How To Ruin Your Favourite Buzzband

A few summers ago I got super into that drone thing. I bought a tie-dye dress, spent most of my time listening to Pocahaunted, and got stoned way way too often. Sadly, no-one I knew really got into the whole drone thing. I tried, I really tried! But no matter how many times I played Wavves’ second album to my friends they just weren’t into it. Which is how, one warm summer evening, I found myself in The Old Blue Last, watching a guy play the cello, while he made gurgling noises through a microphone strapped to his neck.

That, I have to say, was horrible. Eventually he finished and a band came out. As the crowd began to pogo in time I found myself swept over to the merch table where a good looking boy sat alone.”This is terrible.” He whispered. We snuck off for a cigarette and got chatting. We’ll call him Holden, as that was nothing like his actual name. He was American so we had a sort of cute but awkward conversation about New York “I don’t live there.” London “It’s warmer than I thought it’d be.” and tonight “That guy with the cello was really bad.”. Eventually we decided it was ‘time’ to go back upstairs.

As we reached the merch table he asked me why I’d come alone.
“Well I really like the headline band and I couldn’t find anyone to come with.”
He stared at me as he shuffled CDs around. “You like [name redacted]?” He raised an eyebrow, and now, retelling this I am mortified I didn’t realise what was going on.
“Why?”
A silence so long you could have parked an SUV in it. “I am [name redacted].”

After some very English babbling about how the promo photos were fuzzy, and really I don’t look at the photos of bands I like, because like if I like the music, what do I have to care what they look like? I mean unless it’s Girls Aloud, and then that’s different, and then as I took a breath after 2 solid minutes of talking, he put his arm on mine and said “I have to go onstage.” The next half hour was alternately brilliant and pure torture. The problem was that no matter how hard I tried it was impossible not to look like a moonfaced groupie dazzled by the spotlights. When he came off stage I shuffled to the bar, bought myself a stiff drink and necked half of it before he came over. “Are you ok? You looked confused during the show.” He paused. “Or ill.”

An hour later Holden, Holden’s stoner friend, and I were sat on the fire escape out back of the pub smoking weed and talking expansively. Suddenly I realised I was totally blitzed and Holden realised his friends had left for the night and he had no idea where he was staying. The last tube had been and gone. “Let’s explore the city!” I waved my arms around like a Manic Pixie Dream Girl and for once it didn’t seem weird. Holden and I began wondering around, and soon we were holding hands and sitting outside the bagel shop. “I live nearby, do you want to stay the night, since you can’t get home?” I made it sound like it was my idea and I think I thought it was.

We made out on the bike rack outside the bagel shop, and in the alley way that smells of pee, and in the park where junkies sleep, the edge of the playground on the block before my flat, and then while walking crablike up my stairs and into my bedroom. Which was where things got odd. I was wearing white lace underwear, which somehow Holden thought were part of me, and he began rutting against me listlessly. After a few minutes I suggested I take them off. He seemed confused. “I thought you were naked.” It didn’t get much better from there on.

The next morning on the tube we held hands and in a foggy haze I kissed him goodbye and went to work. It was the summer, I was probably wearing something else tie-dye, everything felt lovely, I had a braid in my hair and Best Coast on my ipod. I thought I’d never see him again, that like every American dude who comes to London once for a gig, he’d never come again. He’d do an ipod advert maybe, maybe support Bloc Party.

And then he did well, his other band began doing well, he befriended a bunch of my friends in New York, and now he’s making amazing music and playing awesome gigs and I can’t enjoy any of it because every time I listen to his music I cringe from my head to my toes. I’m listening to the music of someone I had a stoned, scrappy, one night stand with. I wish I could enjoy it for the blissed out haze that it is, but I can’t stop thinking of those lace pants, and his smeary glasses.

Photos by Elizabeth Mahoney and Gudny Ros