999 and the pain & longing of men

999 –09 Dec 2017- New Cross Inn - The Sadness at the Heart of Saturday Night

The Pain Beyond the Mosh Pit

His face was the picture of a man in pain. He approached me as I stood outside the New Cross Inn on Saturday night, producing clouds from my vape.

“Dude, what can I do? There is a woman in there I fell in love with. It was love at first sight. She was sitting behind you”

“Err …” I was taken aback. I knew who he meant. She was black haired and a beauty. She gave off an air of indifference, her friend was shouting out for her favourite 999 songs, but ‘black hair’ wasn’t bothered.

“I approached her after the gig and introduced myself…” he paused, gasped, swallowed, his face assumed the original demeanour; anguish and self-loathing, everything is rotten in his world right now, and it’s on me to help him. We had met before the concert. He was good looking, had good hair and clearly was not a pauper, although he was not flashy or arrogant. “I had thought she would be interested in me, would see we are made for each other. I would give her anything…but.....”

The calm benevolent countenance vanished in an instant, and again he was battling the crushing defeat he was clearly beyond hiding. “She kind of turned away, she said hi and then she was gone. Apparently I amounted to as much..." he paused, now his whole body convulsed as if fighting some cancer of the soul, "as the proverbial flea. She went off to buy a T shirt, you were standing behind her.”

“Yes, I spoke to her” I was now desperately trying to think of something that would help, lift him from the darkness into which his mind was fast descending. “She was nice, she is English. She came with her friend…” this really was not good enough. The pitiful query, the eyebrows raised, the eyes searching me for a hopeful sign. “She was more interested in the T shirts than me…” I found myself trying self-deprecation as a pick-me-up. “She turned her head away so I was talking to her hair. She looked out of the window, which was steamed up, but more interesting than me, no mistake.

“I couldn’t get much out of her either. We are clearly of zero interest to her” I finished, groping for humour in the pit of despair.

With that he lurched sideways as if hit by an arrow. “What can I do?” he was pleading with me.  OMG, this was fast becoming a conversation way above my pay grade, which is low let me tell you. “Oh Christ I don’t know dude, try again, say something completely weird ?” “What?” he replied. “Tell her she is the greatest beauty in London”. “Right , OK” said he and he plunged back into the pub, emptying now the entertainment was over. What a stupid suggestion, I told myself. But then, what could I say. The raven haired woman was none the wiser. She wasnt to know how much longing had been invested in her by a stranger from across the room. It was as if she had applied the coup de grace by a flick of the finger, the condemned man to be dispatched to a lifetime of regret and emptiness, while she carried on with her Saturday night, blameless in her role, like a driver of a car crusher, not knowing the owner was still sat at the wheel, as the claws of doom squeezed the life out of the wretched, hopeless driver. 

I wandered off, puffing the biggest clouds ever produced in New Cross. Its not everyday a relative stranger approaches you with that kind of enquiry. The pain on his face was imprinted on my mind like a horror show climax; Carrie covered in blood, the revolving head in The Exorcist. What happened to the man? I cant tell you, but I fear the worst, as I think I saw them leaving earlier. What of 999? They were great, happy to share the mic with the bouncing crew at the front, great songs like Homicide and Nasty Nasty sent them bonkers. I loved them in 1977, glorying in the pounding dischord of the singles like Me and My Desire and Emergency.  I spoke to Nick at the T shirt stall. He wrote Homicide after watching shows like Kojak he told me. The BBC banned it. Guy the guitarist was equally friendly. They played to 12,000 people once, he related. Now they are touring again, with a different bass player after Jon Watson’s premature death. Never did I think I would associate them with one man's evident end. Stop the Clocks, in the 40 minutes it took to complete the set list, she was someone's East, West , North and South. Now all directions point downward. I wonder if the band's ever know of the turmoil that goes on, beyond the mosh pit.