Andy Smith's trick wasn't the coolest I encountered among kids at school. That was Chris Grossick's. Chris's thing was that he could make himself cry.....
 Nicholas Royle |
I knew a kid at school who could turn his eyelids inside out. I can't remember his name. I think it was Neil something. Sutcliffe perhaps.
I also knew a boy who could fart through his penis.
Now I do remember his name, but clearly I'm not going to tell you in case the intervening years have seen Andy Smith 颅 oh, damn! 颅 become a man of the cloth or a captain of industry.
Naturally, Paul Nixon and myself and the other lads sharing Andy Smith's
tent at school camp doubted his boast. How could he possibly fart through
his penis? He agreed to perform while being watched by one of the boys. Paul
Nixon duly witnessed it - we all heard it, a high-pitched squeak, but Paul
saw it with his own eyes - and he reported that sure enough, Andy could do
as he claimed. In truth, it was a rather forced, mechanical procedure
involving the foreskin, some trapped air and dextrous use of the fingers.
But it worked for us.
But Andy Smith's trick wasn't the coolest I encountered among kids at
school. That was Chris Grossick's. Chris lived quite near me and once
invited me round to his house where he played me Cheap Trick's Live at
Budokan LP. That wasn't Chris's thing, though I did think the album was
good. Chris's thing was that he could make himself cry.
I've always been interested in the question of whether actors really cry at
particular moments in films and on television. If they're on stage you can
see for yourself what's going on. If someone cries, you see it happen, and I
don't believe I've ever seen anyone cry on stage. But I've seen countless
actors cry on screen. Invariably there's a cut just before and I imagine a
member of the crew hovering just out of shot with a pipette of tepid water.
Surely if the actor really could cry unaided, they would make a feature of
it and film the scene as a continuous take. It would be more impressive. You
would remember the actor's sincerity, their ability to empathise with the
character, to be the character.
I questioned the veracity of Chris Grossick's claim, made one afternoon at
his house in Altrincham, that he could make himself cry. It wasn't that I
had never cried. I cried as much as any other kid. I cried when my Granddad
died. I cried when a kid on Hazel Road threw a stone at my eye as I was
cycling past on my paper round. I cried whenever I fell over and grazed my
knee, to be honest.
But I knew for a fact that I couldn't cry to order. I don't know that I'd
ever tried to do it, but I knew I couldn't do it, just as I knew I didn't
like oxtail soup or sauteed mushrooms or poached eggs. So I challenged Chris
Grossick to cry, and he did. After a moment's silent, invisible effort,
tears rolled down both his downy cheeks and I was deeply impressed.
More than twenty years later, married with two children of my own, I find
crying a somewhat less impressive, extraordinary event. I cry all the time.
I cry two or three times a week. I cry in the cinema, I cry in front of the
television. I cry at the slightest provocation. I think I'm fairly sane. I
can hold down jobs, write books and tie my own shoelaces. But my water table
is unusually high. It's up around my tear ducts. The other night I felt
tears welling up just at the sight of my little boy, aged five, walking out
of the kitchen in his pyjamas. Later the same evening, I filled up while
watching a crime drama on television. One character's mother had been
kidnapped by a known sadist and the daughter feared the worst. The news,
when I allowed myself to watch it, gets me without fail. A missing child, a
suicide bomb, or footage of orphans, refugees or any other helpess pathetic
souls and I'm off. I have to ration myself or I'd go off to bed in tears
every night of the week.
I can date the phenomenon back, with accuracy, to 21 December 1988, the
night a bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie. I didn't know
anyone on the plane, or on the ground, but for some reason the tragedy
affected me more deeply than any other. Watching the coverage on the news,
the ragged flames burning in the darkness, I found sheets of tears sliding
down my face. After Lockerbie, they all got me: Omagh, Columbine, September
11. Likewise, Schindler's List, Dead Man Walking, Secrets & Lies. My
three-year-old daughter telling me, 'I luff you, Daddy.' My son explaining
why he wants to live in Holland or Denmark: so he can marry his best friend,
who has a nice smell. But it was the World Cup that really brought it home
to me. What was it about the World Cup that made me cry? Was it England
beating Argentina? Or losing to Brazil? Neither. It was the sight of the
gracious Turkish players, after the third-place play-off with South Korea,
linking arms with their crushed opponents to go and salute the crowd.
I still can't cry to order like Chris Grossick, but give me time to switch
the telly on or two minutes to spend with my kids and, in the words of the
song, 'Teardrops Will Fall'.
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