Yesterday I went with some old friends from school to the fairground. Up until I was about seven this was a permanent fixture in town, and doubtless a big incentive to moving here. Especially as a kid, having a run down, rickety, roller coaster, ghost train, old fashioned helter skelter and a plethora of hook-a-ducks, ring tosses and candy floss stalls directly opposite school was glorious. But for at least a decade now the fairs tacky reincarnation has come back to the sea-front every bank holiday, bringing with it a rudimentary crowd of tanked-up, teenage mothers in waiting, intent on emptying their cheap cider stomachs on the waltzers, only to fill them back up again with mechanically reclaimed meat snacks. It's a sad carousel of tired looking families, fake tanned adolescents and creepy chain-smoking stall merchants.
Trying to win a 200 pack of Regal cigarettes on the ring toss, the bitter north easterly wind kept blowing Clio's hoops in the wrong direction. I looked around me. With the thick, foggy sea fret that had been hanging over the coast all week, the tops of the tallest helter skelters were obscured in the mist, as was the sea. The usual sounds of seagull squawking and crashing waves had been usurped by blaring, early 2000s pop, so we could've been anywhere, but the spirit of the place was inherently in keeping. A hideous version of Jefferson Airplane's 'Somebody to Love' by the 'Boogie Pimpz' was playing full blast, whilst twelve year olds rode the uncomfortably over sexualised Rodeo Bull ride. A ten foot, spray painted picture of a topless woman with a stetson was behind them as the ride MC exhaled his cigarette, "Are you reeaaaaddddyyy?".The children squealed as Grace Slick's voice stammered electronically, the tacky, soft pornographic image smiling behind them and a crowd of track suited, shaven headed youths gathering to glimpse up the short skirts of those on the cusp of adulthood.
Spending time with one of my oldest best friends, I remembered the first time we'd watched Ghost World on a sleepover at twelve or thirteen, and how utterly and rapturously I had been able to relate to those characters. Though being too cool, awkward and Enid-like to quite express it at the time, seeing Clio always makes me feel that again. Looking back to our bitter, sardonic fifteen year old selves, I miss trawling through the streets in a dead end town with her, spying on weirdos and mocking everything in a ruthless cull of all that was tragic and lame. As I went to the ThursBay clubs for the second week running that night, I had the sad feeling of selling out in enjoying the drunken clamor around me.
Tyler the Creator, chameleon weed from tumblr, horrible local children, some horrible graffiti by the sea front near my house, Tyler again, Nike Air Max that everyone had in middle school, along with pink Baby G watch, Sporty Spice - my pre-teen idol, Huf cannabis print socks.
Half the time I can't decide if I want to be a radge or a riot grrrl. Either way I just want to get stoned and watch some Buffy the Vampire Slayer right now. Being at home makes me feel fifteen again.
Jonny, my hypothetical boyfriend, came to stay for a little while. He's only my hypothetical boyfriend because he's not my boyfriend at all, but after mentioning to my parents months ago that he may be visiting us at the seaside they decided to assume he was, which went on for three months without any evidence to support it. It is now very clear to them that he isn't. We went on lovely walks up and down the coast, to the lighthouse, to the fish quay. We ate hot fish and chips and stooped to take pictures of dead sea birds and experienced all the cultural peculiarities of the Bay.Including the glaring, hen-night, nightlife, which Jonny described as 'grim', and is scathingly documented in a previous article of mine, here. After endless charity shop excursions, looking forward to getting film rolls back and bike rides up the coast, although I'm enjoying seeing a couple of my favourite people, I think I've just about exhausted this town. Not bad considering I haven't been able to stick it here for longer than three weeks since I moved out at eighteen.
I was too alternative to go to Prom but I'm not alternative enough to grow my armpit hair.Interesting.
Maybe I shouldn't have stopped at the green hair dye and the nose ring and the angsty, pretentious art (see above). Maybe if I hadn't been so timid and desperate for approval I could've gone the whole hog and not skipped past the riot grrrl phase so quickly, or spent time reading more the sort of filth presented below.
I thoroughly enjoyed these books in my pervy, morbid curiosity phase. What was inspired by reading lots of Irvine Welsh soon spread further afield to some German feminist literature about infected arseholes that was beautifully parodied by South Park in 'The Tale of Scrotie McBoogerballs'. If you have a prissy boyfriend, I highly recommend.
I remember when me and Clio shunned year 11 prom to watch a crappy copy of Pysch-Out on vhs and eat Chinese food with the boys. I felt too paralysed with fear at the thought of joining the other girls in my year with their toilet-roll-cover dresses and fake tan smell.
I remember lusting over the most amazing girl over Myspace when I was fifteen. She had bright, bubblegum blue hair and massive tits and wore the most hideous, lurid dresses that never sell in vintage shops, with a necklace of dolls heads and crayoned-on Barry M make up. There was this phenomenal picture of her on all fours, roaring up from the pavement like a blue maned lion, with a humongous pile of sick in front of her, her half lidded eyes and spittled pink lips swollen with pride. Perhaps instead of accepting that I had the potential to be perfectly normal after years of doubt, I could be a fully fledged feminist internet icon. Or maybe I'm just suffering from juvenile tumblr envy. I'll get back to my dusty academic subject of choice and my Nick Drake appreciation and muted wardrobe colour scheme. Being on the cusp of final teenagehood and emotional stability can seem kinda boring sometimes.
I guess being alternative is all relative. After being un-intentionally different, lauded and mocked through school, the stigma attached in university to wanting to, or seeming to want to be different is seen as disgustingly hip. Through layers of ironic self detachment every valid cause can stink of a crowd mentality. Not fitting in is fitting in.
Having rocks thrown at you when you were ten years old for wearing tie-dye and flares on non uniform day, only three other people standing near to you for wearing black lipstick at the school disco when you were twelve, nearly being glassed for having pink hair and purple docs at thirteen, having people bitch and whisper in the common room when you walked past with a Butthole Surfers t-shirt and a PVC skirt at sixteen, the constant taunts of skinny, stinking, hippy, freak. And it went deeper than the clothes. People genuinely believed in High School that I was horribly, undeniably, strange and creepy. Rumours that I was a slutty, lesbian, drug addict frequently circulated during my high school career. To this day although they're utter lies, I am sort of morbidly proud of this, despite being reduced to tears at the time.
Completely lame and self-indulgent, but these memories help me remember that I'm not getting washed away into the sea of hipsters intentionally. I miss being part of the 'weirdos' that collected under the surface when we all lived in this town, when I felt like our own sub-culture could exist without the scorn of being deemed 'hip'. Back when we didn't have to be so self-aware of our own cultural identities, and could like something for the joy of it being different to what we were involuntarily subjected to. After multiple talks over the months on this subject with friends, I have decided that maybe I'm holding back for the sake of being more socially acceptable. Despite in all probability being perhaps disappointingly normal, I still withold pointless, yet vital information at times. Like my fascinations with John Waters/teen problem pages/tits for example. This is why I have decided from now on to hold back less on what I'll write about. And learn to love that painful but proud feeling of heart-aching, stomach-churning, cringe that comes with every grateful blog view.
I kept thinking about this all last night, and when the birds had started chirping I thought back to an article I'd read in the Metro that day. Apparently whales all sing varitations of the same song in mating season, until a few of them break out their own unique tune and gradually everyone copies them, as some are born to be different, and others spend their whole lives trying to conform. I wonder if those whales had armpit hair, whether they would be the armpit-shaving kind...
Spent the evening in an old Victorian theatre by the city walls, listening to the beautiful warblings of Geordie folk singing sisters. Their songs perfectly evoke the spirit of crisp beaches, winter quayside walks, grey winding rivers and dreary crowded docks. All in gorgeous husky voices and a spot of clog dancing thrown in. It was all a bit too perfect, and Trembling Bells supported them so I also got to meet my hair idol, Lavinia Blackwall. Listening to The Unthanks and their Geordie witticisms on stage between songs, I wonder if that Northumbrian, folklore image is translated amongst those who aren't natives in quite the same way. Morrissey's Every Day Is Like Sunday, Billy Eliot, Grey Street, Blaydon Races, bitter cold walks on the quayside in winter and thick accented old men in swirly carpeted pubs. It's good to be home.
Here's a particularly, excellently miserable song they played. Coal houses, broken hearted lasses at railways stations, poor lads and hungry bairns are all recurrent themes in their lovely, melancholy catalogue.
I take a lot of advice from my dad, seen as he's liberal and has good taste in music, I've always thought he was pretty cool. But if there's one moment in my life I won't be following his example in, it'd be taking acid before my driving test. Though he did pass so maybe it works...
At twenty past seven on Saturday morning I was sat in Oscar’s bed, watching the pink blossom on the opposite side of the street swaying almost undetectably. I was trying to figure out if there was a slight breeze, or if my eyes were making everything sway in a sickly, languid way resembling the way my body felt. Antoine was squashed in to the left of me.
“There’re symbols, and it’s like a crossword, like crazy-bus-lady writing you know, and it’s swelling into a balloon. And now it’s a siren...and it’s like bursting. When I shut my eyes, you know.”He muttered in a thick Irish jabber. Jonny was half tucked into the duvet, his stubble peeking out from the covers and his big blue eyes obscured by Mickey Mouse pupils. “There’s a curtain twitcher across the street” he whispered to me cautiously.
Oscar sat by the record player, chain smoking. Andrew, the twenty-eight-year-old father of two we’d met on the bus an hour previously, asked for a change of music. “Sounds like a bloody funeral in here. What’s this shite? Four Tet? I want some trance on.” I tried to shut my eyes but they buzzed and vibrated in my head, shapes and mathematical patterns floated across my consciousness, trying to lull me to sleep through endless symmetries but it wouldn’t happen, I wouldn’t rest for another twenty hours.
I thought back to the only definate song I could remember of the night. At half four they’d played Sun by Caribou and everyone had slowly extended their hands upwards, contorting towards the light of the dj booth like the cress-in-a dark-cupboard experiment you do in school. They let the sounds alter them, compounding everyone’s movements to the same frantic drone. Oscar asked me how I got to be so good at dancing, and I spent ten minutes introspectively wondering if people were capable of being insincere on the kind of chemical that had tampered with his usually sarcastic and collected temperament.
My cheeks were smushed into the chests and necks of the boys I was with, ushered into the huddle of stimulated serotonin receptors. “I’m an honorary lad, I’m an honorary lad. Wait a minute my bra’s falling down.” Oscar checked his watch, I rolled up my sleeves, Jonny fluffed his fringe. These actions were repeated with compulsive agitation, filling in gaps between the thirteen miles of dance moves my pedometer recorded of the night, and pauses for tender group proclamations.
In the morning air I felt deliciously, hallucinagenically lucid. Putting their arms around me, I propped up the boys as I thought of forgotten childhood memories; playing in the mud with a kitchen spatula, digging up slugs and worms. The next day I tried to make sense of what I had thought was important enough to concentratedly type into my phone:
“Some thoughts I had whilst high. Men are like snails. They respond to the lightest touch. No matter how high I get I retain my cynical level of sub consciousness.”
Obviously not.
