High Fidelity

Only people of a certain disposition are frightened of being alone for the rest of their lives in their twenties. I was of that disposition. Everything seemed much later than it was.

I couldn’t fill a room. I don’t mean that I didn’t have enough stuff. I have loads of books and hundreds of CDs, and my room’s pretty small anyway. I mean that I didn’t seem loud enough, or powerful enough, so that I was always conscious that the only space I occupied was that taken up by my body. I couldn’t project like most people can.

Sometimes I tried, when I was out with people even quieter than me; I never talked about why I suddenly became shriller and louder, but I’m sure I knew that it happened. I did it to compensate for the fact that life was going on elsewhere, other people were together, having a better time than me with people more glamorous than me, and making a noise was sort of a defiant gesture, a futile but necessary last stand (You can see this everywhere you go, young middle-class people making too much noise in restaurants and clubs. ‘Look at me! I’m not as boring as you think I am! I know how to have fun!’ Tragic. I’m glad I learned to stay home and sulk.)

Mine was a marriage of convenience as cynical and mutually advantageous as any.

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