Every You Every Me - Placebo

September 2004

A-Level year

Sitting with Dolly

The automatic door

Of the PAB swishes open

PAB – Performing Arts Block

It’s the home of the performing arts courses

It’s the home of creativity and exploration

It’s the home of those who live on the fringe, who shun the boxed-up ideologies of a 90s hungover society of lads and lasses and labels and using identities as slurs

It’s home

You walk in

Something in me shifts

“Who’s that?

Is he new?

Who?”

Dolly barely glances up

Dolly is eyes and ears on the ground, but head in the clouds

Dolly is my very own Fairuza Balk fantasy

We went to school together

Friends of friends (if I could actually claim to have real friends)

Polar opposites at face value

I did drama and plays, she did shadows

I did social butterfly, she did moth

I did secrets, so did she

“Who’s that?

Is he new?

Him?”

Dolly puts down the shoe she’s been drawing on

Dolly always knows a little more than she should

Dolly has some kind of powers

We started walking to college together in AS year, mostly out of convenience

She did Performing Arts

Sang like an angel

Acted like a demon

Surprised me at every turn

I could never surprise her

“Who’s that?

Is he new?

No”

Dolly looks at me incredulously

Dolly’s poetry exists purely in the way she looks at people

Dolly sees things way before I do

We would walk and talk

About our families, our friends, our coven of outsiders

About ourselves

She was the first person I told I was gay

Other than Ray

My first boyfriend, who I met on Gaydar

“Who’s that?

Is he new?

Dex?”

Dolly’s head is on a swivel

Dolly is forming a narrative more complex than War and Peace

Dolly has all the answers

“He’s on my course, in the other class

He’s been here for a year?

He’s quiet, 18 last week, comes from Eastbourne too

He gets our train?

He might have a boyfriend

He’s beautiful

Ok”

Dolly grins

Dolly leaves me gawping

Dolly knows what’s up

This really isn’t about Dolly though,

It’s about you

Obviously