CARS AND GIRLS

All my lazy teenage boasts
Are now high precision ghosts
And they're coming 'round the track to haunt me

He tried to avoid listening to popular music from his generation because each time he heard an anthem from the past it felt like he was being reminded in the cruellest way that he was getting old. Songs from his youth that had him thinking he was immortal whilst kissing girls in the blinding sun had now become like sour milk to him. Explaining to one of his old friends, Wayne, at the school reunion disco he'd just arrived at that pop music, much like first love, has an expiry date he found some small comfort in seeing his blotchy faced ex-classmate appearing to agree with him. This curmudgeonly argument that he was openly touting probably explained why Justin was so perplexed, watching his peers hang onto these dated songs like emotional life rafts across the ever shortening span of their lives. Nothing could be more depressing to his mind, except from maybe trying to fit into young looking clothes whilst trying to pretend the spectre of death wasn't dancing behind you on the dancefloor. Belonging to a moment in time or the idea of a generation always seemed like a trap to Justin who prided himself on existing outside of time, refusing to be strait jacketed by some collective sense of identity and belonging.

"Why are you so glum?" A fifty something Hannah Wood asked him as she almost took Justin's eye out with a lethal looking straw that had fallen against the side of her giant cocktail glass.

"Am I glum? I think this is just how I always look."

Uncertain whether she'd offended her ex-boyfriend or not, Hannah had a sense that Justin had been through the wars in one way or another. He just had that weary look of someone who'd spent too many sleepless nights over thinking things.

"Well, it's good to see you even if you are glum," she teased.

"I'm not glum!" he insisted.

"Me thinks the lady doth protest too much!" she further jested as she smiled at him in a way that took him back about thirty five years or so when they attended their first school disco together.

Standing alongside him and taking an accentuated sip of her over elaborate looking drink, Hannah bobbed along to the sound of Grandmaster Flash's 'White Lines' as the strobing disco lights creating a threaded straw effect across her still beautiful face.

"Why do I feel like I'm in a bad episode of The Office all of a sudden?" Justin asked  Hannah who was vibing happily away to the beat.

"Because you are in a bad episode of The Office," she said out of the side of her mouth like a ventriloquist dummy.

Confounded by Justin's perpetual angst, she decided to focus on what had made him so bitter in the intervening years since they'd last seen each other.

"Go on then. What tragedy has befallen you since I last saw you?"

"Nope. Tragedy free. I have avoided most of the soap opera cliches of life that the rest of our classmates appear to have fallen victim to."

Shaking her head, Hannah blew her retro fringe up with a sigh as she looked into Justin's sad and tired eyes.  

"You mean marriage and kids?"

"That'll do for starters. You?"

Laughing into her drink, Hannah spluttered, "I'm just a walking cliché. Some clichés are clichés for a reason. I've got the husband, the kids and the T-shirt."

She flashed her Bros 'When Will I Be Famous' T-shirt at Justin who winced.

"Rude!"

"So, who'd you marry?"

"Robin Owen. He was a few years above us."

Justin narrowed his eyes as if that would help him visualise the man in question but he drew a blank.

"Is he here tonight?" Justin said, looking around the old main hall of the school.

"Nope. He's helping our youngest with their homework."

"Homework. Man, I don't miss being young."

Knocking back the dregs of an alcohol free beer, Hannah sensed Justin was missing something in his life but wasn't entirely sure what exactly.

"Well, you're a grumpy old man now."

"Nope. I'm a realist. Always have been, always will be. I wasn't even going to come here tonight."

"Well, I'm glad you did. It's nice to see you again."

And as she smiled at Justin, his heart instantly melted as he remembered that life-enhancing look she'd given him before they'd had their first kiss all those decades ago.

"Just think. It could have been us living a life of clichés together."

And as he found no reply to her poignant statement she was ambushed by a coterie of her old classmates who led her away from Justin as they all began to dance with their drinks under the giant spinning mirrorball.

Uncertain whether it was the nostalgia of seeing Hannah again after all these years or the sudden inclusion of Prefab Sprout's 'Cars and Girls' on the speaker system clearing the cobwebs of yesteryear from his mind as if time itself was a mere illusion, Justin  found himself found himself feeling heavier than he could ever remember, hurt by the sweet melancholy of hearing a song from long, long ago.

Suddenly, he saw an alternative life flash before his eyes, one where the regret, bitterness and anger he'd worn like a badge of honour were replaced by a wife and kids and where they would reminisce about their excesses of youth each night before they turned off the lights.

Dropping his empty plastic pint glass on the floor, he left without anyone seeming to notice, not daring to look back at Hannah for fear he would feel even worse about what he may have lost all those years ago.

If music contained memories of dreams, he thought as he unlocked his car, then they could also give you nightmares.