Boys often fantasise about being a movie hero like James Bond or George Clooney, but none of us really believes we will ever see ourselves on the big screen. Well, I went to see a film the other day, and there I was, 20 feet high, in glorious technicolour - but I was anything but thrilled to see my magnified mirror image. Oh, I loved the movie. But my Doppelganger on the screen was no action hero or romantic swashbuckler, but a rather unglamorous record shop owner, music obsessive and list-o-maniac named Rob, whose emotional development had been arrested during the anti-Vietnam riots. My character was portrayed by the actor John Cusack; although he doesn't much resemble me in looks, he nailed my personality to the wall, next to the Led Zeppelin poster.
Flashback to a couple of weeks ago: I'm at a music industry lig, chatting to a fellow journalist, music obsessive and pop trivia buff, whom we shall name J. "Have you seen High Fidelity?" J asks me. I reply that I haven't yet seen Stephen Frears's movie of Nick Hornby's best-selling novel. J grips my arm with a get-out-of-the-building-now-before-it-explodes urgency, leans closer to me, and says, "Oh, my God, Kevin, we're all in it!" It felt like the moment when Richard Nixon was told that the whole Watergate cover-up was blown.
And so I scooted down to my local cineplex, and watched with a mixture of amusement and horror as John Cusack re-enacted my rather imperfect life right before my eyes. I had originally planned to bring a date to High Fidelity, but something told me I should make this one a solo trip, even though I might look like billy-no-mates sitting alone in the cinema. Call it alpha male self-preservation instinct - I don't want to be found out just yet. Top five reasons for not bringing your girlfriend to see High Fidelity:
1. She will realise with a sinking feeling that the sad, hopeless bloke on screen is the same sad, hopeless bloke she's been living with for the past two years. Except not as good-looking as John Cusack.
2. You will spend the entire movie fidgeting in your seat, head averted to avoid eye contact with her. At certain points in the film, you will have to fight the urge to slide on to the floor and crawl out of the cinema.
3. Each time Rob confesses to another selfish, insensitive act of betrayal, she will stare suspiciously at you and say, "I hope you've never done that!"
4. Every time you laugh during the film (and it is a funny film), it will be the hollow laugh of a cornered rat. Every time she laughs, it will be with a wry and slightly vexed chuckle of recognition.
5. She will break up with you right after the film's credits roll - if she has any sense.
The blurb on Hornby's book reads: "You should read it and make your partner read it, so they will no longer hate you but pity you instead." The story concerns a record-shop owner named Rob, who, refusing to grow up and get a life, hides behind his vast array of musical knowledge and builds impregnable emotional barriers using hundreds of 12-inch-square slabs of vinyl (alphabetically sorted, of course).
Rob is the archetypal approaching-middle-age man: immature, under-achieving, obsessive and anally retentive; he knows more about music than anyone really needs to know, and knows less about relationships than is decent and acceptable in proper society. He can recall the minutest details of rock events past, but can't remember the conversation he had with his girlfriend last weekend. He can commit 100 per cent to rock bands he has never met, remaining loyal to them even through their jazz-African-concept phase, but he can't commit to the woman lying in the bed next to him. He is often referred to as a "Sad Bastard", but the saddest thing of all is that Rob is a painfully accurate composite of me and most of my middle-aged, trivia-driven friends.
Rob spends his entire working day skulking around in a secondhand record store. I too have often spent my entire working day in a secondhand record store, seeking out Primal Scream's Loaded on 12-inch vinyl when really I should have been filing my Primal Scream review for a 5 p.m. deadline.
Rob's record collection is alphabetically arranged on big wooden shelves. Once, I was entertaining a young lady at home, and she idly browsed through my CDs while I fixed us a drink. "I don't believe it!" she exclaimed. "Your CDs are in alphabetical order! How sad." Blushing profusely, I tried to explain that, as a music journalist, I needed to be able to locate a record quickly, but I could already see her mentally taking note of the nearest exit. I even claimed mitigating circumstances, i.e. that only two of my shelves were so arranged, the rest being in glorious disarray, but it was no use. She was already looking at me with a mixture of contempt and fear, as though I might suddenly lock her in my basement, tie her up and show her my butterfly collection.
But High Fidelity is not just about me. It's also about my male friends, colleagues and social compadres. As my trivia-loving chum said, we're all in it.
My two closest friends are in it. When the three of us meet up in our local pub, the conversational parameters are set down even before the first pint has settled. Top five things we will talk about: 1. This year's Mercury Music Prize nominations. 2. Rory Gallagher's greatest guitar solos. 3. The tracklisting of Led Zeppelin's Houses Of The Holy. 4. Getting on the guest list for Lou Reed. 5. The Bends versus OK Computer - discuss (at length, ad nauseam).
Top Five things we won't talk about: 1. Our feelings. 2. Our partners' feelings. 3. Our fears, hopes and dreams, and how to be better people. 4. Spirituality (we will, however, happily discuss Spiritualized). 5. Westlife. We will never, ever, mention those, who we consider evil spawns of Satan.
When love breaks down, Hornby Man takes solace in his top five sad songs. "I have my own relationship break-up songs, just like Rob," admitted a colleague, N. "I can track the whole trajectory of my relationships through music - happy songs to start with, sad songs to finish, and bitter songs to help get over it."
Experts say that middle-aged men start collecting records because they're trying to recapture their youth and - by association - their fading virility. Women are becoming more empowered in the workplace and in their personal lives; men, already reeling from hair loss, falling sperm counts and soaring stress levels, are in fear of losing their place at Number One and dropping out of the human hit parade. Finding a pristine vinyl copy of The Beatles' White Album, complete with poster, seems a perfectly logical way of fighting the onslaught of change.
Now that we have been outed, however, I feel a sense of relief. No longer do I have to skulk in secondhand record shops, hiding from the real world, and nor do I have to change the subject to my Top Five punk anthems every time my girlfriend wants to discuss relationship issues. I'm finally ready to seek professional help to cure these symptoms of mid-life crisis - just as soon as I've finished cataloguing my record collection.
