Starter For Ten Part 9

'Mis-spent youth!' I say, but she doesn't get it, so I say, 'I suppose I just have a capacity for remembering useless knowledge, that's all.'

'D'you think there's such a thing? As useless knowledge?'

'Well. Sometimes I wish that I hadn't learnt how to crochet,' I say, and Alice laughs. Obviously she thinks I'm joking, which is maybe for the best. 'And lyrics to pop songs, I 99.sometimes think that i could do without knowing so many pop lyrics . . .'

' "Give me spots on my apples but give me the birds and the bees ..."?'

Know it.

'"Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitch.e.l.l,' I say.

'"From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads Know it.

'"Life on Mars", Bowie,' I say.

'Okay, here we go, something new. "She's got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin/and she's s.e.xually enlightened by Cosmopolitan . . ."'

Of course, I know the answer to this, but I do an engaging little pantomime of not-knowing, then say, '"Perfect Skin", Lloyd Cole and the Commotions?'

'G.o.d, you're gooooood,' she says and then, bizarrely, takes my arm, and we walk on through the park as the sun goes down.

'Okay, my turn. Do your worst . . .'

So I think for a moment, and take a deep breath and say, '"I saw two shooting stars last night/I wished on them but they were only satellites/It's wrong to wish on s.p.a.ce hardware/I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care."'

And I seem to have gotten away with it, in the sense that she doesn't projectile puke on me right there and then. And, yes, I know I should be ashamed of myself, and I am, really I am. She seems to take it fairly innocently though, and thinks for a moment then says 'Billy Bragg - "A New England".'

'Spot on,' I say.

'It's beautiful, isn't it?'

'I think so,' and we walk on through the tree-lined avenue, and the sodium lights blink on as we pa.s.s them, like the illuminated dance-floor in the Billie-Jean video. It occurs to me that what we most resemble at this moment is the black-and-white photograph on the cover of a TV-advertised exclusive 4disc 100.Ronco compilation alb.u.m ent.i.tled The Greatest Love Songs Ever. Ahead of us is a large pile of newly fallen leaves, all russet and ochre and gold, and I steer her towards it, saying 'Hey, let's kick through some leaves!' 'Better not. There's usually dog-s.h.i.t in there,' she says.

And I have to admit, she's probably got a point.

Shortly afterwards we get back to Kenwood Manor. She's held on to my arm all the way, which has to count for something, so feeling emboldened I say, 'Hey, what are you doing next Tuesday?'

Only a highly experienced eye like my own would spot the fleeting moment of panic that pa.s.ses over Alice Harbinson's features, but it's there all right, if only for a moment, before she pulls a quizzical look, and taps her chin with her finger. 'Next Tues . . . day? Let me think . . .' she says. Quick, Alice, think of an excuse, quickly girl, come on, come on, come on, . . .

'It's just it's my nineteenth birthday, you see. The big One Nine! . . .' and I pause just long enough for her to stroll blindly into my trap.

'And you're having a party! Well I'd love to come . . .'

'Actually, not a party, I don't really know enough people for a party. But I thought maybe we could just go out for . . . dinner or something?'

'Just me and you?' She smiles. Is the word 'rictal' or 'rictusly'?

'Just me and you . . .'

'Okay,' she says, as if it were two words. 'O. Kay. Why not? Yes! That'll be great! That'll be fun!' she says.

And it will be great. Great and Fun. I'm determined that it will be both Great and Fun.

101.

QUESTION Lanugo, vellus and terminal are all terms used to describe the different developmental stages of which part of the human body9 ANSWER Hair Today is a special day, because not only is it my nineteenth birthday, the last year of my teens, the beginning of a new and excitingly adult, mature phase in the life of Brian Jackson, but it's also the day of my romantic dinner for two with Alice Harbinson, and as a special birthday gift to myself, Alice, and the world, I've decided to completely change my image.

This has been due for some time, frankly. A lot of great artists, like David Bowie or Kate Bush stay on the cutting-edge by constantly changing their att.i.tude and appearance, but I 12 think it's fair to say that I've been caught in a bit of a style-rut lately. I'm not going to do anything extreme, I'm not going to start wearing knitted leotards, or get into heroin or become bis.e.xual or anything, but I am going to get my hair cut. No, not just cut. Styled.

Hair has always been a bit of a bone of contention to be honest. Like using gel or washing your face or wearing slip-ons, having your hair cut was always considered a bit effeminate at Langley Street Comprehensive. This means that up until today I've been lumbered with this sort of nameless, formless thing that just flops lankly over my eyes, curling unhygienically over my collar and sticking out over the ears 102.

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so that in silhouette my head looks a bit like a large bell or, as Tone would have it, the end of a k.n.o.b.

But all that's going to finish today, because I've been eyeing up Cutz, a unis.e.x salon - not a barber's - that I like the look of. It's modern without being avant-garde, and quite masculine, and clean, with copies of The Face and id to read, rather than a dog-eared, hairy pile of Razzle and Mayfair. I've spoken to a nice man called Sean, with a flat-top and an earring and a boys-y demeanour, who says he's going to do-me at ten.

It is, of course, ma.s.sively expensive, but I've got the fiver Mum sent me in the post this morning (tucked in a card with footballers on the front - 'don't spend it all at once!'), and a fiver from Nana Jackson to go towards the romantic dinner for two tonight, so I'm feeling pretty uptown and ritzy as I stroll nonchalantly into Cutz, the first customer of the day. I approach the small group of staff, all hanging round the reception desk, drinking coffee and smoking Silk Cut.

'Appointment for ten o'clock? With Sean? Name of Jackson?'

They all look up, at my clothes and my hair, then look back down in a 'don't-get-involved' way, except for the receptionist, who strolls over and checks the appointment book. I can't see Sean, though. Where's my new friend Sean?

'Sean's not in today,' she says.

'Oh, right . . . ?'

'Nicky can do-you though. He's the apprentice. Is that alright?'

I follow her gaze to the corner where a skinny boy is half-heartedly sweeping up last night's tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs. Is that Nicky? He looks about six.

'An apprenticed I whisper.

'He's the same as Sean, he's just a bit cheaper,' says the receptionist, chirpily, but even she knows it's a gamble.

You know in westerns, when the gang go to a brothel, and the main cowboy has to pick the prost.i.tute that he likes the most, and there's always a s.e.xy one with a beauty spot, the one 1O3.

that's clearly much more attractive than the other prost.i.tutes, who are all fat or skinny or old, or have a wooden leg, or a mole on their lip, or a gla.s.s eye, and of course the cowboy always picks the s.e.xy one? Well, I can't help worrying about the other prost.i.tutes' feelings. I know that prost.i.tution is wrong, but there's a kind of resigned, disappointed shrug that the rejected prost.i.tutes give as they head back to their chaise-longue or whatever, that shows that while they'd rather not have loveless s.e.x for money with a strange cowboy, it still would have been nice to be asked. And that's the look Nicky the Apprentice gives me. I can't reject Nicky, because Nicky is the prost.i.tute with the wooden leg.

I'm sure Nicky will be great!' I say chirpily, and Nicky shrugs, puts down his broom, picks up his scissors, and gets ready to dome.

They make me up an individual proper coffee in a sort of jug with a plunger, and we have what I think is called 'a consultation'. This is a tricky one for me, because I don't really have the vocabulary. I thought about bringing along a photograph as a sort of visual aid, but if I turn up with a picture of David Bowie or Sting or Harrison Ford, they're just going to laugh in my face.

'What d'you want then? The usual?'

The don't know. What's the usual?'

'Short-backand-sides.'

No, that can't be right - sounds too old-fashioned. 'Actually I was thinking more of sort of keeping some of the length on the top, with a loose parting on the left, and sort of combed back, and short over the ears, and at the back.'

'Shaved at the back?'

'Just a little.'

'Like in Brideshead Revisited'?''

'No!' I laugh, meaning yes.

'Well, like what then?'

Be cool. 'Ummmm.'

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'. . . because what you've just described there is a short back-and-sides.'

'Is it? Okay then, a short-backand-sides.'

'Want it washed?' he asks, lifting a lock distastefully between finger and thumb, like someone picking up a dirty tissue.

Will that be more expensive? 'No, no, no, I think it's fine, thanks.'

'You a student?'

'Yes!'

'Thought so.'

And so it begins. Young Nicky's actually pretty deft with the scissors, considering that the last pair he used were plastic and round-ended, and pretty soon he's hacking away with something like enthusiasm, as 'Purple Rain' plays loudly over the stereo. Meanwhile I sit and read The Face and pretend I understand it, and that I'm not worried about my hair, oh no, not at all, even though Nicky's the apprentice. The apprentice what? Apprentice plumber? Apprentice electrician? Apprentice lathe operator? I'm staring at an article about skate-boarding without really taking it in, so instead just look at the models in the fashion shoots, who are all skinny and androgynous and topless and languidly post-coital, and all sneer up at me, as if sneering at what Nicky's doing to my hair, and the electric razor's out now, and he's shearing the back of my head. Apprentice shepherd? I look up from The Face, look at the mirror, and it looks . . . quite good actually, clean and fresh, structured yet natural. I look alright. In fact, I think this might actually be the one for me, the perfect haircut, the haircut I've been waiting for all my life. Nicky, I am so sorry for ever doubting you . . .

But still he keeps cutting. Like when you do a great painting at junior school, and the teacher says 'stop now, or you'll spoil it' - Nicky's spoiling it! He's carving out great shaved strips over my ears, he's shaving so high up the back that the long hair on top looks like a toupee. Apprentice lawn-keeper?

105.

Apprentice butcher? I want to reach over and yank the power cable out of the wall, but I can't, I just look dumbly back at The Face, something about break-dancing in Basingstoke shopping centres, and wait for the buzzing to stop.

Finally he stops. 'Gel or wax?' he asks.

G.o.d, gel or wax? I don't know. Is 'bag' an option? I've never had wax, so I say wax, and he opens a little shoe-polish container, rubs what looks like lard on his hands, and drags his fingers through what remains of my hair.

It's clear that I'm a long, long way from Brideshead here. I look like Winston Smith. I look like a shaved rabbit. I look skinny and wide-eyed and consumptive and a bit mad. Nicky gets a mirror and shows me the back of my head, where the electric razor has uncovered a Martian landscape of scars and boils that I didn't even know existed until now, one of which is bleeding slightly.

'What d'you think?' Nicky says.

'It's perfect!' I say.

Now that I've ruined my hair, it's time to pick a restaurant for our romantic dinner for two. Once again, no one teaches you how to choose a restaurant, and I've never been to a proper restaurant with just one other person before, just cafes and curries and Chinese with Spencer and Tone mainly, where more often than not, the traditional end to a meal is not a cognac and a fine cigar, but Tone shouting 'Runner!' So I'm working on instinct rather than experience, but sticking to a few basic rules of thumb.

First of all, no curries, just in case things get amorous. Also, there's nothing particularly attractive about sitting there with the object of your devotion, wafting your hand in front of your mouth going 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l, that's hotV Secondly, try to avoid restaurants that are located within large department stores or supermarkets. I once treated Janet Parks to a slap-up sit-down lunch in Basildon British Home Stores, and I don't think it 106.

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went down that well actually. Carrying your own food back to your table on a tray, generally speaking, is to be avoided; remember, waitresses are not a luxury. Thirdly, don't be too flash. Impulsively, I told Alice that I'd take her to Bradley's Bistro, which is pretty sw.a.n.ky, but I went to look at the menu and it's way out of my league, so we're going to have to go somewhere which combines fine cuisine with value-for-money. Even with Nana Jackson's river taken into account, I've still only got 12.00 for dinner for two, to include wine, two courses and a dessert with two spoons.

Walking around town, looking in restaurant windows, I keep catching sight of my new haircut, my face looking haunted and afraid. That hair wax is a rip-off too. They make you think it's going to give you control, but all it's done here is make the fringe cling lankly to my forehead, like an oil-slicked seagull. Maybe it'll look better by candlelight. As long as it doesn't combust.

I browse the restaurants in the chintzier village-y part of town, and finally make my decision - a traditional Italian trattoria called Luigi's Pizza Plaza. It does burgers and ribs too, and deep-fried whitebait, and has red-check tablecloths, and candles in wine bottles under great red vesuviuses of congealed wax, and complimentary breadsticks and gigantic pepper mills on every table, so I book the table for two, eight-thirty, name of Jackson, from a red-faced man with dirty fingernails who may or may not be the eponymous Luigi, then head back to my digs.

107.

QUESTION A durable blue twill taking its name from 'serge de Mimes'; the exuded sap of the tree 'hevea brasihensis', and woven filaments from the genus Bombyx Name the three materials ANSWER Denim, rubber and silk I'm meant to be doing an essay on 'Nature Imagery in John Donne's Holy Sonnets', but I've been looking for a week now and still can't actually find any.

My pencil-notes in the margin don't help much either; I've written things like 'the Annunciation!' and 'irony?' and 'cf. Freud' and 'here he turns the tables!', and I 13 can't remember why, so instead I pick up Jacques Derrida's OfGrammatology. It occurs to me that there are six ages of book-reading. The first is picture books, then 2) books with more ill.u.s.trations than words, then 3) books with more words than ill.u.s.trations, then 4) books with no ill.u.s.trations, just a map maybe, or a family tree, but lots of dialogue, then 5) books with long paragraphs and hardly any dialogue, then 6) books with no dialogue, no narrative, just great long paragraphs and footnotes and bibliographies and appendixes and very, very small writing. Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology is very much a book of the sixth kind, and, intellectually speaking, I'm still stuck somewhere between ages four and five. I read the first sentence, flick through in a fruitless search for a map or photo or ill.u.s.tration then fall asleep.

When I wake up, I suddenly realise it's 4.30, and I've 1O8.

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only got three hours to get ready for dinner. I head to the bathroom, but Josh has been using the bath to soak a load of dirty denim in detergent. I have to scoop the clothes out of the cold, blue stew, and pile them in the sink before I can run the bath, and it's not until I get in that I realise that I haven't got rid of all the washing powder, and that I am, to all intents and purposes, giving myself a 70-degree non-biological cotton/polyester wash. So the bath isn't quite the relaxing experience I'd hoped for, especially as I have to rinse myself off with cold water through the shower attachment to try and prevent the worst of the chemical burns. Looking in the mirror, I notice that I've turned slightly blue.

I transfer the wet denim back in the bath, then in a spirit of righteous vengeance, I nip down the corridor to Josh's bedroom door, and when I'm sure he's not there, I nip in and steal his Apri facial scrub, which basically is grains of ground-up peach-stone in soap that you rub your face with. I do so, and get a pretty satisfying lather going, but when it comes to washing it off, the results aren't good. It looks like I've been through a plate-gla.s.s window. Either that or someone's rubbed my face very hard with ground-up peach-stone. There's a lesson to be learnt here, I suppose, and it's this; acne doesn't rub off.

Tight-faced now, and scared to smile in case my face starts to bleed, I go back to my room, where my futon is up against the wall, drying out, put my dirty clothes away, and carefully choose what books to leave lying around just in case Alice comes back 'for "coffee'" or more likely, for coffee. I go for The Communist Manifesto, Tender is the Night, The Lyrical Ballads, The Female Eunuch, some e.e.c.u.mmings and the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne, just in case things get steamy and I need some lyric poetry to hand. I'm in two minds about The Female Eunuch, because even though I'd like her to think that my s.e.xual politics are progressive and radical the ill.u.s.tration on the front cover, of a disembodied 1O9.

naked female torso, has always seemed a bit s.e.xy to me, so much so that I used to have to hide it from Mum.

Then I put on some brand-new black briefs, my best black slacks, a new second-hand dinner-jacket, bought from the vintage clothes shop, 'Olden Times', my best white shirt, a bow tie, and my new black braces. I arrange the dead seagull on my head, then splash my face with Dad's vintage white porcelain bottle of Old Spice, which makes me smell a bit old and spicy, and stings like h.e.l.l. Then I check my wallet for the condom that I always carry with me in case of a miracle. This particular condom is number two in a proposed trilogy, the first of which met its poignant fate in the wheelie-bin at the back of Littlewoods. This one has been in my wallet for so long that it's stuck to the lining, and the foil wrapper has started to tarnish round the outline of the condom, like some grotesque bra.s.s rubbing. Still, I like to carry it with me, in the same way as some people like to carry a St Christopher's medal, despite the fact that I have about as much chance of using the thing tonight as I have of carrying the infant Jesus across a river.

On the way to Kenwood Manor I have to stop every hundred yards or so, because the metal clips on my braces refuse to gain a purchase on the waistband of my black slacks, and keep pinging off and snapping against my nipples.

I'm re-attaching them for about the twentieth time when a voice behind me says, 'Someone stolen your teddy-bear, Sebastian?'

'h.e.l.lo, Rebecca, how are you?'

'I'm alright, the question is are you alright?'

'What d'you mean?'

'Well, what's happened to your hair?'

'Don't you like it?'

'Makes you look like Heinrich Himmler. And why the fancy dress?'

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'Well, you know what they say - clothes niaketh the man . . .'