‘I’m not going back,’ I whispered under my breath.
Carl didn’t say anything and continued looking out the window at the grey, fusty drizzle. His eyes were all puffy from the early morning start.
‘I’m not going back,’ I said again, this time a little louder.
‘What?’ he said.
I stood up, pressed the stop button and picked up my bag. The tram shuddered to a halt. As the doors swung open I jumped into the freezing cold morning.
A strange combination of exhilaration and terror.
Then my feet took control. Leading me across the road, onto the pavement and back towards where we’d come from.
‘I’m not going back. No, not me, not going back to London,’ I muttered shaking my head as I took each step.
People walking past shot me the odd strange look but I didn’t hold their attention for long. Foreigners gibbering to themselves were a regular sight in Amsterdam and usually the victims of the extra strong space cake specially set aside for them by the sadistic coffee shop owners. A popular Dutch sport was to watch these poor, pathetic tourists (usually English) gurning, crying, ruing the day they had ever been born and eventually sitting next to a canal staring mournfully into their bag of Belgian chips with satay sauce.
Some never got home and ended up wandering behind Central Station, hollow-eyed and skinny.
The industrial strength space cake had robbed them of their soul.
I shuddered as I thought of them and continued walking back in the direction of Carl’s flat.
‘What’s this all about?’ Carl demanded. We were both back at the flat now. I could see he didn’t share my enthusiasm for moving in with him.
‘You can’t expect me to support you Lola, I’m hardly able to support myself right now.’
‘What about the studio? They pay you don’t they?’
‘Yes but it’s a pittance. Not enough for the two of us,’ Carl replied pacing up and down.
His world had been turned upside down by a stubborn seventeen year old.
I stayed quiet for a bit, drawing my knees up to my chest and rocking myself back and forth on the one piece of conventional furniture in the flat; a black leather chair. There was a cigarette burn in the arm which I picked at with my fingernail.
The calm resolution of earlier had now been replaced with misery. I started to cry, the tears coming freely and rolling down my cheek onto my lap.
Nobody loves me.
Everyone hates me.
I’m going down the garden to eat worms.
I hoped this display of misery would soften Carl. Make me look mysterious like one of the beauties in a Botticelli painting.
Botticelli was one of Carl’s favourite artists and on our first date he had given me a small pocketbook of his paintings.
On one of them he’d scrawled a romantic note ‘I dream of you.’
I slyly peeked sideways into the small 50’s mirror that was glued to the wall.
I was disappointed.
Red eyes, long parsnip nose and blonde hair with nasty black roots. Hair that stuck out at right angles to my head.
Nancy Spungeon.
No renaissance beauty.
Nevertheless my tears seemed to be doing something and Carl came over and put his arm around me. He smelt of Drakaar Noir and tobacco.
‘ Listen, why don’t you just stop crying for a bit eh?’ he said, wiping the tears from underneath my eyes with his thumb.
‘I’ll make us both a nice cup of tea.’
I nodded and sniffed.
Maybe I wouldn’t go and eat worms after all.
Tea would be nice.
Carl was already Anglicised enough to realise that tea was the English solution for any type of crisis. He’d gleaned this partly from me and from watching re-runs of ‘Terry And June’ on Dutch cable.
I studied him as he reached up and got two battered mugs from the cupboard. As usual, his trousers were too short. His sister Gertie, who lived in the south of Holland, was a keen tailor but for some reason believed he was four inches shorter than he really was. With the result that his delicate and rather feminine ankles were always on show.
But this hadn’t been what attracted me to him at first.
His hair grew upwards giving him the appearance of someone hurtling at high speed on the Big Dipper and his style ran independent to anything that was fashionable at the time.
His clothes were Gothic and his paisley cravat a nod to the 19th century dandy.
But this hadn’t been what attracted me to him either.
He was the only man I knew who wore green eyeliner. The only man who had both ears pierced. The only man I knew who used dry shampoo that came in a can.
What was it that had attracted me to him?
Carl turned and handed me a steamy hot mug of tea, his light green eyes smiling despite his attempt to look serious.
I didn’t know what it was but I knew I was in love with him.
Twelve years my senior Carl had been at the forefront of the New Romantic and Goth musical movement and a keyboard player in the well known Dutch New Wave band;’ The Clan of the Secret Scribe’. The band had been very successful particularly in Germany and America and Carl had the bags of fan mail to prove it. Including one woman in Mexico who had sent him an envelope full of her pubic hair. Another had sent him a set of antique crucifixes which he had hanging over his bed. But it had all finished badly. The lead singer Bob van Veen had taken much of the credit for the song writing, there had been a falling out about royalties and there was no love lost between them.
We’d met at the ‘Wag Club’ in London. I was freshly permed, wearing British Knights and black Lycra. Carl was trying to get a new record contract and staying with a friend in Shepherds Bush. Despite the age gap between us, Carl was 29 and I was 17, I quickly realised that Carl shared my teenage taste for all that was melancholic; Mahler, Wagner and Ian Curtis were his idols.
His favourite book was ‘The Outsider’.
His favourite film,’ Death in Venice’.
We had a lot in common and our love affair took off quickly much to the dismay of my friends and family who hadn’t envisaged a 29 year old Gothic Dutch man as my first big paramour.
I stared into my tea cup, it looked anaemic despite the concentrated power of three bags. I then looked out the window for what felt like minutes and felt fresh tears spring into my eyes. My throat hurt.
‘Babe, you can’t stay. What about your exams? Don’t you think you should finish them first and then come back?’ he said, sipping at his tea and then beginning to pace again.
He wasn’t going to let me stay.
He was going to make me go home.
Random sad events were circling around my brain.
The time in infants school when I told Rebecca Jones to pull her pants down in front of the whole school. Then the frightened yet courageous look on her face as she asked me whether she ‘could please pull them back up again. And would I still be her friend if she did?’
The time my Dad ran over a baby deer when we were camping in the New Forest and had to go back and run it over a second time to finish it off.
The time in primary school when Lee Daniels spat in my face and called me fatty. I kicked him up the arse only to have my shoes confiscated by Mrs Green for the rest of the day and was forced to traipse around in my holey socks.
I couldn’t stop crying now and felt like I was going to be sick. A strange primitive sound was coming from my throat like a cat with its tail caught under the wheel of a car.
‘Stop that noise,’ Carl said. He came and sat on the arm of the chair and stroked the hair off my face.
‘I can’t go back,’ I said sniffing. I could see a string of watery snot hanging off the end of my nose. I wiped it on the sleeve of my black cardigan.
I wasn’t lying. I had made up my mind and I WOULD NOT GO BACK. If Carl didn’t let me live with him here in the flat, I would go and sleep outside Central Station with all the other English deadbeats. It wouldn’t be ideal but I would survive. Whatever happened I wasn’t going back there.
To London.
To 55 Great Cedars Road, Penge.
I’d burnt all my bridges behind me.
Let my homework slip.
Argued with Mum.
Argued with Dad.
Been rude to all my friends.
Who all had boyfriends called Barry or Kevin. And spent their weekends smoking joints in the back of Ford Fiesta’s or getting into fights at ‘Crystal’s’ Night club in Forest Hill.
I wanted to be with Carl, the only person that mattered. We were meant to be together.
My first proper relationship. A relationship that wasn’t based on sharing Thunderbird Blue Label and dry humping on the sofa when mum and dad were at their Buddhist meditation evening class.
Carl sighed heavily and put a ‘Dead Can Dance’ CD on.
We held hands and smoked.
The flat was a melancholy place and it felt right to play melancholy music. Situated in one of the oldest streets of Amsterdam, the houses were rickety old ruins or brand new Lego-style apartments. The area was very slowly being regenerated and rebuilt; yuppies and drug addicts lived side by side.
‘They have no character or soul,’ Carl would say sadly pointing at the new developments that were springing up all around the neighbourhood. I tended to agree. They did all look the same. Very Dutch. Very organised. Very straight. Yet painted in bright colours to give the illusion of exuberance and experimentation.
Carl’s flat had ‘character’ in spades. Our neighbours on the opposite side of the street were Hells Angels who passed the day sitting on the street corner and hurling abuse at cyclists and pedestrians alike. I owed my first Dutch phrases to these hairy- faced men, phrases including ‘klootzak’ bastard ‘Rot Op’ fuck off and ‘Sodemieter op’ a ‘spicier’ version of fuck off. Next to these ZZ Top look-alikes lived a black prostitute with a passion for outlandish wigs and outfits. Drugs had sucked the flesh from her face and body but the wigs were loud enough to distract attention from her walnut like visage. Monday- fuchsia pink with a fringe, Tuesday-tight goldilocks curls, Wednesday- a purple Afro. She would fly past our window on the back of her latest fling’s moped, clutching her wig as she went.
In the first few days of my new life she was the only entertainment I had.
That and ‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’ which was luckily also available on Dutch cable.
The flat was on the third floor and was reached by climbing up six flights of tiny wooden steps. The staircase twisted round on itself, each step measuring about 2 cm deep. Ballerinas would have no doubt welcomed the opportunity to practice ‘en pointe’ whilst mounting the tiny steps. Normal people with normal sized feet found it difficult to get up the stairs unless they hung onto the impressively thick rope which served as climbing rope and remote door opener if you were upstairs and couldn’t be bothered to come all the way down. I had learnt on the first day of my stay that the best way of mounting the tiny stairs was to drag yourself up on the rope and hope your legs would encounter a step somewhere along the way. This became more difficult when carrying big bags of shopping or furniture which was one of the reasons why the flat was minimalist before it became fashionable.
Once inside the flat, you were rewarded with a small grey L-shaped room. Not dissimilar, I imagined, to those where Death Row inmates spend their final few years. To the left a small kitchenette with hob, fridge and sink. The previous occupant had been quick tempered and/or mad and had left a legacy of dried Bolognese sauce and spaghetti stuck to the ceiling. To the right stood a sofa bed with a bizarre grey and red zig zag pattern on it, a TV and stereo system. The centre of the room housed Carl’s music equipment; his keyboard, bass guitar, drum machines and computer.
The walls were pretty much bare, aside from the crucifixes, a copy of a Da Vinci Madonna with Child and a Pixies poster.
A few hours later and the cheerful reassuring sound of the TV filled the flat. Carl now seemed resigned to the fact that I wasn’t going back to London. His choice was to deal with it or turf me out onto the street and he wouldn’t to that. A) because he loved me and B) because I was only seventeen for Lords sake.
‘You’ll just have to get a job’ he said sucking hard on a Camel Light. He looked tired. The cheese puffs under his eyes had been replaced with deep wrinkles. We had stayed up late the previous night drinking Bulgarian red and chatting about our plans for the future. But I had made the future now and Carl realised he would have been better off getting some sleep instead.
‘You better call your parents,’ he said sighing.
Surprisingly Mum didn’t react as badly as I’d imagined. I sensed she was secretly relieved to have me off her hands. Not that she was neglectful in anyway but I had become a horrible, lumpen problem teenager and spent the weeks after Carl returned to Amsterdam refusing food, crying and listening to Depeche Mode in my room with the lights turned off. My favourite greetings to my parents were ‘ I hate you’, ‘It’s not fair’ and ‘I wish I had never been born’. Eventually Mum had stolen my dirty white dressing gown from its hook in my bedroom so that I would be forced to get dressed and leave the house to go to classes.
But I wandered around the house in a pair of Dad’s old pj’s and a tattered old dressing gown eating yoghurt with a tablespoon and crying into my pillow.
Cat food adverts made me cry. Mashed potato made me cry. The sad black fighter fish that stared moodily out from the tank above the TV made me cry.
Mum was exasperated but had had to accept that I’d fallen in love with a Dutch Goth musician who lived in a seedier part of Amsterdam. Not that she would discriminate between the seedy and less seedy parts. For her the whole of Amsterdam represented a cesspit of hash smoking and sex clubs. The first time she’d funded my trip to visit Carl on the express promise that I’d study properly on my return. But when I returned after that trip nothing changed. I went back to my yoghurt encrusted dressing gown and hysterical crying.
Still I managed to convince her to let me come to Amsterdam again.
But this time I wouldn’t be coming back.
But I of course I wasn’t going to tell her that now.
‘There’s a strike Mum, all the ferries and Eurolines have gone on strike. It’ll probably last for at least a week they say’ I said.
‘I haven’t heard anything about it,’ she said suspiciously, ‘what about your mock exams, don’t they start in three weeks?’
‘No it’s four weeks and I’ll be back by then,’ I said, crossing my toes in my socks.
Carl raised his eyebrow at me.
‘Why don’t you get a flight back instead then? I can lend you the money. Your father managed to sell one of his motorcycles yesterday. I couldn’t bear it cluttering up the garden anymore… do you want me to send you some money?’.
‘No honest Mum, look I’m fine, I’ll be back as soon as the strike is over and then I’ll do my exams. I’ve even brought some of my set texts with me,’ I continued, crossing the toes on my other foot.
‘I’ll have to talk to your father about this. He won’t be happy. I’m not happy. Do you want to make us both unhappy?’
I didn’t reply.
‘You’re not involved in prostitution are you?’ Mum asked with a shrill squawk.
‘No, how could you think that?’ I said disgusted.
‘Aaargh aaargh!’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Sukie’s left a Robin’s head under the coffee table.’
Saved by the bird killer.
This gave me the distraction I needed and after promising to call ‘as soon as there was news’ I hung up.
I lay down next to Carl on the grubby old sofa bed.
‘Are you sure this is what you want?’ he asked, ‘it’s going to be tough. We won’t have much money you know and you haven’t really got any friends here.’
‘I’ve got you’ I said, snuggling into his armpit and playfully rolling his earlobe between by thumb and forefinger, ‘and I’ve got Lynette and Pete’.
Lynette and Pete were old friends of Carl’s that I’d quickly struck up a friendship with. Well Lynette anyway.
I closed my eyes sleepily. All that crying had worn me out. My eyes were like two crispy fried prawn balls.
The sound of the strange bloke downstairs playing the cello rose up through the decrepit floor boards and sent me into a deep but fitful slumber.
The next morning I woke around eleven and I tiptoed into the bathroom. ‘Bathroom’ is perhaps too fancy a term for a room with no bath. Instead there was a toilet with a shower hanging over it. This handily allowed you pee, poo and wash your hair all at the same time. The temperature inside was usually sub zero, especially in the middle of winter. The floor was so cold that chills immediately shot up my legs despite the thick elephant hide on the soles of my feet. I had quickly learned that the trick to creating a bearable temperature was to switch the shower onto boiling, close the door and wait for the steam to create enough warmth to stand on the freezing cold floor. I did this and began to make myself a big pot of tea, dropping the obligatory three bags into the pot.
The flat was pitch dark, Carl had invested in some black material from the nearby Albert Cuyp market and these served as improvised curtains. The positives were that you could sleep all day with a hangover because no natural light would disturb you. The negatives were that even on normal days you could miss morning altogether and find yourself waking up completely disorientated at one in the afternoon.
In winter it would get dark at 3pm so you could avoid sunlight altogether. Carl had invested in a sun lamp which he sat under for one hour everyday.
The idea of buying lighter curtains never entered either of our minds.
I looked over at Carl sleeping. And frowning. From our first date he’d been very protective but had also encouraged me to make my own decisions.
Even if he didn’t agree with them.
The steam began to creep out from underneath the bathroom door and I quickly undressed in front of the tiny fan heater and then forced myself into the bathroom to pee and shower.
‘Twee Kaas Croissants en Chocomelk,’ I said to the elderly shop owner.
‘There you go madam,’ he immediately replied in perfect English. My Dutch was not great but I wasn’t going to get the chance to practice if everyone spoke English to me. I smiled nevertheless; at least he had understood my request, which was a start. I would surprise Carl with a nice breakfast in bed and then we would make plans of what to do next. I felt better after a good nights sleep. I would survive somehow and make a go of it here. I could always go back and do my exams later. For now I would need to find a job. I made a mental list of dream jobs:
a) Actress
b) Fashion designer
c) Singer
d) A record company exec that got to hang out with lots of famous musicians.
I mentally crossed out the last one; it wasn’t credible and was way too shallow.
Back at the flat, Carl finished off his croissant and lit his fourth Camel Light. The television in the background was reassuringly homely. ‘Good Morning with Anne and Nick’ had just started and Anne was discussing brass rubbing with a rather overweight female vicar. Nick was wearing an appalling green jumper with a three dimensional sun sewn onto it.
‘So what are you going to do?’ Carl asked, ‘have you thought of what kind of job you might get?’
Carl was keen to stress that I would not be a lady of leisure in our new life together.
‘Well I’ve always wanted to be an actress,’ I said, ‘and I almost did Theatre Studies A’level so I’m sure I’d be good at it.’
Carl sighed. He was sighing a lot I’d noticed.
‘I don’t think that’s realistic. I’ll go to Social Services next week and see if we’re eligible for any joint benefits. That should tide us over for a bit,’ he said.
I felt a surge of optimism.
‘Would I get benefit then, even if I’m English?’ I said incredulously.
Carl nodded.
The Dutch benefit system was one of the most generous in the world and seemed to offer a bounty to all that chose to live on its flat, grassy plains.
Carl smoothed my hair off my face and kissed me on my forehead.
Everything was going to be alright after all.
‘I’m off to the studio, I’ve got some stuff to finish off for Eddie. Why don’t you come and meet me later and then tomorrow we will go to Social Services eh?’ Carl said.
I nodded but was disappointed that Carl was off to work already and leaving me in the flat on my own.
That first day was a day of mammoth cleaning. I dragged the Hoover out from the attic and vacuumed, vacuumed, vacuumed and smoked.
I threw myself into it with gusto.
I vacuumed the walls, the ceiling and the shelves that housed Carl’s extensive CD collection.
I then scrubbed the cooker hob and tried to get some of the spaghetti that was within arms reach off the walls.
I then put ‘Dog Man Star’ on the CD player and smoked.
And smoked.
I tried on my long velvet dungarees that I’d bought in Camden.
Then I smoked a bit more.
I practised my cool and mysterious look in the window.
I then caught sight of Wig Hooker. Today she was wearing a lime green feather cut wig and leopard skin leggings. The look was Rod Stewart after a nuclear accident. I began to feel restless and bored. This wasn’t quite the glamour of independent life that I had imagined.
This felt like being at home. Only the scenery had changed.
I felt my initial buoyant mood begin to sink.
What was I doing here?
What would become of me?
Was I messing up my entire life?
I decided to apply more black eyeliner and then bike to the supermarket.
Once inside the Albert Heijn supermarket I felt a rising panic. There were so many people and I became paranoid that they would try and talk to me and I wouldn’t understand a word. This was an irrational fear of course but nevertheless I avoided eye contact and quietly filled my basket with carbohydrates and yoghurt, the staples of any Dutch diet. At the check out I mumbled ‘Dank je wel’ and then worried that I had used the familiar rather than formal ‘you’ and that the checkout girl would be horribly offended. She didn’t bat an eyelid, I was probably the zillionth English customer who had made that mistake that week.
Back on the bicycle I felt cheerier. The wind whistled around my ears and I admired my reflection in the car and shop windows as I whizzed past. I was an independent, sorted kind of girl. Look at me on my bicycle. I could pass for Dutch. I belonged in Amsterdam.
The scary growl of my hairy Hells Angel neighbour cut through my reverie.
‘Kut Wife’ he shouted.
I locked up the bike and began to carry my shopping up the never-ending stairs, pulling myself up with one hand on the mountaineering rope. I turned and waved.
He scowled back at me and gave me the finger.
Later that evening, Carl explained that ‘Kut Wijf’ was the worst insult a man could shout at woman, the English translation being ‘Cunt Woman’. I shuddered and noted it down in my book of Dutch vocabulary that was growing bluer by the day.
Carl arrived home at 9 by which time I had overcooked the potatoes till they were reduced to a slimy mush. I had settled on the sofa bed and was watching a very surreal game show that involved contestants coming face to face with their biggest phobias. The woman on screen was having rats dropped down the back of her spandex leotard. She was screaming hysterically.
‘How’s it going?’ Carl said, unpacking a couple of Grolsch beers from his rucksack. ‘Did you have time to think things through a bit?’
I mashed up the potato mush with a fork and tipped it onto two plates.
‘Didn’t you notice? I tidied up? I even opened up the vacuum bag and put a new one in. It had horrible weevils living in it, they were crawling all over the place’ I said.
‘Well dinner looks nice, what are we having with the potatoes?’ Carl asked.
‘Carrots,’ I said.
‘Mmmm,’ Carl replied, trying to look positive about my primitive cooking skills, ‘that sounds delicious’.
The next day I decided to accompany Carl to the studio. I couldn’t face another day staying at home with just my own thoughts for distraction. Besides, I could see if Eddie needed any odd jobs doing round the studio. I had only met him once but he had seemed like a nice man.
We biked along the wide dock road which was open and exposed to the brunt of the wind blowing in from the sea. Even in springtime it was freezing. Other cyclists hurtled past us on both sides of the bike path. The wind chill must have been minus 20 and a small icicle began to form on the end of my nose. I couldn’t risk trying to wipe it away because cycling in Amsterdam required two hands on the handlebars at all times. I was still getting used to the etiquette of Dutch cyclists.
Rules I had grasped so far were:
- Pedal as fast as physically possible at all times.
- Shout or ring your bell at any oncoming obstacles, be they other bikes, tourists or oncoming cars. Use obscenities at all times.
- Combine shouting obscenities with giving the finger to any dithering English wimps trying to get off and push across busy tram crossings.
- Never stop.
Carl was flying away in front of me, his skinny legs a blur. I could just make out his paisley necktie flapping in the wind behind him.
I wasn’t sure whether my nose was still there. I half expected to reach up and feel a frozen hole in the middle of my face. I was peddling hard but felt desperately out of breath. Eventually I stopped, got off and pushed the rest of the way as we rounded the corner under the bridge to Central Station. I would be a dithering English wimp until we got to the quieter canals.
The studio took up four floors of a tall, slightly wonky house on one of the main canals. It was one of the most beautiful streets in Amsterdam with pretty arced stone bridges criss- crossing across the canal. The houses were like a row of people huddled up against one another, some leaning in for support and others standing straight and proud. Here they cost millions of guilders and were occupied by wealthy professionals and old money.
Eddie had recently inherited money when his father died and had spent a fortune creating three recording studios, one on each floor. His passions were hardcore techno music, strange cheeses and bathrooms. He’d converted the top floor into an apartment with a bathroom that would have made Scarface blush. Eddie had given me a tour on my first visit of his pride and joy.
It was dominated by a huge marble white bath and Jacuzzi that looked like you could squeeze about six people in there. There were twin ‘his and hers’ sinks, a power shower and two toilets that faced one another. Thick, maroon towels with Eddie’s embossed initials hung from ornately decorated gold fittings. It was only later that I discovered that Eddie shared more than just a love of swanky bathrooms with Scarface.
We locked up the bikes outside and buzzed the entry phone to get in.
Inside everything still smelt like paint and floor varnish, the studio hadn’t been open for long and planks of wood and cardboard boxes were lined up in the hallway. The noise inside the building was deafening. Eddie and Charles, the sound engineer, were in the middle of remixing a Euro house tune in the middle studio and obviously hadn’t been to bed.
I had only met Charles once before but Carl had told me he was a complete workaholic and often fell asleep under the mixing desk. He had a heavy speed habit that fuelled him till the early hours of the morning. Carl said it didn’t help his engineering skills much as the speed made him completely obsessed with the tiniest of musical details and unable to fix on the big picture. He would stare for hours at the computer monitor, examining the musical pattern made by one second of a drum track and making tiny adjustments to the height of each sound wave with his mouse. Later when I became more used to the sounds emanating from the studio, it drove me mad that Charles played the same tiny snippet of music over and over and over again. Sometimes for an hour, sometimes for 8 hours. The difference in sound before and after his fiddling and adjustments was imperceptible to my ear. But once Charles was happy, a whoop would resound out of the studio and he would drag anyone nearby to listen to his masterpiece.
I tiptoed into the studio behind Carl. Charles was spinning around in a chair, a bottle of Grolsch in one hand. The mixing table looked like the controls of a giant space craft with red and green lights flashing, computer monitors glowing and hundreds of buttons, plugs and wires hanging off it.
Charles offered his hand, which was clammy.
His limbs were long, thin and spindly in his ensemble of slim black jeans and tight black polo neck. His head was like a small oval tea tray and his skin so pale that it was semi-translucent. He smiled to reveal huge gaps between his teeth.
‘Hoi Lola, so you’re staying in Holland now are you?’ he said, taking a swig from his beer. His eyes were bloodshot; he looked like he hadn’t seen daylight in many months.
‘Yes, well I might go back at some point but for now I’m staying put’ I said.
I felt an arm on my shoulder and span round.
‘Lola, Lola, Loooollaaaa. So what you gonna do?’ Eddie’s voice sang out. I looked up to meet his gaze. He was smiling slightly crazily, showing the signs of serious sleep deprivation.
‘ Hi Eddie,’ I said.
He was wearing a horrendous neon and red Hawaiian shirt with cream slacks. His hair was slick with coconut hair gel. His face covered in fake tan. George Hamilton in the role of Scarface rather than Pacino.
Carl put his arm round me protectively.
‘So hows the mix going then?’ he asked.
‘It sounds great!,’ Eddie said, ‘it is fuckin’ incredible. You have to listen.’
He raced over to the DAT recorder and pressed play.
Imagine a spacecraft coming into land. Then imagine hundreds of pointy-headed aliens emerging from the mist. They’re banging bass drums and thrashing cymbals. Some of them have brought those triangle things that you play in primary school. A gospel choir stands on the hillside to officially welcome these alien visitors to our planet. Imagine this choir has deep, baritone voices which suddenly and without warning swoop into high-pitched shrieks that get faster. And faster. And faster.
Imagine they are shrieking the same refrain over and over and over and over again.
‘DANCE, DANCE, DANCE, FIRE, FIRE, DANCE, DANCE IN THE FIRE DANCE.’
‘TAKE YOUR CHANCE IN THE FIRE DANCE!’
It made me nauseous.
‘It’s great’ I said in the silence that followed.
‘It’s hard’ said Carl.
‘I’m going to call this one the ‘24 Hour Horny Mix,’ Eddie said. Charles nodded enthusiastically and then turned to face the screen. The treble on one of the vocal samples was troubling him.
Carl and I sat upstairs in the studio living room. It had large comfy sofas, a huge plasma screen TV and a Sega Megadrive. Carl was showing me how to play Sonic the Hedgehog.
‘Do you think I should ask Eddie if there are any odd jobs he needs doing?’ I asked Carl.
‘That might be an idea,’ he paused, ‘but I’m not sure you’ll want to do them.’
I ventured downstairs; Eddie was in the small studio kitchen making a pot of industrial strength coffee.
‘ Eddie, I was wondering,’ I said, ‘can I help out in the studio perhaps? I mean I obviously can’t do the music side of things but I could maybe tidy up a bit or get lunch for people?’
He turned round to face me and beamed. The coconut oil slick was migrating onto his cheeks. He sniffed.
‘I am sure I can find stuff,’ he said taking a big swig of coffee.
He reached into a tall cupboard and pulled out a bucket with dusters, sponges and polish inside. He shoved a mop into my hand.
‘To start you can be my official studio cleaner.’
I tried not to let me disappointment show. I had half hoped it would be something a bit more glamorous.
But studio cleaner was a start.
I didn’t quite realise what I was letting myself in for. The studio had four floors in total and was occupied by the most slovenly, undomesticated men imaginable. They ate chow mein and put their old fag butts in it. They didn’t flush the loo and peed all over the floor. Sometimes if the loo was occupied they peed in the sink. If the sink was full of dishes they peed in the plant pots. In the corner of the studio the carpet was stained and smelt fusty. I suspected they peed there too.
The kitchen was overflowing with beer bottles, dirty plates, and cups with weird substances in. I chose the vacuum cleaner as my weapon of attack on that first day and started my now familiar cleaning pattern of vacuuming everything in sight. The kitchen could wait. The main studio was empty; Charles had obviously retired for some kip on the sofa upstairs.
I looked at the huge mixing desk and decided to vacuum it, this would be quicker than dusting and less fiddly with all those complicated buttons and levers. I made a start. The buttons were difficult to vacuum around because they moved around a lot. I attached the furry nozzle to make things a little easier but accidentally pressed the mouse next to the computer. Nothing happened so I started in earnest on the complicated machines stacked up next to the giant mixing desk. I heard a sound which startled me.
Eddie was shouting something.
I switched off the vacuum.
‘Noooooo, godverdomme meisje, what are you doing?’ he shouted, his coconut face all shiny and red. A drumming sound was coming out of one of the speakers.
‘I’m vacuuming the mixing desk,’ I said.
Eddie ran over to the computer and frantically grabbed at the mouse, looking up at the screen at some incomprehensible shapes and numbers. He shook his head and then looked at me.
‘No NO NO NO NO NO. Do not touch the mixing desk. Don’t even look at the mixing desk. And do not, I repeat do not ever EVER VACUUM THE MIXING DESK!’
I felt my cheeks redden and I lump rising in my throat. I was going to cry.
Eddie looked embarrassed at his outburst, ‘I’m sorry, look don’t worry but just don’t touch it eh? That’s two weeks work there.’
I nodded, still feeling tearful and shuffled out with the vacuum in one hand.
I was not a talented cleaner. That was clear enough. On my second week of cleaning I used Mr Sheen to lovingly polish all the little wooden steps. All three flights of them. I was proud of my handiwork, they shined up a treat and it really brought out the lovely brown, gold hues of the wood underneath. Later that same day Charles fell from the top floor all the way down to first. He bruised his back and twisted his ankle. The stairs were as slippery as an ice rink.
I threw out lyric sheets and song ideas that I found amongst the old chow mein boxes and fag ends. I turned off machines that needed to be left on so I could get my duster behind them. I left the coffee machine on after I had cleaned it and almost set fire to the kitchen.
But Eddie was patient and kind, always giving me twenty five guilders cash in hand and thanking me. Worried no doubt that I would start crying again.
After cleaning I would cycle round to Lynette’s house near the Leidseplein. She’d known Carl for years and we’d immediately struck up a friendship.
We’d become close through our mutual love of Waterlooplein market and talking about fashion. She made her own clothes and we began spending more and more time together; designing outfits and planning where we would wear them. Lynette had plans to be a fashion designer. If this didn’t succeed she wanted to go to Art College and study animation or be an artist’s model. She’d even mentioned becoming a go go dancer.
We both shared a complete lack of focus or grip on reality.
Lynette’s house was beautiful and typical to canal houses, was tall and thin and leaned slightly to one side. Her mother lived in the top half and Lynette inhabited the lower level. Lynette was gorgeous, tall and skinny with long glossy brown hair. She was also sex mad and spent most of the time walking around her flat naked and complaining that her boyfriend Pete never slept with her. Pete was a withdrawn figure. He had been in a band, ‘Dynamo Daddy’, that had been moderately successful for a while but they’d split up years ago. He still walked around wearing his band’s T-shirt and acting as if he was Slash from Guns and Roses. His days were spent smoking, strumming his guitar and sulking. There was some sort of game going on between them. Pete withheld sex and attention from Lynette and seemed to enjoy seeing her driven to desperation. When she tried to kiss him, he would stick his tongue out and turn his head to one side. She pranced around in her tiny undies and he went off to find a plectrum. As she writhed on the dance floor like an animal on heat, he shuffled off to the bar.
It didn’t take a genius to work out that one day Lynette would be unfaithful. Pete seemed to accept this.
Perhaps he wanted proof of what a complete failure he was.
Three weeks passed by quickly. On Thursdays and Monday mornings I cleaned the studio. I could have cleaned it everyday and it would still have been a pigsty. Afternoons were spent pottering round the market with Lynette and smoking outside cafes. The rest of the time I stayed at home, listened to music and only really ventured out to get the measly provisions we could afford. Meanwhile Carl spent more and more time in the studio. He’d grabbed the chance of recording his own material in return for helping Eddie and Charles mix ‘Death Gabber House Volume 3’ (for German release only).
Mum called again. So far I’d ignored the increasingly irate messages she’d left on the answering machine.
‘You’re not coming back are you?’ she asked immediately.
‘Eventually I will, I just don’t see the point at the moment.’
‘The point? The point?’ she repeated, her voice edging towards hysteria.
‘I’m happy, I want to be with Carl.’
‘So you are going to throw away sixteen months of sixth form and any chance of getting into university for what?’
I didn’t answer.
‘I ‘m so disappointed Lola, you’re messing up your entire life. What about the 5 year plan? Eh? Eh?’
Each ‘eh’ felt like a fork being stuck in the side of my head.
‘Where in that plan did it say ‘Move to Amsterdam to live with strange boyfriend and forget about my future?’’
I pulled the receiver away from my ear; the vein in the side of my head was pulsating violently. I had to sit down.
‘I don’t understand what’s so bad here that you can’t come back?’ she said suddenly.
‘Mum I can’t explain, I just know that if I come back I won’t be happy and you want me to be happy don’t you?’
This was the truth. Without Carl I could never be happy, I’d realised this soon after we met. He’d been over in London recording with his band ‘Clan of the Secret Scribe’ when we’d met. He’d come up to me on the dance floor and handed me a note saying ‘You’re gorgeous’, his phone number scrawled underneath. I was a time bomb about to explode having dated just about every spotty, hair gelled teenage space cadet around. On our first date I knew I already loved him. He was interesting. He read books. He listened to classical music. He didn’t think MC Hammer was cool. But then after two weeks he returned to Amsterdam leaving me empty. Everything became grey, flat, predictable. What was the point in anything anymore? Friends, family, school especially school. School was boring, it was for losers. I had a lover now.
Mum’s voice jabbered away in the background.
‘Happiness is important but it’s not everything. Do you think I’m happy when I commute into work everyday? Or when I have to work late? Or spend all my time worrying about my pension and who is going to look after me in my old age?’
Yada yada yada yada. I looked out the window, jesus what was that Wig Hooker wearing today? Did they really make cycling shorts in white fake fur?
‘ I have done lots of things that I didn’t want to do but HAD to do. That’s just part of being an adult Lola. Not that you are an adult but you need to start behaving like one and less like a teenager’.
‘But I am a teenager. If I can’t do what I want now, when can I? It doesn’t sound like I’ve much to look forward to so I better make the most of it while I can’.
Mum sighed the sigh of the Mum that knows she’s been beaten.
‘Listen Mum,’ I said ‘I’ll be back not now but soon. The plan will still be waiting for me’.
The Five year plan went something like this:
Year One: Start university
Year Two: Get driving licence, get part time meaningful employment.
Year Three: Take year out to do volunteer work in Africa/Cuba/India
Year Four: Finish university. Take up position in respected yet ethical company as full time employee. Buy flat. Buy cat. Then meet man.
She’d forgotten that I’d learnt everything I knew from her. Not from what she’d said of course but from what she’d done.
Pregnant whilst at university, she had married a hippie philosopher/songwriter with a passion for motorcycles. They moved to California with baby me in tow. They grew their hair, grew alfalfa sprouts and then grew tired of each another. They split when my Dad’s love of philosophy finally eclipsed his love for his wife. Mum and I had returned to England where we’d had a semi-normal life in London for a while. If you call having a pink haired, nose ring wearing, rock band loving Mum normal. A Mum who wears green leather mini skirts to Parents Evenings. A Mum who paints murals all over the walls so the house resembles Tutankhamen’s Burial ground. Who embarrasses you in front of your friends by singing the words ‘Pigling Pie in the Sky, Pigling pigling pie’ to the tune of John Denver’s ‘Rocky Mountain High’. She’d then run off to Paris to live with her Spanish lover. Together they travelled to Nicaragua to teach. Finally at aged 40 she returned and got back with my father who had got over his love affair with philosophy and was now running his own motorcycle repair business.
I loved Mum for all her eccentricities but couldn’t help wondering why she wasn’t happier for me to stray from the dictates of the five year plan.
I could hear the 6 o’ clock news theme in the background and Mum’s steady breathing. The news graphic swirled onto our TV screen with perfect synchronisation.
I felt a pang. Suddenly I missed Mum, Dad, Suki and Marmite. I even missed the decapitated Robins Suki left under the furniture.
Tears pricked my eyes.
Mum was now silent.
‘It’s going to be OK,’ I sniffed, more to myself than anything.
‘Ok Ok OK!?’.
Mum hadn’t completely given up and had resumed her earlier technique of repeating whatever words I said until they sounded stupid. She didn’t have to work too hard at this.
‘Well there’s nothing I can do,’ she announced finally. ‘But your father, well that’s another matter’.
My tears stopped.
‘He’s planning to come over with some of the ‘Kent Triumph Club’ and whisk you back home with him,’.
‘What?!’
‘I tried to convince him it wasn’t a good idea but he’s determined and I can’t stop him. He doesn’t listen to me anymore.’
Dad. Oh no not Dad. Dad with his leather trousers. His long hippie hair. And his motorcycle buddies who all smelt of petrol and roll up tobacco. I imagined them roaring up the Czaar Peter Straat, stopping when they got to the Hells Angels on the corner. The Hells Angels would recognise my description wouldn’t they? Then they would stampede up here (tiny wooden stairs might be a barrier fingers crossed) and manhandle me onto the back of a motorcycle. Forced to smell the back of some hairy, grease monkey all the way home.
Back to London.
Humiliated.
‘Lola, Lola, are you listening?’. Mums voice seeped back into my consciousness.
‘What?’ I said distractedly. I had to hatch a plan.
‘Mum I have to go, the potatoes are boiling and Carl will be home any minute. If you speak to Dad tell him NOT to come. Tell him if he comes I will run away somewhere…’ I hesitated, ‘somewhere further away where he can’t find me’.
Mum started to speak but I slammed the phone down quickly. My jaw was clamped shut and my back teeth were grinding together like Patrick Swazye and Jennifer Grey in Dirty Dancing.
I quickly lit a cigarette and stared out the window. My first plan would be to make myself unrecognisable. Dye my hair. Maybe lay low for a while. Dad had no idea where I lived so it would be difficult. I would make the difficult impossible.
Up until that moment I’d been toying with the idea of going home in the not too distant future. That was until Dad and the Hair Bear Bunch. I was definitely staying now. I had my pride.
