Tess Of The Dormobiles

Kelly said. "We never slept together."

"Really?" I said. "Only I remember meeting you at a Yard Act gig in Manchester over the summer and afterwards we ..."

Kelly, it turned out, was not just a one night stand from the previous summer. She was Station Manager of the Student Radio station at my new university. She was also my room-mate's girlfriend. 

After our 'we-didn't-have-sex' conversation I had my interview with Carl and Kelly.

Kelly asked. "Why do you want to DJ on the station?"

"Carl told me to apply," I replied. "Plus I'll be brilliant. I have the greatest musical taste in the world. The world needs to hear me. The universe needs to hear me."

Kelly explained. “We don't broadcast to the entire universe. Our output is limited to the student cafeteria and to the three halls of residence on campus, using old fashioned wires and sellotape.”

Carl interrupted. “The quality of the sound is more sellotape than wire.”

Kelly ignored him. “We also broadcast the shows on YouTube. Every show is filmed and added online.”

The next section of the interview was the trial. Playing my music in the ‘rehearsal’ studio under the studious eyes of Carl and Kelly.

I played the Pixies Down to the Well, Frank Turner’s Recovery and The Flaming Lips The Sun Blows Up Today. In-between tracks I said some words and generally wowed the universe.

Kelly said. “Can I be honest? That was technically shit. You got the volumes wrong, cut the second track short and talked too long over the last track.”

I mouthed a “thank you” / ” fuck you” I’m not sure which, I can’t lip-read.

“However,” she said with a smile, “I liked your banter, the selection of music was good and you came across as knowledgeable.  With training I think you’ll be a good DJ.  You’ve passed. Congratulations.”

“If you think that was bad you should hear everyone else,” Carl added.

After the interview Carl had to run to a lecture (literally, my demo had overrun).  I was left alone with Kelly.

There was a moment of awkwardness before Kelly spoke.

Kelly spoke. “Thanks for not saying anything,” she said. “It’s not that Carl’s the jealous type, I just don’t want to complicate things.”

“I’m quite happy to keep Carl in the dark. Duplicity is my middle name.”

Kelly scowled. “It’s not duplicitous, there’s nothing to hide, I was single and I had a throwaway fuck with a passing stranger I didn’t expect to see again. It’s not like I’m covering up an affair. I’m just trying to avoid Carl getting suspicious every time we’re alone together.”

“Like now.”

“Like now, or anytime I call round your flat and he’s not there. What with the radio station and his being your flatmate I just want a hassle-free existence. That’s not telling lies …”

I let her words echo round the studio. They sounded good, bouncing off the egg-cartoned walls with the confidence and authority of words that really sounded convinced of themselves.

That evening I went out with some people from my tutor group. We ended up at a nightclub which played music so bad I was in my seventh heaven slagging it off. I returned home in the early hours of the morning to find Carl and Kelly having sex. She was on top, with tits wiggling about like sprats at the end of a fishing line.

“Don’t let me stop you,” I said, "I'm quite relaxed about this sort of thing," but it was too late, the free show was over. There was a slurpy rasp as Carl withdrew and I went to great lengths not to comment on it.

Kelly wasn’t at all relaxed about it. Kelly shouted. "Can't you knock?" 

"It's my room," I said.

Kelly shouted back. "It's your SHARED room. She also shouted the word “pervert” whilst covering up her delightful pair in a showy display of modesty, as if I hadn’t seen them, felt them, sucked them, bit them.

“I’m off to bed,” I said, “I’ll be asleep in 5 minutes, you can start again.” 

They never did.

xxx

A few days later I did my first show. I was assured that there were at least four people in the cafeteria, meaning that  I had an audience. The world changed, the universe would never be the same again.

Then, the magic stopped. My show ended. My place on air was taken by a mere mortal who began their alloted hour with Coldplay.

Kelly had written a list of my mistakes. Carl had fallen asleep. The cafeteria was empty. That's showbiz baby.

As I was packing up a young woman approached me. My first fan I thought, only she didn't ask for my autograph.

"I hear you're one of the students from Paradise apartments," she said.

“Er, yes,” I said, not sure if this was leading to a joke or sympathy, or if she really didn’t know.  “At least that was the plan, before I discovered they haven’t been built.  I’m Luke by the way.”

My extended hand was ignored.  “In which case I need you for a piece.  Do you mind?  I’m Tess, one of the news team, a veejay.”  At this point she suddenly turned on the charm, all teeth and cleavage. 

Tess said. “I think it’s really important that you get a chance to tell the world what happened to you – how you came all this way only to find your accommodation hadn’t even been built.  This is the really big story right now – they’ve increased the intake by 10,000 but they’ve nowhere to put them. Just lots of mad schemes that’ll never leave the architect’s notebook.”

A Veejay! The video journalists, who interrupted the station’s music output with the latest ‘news’ from campus: the price of Twixes in the Union shop has risen by a centime, or the Women’s Officer has decided to become a man.  All the usual, irrelevant tittle-tattle that, frankly, should never be given priority over the latest Yeah Yeah Yeah’s single.

“Okay,” I said, “I’m happy to do an interview.  I’m kicking my heels for an hour before my next lecture anyway. ”

“That’s great," she said. "Let’s go.”

“Go? I thought you were going to interview me.”

She looked at me as if I was mad.  “Yes, I am, you just agreed to it.  But I’m not going to interview you here.  What would the point of that be?  We’re going to the empty site where the Paradise Appartments were supposed to be, so that our viewers can see how badly you’ve been let down.”

“Er, okay.  I suppose.”

“It’ll mean missing your lecture though,” she said as an afterthought.  “But you’re only a first year, you don’t have to worry about passing exams or anything. A dead guy passed his first year exams last year."

We recorded a short interview and Tess brought me back to the studio to watch her cutting it into a news feature. 

After the broadcast we went for a drink at the Student Union bar and then moved on to somewhere that wasn't the student union bar. We talked politics (Tess), music (me), philosophy (Tess) and more music (me). We talked about Tess and we talked about me.

"We could go back to yours," Tess said at the point in the evening she'd decided was the end. Me, I could have gone on and on.

"We could, but I share my room with Carl and Kelly's bound to be there too."

There was a long silence.

A very long silence.

"We could go back to yours," I said eventually.

She paused, as if contemplating a difficult question, or just demonstrating her mastery of the art of silence.

"Okay, I'll say it once. I live in a Dormobile."

I said nothing. 

In response to my silence she said. "I can't afford rent." 

"I don't know what a Dormobile is," I confessed. 

"Like a camper van. An older, smaller camper van."

"Sounds fun."

"It isn't."

She was parked in the far rear corner of the car park, an oddly shaped van, the size a camper van would be if it had absolutely no intention of ever being lived in.

"Cosy," I said.

Inside there was a sofa, which became a bed. There wasn't much else, but all we needed was the bed. 

We made love. Let's just say we tested the handbrake was on. Had it not been we would have bounced our way down to the ocean and would not even noticed. It would have made a great movie scene.

"That was just sex," she said afterwards. "A girl needs it sometimes, like you need to squeeze a spot."

"It was good sex though," I said. She said nothing, but smiled. I can be quite a charmer when I want to.

xxx

The next morning I saw Kelly in the studio. Kelly said. "Before you ask Carl was round mine last night."

"Ah, I did wonder," I said. 

"It's not that we're avoiding you, it's just that it's a small room and ..."

"And you struggle to remember which one of us you're sleeping with."

"Thank you. You've just brilliantly demonstrated why we went to mine."

I spent most of my day in the studio. The radio station, I discovered, had a ton of records; old stuff, new stuff, obscure stuff. Vinyl records, like from the time when there was only vinyl. I found some Cud, Kitchens of Distinction, Tiny Too, Family Cat, some on vinyl, some on CD. It was like having my own time machine, I was back in the 90s, hell, sometimes I was even back in the 80s. Once I played a record from the 1970s, I practically cried with nostalgia.

The studio became my hangout. Sure, I went to lectures, I even read books, sometimes, while I was listening to records, as a form of background noise to the music, but more often than not I just hung out in the studio.

Kelly was the station manager, so although she went to lectures she mostly just hung out in the radio station, to do important station manager business, some of the time, but mostly to listen in and mock the records I was playing.

Carl used to hang out in the station as well. His room mate was there, his girlfriend was there. His whole life was there. 

Tess only showed when she had a new piece to work on, which happened to be most days. Often she would get me to help. "Oy, vinyl archaeologist, could you put your toys down for a second and help me with this. I'm making news. Don't worry, the Frank and Walters purple vinyl EP will still be there when you get back, just aged an iota more."

Tess thought news was important. She did pieces about student debt, graduate debt, student jobs, graduate unemployment, dodgy landlords, dodgy employers, dodgy academics. She reported on student demos, police brutality at student demos, media indifference to student demos, government inaction in response to student demos. She painted an oral picture of a world gone to shit, a cesspit soundscape. More often than not she dragged me along to contribute, I was her voice of the man in the street. Afterwards we would go for a drink and have sex. Turns out Tess had quite a few spots that needed squeezing.

xxx

Kelly noticed that Tess kept asking me to help her with stories. "You should ask her out," she'd say every day.

"She'd eat me alive," I'd say every day.

Then Kelly's birthday happened. I guess it was inevitable. Birthday's are as unavoidable as death, just more frequent.

For her birthday Kelly invited the three of us to her birthday meal. Her intention was clear, to set me up with Tess.

Tess took the invite as evidence that I'd been telling everyone about our 'relationship'.  We'd sat at the table first, Kelly and Carl having decided to engage in an extended pre-meal tongue-wrestle.

Tess said. "I bet you tell Carl and Kelly all our intimate details."

I said. "Of course not. You said it wasn't a relationship, that it was just sex. I've not told anyone."

Tess shouted. "You've been keeping our relationship a secret! From your best friends we see every day. Are you ashamed of me?"

"No, I thought..."

"Don't think. You're a man, you're not designed to think."

She stormed off. But only to the bathroom, she'd be coming back.

Kelly and Carl picked that moment to join me at the table.

Kelly said. "Is this for real? You're going out with Tess?"

"Yes," I said.

Kelly said. "And you said nothing! Even when I asked. How long has this been going on?"

Typical really that Kelly should choose to quote Carly Simon at this key moment. "Since the first day I met her," I said.

Kelly said. "You said nothing all this time?"

"I don’t have to tell you everything I do. Besides, we’re not going out. We just have sex."

Kelly said. "You’ve no idea have you?"

"What? Sometimes a girl just needs sex, it’s just a physical thing, like squeezing a spot. That's a quote from Tess," I said. "An actual quote."

Kelly said. "Luke, sometimes a girl lies. She wants sex, but really, secretly, she’s after something more."

Kelly's words hit me like a slap round the face, and were swiftly followed by a slap round the face.

Tess returned in time to witness the slap.

"I don’t know what you’re so animated about," she shouted. "He just kept our relationship from his friends, that’s nothing. We’ve been sleeping together for nearly a month and he doesn’t seem to have noticed. All he notices are individual incidents of sex, he doesn’t see any connection between them, he's not joined the dots together."

There was an awkward silence. Everyone it seemed was going to great lengths to say nothing.

I tried to break the ice.

"Anyway," I said. "Happy birthday."

Kelly scowled.

Kelly said. “Luke and I slept together."

She didn't even qualify her statement with a chronological clarification, instead she burst into tears and stormed off. But only to the bathroom, she'd be coming back.

“This was months ago,” I say hastily. "Before I knew you. We were both single. It was just a thing."

"You didn't tell me," Carl said.

"You didn't tell me," Tess said.

"I...

For once in my life I didn't know what to say.