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Carole Bulewski short story writer Billy by Carole Bulewski   short story Billy   Billy was a great guy. When he was alive, that is. After that he turned a bit nasty, but then again that's understandable, considering... When he was still among the living, Billy was the sort of person that everybody loves even though they're a bit "funny" - read "weird" - at times. Still, not many people knew just how weird Billy could be. He wasn't violent or anything - at least not to others - but he could be slightly scary when he was off his meds. And now that he's dead... Scary doesn't even start to describe him. What was I supposed to do? He says I've been a manipulative bastard, but no one would have heard his music, had it not been for me. Oh well, who am I kidding? I AM a manipulative bastard. I first met Billy at a friend's party, late at night when most people had already left. I had been at a gig earlier on, to see a band that was being hailed as the next big thing, and I had been so disappointed by their music and general lack of charisma that I had drank much more than I had intended to. It was already quite late when I remembered that I had promised my friend Melanie to come to her party - a barbecue; it was August after all - and because all of the Tube lines had already closed for the night I had taken a black cab to her place. Melanie seemed happy to see me when I finally got to her house, but not overwhelmingly so. It was supposed to be her party, her birthday party, at her place what's more, but the evening had turned into something that she had not expected. Because she had invited Billy, and because, wherever Billy went, all eyes were on him. And I don't mean just female eyes. Men loved him too, not necessarily in a gay sense. There was something so organically attractive about him that people always wanted to befriend him. The medications he was taking for his bipolar disorder, if they were, at times, making that light that was emanating from him fade away, couldn't completely transform him into a mundane sort of character. That night that I met him, he was wearing a white, embroidered, hippyish shirt open on a white, hairless chest, his long and wavy brown hair hiding half of his childish face. I couldn't have missed him even if I had tried to. First, he was much taller than everybody else in that place, and then, of course, there was that aura coming from him and all the guests - mostly women, that evening - had gathered around him, listening to his songs. His voice was a bit broken but it was strong enough. That, however, was not the most interesting thing about his music. How can I explain? After the lameness of what I had been hearing at that gig, there was something so pure and honest about that guy, so very painfully honest I would say, that you could only be touched by it. The lyrics were mostly - at least this is what people believed - about his various experiences with psychotropic drugs. But Billy didn't really take that kind of drugs. He couldn't afford it. All he could take was alcohol and some dope, maybe a bit of coke once in a while, but certainly not mushrooms, acids or LSD. That would have been a really bad idea for someone who was suffering from bipolar depression. His was the extreme type, bipolar I, and what he was describing in the songs was actually his experience of life, his weird visions and the pain he was constantly fighting. Of course I didn't know anything about his medical condition when I met him that night, and all I was interested in was the fact that he was the first good thing I'd heard in a very long time. I was a music journalist, you see, and I was going to so many gigs that all these bands sometimes started to merge into one single muddy thing. They all sounded the same. They all looked the same. They all had the same lyrics, the same attitude and the same lack of charisma. Their lead singer always had a stint in rehab and their drummer always ended shaking up with some vaguely famous bird. I shouldn't bite the hand that feeds me - used to feed me, actually - but still, sometimes, in those days, it was getting a bit too much for me to take. To be honest, after that terrible gig that evening, I had been thinking that working as an accountant would be much more fun. But then I heard Billy, and it came back to me, all of a sudden, why I had chosen that career path. It was, precisely, to meet people like him, to be the one who would discover them, the one who would write the first piece about them and help "make" them. That evening, when he put the guitar down - to Melanie's relief; she had planned to sing herself and couldn't wait for him to take his bonny fingers off her guitar - Billy raised from the chair he had been sitting on while playing and reached for a glass of whisky. Two girls were chatting to him but he didn't seem to give a damn. They were pretty in the classical sense, hair well straightened, thin but with a big chest, and over-groomed. I thought it was a good time to go and talk to him. And so I did, introducing myself as a music journalist for that magazine that everybody in the business knows about - no way are you going to break into the music scene if the people at the magazine don't talk about you. The girls looked at me with some sort of vague interest but I ignored them, and so they finally left us alone to talk. I told him straight away that I wanted to write an article about him, but he said that he hadn't recorded much material yet, and that it would be a bit of a hasty thing to do than to write a piece about him when he was just accompanying bands who needed a second guitarist. That's when it happened. The words just came out of me and I asked him if I could be of any help with the recording. "Is it a question of money? Do you need some studio time just to yourself?" He laughed and said that yes, obviously, that was exactly what he needed. He explained to me that he had some sort of a regular job in an office, to pay the bills. Well, actually, he had just been sacked because he hadn't turned up for work for two weeks without any valid reason. At the moment, he was kind of working in a café, cleaning dishes and earning just enough to keep him going. He was sleeping on a friend's couch because he'd also had to give up his flat, but things would get better soon. He added that he had started taking his meds again, and that soon he'd be able to find another job, and another flat. "So," I asked again, "would you be interested in getting some studio time to record your material properly?" "I would have to write some more songs I suppose... I haven't got enough for a whole album right now." "I'm sure you can do that in no time. Based on what I've just heard." "Oh that... I don't know, it's nothing special really, just something I made up as I was going along." "That sounded pretty damn good to me for something that you were just making up. With a bit of extra work, you could record an album in no time." "What about other musicians? Bassist, drummer?" "Let's worry about that later. You could start by putting your guitar lines down and we'd see about the rest later." "That sounds very Syd Barrett and David Gilmour to me. You know, "The Madcap Laughs" and all that. I'm nothing like Barrett you know, I can actually play the same thing twice. And I don't do acid either. Can't, really." At that precise moment I noticed a funny little guy, standing next to the fireplace with a joint in his hand, who was looking at us intently. He was wearing a white, hippyish shirt that looked very much like Billy's. "That friend you're staying at, it wouldn't happen to be that bloke just over there, would it?" I asked. Billy turned around and, when he realised who the guy in question was, he started laughing very loudly. "Course it is! Good old Tim, what would I do without him..." Tim waved in our direction and, although he briefly smiled at me, there was something in his eyes that looked like suspicion to me. He had probably mistaken me for one of those parasites who were hanging around Billy to try and steal some of his energy. Or maybe he thought I was some sort of drug dealer, I'm not sure. What I can tell for sure is that, from that first evening on, he distrusted me with all his heart. "Call me tomorrow, or even the day after that," Billy said to me while getting up. "I need some time to think about what you've just said. And I think you do, too." We swapped phone numbers and, a minute later, he had disappeared. NEXT > >