Melsville: Billy and Jeff

You don’t need a dictionary; Billy Bragg can show you the meaning of “unrequited”. If you want to hear about how an all-consuming love can less than a casual thing the other person, he’ll tell you about that too.   If you need to ask that is, which I didn’t When I first heard Billy Bragg in 1990, I knew all about unrequited love. I knew how twisted-up and raw it had made me feel, and I’ve been relieved to hear somebody else sing about it at least ten times since then. Nobody’s like Billy for the rightous outrage, and I go to hear that too, but it’s the love-songs that creep into my head, humming gently to themselves.

These days, the song that won’t let me go is barely a song; it’s Billy telling a story over another person’s heartbreaking tune. Just as the listener begins to recognize “Walk Away Renee,” Billy starts talking about a declaration of love being “a figment (of speech) because she could never imagine it happening”. The song and the story walk along together, keep each other company.   They commiserate. Finally, the tune winds away, and Billy says, “And then, it happened. She cut her hair, and I stopped loving her.” Although, when Billy performs it live, he has been known to say, “she voted Tory, and I stopped loving her”, I prefer the haircut ending. It’s abrupt, complete and shuts the story off like a light. Feelings are like that, sometimes they come from out of nowhere and change everything.

Funny, but those songs of Billy’s as well have come from Jeff Murdock , a character from a show that makes Jamie laugh so hard that he just might hurt himself. Americans try and sum up the British television show Coupling by saying that it,”just like Friends , only dirtier“ because it follows six buddies (three men, three women) though their thirties. After ten years, Friends wrapped it up, had people fall in love and give birth , and offered its audience six happy endings. Coupling didn’t work that way, because things didn’t always work.    Things got messy, and stayed that way.   Sex came in at least 31 flavors, and everybody had a few favorites and talked about them.

Jeff talked about everything. That’s what he did, talked about everything even things his friends wouldn’t admit they understood. Jeff spent more time inside his own head. Jeff pulled an experience out, named it and nailed it, wriggling to the wall. To him, the undeniable need to laugh at a funeral was part of the, “giggle-loop.” When his lathorio chum Patrick tells him he’d been unable to work up an erection when he really wanted one, Jeff told him that the had been visited by the dreadful, “Melty Man”. What he says makes sense, but the others don’t want to put it into words.

Any romantic history Jeff may have had started out sketchy at best.   He implies there has been some, but offers few details. One story he does tell is a story where nothing actually happens He talk about falling for “the school bike” (slut?), but wanting to treat her differently. He tells the guys that he did ask her for her phone number and carried it, in his pants-pocket, increasing creased, blurred and besmirched , before he finally does call. When he does call, his conversation with the girl ends abruptly when her boyfriend arrives and they, rather graphically make up. Not only does he have to listen to it, he believes that the phone-receiver was used as some sort of sexual device.

Billy Bragg never talks about sex devices, but you get the idea.    Can you see what I mean?

When Coupling ended, two character had had having a baby, two were going to marry, and one had met somebody very nice. And Jeff had been removed. He appeared in dreams and made phone-calls, but he had been removed, sent on a long holiday to Lesbos . It made as much sense as anything else. He never got the neat, cheery ending he might have deserved. Uncomfortably honest, he remained always barely on the outside. Can you tell he was always my favorite?