Clear: A Transparent Novel. Nicola Barker

powder).

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

      So what does Solomon 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.)

      ‘And that’s what happens,’ he throws up his hands, ‘when a racial group is denied real opportunity. Because when success involves cherry-picking, bet-hedging, compromise, pretence, a subtle diminution of creative integrity, then a culture – a confused culture – turns in on itself. Instead of celebrating its achievements, it hacks them down out of jealousy. And can you blame them, Adie? Can you blame them?’

      ‘But I thought The Rasket was the real deal,’ I mutter, confusedly.

      ‘He is,’ Solomon confirms. ‘And they’re making him safe. By sanctioning his brilliance they hope to defuse him. This time is critical for Dizzee, see? He needs to stand tall. He needs to be unbowed. He needs to grab the initiative, be irreverent, be young, and black and fucking strong.’

      Uh. Okay, then.

      Solomon listens (you’re getting tired, yeah, me too, so let’s try and wind this up now, shall we?) to Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and Fela Kuti, Franco, Dancehall and R&B. He deejayed on a Pirate Jungle Station ‘back in the day’.

      Solomon is obsessed by black sci-fi. ‘The black man,’ he explains, ‘can feel a deep and strangely comforting resonance between his own experiences of slavery and the experiences of the UFO abductee…’

      Yeah. Enough already.

      So I get to live rent-free in this joint. But just imagine sharing your TV remote with this guy.

       Three

      Oh shit.

      Oh SHIT!

      It’s 2 a.m. I’m stewing in the bath having just briefly recounted – to a slightly-stoned