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The bartender nods to Johnny as he sits on his usual barstool. Work had been the same as always, and while the clothing store was a much needed change of scenery from where he’d grown up and people he’d known, even the most unique personalities had begun blending together in a composite of mohawks and wide nostrils. He came to the same club after work day after day, which didn’t make anything any better, but the ale was cheap and it was close and there were people there to talk to and pretend he knew once the night was over.
A pint is pushed in front of him; the murky ale and low lights around the bar making it hard for Johnny to tell if something is floating in it or not. Johnny mouths ‘and one for yourself’ at the bartender; the pulsing beat and shouting conversations of others make it useless to try and be heard properly. Johnny spins on his stool and leans back against the bar. It’s the usual sea of faces, most of them indecipherable from being backlit by the bright dance floor.
Johnny sighs and reclines into the anonymity. One day I’ll scarcely be able to cross the street without people needing a signature or picture. Best to enjoy the nobody-ness while it lasted. Frowning briefly, Johnny refuses to be sidelined by not having the right word for the right feeling. He turns back to order another drink, fully set on ordering himself gin this time, when an arm snakes out next to his, brushing against it, toward the bar, and knocks on the oiled wood.
“Two more, if you don’t mind terribly.” The boy attached to the arm yells when the bartender gets close enough. He doesn’t look much older than Johnny, even with a blazer on. He’s handsome, but despite the venue, Johnny swears he frequents the gay club because it was close and the beer was cheap, not to try and pick up alright looking guys with dodgy haircuts. It was what he told Angie, at any rate.
“Must we, James?” The voice instantly has the hairs on Johnny’s neck standing up. He tries, and he’s certain he’s failed, to look over his shoulder in a discreet way with no trace of an invasively interested look. It doesn’t matter though, the quiffed boy standing at James’s shoulder isn’t looking at him. He’s turned and looking through the smoke at the general location of door. Johnny thinks fleetingly of clearing his throat or knocking James’s drink off the bar and onto his blazer, which the quiffed boy has tangled a hand into the closest lapel. “You promised we would leave.” James laughs.
“Of course we’ll leave eventually, Steven.” Steven pouts and James smiles wider. Johnny knows it’s only a matter of time before one of them notices his gawking. Notices the way he can’t take his eyes off of Steven’s jawbone. “You have all the daytime in the world to read and watch films. You promised you’d pretend to enjoy yourself tonight. I need to drink away the painful memory of my latest trip to the barbers. It is my solemn vow, and you are my witness, that I will not be cutting my hair again this decade.”
James removes Steven’s hand from his blazer and puts a pint in Steven’s hand. He raises his own glass and clinks them together, ignoring that Steven’s hand never moves. Johnny raises his own glass to toast to James’s hair proclamation and has the pint halfway to his face before remembering that he isn’t included. He doesn’t know these people, no matter how long he listens to their conversations and catalogues their every move and creates false memories out of their stories and perceived personalities. He is no one to them. Johnny lifts the glass to his lips and looks over the rim at them again. He can see himself putting down the glass, standing, making a witty comment, running his fingers down Steven’s arm, pushing him against a wall. He can see that Steven’s eyes are blue, but they aren’t looking at him. They’re still looking at the door even as James presses a kiss against his cheek.
The acrid sting of smoke going through his nostrils as Johnny exhales doesn’t make his eyes water like it used to. He’s getting better at not letting the cigarette fall from his lips as he plays and better at ignoring Morrissey’s eye roll when he does. They’re at their fifth venue of the week and Johnny’s smile cracks through every tight lipped interview Morrissey insists he join him during. He spends them with his sunglasses on, using the tinted glass to hide the way his eyes never leave Morrissey.
“Hello you little charmers,” Morrissey says with his lips pressed close against the mic. Johnny catches Morrissey’s eye as he spins around, lifting the mic cord above his head in a sloppy pirouette. He swallows and looks down at his hands which seem to be moving in slow motion over the familiar chords. The past few months have been the same routine of half-hearted attempts to keep Morrissey from noticing the pressure building denser in his ribcage every time their eyes met
Morrissey yips and the stage lights go out. Johnny feels Morrissey brush past him and head off stage for a new shirt. He waits a moment before exhaling and letting his shoulders drop from being up around his ears. He waits for Andy to leave the stage in front of him, glad that his list of superstitions was longer than a genealogy chart of the royal family and forces all of them to exit to the same side of the stage at every performance. Morrissey might roll his eyes whenever Andy mentions a seemingly new ritual, but he follows them all the same, just like the rest of them.
It’s these moments of soft understanding and quiet playfulness that have Johnny staring out bus windows at streetlamps in the middle of the night. That have Johnny crawling out of bed in the late hours of the night to answer phone calls he knows he could leave until morning, but end up in him driving in the dark to Morrissey’s house all the same. That have Johnny telling Angie that with the band and all, it might be better for both of them, for their current and future relationship, to take a bit of a break, just until things settled down some. Johnny does these things and tells no one. He does them and pictures himself whispering the litany of things he has done and would do for Morrissey if only he asked.
Johnny is leaning against the hallway wall, listening for the crowd to reach the fever pitch that Morrissey requires before going back out on stage. Once in an interview Morrissey had told the reporter that waiting for exactly the right amount of time before getting what you want made the getting rapturous. Johnny hadn’t been able to keep himself from staring at the way Morrissey’s mouth bent around the word. He has a pretty good idea of what Morrissey was talking about.
Andy claps a hand against Johnny’s shoulder as he passes and walks back out onto the stage. Johnny feels around both ears for another cigarette but can’t find any. Maybe he is always looking for something that may have once been there, but has already been used. He shuffles back onto the stage and straps on his Rickenbacker
Their encore is Hand in Glove, and Johnny can feel the sweat already beginning to pool at the base of his spine. Morrissey is midway through the song when he turns and stalks over to Johnny, crooning. He lifts a hand and holds it just short of touching Johnny’s hair. Johnny tries to lean into Morrissey’s hand, but by the time he’s moved Morrissey’s already taken his hand away. Johnny tries to remember to breathe as Morrissey takes two steps back, spins, and returns to the front of the stage.
Johnny wonders how much closer he could possibly stand to Morrissey; should he bunch up the fabric of his shirt in his hand and toast to their hair? Johnny swallowed down the feeling of Morrissey walking away. How would he know when exactly the right amount of time had passed?
“You know it wasn’t real.” It wasn’t mean. He wasn’t sneering or even being any more condescending than usual. It made the feeling in Johnny’s stomach intensely worse for it. They’re sitting in the dark corner of a tea shop, but Johnny was sure everyone in the establishment had turned at the first scent of blood. At the moment Johnny had said I love you and leaned across the table for a kiss. At the moment Morrissey had turned his head away and said wait. At the moment Johnny looked down at his hands and hadn’t looked up since. “The posing for pictures and stage maneuvers are just production.”
“I know your songs,” Johnny says quietly. Then louder. “I know you were thinking of me when you wrote Hand in Glove. You mean it when you sing it to me on stage.” He raises his eyes to meet Morrissey’s, like showing a junkyard dog you weren’t afraid of it. Morrissey looks away this time. “You know I’m right about that.” Johnny goes for the exposed jugular. ”You’ve said you love me.” Morrissey bites his lip. Morrissey speaks slowly as if he’s been tasked with explaining physics to a toddler.
“It was about you, I suppose.” Johnny snorts and tries not to cross his arms over his chest in a clear signal of discomfort. He leans back and lifts a chipped mug instead. Morrissey looks up at him, meets his eyes for an apologetic moment, then looks back down at the scarred tabletop and continues. “It’s more about the idea of you, without necessarily being you, Johnny Marr, the quite brilliant guitarist.” Morrissey smiles. “It’s more – the shrouded figure who may resemble you, a bit, if you squint, the way that Picasso’s dancers aren’t really any specific dancers,” he says, quickly. Johnny has never heard Morrissey babble like this before. He supposes it’s a small consolation for the absolute shards he is being reduced to. “So, it’s unfortunate if you got the wrong impression.” Johnny winces.
“How can you say all of that? I’m not a real person to you?” Johnny wishes he weren’t talking, that he could just accept the rejection he can now see was inevitable, but his vocal cords are buzzing without any input from his brain. His voice is louder than he meant it to be, and he can feel the stares of other patrons drilling into his back.
“Johnny, you’re my muse,” Morrissey says in a whisper, reaching a hand toward him but not actually bringing himself close enough to touch. “Isn’t that better than any fleeting physical compatibility you believe exists? You must know it's better this way.” Morrissey grins. "Besides, what will Mummy say if you don't bring Angie home for Christmas?"
ohnny feels himself give up in a great bellow of rotted ribs. There was no convincing anyone of anything. He nods and Morrissey is looking more relieved than Johnny’s ever seen him. Morrissey stands, and, his good mood beginning to lapse, nods back. He takes a step back from the table, looks around at the tea shop like he’s committed a crime, and takes short, quick steps to the exit, calling over his shoulder about a forgotten phone interview. Johnny stares at his empty chair. He briefly imagines Morrissey still sitting there, blushing but pleased. Morrissey reaching across the table, actually reaching for his hand. Morrissey admitting to holding on to the same secret Johnny had been holding on to since he first saw Morrissey at that club in Manchester. His heart is beating loud and quick at the base of his throat, trying to let him know that it’s still there, still working, still whole, but he can’t breathe around it. He knows if he went outside there would be people, not many, not yet, but there would be people wanting signatures, photographs. But they would only have listened to the songs, read the interviews, catalogued every move and have created false memories out of the stories and a perceived personality. They would know the construct of Johnny that Morrissey had made of him. Johnny wasn’t sure there was anything else to know.
