Taz.
I had spent only fifteen minutes with Taz before we tried to hotbox a phone booth. I use the term loosely, as it is not possible to hotbox a non-air-tight space. But Taz and I did not care about technicalities. We were 15 years old, we had weed, a pipe and we knew about the word ‘hotbox’.
It was a cold spring evening in 2005 and we’d chosen a telephone booth just outside Euston station. An office worker hurrying past on their way home might have noticed two pairs of twig-like legs with scuffed up Vans protruding from the bottom of the booth. They might have noticed our green and black parkers with faux-fur hoods smushed up against the BT sticker, and if they listened really carefully they might have heard a posh London accent say “why don’t you try poking it in a bit further” and a strong Merseyside accent say “come on yeh fucker.”
They might also have heard lots of snorting and snickering – the occasional guffaw – and if they’d decided to open the door they’d have found two pint-size emos crushed inside, one upright and one in a kind of wall-squat. One has the pipe, the other has the lighter, and both have only one eye – because the other is engulfed in a dramatic sweep fringe. The office worker might have arrived home and said to their loved one “darling – I saw two little greebos try to hotbox a phone booth today…”
And that person might have replied
“Oh really sweetheart? They sound like a couple of dickheads.”
—————
I’d been emo for nine months when I met Taz. Previously I’d been a grunger, but at the age of 14 I’d transitioned to emo, and that decision was entirely the fault of a social media platform and cultural phenomenon called MySpace.
Before MySpace I’d been into Green Day, Blink 182 and System of a Down. My hair was long and Babyliss straight and I did most of my clothes shopping at Camden market. I wore wide leg Criminal Damage jeans that swooshed when I walked, chunky skate shoes (ideally DCs but I could live with Etnies), fishnet crop tops and belts made of real bullets that cost an entire week’s EMA. It was a good look, and very much in vogue today, but when I discovered MySpace I knew I needed a re-brand, stat.
I was the first person at Streatham and Clapham High School for Girls to get MySpace. Someone sent me a link to an emo boy’s profile and from that moment I was obsessed. The boy had an outrageous sweep fringe, worthy of a shampoo-ad, and he’d taken his profile picture himself from a very high right angle. All I could see was his pale stringy arm sticking out from beyond the camera, his maybe-he’s-born-with-it hair, one blue eye, his mouth which had not one, but TWO lip piercings, and an impossibly tight t-shirt that said BRING ME THE HORIZON in melty, ghostly type-face. I simply had to be part of it.
I clicked on profile after profile. Some boys had sleek blonde fringes with brown streaks in the middle, others had short black hair that spiked up at the back. All of them wore very tight clothes, and some of them wore no t-shirts at all, just skinny jeans and a bald torso and a shiny shampooed fringe. There was a comment area, not unlike a ‘wall’ on Facebook, where people could tell each other how cute they were.
Words here were not spelled correctly. Cutie was “qt.” How are you was “how r u.” You did a heart like this <3 and exclamation marks were impossibly droll: “!!!!!!1!!!!oneone!!!11one11.”
Some of them had thousands of friends and these people were considered to be MySpace Famous. Jeffree Starr, for example, with his multi-coloured hair and make-up best described as art, was a permanent fixture on the MySpace home page. His friend-list hit six figures.
The boys I liked most had evocative names like ‘med the ghost’, ‘Stars4Skulls’ or ‘…ZOMBIE!!!’ Many had sleeve tattoos – thick, inky mosaics of stars, swallows and broken hearts – and many had alarming piercings that no grandmother on earth would approve of. No skin surface was off bounds – cheeks, septums, the bit of skin on the bridge of your nose, arms, necks, but my personal favourite was the double side lip, which I soon learned to call “snake bites.” These boys were not like the ones I knew in real life who would call girls sluts and spend their time comparing fingering techniques. The boys on MySpace were mysterious and emotional and sensitive and, needless to say, I fancied each and every one of them violently.
The good news was that, unlike my previous crushes (Billie Joe Armstrong, Tom DeLonge, Travis Barker), it was possible to speak to them. I could just send them a message saying hey qt how r u and there was a real chance they’d reply.
I signed up immediately. I had no pictures because it was 2004 and I neither owned a scanner or a digital camera. So instead of a picture I filled my profile with nonsensical, artsy-sounding sentences, one of which was “who turned out the lights?????????????” and another, I’m so embarrassed, was “dude where’s my bra?????????”
After I signed up I contacted five of the boys I fancied the most. When I logged in the next day I was heartbroken to find that none of them, not one, had replied. </3.
It was clear that I needed some emo pictures. Luckily my best friend Flo had a digital camera so I went over to her house one night after school and we had a little photo shoot in the kitchen.
Once I had a socially acceptable profile the messages started to come in. I’d log-in to MySpace on the gargantuan desktop computers in the IT room at school and check how many people had viewed my profile. I’d refresh and refresh and refresh and whenever I got a new message or comment my heart would jump as if I’d been tasered. It could mean only one thing – that a fit boy had messaged me back – and it was like a shot of adrenaline to my very soul. Within weeks I was an addict; but it was only the beginning. My hair was still long and brown and I didn’t have a real sweep fringe and my jeans were no way near skinny enough.
I spent the summer of 2004 putting this to rights. Nanci had a sewing machine and, since skinny jeans were not yet available at H&M, she sewed my old ones so tight they came close to cutting off my circulation. Next I hit Camden, but instead of heading to the shop with the pop-punk hoodies and the incredibly creepy fat man, I approached a different stall. One that had studded belts and Funeral for a Friend t-shirts. I purchased some big, white Reeboks from Offspring and when I stepped back and surveyed the mirror, I thought: that’s it, almost there. Now all I need is a haircut.
I walked into Toni and Guy Wimbledon one sunny Sunday with a picture of a girl from MySpace. Her name was Alice and she was MySpace girlfriend to a boy called Nathan and they both lived near Birmingham and I very much wanted to be her. She had a well-conditioned sweep fringe that hid her eyes and Nathan commented on all of her pictures with hearts <3<3<3 and kisses xxxx. Sometimes I’d sit at home on my clunky desktop computer looking at her profile with envy that bordered on maniacal.
So I chose the sweepiest, emoest, most majestic sweep-fringe shot of Alice and printed it out on my chugging home printer and brought it to Toni and Guy.
A young Italian hairdresser sat me in a chair and stared at me blankly in the mirror. She chewed her gum slowly, like a lazy goat. Her face was very angular, as was her haircut. It was black and jagged and “modern” (the haircut) and very pointy, and it looked as though her entire head had been cut out a magazine and pasted here in front of me.
She broke off our staring contest and started fluffing out my hair. “So,” she said in a thick Italian accent. “What are we doing today?”
I explained to her, in so many words, that I’d like to complete my transition to full emo please and in order to do so I’d like shorter hair with a ginormous sweep fringe covering half of my face. I handed her the picture of Alice. “I don’t use pictures,” she said. I was 14 so instead of saying Why the fuck not I said Okay and then I said Sorry.
“So we do kind of like er how you say… asymmetrical?” I didn’t know what that meant and I was 14 so instead of clarifying I said Okay yes please.
We’ve all been there. Staring into the hairdresser mirror, every pore, freckle and pimple staring right back at you, watching someone whose only job is to dress hair, massacre it with alarming nonchalance. This woman took no prisoners. She went straight in and lopped half off just below my ear. It was such a big chunk that it fell straight to the ground. Of course, most adults would say Hair Demon! STOP! But I was 14. And instead I spend the next 45 minutes watching the hairdresser from hell hack my hair into what can only be described as a sideways mullet.
I am not exaggerating when I say I walked into Toni and Guy Wimbledon that day with mid-length hair, and I left with one half about the same length, and the other as short as, say, Jerry Macguire’s or Chandler Bing’s. My hair graded downwards from short to long, a look that could only possibly be pulled off by a very ‘fashion’ super model, not a 14 year old school girl still shedding her baby fat.
So to be clear, one half of my hair was quite long, and the other half was quite short. The fringe, arguably, was the most horrifying part, as it followed the same trajectory. It started above my eyebrow and graded downward into a jagged point to meet the long part of my hair. Do you understand what I am saying? What I am saying is this:
My hair.
Looked fucking.
Mental.
I paid, because I was 14 and unable to cope with confrontation, walked into a changing room in Miss Selfridge, clutched my head and sobbed. I felt furious and helpless and it felt a lot like grief because it washed over me in waves.
I caught the train back to my house in Earlsfield, convinced everyone was staring at me. My big brother was coming out the kitchen as I walked in the door. He froze. He stared. His face lit up. ‘Alright, Haircut?’ he said. And that was my name for the next 18 months.
——————
It is okay, everyone. Because I figured out that if I changed my parting so the long bit covered the short bit like a giant combover, it created – you guessed it – the ultimate sweep fringe. There wasn’t much I could do about the fact that half of my hair was extremely short other than tie it all up in a little tuft at the back of my head. It meant that when I went to school on Monday no one quite understood what exactly was going on with my hair, but the key point was this: from head on, I looked emo as fuck.
I purchased a digital camera and proceeded to take hundreds of photos from high right angles. My mum would find me in odd places and strange positions around the house. She’d find me draped over the chest of drawers in her bedroom (it was mirrored and I thought it looked arty). She found me sitting Yoda-like on the bathroom floor, trying to get the right lighting without getting the toilet in shot. She spotted me in the garden trying to look ethereal amongst her hyacinths and she almost had to take me to A and E after I dropped the camera on my face during a horizontal snap session.
But, my mum’s puzzlement aside, my profile was starting to look banging. I dyed my hair Midnight Blue. My friend numbers were going up and every time I logged in I had at least 3 messages from fit boys. Six months after The Haircut and, if you ignore the mental little tuft sticking out the back of my head, it was quite obvious to everyone that I was a full-time emo. In school it was quite clear that I was the most emo of them all.
—————
Just like you can’t have Doritos without dip, you can’t have MySpace without MSN Instant Messenger. MySpace is simply the prelude to MSN. You message the person you want to be friends with and then you move it on over to MSN, the digital bedroom.
Taz was one of my first friends on MySpace. Her name on MySpace, however, was not Taz, it was !!!F R E E Z E P O P!!!
I messaged her because she looked like a badass. She had a mouse coloured streaky fringe, short like mine, and she had the side lip piercing I’d been dreaming about. All her photos were so close-up only her fringe and mouth and a bit of green eye were in view, but I could see she was a fantastically good emo and it was important we become friends.
Taz had a cool MySpace name based on a cool US band I’d never heard of. Freezepop are an electro-pop band from Boston with hits like ‘outer space’ (Freezepop don’t ‘do’ capital letters), ‘robotron 3000’, ‘that boy is all about fun!’ And ‘parlez-vous freezepop?’ Freezepop are quirky and strange and not mainstream at all, and Taz embodied all of it.
Taz was from St Helens, a large town in Merseyside bang in-between Manchester and Leeds. This, too, I found interesting. I grew up in South London and would romanticise small town life. I imagined Taz on first-name terms with her local butcher and paper boy, saying ‘good morning’ to her neighbours. Back then I had a theory (and still do) that if you’re from a dull place you’re more creative, because you make up your own stimulation. I thought that true creativity was a direct result of boredom, beer and basements.
I, on the other hand, turned 15, got a fake id and from then on spent all my spare time shit-faced in parks and nightclubs. All my creative cells were frazzled and disposed of so I had no time to make music or write stories. Plus there were boys to be snogged and ciders to be drunk. I didn’t need to go hunting for good music. Every band I liked played several times a year in London and if I cared about art which I didn’t I could go to the world’s best galleries for free.
Taz from St Helens, however, had nothing to distract her from being cool and creative and good at MySpace. She could find out about bands like Freezepop and learn HTML and customise her profile. Wow. I thought to myself. Cool.
After we moved our chat over to MSN Taz and I spoke almost every day. She was quirky and witty and never used capital letters.
The first weekend of spring half term I was at a friend’s house in Streatham. We’d had a sleep over and were in the living room having pesto pasta for breakfast. I was eating mine at Cassie’s giant desktop computer, chatting to Taz on MSN.
“I’m so bored,” Taz said, which did not surprise me. “Shall I come to London tonight?”
Interesting. This sounded big. I needed counsel. I turned my midnight blue sweep fringe in the direction of my friends and said:
“I’ve been chatting to this girl on MySpace from Up North and she wants to come to London tonight. What do you think?”
They piled around the computer and I showed them her MySpace profile and we all agreed that yes, she should come. We would hang out with her.
We had two full weeks off school which meant as long as we told our parents whose house we were staying at and kept our 33:10s charged, we could go out whenever we wanted.
That night I met Taz at Euston station. She was smaller than I’d imagined and wore a big green parker that reached below her knees. Her skinny jeans were just as tight as mine and her sweep fringe was as perfect as in the pictures: glossy, sleek, totally engulfing. But the side lip piercing wasn’t there. It had been fake all along.
The best bit was Taz’s accent. I’d never heard a northern lilt from someone my own age before. We hugged hello and she pulled a couple cans of Strongbow out her backpack. “Let’s crack these open then,’ she said, and we did so on one of the picnic benches outside the station.
There was something about Taz that made me tingle with excitement. Perhaps the spontaneity of her coming down on the train like that, or the fact that she was independent enough to do it, or that she’s crazy enough to meet a total stranger off the internet. Something about Taz was unspeakably intriguing. With her I felt like I could do and would do anything.
She told me about her journey, about the couple a few seats down who kept sneaking off to the toilets to have sex, and then she suggested we hotbox a phone booth.
That sealed it. She’s a badass. We went hunting for a phone box.
——————
From that night onwards Taz and I were a dream team. We were discovering hedonism together, breathless and giddy. Even though we grew up worlds apart, we were part of the same universe: MySpace.
My friends took to Taz right away. They liked her accent and the way she sang strange folk songs when she was drunk. One of her favourites was “Sugar Town” By Nancy Sinatra. She’d close her eyes, sway a little, and say “Shoo shoo shoo, shoo shoo shoo, sugar town.” It delighted us.
My mum didn’t really question why a small northern girl was staying over almost every weekend. I told her we met at a gig. My mum knew we were smoking Taz’s little pipe at the bottom of our garden, she knew we were drinking Tropicana and vodka, but she let us get on with it. She didn’t ask any questions.
I’m not sure if I was a bad influence on Taz or if she was a bad influence on me. Either way, when we were together we both went utterly mental. We’d smoke weed all the time. We’d drink K ciders on the streets. We’d snort lines of sugar. One night, at Anna’s 16th, Taz and I got so drunk we forgot where we were or who we were talking to and offered Anna’s dad some of our pipe. He took a toke unquestioningly.
We’d go to night clubs in Bethnal Green and get shit-faced. We started smoking cigarettes. I would go wild, dancing to Bloc Party and Kings of Leon. I remember one night in Dome Taz wanted to tell me something but at that moment a girl’s cigarette fell down my top. I screeched and put it out and bumped into an emo boy and started making out with him immediately.
One morning after a particularly heavy house party Taz and I missed our stop and rode the train all the way to Brighton. We hopped the barriers and wandered around all day, asking for free stuff from cafes. We were knee-deep in shameless adolescence, we hadn’t slept and didn’t even feel it. I don’t remember how we got home, but I remember how that day made me feel. Filled to the brim with joy.
Taz swept me up in her adventures. She’d often chat to her MySpace friends on my desktop computer, and one day she turned to me and said: “Wanna go to Tunbridge Wells?” I nodded slowly. Sure I said. Let’s go to Tunbridge Wells.
We threw some spare clothes in my zombie backpack and told my mum we were going to Anna’s. We caught the train to Waterloo and caught another to Tunbridge Wells. We must have looked a picture, me and Taz, piled on to the train. Misfit slip-on vans, jeans so tight they could be painted on, mirrored fringes pointing in opposite directions, cans of K in our hands.
Christina met us as we got off the train. She was one of Taz’s MySpace friends, a beautiful emo girl with chestnut brown hair, big hazel eyes, a smattering of freckles, luscious lips and a bright smile. She looked Mediterranean and had the same grey hoodie as us from H&M. She was exactly the same height as me and Taz, about 5’4. The 3 of us looked like we’d been friends for life.
We spent the afternoon kicking about this quiet town. We hung out in a carpark, went to a pond, met Christina’s beautiful emo boyfriend, and eventually, when it got dark, we went to Christina’s house and asked her mum if we could stay over. Christina’s mum said sure. Then we hotboxed the basement.
Taz and I went on another trip, shortly after, to Maidstone. This time to meet Camilla, AKA Please Don’t Feed The Models. Camilla was beautiful too. Blonde, slender, pixie haircut, button nose, blue eyes like the bunny in Bambi. We did the same things. We got drunk and smoked weed, Camilla pointed out the Primark where she worked. We stayed over, although this time we hotboxed the shed.
Taz taught me a lot. She taught me to be fearless and open-minded. She taught me not to be afraid to connect with the unknown and have adventures and get swept up in every possible direction that a night out could take us. We wanted to hotbox things and talk loudly about sex and snort lines of sugar and pretend like we knew what the fuck we were doing, ever. We were poking around failing to figure out adulthood. We may have been small, but we were living.
Taz and I hooked up the weekend after Anna’s 16th. Taz had taken herself to bed early because she’d got too high, and I’d carried on drinking downstairs. I’d told a boy I shouldn’t that I fancied him, and then I realised I’d probably drunk too much and I should call it a night. Taz was sleeping in Anna’s parents bed.
I didn’t really think much of it when I got in, but I knew what I was doing when I started kissing her. I knew what she’d wanted to tell me in the club that night. I knew what this would mean to her and I thought I’d just see what would happen. We fumbled around, I touched her clumsily, I think I hurt her, I think this was her first time doing anything.
The whole thing didn’t last long. I remember being totally unaroused. I remember thinking maybe I shouldn’t have done that, maybe I’d messed up our friendship. I remember telling a friend the next day that the experience was so un-erotic it was like doing a load of ironing. Since then I’ve considered myself to be close to 100% straight.
Around this time I was speaking to another person off MySpace. His real-life name was Keir, but his name on MySpace was I Ate My Twin In The Womb. He was from Bury St Edmunds, a market town in Suffolk, full of beer, boredom and basements. Keir was four years older than me and played guitar in a metal band. He had a very good dark brown sweep fringe and bright blue eyes and wore tight band t-shirts with melty writing. We’d speak on MSN for hours. We’d stay up until 3 or 4am, incapable of saying goodbye. When we weren’t both online we’d write each other long messages. When I’d see one sitting in my inbox my heart would blow up ten times its size.
Keir had a side-project called S, meet Z. He’d produce electro tracks on his computer and post them on MySpace. It was slow, indie music, more accessible than his screeching metal band, and when he wasn’t online I’d listen to it on repeat. I’d just sit there and let the infatuation crash over me in waves.
We met face to face about two months after that night with Taz. He came to London one day. We sat in a park behind Victoria Station and he said he liked the way my eyes move when I talk. He came back again the next day and the next weekend and the one after that and the one after that. My whole world shifted focus. Everything veered towards Keir.
It was around this time, summer 2006, that I saw Taz for the last time. She and Keir were staying at my house, but her presence is just a shadow in my memory. I barely remember her being there. I do remember her sitting at my desktop computer while Keir and I had a play fight on the sofa. I remember her face, glum and hurt in the background. I remember the three of us getting the train to Waterloo one day to sit and watch the skaters in South Bank. I must’ve hugged Taz at the station, promised we’d see each other again soon. But honestly, I don’t even remember saying goodbye.
-Alice Austin
If you enjoyed this, then please buy me a coffee and support my future overshares.
