Nothing’s Changed, I Still Love You (Only Slightly Less Than I Used to)

I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear. Tonight, at the Silver and Midnight Blue Club, where one, who is distinguished enough to not organize his albums alphabetically, but will put a record on after carefully wiping it clean from specks of dust with a velvet brush, telling his guest the scratches are what make them so very special, they add such a feeling of romance to the listening, do they not, before undressing her, tossing her floral-patterned undies on the floor, and tonight, at the Silver and Midnight Blue Club, he will seduce the blond waitress who likes to tell him what color rugs she has bought to her new apartment this week. Her underwear will be lace and satin, and he will carefully remove them with his teeth, suddenly realizing the floral panties’ presence, they are still on the floor, but no worries, under the bed just like that, in one quick sweep, among others like them. The blond waitress will not notice this indiscretion, or she will pretend not to notice. The girl with the floral cotton panties, poor thing, claims to be in love with him. But he has not lead her on, at least not lately he hasn’t. He tells her about the waitress, and takes her to the club so she can watch him flirt with her.

Sweetness, I was only joking when I said I’d like to smash every tooth in your head. So tiring, this little kitten of a girl who looks at him with her big, watery eyes, so innocent, so fucking innocent and despicable, naïve with her tough girl mannerisms and terrible country tang in her thin, scratchy voice. This time he hates the scratches, there is no romance in any of this. The kid would do anything with him, he has never seen anyone so eager to try any position, do whatever. But that is precisely what brings him to his knees, the hard-on of the power play, his absolute mastery over the kid. But the love. When she was out of his reach, she seemed like the most beautiful girl in the world, and he said to her, whispering on the payphone, wet and short of breath from running, the rain falling hard around him, that he would do anything for her, he loved her, he worshiped her, he would die for her, and he heard her gasp and tell him that she was touching herself as she spoke, and that was the most erotic thing he had ever heard.

“But take me to the haven of your bed”, was something that you never said. There was no time and no need for that. The first time he wants someone so badly he feels he will go insane without her. All their clothes in hasty piles around the apartment, his collared leather jacket thrown on the one chair he owns. It is a wild heat, beyond his control. But now, afterwards, he would really like to be alone, roll up a smoke, take a shower, have a beer. But she is glued to the bed, and doesn’t get the hints. And he can’t throw her out because she doesn’t have anywhere else to go in this town. Floral Panties is here only for him. He opens the large window, looks at their reflections against the black backdrop of the night. She is his. What he wanted. Right?

Keats and Yeats are on your side, while Wilde is on mine. It is raining, and he tells her all about it. All of it. Music, literature, films, politics, how to talk sophisticatedly to people. They are making a simple meal, frying some vegetables on the pan, and having a smoke. The windows open to the patio, and the sun is almost too hot to bear. Floral Panties sits on the window sill, cross-legged, in her army green mini-skirt and black bra. She is with the program now. He makes her mixtapes of everything she needs to be familiar with. They discuss Henry Miller and Andy Warhol and Pedro Almodóvar and Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. They listen to Manic Street Preachers and Suede’s Coming Up and Vanessa Daou, and sometimes some tropical jazz. He tells her to straighten her speech. Sometimes she forgets, and embarrasses him by using uncouth language, but he puts her down so easily, and loves it when she blushes from not being able to please him. She is getting a real education in terms of free love, art, culture and sarcasm. They go shopping for clothes together, and he nods proudly, the nod of an educator, of a senior connoisseur, who sees his disciple master a new difficult terrain, when she buys a Larry and The Lefthanded album at a second-hand record store. They lay awake all night, whispering nonsense in the moonlight. In his deluded post-coital state, he confesses his love once more for Floral Panties. He knows he really shouldn’t, but the girl doesn’t seem to detect the lie.

Driving in your car, I never never want to go home. (But then a strange fear gripped me and I just couldn’t ask.) Floral Panties has a beautiful old car, and the charming man in midnight blue collar shirt with sleeves rolled up, and hair recently dyed black and carefully messed up to give it that straight-out-of-bed David Lynch -look that is very in in the subculture he has claimed his own, loves to drive her beautiful car. Having her almost means it is actually his, and they do make a handsome looking couple cruising in it. Her yellow hair is so gorgeous, extremely short, pixie-style, and she wears a key in a black leather string around her neck. It is summer, and they are driving to a music festival, and stop at a yard sale. She has brought his mixtapes along, and they are blasting music with the windows half open. He doesn’t want to be seen with her in the city, but here, in the country, he can love her and do what he wants with her with all his might, and he does have lots of love here, suddenly, and she has that undeniable, intense look in her eyes when he wants her, the look of sexual hunger like he has never before seen in a woman. Only she isn’t a woman. He really should nip this in the bud. He rummages through some LP’s, answers curtly to her question, corrects her language in the cruelest way he can figure, and refuses to hold her hand. Back in the car, when she sings along to the romantic lyrics of the song he all but grimaces, and pretends he doesn’t understand the reference.

I started something and now I’m not too sure. The fact that they wore identical t-shirts, vintage, with the text Back in the USSR written across the chest, when they met for the first time, meant nothing. Everybody wears clever t-shirts, and everybody wears midnight blue jeans with the legs rolled up like in the Seventies. So what if they were shirts bought from different flea-markets at different times, and the odds of the both of them even having the same exact vintage tee was a thousand to one? It is something Alex realizes after a long time has passed, that wearing the same t-shirt means not everlasting anything. What it means is that your t-shirt gets hijacked into the wrong pile of clean clothes and when everything’s over and done with you’ve got yourself one less t-shirt.

You said I was ill and you were not wrong. Who is asking you to stay, you stupid bint? Can’t you see that I am really sick here? Go get out of here so that I can throw up in peace! I don’t care how long, go now, take how the fuck ever long you want! Leave me be, you fucking - girl! Did I ask you to come? And I hate your goddamn grandmother panties! For Christ’s sake stop apologizing! You go do that! I don’t care. You look pitiful. Stop crying. I need to go back inside now, I’m sick. I don’t know, come back in a few hours. Go buy some LP’s or whatever.

Under the iron bridge we kissed, and although I ended up with sore lips, it just wasn’t like the old days anymore. After six months, he has finally been able to shake off Floral Panties. He is with the painter from his workshop now. He is still the number one loverman of his town, and seems to have suffered no damage to his reputation with the business with the little kid. Then, there she is. Not looking at him, not hovering around him at all like the eager to please little feline that she was. God, she is beautiful. How come she isn’t noticing him? Could it be that she has grown some - dare he even think it – cojones, some self-confidence? He must find out. He does these things easily, there is no end to his boisterousness, and he will make her look, even once.

Last night I felt real arms around me. So tell me how long before the last one? They are finally getting the kind of kindness in their relationship that Alex always prayed would happen. They don’t go out tonight, but curl up on the couch and watch Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 on TV, and go to sleep early. For her, it is the loveliest, most unforgettable night of their entire affair.

The rain falls hard on a humdrum town, this town has dragged you down. Oh, good god. Here we go again. Why did he have to go up to her?

So what difference does it make? They drink profusely, more than Alex will ever drink in her life, and do nothing but that, and other stuff, when he feels like it. She pretends she doesn’t notice how much embarrassment she causes him, and how reluctantly he takes her to meet his friends. But his lady friends, those he flaunts in front of her, everyone much older and more glamorous than her. Why do that, she has no idea. (He is trying to get her to break up with him, but she doesn’t get it, poor thing, with her country dialect and wrong opinions and shameful ignorance. After this, she will never be ignorant about anything, ever again. When she, in an idle conversation with him on literature, realizes he has never even read anything of Miller’s, she cannot understand. Cooler to appear worldly and scholarly than to actually take time from the precious drinking and getting high, to do the reading? Alex doesn’t know what to say, and when he tells his phony group of alcoholic friends in second-hand polyester collar shirts and Sixties polka-dot dresses that in Bradbury’s world he would learn by heart The Bible, she starts laughing in his face.)

Now shut your mouth, how can you say I go about things the wrong way? If he feels like cutting himself, he’ll bloody well do it. Floral Panties may have black lace underwear now, but changing her lingerie won’t change the fact that she is seventeen, so stupid, so clingy and needing constant affirmations. She is beautiful, though, and right after the photoshoot for his art project he will ditch her, it is way past time for that. She is beginning to think they are an actual couple, and he will not have any of that, he likes to play the field, because she may be beautiful, but so is he, he is only beginning to understand his own charms, and what the hell is he doing with a kid? He has another shot of whatever, takes a knife, carves a little hole between his left thumb and index finger. So what? It’s art. It’s fucking art. The organizer of the project is taking a liking to him, and after a few times in bed with her, he knows which buses go by her house now. She wants to meet him next week, but Floral Panties asked him to come over for a few days. He’s accepted both invitations, but he will go with the woman. Panties will get the idea when he just doesn’t show up at the train station. He’ll just never call her again. She’ll get the picture. He does as he bloody well pleases. He wipes the gushing blood with some tissue.

Why do I give valuable time to people who don’t care if I live or die? When he carved the word “Manic” in his left arm, Alex became very worried. But now she is sitting buck naked in her kitchen after he never showed at the station and never called her, and she realizes now she can’t call him back anymore, not now or ever. There is nothing but a small knife, which she uses to slice tomatoes and cucumbers, in front of her on the table: she is staring at it and contemplating, reluctant to actually become Young Werther and use it, when she suddenly understands the vast, hollow stupidity of it all, it all becomes crystal clear and harming herself over love so obviously a daft thing to do, so she puts the knife back in the drawer. She tries to laugh, but the laughter doesn’t come. She is heart-broken. She has read about it happening to other people, listened to thousands of songs about it, and now it has happened to her. But she understands and acknowledges the irony of it. The disciple has outdone the master, finally. But the joke just isn’t funny right now. But one day though, perhaps it will be.

The lyrics excerpts are from the following songs by The Smiths, in order of appearance, starting with the title: Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before, This Charming Man, Bigmouth Strikes Again, Reel Around the Fountain, Cemetery Gates, There Is a Light That Never Goes Out, I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish, These Things Take Time, Still Ill, Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me, William, It Was Really Nothing, What Difference Does It Make?, How Soon Is Now?, Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now.