Love Lies

43. Scott

Straight after lunch Fern and I jump in my yellow Lamborghini Murciélago and speed off to Santa Monica pier. Fern’s really chuffed because we are alone; which – apart from Bob, who follows us in the Audi – we are. We don’t talk about her phone call with her mate. It’s a downer and I don’t want to do ‘down’ this afternoon; I want to do ‘tourist’.

The sun guarantees smiles as well as flip-flops and we wander hand in hand and on air. We cross a bridge above a busy, multi-lane road. The air smells of gasoline and hot tarmac but when I breathe deeply there is a hint of sea breeze, accentuated and made more convincing by the sound of seagulls. Fern reads a little plaque and tells me that the wooden pier dates back to 1909; the wood is worn to a shine with the feet of thousands, if not millions, of souls who have also sought a bit of easy fun in the amusement park.

It’s a beautiful day. We ride the rollercoaster and the carousel, we eat candyfloss and drink Diet Coke, then we wander down to the beach and walk along the waves. We kick off our footwear and I keep dashing us both in and out of the sea, trying to race the surf. We get soaked but we’ll look pretty cool if we happen to get caught on camera. I don’t think any photographers are trailing us but I’m just saying – if they are – they’ll get some great

‘I feel as carefree as a child and yet I’m an engaged woman with a home and a future. It’s marvellous. How come when I was with Adam I owned nothing and had no plans and yet I felt weighed down?’ asks Fern. She’s panting and she has sand stuck to the side of her face. She’s lovely.

I don’t answer her because I don’t have the answer. I have very few answers, actually, but I am listening to her. I’m finding that nearly everything she says is interesting. Unlike most men I love to talk about moods, and beliefs, and life’s incidents that we call experience. I find it helps my work. For instance, there’s a lyric somewhere in what she’s just said. Something about the weight of freedom or the lightness of commitment. Not sure; I jot it down anyway.

I’ve been working on the new album for some months now. All my albums to date have had songs about being, well… me – angry, cheeky, humble beginnings, rich and famous now, misunderstood, too well understood. I use my song writing to replace the confessional box which I gave up when I was about thirteen (roughly the same time as I really started to sin, actually). I offer my fans brief glimpses into my infamous life. I lay out my sordid and soiled self. I flaunt my fame-induced neuroses and I dazzle them with my humongous success. It’s complex. But people are. And me, I am especially because I’m like other people but more so. The Europeans love all that stuff, always have done. They love hearing about my sex

But not the Americans. The albums haven’t worked in America. How come even when I’m having the best times that thought punches me? Floors me.

Thinking about it (and I do think about it, endlessly), it’s not a surprise my albums aren’t doing it for the guys of the stars and stripes. For one thing they don’t like messy famous people. They like their famous people to be happy and uncomplicated (because otherwise what are they all working for?). And for another thing, they don’t really accept I’m famous at all because I’m not famous here. It’s a fucker.

So I have two jobs to do out here in the States. One, I have to show them just how big a dick I swing and two, I have to produce an album they will like – which probably means I have to stop talking about swinging my dick. I need to do less of the fame stuff, they’re not buying it – literally. And I need to talk about love. The happy sort. The celebratory, blissful, ecstatic sort. Enter Fern.

Fern is so clear-cut and straightforward. Her dilemmas are few and far between and so ordinary. The Americans are really going to relate.

‘The stuff you talk about, Fern, is so fresh and frank and authentic. I love it. You’re helping me think new thoughts. I’ve written so much in the last week. I’m working on this new album, called Wedding Album, it’s a bunch of love ballads. Something very different for me. It’s all about you.’

‘Really?’ Fern flashes one of her astonishing smiles.

No, not really if she means really in the absolutely, one now. I’ve dropped her name into two or three of the songs, which only required the smallest of changes in the lyrics. It’s pedantic to insist on believing that just because I wrote the vast majority of the album before I met her, it’s any less about her than it would have been if I’d written it after I’d met her. I’m like dedicating it to her. The press will think it’s about her. My fans will think it’s about her. And in my experience if enough people think a thing, it makes it true. True enough. The thing is, more people will buy it if they think it’s about her.

I start to tell Fern more stories about myself. This isn’t just because I like talking about me, I’m wondering how she will react to it all. She’s appropriately (and understandably) enthralled, but more than that, her responses to my experiences are really fascinating. Fern understands my ordinary roots and extraordinary flowering. That’s special. I offer up fragile, immersed memories and she appreciates what I’m on about; I can elaborate on them, giving them warmth and texture and a meaning they sure as hell didn’t have when I was living them. Story after story pours forth. Some are blazingly bizarre; she’s surprised to hear I’ve had coffee with Nelson Mandela. Others are painfully predictable; everyone expects me to have snorted cocaine off the arses of women whose names I never knew.

‘I think it’s brilliant that I can tell you all this stuff,’ I mutter as I kiss her. I slip my tongue in her mouth and my hand up her skirt. I feel her warm wetness in both places. We’re lying side by side on the sand. It’s fun to push a fraction further, go a bit deeper, play a little harder.

‘Not if you insist on giving me filthy looks and probing kisses in the sunshine,’ she laughs. We both know she wants it.

I love it that she’s so horny for me but I love controlling myself (and her) more, so I keep talking. There’s loads more stuff to tell her about me yet and she, like everyone else, can’t get enough. The difference between her and everyone else is that I don’t edit. If she’s shocked she doesn’t show it. The thing is, for a long time I believed that as a rock star I sort of had a duty to enjoy myself to the absolute limit. That’s what’s supposed to happen; it’s part of the natural order of things and rock stars don’t enjoy themselves line-dancing or whipping up a really tasty meal for two with only four ingredients. Decadence and depravity are the birthright of the rock star. It’s my job to be reckless and extreme. People expect it, because if I’m not shagging and snorting to excess then who the hell is? It would be an ungrateful waste of opportunity to be a rock star and to just turn up at a gig or the studio, play some songs and leave quietly by the back door. No one wants that. I’m in a unique position, not even models or princes get the same opportunities. I answer to no one. The stuff I’ve done isn’t evil; it’s just dirty. Really, very much so.

I tell her about parties where people left their clothes and sense at the door, where joints and women were rolled on glass-top tables and champagne and bullshit flowed and was lapped up with ravenous greed.

However sensationally beautiful and cool the party

‘I guess we won’t be going to many parties,’ comments Fern.

‘No, not at the moment. I don’t feel like it. Does that bother you?’

‘No.’ She hesitates and then adds, ‘But maybe parties would be more fun together than they ever were when you were alone.’

‘Yeah, maybe. That’s what I’m hoping.’

We kiss again and I don’t tell her that my hope has a way of vanishing; I spend it like liquid gold. That sort of thought won’t help Wedding Album; it’s not the right chi. Instead I say, ‘It’s great that I can tell you the most sensational and sinister things about myself and you seem equally interested in both.’ I shake my head with a mix of disbelief and delight.

‘That’s what love is, accepting the person faults and mistakes and all,’ says Fern in a matter-of-fact way.

‘So it appears.’

We stare peacefully out to sea for a few moments, then Fern asks, ‘Do you think I’ll get a signal here? I’d really like to call another one of my mates, Lisa.’

And we were having such a nice time; she must be a glutton for punishment. I smile and try to appear supportive. As it happens it pans out better than I hoped as this Lisa practically wets herself when I grab Fern’s phone and talk to her.

‘Hello, Scottie Taylor here,’ I say. ‘How’s tricks?’ This is the routine I use at my gigs. I grab the phone off someone in the crowd who is taking a photo and then I call their mum. It’s hilarious. The effect is just as awesome with Fern’s friend as it is with the people in the crowds. Of course, Lisa squeals with laughter.

I like this Lisa better than the other mate. At least she doesn’t give Fern a hard time about leaving her old boyfriend in the lurch. In fact, she doesn’t say much at all beyond, ‘Fern is a lucky, lucky cow.’ Which she says about ninety times, but sort of nicely.

Fern takes the phone off me and asks Lisa to be bridesmaid so I hope she’s fit. Lisa says yes and gushes that she’ll do anything to help out, that she’ll come to LA at the drop of a hat. But when Fern offers to fly her out and to hire a nanny for her sprogs Lisa says she is meant to be running the NCT nearly new sale in the town hall next Saturday, so it’s tricky. I’m not sure what that is but it must be pretty important, sort of on a par with a global summit about climate change, I guess. Fern

Poor Fern, I think she’s beginning to realize that the tiresome thing about getting what you want is that you always have to lose what you had.