Title: One of THEM!

Author: Peter Wells

In: Sport 7: Winter 1991

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, July 1991, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 7: Winter 1991

I Only Want To Be With You

page 132

I Only Want To Be With You

It happened after this, but not in direct sequence. This is the strange thing of setting this confession down, to make sense of what was necessary in it. It all connects up like it was always meant to be but when Lemmynme lived it, none of it made sense, none of it apart from him knowing me and me knowing him, that was the total sense of it. And that was necessary.

But after all this and School Cert, which Lemmy never sat and I did, he got new friends and I became this sort of, like, an embarrassment to him. It was like, with his new friends, he didn't want to know an Audrey Hepburn kind of boy any longer. Then this thing happened.

Lemmy slit his wrists.

I hadn't seen him for quite some time, he'd even left school.

I rang up his father, it's Andrew speaking I say in my imitation-Andrew voice which I know never fooled anybody, I mean, anyone who's ever loved could look at me and know, and he said Lemmy's in the bin, not those words, Lemmy's at Kingseat he says, like it was my fault too, just hinting at it, and my voice said now no longer pretending to be Andrew, whoever he was, but Jamie, oh, why's he out there Mr Stephenson, in the bin I don't say, why's my Lemmy in the bin, without you I'd die dear, I think, and Lemmy's dad says then, like he accepts me as Lemmy's mate, which I am most definitely not, he tried to kill himself and I think oh Lemmy why didn't you call me, why didn't you tell me, you don't have to walk alone.

I went out to see him. I'd never been into a bin before, I was frightened but I was strong too, I knew I had to see him.

It was different from what I imagined and suddenly there he was, thin Lemmy now, with long straggly hair hardly even looked after: it was like it no longer mattered. He wasn't expecting to see me, I could tell that.

Hi he said to me and I could hear this little echo in my head saying let's go ... but it just died, very faint like a pin falling in space, falling, now, forever, end over end, glinting as it fell into darkness. I am in this darkness, this space of unknowingness. But Lemmy looked at me like he didn't hear it and oh hi Jamie he says and he looked like he wasn't unpleased to see me but he also didn't look pleased. I thought yes my life seems dead and so unreal, there's nothing left to feel but it was as if Lemmy couldn't hear that, it was like he was listening to some other sound now.

page 133

It was quiet there.

We went and sat away from everyone else on a park bench and I got out the cigarettes I'd bought and gave them to him. He looked at them then up at my face. For the first time he seemed to recognise me. A faint smile flickered across his face, making him seem like Lemmy. He shook one out, put it into his mouth, then hesitated. It was like we were suddenly strangers, we didn't know each other and had to make it up, to get to know each other again, introducing ourselves. I close my eyes and count to ten, I think, and I open them and you're still there.

And Lemmy says I cut my wrists and I close my eyes because I see the razor and I can't stand the thought of losing Lemmy, of being alive without Lemmy, alone without him, I just wouldn't be able to live, no. But I don't say that.

We sit a while in silence and let the soundlessness breathe its way all over us and Lemmy takes in a breath, sharp, and he looks at me and says Jamie?

I say yes Lemmy?

And Lemmy pauses then, he takes in another breath and looks at me right into my eyes deep into my soul.

Jamie, he says. I'm one of them.

I can hardly breathe.

Oh Lemmy I say with this sick laugh which dies in the air and crumples to the ground, I watch it at my feet. Oh Lemmy you're having me on. Of course you're not.

If you are, I am, I think to myself in a flash. It is not possible.

I am, he says.

I am one of them.

I don't dare move or breathe or even look at Lemmy, I keep very quiet.

We both look straight ahead.

Then my hand sort of falls down, of its own accord, like in an accident and just grazes past Lemmy's. For one moment he goes to take his hand away, I can feel it, but, instead, he just lets it lie there. He relaxes.

Have you heard Dusty's latest? I say, in a strange voice.

Lemmy doesn't say a word.

It's called 'I Only Want To Be With You', I say.

Then Lemmy says again,

I'm one of them, Jamie.

And I say nothing.

page 134

We sit together for a long while in the silence not knowing what more to say to each other, whether it's the end, or whether it's only the beginning, then I say, Lemmy, like, would you like to hear how Dusty's song goes and he nods very slow and I stand in front of him and I sing: