Nicola Barker - Clear - A Transparent Novel

But Solomon ‘worked out a deal’ (of course he did) with an early bunch of contractors. Rented, invested, ducked and dived. Soon got his hands on the ground floor, the first floor, then the second and then the third. Journeyed from ‘Social Outcast’ to ‘Pillar of the Community’ (sits on the board of governors at a local school, has four children of various hues on a mentoring programme, fought tooth and nail for a new zebra crossing, founded a local ‘living history’ society to encourage racial integration among the bolshy cockney and Asian populations).

Meantime, I’m still quietly lodged in my original basement room, thinking about girls, playing on my XBOX, listening to Funkadelic; a tragic carbunkle hitched (like a bloated tick) on to the smooth heel of Solomon’s relentlessly advancing, righteously ideological, all-conquering life-style.

I mean where’s the guy find the time, huh ?

Sometimes (if I’m lucky) he’ll bring me out and parade me around when some of his real friends are visiting (artists, musicians, accountants, decent people) and he’ll make me tell them the story of how I shagged a 55-year-old journalism lecturer for six months (to try and improve my grades at college), and then, when it came down to the crunch, she broke my heart and failed me (The bitch. And I shouldn’t have failed. I was on track for a B. It was my best fucking subject. I just wanted the A so bad I could taste it — although, in retrospect, that was probably just the dusty residue of her lily of the valley talcum powder).

Yes that’s- ‘Ha ha ha . That’s very funny…A splash more Johnny W., Martha?…’

So what does Solom o n do , you’re wondering. Good question, but not good enough ( Yeah . Maybe you’re getting a little taste of how it is to be me now, huh ?). Because the only sensible question to ask in this situation is: ‘What doesn’t Solomon do?’

If you asked him directly he’d probably fob you off with a sarcastic aside about being ‘a jobbing inkhorn’. His main gig (or one of them) is at The Economist , where he writes complicated stuff about Globalisation, world debt and branding.

Imagine how it feels (just for a moment, if you wouldn’t mind) to actually be living with someone who read philosophy at university (the degree of choice for crackpots and losers), then graduates, then ‘reads a lot’, then ‘takes an interest in stuff’, then ‘asserts himself’, then ‘meets a few people’, then ‘kicks around some ideas’, then ‘gets proactive’, then ‘discovers a niche’, then ‘earns some respect’, then ‘makes shitloads of money’, then ‘blows it’, then ‘earns some more’, then ‘has a blast’, then…

How the hell did he do that? I mean I was right here . I stood idly by and watched (half an eye on the Guardian review of the new Coen Brothers project, fantasising about Rose MacGowan, casually mauling a Pop Tart).

How did he do that?

Jealous? Jealous ?

Fucking hell! Wouldn’t you be?

Solomon is the guy who the ‘ideas people’ in the advertising industry desperately want on board when they’re sourcing a new product. He’s the man who knows everything about ‘the newest kind of beat’, ‘the nastiest type of drug’, the ‘most beezer vitamin’, the ‘top colour’, the ‘most innovative fabric’. He’s the chap who gets invited to all the best parties but who is too fucking cool to ever turn up.

Solomon is the only man I’ve ever met who can wear those ridiculously poncey Paul Smith shirts (the ones with the paisley and the frills and the photographic flower prints) and still ooze bucket-loads of raw machismo.

Solomon is best pals with Chris Ofili. Bjork thinks he’s ‘a hoot’. He stole (I repeat he stole ) Lenny Kravitz’s last-but-one girlfriend. He owns two early Jean-Michel Basquiats. He had a cameo in NYC art wunderkind Matthew Barney’s Cremaster 2 (or 3 , or 4 ), where he appeared as a rampant black goat in a golden fleece and stilettos ( coated in Vaseline).

And you know why? Because Solomon is an archetype. Solomon represents something. Solomon is the Über -man.

Solomon grew up — for a year — on the same estate as Goldie, and introduced him to his dentist . Solomon got a blow job he didn’t really want off a female MP in the locker rooms of the House of Commons (‘How could I refuse? It meant so much to her…’). Solomon told Puff Diddy that he should ‘seek redemption through sport’ (then Diddy promptly ran the New York marathon, for ‘Charidy’ ).

Want me to go on?

Okay. Solomon met Madonna (yes, that’s right) in a NYC bar, and she chatted him up and he turned her down (‘Too muscular ,’ he sighs, ‘that bitch really needs to soften up’). He told Robbie Williams to be ‘more like Sinatra’. He predicted ‘a major downturn in MacDonald’s economic fortunes’—to the actual month , two years before.

Solomon had a feud with Palestinian intellectual Edward Said. Alicia Keys claimed he ‘broke my damn heart’. He calls Mario Testino ‘a sad, little turd’. The people who run The Late Review (BBC2, after Newsnight ) consider him Public Enemy Number One after he casually accused them of ‘espousing the worst kind of tokenism’ (they asked him to appear, on-screen, to defend his position — of course they did — but he told them, ‘I’d rather get Meera Syal to lick the cheese off my knob’).

Yup .

Solomon’s a radical. And he’s vicious if he needs to be (‘the world never changed yet,’ he says, ‘through somebody asking nicely’). He has a whole bunch of theories about how The Culture is only really interested in rewarding (and exploiting) black mediocrity. ‘If they’re afraid of UK Garage,’ he says, ‘then they kill UK Garage. Simple as that. Blow the black-on-black violence issues out of all proportion, shit-up the promoters, deny it the radio-play. Stop spinning the discs on Radio One by creating 1-Xtra (Black Music for Black People), aural apartheid, and only available on Digital, remember…?’

(Yeah. So that’s why I catch him listening to it, and with such obvious enjoyment , all the livelong day, eh?)

‘But then here’s the master-stroke,’ he continues, ‘they take with one hand and then they give Britain’s premier New Music Prize the Mercury — to Miss Dynamite- tee-hee , with the other, as an almighty Garage sop , when the person who’s innovating that year is The Streets, and he’s dynam- white -tee-hee. Laugh, Adie? Laugh?! I’ve cum all over my fucking joggers .’

‘But what about The Rasket?’ I ask (and very genially — since Rasket, or Dizzee Rascal — the hottest, most mischievous and cacophonous ‘urban-music’ pup of this Fresh New Century — has just won himself the self-same prize — last Tuesday , man. I mean, what to do with an ideology of exclusion when the cherry on the cake has just been cordially awarded— uh —the cherry on the effing cake , so to speak?).

‘A blip,’ Solomon avers, mildly, then ponders for a moment, then sniffs, and then he’s off again.

‘This kid’s eighteen years old ,’ he rants ‘and he has a history , yeah? He’s an innovator, a genius, and yet his own people hate him. They’re full of envy …’

(Dizzee was stabbed, earlier this summer, somewhere in Ayia Napa.)