Page 54 of Marley
Maca and I had invested in a holiday resort in the Turks and Caicos Islands in early ’87. We were invited to the opening in December of that year and spent all of Christmas, New Years, and January of 1988 there. We hadn’t planned on staying away that long, but the weather back home was freezing and the place was like paradise.
We played a lot of golf, snorkelled, and even wrote and composed four new songs. I returned to England feeling relaxed and centred, although I hadn’t been able to shake the feeling that there was a hole somewhere. Something was just missing from my life, but I didn’t know what.
In February we took a skiing holiday with Jimmie and Len, and finally settled back into life in England in early March.
Thinking back on it now, I know that I was just running away from the loneliness I was feeling inside, and I suspect that Maca was doing the same. It had been almost five years since we’d had this much time to ourselves, and if the truth be told, we had no one except each other to spend it with. What a sad pair of wankers we were.
Sundays, when I had nothing to do, were always a shit time for me. I knew that my whole family gathered on a Sunday at my parents’ place, but I was usually travelling, busy, or too hungover to care. But that particular sunny March morning, I woke up feeling pissed off that I couldn’t just turn up there for dinner with Maca in tow like I’d done hundreds of times before when we were growing up.
The girl I’d come home with the night before was still curled up and sleeping next to me. I laid there for a moment, trying to remember her name. I went through the alphabet, starting with A, recounting every girl’s name that I could. I got to L and knew I was close; Laura, Lauren, Linda, Lesley, Louise. It began with an L, I was sure of it.
My bedroom door flew open and Maca stood there, drinking from a coffee cup.
“It’s a beautiful morning. Fancy taking the bikes out?” He asked.
We had bought ourselves a Harley Softtail each last year, but had only been out on them a few times in secret, behind Len’s back. Both he and the label would shit a brick if they found out, so we’d kept those particular purchases quiet.
The blonde sleeping next to me poked her head out from under the duvet.
“Talking of bikes,” Maca said. “How was that one to ride? She made enough fucking noise.”
“Ooooh, harsh dude, and a highly misogynistic assumption.”
“You eat a dictionary along with her fanny last night?”
“Oi. Don’t come in here with the hump, just coz you didn’t get any last night. Fuck off back to bed and rub one out.”
He’d left the club early the night before, getting pissed off with the way the women there thought it was okay to keep putting their hands all over him. I mean seriously, would you go up to a complete stranger and start rubbing their cock through their jeans? No, probably not, so why the fuck do women, and some men, think it’s okay to do it to us, just because we’re in a band? We’re neither pieces of meat, nor public property, at least not once we’re offstage. If we were to approach random women and grab them by the snatch, we’d be locked the fuck up for it.
Anyway, Maca jumped in a taxi and went home. He was going through another withdrawn and angry stage. As much as his mood swings gave me whiplash, he was my mate and I worried about him. I stayed for another hour, talking to a couple of mates when blondie, with the L sounding name, caught my eye and I ended up taking her home. If I remember rightly, she was short, cute, and had a massive rack. The sex was pretty good too, and I seem to recall bending her into a few interesting positions during the night, but what I’d liked most was that she had no fucking clue who I was.
L girl sat up and blinked a few times.
“Oh my fucking, shit, fuck ...” She stares at Maca while trying to wipe her make-up from under her eyes and messing with her hair.
“Morning, blondie.” I played it safe, seeing as I couldn’t remember her name
L ... Li ... Le ... Lu ... Lucy! Fuck yeah, I’m good. Lucy. That was her name.
She turned to me and screamed. “Oh my fucking god, Marley Layton!”
I gave my best impersonation of her scream and in her voice, I said, “Oh my fucking god, Lucy.”
She looks around the room, frowning. “Lucy? Who the fuck’s Lucy? My name’s Olivia.”
Oops.
“Livy, sorry, I meant to say Liv, Livy, not Lucy.”
“Ooh, nice backtrack, dude.” Maca got in, shaking his head as he walked away.
“Shut the door on your way out, fucker,” I called after him. “Don’t want you getting all jealous coz your right hand is the nearest thing you’ve got to a Lu—I mean, a Livy this morning.”
Shit, just shoot me now.
After another quick roll around with Lucy Livy Lou... yeah, that’s what I’d decided to call her. It gave me a few more options at getting her name right and she was giving me the best blow job, all because she thought I’d given her a ‘cute nickname.’ Everybody wins.
She headed off to my bathroom and showered while I went out to the kitchen to find Maca sitting at the breakfast bar, watching an episode of ThunderCats on the television. He had the sound muted, whilst sipping on another cup of coffee.
