Read The Man Who Lived by Night for Free Online

’n’ roll music, which the BBC didn’t back then. A fabulous moment, mate. Door closed. Turning the dial. Searching. Seeking. Hearing nothing but static. And then, very faintly … it.
    Hoag: It?
    Scarr: “Heartbreak Hotel.” Elvis. It was nasty and hot. It was me. I freaked. From that moment on, I knew what I wanted to be, y’know?
    Hoag: Yes, I do. I had a similar experience the first time I picked up Mad magazine. I like that anecdote. It’s private, and has feeling. But can we go back to the very beginning?
    Scarr: Wee laddie days? (pause) Very well. I was an only child. Born April 10, 1944.
    Hoag: In?
    Scarr: Rubble. Officially, it was called London. The war was still on then, of course. Mum was a nurse. Dad was a bombardier in the RAF. Dropped bombs. Poof. Martin and Meta. Named me Tristam after his grandfather. I think they met at a service dance. Neither of them was very young at the time. Or happy. They’re both dead now. Bought ’em a house in Brighton to retire at. It was the only place they ever lived at was their own. He was a short geezer. Hairs sticking out of his nose and ears. Sold things door to door, or tried to. Eight-in-one kitchen implements. Miracle bloody cleaners. M’dad was accustomed to having doors slammed in his face all day long. He never complained. Just kept dreaming. He always believed the big pot of gold was just down the road.
    Hoag: He wasn’t wrong—he was only off by one generation.
    Scarr: You got that right. Mum, she became a practical nurse. Strong woman. Very good posture. Liked everything clean, especially her little Tristam. Wore his proper school uniform, he did. Starched white shirt. Black blazer. Gray short pants. Tie. Gap. My very first act of rebellion was to be dirty … She saw to old ladies who were dying, and was always telling Dad about it at the table. “She’s got blood in her stool again, Martin. Blood in her stool. …”
    Hoag: You were raised in … ?
    Scarr: A bunch of nothing London suburbs. Acton, then Ealing, then Twickenham, Teddington, Kingston … We were always moving.
    Hoag: Wait. Time out. I thought you grew up in Liverpool.
    Scarr: No. Never.
    Hoag: But everything I’ve ever read about you said—
    Scarr: All made up. They made up a lot.
    Hoag: You mean the record company?
    Scarr: And our manager, Marco Bartucci—the man who made us Us. Liverpool was hot. Kids from greater London weren’t. So they gave us fake biographies. Christ, they said Puppy’s dad was a merchant seaman from Dingle, the Liverpool docks. He was actually in jail in Louisiana for killing a man.
    Hoag: And your Liverpool accent?
    Scarr: The scouse was put on, like a costume. Show business.
    Hoag: It certainly is. You were saying you moved around a lot.
    Scarr: Mum would ask the neighborhood shopkeepers to put it on the slate. Then, when they’d get touchy about money, we’d move on to another furnished flat somewhere. “Someday, Tristam,” m’dad would say, “I want you to be a professional man. A man in a proper chalk-striped suit and bowler who rides the train into the City every morning with the Times under his arm. Yessir.”
    Hoag: Did you want that?
    Scarr: Not if he did, mate.
    Hoag: You didn’t get along?
    Scarr: It wasn’t as if we ever had a go at one another. He never had goes with anybody. Over anything. Too weak. Too afraid. He just quietly took it up the bumhole. I hated that about him. It was as if he was spending his whole life getting ready to die. Only thing he succeeded at.
    Hoag: What kind of boy were you?
    Scarr: You mean was I a jolly little pink-cheeked laddie? The apple of Martin and Meta’s eye?
    Hoag: Something like that.
    Scarr: It wasn’t like that.
    Hoag: Didn’t think it was.
    Scarr: I was sickly. Asthma. Pneumonia. Tonsils. Always had breathing problems. Still do. I was home in bed a lot, swallowing bad-tasting medicines, Mum nursing me like one of her old ladies. Didn’t have many mates, between that and moving to the different