my room there, empty room there, and your room, up there,” he said, pointing in various directions, ending on another set of stairs, which led from the first floor to my new room. Jay decided not to burden me with choice and I decided to go with it. “It’s a loft conversion, you can basically make as much noise as you want up there, no neighbours on either side,” he said and we both nodded. His accent sounded old, like how I imagined Scousers in the 60’s spoke. Like one of The Beetles slowing down their speech to make it easier for their American interviewer to understand them.
He was older than me by a few years, a tall fella with a round face that seemed constantly flustered, with curls of black hair that hung down from beneath his tight beanie hat like tangled black vines.
Jay stepped into his bedroom, which was directly in front of the door at the top of the ground floor staircase. Why Jay chose a single mattress on the floor of the smallest room in the flat was beyond my realm of understanding, especially seeing as right next door to his room was a much larger room with a king-size bed in it.
“Come in,” he said and I followed him in and stood next to his open door, clutching my bag, waiting for Jay to finish. In the room, aside from the single mattress, was a plastic foldable chair doubling as a bedside table, on top of which was a retrostyle alarm clock. A solitary, fading old photograph was stuck to the wall above his mattress with a thumbtack. I assumed the person in the photograph was his mum, although I never asked and he never said.
Jay’s face drooped a little as he pulled off his hat and he knelt down and folded it neatly on top of his pillow and smiled to himself. Then he picked up the alarm clock and sat down on the chair in its place. “Take a seat,” he said. I looked around the room, unsure as to where. There was nothing else in the room except the built-in wardrobes opposite. I opted for the edge of the mattress, as close to the open door as I could sit, holdall still hauled over my back.
Jay placed the alarm clock in his lap and sat with his hands clasped together and leant forward, looking at me directly in the eyes like a sociopath. I looked away. I don’t do well with eye contact and I am certain those that bask in it are psychopathic. He let me know that he had heard my stuff and thought I was a decent rapper but I needed a DJ and that he was a DJ but he didn’t want to be my DJ because he thought DJs were dickheads. “Yeah,” I agreed, even though I had no opinions on the matter. I let him continue on with his rant and thought it best I didn’t mention the talented but obnoxiously unsad DJ Sadsack.
I quickly discovered Jay’s knack for switching topics mid-conversation, as halfway through name-dropping a local DJ he despised, he rose to his feet, declaring the next topic. “Football,” he said. His serious demeanour waned. “See the game?” he asked, to which I replied, “Yeah.” But that was as deep as he delved into the topic of football and he sat back down, re-clasped his hands and asked me if I had any issues better left unsaid.
“Er,” I muttered, unsure of how to respond.
“Hmm,” he said, looking at the alarm clock in his lap. “Right, I’m going to bed anyway,
I’m up early.” He took off his long black trench coat and hung it up in his wardrobe and turned to draw the single red and white curtain that looked like it would have been more suited in a 1950s kitchen. “Cool,” I said and I left him to it.
It was still some time in the afternoon, no sort of time for a man to be sleeping, I thought. I came to discover, although he appeared as though he was not all there, that Jay was deceptively quick, and not just in wit. His pace appeared lazy and lumbered to the eye, a deception spoiled the first time I was forced to keep up with him, taking two or three strides for his every one. He owned one large blue puffer jacket and three outfits, all of which were identical. Ill-fitting blue jeans and plain black T-shirts; his awkward frame made his clothes look both too big and too small.
On first impression, I didn’t envy his ability to make me feel sane, and felt as though that could become a problem. At first though, I was relieved to have somewhere I could potentially start making music again. I remember feeling particularly optimistic as I reached the top of the stairs to my new, doorless room. Fuck it, maybe I would even quit giving up on the making of the greatest rap album of all time, I naively pondered.
The room, which was bigger than my entire flat in London, contained a king-size mattress which lay in the middle of the floor with no bedding and shoved under the sloping wall at an angle was a dining table with a single wooden chair tucked under it.
On the opposite side of the room was a large window with no curtains. Out of it I could see a busy main road with replica bus stops either side. Over the road stood an old church next door to a garage. There were several burly men with their heads tucked into car engines, shouting over their own banging tools and the sound of pop music blaring out of a very loud yet very small radio. I could hear their indistinct, muffled chatter over the music, even with the window closed.
That night I lay on the mattress using a couple of hoodies as a pillow and a coat as a cover. The evening was warm and eventually I swapped the coat for air.
On my little unbranded mp3 player, my own beats looped around and around all night, providing the slow plodding original soundtrack to my forgotten dreams. And in the morning I tugged my earphones out of my skull and listened to the birds fighting to be heard over the sound of the busses that pulled into the bus stops. I imagined the people outside on their way to work and it made me shudder and I put my earphones back in and turned the volume up to drown it all out.
Jay was kind enough to give me a few weeks to figure out my money situation. He told me the previous tenant had covered the first month’s rent and won’t be asking for it back any time soon. The deposit was also covered for the same reason. That’s all I ever knew of the situation; I knew there was a reason but Jay never delved deeper than “because they were bellends” and I chose not to pursue it any further than that. For whatever happened, was none of my business.
Temporary Puppet.
I made a few minor adjustments to the trick that I used in London and put it into action in Liverpool. Before long I had transferred my Jobseekers claim and secured housing benefits, this time with the added bonus of a back payment. With my first rent paid up I used the back payment money on essentials, such as a computer, an old second-hand turntable and a DJ mixer.
I purchased the turntable from a pawn shop, imagining the previous owner as I slugged their former prized possession back to my new flat. Some poor lost soul who had given up on their dreams and skipped town in embarrassment. The very least they wanted was respect as a small time Liverpool hip-hop DJ. But instead all they received was a pelting of mockery and scorn at the hands of real DJs like Jay. Real DJs that were too real to even engage in the practice of their craft.
Turntable under my arm, the plug bouncing up the stairs behind me, I burst into the flat to discover Jay standing outside of his bedroom. The back of his head was pressed against his bedroom door. His eyes were fixed on the jaundiced skirting board running along the bottom of the wall opposite, quietly furious with some invisible irritant. I waved my spare hand in front of him but got nothing.
“You got a mixer for that?” He suddenly asked as I was halfway up the stairs to my room.
“No,” I answered.
“Sound,” he said and left.
I placed the turntable on the crooked dining table and sat down on my mattress. Taking a small swig of cheap vodka from a quarter-litre glass bottle, I grimaced in disgust. I took a furious pull on a cigarette and studied its brown, speckled filter between my finger and thumb as I exhaled. And I suddenly felt as though the cigarette was killing me in real time. I mean, anybody that smokes is at least acutely aware of this apparent fact, but there is a certain wilful ignorance a smoker develops, if they were not born with it. For whatever reason, in that moment, my protective shield of conscious delusion had disappeared.
Suddenly the room got hotter, my skin felt as though it was burning. I pulled at my loose T-shirt, which felt tight around the collar, like it was choking me. I jumped to my feet and tore it off. Words I can’t recall rushed out of my mouth and dissipated into the ether. I ran to the window and opened it. I wanted to climb out onto the sloping roof and launch myself into the trees but I was too shaky and weak to pull myself up.
Cold sweat dripped from my armpits and trickled down my sides. Overcome with the sudden urge to flee, I turned and ran down the stairs from my room to the first floor. In the hallway I stopped and the walls were pulsating so I continued, running down the ground floor stairs skipping three or four steps at a time, throwing my hands out in front of me to stop myself at the bottom. The road was busy with fast-moving traffic, my vision spiralled into a blur and I had to concentrate to refocus them. My eyeballs felt too big for my skull and my mind felt crowded. I couldn’t tell whether the noise that suddenly engulfed me was coming from inside or outside my head. Either way, I slapped my hands over my ears and retreated, making my way back up the stairs.
