Hyde Park, February 2008
Nostalgia
It was summer, now it’s spring, and a lot of shit has passed between these seasons. _____________ I can see daisies and memories, and when I sit writing in the sun those memories are of vodka and you. You only fucked dead celebrities, and for 10 days I was your Ian Curtis. _______ You were my coming of age.
We met as the papers screamed about heat-waves, but we ignored them because it was summer and if we couldn’t burn and sweat then then when could we? _____________ That year was built of bombs and adventure, and I think we were both scared stiff when we met on the dancefloor. You grabbed me by the knot of my tie as my body wound down from ‘Disorder’. Drunk, of course, we shimmied and shagged and __________________ fuck: The state we were in. I think at one point your sweat even tasted of Smirnoff. We ruined each other, but I didn’t realise that that’s what you did.
On our backs, staring at the night. ______ We’d managed to wriggle out of my window, over the ledge and onto the roof nextdoor when you suggested we head north. _____________ That tenth day of unbearable sun we slept together in a cheap hotel in Manchester. The next morning you were gone. The heavens opened.
I’ve seen you since, not so long ago actually, and you’re still the same because you couldn’t change. Same basement club, the same dead faces: at the start of the night you had Jeff Buckley on your arm and you left with a young Nancy Spungen. Fickle. The Pink Wig Girl flopped into my lap, scattering my thoughts, and asked me where my head was at. I didn’t reach far. I said ‘Love Will Tear Us Apart’. ________________ She blanched and looked over at you.
Nunhead Cemetery, April 2008
Before The Dawn Heals Us
I’m tramping through the snow in the early hours of Sunday. I don’t think there are many people who know this is happening yet: London never stays up too late, even on a Saturday night. I want adventure, but all I have around me is the white and the grey _________________ until my phone beeps and I get a message from The Pink Wig Girl. Part come-on, part inspiration, a pocket conspiracy while this billowing white smacks about my face and starts melting like some colossal breakdown of tears.
I try not to notice I am actually crying. _______ Too much history has been coming down. The same shitty routine and I’m bored and I’m really really tired and I’m surprised I hadn’t broken sooner. ______ A pretty reliable backpack sits on my shoulders that Grandma got me a lifetime ago. It thinks it should be going down mountains instead of across Hungerford Bridge, but that’s better than months of being sat at the foot of couches while I drink and piss and fuck away hours and hours of my life.
I walk south for summer. For ever? ______ I go through Nunhead Cemetery as the sun starts to come up, and stare at the headstones and monuments so cleanly blanketed. It’s even quieter than Abney Park here, and I get a second message from The Pink Wig Girl simply saying ‘I miss u.x’ I can’t really cope.
I have, very carefully, taken myself offline, and this text reminds me of my last tie to Presence, of living plugged in. I throw my phone in the gutter.
________ I think I know I’m only leaving because everyone tells me they couldn’t ever see me doing it.
© Matthew Sheret, 2008
