Ninety pence for twenty minutes?
You must be joking, I thought, as I drove in, and promptly out, of an NCP car park in West London.
It was hot and I was on my way to an interview. Knowing this interviewee as I do, (which is not a lot, but enough to know that he can talk the hind leg off a donkey), I knew that this was a price I could not afford. I settled on a meter. Better to have a time limit, I thought. That way I will focus my concentration and get the information I need, quickly and concisely. As I parked up, I clocked a small cat with a large spangly collar saunter by. That cat looks like it knows where it’s going, I thought.
I checked my hair and grabbed my bag. My interviewee lives in a basement. It wasn’t hard to find. Music burst from the open window and through the protective bars of a basement flat. As I walked up the garden path, a lady was squatting low to the ground. A huge dark coloured bird hopped around the garden in an ungainly manner. ‘It’s a chick’, she said. ‘It hasn’t learnt to fly yet’. It was the size of a puppy. Whatever it was, she did tell me the name but I forget now, it seemed unperturbed by my presence as I descended stone stairs, towards the sound of music.
I knew he wouldn’t be able to hear me so I peeped through the window. Through the gloom, I could just about make out a pair of white pants doing the vacuuming, the limbs concealed by the sooty darkness. That’s nice, I thought, he’s tidying up before I arrive. I knocked loudly on the window and held my breath. The Hoover stopped. ‘Hold on a minute’, the voice chimed from within.
A minute later, the door opened and there he stood. Tommy the rock star. His eyes blinking in the sun as I thought I saw a flicker of surprise cross his face. It was mutual. In a flash, I realised that for the duration of our entire encounter in Holland Park gardens last weekend, he had never once taken his sunglasses off. I had no idea what he looked like until now.
Pretty, is the answer. Too pretty to be a man. And very, very tall.
It dawned on me that he had forgotten our appointment, and it seemed, even who I was at all.
‘Er, yes,’ he confirmed when I asked, ‘I had actually’.
Shit. I’ve just fed my last five pounds into a meter. I didn’t say that, but I thought it. ‘Do you still want to do the interview?’ I asked, crossing my fingers behind my back and hoping that he did.
‘Sure’, he said, and invited me to step into his labyrinth. All basement flats are dark but this one is especially so. Windows were involved but very few of them were open. ‘I’ve just got up’, he said.
It was 4pm.
Like the bird attempting to take flight in his garden, he hopped around his flat, simultaneously fashioning tobacco into cigarettes and making cups of tea. I took my surroundings in. Sheepskin, tapes, discs, papers, ashtrays, books and a large black duvet strewn across the living room floor. It made a nice sofa as I sat down to unpack my bits and pieces.
The moment arrived and he unfolded his six-foot-something jean-clad frame and arranged it rather gracefully over the arms of the sofa. He fixed me with large brown eyes.
‘Don’t worry’, I said. ‘I won’t ask you to freestyle for the next sixty minutes. I’ve got lots of questions’, reminding myself of my trusty red Renault 5 parked outside, next to the ticking clock of the meter.
People respond in so many different ways. Some appreciate a list of questions and will answer only what you ask. Other’s can tell a story in a Robert Altman-esque stream of consciousness that requires little prompting. Just like the stories themselves, everyone is different. But I don’t think ‘worry’ was on this boy’s mind as he took a deep breath and began to talk. He could have free-styled for three and a half weeks if I’d have asked him too. The thing was, that not all of it was relevant. We went to lots of interesting places, Russia, China White’s, we took drugs, of course, (metaphorically speaking, I assure you), and we woke up, battered and slightly confused in a strip joint somewhere in downtown LA. But we didn’t spend nearly enough time discussing the loss of his erstwhile virginity.
Why didn’t you stop and point him in the right direction? I hear you ask. Easy question to ask. Harder question to answer. I don’t know. In all the time that I have spent interviewing people, two of them have foxed the f**k out of me. Tommy was one of them.
The other was a charming gent in his sixties who runs a unique gallery space in town. He was my first interview. My ‘first time’, even. So I could forgive myself, I thought as he told me the best story ever about virginity loss and then proceeded to tell me pretty much everything else that had ever happened to him in his life. Don’t get me wrong, it was fascinating. It could be another book, I thought, as he took me to meet Jimi Hendrix, alongside mods and rockers, purple hearts, American soldiers and lord knows what else. I hadn’t the heart, or the wherewithal to stop him.
+Sigh+, as my religious correspondent sometimes writes in his emails.
An interview is a funny old thing. You always want to ask the best questions, the ones that will garner you the best response, and therefore produce the most compelling story, but sometimes, like the frustration of first sex, you can’t always get there. I tried. I changed the subject, (when I could get a word in edgeways), I pushed forwards, I eased backwards, but the boy was sharp. He knew exactly where he wanted to go, and it wasn’t my way.
Such is life. The clock stopped ticking and I had to go. It hadn’t been a waste of time. You always learn new stuff, even if you’re not sure you’re gonna use it. Make sure there’s plenty of money in the metre, in fact, leave the motor at home.
Tommy the rock star and I stood outside, guarding the car and chatting, before I said goodbye. The bird was nowhere to be seen. Learnt to take flight perhaps? Or off to meet its fate with the spangly-collared-cat?
The former, I hoped.
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