| eleven: but that's the least of all my fears |
or
| barton hollow: the civil wars |
The words of the vinyl spinning on my turntable haunt me. I try to block them out, but there’s little use. They repeat themselves in my head like they’re trying to drive me mad.
Ain’t going back to Barton Hollow,
Devil’s gonna find me ever I go
I find an excuse to take the needle off the Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow when my doorbell rings. Today’s the day we’re fighting the law and winning. Or at least, I certainly hope we’re winning.
I walk slowly down my hallway, wondering when the house began to take on the scents I like. When I lived here as a teenager, it always smelt of my mother, of lemon and jasmine and when I first arrived there was only the salty brine of the sea. Now, the house is filled with the delicate scent of cherry blossoms and lotuses.
Jez looks comfortingly familiar as I open the door. She’s wearing a simple black band t-shirt that drowns her with black leggings that have fishnet panels down the sides, plus her customary black Dr Martens, all topped off with the shockingly bright blue ends of her dark hair. The colour changes with her mood. In a world where everything always seems to be changing, I always need her daily reminder that not everything does.
“I’ve got the shit you asked me to get,” she uses far too much profanity, but it suits her. If she was well-mannered, it wouldn’t fit well with everything I’ve learnt about her.
“Well then, we’ve got a car to get into,” I smile at her. We’re quickly stopping off at Norwich in order to pick up her false ID from Matt before we drive down to London. Hopefully, we’re not going to be singing the Clash on the way back up.
After I unlock the car, Jez clambers up into the Defender’s passenger seat. I gently tap the hood as I go past, glad of my chunky car. I will admit, she is quite a posh Defender, looking like a futuristic robot truck rather than an army vehicle.
As I back out of the driveway, Jez begins sifting through the CDs that I have stored in my glovebox. She huffs before pulling a Ramones messenger bag up to her knees and pulling a CD out of it. There’s a few hits of drums before a wall of sound explodes from my car.
I don’t recognise the band, but I do recognise the angry tone of the music, spitting and snarling. I’ve never been an angry person. When thing have gone wrong in my life, I’ve always been more morose. I glance over at Jez when we finally reach Eastfields’ idea of a high street and notice her tapping on her legs along to the music. All of this anger is as familiar to her as sadness is to me.
The next song continues in a familiar angry tone and when it ends, ironically just as my car pulls past the sign announcing that we are leaving Eastfields, I turn slightly and raise my eyebrow at her.
Jez simply shrugs at me. “Not in the mood for soft stuff,” and the guitar riff that explodes through my car certainly proves it. Maybe she’ll let me put on something a little softer after the album ends. I’ve got no problems with heavy music but I’m not good with the jagged edges of all of this anger.
The music suddenly stops and Jez gives me another smile. “You were uncomfortable with angry. I figured we’d find a middle ground,” she puts another of her CDs into the player and I give her a small strain as I recognise the feedback at the start of Paramore’s Careful. It’s an excellent compromise.
We pass the rest of the drive to Norwich is our comfortable relative silence and Jez’s eyebrows don’t even twitch when she sees the building the car park I’ve pulled into is attached to. If this had been my mother, her lip would have curled and she would have asked me what we were doing in such a vulgar area. She was a country-club woman through and through.
I quickly hop out of the car and race up the stairs, finding apartment no. 216. I ring the little doorbell and begin to bounce of the balls of my feet. I’m just about to being pacing when Matt opens the door, hair slightly rumpled from sleep.
He nods at me before walking back into the apartment. The glimpse you get of the inside is not the typical 20-year old living on their own mess, inside just military neatness. Many people underestimate Matt simply because he lives in a council flat and doesn’t dress in sharp suits.
He hands me a thin, laminated strip of one of those new ID cards for students that they’ve started making recently. It’s a great choice. Driver’s licences are exceptionally difficult to forge well on a short time scale and it’s exactly the kind of thing a teenager would take as a proof of age to a tattoo parlour. Most of all, I can’t see a single missing detail.
“This is great, Matt,” I give him a small smile, flipping it over to inspect the back.
“Well, I figure you need to get on the law’s bad side by taking a seventeen year old to a tattoo parlour after all of those years pretending butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth,” Matt grins at me and for a moment, I grin back.
“Wait, I didn’t tell you I was taking a seventeen year old to a tattoo parlour,” my alarms instantly turn on. Maybe he really does work for the Secret Service. Then again, why the hell would the Secret Service be interested in me?
“Calm the fuck down, D’Angelo, it’s a deduction from your personality,” Matt rolls his eyes at me, “she has to be seventeen because your morals won’t allow anything else. You wouldn’t take a seventeen year old to get drunk because they can buy their own alcohol and from the looks of the chick in the photo, she could pass for eighteen and sneak into an eighteen plus gig anyway. So, that leaves tattooing because it’s the only other thing you’d do.”
If I’d had Matt’s brain in school, I would have never had to spent so much time wheedling my way out of trouble in Selby’s office. They never tell you that if you’re smart, you get let off lighter.
Take Seb, for example. He was planning to set a sheep loose in school and attempted to light my cigarette for me whilst walking and dropped it. Somehow, it landed on the sheep and managed to set the wool on fire. The sheep then ran, flaming, through the school, setting all of the fire alarms off and causing absolute chaos. He only got one lunchtime detention.
I smoked on the furthest end of the sports field, which is about a mile away from every other student and was somehow found by Selby. I had to spend three weeks in after-school detentions.
I call that favouritism.
“D’Angelo!” my head snaps to Matt.
“Sorry, I spaced,” I have a habit of spacing on people when I reach the point of nostalgia. Probably because I have too much to be nostalgic about.
I dig into my pocket and pull out my purse. I count out Matt’s cash to him and he smiles, handing me the ID.
I quickly jog back down the stairs and jump back into the car, handing Jez the little laminated bit of card. “This is good,” she turns it this way and that, “very good.”
“Matt’s the best. That’s why we used him so that we could get into clubs,” I shrug at her, and her lips twitch.
“You snuck into nightclubs?” Jez sounds far too amused for her own good.
“Well yeah. The good bands around here played in 18 plus clubs, so we had to get in somehow,” Jez begins to laugh then.
“It’s always about the music, isn’t it?”
My expression must turn slightly grim, because Jez’s eyebrows pull together. I fix my eyes straight ahead on the road and grit my words out.
“Never make promises,” the sigh that slips between my teeth is heavy, “because they might cost you everything you are.”
I only realise that Jez has never been to London before when I catch a glimpse of her moony-eyed staring out of the window in my peripheral vision. We’ve gotten into my comfort zone musically with Ben Howard’s Every Kingdom, and I’ve found myself doing high harmonies along to the songs.
“You look like a tourist,” I smile at Jez and she goes cross-eyed at me. She’s going to get out of East Anglia someday. I can feel it. She’s going to do something amazing. She’s going to set the fucking world on fire.
I used to be sure I could do that. Now I think I’ll be happy if I die and somehow the love that I’ve felt balances out all of the shitty things I’ve seen and done.
We finally pull up outside Pulse and I find myself glad that it’s in a relatively remote part of town. Parking is much, much easier. When I’m in London, I rarely use my car just for the mere fact that trying to find a parking space is like trying to find the North Star from the South Pole.
Jez is grinning from ear to ear. “Most people would be worrying about if it was going to hurt,” Jez turns and gives me a look that says really? She probably thinks that I’m implying she’s soft.
Jez hops out of the Defender as I flip the CD player off. I check that I haven’t left anything on show before I jump out of the car. I walk round to stand next to Jez on the pavement, where she’s pulling her hair up into a bun. I raise an eyebrow at her, but she offers no explanation, so I simply turn and lock the car.
We walk to the door and I let Jez go in first. Gigi initially looks confused but when I appear behind her, she grins. “D’Angelo, you need to kick the habit,” I smile back, glad to see her face after the month I’ve spent away. A phone call really isn’t the same as seeing someone.
“I’m celebrating not being stabbed with a pitchfork,” Gigi gives a short laugh and Jez joins in with a small smile.
“That’s always an upside,” I take out my piece of paper and put it down on the counter, “I thought you were only going to have optimistic tattoos!” Gigi frowns at me but I can’t summon the will to smile back at her.
“It needed to be done, and you know that as well as I do,” she nods, with a sad look on her face. Gigi herself has plenty of tattoos and some of them are very, very sad.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jez’s eyebrows pull together. Gigi obviously notices too, because she rolls up her sleeve to reveal a line of calligraphic text on the inside of her arm, reading my head is bloody, but unbowed.
“You like Henley?” it’s my turn to look confused as I note the sparkle in Jez’s eyes.
“Not many people would recognise that,” Gigi smiles, “it’s generally considered a mark of freakishness if you enjoy Victorian poetry at our age.”
Instead of shooting back something profane about the people of today, Jez digs around in the bag at her hip and hands Gigi a sheet of paper. A grin spreads across Gigi’s face and she begins to laugh. “This is brilliant,” she’s shaking her head, “this has just made my week.”
“Huh?” I can’t help the confused sound that spills out of my mouth.
Both girls turn to me with small, secretive smiles. “Your friend here actually has the balls to be tattooed with Victorian poetry. Depressing Victorian poetry,” I really should’ve guessed that Jez was never going to tattoo herself with anything vaguely normal.
Gigi turns to Jez. “I’m guessing this is your first, so I’ll let you sit in whilst I ink up Lacey before I do you, yeah?” it’s not standard practice but even the people who pretend not to be are slightly nervous.
Even though I’ve been tattooed before, I’m almost twitchy with nervous anticipation. It’s probably the oddest kind of excitement I’ve ever experienced.
Jez hands Gigi two more pieces of paper as well as her fake ID, and Gigi runs it over before nodding. I almost sigh in relief. As much as I don’t care to lie to her in such a way, the amount of times I’ve caught Jez tracing her forearm tells me that she needs whatever tattoo she has planned for there more than I can explain.
Gigi beckons us into the back and I obediently remove my t-shirt. I watch Jez shift uncomfortably and initially think it’s due to prudishness before she rubs the bottom of her back. I don’t ask. I’m a firm believer in the policy that if someone wants to tell you something, they will.
“Ah, it’s always nice to see my work all healed up,” Gigi smiles and I notice Jez looking intently at the pattern of lines on my back. It’s not something you can really see – whilst the lines span over my right shoulder, you never see the delicate, intricate design. I don’t mind it though. I got the tattoo because it meant something to me, not because it was meant to be something pretty I could show off to other people.
I lie down, giving Gigi access to my left side. “Here,” I say, running my hand in two lines down the side of my ribcage. There’s silence before Gigi puts her hand into my line of vision with a thumbs up. Obviously she nodded before realising that I couldn’t see her.
She quickly begins drawing in the background, even though I know each bit will be precise. She’s always had a talent for drawing, almost as much as she did for bass.
After she’s finished, she transfers the outline to my skin. I quickly get up and check it, even though I know I don’t really need to. Gigi knows me so well that the placement will be perfect.
The low hum begins before I give Gigi a thumbs up to signal that I’m ready. The irritation of the tattoo needle is uncomfortable, but it’s worth it. I’m not going to recite those silly mantras like ‘no pain, no gain’ because that’s just bullshit. There are plenty of things to be gained without pain.
Gigi wraps my tattoo after it’s done before letting me walk over to the mirror and examine it. I’ve always loved the cursive work she’s done and I’m glad to have a second piece of it on my body.
This is sort of a dedication to Adam, in its own way. If I tried to explain everything I’ve ever felt for him in tattoo form, I’d need another body. But this, I think, is fitting. Something to remind me after I’ve buried everything that I lived it, that I was there.
“What does it say?” Jez’s head pokes round Gigi’s back as she looks at my side.
“And your voice was all I heard, that I get what I deserve,” I have trouble not letting myself replicate the patterns of the lyric, the holds on certain notes and quickly skipping over others.
“God, you’re making me feel old. You’re getting Linkin Park tattooed on your body and I’m getting Victorian poetry,” Jez’s laugh is short and slightly edged with bitterness. I understand it though, what it feels like when people cannot see that your face is so much younger than your heart.
Gigi turns to Jez. “We’ll do your Young Guns lyric first, before the Victorian poetry. Save the smallest for last, yeah?” Jez nods, slipping over to sit on the tattoo chair I’ve just vacated.
They quickly discuss placement and font style before Gigi begins to draw again. Gigi places the tattoo straight down the centre of her arm, exactly where Jez wants it. “Happy?” Gigi checks as the low hum begins again.
“Yeah,” Jez’s voice is awe-filled, like she cannot quite believe she’s here. I read the words just before Gigi goes to work with her tattoo needle. Without pain, tell me what’s the point in glory?
I expect Jez to wince when the needle meets her skin, but instead her face remains passive. Even though a forearm is probably the least painful place to get a tattoo, there should be a bit of discomfort showing on her face. After all, tattooing is not a painless process.
I change my angle so I can watch the tattoo unfurl on Jez’s skin. When it’s finished, it really is a thing of beauty. The cursive script has little decorative flicks, but it’s nothing over the top.
Gigi quickly wraps the tattoo and turns to me. “You will make sure that this tattoo stays in good order. This might be one of my favourites. Like your back. I would have killed you if your back had gone wrong because you didn’t look after it properly,” Gigi’s eyes narrow and I know that it has happened to her at least once – her work destroyed because someone thought that it would just be okay to leave it and heal however.
Jez begins to shift uncomfortably as her fingers clench round the hem of her t-shirt. Whatever it is with her back, she’s got some major insecurities with it. “It’s okay, I’ll sit outside in the car. You can interrupt Neil Young when you’re finished,” I smile at the two of them before I slip out of the door.
The air outside has the hazy feel of a British summer to it – neither too warm nor too cold with the promise of short nights and long, languid days. Or at least, it does to me. I get this way in June, when we’re on the cusp of summertime.
I unlock my car and hoist myself into the driver’s seat. The Defender is quite a way off the floor, unfortunately. I quickly open my glovebox and pick out the CD I’m looking for, flipping on the player.
I slide the CD into the slot, waiting for the music to begin. Neil Young’s Harvest is a masterpiece of an album. When the music begins, I shut my eyes and sink backwards into it, letting it wrap me in its warmth. Adam Marr can say whatever he likes, but music has always been and always will be my home.