Not A Usual Love Story - Part 2

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"So what are you doing down here then?" he asked, again speaking quite quickly and partially covering his mouth with his hand as he did so. He was very forward. But also, at a deeper level, it struck me that he was shy. I could tell. I could see it. He was very much both things. And, instinctively, I felt drawn to that shared characteristic. I told him what I was doing, keeping it as brief as I could.

She said that I had been down for the day for work. The job was boring, I said, and not worth talking about. Then I stopped because I realized that the whole time I spoke, I was being watched very carefully by unflinching eyes. "What about you?" I finally asked, trying to shake off his gaze. He blew smoke straight at me and widened those eyes a little. Smiled.  And then I just shrugged. "Actually, some of my friends live in a big house.

Out in the suburbs, the posh bit And we've been there all week, partying. partying on and off, and now I suppose I'm going back home. It's a shame, really; I wouldn't have minded spending another day or so out there. It was fun." I nodded.  "I'm jealous.  It sounds ideal. Was it out in the country? I love the countryside. But I never get out of it." He shook his head a little.

The train stopped once more. And a half-dozen biggish lads got on and sat right behind us. They made no impression at all on me, but he, the girl opposite, glanced up at them and winced. Then, leaning forward and lowering his voice, almost conspiratorially, he asked, "So what are you doing now?" Where are you going? Somewhere lovely?"  The truth was, I was going back into the center of London to catch the first train back home, but I lied about that. I lied because I knew now, already, that I wanted to keep this going and keep this boy talking.

This girl,  Boy,  Girl.  "Oh, well, before I go back to Birmingham, I guess I'll go and have a drink somewhere." Do something."  I didn't really understand myself at that moment. I knew I wanted to say more. To talk.  Yet this was a boy dressed as a girl, and I also knew that I was totally straight. So why did I want to talk to him? Why?

I had to be honest with myself. I wanted to talk to him because I was breathless. He had simply crashed into my space. He looked like a girl but chatted me up like a boy. And I was impressed. Almost dumbstruck.  Once more, those eyes fixed on me. A hesitation.  The tip of his tongue briefly touched his top lip. "Isn't life strange?" he said at last. "Actually, we're all going to be in Birmingham this very weekend. Do you know the Aussie Bar? Yes, you must do." I smiled.  He asked and answered his own questions. I liked that.

I replied, saying I knew the Aussie Bar. The truth was that I'd heard of it but had never been there. Actually, I wasn't really focusing too much at this point, as the voice, his voice, I suddenly realized that I found it attractive. It was a little bit husky, as if he had spent a weekend smoking, or at least dancing in a smoky club somewhere. It was also quite effeminate, for lack of a better description. But there was something else in there too, something that fascinated me. Another accent I couldn't definitely place Not at first.

And I wanted to ask him about it. "I'm sorry," he said in that soft, light voice. "Do you want a cigarette?" "No thanks.  No.  I'm fine."  He lit another cigarette and sat back in his seat. I looked at him a little more closely as he did so. In addition to a short pink mohair jumper, those heels, and an uncomfortably tight-looking skirt, he was even wearing black fishnets. In many ways, it seemed like an outfit from the 1950s. Even I could see that much. I wondered if he was a so-called "New Romantic." They were making the news a lot.

Maybe those others on the platform hadn't been punks. Then I saw that he was watching me again. I smiled.  and he smiled back. "My turn to say sorry," I said, "as you've already said it to me about five times. But I think your accent's a bit strange too. Where is that from? It isn't an ordinary Southern accent, I can tell.

There's another sound in there. It's almost like a foreign accent." I had met and dated a Swedish exchange student on holiday the year before and a Finnish girl the year before that. "Oh my god!" he laughed, sitting up sharply. "Thank you.  How did you hear that? That's quite sweet. That's really very perceptive." "Sweden?"  "Yes and no." I'm not, and I'm not English.

Well, I am. And I'm not. My father was English, but my mother was French. And I was actually born in France. We moved over here when I was little. Then we lived for a while on the south coast before moving up to Guildford. "How could you hear that?" I laughed.

"Oh, I,"  I opened my mouth to carry on, then paused. Why was I saying all this to a boy I didn't know? A stranger on a train? But I said what I'd been thinking anyway. "There's supposed to be a million-year-old man living inside each of us. Well, I think I'm him. I seem to know and feel everything sometimes. Just... I don't know everything. So that's it, I guess. I'm a million years old."

Those dark, narrow eyes lingered on me again. He drew on his cigarette and held the smoke in for a moment. "Really?"  And then he pouted to exhale a big cloud of blue smoke. "Well, you don't seem a day over fifty thousand." He smiled.  I laughed.  "Thank you," I said. Yes, to answer my own question, I liked him. I liked him a lot. That was why I was talking to him. He looked at me. Still intense.  almost a scowl.

And once again, I felt under examination. But, somehow, from somewhere, I think I understood why he did it, and it felt OK. It even felt right. Maybe he needed to suss a person out. Of course, he did, being dressed like that. And perhaps he did so just by scrutinizing their faces. "What are you reading?" he asked me at last. I nodded at my book, which was now on the seat beside me. "Oh, that," I said. "It's philosophy, I guess. Religion.  a bit of both. Eastern."

I paused.  "If we could live our lives like that, I think we'd all be a lot happier." I was reading a lot in those days, too. serious stuff like Jung, Rousseau, and even Nietzsche. Sometimes novels by authors like Gide, Balzac, or Camus That was a big part of my inner self. The real me I had begun doing so as an escape from the boredom of the factory, where I felt so trapped. In fact, to kill those seemingly interminable hours, it was to read books or newspapers. In practice, I did both. Oil-stained copies of The Sun and the Daily Mirror, cover to cover. leather-bound copies of the Timaeus and Critias of Plato, cover to cover. I could relate to either. And I liked that.

"Read me a bit, then," he said. 'Bloody hell.'  That was my thought. But instead, I shook my head. "No, no.  It's a bit heavy going, really." "Go on," he said. "Please.  Just a bit." Thirty minutes ago, maybe a little more, I had never met this boy, this girl, this boy. Girl.  Now I was reading his philosophy. What had he said a few minutes ago? 'Isn't life strange?'

I picked the book back up, opened it where I had folded one corner of the page to bookmark it and read, 'Past and future are the same. Neither is here now. Only the present is here. Time is shaped so that we can alter the past, and therefore the future, to heal ourselves or even others. What we did not live, we may yet live, but first, in the present, we must give shape to it. I closed the book.

Was I boring him? I wasn't sure. "Like I said, it's pretty intense," I said. "Sorry."  He nodded.  And for a moment, neither of us spoke. "So, anything that we missed, or anything we did that we didn't like, we can change it?" he asked suddenly. "Tell a different story. And if we change it, then that will change who we are today for the better. And maybe change our future for the better too?"

"Yeah.  Exactly that."  Inside, it surprised me that he had followed the passage so clearly and summed it up so concisely. I didn't think I could have done that. "Hmm.  "So how does that work, then?" I wasn't really sure, but I had a stab at it anyway. "I guess the point is that reality isn't what we think it is. It's very different. It has so much more potential. It's just that, as humans, we don't really get it. "There are dimensions and all sorts of possibilities.

I tailed off. "Maybe we just have to have faith." He watched me very carefully as I spoke, almost as if he were looking for truth or lies in my gestures and facial expressions. "I like that," he said at last. "I like the idea that our past is actually as open as our future." "Me too," I agreed. What was I saying? What was I doing?

This was a boy dressed as a girl. Were we flirting with each other? I was straight. What was I doing? I looked at him, and as I did so, he returned the favor deeply, almost piercingly. I didn't flinch away, having already learned not to. "What about you?" I said, trying to change my focus and nodding at the fashion magazines by his side. "You read a lot too?" He laughed.

"Oh, those.  Yes.  And no.  I read a bit. And I cut out some of the pictures and put them on my wall." "You bought all those just for a few pictures?" I was surprised. One of them was Vogue. Big glossy magazines like that would have cost quite a bit.

He shook his head. "Oh, I didn't buy them." A quick gesture with his hand implied that he must have stolen them. I smiled.  There were at least half a dozen magazines. He'd taken quite a risk.

"You know what?" he said finally. Out of the window, there were all kinds of railway lines meeting up as we neared central London. "I've made a decision. I'm going back to my friend's house right now. Why should I go back home today? It can wait. It can all wait. "What's a few more days?" He paused.  And took a last long draw on the cigarette, still fixing me with those eyes. "Birmingham," he said, changing the subject. "We're going to go to a wine bar there. On Saturday.  The Hostaria.  It's a very "in" place. The Hysteria.  Why don't you come?

If you aren't doing anything else, I mean." "OK," I said, trying to look back at him as hard as I felt he was looking at me. "But where's that?" "Sorry," he said again. We seemed to both be saying that a lot. "Actually, it's right by the Aussie Bar. Come on, come. You'll enjoy it. I promise.  Why not?"  He laughed.  It was a small laugh. Quick.  It was almost a giggle. Saturday was only two days away. On Saturday nights, I usually went to a club in the city center with some friends. But I had been a bit bored with that for a while.

So, yeah, I could do that another time. I was going to go to that wine bar. I wanted to do that instead. "OK," I said. "I might.  I will.  It sounds good. The Aussie Bar The wine bar is by it. Saturday night.  What time?"  The train was coming into a station, and he was clearly going to get off. He blew out a long breath. "Oh anytime.  Any.  Time.

I shall be there all night. "Until we leave." He stood up. Not tall.  Not short.  But he was very slim, his trim figure enhanced by the tight-fitting skirt. "Are you getting off here too?" he asked. "Oh, er, no," I said. "No.  I don't think so. "A few more stops yet, I think." We both paused. I don't know why, but I instinctively opened the door for him.

He exited the carriage in much the same way I imagine a film star from the Golden Age of Hollywood might have done. Then he turned back to me and smiled. A huge, broad smile "I'll see you there, then." It wasn't a question. I smiled back. And he was gone. I tried to read my book again. But I couldn't. My mind was already elsewhere. I couldn't really believe what had just happened.

Suddenly, my phone beeped with a text from Kate. "Dad, I hope you're OK. Stop sitting in your hotel feeling sorry. Get out and go see things! I have found your photo. He is beautiful. Love Kate xo". I called her back immediately, got no reply, and sent her a text instead. "Wow.  Brilliant, well done. Thank you.  So much.  Guard it with your life. going out right now. Love Dad."  Kate's news that she'd found my photo cheered me up.

It was only two small, identical black-and-white images, but they were the only ones I had. Today, with cameras on phones, every step and every moment of life is logged and posted on social media. One long-running photo saga. But in the 1980s, we had none of that. Most of our memories were locked up inside our heads, with no permanent visual record ever existing.

Despite my promise to my daughter that I was "going out right now," I turned back to my laptop. not to write. not to put down any more memories but to catch up on my work. First, several business emails, And then I had to work on a detailed drawing for the parts needed for some unusual scaffolding to be used on a new hotel in Stockholm. An hour or so later, looking up from my screen, I realized that outside it was now dark.

I had already showered, eaten, and watched some nonsense on the TV, and now I really do owe it to myself and Kate to get out and explore a few sights. It wasn't easy to motivate myself to do that, as my hotel room offered the kind of comfort I could never have dreamed of years ago when I had once drunk in the bar downstairs, as a prelude to going on somewhere else with my mates. But, somehow, after one last bout of wrestling with the scaffolding diagram, I managed to shake off my lethargy and go out into the Birmingham night.

To begin with, I knew that what I needed and wanted simply had to do with a visit to the Hostaria wine bar. In so many ways, this story had really begun. But first, I would walk across the city center to get a feel for my hometown. My hotel was situated adjacent to the central cathedral, churchyard, and graveyard where, all those years ago, the punks used to hang out on a Saturday afternoon and where, sometimes, there would be fights. Benches and iron railings Trees.  rows of bus stops. It all looked and felt exactly as it always had during my youth.

And despite the typical background noises of the city, all around me, I could hear starlings arguing and chattering in their distinctive manner as they settled down for the night in treetops and on buildings. I'd always associated that sound with this particular churchyard. My first impression was that nothing really had changed.

It still felt like home. Time hadn't even passed. The sky was dark, of course, and bright lights were everywhere. A city center shines. Attracts.  especially at night. I soon realized how wrong first impressions could be.

People who didn't know the city thought it was grim. Concrete.  built for cars, not humans. But it was also a good city with a big heart, and when I was young, the center of Birmingham had been small. We all knew the names of every club and pub in 'uptown', as we called the city center. It was intimate. much more so than other cities.

But now there were lots of bars. Lots.  There were many more than we knew or needed. And I had the clear impression that the names of the bars were now changed almost every weekend. Each finds it increasingly difficult to have a unique voice. I wondered where people found an anchor in such rapid change. There was something else, too.

The further I walked, the more I realized that the town was packed, with crowds roaming pavements in ways they never used to do at night. I tried to avoid some of that by cutting through some dark alleyways and the hardly-used side streets of my childhood. But even these were now filled with people drinking outside, crowds smoking sugary electronic cigarettes, ignoring one another and talking to friends on phones, and a lingering smell of hair gel. Wasn't any part of the city center still dark and quiet? It seemed to me that the answer was no.

And that was very different from the old city that I had known. Further on, the old Bull Ring shopping center had gone from the center of town, but 'The Ramp' was still there. I smiled.  'The Ramp'.  New Street.  Where so many people would arrange to meet, at the foot of 'The Ramp', on it, or at the top of it. A long, sloping walkway, ugly concrete with a plain black iron railing a McDonald. Some other fast food shops.

It had been many years since I last sat in a McDonald's, and I wasn't about to go into one now. But as I walked past it, I vividly recalled how this was the very first one I'd ever seen or used. When?  It had been 1979. I remembered the date so clearly because I had taken a girl there from my school. A girl used to backcomb her blonde hair and make it stay upright with far too much hairspray. The date hadn't worked. We hadn't really gotten on.

But I remembered her name very clearly it was Lisa. The same Lisa I would later live with and have a daughter with. As I recalled that first failed date, I hesitated outside the shop. Then I laughed out loud to myself. I had ordered a horrible, sugary apple pie, the watery contents of which burned the roof of my mouth. I had spat it out. Lisa had not been impressed.

Did they still sell those ghastly things? Surely not.  From McDonald's and the Ramp, I went along New Street itself to where the Golden Eagle pub had once stood. A wonderful old pub and a great venue for live music I had seen bands like Birmingham's own 'G.B.H.' there and stood in awe watching Mark E. Smith's 'The Fall'.

But now?  just a small and largely inaccessible car park. I might have lingered a bit longer in New Street and even gone for a drink somewhere, but it had been a long day traveling, and, in any case, the closer I got to the Hostaria Wine Bar, the more excited I felt at the prospect of seeing it once more.

As I walked along I visualized it; the wine bar was out past New Street Station, beyond any of the main shops, through dark and windswept underpasses, with very little to brighten the area up except for the headlights of passing cars.

The relative isolation of the area had allowed it to develop a bohemian character all of its own. That was probably part of the reason it was so appealing to those who felt themselves to be outside of 'normal' society, Sadly, for me anyway, very little of all that now seemed to remain either.

What used to be such an offbeat part of the city is now a bright and vibrant Chinatown. Large red brick restaurants, new hotels, crowds, and traffic The Aussie Bar, the old public house, was still there, albeit now blacked out. But I had hardly ever used it. It had always been merely a sort of bookmark for me to find the Hostaria or to tell people where it was.

But the Hostaria? No.  It was gone. Not only the wine bar itself but the whole brick building and courtyard had been demolished and replaced with a characterless modern structure, largely unlettered despite being perhaps 10 years old, that did very little for me or for the city. Some might call it progress. But elsewhere, old industrial buildings were being preserved and brought back to life. An industrial city needed its industrial heritage.

The Hostaria could have been renovated or renewed. Instead, it was gone, as if it had never existed.