Now Reading: The Long Road To Funkytown (Part 1)
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The Long Road To Funkytown (Part 1)
The Long Road To Funkytown (Part 1)
1981 - 16 Years Old
If you were to ask people what they thought was the greatest opening line to a novel, they’d typically give you something along the lines of It was the best of times, it was the worst of times from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.
And although they’d be missing about 70% of the actual opening line, they’d be on safe ground. Sort of like naming any number of Beatles’ tunes as the best song ever written.
A solid, yet uninspired answer. Nobody is going to say wow, but also nobody is going to laugh you out of the room.
But if you were to ask me, the greatest opening line in literature comes from James M. Cain from his 1934 novel The Postman Always Rings Twice:
They threw me off the hay cart about noon.
You can only imagine what sort of character the narrator is, what he had done to make them do that, where was he going, and what would he do?
Brilliant stuff.
So I set myself the task of writing my own James M. Cain style opening.
But first up, I have to explain a couple of terms that might not be familiar to those of you outside of the UK.
Americans have the term Hickey. It’s almost an almost cute, Hallmarksy expression.
But all the British have is the Dracula-sounding Lovebite. Which, atypically for the British, sounds more sexualized, a bit more on the nose.
Or the neck, as it were.
Then there’s the act that Americans call making out. Smooth. Like a Barry White song automatically plays in the background.
It’s cool, even sexy sounding.
And what do the British have?
Bloody snogging, that’s what.
Which sounds like one of the nastier tasks a peasant was responsible for on a medieval pig farm.
To the sound of the tavern:
But you have to work with the cards you’re dealt.
So, with all of that in mind, here’s my opening sentence. Almost midway through my entry, granted:
I stared into the bathroom mirror, looking at all of the love bites on my neck, trying for the love of god to remember the girl’s name I had spent the evening snogging with.
It was a Sunday morning after one of those Saturday nights out where my loser friends had already used up their pocket money for the week. It started out, as usual, at The Rain, our local wine-bar hangout, and I ended up being invited to an impromptu party.
A lot of drinking was involved.
And, as was typical for being a sociable person in a not-too-large town, I knew most of the people there to some extent.
But apparently not all of them.
And, to complicate things further, that she was blonde would have been the best description I could have given a police sketch artist.
What in the bloody hell was her name?
My parents were at church, so I had at least an hour or so to cover up the lovebites, with a mixture of makeup and a ratty old turtleneck that was in the back of my closet. At least it was winter, and I wasn’t the only Don Juan wearing a sweater at one of parent’s weekend summer BBQs.
I drank about 3 cups of tea, and felt like David Bowie was singing about me:
My dad was horrible with names. He unironically called my sister Bev and her husband’s close friend Rover (Trevor). Another time, we had arrived at Dallas airport, and he had my recently-wed sister Dee and her husband paged. Nobody responded to the page for Mr. and Mrs. Solomon.
Probably because they were Dr. and Mrs. Musallam.
But I was good with names. Not as good as my mum. She could (and still can) remember the name of every single person who didn’t pay enough attention to her throughout her whole life.
What the fuck was her name?
I dug through the long black wool overcoat that I had bought from Oxfam because of its unique characteristics of being cool and only costing 3 quid. My mum made me have it dry cleaned, so I wouldn’t be “bringing home fleas.”
There was some change, two overly-optimistic packets of unopened Durex, a Mars bar wrapper, and half of a pack of Dunhill Blue.
I pulled out the cigarette packet. Not to smoke. I only did that when I was out drinking. But because its top was torn off. Which was odd.
On the pack there was writing. More like an engraving. Only a few traces of blue ink had stuck to the grooves.
“Wimpy 6pm”
Nothing else. Her name was probably written on the torn-off top. And also the date.
So the plan was to show up at the Wimpy every evening at 6 until some blonde girl who’s name I didn’t know gave me an indication that she knew me.
There have certainly been better plans conceived in the pursuit of love.
But there’s also been worse.
Stay tuned; you can read part two next Monday.
