I was 17. He was older. Mysterious. Brooding. And, apparently, best friends with Gary Numan. Yes, that Gary Numan. Of Cars fame.
The eyeliner, the synth, the futuristic angst.
My boyfriend swore they were close. He said he stayed with Gary every weekend. Said he was on the tour bus. Said he had insider access, backstage passes, all of it.
I believed him. I was 17 and in love and frankly dazzled by the idea of dating someone on a first-name basis with a synthpop legend. So when I got us two tickets to a Gary Numan concert, I thought I was being romantic.
He was furious.
“I’m already going,”
“I’ll be on the bus,”
“You’ve ruined everything.”
So I shrugged, took a friend instead, and went.And let me tell you: That was the right choice.
Because halfway through the night, the lighting engineer invited us to the afterparty.
We got on a bus. A real one. With people who actually knew Gary.
Not a cult bus for obsessed fans.
Not a budget Megabus with a Gary sticker.
The actual afterparty bus.
We arrive. Fancy hotel. We walk in. There he is. My boyfriend. Already sulking.
He storms over like I’d gatecrashed his own wedding.
“What are YOU doing here?”
“Playing pool with your mate from Lighting & Effects,” I replied.
Then came the moment. Gary himself appears. I froze.
He said hello. I panicked.
I blurted out:
“You know my boyfriend, right?”
Gary raised an eyebrow. Asked who. I said the name.
Silence. Then “Ah. Yes. I know him.”
Turns out my boyfriend wasn’t Gary’s mate.
He was Gary’s personal stalker.
He sat outside their house every weekend.
He followed the tour in a fan club coach.
He told people he was part of the crew.
He. Was. Not.
Gary was not impressed. His wife? Absolutely livid.
She dragged my boyfriend out in front of everyone and ripped him to shreds.
Called him out for the lies. Told him to never show his face again.
He fled. I stayed. Finished my game of pool. Made a few new friends.
Left with the drummer’s necklace.
And that, is how I discovered my boyfriend was a delusional synthpop groupie…
and got banned from a Gary Numan tour by association.
10/10. No notes.
It started as a normal night in Soho.
Well, as normal as things get when you’re already on round seven and someone suggests “just one more.”
We ended up in a bar that didn’t have a name so much as an atmosphere.
There was no sign. No bouncer. Just a slightly ajar door and the unmistakable smell of regret. Naturally, we walked right in.
The floors were sticky, not metaphorically, but viscously.
My shoes didn’t so much walk as detach with effort.
The till? An old ice cream tub, a small notebook, and a shrug.
Drinks came in paper cups and cost whatever the bartender (who might’ve been a DJ five minutes earlier) felt like charging.
People were smoking weed like it was 1972.
Nobody blinked.
One man danced with a traffic cone.
Another was asleep on a fruit machine.
We stayed for hours.
It was 7am before anyone noticed.
We emerged into daylight like nightclub vampires, blinking, bewildered, faintly caramelised from the floor.
I had no idea where we were.
But I knew one thing for sure:
I belonged.
The night started with a plan.
We would have one or two drinks. Be responsible. Maybe even leave before midnight. (You know; lies.)
But somewhere between the third “just one more” and a round of drinks that appeared via group telepathy, someone suggested rock, paper, scissors; loser takes a shot. And that was the end of all adult decision-making.
It began innocently enough. Paper beats rock; cheers! Scissors beats paper; bottoms up!
Then came tequila. No salt. No lime. Just pain and bad ideas in liquid form.
It got competitive, strategies emerged, superstitions took root. I started throwing rock every time like some tequila-fuelled Cro-Magnon; it worked exactly once.
Before long, we weren’t even keeping score.
It was just:
“Rock, paper—oh god—shot.”
“Scissors, scissors—double shot.”
“Why are we doing this again?”
“I DON’T KNOW, BUT I LOVE YOU GUYS!”
Someone tried to swap in truth or dare. Someone else shouted “UNO!” for reasons unclear. I lost a round so catastrophically, I had to take two shots in a row and make a toast to “Gary Numan’s porn bill.”
No one knew what that meant but they cheered anyway.
Eventually, we staggered out into the night, victorious in nothing but united in chaos.
Someone vomited in a plant. Someone tried to pay the taxi with an expired Boots Advantage Card.
And in the morning? A group chat photo of the scoreboard, scrawled on a napkin. It just said:
Rock - 8
Paper - 6
Tequila - Winner
(Colorado – altitude: unhinged)
I thought I was walking into a hotel restaurant.
What I actually walked into was…
something else.
There were cows.Not steaks. Not decor. Actual cows. Wandering. Indoors.
I blinked.
They blinked back.
And then, as if summoned from a cowboy-themed fever dream, I saw them:
full-on ranchers in leather chaps and ten-gallon hats, sitting at lace-covered tables, having high tea.
Not a metaphor.
Finger sandwiches. Tiny scones. Three-tier stands. Doilies. Silverware.
And cowboys.
Not a single person was acknowledging the chaos.
Not the cows.
Not the hats.
Not the fact that one man who looked like he’d just branded a steer was now delicately layering jam and cream in correct order.
So what could I do? I joined them.
Sat down. Took a scone. Tried not to make eye contact with the calf by the dessert cart.
No one questioned me.
No one explained anything.
I drank my tea with strangers in spurs, while cows shuffled past the sugar bowls, and nobody flinched.
It felt like a dream, but the crumbs on my napkin, the faint smell of livestock, and the sound of a cow gently knocking over a butter dish told me otherwise.
I never did figure out who ordered the cows.
But the tea was excellent.