Get Into The Light: Chapter Twenty Four- If You Pick Your Nose In Front Of Your Partner, Your Relationship is Pretty Much Over

‘Reality used to be a friend of mine
Maybe why is the question that's on your mind
But reality used to be a friend of mine.’
‘Reality Used to be a Friend of Mine’, PM Dawn.

The bicycle wheels squeaked as we peddled alongside in the direction of the local park. Carl was cycling close behind just in case I pulled any of my usual stunts and ended up stuck in the tram lines. The sun shone and there was just enough light breeze to stop it feeling sticky. Amsterdam rarely got sticky. The winters were harsher than any I’d experienced in England but then when the sun came out it made the contrast so much finer. It seemed like everybody was outside today enjoying the weather - no one was working. I often felt this way –not just when the weather was good- a sense that no one was working. How come all the coffee bars and terraces were busy with people from eleven in the morning? These people sitting drinking coffee with their portfolio’s curled up under the table. Could you really study art for fifteen years? And who looked after your dog when you went to work in an office? Who was paying for all this stuff? In reality most were probably just like myself, living off a generous social security system and the promise of some artistic achievements in the future. Having just enough money to get by doesn’t help fuel passion and drive. Some students were older than lecturers. People went to nightclubs sporting grey hair. People didn’t force themselves to do jobs. It was one of the things I’d loved about Amsterdam when I first arrived. But then there was another side which seemed self indulgent. Didn’t there come a time in everyone’s life when you had to do boring stuff to pay bills and be self sufficient?

But today it felt good to be outside with all these free-loading rogues, filling my boots. And it was the first day (two weeks since the funeral) when other things besides Lynette wriggled into my head. I was no longer dissecting the way I should feel. I was facing up to my sadness and not worrying about where it came from. I’d also got sick and tired of watching TV each day from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to bed. TV wasn’t healthy. There was something about it that made you want more and more. When I thought of all the hours I’d spent (sometimes with Carl sitting beside me, more often than not whilst he was at the studio or sitting at his computer composing) it made me feel sick. There had recently been a couple of occasions when I’d actually caught myself laughing with the moronic characters in the American soaps that started up just after lunchtime. I felt like I was actually part of the story. That Blaze/Ted/Phoenix was leaning in for a kiss. It was pushing me ever closer to the nice little pyschosis I’d got going earlier in the year. There was also something about watching TV for hours that made your real life feel undeniably shabby. In real life your partner doesn’t sprinkle rose petals on your bed and exclaim- ‘Let’s make love all afternoon honey.’ In real life your partner scratches his balls and holds his hand to his nose so he can get a good sniff. Equally when someone dies you don’t find that you’ve inherited four million dollars – enough to set up your own swimwear company in Malibu. In real life there is a potato in the bottom of the cupboard that’s grown eight wobbley legs and you have to cut these off so you can eat it with a frozen schnitzel and some baked beans. It seemed the Dutch loved these American soaps (The Bold & The Beautiful was the most popular). But who was I kidding? I loved them too. I walked like a zombie from the kitchen to the sofa, from the sofa to the toilet, from the toilet to switch the light off and then to switch it on again because it was getting dark and Oprah would be starting at five. But this TV stuff wouldn’t get me any closer to the person I wanted to be. Underneath the layers of laziness, excuses, love of comfort and carbohydrates was an authentic me trying to escape. This person wanted to read good books and have intellectual conversations. This person wanted to have a meaningful career- to contribute to some great artistic tradition that didn’t involve a rhyming dictionary and monotonous drum beat.

It was so hard to work out where my life was going right now. It seemed as if I’d ended up with this weird musical career by accident. I had no idea whether I actually liked it. In fact my whole life felt like an accident. Did I want to be wealthy and live in Malibu and wear a high-cut swimsuit? (this option obviously wasn’t a possibilty with my dumpling physique) or did I want to get back to my family (who seemed to treat me like I was dead - I hadn’t heard anything from them in months) and go back to studying something that would help me be more intelligent/less likely to watch too much TV/more authentic etc. But what if the authentic me was a monster? What if this monster just wanted to mainline cheese and let its brain cells be eaten alive by low-brow culture? It was a distinct possibility.

One thing was certain. These TV characters never spent their days sitting in bed thinking, thinking, thinking (this would have been intolerable to watch I guess). They had plans. They hustled and made money. And on top of everything else our finances were diabolical. The Dutch benefit system was generous but there came a point when even they started to think- ‘HEY ENGLISH FREELOADING IMBECILE- ISN’T IT TIME YOU ACTUALLY GOT A JOB?’ There were enough Dutch lazy bastards without people like me taking advantage of the system. We’d recently received a letter saying we needed to visit the Customs department to apply for a work permit. It seemed perhaps they’d cut our benefits completely. Our single was doing well and there was a possiblility that we’d see some money eventually but right now we were smoking rolled up cigarettes (I permanently had tobacco stuck between my teeth these days) and eating so much potato that I’d put on six pounds. And the flat really was the pits. It amazed me that I’d never really noticed it before. Perhaps the drugs had clouded my judgement. Now it was like waking up next to a giant Cyclops with yellow teeth and bad breath. Perhaps it wasn’t just the drugs, it was also the loved up feeling I’d had the first few months. That loved up feeling had eroded into something else. I wasn’t sure what to call it yet.

But at least today were were out of the flat. We were having a go. We found a nice deserted patch of grass under a tree and lay the bikes down next to us. I looked at Carl. The bags under his eyes had tripled in size. More of his hair had turned grey. For the first time I recognised that he was much older than I was. And he was looking me over, probably noticing how my stomach was bulging over the top of my jeans, how my chin had a new partner that rested on my neck.
‘Forest wants us to go ahead with the Lottery thing,’ he said lighting up a cigarette.
I’d made this particular roll- up earlier and it quickly burnt up to his knuckle and he threw it onto the grass.
‘Why can’t you make a fucking roll up?’ he shouted.
I felt tears prick my eyes. There would have been a time Carl would have found my inepititude endearing. That time had definately passed.
‘Do you want to do to the show?’ I said swallowing hard.
We were going to have a nice day today. We had to prove we could do something fun together that didn’t involve concentrating on a box that emitted coloured light and sound.
‘Lola, we have to do something,’ Carl said as if he could read my mind, ‘Do you really want to watch TV for the rest of your life?’
‘I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right. The band could do much better than a show like that.’
‘It’s a very successful show. We could get more mainstream success. Once you have more money, then you have more freedom to create the things you want to. We all write under different names. It won’t matter in the future- what we do.’
‘I’m just not sure about anything at the moment.’
Carl was silent for a while as he constructed another roll up. I lay down and looked up at the tree. Even the leaves were less exciting than on the TV shows. On the TV the leaves were more action orientated- they were involved in tornados, they were kicked in the air by joyful children, they were taken home by freshly-in-love couples and stuck on the fridge as sentimental momentos. They didn’t just sit there waving in the air like useless things.
‘You’ve got tobacco stuck on your lip,’ I said sitting up, ‘Here let me brush it off.’
‘Nice that you’ve noticed,’ he said angrily.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You don’t seem to notice much about me anymore.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘I do notice you. I notice you all the time.’
‘Tell me something you’ve noticed about me then.’
‘You wear your headphones a bit too often,’ I said.
‘Tell me something else,’ he said leaning in.
‘I’ve noticed that you sniff your hand sometimes after you’ve scratched your balls.’
Carl didn’t answer.
‘I meant that as a joke off course,’ I said.
Carl took a long drag from the roll up, stood up and got back on his bicycle.
‘I thought we could try and have a nice day together but that seems too much to ask,’ he said just before he cycled off.

There was part of me that really wanted to get on my bike and race after him. We’d been lined up to have a nice afternoon. A chat in the park. Why not just do the Lottery Show? Who cared? And then we’d planned to go to the ‘Vligende Schotel Restaurant’ and treat ourselves to a vegetarian banquet (they had a special menu on Tuesdays- all you could eat for ten guilders). Why had I ruined everything? I had four guilders in my pocket. I didn’t even have enough to buy a pack of Camel Lights. I could get a cheese souffle from the corner and then hope that Carl had forgiven me once I got home and would share his tobacco. There are certain of your partner’s foilbles that you’re supposed to ignore. You aren’t supposed to make them part of a sunny day’s conversation in the park. But it was the whole Lottery thing that had angered me in the first place. It felt like we were losing any semblance of artistic integrity. Artistic intergrity! Edith Piaf would have howled at that one. Our twelve inch was called ’The 24 Hour Horny Mix’! But I just couldn’t visualise the band without Lynette. Now all the attention would be on me. It was too much pressure. I needed a hot- looking female to act as a distraction to my morose mumbling. And I was worried that the drugs had made everything sound much better than it was in reality. I wasn’t sure I’d play the music we made to my friends back at home (not that I had any left). I wasn’t sure if I was proud. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be all those years ago when I’d dreamt about doing something artistic, becoming famous, being successful. I felt like perhaps I’d ended up in the wrong place.

After eating a cheese souffle and looking through the magazines in my favourite magazine shop in the train station, I had a sudden realisation of how selfish I was behaving. Carl was doing everything he could to get us some money, to help me be creative- he’d never once asked me to get a job, hadn’t even flinched when I’d stopped cleaning the studio and had said I needed to write lyrics full time instead. He’d never lectured me when he came upstairs at the studio and I was still playing Sonic at two in the morning instead of typing up new ideas. I was pretty sure he hadn’t told anyone when he’d caught me peeing in the plant pot on the landing because I’d been so close to the final, final level and couldn’t be arsed to go down two flights of stairs. He’d let me sleep in late in the days after Lynette’s death, had cooked for me, cycled out to the supermarket and then battled to concote something edible from whatever measly offering he’d come home with. He’d looked after me when I was crazy, when many people would have called the police/parents/ambulance.

I imagined him sitting at home, the curtains drawn, lights out. The budgie would be resting on his shoulder. Some dooming yet beautiful classical music playing. He’d be wondering about ex-girlfriends, comparing them to this spoilt, teenage brat he’d ended up living with, he’d be stewing on how ungrateful I was, at the same time he’d probably be thinking the best of me because that was Carl- he always thought the best of me.

But I came home to silence. There was no music. The lights were on. There were some vegetables boiling in a pot, almost all the water evaporated. Carl had his back to the door with his headphones clamped to his head. The TV was on but the sound was right down. And instead of bending down and kissing the back of his neck, instead of saying sorry, I simply drained the vegetables, left them on the side with a knob of butter, turned up the TV and slumped down on the sofa. Any moment he would take the headphones off. He would join me and we’d laugh at how silly we’d been. How we’d ruined the afternoon being angry with one another. But two soap operas passed, the news came on, the vegetables went cold. I felt hungry and in need of a roll up. I looked up at Carl’s desk but his face was a picture of concentration. I wanted to ask him for a roll up but I had no intention of breaking this thing that was going on between us. I would sleep sitting upright with my clothes on if I had to. Eventually I helped myself to some of the vegetables (now cold). They tasted awful. I tried not to think of the lovely meal that we’d missed. If we made up now there was still a chance we could cycle over there. But I was rooted to the rotten sofa watching a show which involved people laying bets on whether a contestant would be more likely to survive being catapulted over four buses or lowering their head inside an alligator’s open mouth. And the lack of nicotine was making me feel anxious.

Then finally, finally Carl stood up. He took the headphones off. He stretched his arms in the air.
‘I think you should go back to London,’ he said turning round to face me.
It felt like a slap in the face.
‘What?’
‘I’ve been thinking and you’re really not happy here. It’s pretty obvious.’
‘That’s not true,’ I said.
‘I used to think I made you happy.’
‘You do make me happy,’ I said frowning.
‘Look at you! You’re not happy at all. You watch TV all day. You have no motivation. I thought you’d at least enjoy the creativity of being in a band but all you do is worry.’
‘I enjoy some of it.’
‘What part do you enjoy?’
I tried hard to come up with a good answer. There must have been some aspect that I enjoyed. There was the writing lyrics. That was hard because it didn’t feel like I was creating something I was actually proud off. I felt like they were the type of lyrics that idiots enjoyed- people who were off their faces and wanted reassurances that life was essentially okay as long as you had plenty of opportunities to dance and snog one another. There was the performing- well I hated that. I didn’t like being the centre of attention. I hated trying to dance with people watching. The only times in my life that I’d been any good at dancing had been hiding in the corners of night clubs, in the dark or on my own in my bedroom. It was hard to replicate those circumstances on stage. But what about being successful? Wasn’t that what I desperately wanted? An opportunity to prove my family, my friends back home wrong? To prove I was much better than any of them and their suburban, boring ambitions (except they weren’t suburban, they were all sophisticated and probably had interesting jobs already in publishing, media, the arts whilst I was trying to beg a roll up from my elderly boyfriend). Carl was right. I wasn’t cut out for any of this stuff. Sometimes when everything’s a battle you have to just give up (I was pretty sure this wasn’t one of Oprah’s catchphrases).
‘Or we could get married,’ Carl said handing me a roll up.
‘What?’
‘If we get married then you’ll be entitled to more benefits. You could try and study something here in Amsterdam, maybe finally discover what it is you want to do with your life.’
‘Do you want to get married?’
Carl had never spoken about marriage before. His parents had been married for a long time but I wasn’t sure if it was a happy relationship. He sometimes commented that it was more about companionship than anything else. And there it was. Companionship- wasn’t that slowly the way our relationship was going? We weren’t sleeping together regularly anymore. I didn’t get excited by the sight of his womanly calves peeking out of his trousers. I was no longer bothered about making myself attractive. I looked like a complete clown most of the time and never once considered whether I was sexy with my smeary make up, unwashed T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms with bird poo down the front. I picked my nose in front of Carl. I wasn’t even worried about him seeing me. In fact quite recently I’d picked my nose whilst we were eating dinner. I drew the line at letting him see me eat it. How romantic! None of these things pointed towards a happy marriage unless that was what ALL relationships were like. Which was another reason not to get married. I hadn’t had enough relationships. I was eighteen. Was I really going to stay with Carl for the rest of my life? My silence said everything and Carl went to the toilet, washed his hands, picked a few damp vegetables out of the pan and took the last beer from the fridge.
‘I’ve given you a couple of things to think about,’ he said putting his headphones back on his ears.