Very Beret

My brush with fame was more my hat of fame – if that can be seen as even a thing. 

When I was doing my degree, I lived in a house with a number of oddballs and ne’er do wells and I loved every minute of it.  There was the guy who danced nightly with his mange-ridden dog to Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. The guy, tall, serious, in rhythm at every step.  The dog, on its skinny, back legs, bits of skin snowstorm-flying to the floor. 

There was the couple who introduced me to The Velvet Underground and who took every reasonable (and many unreasonable) opportunities to have loud sex.  There was the older guy who we called the Goat Father for reasons I’m not sure anyone knew.  There was Cosmic Trev, who didn’t even live in the house, but who might as well have – his personality and odour being so all-embracing.

But my hat of fame is about none of these people.  The hat is about Skelly and Dom.  Skelly was about five foot two, smart suited and shrewd.  A give me no shit expression and shiny brogues.  Dom was Skelly’s boyfriend and he presented as a more vivid, exotic version of Prince in his purple rain phase.  In my crappy, Spark Hill bedroom, we played chess for hours in front of the gas fire and we listened to The Smiths – a weird kind of Seventh Seal scenario.

My dad came down to visit me once and Dom answered the door to him, with a rose between his teeth.  My dad (unreconstructed man that he was) looked with horror at the rose, at me and then back to the rose.

Dom’s mum was the secretary of the UK Lou Reed fan club and through this route, Dom had taken possession of a black velvet beret with sequins that Lou wore around the time of his Transformer album.  The beret was a little musty-smelling, a little scuzzy.  On a windy night in March, after a long bout of chess, I traded my long, black winter coat for the beret.  At the time, I reckon I would have traded my soul.

Damn, but I felt cool wearing it.  At the time, I had very bleached, blonde hair and wearing the beret  with a brocade jacket and ripped jeans, I imagined I was a bit Andy Warhol art scene, a bit Chelsea Hotel skank.  All spring and summer, I wore the beret and in retrospect, it’s harder to know who looked more incongruous – me, in beret and bikini, or coated Dom, swaggering and sweltering in the dog days of August.

But things change, as they must.  Seasons turn, cool becomes bloody freezing and I wanted my coat back.  Sod Lou, sod the pose – sometimes only a warm coat from H and M will suffice.  The trouble was, Dom kind of thought the same.  So, we played chess for it.  Smiths on the turntable, the chessboard curling slightly at the corners with the heat from the gas fire.  I lost of course, I always lost, and Dom got to keep my coat.

I’ve still got the beret somewhere in the loft, scrunched in some box or another, between letters from Greek boyfriends and old lecture notes.  Who knows?  One day, I might just dig it out.

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