My friend had a friend who, while growing up in Dublin, possessed a Madonna-like ability to reinvent himself. Let's call this friend of his Gerry Bloom.
Just because I like the name Gerry. And Bloom because it's Bloomsday. Gerry Bloom was a small boy with big obsessions who changed direction like the wind, and for this he made no apologies. Even though I've never met him, and even though he doesn't seem quite real, Gerry Bloom is something of a hero of mine.
This was Gerry. One day he would wake up and decide he was crazy, just crazy, about U2. He'd buy all the U2 records and memorabilia and head up to Bray, where at the time Bono lived in a Martello tower. Gerry camped outside the tower until, one day, Bono appeared and signed all his records. A few weeks later my friend would say to Gerry Bloom something like: "What about this U2 thing, huh? You must be their biggest fan in Ireland." And Gerry Bloom would look at him quizzically, head cocked, and say: "Are you on drugs?" You see, Gerry Bloom had moved on.
To Japanese fighting fish. Overnight he decided they were the best thing since, well, Bono. Gerry Bloom bought a tank and filled it with fish and educated himself about their eating habits. He looked after them, never stopped talking about them and brought people home from school to see them. One day my friend asked about the health of the Japanese fighting fish, and Gerry Bloom denied all knowledge, seeming offended by the suggestion. My friend had seen them with his own eyes, but still Gerry Bloom maintained he had no knowledge of or interest in such creatures. He'd tell you what he did like, though. He was mad into American football.
One Friday at school, Gerry Bloom told his classmates that he had an American-football game on Monday but needed a helmet. Did anyone have an American-football helmet? To this day my friend doesn't know why he told Gerry Bloom: "Yeah, I have one of them." Gerry Bloom was suspicious. "Are you sure you have an American-football helmet?" he asked my friend. "Yes I do, course I do," said my friend. "If I find out you are lying," said Gerry Bloom, "I'll never speak to you again."
My friend said nothing and just hoped an American-football helmet would somehow, miraculously, turn up over the weekend, the way you do when you're a teenager.
On Sunday evening Gerry Bloom knocked on my friend's door in full American-football get-up. My friend opened the door long enough to hear Gerry ask for "that American-football helmet"; then, in a panic, he closed the door in his face. He went out to his back garden, where over the fence he spotted his young neighbour's CHiPs toy motorcycle helmet. Knowing it was wrong but finding it perversely funny, my friend went out to the door and placed the CHiPs helmet on Gerry Bloom's head. Dribbles of muddy water ran down the side of his face. He didn't speak to my friend for six months.
In the years that followed, Gerry Bloom continued his random obsessions. He got into John Lennon. Worshipped Bruce Springsteen. Became Barry McGuigan's biggest fan, even bunking off school to try to meet the boxer. He shed skins like a snake, never looking back to the skin that had gone before. It was as if the past had never happened. He was a caterpillar, constantly emerging from a chrysalis, a multiple butterfly boy.
The next time my friend saw him, he had a job.
"I'm a carpenter," said Gerry Bloom.
When I tell my friend what I'm up to these days, he likes to call me Gerry Bloom. I'll be evangelising about this new diet or that new form of meditation, or a new exercise regime, and he'll say: "I never have to argue with you about your latest fad, because the fact that two weeks later you are not doing it any more is argument enough. You are just like Gerry Bloom."
Last week I told him that I was now living a wheat-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, caffeine-free existence, and he laughed his head off. And when he laughed I thought of Gerry Bloom, always on the lookout for the next new thing. I should mention that when Gerry was in first year, going through an intense Michael Jackson phase, his mother died, so you could say he'd been looking for something else entirely during all those years.
The last time my friend saw Gerry Bloom he had just bought every record The Beatles ever made, but my friend could tell he still hadn't found what he was looking for. You are not the only one, Gerry Bloom.