Punk rock lovers

"Peter Shelley"

By Patrick Marber
-------------

Where was I when Kennedy got shot?
Between my mother's legs, getting born.
Georgia thought this was the coolest thing.

It's summer, 1978. We're both fourteen.
We're at the same school in the same class.
She hates me. Because she does.

She's got three items of clothing: a cotton slash-neck
dress down to her knees and a pair of black brogue lace-
ups.
She says underwear's for hippies.
She has three dresses: one black, one pink, one white.
Each month she dyes her hair one of these colours.
She also has different coloured laces.
I like her best when she has white hair, a black dress
and pink laces.
That's what she's wearing the day school breaks up.

I've gone to the record shop to buy the new Buzzcocks
single.
Last winter they'd done a single called 'Orgasm Addict'.
The sleeve was screaming yellow with a collage of a
naked woman on it.
She had mouths on her breasts and instead of her head
she had an iron.
If I could be anyone, I'd be Pete Shelley.

Georgia's coming out as I go in.
'What've you bought?'
She says, 'New Buzzcocks single.'
'"Love You More"?'
And she says, 'Yeah… you like Buzzcocks?'
And I say, 'What's more, they like *me*.'
She smiles a bit, showing her funny, gappy teeth and I
wonder what it would be like to slither my tongue around
in her mouth.
She's not so good looking but she has this way of being
her which is just her thing. I'm no oil painting
either, I suppose.

She thinks about something and then she says, 'Do you
want to come back to my house and listen to it?'
I say, 'Maybe,' and she says, 'Well, fuck off then.'
I say 'Maybe I will fuck off,' and she says, 'If you
want to with me I live above that pub.'
She points.
'The Swan?' I say.
'Go to the black door at the side and push the buzzer
saying "Murphy".’ So I say, 'OK, I'll just go and buy
it myself.' And she says, 'OK', and I say, 'See you.'

I go into the shop and buy the record and I also buy her
a copy of 'Gary Gilmore's Eyes' by The Adverts in case
she doesn't have it. The B side is better than the A
side. It's called 'Bored Teenagers' and the chorus
goes, 'We're just bored teenagers, see ourselves as
strangers', or something like that and at the end the
lead singer (T.V. Smith) goes, 'We're just bored
teenagers, bored out of our heads bored out of our
MINDS', and the way he screams 'minds' is really quite
passionate.

I buy her this record for two reasons: first, I think
she'll be impressed that I've even heard of it and the
second reason is that on the collage on the front cover
it says, 'One rural oaf in Georgia even sent me a hunk
of rope'. I don't know why. But I know from geography
that Georgia is a state in America. I think Georgia
will like seeing her name in print.

*************

So I press that buzzer and she lets me in and I follow
her up a long flight of dark stairs. They have read
lino on them and steel edges so you won't slip. It
stinks of old smells and some new smells, too. As she
goes up I look at the creases in the backs of her knees.

We go into the kitchen and she gets two cans of beer out
of the fridge and throws me one. The fridge is full of
beer. She opens her can and I open mine and we both
drink. Georgia sits on the table dangling her legs and
I lean in the doorway, just leaning and drinking my
beer.
We don't say much.
She says, 'You got a fag?' and I say, 'No, I don't
smoke.' Georgia looks disappointed and then she calls
down the corridor, 'Mum, you got any fags?' and a voice
(Irish sounding) comes back, 'Yeah, in here.'
In our house, our flat, no one smokes and everything is
clean, plus if I invite someone round for tea my mum
will always be there fussing around and making sure
we've got enough food and stuff. Georgia gets up from
the table and says, 'Come and meet my mum.'

We go down a corridor full of old newspapers, beer
crates and musical instruments and speakers all in their
black suitcases. The carpet is like orange fungus on
cheese.

In her mother's room the curtains are closed and she's
in bed. The TV's on showing the horse racing. She
makes a shushing noise to us. The race ends and as it
does she goes, 'Ahh, shite.'
Georgia sits on the bed and gives her mum a kiss. Her
mum says, 'That's your father in a filthy mood all night.
Someone gave him a tip, the "dead-on-certainty" and he's
rushed off to the bookies like greased arse lightening.
Get us the cigs would you love, they're on the table.'
I thought she was talking to Georgia and then I realize,
when nothing happens, that she's talking to me.
I go over to the table. It's a round, Formica pub table
with a rectangular mirror propped up against the wall.
The wallpaper has strange yellow flowers on it. I give
her the cigarettes. There's a book of matches, 'The
Swan' matches, tucked into the cellophane. I say, 'Here
you are', and she says, 'Have a seat then.'
There are no chairs in the room so I sit on the bed, on
the other side from Georgia with her mother in between
us.

The sun is coming in through a gap in the curtains and
wherever the sun touches in the room it looks clean and
everywhere else looks like it's been smeared with
dishwater.

'So, Georgia, who's your friend? Are you going to
introduce us?' Georgia lights a cigarette.
'This,' she says, 'is my friend, Peter Shelley. Peter
Shelley, this is my mum.'
We shake hands.
I say, 'Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Murphy', and she says,
'Call me Claire.'
Then she takes a drag and says, 'Now if you'll forgive
me for a while I need a snooze before we open this
evening.
Will we be seeing you later, Mr. Shelley?'
'I don't know, maybe.' Her calling me 'Mr. Shelley'
gives me a little snigger inside.
'Well, you're always welcome to stay if you want, have
you far to go?'
'The Attlee. On the other side of the park.'
'I've heard it's quite nice, the Attlee.'
'It's OK.'
'Good. Georgia, give him some tea, he's wasting into
thin air.'
'Bye, Peter.'
'Bye.'

On the way back to the kitchen, Georgia has her hands
behind her back. She quickly clenches and unclenches
her hands; three pulsebeats.

*************

In the kitchen she makes tea. She says 'How many
sugars?' and I say three please.
I tell her I like her mum and she says she does too.
She says her mum lets her do whatever she wants. I say
my mum lets me do whatever she wants me to do.
Georgia smiles and gives me a funny look.
I ask her why she said I was Pete Shelley and she says,
'Because I want you to be'; and I say, 'So do I', and
she replies, 'So there you are.'

We go into her bedroom. Ads from the NME are stuck on
the walls, posters of The Clash, Buzzcocks, Sex Pistols,
Siouxsie and the Banshees, Ian Dury, Dead Kennedys and
some others. Records everywhere. Two dresses on a
clothes rack.

I give her The Adverts single and she's pleased. She
touches my arm for a second and I go hard. It's the
weirdest. It goes down after a while.

So we sit on her bed with the mugs on the floor.
We get our Buzzcocks singles out of their bags. We
decide to swap. For a lark you could say. We agree
that this cover is better than the last two ('What Do I
Get?' and 'I Don’t Mind'). It's a pink and purple
graphic of nine rooms seen from above.
The Buzzcocks logo (with the second Z raised above the
first) is in pink in the bottom left-hand corner. In
capitals at the bottom of the sleeve it says UP36433:
LOVE YOU MORE.

The back of the sleeve is more complicated: a cartoon
man and woman are in the same nine rooms but never
together. They're moving speakers around… maybe to get
the right sound. Who knows?
In the bottom right-hand corner room there's a man
holding a board or tray with the letter K on it. It's
hard to say what he's up to. It's all quite mysterious.

*************

Georgia takes the disc out of the sleeve and because
it's brand new it kind of sticks to the paper producing
a tiny static crackle. We look at it.
The first thing we notice is how short it is: 1.45.
The B side which they always call 'i side' is 2.49.
It's called 'Noise Annoys'.
Georgia holds the side of the record with her
fingertips. Her fingers are pretty chewed up but they
look nice all the same.

I sip my tea to be polite. It's evil. The milk's all
sour and floating about.

She says, 'Do you think it'll be quite fast or very
fast?'
I say that as long as it isn't slow I don’t care, but
given that it's very short it will probably be very
fast.

We examine the inner spiral for more information.
Scratched in capitals is says, 'THE CROSSOVER MARKET'.
We don't know what that means.

Then Georgia says, 'Come on, let's put it on.'
I nod. My mouth is full of tea. She puts her hand on
my leg and holds the record with her thumb on the A side
and her fingers on the i side.
I'm looking at her, my face is three inches from hers
and she says 'Spit it out all over me.' I shake my
head. Meanwhile, my cheeks are bulging and my mouth is
smiling. She says, 'Dare you.' Her hand is between my
legs now and she's beginning to move it further up. I
spit my tea in her face and then she buries her face
into mine and it's hot and wet. Her mouth tastes of
beer and cigarettes and she's waggling her tongue about
and I'm doing the same. I can feel her teeth and the
gaps between them and I go, 'I like these bits,' and
then she says, 'They're horrible,' and I say, 'No, I
love them.'
We're like two dogs scrapping.
I can't get my hands and mouth in enough places at once.
I'm thinking I might come any second and I don't know if
this is allowed.
Does she know about spunk? She must do, she's got
'Orgasm Addict'.
I vaguely wonder if she has spunk of some equivalent
thing that would come out.
I hope so.
Suddenly she gets up and puts the record on top volume
and we start squirming about again.

The record plays over and over because her record player
has something that makes it do that. After about the
fourth time we can make out more of the words in the
rushing, relentless noise and we sing along and we're at
each other like mad.
I'm on top of her, her dress is up to her waist and
she's got her shoes on, I put my hand down between her
legs and put some fingers (three) up her and take them
out and taste it. It tastes of God knows what but
something interesting.
Georgia licks my fingers and then wrinkles her nose.
'Do you know what to do?'
I say, 'Not certain, do you?'
She says, 'No, but don't stop.'
She puts her hand down my trousers. She begins to wank
me just how I do it myself and I'm really totally
shocked.
How does she know how to do it? How could she *know*?
I say, 'Don't, I'll come,' and she whispers in my ear,
'Go on then.'
So I do.
She wipes some of it on her sheets and licks her hand
and then kisses me so I can taste some of it.

'Love You More' is tearing out of her crappy speakers.
The song is so loud and fast it just comes and goes and
the ending is desperately sudden and sad. My trousers
are down and her dress is up to her neck, her chest is
as flat as mine. I say too loud right in her ear
shouting over the music, 'Now what?'
She nods and suddenly her mouth is on my cock and her
cunt is in my face and we're wiggling away like fish.
I start to lick all round the area and to be honest I
feel a bit stupid for a second because the music stops
while the record player does its thing and we're just
making these noises. And suddenly I imagine my tongue
is painting in a wall where the plaster's broken off,
which is quite a nice thing to do but only *quite* nice.
And she's kind of gnawing away on some bone I can see
out the corner of my eye and it all seems a bit
ridiculous. I can't quite concentrate on enjoying what
she's doing because I'm having to do the stuff to her
and it's really quiet and just these slippy sloppy
noises but the song starts again and it's OK again. So
we do that for a bit and then when the song begins
again, maybe the sixteenth time, she crawls up to my
face and she says, 'Come on, let's fuck.'
I get on top of her and she smiles and Peter Shelley's
wailing away. I find the right hole quite quickly and
I'm not, to tell the truth, sure it *is* the right one
but Georgia says it is and then when it goes in, we're
both holding our breath and staring wide eyed at each
other and I go, 'Fucking hell,' and she says, 'Jesus
fucking Christ', and we're both sort of laughing and
it's the most totally weird feeling for me so for her it
must be equally if not more weird and I'm also thinking
this is what the world makes such a fuss about your
whole life and I get it now.

I lie on top of her and it goes all the way in and we're
both by this time very sweaty and covered in spit (and
tea and a bit of spunk) and we suddenly lie very still.
Just contemplating our situation.

I say, 'What does it feel like?'
Georgia says, 'I don't know, full, funny, it feels nice.
What does it feel like for you?'
'I don't know, like someone's taken all my skin off and
put me in a warm bath.'
She says, 'Move about, like this.'
She begins to move and I move with her very, very fast
and she says, 'Tell me when you're coming, I'm coming,
tell me when you're coming,' and I say, 'Now, Now' and
we come and then collapse in a heap as they say.

After a while she leans over and unplugs the record
player just before it starts again.
I stretch with her, still inside her. It's quiet.
We lie in each other's arms and then she says, 'We've
lost our virginities.'
I say, 'I thought you hated me,' and she says, 'I do.'
I flick her on the arm and she punches my leg.
And we lie a bit more, doing nothing, contemplating
things again.

Then I start going a bit soft so I say, 'Shall I take it
out now?'
She says, 'OK.' So I do, quite slowly. We both gasp a
little. We really do.
I sneak a quick glance and there's some blood. Which is
OK I think.
She says, 'You've been in the wars.'
She's actually talking to my nob like it's some other
person in the room.
She's holding it very gently, she says, 'You've been in
the trenches.' (We did 'First World War' this term).
I say, 'Are you OK, with the blood?'
And she says, 'I'm dandy,' which I just love.
Then she lights a cigarette and says, 'My first post-
coital fag.'
'Coital's *fucking* isn't it?'
And she says, 'One hundred per cent.'

After a while we get up. We lie on the bed kissing and
stroking each other, listening to her favourite records,
discussing the lyrics, talking about school.

She walks me home through the still summer air. I say I
won't be able to sleep and she says, 'Wank about me.'
I say I will but in fact I won't because I ache like mad
down there.

We sit on the kerb near my flat.
My mother comes out on the balcony, it's getting dark.
She shouts down that she's been worried sick about where
I was.
I say I'm sorry and that I've been with Georgia and this
is Georgia.
My mother knows all about Georgia and she smiles.
She says, 'You must come to tea soon, Georgia.'

We kiss good-bye.
I say, 'I love your hair, I love your dress, I love your
shoes, I love your laces, I love your body'.’ She says,
'Don’t be poxy.'

I go up in the pissy lift feeling like I could eat the
world.
I go on to the balcony to watch Georgia walking away but
she's still standing in the street, smoking.
She looks up at me and says, 'We forgot to listen to the
B side.'
I say. 'Tomorrow?' and she says, 'Tomorrow.' And then
she walks away.