Black Holes For The Young

The late 90s weren't the most social years for me. I was an anxious, insecure, depressed agoraphobe. Aside from the first, and highly anticipated, tours to Australia of the Manic Street Preachers and Suede in January and October of 1999 respectfully, I very rarely left my bedroom. As human contact was a far too difficult occurrence for me I decided to interact socially the modern way; on the internet. Kids these day may scoff at the idea of an internet without Myspace or Facebook, but back when I was a youngster if you wanted to meet people who shared your interests you used a chatroom. Being the committed anglophile I was in my teens, the first chatroom I became a regular in was on the NME website. The chatroom catered for a broad range of people, and initially this suited me fine (a few months later I would relocate to the chatroom on the Archives Of Pain Manic Street Preachers fansite, as I desired a more focused group to interact with). The best thing about the chatroom environment was that whereas in reality I had no social skills whatsoever and had no hope of making friends at all, in the chatroom, with my encyclopedic knowledge of alternative music and my rapier wit, I was able to become a competent and cool dude.

After a few weeks of interacting on the NME chatroom I began exchanging private messages (or "PMs" as they are know in chatroom and message boards across the web) with a girl whose screen name was mydarkstar, named after the B-side to Suede's Stay Together single. As well as being a Suede fan this girl was also an Australian, a combination that I was unaware existed (aside from myself) up until this time. Her name was Megan and she lived in Brisbane. Our interaction progressed rapidly from PMs to daily emails and frequent telephone conversations. We would send each other parcels in the post; books and photographs, drawings and poetry. We had formed a genuine connection. An unmistakable bond. It was fate. We stated that as soon as we had the opportunity to meet in person we would never be separated. This, however, was going to be a while. Megan had plans to move to London in September of 1999. She had already got her visa and paid for her flight. She invited me to join her. I told her I would love to, but with no money and lacking the ability to make money, I was unable to commit to a time-frame.

At the Manic Street Preachers show of January 1999 I had met a young lady called Katey. She was from Perth and had traveled to Melbourne for both the Manics show and the Big Day Out which was on the following day. We kept in touch via the internet and telephone over the next few months and when the Suede tour was announced she decided to come back over to Melbourne for the show. Accompanying her that October was her friend Nat. Although the doors didn't open at The Forum until 8pm, the three of met outside the venue at 12pm and spent the next 8 hours making sure that we would be the first in the queue. Megan had informed me several days before that her friend and editor of the Pornographic and Tragic Suede fanzine, Katrina Schwartz, would be coming down from Sydney for the show and that I should attempt to meet up with her. She passed along her email address and so I sent Katrina a message informing her that I was a friend of Megan's, that I would be camped outside the venue early on the day of the show and that she was more than welcome to approach me and say hello. I provided a detailed description of myself in order to aide her in locating me. In the middle of the afternoon a brown haired girl, a few years my senior, approached the impenetrable fortress fandom Katey, Nat and myself had formed on The Forum's step and inquired whether I was Grant. I replied in the affirmative and Katrina and her friend Bettina were permitted to join our cross-legged circle of overt-enthusiasm.

It was during this afternoon outside The Forum that I felt something that I hadn't felt in many years, possibly even ever. A sense of belonging. I actually had friends! And they were female friends as well. The best kind! Somehow I had managed to pull this off and quite surprisingly it didn't seem particularly difficult. Here I was, at a social event, with four pretty girls who all had similar interests to myself. It was quite astonishing. The only problem was that at the end of the weekend they would return to Perth and Sydney where they would transform from actual real-life people into merely text on a screen.

Megan and I continued our relationship after she moved in London. She would send me letters and encouragement and I sent her my favourite black woolen v-neck jumper when she complained she was cold. Without having anyone for companionship in Melbourne, and having become accustomed to the frequent contact Megan and I had whilst she was in Australia, I became increasingly eager to communicate with her. As well as emailing every day (sometimes twice), I began calling her in London several times a week. Although I realised that hour-long international phone calls would be expensive, I was hoping somehow they would be overlooked on my parents' phone-bill. Unfortunately they were not and over a three month period I had racked up around $500 worth of calls. Having no money to pay my parents back with, I was informed by them that I would have to pay the money back once I started working. Although they were rather displeased with me, they also seemed reasonably sympathetic.

Luckily by the beginning of 2000 I had managed to set aside enough of my anxiety and gain enough confidence to enter into the workforce. My Mum, through her position as secretary of the Florence Nightingale War Nurses Trust, had dealings with one of the partners at a medium sized accountancy firm in the city. My Mum had actually worked at this company when she first moved to Melbourne from Rockhampton in Queensland in the late 60s. She had known this man since then and used her influence with him to secure me a job in the company's mailroom. I was a man with a job and a fortnightly payment made into my bank account. I had a debt to pay off, a plane ticket to save for and a $5000 sum to acquire for visa regulations, but as I had nothing else to spend my money on (with the exception of music), I didn't envisage it would be too difficult to meet these obligations. I was happy, I was finally on the path to true happiness.

As the months of the year 2000 went by communication from Megan became increasingly irregular. From every day to every second day to once a week by August and September. Not only were her emails becoming less frequent, but they were also becoming less affectionate. Although I should have probably realised this was inevitable I was in denial. These were the days before mass-storage email accounts and so I had been printing out all of her emails and keeping them in a shoebox under my bed. I was so positive about our relationship that I'd convinced myself that once I informed her that I was coming she would begin to enthuse about me again. Of course she would, we were destined to be together! By October I told her that I would have enough money by January and I would be booking my flight for then.

In December tickets had gone on sale for a Manic Street Preachers show at the Brixton Academy in March. Rather than purchase tickets and have them sent all the way back to Australia, I asked Megan whether I could purchase the tickets online and have them sent to her address. I would buy tickets for both of us. It would be a splendid outing for a romantic couple to enjoy together. Megan told me that there was no problem in me having the tickets sent to her place and that she would hold on to them until I arrived.

Two weeks before I left Melbourne, with everything booked, Megan informed me that she no longer wanted me to come to London and that if I was still coming I wouldn't be able to stay with her. She didn't provide any reason for this other than she "just didn't want it". The more I attempted to get her to elaborate the less forthcoming she became. I was distraught. Not only had the girl I'd believed to be the love of my life told me she "didn't want" me, but I had also lost the only real connection I had to London, and the place I had thought I would be able to stay as I moved out of my parents house for the first time. My cousin Lucy lived in London, but she would be out of the country until April, and the only other person I knew was a friend of my sister's. I would have to stay in a hostel until I found myself a place to live. For some unknown reason I still hadn't given up hope that the situation could be rectified. I packed my shoebox full of her emails, as well as the other objects she had sent to me. There wasn't much room left in my luggage for other items, but I viewed these as the most essential.

After arriving in London I made several efforts to speak to Megan. She would agree to meet with me, but do so surrounded by groups of her friends and proceed to ignore any attempts I tried to speak with her. Each time I would see her or speak to her she would become increasingly hostile. Not only did she want nothing to do with me, but she was now claiming that I would not be getting my Manic Street Preachers tickets either. She stated that as I had sent them to her address they were rightfully hers. This was one step too far on her behalf. Having been an obsessive of the band since my early teens, no-one was going to stand in my way of seeing them perform live. Regardless of how rubbish they'd become over the last few years. This was the trigger that finally pushed me into standing up for myself. So I decided to do what felt was the correct thing to do after someone had effectively stolen my property. I informed the police.

I went into the Albany Street Police Station, just up from Great Portland Street Tube. I spoke to the officer on the front desk and informed him of the situation. I explained in detail what had occurred, and could prove with my credit card details that I was the purchaser of the tickets. I also thought it would be a good opportunity to get my jumper back as well. It was the middle of winter in the UK and I was severely under-clothed. So I also told him that along with the concert tickets, Megan also had a jumper of my that I would like returned. The policeman listen intently to my story and then asked for Megan's number. He called her and left a voicemail explaining who he was and suggesting that it would be wise of her to return my property to me with a minimum of fuss.

The next day I received a text from Megan. It simply read: Come to Stay Beautiful on Wednesday for tix and jumper". Stay Beautiful (named after the first single from the Manic Street Preachers' Generation Terrorists album) is a club run by music journalist, professional fuckwit and statutory rapist Simon Price. At the time the club was in a downstairs bar on Inverness Street in Camden, just a few doors down from Britpop's spiritual home, The Good Mixer. Megan, knowing my utter disdain for the man, was keen to get me into his club as a way of neutralising the victory she thought I might feel in regaining my property. I went along, reclaimed what was mine and left immediately hoping to never see her again. However, with the tickets and jumper firmly in my possession I decided to write her a colourfully worded email informing her exactly what I thought of her behaviour. Pressing the send button felt good.

Several months before I moved to London, Nat had moved to Edinburgh. Having a penchant for red-head and Scottish accents it seemed like the perfect place for her to be. Come March 2001 she had fled Edinburgh and was living with me in my cramped and ridiculously expensive bedsit in London's inner-west. Luckily, Nat's arrival coincided with the Manic Street Preachers show at the Brixton Academy. Rather than have to try and sell my spare ticket to a scalper for a fiver and stand by myself attempting not to look awkward, I was able to take a friend along to the show and have a much more comfortable evening. It was decided during the period Nat was staying that I should purge myself of Megan by ripping up and throwing away all her emails that I had transported to London in a shoe box. The process was reasonably enjoyable, but also somewhat sad. Being completely unaccustomed to deal with affairs of the heart, I found the experience a little difficult, although with hindsight I can't claim to be unique in this regard, but at the time it felt like a pain only I could understand. Although I had destroyed all of Megan's emails, I had thought it unethical to rip up the books and photographs that she had sent me and so I place them in an envelope in order to send back to her. I had Nat write Megan's address on the outside of the parcel just in case she recognised my hand-writing and decided to throw the package out.

In July Radiohead held a gig in the South Park in Oxford. Other local favourites Supergrass were playing, as well as Thom Yorke's Band Of The Month™, Sigur Rós. With Nat leaving by April and having not made any other friends in London I decided to go alone. I caught the train up to Oxford in the morning and after disembarking was informed by a placard inside station that after 6pm that evening there would be track repairs taking place on the lines between Oxford and London and that a replacement bus service would run instead. This didn't seem like too much of an issue to me and I instead turned my attention to locating the South Park. A map off the town on the station wall provided me with all the information I required, the park was only about 15-20 minute walk away and the road that the train station was situated on led to the park in a reasonably direct way. To be honest, far from merely being a Radiohead show, the day was more like a festival. A festival to honour Radiohead. Several local bands played throughout the day before Sigur Rós and then Supergrass took to the stage in the late afternoon. Having got to the park early I was about to position myself close to the front of the stage in anticipation for the reason we were all here. In order to maintain my position it meant forgoing any food or beverages throughout the day, but I was fairly comfortable with this proposition.

Backing in 1997 I had gone to see both the shows Radiohead performed at Festival Hall in Melbourne. The shows were held on two consecutive 40 degree days. The temperature outside coupled with Festival Hall's distinct lack of ventilation, not mention the combined body heat of several thousand alternative music fans, made the shows difficult to enjoy. I was hoping that the show in Oxford would not have its comfortability dictated to by the weather. Unfortunately this was not going to be the case and halfway through the show, during an especially powerful version of Idioteque, Thom Yorke's whining falsetto and twitching dance moves caused the heavens to open and God to cry, in admiration, a deluge of tears down on the park.

As the performance ended and everyone began to leave most of the crowd seemed to be heading right out of park, I assumed that the majority of people would be heading back to London and so decided that was the direction I should be walking. After walking about forty five and becoming increasingly drenched, I still hasn't come across anywhere that looked familiar from the morning. I decided to ask someone. I assumed that the rail replacement buses would leave from the Oxford bus station, and so I inquired of someone walking near me how I would get there "It's back that way mate", pointing in the direction I had just come from, "Just keep walking back the way you've come". Annoyed, but at least consoled by the fact things couldn't possibly get worse, I finally arrived, I stood in line with all the other rain-soaked Radiohead fans and waited my turn in order to board a bus. After reaching the front of the queue I was informed that the ticket I had was not valid on these buses, and that it was only valid on the rail replacement buses and these buses were leaving from the train station. I ran down to the train station only to be informed that I had just missed the last of the rail replacement buses. I would have to go back to the bus station and attempt to get on one of the buses there. A bus I would have to pay for.

Upon returning to the bus station in order to have to line up once more, I was suddenly grabbed out of nowhere by someone. As this person pushed and pulled me back and forth and shouted obscenities at me I gained enough composure to realise that it was Megan. She had taken offence at the email I had sent her several months ago and was letting me know of her dissatisfaction. As I attempt to struggle free from her grip her arm was pushed upwards and one of her long fingernails scratched the tender skin just underneath my eyeball. My pained squeal of "FUCK!" seemed to provide her with her desired satisfaction and she walked off leaving me to tend to the blood dripping down my right cheek.

After finally being able to get on a bus, begrudging £10 lighter, I arrived back at Victoria just after 2am. I walked up from the bus station to the train station but there were obviously no trains running at that time. The week before, in order to get out of my lease, I had told the landlord of my Earl's Court bedsit that my mother was sick and I had to return to Melbourne. Since then I had been sleeping on my cousin's floor in Clapham Junction. Not knowing which bus I need to catch in order to get to Clapham Junction, I decided to just wait for the trains to start running at 5am. Still damp and cold I went and bought a copy of The Observer from a off-license on Buckingham Palace Road. I then found myself a seat in what I considered to be the warmest part of the station and read as much of the paper as my tired eyes would allow. Catching the first train out of Victoria in the morning, I made it to Lucy's place by 5.30am only realise that I didn't have a key. I had expected to be arrive back not too late into the previous night and didn't think I would require one. As this didn't turn out to be the case, and not wanting to disturb anyone, I decided it was best to just curl up on the doorstep until a reasonable hour to ring the door-bell. My clothes were now fairly dry, but the scratch under my eye was still stinging. I was looking forward to a shower and a sleep.

In the drawers where I keep all my miscellaneous objects I still have the package containing the books and photographs Megan sent me. I never sent it back to her and I have kept it with me for the last 7 years. I don't know why I have held onto it. I no longer having any feelings towards Megan either positive or negative. I have no desire to talk to her and I rarely even think about her. But for some reason I can't seem to part with that package. Maybe the books symbolise part of the process which enabled me to begin my life. Although Megan caused me trouble, the consequences of my contact with her were ultimately positive. I may have never gotten out of my bedroom in my parents' house if it wasn't for her. And for that, I guess she played a significant role in improving my life.