BIYL QUICKIES

veraville:

The Streets - “It’s Too Late”
Original Pirate Material, 2002

I was all but born in London, but when I lived there I often felt anything but English. One of my first loves was a British fellow named Jack. We met at a summer job, and as these things go, our love faded with the season. I went to an American school that he knew of well because it stuck out like a sore thumb. He went to a very reputable boys’ school that I knew well because I almost went to the girls’ equivalent. (Instead, after sitting through grueling placement exam for U.K. secondary school, my family was shipped off to Cyprus.)

Jack and I used to take walks on Parliament Hill Fields, where Plath and Hughes used to hang out and where I occasionally set cross-country records but more often got schooled by British runners. Jack and I were affectionate but conversationally, we were forever missing each other. It was one of those young, self-conscious relationships where all you talk about is the relationship. We’d sit on a bench at the top of the field. It was always damp. Our hands were always cold. The colder it got the more dismal our chances looked. Looking down in silence on the playground, the track and the empty pool at the bottom of the fields, I’d look for words to help me ingratiate myself with him. While I might sound like a repressed British person, I was really just young. And most of the time all he wanted was a kiss.

But we both loved dancing. We’d go to Buzz Bar, one of few clubs that under-18s could get into with fake IDs, though it wasn’t entirely a club because it closed at 12. My best friend and I would smoke and drink apple-flavored vodka. Jack and my friend’s boyfriend would drink pints. We’d be dancing and singing along to Craig David or Artful Dodger. In that context, we were all British. But eventually, Jack went for some girl at the sister school I almost attended, and I went for a rising star of the basketball team. Jack’s school didn’t even have a basketball team.

When I came to the States for college, the culture shock was dreadful, all the more so because I was neither here nor there, just some waffling half-breed. Around this time, The Streets happened: a quintessential British artist that crossed the pond defiantly himself with apparent success. I’m not an enormous fan of his newer music but this track was comfort food to me when it first came out. Mike Skinner sometimes sounds like a caricature of a British person, or he must do to Americans. But to me, he’s just one of the guys we’d bump into at Buzz Bar who’d chant “Aaaayyyy” and clap if you attempted some bold dance move, then bum you a cigarette or two and probably try to take you home.

And the imagery and tension in the song reminds me of myself and Jack, who were either too young, or too afraid, to celebrate anything other than what we had in common (the radio).

I love everything about this post.