Each song was another needle dragged into the groove of my obsession; each chord reinforced pathways I’d forged in his honour. I saw his name, his initials, his profile everywhere. I was besotted, and adrenaline-soaked in my need for approval.
‘What are you thinking?’
I’m not thinking anything, apart from how cracked your ceiling is, and how you’re living the hard-luck student dream. And how I can’t believe someone so wrapped up in themselves might be wrapped up in me too.
‘I’m not thinking anything, apart from how the cracks in your ceiling remind me of stories we used to make up when we saw the cracks at our grandmother’s house,’ I confessed, referring to my childhood again.
He pointed this out, and I felt embarrassed, and wished I’d talked about something relevant – something contemporary.
“You’re so traditionalist in your approach to things,” he said in pseudo-intellectual tones that impressed me so much at the time.
“You’re more of a blazer and straw hat type, aren’t you Mark?”
I reveled in his attention and snuggled further into his crumb-strewn bedclothes. The blue screen of the television flared out into the room, having been switched on in order to play a cd through the DVD player. I loved his taste in music, his fierce pride in mixing high and low culture. He would often talk about Mariah Carey as though she were a close friend of his, and this sort of planned off-the-cuff humour was a major part of what endeared him to me.
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