Some memories from memory (July 1997)

I think it was the week before Diana died. I was kind of an amateur drinker and stuck to drinking gin and tonics. I was accustomed to the gassiness of beer letting me know when to stop. Walking home I confided to Sarah, giddy and nauseous, that I was never drinking again. 


I can picture her vividly but don't remember her name. She was tall and clearly anorexic and I looked like a child. We gravitated to the same table and talked about art, film, fashion. It felt like having a co-conspirator in outsiderdom, as it does when you're 22. We exchanged numbers and she called me a few days later and we met in some woods.


She had friends in London, she wanted to make it in fashion design. She made wry jokes about her self evident anorexia, I was absolutely overawed by her humility, the kind that only gets cultivated by pain. 


We didn't have a second date and we never spoke again. Two years later I would move into London, empowered by an inheritance of five grand which I quickly pissed away on rent, booze and records. 


My flatmate also felt like a co-conspirator in a different way and we partied a lot and I learned how to make my childish looks and demeanour into a virtue. She had a friend who phoned a lot and we ended up getting together despite her reticence about my being basically a child, of which she reminded me often. The subsequent decade and a half I wish I could just erase, all of it.

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