Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys. (31 page)

‘Is she unconscious?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

What does unconscious look like? This must be it
.

‘Dial 999. Call an ambulance.’

For a second I think they’re being dramatic and overreacting. There’s nothing seriously wrong, is there? Tessa’s just a bit out of it, don’t want to call an ambulance unnecessarily, I’ve got too much respect for what they do to waste their … A voice in my head cuts in,
Do it, Viv
.

I feel a fool, but I make the call. The paramedics arrive and carry Tessa out of our basement on a stretcher and slide her into the back of the ambulance. I put my coat on and walk alone to the hospital. It’s only a few streets away. I feel stupid and guilty. Tessa might die. From the hospital payphone, I call Don Letts, who Tessa’s seeing off and on. He’s out so I leave a message on his answering machine telling him she’s in hospital. I call our manager, Dick, he says he’s on his way. I’m so relieved. I’m out of my depth and Dick’s grown-up and capable. I call Ari and tell her what’s happened. She says she’s going out to meet some friends and has no respect for people who do things like that.

I go and visit Tessa every day. I sit by her bed and talk to her even though she’s unconscious. So does Dick. Her family come and go, they get a priest to say something. She remains unconscious, so still, her body ‘a rock of blue-veined stone’, like Lizzie in ‘Goblin Market’. Tessa’s pale face is framed by tumbling black hair spread out across the white pillow, her expression serene – she reminds me of Snow White lying in her casket after she’s taken a bite of the poisonous apple – beautiful, fragile, in eternal sleep.

At the end of each day I walk back to our flat through the streets of Victoria. Such a soulless, transitional place. I stop and stare into the window of Cornucopia, my favourite second-hand shop. A man approaches me:

‘Are you on the game, love?’

‘No. Are you?’

He slithers away. I’m bereft, but not just because of Tessa. If I’m honest with myself, if I look myself in the eye and the heart, I have to admit – hateful and weak as it is – that visiting Tessa every day gives me something to do. Something important. Something to live for. The Slits have split up, Ari’s already making music with new people, I have nothing. Twenty-seven years old and all I’ve got ahead of me is living in a box room at my mum’s. No band, no money, no job, no husband, no children. I’m finished. I tried to do something different and I failed. I’m using Tessa’s situation to make myself feel good, needed, worthy, useful. I’m no better than Ari who isn’t interested in coming to see Tessa; in fact she’s more honest than me, I’m just pretending to be good.

Tessa wakes up and smiles the most radiant smile I’ve ever seen. She’s transformed. I ask her if she minds that I brought her to the hospital, that she’s come back to life, and she says, ‘No, no, I’m happy.’ She keeps apologising for what she did. I feel so differently about Tessa now. I love her. I’ve watched her sleep day after day – looking so innocent and vulnerable – thinking she might not come back. I feel differently and she acts differently. She’s open, communicative, happy, reborn.

59 THE END

1982

I smell the stench of peace.

Gabriele d’Annunzio

Tessa and I can’t afford to keep the flat in Victoria any more, so I move back to my little bedroom at Mum’s. I dye my hair back to brown and wear dull, drab, shapeless clothes. I want to disappear. Other people disappear too. They vanish from my life in an instant, no invites, no calls, no interest. Boys in bands find it so easy to have girlfriends, there’s always a pretty – even smart – girl to be found who’s willing to be a sidekick, but it’s very difficult for girls to be in the music industry and keep a relationship together. Boys don’t like it, not many of them feel comfortable in the supportive role that’s required.

I call Mick. Even though we’re not together, he’s always been there for me. I burst into tears of relief when I hear his voice. ‘Mick, it’s all gone wrong. Life’s gone wrong, not how I thought it would go.’ He says, ‘Come over, I’ll pay for a taxi, I’ve got a bottle of champagne.’ Mick is a success. A survivor. I thought I would be too, but instead of being the equal I expected to be, here I am asking him to rescue me again. We sleep in the same bed but I don’t want to have sex – I do want to, but I want him to love me, I couldn’t bear to have sex with Mick and not be in a relationship with him. I hope he’ll tell me he loves me tonight, but after I’ve said no to sex (I thought rather coyly) he snuggles down under the quilt and falls asleep.

The next morning he has to go out and suggests I come back later if I’m still feeling upset; I say I’ll come back in the afternoon. At four o’clock I ring on his bell but there’s no answer. I stand on the doorstep and ring the bell every few minutes for an hour –
maybe he’s fallen asleep
. I go for a walk and try again:
he’ll be back soon
. After two and a half hours, I have to face it: he’s forgotten. Mick’s forgotten me. I understand, he’s moved on.

The pain I feel from the Slits ending is worse than splitting up with a boyfriend, my parents divorcing or being chucked out of the Flowers of Romance: this feels like the death of a huge part of myself, two whole thirds gone. Now the Slits are over and Tessa has recovered, I’ve got nowhere to go, nothing to do; I’m cast back into the world like a sycamore seed spinning into the wind. I’m burnt out and my heart is broken. I can’t bear to listen to music. Every time I hear a song I feel physical pain, just to hear instruments is unbearable, it reminds me of what I’ve lost.

The Slits naked on Malibu Beach

Side Two

1 LOST

1982

That awful yawn which sleep cannot abate.

Lord Byron

The only music I can stand listening to now is by This Heat. At least three times a week I go to their rehearsal studio, Cold Storage, a concrete room with a thick metal door in Coldharbour Lane, Brixton. I sit on a speaker for hours as Charles, Charles and Gareth play the loudest, purest, heaviest, ugliest, most beautiful machine-music noise in the world. A sound so honest and passionate that even a broken person can tolerate it.

I need some love. I know a nice drummer who likes me; I invite him over to the flat I’m house-sitting. We go to bed, we have sex. The second it’s over, I want him to leave. I feel terrible. My skin is crawling with a thousand insects, Curse-of-the-Mummy type thing. I lie next to him, counting the seconds until it’s 7 a.m., then I can get up without looking rude. I don’t want to be rude, I like him. It just feels wrong.

Lying here, staring across the room at the white veneer wardrobe, trying to see shapes in the lines of fake grain, I make a decision. I’m not going to have sex with anyone again unless I can bear to have their baby. Not that I want a baby, the thought still horrifies me, but that’s surely the purpose of sex. If I can’t bear the thought of having a man’s baby, then I shouldn’t be having sex with him. I think this caveat will bring meaning back to the deed. At the moment, sex is like scoffing a box of chocolates and then feeling a bit sick afterwards.

After three years with no sex, I gave up on that rule.

As soon as the drummer leaves, I pack up my carrier bag and get the 31 bus back to Mum’s – she’s moved into a housing co-op flat on the top floor of a large Victorian house in a tree-lined street off Finchley Road – where I have a small bedroom with a skylight over the bed.

I lie under the skylight whilst a rain storm drums on the glass just a couple of feet above me. I think,
I’ll have a go at masturbating, everyone’s always going on about it
. I take all my clothes off and stretch out, imagining the rain hitting my body. I put my hand between my legs.
Boring
. Wanking doesn’t work for me. I’ve got to have a man in my life that I have feelings for to be sexually excited, but I don’t think I’ll ever fancy a guy again. It’s difficult to like someone else when you don’t like yourself.

I trot after Mum to the launderette, pulling a brown plastic old-lady’s shopping trolley after me up the road, the dirty washing stuffed into a black bin bag inside. I’m so broken that this seems like a good thing to do on a Saturday night. I sit on a plastic chair, glazed eyes fixed on the rotating washing, and listen to Mum talk about her work as an estate manager at Camden Council. I have nothing to say, but she’s a good storyteller and makes me laugh. Most nights we eat too much – healthy stuff, lentil roast, potatoes, salad – but huge portions, so we link arms and go for a late-night walk around the streets of nearby St John’s Wood to try and get rid of the bloated feeling. I can’t find meaning in anything, so I may as well do meaningless things like go to the launderette and stare in rich people’s windows.

2 WISHING AND WAITING

1983

Hofstadter’s Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s law.

Douglas R. Hofstadter

It may seem like I’m just drifting, but I have a strategy: wait. Yep, that’s it. Wait and something will turn up. I’ve always hustled life but this time I’m going to do what I’ve seen other people do and let something come to me.

A year goes by and still nothing happens. I’ll still be sitting here in another year’s time at this rate. I’m obviously not the sort of person things just happen to. I ask myself the same question I always ask when I’m lost. What do I find most interesting right now? The LA fitness boom. I’ve been going to Pineapple Dance Centre and the Fitness Centre in Covent Garden every day, keeping fit. I love being physical, I haven’t used my body so fully before. I’ve always hated sports but envied the way boys get to use their bodies, not only by doing sport but mucking about and play-fighting. I’ve got so good at the classes that a couple of the teachers ask me to take over for them whilst they’re away. When one of them leaves, I’m given her class to teach. I build up more and more sessions until I have the busiest classes at Pineapple, much to the annoyance of the regular dance teachers. I teach aerobics. I’m only the second person in the UK to teach it. It was made popular by Jane Fonda in LA. I work on the front desk sometimes too. I like answering the telephone, ‘Good morning, Pineapple Dance Centre, Viviane speaking, how may I help you?’ I find it soothing. I like the people I work with too, they’re funny and down to earth, we have a laugh. Something weird happens when I laugh though, my face crumples up into a cry. Nothing I can do about it. I turn away so the others can’t see me. It reminds me of the Vietnam vet we met in California; maybe you can tell how much pain a person is in by watching them laugh.

Teaching aerobics at the Fridge night club in Brixton, 1983

I’m aware I’m undereducated in all areas, especially music. I hated that I couldn’t ever jam with anyone when I was in the Slits. I want to put this right, otherwise I’ll never be able to make music with other people, so I go to evening classes at Goldsmiths College in New Cross, to learn how to read music, practise playing guitar and develop my ear.

But although I’m earning good money teaching aerobics and enjoying going to the music classes, I feel time is slipping by and my brain is atrophying. I’ve got to do something that stimulates my mind. So again I ask, what, for me, is the most interesting thing happening in the world at the moment? It’s got to be filmmaking. With directors like Scorsese, Tarkovsky, Godard and Cassavetes making great films, and experimental filmmakers Maya Deren, Chantal Akerman and Stan Brakhage being reassessed, independent film is challenging how people think and feel much more than music. Even more interesting is film theory, especially feminist film theory; it’s changed the way I watch a film, questioning what part the audience plays in the experience and the responsibility the filmmaker has not to reinforce stereotypes. The influential film theorist Laura Mulvey (author of ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, published in 1975) is teaching at the London College of Printing, so that’s the college I want to go to. I want to do a degree in filmmaking at LCP and be taught by Laura Mulvey. I’m never going to enter into a discipline again without knowing the background of the subject. I learned that lesson in music. So now I have a goal: get a portfolio together and get into LCP.