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we can’t do this anymore, he keeps saying. No, no, no, no, you daft prick, you daft cunt—
but you know he’s saying it not so much to convince you as to convince himself. and he’d never have the balls to break it off completely, which is why he’ll leave it down to you, provoking you on the night you absolutely obliterate his guitar to say all those things that can’t be unsaid. but that’s years down the track, not even a blip on the horizon now, when arguing like this is futile substitute for an existential wrestle that can never be won.
you don’t— you’re not listening, just fuckin— listen to me, hey, hey, hey, listen—
how the conversation always goes, speaking over your brother, both knowing what either is going to say and wanting to get it out first. yelling, sniping, fighting, as though by creating that silence into which you can speak your words will make it happen, make it real, make it right…
creating reality with your words. Isn’t that how it feels? Singing rock and roll star to a stadium full of screaming fans after singing it to five people in dive bars for what felt like fucking ages, looking down at that big sprawl of churning bodies out there as far as the eye can see, and they sing it right back in an endless roar, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once. when the lights are bright and it’s just you alone big star on that sparse empty stage and then you look at him and he meets your eye and it lights up, blazing, the two of you up here, nobody else in the wide world, it feel surreal, unreal, perfect, like you managed to both step inside the same dream…
it’s not right, he says, grinding cigarette bitter in ashtray like trying to make a great big ugly smoke stain mark on your face. it’s not right— not right—
and if you could just get a word in edge ways, if you could just…
if words even mattered, and they don’t, they don’t…
you could just tell him
shut up, would you, shut up and let me speak—
but it’s not about who’s speaking when there don’t exist the words to say it.
this is the crux of your whole point, maybe if you were more articulate, this is exactly what you’re trying to get across if the daft cunt would stop screaming the words that he doesn’t even believe to make you shut up…
as if he could ever make you shut up.
—
he wants what he can never have, which is for there to be no you and only him. whatever cruel stroke of the world split genius like an atom and deposited the wordy clever parts to him and beautiful cool parts to you strokes your ego immeasurably because he can win a verbal fight but only for that night, and later when he’s pulling your hair and fucking into your mouth his moans are pitchy and desperate, and you think maybe, like, Freudally he’s trying to shut you up forever. before you can consume him.
but the silly cunt’s methods are all wrong, because the only thing this leads to is him cumming so hard there’s tears in his eyes, and you leer out to rub it in like - here i am cunt, and didn’t i do good, aren’t i looking pretty.
he hates you because he loves you because he wants it to just be him.
but he needs you.
you’re the splinter in his finger he can’t get out, and you fucking love it.
you love it when he’s pouty, stropping, you’re running your wide-open mouth really caught your stride in the nonsense you’re spouting, and the interviewer loves it, loves you, everyone loves you and your pretty lips and your wide-open blue eyes, and he has something to say, wants to say it, but you’re just talking shit and he taps a foot, tenses fingers, camera on you and he tries to hold back. “if i could just get a word in edgeways…” but he can’t. can’t press you to a wall and press his mouth on you, teeth biting lips, drawing blood, only way he knows to shut you up completely. he can’t do that here, and he hates it the control freak; because the camera’s on and the world is watching…
and you love it when he gives in like you know he can’t help but have to, hotel room dark and your mass of twisted tongues and limbs, tousled hair and sweaty bodies lit in shadow only by the curtain-dampened headlights of passing traffic way down on the street. you press up against each other, you give and give and he only takes, but in that moment when he’s slipping just over the edge he grips you tight and meets your eyes. whispers your name.
because wherever he goes, he wants to take you too.
in the post-orgasmic haze, sweat-slick; he’s mad at himself, disgusted and he’s always leaving and it always hurts but you’ll never tell. when his back’s to you, clothing pulled on in a hurry, looking as discomposed as he’d never like to, and collar all flicked up wrong, hair askew. you like to remind him: you’ll be back.
cigarette lit, reclined easy, leaning up against the headboard. you flick your leg out from under over-starched hotel sheet, let him see a little more of what he can’t resist. you already want more. dirty bastard.
that’s why god put you here, to remind him. you’re the wakeup call in the morning he tries to ignore.
he got his songs on the radio, but they’re sung with your voice.
he gets the 70% split for songwriting, but when they close their eyes and listen they can only hear you.
he’s the music, but you’re the heart and soul of this band, and if he thinks he can hide from that… if he thinks he can run away…
then you start to wonder if you’re just trying to convince yourself.
tambourine incident included. crystal meth turning soft outlines of beer-haze harsh and ugly, three days and nights up snorting, getting your dicks hard with no climax in sight. maybe somewhere about the second hour of selfish fucking, out of sync almost over the edge, then back further away, orgasm evasive, elusive, the hill you can’t climb, the oasis you can’t reach…
teeth gritted and skin slapping skin sounds horrible, suddenly. cheap. pornographic. and he tightened his grip on your shoulder.
this is fucking sick
back and forth. hitting the headboard, pillows on the floor.
this is fucked. fucking wrong.
sweat and precum gritty, horribly chafing, the kind of scum a shower couldn’t even wash away. when he pulled away from you, you were already at the bedside table, fingers fumbling shard ice for another line. because the only answer to this predicament, you were sure, was to get more high. don’t blame me, you said - something of the like. you perverted fucker.
and things continued to be said as they were always said. words exchanged, building to the kind of crescendo where you say all those ugly hurtful things you never really mean.
worse than you’ve ever said before.
the iciness between you was too cold and terrible, like a fuckin’ blizzard, rest of band too blitzed to notice, and you still hadn’t slept, paranoid seeing spiders out of the corner of your eyes; and he’d put up some wall of ice between you couldn’t stand, took a fuckin’ tambourine to shatter…
and you thought he’d gone forever.
then he came back.
this was how you kept fooling yourself no time would ever be the last. he’ll always be back. old reliable line up on your shelf. alongside: i’m a pretty fucker, me.
i sing the songs.
but then your voice started going. and the tiny panic at the edge of your consciousness started to comprehend
(though you dulled the warning bell alarms the way you always had. heavy doses of booze and whatever drugs you could get your hands on, bit of plain reliable self-denial)
maybe the things that make you you
things taken for granted
things you thought could never be taken away
could.
but why would you believe that for more than half a moment? you. the you who simply had to walk up on that stage and be adored, having put in little more effort to stardom than simply allowing yourself to be packaged up for the masses to consume. subsequently found yourself rewarded in every way
(and he hated that you always did the least but got everything anyway, but dumb fucker played that joke on himself cos it was just as he’d always planned. see, he always knew he’d need you, he in a certain way used you. and you never minded, but it was like he created you from his own benefit, then constantly needed to blame you, you, you for only being what he created…)
it was easy to piss it up and snort it down and smoke cigarette after cigarette thinking you’d just sleep it off and wake up fine, never have to face a consequence in your life
and then he went and left, didn’t he, the fucker.
went and left for really the last time.
—-
now the you that’s you don’t really know how to feel, only you know that you’ve been around, seen around and decided off your own back to slow down. just as you’ve always known you would be, you’re a legend in your own right. and when the people come to see you on the stage, if you don’t hit the notes perfect, or you kick off afterwards, they’re able to forgive you in a way that he never could. they don't care you don't sing like you're 19, they like to hear the wear and tear in your voice, evidence of things done and seen and experienced; they let you change because they wouldn't rather you as some kind of stunted performing monkey
because their love is different for you.
and granted they’re not out there slagging you off in interviews and playing the big-time serious rock star with no little brother to tell em, hold out, you ain’t david bowie, you ain’t fucking… elton john, out there, you’re a geezer with a guitar who can write a good tune
sometimes you need someone with a fucking edge, a fucking soul, to sing them right
but you know it’s not just that, not just that, a bunch of other things as well. like every time you sing them old songs, slide away, and all, you feel something that words can’t explain where your heart all swells up throbbing and you realise those simple dreams you always had or wishful longings… you realise deep down when you were young and dumb and always up for a laugh or to slap a reporter down, you realise you really did think it would all come true
that you’d really get those things you dreamed
like the two of you in paris, panting in each other’s faces on the hotel bed.
like some nice green meadow where you could sit and hold hands like if you’d met as strangers; where none of this shit mattered and everything might be okay.
that you actually had expected this might come true, once upon a time, is the cold-water slap of reality.
this is the tiny shard splinter that leaving youth has taken out of you.
you think now, though you’d never admit it, that he was right to leave.
because you can’t be fifty and playing your classic hits on stage, with grown up kids and wives and ex-wives and alimony, and still running like teenagers to get of the stage to wank each other off secretly in the gents.
you get more used to it each time you tell it to yourself: noel was right, was right; old funny bastard was right.
bastard.
you go on Jonathan Ross or Graham Norton or any of the number of fucking endless varieties of podcast interviews and vlogs for online blogs and whatever the fuck has sprung up today. and you face the camera and you flex your twitter fingers and always have try to find the words to make noel understand your realisation.
you were right to leave you fucking bastard. you fucking prick, finally got me to shut up and realise that you were right.
but at the same time, those words are inextricably linked with others.
other words you don’t always say, like: so i forgive you ya silly fuck. so what the fuck are you doing playing bowie on that stage.
so why the fuck don’t you come back to me.
you think sometimes maybe he knows what you mean. never been much good with words anyway. you scoff at the stupid edm bassline on his silly new songs but in some of the lyrics which you’d never admit to googling you think he’s answering you in his own way.
like maybe he’s been answering you all this time.
all of it.
before you knew what question you were asking.
before you started to realise that maybe it was the only way he knew how.
--
you remember his face the first time you played him that song. that simple little ditty you wrote, one day sitting under a tree.
wrote this yourself, fuck
did, you said, satisfied, and settled back and lit up a cigarette.
you watched the kaleidoscope of emotions wash over his face. never could hide ‘em from you anyway. swallowed his amazement, flirted with the idea of labelling it shite - silly cunt would always overthink, that’s what you were always trying to tell him; could never let go, could never just accept… that sometimes life’s just about those feelings you can’t put into words.
and you can’t remember exactly what he settled on, only that it stroked your ego enumerably
but that wasn’t the point, was it.
point was, he’d been having you stand on that stage singing his fucking love songs to you long enough. that’ll do things to a man when performing is made into one long masturbation session, and it was no less rewarding for it but no wonder you became such a cocky fuck and him such a miserable bastard in the end.
so, we putting it on the album then?
you just want your 70%, he said, and snagged a smoke from you even though he’d quit, reached in his pocket and had the gall to pull out a light.
things carried on and the world kept turning; always another beer to drink, another afternoon to slip away in a haze at the pub. back then, there were still more whispered kisses behind locked doors under the cover of the night to come. hadn’t yet been the last time.
but from then on, it was like a little golden candle flame was lit glowing in your chest.
because fuck his songs. fuck him. he could shut up and listen for once in his life.
here was a song you could sing on stage and know he knew you wrote
without him putting words in your mouth
because you finally found a way to say it.