Live Forever

I never had much love for the idea of fate. It all seemed too lame; the sort of thing that the girls in the Fashion/Lifestyle area of the student newspaper at UCL would’ve embraced wholeheartedly and chirped about, or something from the High School Musical world of thinking. So I wouldn’t describe this accidental rendez-vous with Dan as fate – meeting a blast from the past isn’t exactly turning me mushy. But it’s made me think...
What was I thinking, saying yes to Christian? He’s rich, but I never did it for gold-digging reasons; give me room for a thousand CDs in alphabetical order and a hi-fi to listen to them on (and an iPod, of course), a bed to sleep in and a television so I can watch Chelsea win things (two FA Cups in three years? Get in!) and I’m all set. He’d make a great father to any potential spawn, but seeing as I’m about as maternal as a knife in a crèche, it’s a wasted resource that would better be spent on a Stella-type baby machine. He quite likes The Auteurs, but then again, he also has the entirety of Westlife’s back catalogue, which is something I’ve never wholly forgiven him for. And everything’s very average, very routine, and very unsuitable for me. Marry him and I condemn myself to being part of the wallpaper. It’s been over ever since I “accidentally” had a fling at work (one drunken, mediocre night with a deeply attractive and similarly boozy semi-professional drummer from a local band that I was interviewing), but he was too tired from the winter to do anything about it, and the proposal was a way to fix the problem. It didn’t. It just made it more pronounced.
Now I’ve got a Get Out Of Jail Free card. Wouldn’t that be ironic, if the one who started the circle of hurt was the one to end it? As an avowed feminist, this is appalling. Forgiving the ex-boyfriend who cheated on you so many years ago? I may as well chain myself to a kitchen and encourage rampant sexism...
But that’s just fucking stupid. I’d be a hypocrite now to condemn it, in any case, but with Dan... Well, we were kids then; we didn’t know what it all meant, we were innocent and stupid. When we fucked things up, I acted on pride rather than happiness, and ended up being robbed of my virginity by an utter tool three months later and never finding anyone I liked as much as him. Yes, I got a great degree, job and record collection, but who cares when you can’t share the latter with anyone? The music guys I know, they’re all pig-headed, critic-rimming egotists who’d rather die than admit to a secret love of anything vaguely mainstream, and force themselves to listen to dire Belgian techno-rap to look cool. Guitars are dinosaur instruments to them, it’s all about synths... whatever. The conversations Dan and I had were always fun, they always had a spark. All our problems stemmed from our immaturity. Now we’ve bloomed and we’ve still got the spark. Wouldn’t hurt to try again, at least...
Perhaps all of this forgiving/restarting ramble springs from the greenery all around us in Hyde Park. It makes us think of fresh starts and life. We’re discussing whether or not they’ll play Popscene now. Apparently Dan met someone at uni who was somehow related to one of the band members, or perhaps the management – I’m too busy looking over the changes to his appearance that twelve years have worn onto him to listen fully – and he gave him a few rare vinyls and unreleased tracks, at which point I nearly salivate.
“You can have them, if you want,” he offers. He stops and pauses for rest under a tree. There’s a gathering of people in sight, waiting. They’ll be waiting for a few hours yet. “Lyla... you do know that Daisy was a mistake, the biggest mistake of my life, don’t you?” I pause for thought. He wants forgiveness. To be absolved of his decade-old hormonal teenage sins. What does that mean? That he’s felt terribly guilty for a dozen years, or that he’s just making it up as he goes along to make conversation easier? But the conversation was light; he’s made it heavy... Speculation, speculation. It’s part of my job.
Eventually I settle for a “Well, now I do.” Is it the sun or the prospect of mutual romantic ambitions making me light-headed?
“Ok.” Is that it? The dry mouth, pounding head and racing pulse... I’m not sure if it’s like a hangover or being sixteen again. “...You and your fiancé are definitely over? Finished?”
“Well, it might take an awkward conversation and a few arguments to show him that I’m serious, and blocking his mother’s number from my phone, but effectively, yes...” He scratches his head in a bemused manner.
“Mother-in-laws are the worst. Anyway, this might sound a bit stupid, but I don’t suppose you want to... uhh... come out for a coffee tomorrow or the day after? And see how things go? What I’m trying to say, I guess...” Erratic tremors in my leg are manifesting themselves in hyperactive tapping. “Well, do you want to try again? With us? Oh, God, fuck, what am I saying... we haven’t seen each other in twelve bloody years! And you probably still-” Now, I don’t know what I’m playing at; but the sun’s rays have always had a mindless effect on me, and no more so than now because I’ve grabbed him for an impromptu snog in the park, to a few wolf whistles from the lads in the nearby mass. How old am I, again? Sixteen? I wish.
There’s a pink-cheeked silence following it, with neither of us entirely sure what to do now. I seize some words from assorted memories, back when speaking was a viable option, before he was staring at his shoes in either wonder or horror.
“By the way, that’s a yes.” He looks like a guppy as words fail to materialise.
“But we- we were... we haven’t... we...” He thinks. “What I mean is – are you sure? I mean, are you sure you won’t get bored with me, like you’re bored with your other guy? Your ex-to-be,” he mumbles, as if clarification were needed on the ‘other guy’ point. “Or we’ll find we have the same cracks as before? Or-”
“Oh jeez, Dan! Chill out. We might still have the same problems, or we might have different ones, but it’s never going to be perfect, is it? I’d rather we completely ballsed things up and went through the same hurt as before than to not at least see how it goes. I fucking hate regrets. I’d rather regret doing something than regret not doing it. It’s not like I believe in soulmates, but out of the thousands of people coming here – the millions in London – to see you at one of hundreds of stations – it’s all too much of a coincidence! For God’s sake, give it a chance before you tear the threads apart. Anyway, it was your idea. So, in conclusion, shut up and let me judge your iPod.”
There’s this magical transformation that comes over his face during my emphatic speech (I was part of the undergraduate debating team at one point – though I tried dramatically too hard to be good at everything at uni, because it was in London and I wanted to do everything there). At first he’s still blushing, then his eyes brighten – still chocolate brown – and eventually he has a fully fledged grin plastered across his face. It makes me feel less like me, which is probably a good thing.
“How do you even know I have an iPod?” he gasps in an accusing tone, and we’re as goofy as ever, and it’s thrilling. Did I get over Dan? To a point. I got over the 90s too, to a point; don’t get the impression that I sit at home watching 90s-themed repeats of Top of the Pops and sobbing because Elastica will never get back together – I do listen to modern music, even if the vast majority of it is utter shite. Similarly, I have dated men in the last decade, even if the vast majority of them were dire. But things were so much better back then... and it’s nearly as it was. I’m having 1995 déjà vu.
“Everyone has an iPod. Except my grandma. Hand it over!” He dutifully does, moaning and rolling his eyes the whole time, so I tell him to man up, and we sit in a spot under a tree that another couple has just vacated, and we bicker amiably about his music taste for an hour and a half whilst the queue swells past us. We don’t care. We’ll doubtless push further forward anyway – can any of these sulky-looking teenagers honestly stake a better claim to the front row than us? Have any of their romances been based on Britpop or the 90s? As if! They were barely out of nappies. In fact, most of them weren’t out of nappies during Damon, Graham et al.’s peak. It’s sad that they’ll grow up in the digital age, listening to the same churned out, aimless crap. So sad. At least they haven’t succumbed to it; they’ve tried to break the cycle by going back to a better time... but we still deserve the front row more.
And then the gates open, and we’re submerged by fans of all ages and shapes and sizes, but we don’t care. We’re joined at the hand, inseparable. It’s to make up for the awful hostility of Knebworth so long ago. The half-smile he wears as we make it past the ticket barrier says everything. We’re through. We’re in. We’re going to see Blur. We, meaning me and Dan, again. We’re walking into the sun-drenched fields again, happy again, together again. It doesn’t seem real.
“Oh, I don’t suppose you’re doing anything next weekend, are you?” he asks, suddenly. We were discussing how well the Blur boys’ looks have withstood the test of time up until that point. It was agreed that Graham looked the best, if a little weathered; Damon hadn’t aged at all well, whilst Alex needed to shave and Dave was always the token ginger, though Dan protests that he always had a bit of a man-crush on him out of pity.
“Only the one thing, on Saturday.” He looks at me expectantly. “I’ll be in a football stadium. A very big one.” He gasps and whacks himself round the head comically, putting him off balance as he tramples the grass and walks into some pretentious teenage boys who look very put out to be interrupted midway through a “Blur v Gorillaz” conversation. Naturally, I have opinions on this; opinions I must share, because what the hell do they know?
“’Scuse me – yeah, you – about your conversation. There’s no competition, Blur win hands down. Everyone wanted to do Damon and Alex and Graham back in the day. How many girls want to screw Murdoc? Exactly. He’s a fucking cartoon. Deal with it. Go back to the crèche.” Having dispelled them and their subsequently curdled expressions, our conversation resumes. “I can’t believe I forgot. Standing?”
“Of course.”
“See you there...” It’s another bloody coincidence. I’m starting to question all of this stuff. Out of all the days when we could’ve gone to see Oasis – all the places – it’s the same one, again; same ticket types, same everything. I smother him with another adolescent-esque embrace and we continue walking, until he dares me to race him to the nearest beer stand. I accept the challenge, overtake him, overtake the moody kids he bumped into earlier, find myself at the end of a relatively short queue. And once we’ve got our (overpriced) beers, we stroll up towards where the crowd is gathering, listening to his iPod as we walk and drink. Ironically, it’s Champagne Supernova.
“Wrong band, Dan... you do know that this is Oasis, right? And we’ve come to see Blur?”
“No shit, Sherlock.” He pretends to look mystified. “Did Blur do that Wonderballs song?”
“Nah, I think they did Dong 2.” The chorus arrives. “Somedaaaay you will fiiiiiiiiind me, caught beneath the laaaaaaandsliiiiiiiiiide, in a CHAMPAGNE SUPERNOVA IN THE SKY...” we howl to the bemusement of the po-faced Blurite swarm. To think that I used to be one of them.
We might not live forever, and – to be brutally realistic – we probably won’t. It’s the same with Oasis and Blur. One day they’ll split up, again in Blur’s case, and there will be mourning and obituaries in the press and blogs – some churned out of my old laptop – and then they’ll be patchwork strips on the canvas of ‘old’ music, half-forgotten on iPods, dormant on Twitter. But all three are together now, and that’s what matters; anything stretching further than Hyde Park or Wembley Stadium seems totally irrelevant. Drinking beer and holding hands in the July sun that blazes over Hyde Park is my idea of forever - for now, it is.