It is generally believed that Mr Childes had been put under pressure to come out by the media and many members of the gay community.

Mr Childes won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor two years ago for his portrayal of a gay journalist who outed and then seduced Patrick Frazier’s baseball player. Continued on PAGE 8
PAGE 8: Daniel Newman Expresses Anger at Media Treatment of Childes
PAGE 9: Forrest Childes’ Future?
PAGE 27: Film Review! Second Guessing Sartre. Another Star Turn By Patrick Frazier

 *

Patrick goes out for dinner with Genevieve a few weeks after the news about Forrest Childes breaks.

“Have you been behaving?” she asks.

“Of course I have,” Patrick replies, in his best wounded tones. “Jenny, have you no faith?”

“When it comes to your acting? Yes. When it comes to you behaving? That would be a resounding no.”

Patrick smiles at her winningly and she thaws as he knew she would.

“Homme have been onto me again,” she says. “They want to do another shoot.”

“Will they fly me to Rome again?”

“No, they want to do it in New York. The actor in his natural habitat.” Genevieve fixes Patrick with an icy glare. “Not too natural, you hear? Make sure your apartment is clean, okay?”

“Does this mean I have to burn my extensive collection of Mano a Mano?” Patrick asks sadly before he bursts out laughing. “Chill, Jenny. The place is so vanilla, it’s not even funny.”

“You are a horror,” Genevieve announces as the waiter brings their entrees.

“But I’m a high-earning horror,” Patrick reminds her and he smiles at the waiter. The waiter smiles back and drops his eyes.

Genevieve waits until the waiter is out of earshot before she speaks. “Don’t even think about it, Patrick.”

“What? Oh, come on. I did nothing.”

“You are the only person in the world who considers your smile to be nothing.”

“Ah, quit it, Jenny, or I’ll blush.”

They eat quietly. When the waiter returns to clear the table, Patrick smiles and Genevieve glares. Their main course arrives and the ame happens. Patrick thinks the waiter is probably about nineteen, maybe twenty. He’s so busy eating his steak and admiring the view that he completely fails to notice Alan until he is standing right next to their table. Patrick jumps to his feet.

“Alan,” he breathes. “Shit, it’s been…”

“Two and a half months,” replies Alan. “I’d like you to meet Jonah. He’s just over there.” Alan beckons to a tall, brown-haired guy who is loitering nearby.

“Wonderful. Perhaps you guys would like to join us for dessert?”

“Actually, no, we’ve just finished but thanks, man.”

Patrick shakes Jonah’s hand and they are very civil to each other. Patrick wonders how much Alan has told Jonah about their not-arrangement. He doubts that Alan has said much. When Alan first mentioned Jonah over the phone, Patrick thought nothing of it. He called him a whale but Alan said he was a yuppie. Patrick asked if he was gay and Alan said that he was. Patrick asked if being gay and a yuppie made one a guppy and Alan didn’t laugh. That’s when Patrick realised that something was rotten in the Upper East Side.

Alan and Jonah leave and Genevieve wisely says nothing as Patrick attacks his steak.

“Excuse me a moment,” he says when he finishes. He passes the waiter on the way to the restroom and raises his eyebrows. The waiter blushes and Patrick gives him up as a lost cause.

The lost cause arrives into the bathroom as Patrick is washing his hands.

“I’m not supposed to be in here,” the lost cause says but Patrick puts his finger to the lost cause’s mouth.

“I won’t tell if you don’t,” he whispers.

Genevieve waits until they’re in the car before she starts shouting. Patrick doesn’t really listen. The lost cause was good. Very good, in fact. Patrick thinks he’ll go back tomorrow night.

Patrick Frazier: “You want me to tell you about my girlfriend? What can I say? She’s gorgeous. And camera-shy, sorry.”

Patrick Frazier: “Sandra and I go way back, don’t we, Sandy?”
Sandra Denney: “Call me Sandy again and I’ll hurt you, Paddy.”
Patrick Frazier: “She loves me, really.”
Sandra Denney: “It’s true, actually. God knows why.”

Patrick Frazier: “Oh, I’m just going to catch up with my friends. Take it easy, you know.”

Vic Carrera: “He’s a fine actor. Crap at baseball, honestly. Hey! Patrick! Who was your stunt double for Run?”
Patrick Frazier: “For the baseball or the kissing?”

Sandra Denney: “No, he’s great. I do actually love him. If I wasn’t married, I’d run away with him like a shot. Don’t tell him I said that. Don’t tell my husband either.”

Patrick Frazier: “This woman wrote to me, right, and asked me to suggest a name for her unborn son. I said Horace. There aren’t enough Horaces in the world today.”

Patrick doesn’t win Best Actor and he was supposed to be a shoe-in. He ignores Forrest’s smug expression and smiles his fake smile for the camera, graciously congratulating the winner.

*

[SCENE: Brad’s Hospital Bed]

BRAD:
Look, Denis, you ruined my life. You keep coming back here like the fucking pigheaded bastard you are. Don’t you get it? There’s no story anymore. My life is officially over.

DENIS:
I’m not here for a fucking stupid story.

BRAD:
Then why? The food here’s not that good.

DENIS:
Except the jello.

(BRAD clearly struggles to hide a smile)
BRAD:
Okay, maybe the jello.

DENIS:
And this, perhaps…

(DENIS leans in to kiss BRAD. Pan, close up and cut)

*

Come on, kiss me, Patrick. You know you want to.

No, Forrest, really, it’s just acting.

Like hell it is. You wanted me.

Woah, now you’re undermining my acting skills?

Patrick, unless you’ve persuaded various parts of your anatomy to act as well as your pretty face does…

Fine, fine, Forrest, I want you. But these things never end well.

These things?

Things with co-stars. Always end badly.

Ha, tell that to Katherine Hepburn and Spenser Tracy.

They were straight, Forrest. And your knowledge of movie stars scares me.

Stop deflecting attention from yourself, Patrick. You want me.

You’re fucking full of yourself, you know that?

So are you. You’re a fucking Oscar winner and you don’t let us forget it, do you?

What the fuck does that have to do with anything?

Just fucking kiss me, Patrick.

Just. Fine. Fine.

*

NYC, June: At the premiere of Patrick Frazier’s latest film, rumours of a rift between the co-stars seemed grossly over-exaggerated as Frazier and Forrest Childes chatted amiably to fans and each other. Daniel Newman is quoted as saying that Run is an incredible film that highlights the ongoing problems of gay men in today’s celebrity arena.

Sorcha fumbled slightly with her cigarette lighter. She brushed her hair out of her eyes and looked at her cousin.

“Lewis, be a darling and give me a hand, would you?”

“I shouldn’t because, you know, smoking’s bad for you and, well, you’re not supposed to be in here,” said Lewis but he lit her cigarette for her anyway.

Sorcha shrugged and looked around. They were in the men’s room of the most exclusive nightclub in London; black marble and blue lights and the throb of bass that made the mirrors shake. Sorcha was perched on the edge of a basin, a cigarette in one hand and her compact mirror in the other.

“Fuck, most of the glitter’s worn off,” she said before she took a drag and offered the cigarette to Lewis.

He shook his head, frowning. “No, thanks. Why do you wear that stuff anyway? It just gets everywhere.”

“That’s the point,” said Sorcha with a grin and she reached for her cocktail glass, having forgotten that she had finished it about half an hour previously. “Fuck.” She looked at Lewis. “But, hey, you didn’t mind the glitter on Daniel, did you?”

Lewis looked pained. “I can’t believe you did that to him. He looked like a fucking Christmas tree. And poor Gabriel!”

“Gabriel’s the angel on top!” Sorcha started to laugh hysterically.

“You think Gabriel’s hot?”

“Oh, bloody hell, Lewis, you are no lover of man if you cannot see how hot he is. God, I definitely need more booze if I’m telling you this sort of thing. Oh, and mascara.” As she started to reapply her eye makeup, tongue sticking out slightly, she asked, “Are you having a good time, Lewis, darling?”

“Surprisingly good, actually, seeing as I never liked nightclubs when I was an undergraduate.”

“Aha, but you never liked boys either! Things change.”

“I think I need another drink at this stage,” said Lewis. “Brian has a bottle of champagne that I have to get back to.”

“Good luck with that,” murmured Sorcha, flicking her hair over her shoulder. “I definitely saw some blonde chick wrapped around him and she was showing great interest in that bottle of champagne.”

“The bastard!” cried Lewis jokingly. “And I thought I was the only one.”

“God, you are quite gay, aren’t you?”

“Very bloody funny. Come on, are you done? Let’s go.”

Sorcha slipped off the basin and readjusted her top. “I look like such a slut,” she said cheerfully.

“In comparison to the girls out there?” asked Lewis. “You look like a fucking nun.”

It was true, incidentally. The nightclub was full of anorexic C-list celebrities, schmoozing and shimmering their night away. It was like a galaxy of minor stars, connected through a haze of cigarette smoke. The band had the VIP section to themselves, fortunately, only venturing out to the dancefloor when Oakey insisted that the music was of sufficient quality.

Lewis opened the door for Sorcha and she giggled as a celebrity (lesser than Arch) did a double take.

“Is this the men’s…?” he started to ask.

“Oh, you’re in the right place, love,” said Sorcha before she took Lewis’ arm. “Shall we, darling?”

They made their way back to where Brian was sprawled out on a couch, chatting to Jan (the blonde chick was nowhere to be seen). Gabriel and Daniel looked breathless, having made another foray onto the dancefloor.

“We were accosted by women!” whined Daniel, sliding onto Lewis’ lap. “Hold me.”

“You up for another dance, Barnes?” asked Sorcha. “I’ll keep the daytime soap girls away from you, I promise!”

Gabriel grinned and nodded and ran his hand through his hair. Sorcha noted with satisfaction that he was still shedding glitter, like a falling halo.

“I assume you can dance?” she shouted over the sound of the music as she led him onto the dancefloor.

“I’m a drummer!” he shouted back as if that explained everything.

When they started dancing, of course, it all became clear; the rhythm owned Gabriel or Gabriel owned the rhythm; either way the man could dance.

Later, they picked their way along the London streets. Sorcha was wearing Gabriel’s jacket and insisting that she could walk, despite her crippling boots. Daniel and Lewis kept stopping to kiss until Jan told them that they had to walk on either side of her or else they’d never get back to the hotel.

The following morning, Lewis sat at the breakfast table in the suite, head in hands, as Liz read out the headlines in the Sun. His hangover rather hindered his comprehension of the situation but it seemed that Arch were back in the news; comeback kids, reunited.

Lewis blinked because it seemed like the least one could do whilst having a revelation.

Daniel Something was sitting, sprawled in an armchair in the Classics section. His face was half-hidden behind glasses and a copy of Edna Keyes’ latest translation of Virgil. He shifted slightly and the hem of his t-shirt rose up, just a little, so that Lewis could see the hard angle of his hipbone. Daniel Something was smiling very slightly and was possibly not even aware of it. He glanced, by chance, in Lewis’ direction.

Lewis dropped his mug because it seemed like the least one could do whilst understanding a revelation.

>>

Daniel was surprised when he fell in love in broad daylight.

After years of midnight fumbles and blanket hazes of smoke and desperation, he sat across from Lewis Knightley in a little English tea-shop, saw him as a dark gold blur against the pale sky and the summer roses waving in through the window, perfectly absorbed in a harmless academic conversation with someone else – it wasn’t even as though they were alone - and felt like a blind man shot with poetry. It was beautiful, of course, but there was no turning back, and the powers that be would not let him refuse it.

Danny’s first thought was god, he’s too young.

His second thought, which occurred only long after he returned home, was that he couldn’t possibly be, because Daniel wasn’t too old.

In the teahouse, Daniel watched Lewis, felt his long legs brush awkwardly against Daniel’s knees under the table, and surprised himself with the roses and sunshine and the heady rush of so this is what it’s like. Because, after all, it always happened in the most unexpected ways, and whatever Daniel had expected, it hadn’t been romance.

He buries his face in his pillow and the buzzing in his ears begins. With a groan, he screws his eyes shut and attempts to ignore the noise which is morphing into a strangely familiar tune.

Lewis opens one eye because dead composers tend not to infiltrate his hangovers (or, at least, they haven’t till now) and then he realises that his phone is ringing on his pillow: Mozart’s 40th Symphony in all its polyphonic, vibrating glory.

Blearily and rather bitterly, he reaches for it.

“’Lo?”

“Lewis! It’s Sorcha!”

“Sorcha…” repeats Lewis slowly and the word tastes furry in his mouth before he realises that that is probably residue of vodka.

“Your cousin, you gobshite! Didn’t you get my fax?”

“I know you’re m’cousin,” protests Lewis. He’s wincing slightly and rubs his head. Sorcha sounds impossibly cheerful for this time of… early afternoon, as it turns out. Lewis struggles upright and feels as though he has left half of his poor, dried-out brain on the bed. He lurches over to the fax machine and, sure enough, there is a fax waiting for him.

“When did you send it, Sorcha?” he mumbles, peering at the jumbled letters that slowly form into words and sentences before his tired eyes.

“Last night! Hurry up, would you? I’m downstairs! I don’t think your doorbell is working. I’ve been leaning on it for at least a minute.”

Lewis groans. “Why does everyone keep doing that to me?”

He goes over to the window and steps out onto the little balcony. “Look out below,” he mutters and there’s Sorcha, looking up and grinning. She’s carrying a cardboard tray with two coffees and Lewis could kiss her except that there are three storeys between them and, even if there weren’t, they’re just a touch too closely related for comfort.

“You’re not going to pee on me from up there, are you?” Sorcha shouts up to him and there are the fucking wolf whistles again. He thinks they’re coming from the same girls as yesterday but finds he doesn’t care what they think.

“Sorcha!” cries Lewis, managing to look both amused and embarrassed. “Here, let yourself in.” He throws the keys down to her and she catches them in one hand.

“You should take up cricket!” he says.

“You should get dressed!” she shoots back.

Lewis blushes and runs his fingers through his hair as he stumbles back inside. He sits on his bed and finally reads Sorcha’s fax.

Lewis baby,

I hear you’re in de big shmoke! I live over near Connolly these days. I intend to venture over to the south side tomorrow and I demand visiting rights and possibly your company in battling the bloody tourists on Grafton Street. Of course, you’re a bloody tourist now, aren’t you? I’ll take it easy on you so.

I’ll call over at 2, assuming you’ve survived the terrifying experience of drinking with Eoin.

Love,

Sorcha.

“Eoin. Shit.” Lewis needs to sit down and then he realises that he is sitting down. “Where the fuck is Eoin?”

He gets up and goes into the bathroom. The tiles are cold and he wonders if there are nerves connecting the soles of his feet with his head. As soon as his toes connect with the floor, his hangover intensifies with a brain-freezing jolt, complete with a swell of nausea, and that’s before he catches sight of himself in the mirror.

“Urble.”

The hair on the right side of his head is tufted up and he looks a little like a startled chicken. His eyes are horribly bloodshot and he really needs to shave. Sorcha isn’t renowned for her patience but he thinks that personal grooming is a necessity today.

Shaving takes quite some time and care because his fingers are trembling. Even still, he nicks his chin when he hears Sorcha letting herself into the flat and he swears profusely.

“Is that a customary Oxford welcome?” she calls through the door.

“Sorry, Sorcha! Just jumping into the shower! Won’t be a minute!”

“Lewis! This entire place smells like a distillery. God knows what you smell like! Take your time, for all our sakes!” Sorcha is laughing at least. It’s good to know that someone finds this funny. “I’ll just work my way through your personal effects and steal the valuables in the meantime. Just let me pass this coffee into you, yeah?”

Lewis grins to himself and opens the door just a fraction. Sorcha’s slender hand appears, bearing a large cup of coffee.

“Still black and no sugar, right?”

“Perfect,” he says gratefully as he closes the door. Leaning against it, he takes a long draft. “Oh, sweet nectar of life,” he sighs.

He steps into the shower and closes his eyes, happy just to stand still and let the hot water flow over his body. His poor dehydrated cells finally start to forgive him and he rolls his neck appreciatively. Lewis is entirely unaware of time passing; it’s as though his mind stops for as long as the water is running. He quite enjoys the temporary anaesthesia and the nothingness of it all. His world has shrunk right down to the space between the shower curtain and the frosted window and the steaming water washes away all manner of sins.

“Lewis? Have you fallen down the plughole?”

Sorcha. Of course, she’s still here.

The exact moment he first saw him was imprinted on his memory. Jamie. James. James F Bailey. Strange that he never learned what the F stood for. But that was later. For now, a complete stranger was browsing in the poetry section, his lips moving silently as he read.

Lewis firmly believed that all great poetry could only be read aloud. Maybe that’s why Jamie caught his attention. Or maybe it was the way his brow was slightly furrowed, or the way his eyes moved rapidly over the page or the way a lock of hair fell forward onto his face and he didn’t bother pushing it back because that would take time away from poetry.

Jamie was lost in his own world and Lewis found that his gaze was drawn back to him repeatedly over the course of the next few hours. Wherever he was in the shop, whether at the cash register, or stacking books, or reaching up to a higher shelf to reach a novel for an old lady (a trashy romance novel that she had wanted for years), Lewis kept looking back at this person. Jamie hardly moved in all that time, except to pull down another book and another.

Lewis remembered Geoffrey piping up at that point, something asinine about a voracious appetite for poetry. He also remembered being pushed forward to serve Jamie when he finally approached the desk to pay for his purchases. A John Donne anthology and Sylvia Plath’s Ariel.

That was the moment Lewis should have spoken. Instead, he watched Jamie walk out of the door, having counted his change out into his hand.

“Batter my fucking heart,” he murmured just as the door was closing. Jamie paused on the step. Glanced back inside. And kept walking.

The next few days passed all too slowly. He couldn’t take his mind off Jamie, even though he was still nameless in Lewis’ mind. Geoffrey referred to him as the “pale poet”. Actually, Geoff referred to him as “Pale Poet, GSOH, Looking for SWM, Age 18-25, for deep meaningful conversations and hot sex.”

Lewis told Geoffrey to piss off.

Geoffrey just laughed.

Their next meeting was inauspicious serendipity, clouded as it was in heavy autumnal rain and lifeless thoughts. A coffee shop, frequented by students and workers. Actually, it was the door of the coffee shop. Lewis was walking in as Jamie was walking out. It was a snapshot memory. Jamie’s slender fingers were wrapped around a paper coffee cup, absorbing the heat. Later, that would strike Lewis as strange for Jamie was always anything but cold. His skin was invariably hot to the touch, a strange thing, enticing and extraordinary. Again, his memories were getting ahead of him. The coffee shop. Where he opened the door and walked straight into Jamie. Spilt coffee (no use crying over it, Jamie said later) and Lewis’ college books on the ground, covered in coffee and rain and some soggy dead leaves.

They both crouched down to pick up the books, some innate panic within them both that, above all else, the books must be saved. When they stood up, they exchanged blushes and smiles. (It could have been worse, Jamie said later. What if it hadn’t happened at all?)

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RS, London – To watch ‘Arch’ in action is to forget for a time that they belong to a generation that is growing up in an American crisis of rock and roll. It’s there, to be sure, in the underconfident edginess of their presence as they take to the stage in their opening act for U2 (whose music they both respect and keep a safe distance from). But their stance belies the performance itself, which can only be described as incendiary. To watch them is to know why they have come from behind (backed by maverick independents Marprelate) to outsell every other American artist except Barbra Streisand this year with their first-ever album, “Towering Wirefree”, and why U2 reportedly offered them the opening slot on their Retrospective tour - in person. “I see hope,” says Bono backstage as they launch into hit single “Gilded Cage” from their forthcoming album ‘The Defence of Poesie’. “I see power. I see honesty.” The word is out. Arch has arrived.

Undoubtedly the centerpiece of their music is the glorious, prophetic voice … Read more

poor boys and pilgrims

[laughs] “Baudelaire and Fincher, how could I object? Although they might object to being compared with a contract-labour guy like me.”

A light burning in liquid rage
A deity caught in a gilded cage…

“We get it. But these people clearly do not. We’re not causing this undefined trouble in quote marks with our music, we’re telling the truth about it. So, like, Platonic, f*** thyself.”

“If by “bi” you mean duplicity, like, ‘do I have two answers to every question you ask me?’, the answer is yes and no. Because I usually have more. So really I’m “multi.” Or “poly”.”

And the god and a demon dance before
The sea of parts
on the gilded shore…

“I’m not a fan. In a way the Beatles killed everything.”

“Oh no, I’m the worst person to ask about diets. Food is an area of darkness for me. I lived on pizza and juice when we were making ‘Nine’. Uh, pepperoni. [laughs] And orange.”

“I have no say in the matter. It’s why I’m well-dressed all the time.”

It’s one of the things I keep promising myself never to say – there isn’t much point in accepting that you’re a poet, however unorthodox, and then claiming you can’t find the words for something. But one moment I was standing in the back room at Toto’s, desperately trying to channel Jim Morrison for more reasons than one. The next minute I was gripping the mike like the handlebar of a rollercoaster, hanging on for dear life as I was overpowered by my own voice, flung along into the heart of somewhere desperate and far, far below – or above, I can’t remember for certain – the place I usually lived in.

Poet. Unorthodox. Hanging on for dear life. That’s a pretty comprehensive bit, up there. That’s my life in a nutshell.

Sometimes I can’t stop from referring to myself in the third person. It’s a curious habit of mine. It’s not consistent, either. How much easier I would have made it for myself if I could tell the first half of a story that may or may not be true as: Daniel was born, his father left his home when he was six years old, he was brought up by his mother, he loved a man twenty years older than him instead of keeping his head down and being worthy of his community scholarship to New York University, he was consequently disowned and disgraced, he had to leave school and work like a slave in a perfectly deplorable MNC for three years before he made it big. That’s a simple story with a happy ending. I have made it big, after all. Bigger than my expectations, or even Brian’s. (Jan’s the real romantic among us. She’s the one who laughed at our silly dreams of living on clouds, but she believed in it the most. If it wasn’t for her, none of us would be here.)

Alternately I could tell that story in the first person, and then break off into talking about a strange man, no relation to myself, who lives in an all-white palace that has no fixed address, lingering in twilight and instability. The prince of No Man’s Land. Jan once mocked me like that. “Go ahead,” she said in one of her tempers, “Think you’re a prince in exile all you like.” Can one be banished from banishment?

But of course, there’s no way to draw a distinguishing line between my stories. I shuttle back and forth between them. It would be so easy, if only Daniel remained confined to his slightly screwed-up but on the whole educative and engaging past. What an innocent Daniel would have been. But I’m not an absolutist. Neither is Daniel. Sometimes I think I’m in one of the cosmic trial rooms of the universe, faced with mirrors on both sides of me, looking into an endless array of Daniels. Daniel Daniel Daniel Daniel Daniel. The lions in their den are no match for your armies, Daniel, Daniel, it’s just as well.

Sometimes I’m amazed at how endlessly fascinated I am with myself.

I began that night at Toto’s Rock Wednesday. Toto’s is a nice but weedy place. I’m told Lou Reed used to visit it once upon a time. (It seems like it’s destined to be a once-upon-a-time place. A good place for a story to start. In a place where Arch used to play before they made it big, Daniel Newman stood before an indifferent crowd made in equal parts of the very old and the very young, and lost his head.

I’ve never wholly got it back after that. I don’t even remember what the song was. I do remember we had a hopeful teenage set list – a bit of everyone’s favourite things. We were singing Nirvana, whose posters Brian’s parents tore down from his room because they radiated negative energy. I remember the kids in front of us went absolutely stir-crazy moshing on cue as I dropped the one-word chorus of “Lithium”. Very potent. We were putting a new spin on Jan’s old favourites, the Ramones, who I’ve frankly never liked a whole lot. Frederica Ramirez – I wonder what she’s doing these days – contributed her idea for a weird medley of the Cranberries and The Pixies, which actually worked, to the best of my recollection. And for me, Brian added, very kindly, spruced-up versions of two old Doors’ covers. I think I’ve always wanted to be Jim Morrison, in a way - to choose sides and be done with it, instead of this constant classical conflict between the forces of Dionysus and Apollo, passion and reason. It hasn’t worked so far, but I have survived my heart, my bathtub, and my twenty-seventh birthday.

No applause has ever sounded sweeter to my ears than the cheers we got after we wrapped up that set. We really made the old junkies and the weird punk kids sit up.

That was an unusually mild December by New York standards. I was twenty years old and there were all kinds of things wrong with me. I was poor, I was bored, I was listless. The turret of my dreams was struggling in its restraints; the column of my faith was in danger of crumbling. The tree of my talent was beginning to flower. I was, in one indelicate word, horny. Strange but true: I’ve never been quite as reckless, or, I must admit, eager, to hook up with random men as I was during those months Jan and I lived together. As I have said, I was twenty, and there was nothing to stop me – there was no cause to doubt myself or the other boys. It was cathartic; it made me feel connected to the world I breathed and ate and slept and slaved in. And it was fun.

Maybe. Maybe it was just the frustration about the other things that sometimes made me feel that I would burn up into nothing, like a particularly unlucky crisp tossed out of the cauldrons of my personal Hades, McDonalds Incorporated. It used to give Jan migraine, the oil and the smell of it all. No wonder we’re both thin as straws in the few photos that exist of us in that time.

Perhaps if I’d finished college at twenty-one, I’d have learnt to digress less.

Our hosts served excellent Chinese food, a fact I could never afford to confirm until that Wednesday night in December. Toto, who consisted of Tom, a fat aged hippie, and Toni, a wiry black woman with the most beautiful hair I’ve ever seen, came in person to offer us dinner on the house, along with the usual measly amount Brian managed to extract out of them. Tom, who took especial pleasure in identifying himself to other people as one of the topless curly-haired youth near the stage in the footage of the immortal Jimi Hendrix show at Woodstock ’69, provided me the pleasure of shaking his hand. Somberly, he told me that I reminded him of Joe Cocker. I’d never heard of Joe Cocker and didn’t particularly want to be identified with him (now I do less than ever) but on my adrenalin high, it felt good, being compared to a rock star, any rock star. Still, it was a bare scratch on the surface of my hypersensitive consciousness, bursting with the brilliant, sparkling awareness that I had sung. I, Daniel Newman, had sung in public. I had let go of the last thing that connected me to Mrs. Kadison’s dusty little stairwell, where I had spent my boyhood singing old, sweet, utterly useless songs for Miriam’s benefit. It was over, it was over, it was brilliant. Nothing could compare to the sweat and heat and the utter ecstasy of it all. What a heady combination of the things I love – attention, music and freedom. How could I have ever wanted to conceal this part of myself?

I only said that I was curious, Leonard Cohen had crooned into my sixteen-year old ears through borrowed headphones. I never said that I was brave. Until I left home, I always thought that was a good way of describing me. A good way to be, perhaps. And then I turned my principle on its head. Twenty and headlining a fledgling rock outfit called, of all things, Project Dare, there was nothing to it but to be brave. Life was a series of courageous things.

Miriam was the furthest thing from my mind,that night. I never expected to find myself picking up the phone and calling her, years later, simply to hear her distant hellos hurled at me down the line. I think she knew it was me. I said I wanted to hear her voice. I didn’t want to want it, but I did. Another place where the lines are a little blurred. When I was eighteen I stood on the street outside my home and thought I would never want to have anything to do with her again. I guess I’m getting on in years. Martin always said that the older he got, the more he found himself leaning towards tradition and security. Like every other younger person in the room I didn’t want to believe that I would be like that. But the older I get, the more I find myself living in the past and, to a lesser extent, the future. I’ve been thinking of going back and trying to talk Miriam around, and to make my peace with Ben. Perhaps it means I’ve gotten over my anger. Perhaps a part of me never was angry.

It’s another kind of courage altogether.