Chapter 1: 30th of September
A toast to oblivion, plastic people,
and the wonderful promise of blood
It
being a cloudy moonless midnight, my victims and I were in near-complete
darkness as I led them through the graveyard. The only light came from my
torch, as well as the occasional scratching flicker of cigarette lighters from
one of the four, presumably to get their bearings. Which was a course of action
I saw as almost monumentally fuckheaded, seeing as the lighters would soon get
too hot to hold and therefore be extinguished, immediately after which the
darkness would leap into their vision with renewed intensity and they would
have to spend dangerous moments groping round with outstretched hands until
their eyes became accustomed to it. By which time they probably thought their
lighter sufficiently cooled off, as the whole idiotic process began again. I
prayed that their generation’s stupidity was an anomaly, a blip in the graph,
for if it in fact signified a trend, then we are all truly, unstylishly damned.
We had on our persons 200 units of alcohol, 27 Temazepam, fifteen ecstasy
tablets, 2 grams of coke, a bottle of amyl nitrate and an eighth of skunk. Matt
carried a guitar; I, the torch and my ‘pigsticker’, a flick-knife the
manufacture, distribution and possession of which was almost certainly illegal
(and which would, moreover, before the night was through, shine darkly with
blood). The small pool of light trembled and danced over broken gravestones: I
was looking forward to this.
“Nearly
there yet?” whined Naomi.
“Nearly,”
I said. “All I ask is patience.” And to remember your age, bitch. “You know
it’d be easier if you stopped flicking those lighters on and off. Let your eyes
get accustomed.”
“That’s
easy for you to say,” said Bob, pointing at my torch.
Whereas,
of course, spouting clichés like that is incredibly difficult and worthwhile,
you rat-faced dick-witted son of a cunt.
It
had been my idea -that, in itself, accounted for its brilliance- and one that
after a small amount of nebbish humming and hawing, they had agreed to. Agreed
to- the very notion made me want to laugh, as if it was their choice, as if
someone agreeing to their fate has, in doing so, some form of control over it.
Already, at this early stage, illusions that had to be destroyed. (These
youngsters had a lot to learn, I was the one to teach them, and sometimes the
only way to build something is to smash it to smithereens and start again:
these are simply the facts that I place before you.) As I say, my idea, and, I
suppose, phase one of my nine-month plan. The evening had, until that point,
been as depressingly nullish as I had feared: a ‘few beers’ and a ‘chat’ in
what they had already dubbed, with pathetically premature chumminess, ‘the
local’. The Packhorse- and please excuse me while I weep tears of gratitude at
having such a rancid, old-man-smelling dump practically on my doorstep:
probably a stone’s throw away, something I shall be verifying in the near future
with great enthusiasm and accuracy. But still better than nothing, which is
what I almost got, nothing: Lucy said she had some reading to do, Naomi said she had to unpack, and Bob wanted to
watch a film that was about to start. That, and of course, they had all had a
‘long day’ and were ‘well knackered’. The only one warming to my
popping-out-for-a-few idea was Matt, until he too remembered that he had had a
‘long day’ as well, and was also ‘well knackered’. So depressing when one’s
youngers show such reckless signs of moral fibre in the face of temptation. I
remember their gestalt expression: regretful yet resolute, as if their not
coming out was a terrible blow to me I would simply have to get over, a grim
but necessary fact of life that I would one day, with time and luck, understand
and come to terms with.
Idiots.
I’d been tempted to pepper the air with obscenities and flounce
out into the night to get drunk and rape something (mainly to spite them, by
way of me depriving them of my company), but I manfully rose above it. I
informed Lucy that recommended reading lists were no more than a cheap
alternative to toilet-paper; Naomi, that unless her suitcases contained some
form of vital organ or bag of blood whose transfusion was due, her unpacking could
surely wait; and Bob, that video-recorders had been invented in the early 80s,
alongside the happy discovery of people having a social life. Then, drawing
Matt in and addressing them as a unit, I said that if a tired old soul such as
myself -whose day had been no less ‘long’ or ‘well knackering’ than theirs, a
bunch of teenagers- if I was the only one in any shape for a night of
hedonistic abandonment, then well, things had reached a pretty pass and rock
and roll was indeed dead. The aforementioned nebbishness began, each one of
them looking at each other unsurely, waiting for one to crack: as if it was a
diving expedition to find the lost city of Atlantis I was suggesting instead of
just going to the fucking pub. My mind screamed So GET YOUR COATS ON! as
I smiled at them and said that besides, what better way for us to get to know
each other?
They got their coats on.
The
Packhorse had been my choice, and had represented a bit of a gamble: situated
on the same block as St Mark’s (university flats), there was always the risk it
would be full of other friendly firstyears who would drunkenly initiate those
fresher conversations -where from, what course, A-levels, pet peeves and
turnons- and in doing so befriend them and totally ruin my evening. But it was a
Sunday evening the week before freshers’ week, most people hadn’t arrived yet,
and The Packhorse had lots of little
rooms for little groups. We found one empty, and so we settled down for the
evening, with me sitting facing the door giving anyone who stuck their head
round it a look that said Sure, come in- if you want your throat cut
(and, by virtue of this, nearly getting into trouble with various members of
staff). I got every round in, tapping my nose conspiratorially whenever one of
them asked me how I could afford to do so. Their reactions to my nosetapping
were, in all of them, the archetype of naive youth: first puzzlement, then
recognition, then a moment of shock quickly masked with a sly insouciance that
said yes I know all about ‘dodgy dealings’, say no more... Yes I got
every round in, the reason behind my generosity being I wanted them to
instantly like me, and was loathe for one of them to leave the table and bump
into some unknown friendly face. I had even arranged for our little room to be
just opposite the toilets, just in case: my foresight and attention to detail
are amongst the reasons nothing has ever gone wrong in my life and I get pretty
much whatever I want. Anyway, the evening followed, we all got pretty drunk,
and we all got to know each other.
Just
as I had planned, talk turned, as it will on Sunday night student piss-ups, to
what we should do at chucking-out time. Matt said he had a bottle of vodka back
at the house we could all share, an offer Bob supplemented with his bag of grass,
but the girls (bless em) wanted to stay out: were there, they asked this
grizzled old Leeds veteran, any good clubs open? I put my head to one side, and
said “Yeah there’s a few on Sundays, not really that good, and wouldn’t it be
more fun if we-” and then I laughed, shaking my head at what could only be my
own folly, and said “No” to myself. “No, doesn’t matter.” Immediately they were
curious, snapping at the bait, saying things like “No come on Alex- what?”
I
looked at them with what I believe is called ‘sheepishness’, as if embarrassed
by my uncontainable candour, as if inwardly weighing up the pros and cons of
taking these near strangers into my confidence. Eventually I made it clear that
in saying what I was about to say, I was putting my reputation on the line, but
they were my friends, so hey, here goes. “It’s just that when I’ve had a few, I
like to... well, go to a graveyard, do some drugs, drink a few bottles, sing a
few songs, get naked and dance around. You know.”
And then I had added, as if
the possibility had only just occurred: “Is that weird?”
“Here
we are!” I stopped suddenly, and felt Lucy’s excellent breasts on my
shoulderblades as she bumped into me. I then felt the transferred kinetic
energy of the person behind her doing likewise, then again, fainter, and then
finally again with surprising force (I figured that to be Matt, who was a bit
of a chubby lad, and a lagger to boot). We were standing in what amounted, in
masonry terms, to a clearing: a roughly circular arrangement of gravestones,
roughly twenty feet in diameter, and closed by a curved mausoleum or cenotaph,
which was about the size of a church altar and gave the impression of being
something upon which one could have a really enjoyable fuck. Plenty of space. I
stuck the flashlight into the ground and pressed the button that intensified
the beam, getting the first real view of ‘the gang’ since we had left the pub.
Lucy looked cold, Naomi looked scared, Bob looked pissed off and Matt seemed to
be in the middle of setting fire to himself: hardly ideal for what was about to
commence, but not completely unworkable. I drew breath.
“You
didn’t say your torch could, err, facilitate that!” said Bob.
“You
didn’t arse-kiss,” I said. “Anyway, don’t worry, we’re here now. Tell you what,
we’ll build a fire in a bit, give those zippos and clippers of yours something
constructive to do as opposed to just burning your thumbs. That’ll stop you
being cold,” -I pointed to Lucy- “stop you” -Naomi- “being frightened,
and’ll give your jumper” -Matt- “something to be jealous about. Okay?” I
saw the hurt start to materialise on Bob’s face, the resentment at being the
one left out, and was almost shocked at how quickly and easily I had been
granted the role of leader. One of the many benefts of being a mature student.
Very well: gather him up into the fold. “And then you can play with my
torch to your heart’s content. Okay?” Bob’s smile indicated that yes, this was
fine by him. “Anyway, now,” I clapped my hands together, “time for drink and
drugs!”
The
weed was Bob’s, everything else -the coke, the poppers, the Es, the temazzies-
were mine, a small chunk of my massive and constantly-updated personal stash.
Under my bed was a small box in the style of a treasure chest with a strong
lock, divided into various compartments. There were two divisions of ecstasy,
one being practically pure MDMA, the other having an almost negligible amount
of the lovedrug, being mostly crammed with ketamine, strychnine, barbiturates,
washing-powder, ground glass, brick-dust and all manner of nasty little toxins.
I called them ‘nice’ and ‘naughty’. I took two nices for myself, as the
naughtys (horribly) made me feel wonderful and happy and loving, whereas the
nices turned me into a (much more appropriate) demented sociopath and eight
naughtys for my eager young charges. Now you may think that I chose to poison
them in order to ensure their last night as real people was a hellish one, but
the truth is almost the opposite- I didn’t want them to enjoy themselves too
much, it would only give them further to fall. (I may be so evil I would go
well out of my way just to even slightly upset someone, and draw a strength
from doing so that far outweighs any trouble taken, but I do have some
standards.)
I’d
been generous when it came to the drink too. When we’d went back to the house
for the weed and the guitar, Matt’s bottle of vodka, the intended subject of
his ‘sharing’ idea, had turned out on closer inspection to be a 35cl bottle of
cheap 35% bullshit that was furthermore about three-fifths full, and was
declared by me to be woefully inadequate. A trip to the allnight garage had
saved us though. (Right in the middle
of studentland, there is a guy I know quite well, Rajif, who works the weekend
night shift at a chain he’d rather I didn’t name: he supplements his wage by
flogging alcohol to people coming out of pubs and clubs, plonking the bottles
into the small reminds-you-of-a-bank compartments under the bulletproof glass
the minute he’s snuffled up your cash. His prices are reasonable, and he’ll
sell to anyone who doesn’t look like ‘undercover plod’ as he puts it: the trick
is to not try to radiate normality, don’t act strenuously casual, keep 15
year-old street-slang to a minimum.) I’d insisted we have a bottle each,
assuring them I would pay: Lucy, Matt and Bob were happy with vodka; Naomi, who
was not much of a drinker, eventually plumped for Southern Comfort (sweet and
easily potable, a woman’s drink, and one that to this day I am convinced is
distilled from essence of Fruit Pastille). As for me, Rajif said he had some
tequila in: there being no fouler, more evil-smelling potion I have ever
projectile-vomited, I absolutely adore the stuff and had snapped up a bottle
pronto.
We
were sitting in a circle round the torch, crosslegged. I put my hands together,
as if in prayer. “For what we are about to receive, may the lord make us truly
grateful. Amen.” I then put the two nices in my mouth and sloshed them down
with some tequila, my head involuntarily jerking to one side as the liquid scorched
my innards. “Well come on then!” I said, holding out the eight naughtys in my
hand.
“What-
we’re gonna double-bang them?” said Lucy, thus marking herself out as someone
with drug-knowledge: a worrying intelligence, the girl could prove difficult.
“’Double-bang?’
What’s that?” said Naomi, thus marking herself out as drug-naive, and therefore
most pleasingly malleable: suitable for my purposes, then.
“Yeah
sure Lucy,” I said. “Don’t worry, the come-up’s pretty mild, y’know a gradual
build-up, not one minute you’re straight then whoosh, none of that,
trust me.” I turned to Naomi. “Means taking two at once.”
“Whatever.”
Lucy took two pills and studied them in the gloom. “The fuck’s this symbol?”
“A
rhino. S’what they’re called- rhinos. Practically pure MDMA. Really beautiful.”
Bob
looked at me with disbelief as he took two. “Why on earth are they called
rhinos?”
“I
don’t know- maybe cos they make you feel horny?”
Lucy
laughed. “That’s good enough for me!” she said as she double-banged them with a
glug of vodka.
Now
this had an immediate effect on the boys: though I had already given the
impression as being the sort of charmingly dark eccentric who like dancing
naked in graveyards, Lucy had emerged as a rather sensible lass. Friendly and
lively and fun (if you like that sort of thing- apparently some people do), but
nevertheless worldlywise, one with a good head on her shoulders who only took
the most calculated of risks. The kind of person you suspect has their life
very much sorted, and to whom bad things simply failed to happen. Not a bad
role-model. The internal reasoning was practically etched on Matt and Bob’s
faces: well if she could take them... They both shrugged and downed the
pills. I held the remaining two out to Naomi.
“I
don’t know...” she whined. She on the other hand had emerged as almost the
polar opposite of Lucy, a whinging worrier who nibbled at every choice or
opportunity and still managed to fuck it up, all due, I suspected, to an innate
medical condition known as ‘being thick as pigshit’. “I’ve never had ecstasy
before.”
“Then
you are in for a treat, m’dear,” I said. “First time’s always the best.”
“Yeah
but you like, hear such stories.”
“Stories?”
“Yeah,
you know, overdoses and that. Leah Betts.”
I
looked up at an imaginary waiter hovering over me. “Err, no need for the
winelist thanks, I’ll just have a glass of water with my meal, don’t want
alcohol poisoning, now do I?” The others tittered a bit, but Naomi just looked
at me blankly. “Look Naomi, what the press weren’t allowed to say about Leah
Betts was the exact cause of her death. They said she drank too much water and
drowned internally, but the actual truth is...”
“Yes?”
“She
died of happiness.”
They
all laughed in a way they already had a couple of times at things I’d said this
evening: a shocked smile, amusement against one’s better nature. Standard sick
joke procedure. Well actually, they didn’t all laugh...
“That’s
not funny Alex, actually,” said Naomi.“And it’s also in very very poor-”
“Okay,
sorry, nasty joke, I know. But to be honest and realistic, Leah Betts was one
unlucky girl, just as unlucky as the thousands of motorists who die
every year behind the wheel. No reason to hand in your driving license though,
is it? Look, you’re here, you’re with friends, you’re safe. Okay?” I
was, by now, practically shoving the pills up her nose.
She
looked at the others. “Friends?” They all nodded. She took the pills and
sighed, all resistance gone. “Oh all right then.” Down they went.
“A
toast!” I cried, holding my bottle aloft. “To oblivion!”
We all shouted Oblivion!
and clinked.
We
then sat for a bit in silence. I enjoyed it, just sitting there pondering the
meaning of oblivion, its etymology (Latin- being forgotten), but knew that one
of them would find it awkward and feel the need to say something, no matter how
inane. A bit of a shame that, as I thought it rather nice to just sit there
sipping my drink, casually waiting for the drugs to kick in and take us all to
a dark and dangerous place. My money was on Naomi.
My money wasn’t wrong.“Err,
how long do these things take to work?”
“An
hour or so,” I said. “Actually, no, double-banging so, half an hour.”
“So
what do we do in the meantime?”
“Yeah,”
said Lucy. “We just gonna sit here in silence till they kick in?”
“Fine
by me,” I said. Which it was.
Lucy
shook her head and exhaled in pretty exasperation. Naomi looked worried and was
fidgeting with her chewed-up nails: probably thought any form of activity would
help counteract or at least delay the effects of the pills she already
regretted taking. Bob was skinning up on the back of the guitar. Matt looked
lost in thought.
“What
you thinking about mister?” said Lucy to him.
“It’s
just- something we used to do back home...”
He trailed off, smiling. The girls’ attention was grabbed, and I
pretended mine was too, fearing a nauseating episode of nostalgia or
homesickness. Even Bob looked distracted from his duties. Sensing this, Matt
continued. “Got these two mates, Steve and Pete, drinking partners I suppose. We
had this idea that when we went to the pub, none of us said anything until we’d
had five pints. Well it started off as two, then grew. Just sitting there in
silence, drinking. Not a word till number six was there on the table.”
“Well
that sounds like great fun,” said Lucy.
I nodded vigorously at this until I realised
she was being sarcastic. “Why exactly Matt?”
He
shrugged. “I don’t know really, and there’s no need to take the piss Lucy,
cos it was fun. We’d be sitting there getting more and more drunk, and by like
the fourth or fifth pint we’d be having all these crazy funny half-pissed
thoughts, but we wouldn’t be allowed to say anything until the fifth pint was
gone. When it was -and it’d have to be all three of us finished, yeah?- we’d
all start laughing and shouting. Fucking brilliant, every time. Kind of like,
some sort of valve opening, y’know, after like a build-up of pressure.”
“Delayed
gratification,” I hissed, my eyes probably twinkling in the torchlight.
“Excellent.”
“S’pose
it encourages you to drink quickly,” said Lucy grudgingly, as if doing Matt a
massive favour in giving his fantastic idea what is known as ‘head-room’.
“Not
just that,” I said, “but to keep up with each other, no lagging behind or the
whole group suffers.” I felt like clapping: the thought of fat Matt and his
cronies sitting in grim determined silence in some shoddy little boozer,
suspiciously eyeing up each others’ pints, desperate to avoid the shame of
being last, was all too exquisite. “And the ritualistic element, the pact of
silence, trappist drinking, oh that’s wonderful Matt, really it is.”
“Trappist
out of our fucking heads,” he said, smiling.
“You
saying we do that now?” said Lucy.
“Might
be a laugh,” he said with a distinct lack of conviction.
“But
it’ll take me hours to finish this,” moaned Naomi, holding up her
bottle, which contained at a guess 749 mls of fluid out of a possible 750. “I said
I don’t really drink that much. I did say that.”
Lucy
leaned over to her. “I think the idea is we wait for the E to take
effect honey. Like Alex said, it’ll be half an hour tops.”
“Oh.
Oh. Oh,” said Naomi. Let me go through that with you: Oh 1 was
understanding, Oh 2 was remembering the chemicals currently running through her
body, and Oh 3 was resignation and fear.
“Oh
oh oh indeed,” I said. “Well I think it’s an excellent idea and I for one am
all for it. What say we have our first house vote- who’s for the pact of
silence?” I raised my arm high.
“Well
it was my idea, and it’s pretty funny with beer, so... yeah.” Matt was in.
“Try
anything once, that’s my motto,” said Lucy, putting her hand up. It was a motto
I would make sure she would come to regret, or at the very least, question the
wisdom of deeply. “How about you Bob?”
Bob
looked up from the spliff he had just built. “Huh?”
“Bearing
in mind,” I said, “that we’ve already got three out of five, so a negative vote
would only be a waste of arm-power.”
“Yeah
sure, whatever,” he said, limply raising one hand as the other searched in a
pocket for his lighter. “But we can smoke though, yeah?”
“I
wouldn’t have it otherwise,” said Lucy, “which in other words means I’ll have
second dibs on that j.” She turned to Naomi. “How about you hun?”
Naomi
looked nervous and unsure. Well no, that’s not true, or rather it’s not particularly
informative: by then I had realised that Naomi always looked nervous and
unsure, it was just a matter of degree, a sliding scale of crapness. So, Naomi
looked like Naomi, but even more so. (And I have no doubt whatsoever that
you’re getting about as sick of the wretched girl as I was at that point.)
“Well I’m all for house democracy, but...” She looked around into the still
quiet darkness. “I mean, complete silence, it’s just, ooh dear, it’s a
bit creepy round here...”
I
sighed. “We’re in a bloody graveyard woman. It’s about as safe as you
can get- everyone here’s dead!” She jumped at my last word, as if only
just alarmingly realising what all these stone tablets growing out of the
ground actually signified. “Anyway, you said you’re all for house democracy, so
the vote is closed regardless of your dithering. There’ll be no talking until
twenty-five minutes from...” I looked at my watch, “now!” Everyone then
took a big gulp of breath and held it between sealed lips, as if it was a
suspension on living I had suggested. Then I broke the silence (see them all
gratefully gasping in air), which I regretted, but I had to, it was important.
“Sorry, but Lucy and anyone else who’s never done this before?” Neither Bob nor
Matt looked at me, not in any significant way, so I turned my attention to
Naomi. “Naomi. You may feel the need to vomit.” A suggestible girl, I could
imagine her mouth filling with squirts of portentous saliva as I broke this
unfortunate news. “Not necessarily, just maybe. It’s not a given-
okay? If you do, erm, ‘Naomi’, you must try to fight the urge. At least
until the pills’ve kicked in. Otherwise it’ll be six quid of my money you’re
spewing, and I think I’ve spent enough this evening. You with me?” She nodded
furiously, gulping, looking like Naomi by now to an extraordinary degree. “So
if, if, if you feel the need, try to hold it in for fifteen or twenty
minutes, let the E get absorbed into your bloodstream, then by all means puke,
it’ll be a moment of discomfort and you’ll have a wonderful evening. Okay? Can
you do that?” She carried on nodding, one hand massaging her stomach. “And
don’t touch yourself there- it’ll only agitate your insides. Okay? Good.” I
turned to the others. “Sorry everyone.” They smiled indulgently: hey no
worries Alex, the kid’s just green. Bob in particular seemed to be
overdoing the men-of-the-world thing, hamming up his embarrassment at Naomi’s
naivety. “Right, sorry about that, no more interruptions, and no more talking
till twenty-five minutes from... now.”
We sat
in silence for about three or four minutes, until Bob threw up. He had the good
grace to warn us of this at least twenty seconds prior to the event, which was
ample time for me to grab a plastic bag. “Don’t know what it is, usually fine
with these things,” he said queasily before spewing into the bag, and I
instantly realised (I think Lucy did too, I caught her glance and it spoke
volumes) that in spite of his earlier casual manner, this was his first
experience with ecstasy. He vomited a small amount of liquid, mostly dark red-
I caught the lot.
“You
okay Naomi?” I said, looking at her, fearful of how fearful this turn of events
would make her. But she seemed fine: in fact, she seemed most unNaomi-ish, eyes
closed, gently swaying, taking surprisingly deep tugs on the joint that had now
passed to her. I rootled with one finger through Bob’s blood in the Texaco
carrier-bag, and found what I was looking for, two little fragmented and
semi-dissolved tablets. I rinsed most of the visceral muck off them with tequila,
popped them back in Bob’s mouth and poured vodka down his neck as I held his
nose. (And God it felt good: I couldn’t wait to really get things going
with him...) He was in no mood or position to call such a sequence of events
into question. The others were about to offer advice or dissuasion or... well
who cares what, I silenced them all by pointing at my watch and holding a
finger to my lips. Bob wiped sweat from his brow and resumed his position,
indicating with both a thumbs-up and grimace that he respectively felt a lot
better now and was sorry to have been such a nuisance. The twenty-five minutes
resumed themselves, this time uninterrupted, and I studied the four closely.
Bob
first, having now resumed his skinning-up duties. Bob- the name didn’t fool me
for one minute. He was clearly a Robert trying to slum it (like a middleclass
Gareth trying to palm himself off as a Gary or, even worse, ‘Gaz’), and had
probably chosen the monosyllabically
blokeish alternative in the manner of many firstyear students- a new town, new
friends, new life, so why not, therefore, a new me? That was my bet, anyway.
Accent rather refined –home counties at a guess- but littered with mockney
matiness and sweary attempts at epigrams: probably thought of himself as one of
those people who embrace both the high- and the low-brow upon their own terms.
You know- ‘a fascinating bundle of contradictions’. Hair down around his
shoulders, but too fluffy to look good with it. Or, for that matter,
heterosexual. Fine features that, due to a too-pointy nose, unconvincing chin
and eyes too small, tired and far apart, could not be called pretty. Short and
skinny, in clothes that are occasionally fashionable amongst certain students,
and never stylish amongst anyone with any sense ever. Yes velvet
smoking-jacket, yes tatty flares, yes Open University shirt, I’m talking about
you. A peg or two too high for my liking, he probably thought he was the bee’s
knees, the dog’s bollocks and the cat’s flaps: it would be interesting to see
him his ego destroyed, and what - if anything- was left.
Matt,
sitting there smoking a roll-up and steadily knocking back the vod. Most
definitely no Matthew, anyone could see that, and this was probably something
to his chagrin, given the scope for playground-style rhyming (Matt is fat, Matt
is a prat, Matt the twat shat in his hat etc). Fat, yes, in every sense, even
his movements and speech seeming dense and lardy, but with a nice face. Not, by
any means, an attractive one (and why should that be a criterion? where’s the
correlation?), but open and friendly and honest: unlike the rather
shiftylooking Bob, he seemed to lack any guile. Terrible teeth. Stereotypical
rotund joviality, likes a drink, probably loves his food (I reckoned the
drugs were the only thing stopping him from getting a kebab right now), an
easygoing salt-of-the-earth Northerner -think he mentioned Salford earlier- who
dressed like shit and didn’t really seem to care. In short, a rather nice chap-
pity, that.
Lucy
next, offering me the joint which I decline, then shrugging and finishing it.
An alarmingly well put-together girl. Big green eyes, glowing with impudence
and intelligence; cheekbones and mouth pointy and pouty; creamily pale skin;
face both round and delicate, not unlike a doll’s BUT, in the ‘stylisation of
beauty’ way, not the ‘sinister horror-film chick’ way; funkily cropped
reddish-purple hair (dyed? I do hope so- always love it when people aren’t
happy with what nature gives them, such potential for fun); big white tablets
of teeth with a pleasingly snaggly hint of indented front retractors, like
Bowie had when he still had it; slim yet also curvy figure topped off with -and
let’s not be coy here- lovely great big huge fat tits. (Yes I am a
breast man, simply by dint of not being a gay man, or one in pretty
serious denial about the way the world works. And a man furthermore chockful of
rising sick concerning his male peers whinging on about the virtues of
‘pertness’ or ‘more than a handful’ being ‘a waste’... Mmyeahright. Such saddoes
either think, mistakenly, that they’re being urbane and sophisticated, or are
saddled with an ironing-board of a girlfriend and feel they have to defend
their choice, and have in any event probably never clamped their dick between a
pair of whopping great gazungas). She wore a long black velvet jacket, under
which the many roundnesses of her body moved, clad tightly with a sparkly
sequin-rimmed top and short leather skirt, which forced her to sit with her
long legs curled primly under her. Yes, altogether most easy on the eye, but,
as I said earlier, with an infectious sense of joie de vivre, an
unflappable air of fun and capability, which I must say rather lets the whole
package down, in my eyes. But it would soon go- oh my God yes.
Naomi,
on the other hand, was a much more promising prospect. Quite unrealistically
unattractive in every physical sense, I grant you (bashed-in gummy-smiling
witch’s face, mousy hair dry as dust, concave chest and fer-labby arse),
but with a haunted look about her. Every gesture and tic spoke of a horrible
past, of bullyings, ritual humiliation, evil parents, a world full of
lovelessness and empty of anything else. She looked as if life had constantly
dealt her a bad hand and then went on to stamp on her foot and slap her round
the face, and the fear and paranoia and resignation that lived in her eyes
showed that life, as far she was aware, was in no real hurry to let up on such
arbitrary cruelty. A deformed and much-experimented-on lab-rabbit in cheap and
ill-fitting charity-shop clothes, forever staring into horrible headlights. My
kinda gal.
Plastic
people- all would melt.
I
sat there, my jaw working itself up into a nice crunchy grind, repeating this
phrase over and again to myself, until I was rudely jerked back into the
present by Naomi pointing at her watchless wrist and mugging frantically. An
odd thought bubbled up -you want me to slash that for you?- until I
realised and checked.
“Well
that’s twenty-five minutes friends.” There was a collective sigh of relief, and
then, oddly, silence. “Well?”
“I
feel fucking weird,” said Matt.
“Yeah
me too,” said Bob.
“Yeah
me three,” said Lucy. “But, y’know, good weird. How about you Naomi?”
“Yeah-
weird.”
“Good
weird?”
“No,
bad weird.”
“How
about you Alex or should I say Mr Bullshitter?”
I
looked at Lucy, puzzled, worried. “Mr..?”
She
laughed. “Pure MDMA my arse. I’ve taken enough ketamine in my time to recognise
it, you big fraud.”
“I,
err...”
“Oh
don’t worry, I like it, but, y’know, some people...” She drifted off,
letting the image of people with whom the horse-tranquilizer didn’t quite agree
-people sweating, people puking, people overdosing, people freezing up and
screaming at loved ones don’t come NEAR me!- hang in the air between us.
The others turned to her, looking worried.
“The
fuck’s keta-majig?” said Bob to both me and her.
“Oh
God it’s not something bad, is it?” wailed Naomi.
“What’s
she going on about Alex?” said Matt levelly.
Now
you, in similar circumstances, might have been worried at this point, sure that
the ‘game was up’ and in any minute you’d be ‘rumbled’. But not me- I diffused
the situation using Lucy , and it was a piece of piss, almost embarrassingly
so. I gave her a sly secret look, conspiratorial, from one seasoned pillhead to
another: it said hey, now don’t let’s get these kids upset with information
that doesn’t necessarily concern them. I would have prayed that it worked,
if not for the fact that in knew in my black heart it definitely would.
“Lucy,
Lucy,” Naomi was actually, I KID YOU NOT, tugging on her sleeve. “What are you
going on about?”
“Oh
nothing honey. Nothing at all guys. Everyone relax- I’ve tried these before and
they’re well nice.” And so everyone relaxed. It really is that easy with most
people- they’ll let you get away with anything as long as you convince them
it’s all part of a delicious secret you’ll let them in on. An upright citizen,
for example, calling your grannybashing into question? Just tell them behind
your hand that it’s this big hilarious prank the old biddy couldn’t possibly
hope to understand, and they’ll wink knowingly and hold her down for you. I
smiled at Lucy and she returned the compliment. Already, a bond had been
forged, and she seemed pleased at this: she may have had bucketfuls of
self-sufficiency and independence, but everyone likes an alliance with the
leader, everyone loves a secret. “Why how d’you feel Alex?”
Good
question- how did I feel? Sitting there, I felt like- well, not a very
nice person, really. In the most wonderful way. “I feel splendid- absolutely splendid!
Anyway- shall we have a song?”
This
idea got a warm reception from everyone (except Naomi, who was studying her
fingers, probably checking they were all still there, no worrying subtractions
or additions). Bob scraped the tobacco and shreds of grass from off the back of
the guitar into his little polythene bag, and held it up. “Well does anybody
know how to play this thing, as I lack the, err, requisite skill sadly.”
Lucy
shook her head.
“I
used to play violin, but I, I, I...” said Naomi, a simple ‘no’ obviously being
far too much trouble.
Matt
took the guitar from Bob and gently strummed it with his fingernails. “I can
play a few songs, but they’re mostly, err...”
“Let
me guess,” I said. “The Beatles?”
He
looked surprised, as if knowing the three-and-a-half chords to Hey fucking Jude
was a rare and secret trait that I had been most percipient in identifying.
“Well yeah, but, hey, like, I mean…”
Realising that that was it, the extent of his argument, I reached
over and plucked the guitar from his sausage fingers. “I don’t know any
Beatles’ tunes, which I think means I should play.”
Lucy
looked shocked. “You don’t like The Beatles?” (Incidentally, she was a scouser,
with a soft sing-song voice that instantly put me in mind of good lazy aromatic
sex.)
“No
I do fucking not like them, and there’s no need to look at me as if I’ve just
defecated into my hand and showed it to you for approval Lucy, I’m not the only
one.”
“You
probably are, mister!” she said, snorting.
“I
like their later stuff,” said Bob. “Not the poppy stuff, the later stuff,
y’know, well trippy.”
“Oh
yes!” I cried, holding my hands up in sarcastic horror. “A submarine that’s
also yellow! A man who’s also a walrus! Help me doctor- such
concepts are too odd for my tiny mind, they won’t fit!”
“But
everyone likes The Beatles, don’t they?” said Naomi. “I mean, everyone.
Don’t they?” That the opposite might be true was clearly giving her
‘belief-systems’ (as I believe they’re called) a bit of a battering.
“It
may alarm you to learn that there is a growing movement, Naomi, everyone. It is
called ‘The New Orthodoxy’, our principles are aesthetic common sense, and our
demand is revolution by whatever means necessary. We will show the world that
not only is the emperor stark bollockarse naked, he is also fat and ugly and
impotent, and is an impostor with no real sovereignty over anything or anyone.”
Sorry- sometimes drugs make me talk like this.
Lucy
scoffed again. “Oh come on Alex, don’t you think John Lennon was a
genius?”
“No
Lucy, I think John Lennon was just about the biggest fraud of the twentieth
century, and he makes me want to vomit. I genuinely resent, no but I really do,”
-I was starting to receive under-collar heating by now- “I resent a junky
wifebeater telling me that ‘all I need is love’. I resent a bloated expat
millionaire with a fleet of Rolls Royces challenging me to ‘imagine no
possessions’. A man worshipped the world over, whose every predictable whim
could be instantly satisfied by the legions of grovelling lackeys on his beck
and call and who only had to snap his fingers for women to take off their
knickers, making the brave and bold assertion that ‘nothings gonna change his
world’. I resent a man -no, I resent a society- a society where a
drugaddled semi-literate failed artstudent spews halfbaked gibberish into a
microphone about ‘crackalacker dingdong’ and ‘goo-googa-choo’ and is hailed as
the next James Joyce.” The volume and intensity of my voice had risen quite
sharply, and when my rant stopped everything seemed more silent than ever, if
that’s possible (and I know it’s not, but you’ll permit the odd figure of
speech, I trust). Then Lucy said something about his death being ‘such a
tragedy’, and I was off on one again. “And most of all, I resent that sad
little psychopath -no, sociopath- who hated himself and what he had
become so much he had to convince himself he was the world’s biggest rockstar
in order to give his shabby little life some meaning, and in doing so thought
there wasn’t enough room on the planet for him and the real fake he so
desperately needed to be, I resent that fat pathetic little shit Mark Chapman
firing those bullets in 1980, and in doing so forever canonising a man who was
steadily losing whatever spurious ‘talent’ he may have had almost daily. I
resent the fact that John fucking Lennon isn’t alive today and making an
absolute fucking prick out of himself doing duets with Phil Collins and
Bryan Adams, like the middleaged middleclass middle-of-the-road wanker he
always was underneath that risible avant-garde exterior. Fucking phony cunt.”
Lucy was looking at me with a mixture of anger and indulgence, about to say
something along the lines of now steady on Alex old chap, but it was too
late: the evilness was flowing through my blood like poisonous lead. “Or no,
even worse, even more horribly believable, making a right tosser out of
himself by trying to embrace youth culture, a 60-year old man attempting to
understand dance music with all the conviction and credibility of a Granddad breakdancing,
rereleasing that shiteawful song ‘Imagine’ with a techno backbeat, doing
collaborations with other dance sellouts like Goldie or LL Cool J. Fuck.”
“Yeah
I know,” said Bob. “You mean like David Bowie doing that jungle thing, yeah?”
Not
wise words.
I
looked at Bob murderously: not in the usual jokily hyperbolic sense of ooh,
I should kill you!, but in the unitalicised, no-exclamation-mark-necessary
blandness of a true murderer, one who, on the few occasions he uses his voice,
never feels the pulish need to raise it. Sure, the Duke had committed some
indiscretions, but he was still Bowie, still needed some respect, or at
least for eighteen-year old stoner pillocks whose earliest memory of him was
the unfortunate appearance in Labyrinth, alongside other jerking
puppets, and who thought ‘The Man who Sold The World’ was actually written by
that dickhead Kurt Cobain, for people like Bob to actually pronounce his
surname correctly, so that it rhymed with showy, not wow-wee. “I’ll pretend I
didn’t hear that,” I said to him, fingering the pigsticker in my pocket, at
that point quite tempted to slit his scrawny throat to the actual point of
decapitation and hand his head in at the nearest police station to claim my
reward.
“Hey,”
said Matt, in a manner that was no doubt engineered to calm me down- nice try,
fatman. “Okay, the man likes Bowie. Sure then Alex, play us some of that. I got
some of his stuff- s’pretty cool.” At least he pronounced it correctly.
“Is
one to take it,” said Bob, poncily extending his hand along with the query, as
if we were philosophers in Ancient Greece conducting an interloculatory
exploration of a rarefied point of metaphysics, instead of five pissed-up
students taking drugs in a graveyard, “that you’re not the biggest fan of Mr
McCartney either?”
“Paul
Mc-fucking-Cartney? Jesus, I can’t believe you’d even ask me that Bob.
The man is a joke, an absolute joke- inherently ridiculous and absurd to
the point of sheer incredulity, both as a man and a concept. And as for George
‘oh-I-wish-I-was-a-paki’ Harrison, well... Just point me to his grave,
then hand me my dancing shoes.”
Lucy
laughed. She laughed because that’s what she does when faced with something she
doesn’t understand. Go on, giggle it up you little whore, one day you’ll
never laugh again, but by fuck you’ll UNDERSTAND. “You’re fucking mad
Alex.”
“Which
of course isn’t the kneejerk reaction of the unimaginative to the
innovative,” I replied with a bitterness I instantly regretted, seeing the
previous and precious allegiance I had forged with her melting in the hot blast
of my E’d-up rudeness. “Oscar Wilde,” I lied. That seemed to satisfy her. Well
of course, it would: oh right yeah- ‘e’s full of funny little quotes, innit?
“Would
one be right in assuming then,” said Bob, “that Mr Ringo Starr is also not one
of your, err-”
“Ah
now Ringo,” I said with relish (don’t believe me? Well try it yourself-
truly a most satisfying word to say). “Now that man at least had a certain
style.”
They looked at me as if I was mad.
Why not: it’s the kneejerk reaction of the crap to the credible, the trite to
the truth.
“Fucking
hell,” said Lucy , shaking her head in bemused wonder at my ‘world-view’. “I love
The Beatles, right, everything they’ve done? But I still feel Ringo was a bit
of a-”
“A
bit of a visionary, no, a lot,” I said, with feeling. “He carried those
three untalented runts.” They all started laughing, which had never been my
intention: if I had wanted them to laugh I would have said something I thought
was funny, something I didn’t believe in. “Right, anyway,” I said, once the
laughter had died down, “a song.”
“What
you got in mind?” said Matt.
“’My
Death’- heard of it?” Come to think of it- have you? Written by Jacques
Brel- quite beautiful.
“Is
that Bowie?”
“Well
he covered it, yes. Scott Walker, too. Anyway, I bid silence people.”
I started strumming the intro. Could really
have done with Bowie’s buddy Mike
Garson and his creeping, jittery piano accompaniment, or maybe the lush
textured orchestra so suited to Walker’s velvety baritone, but we can’t always
get what we want, as people are so wont to thoughtprovokingly remark. The torch
had been angled by me so as to underlight my face, the shadows of my superb
cheekbones creating hollows in my eyesockets: a rather juvenile trick
instinctively mastered by any five year old fucking about with a lamp on
Halloween, but still, eerie enough. I started singing the song I hoped they’d
remember, the song that if all went according to plan, would, in nine months’
time, mean more to them than they would know how to deal with:
My death waits like an old roué
so confident I’ll go his way
whistle to him, and the passing time
My death waits like a bible truth
at the funeral of my youth
oh look out for that, and the passing
time
My death waits like a witched night
as surely as our love is bright
lets not think about the passing
time
The sound animated the stillness, illuminated the
darkness, unNaomied the Naominess: my guitar is expensive and my voice like Bowie’s
since he lost it, rich, deep and honeyed (and I didn’t need to smoke half a
million cigarettes over forty years for the privilege).
But whatever lies behind the door
there is nothing much to do
angel or devil
I don’t care
for in front of that door
there is you
And at that final word I managed to look at all four
of them in a way that suggested my loving (!) gaze was directed exclusively at
each one of them and each one alone, and they all smiled back at me, so glad to
have been singled out by the troubadour.
My death waits like a beggar blind
who sees the world through an unlit
mind
throw him a dime, for the passing
time
My death waits there between your
thighs
I looked at Lucy: not, you understand, for any
effect or to achieve some calculated purpose, but solely because at that moment
I genuinely and reflexively wanted to get between her thighs and fuck her into
paraplegia. Calm down Alex.
your cool fingers will close my eyes
lets think of that, and the passing
time
My death waits to allow my friends
And here I took all of them in as a unit, and they
looked at each other, again smiling: yes, we are friends, aren’t we?
(The fucking moribund morons.)
a few good times
before it ends
so lets drink to that, and the
passing time
My strumming hand dropped to the bottle on the
ground and lifted it before me. They all raised theirs and we nodded them
towards each other, five spokes in the wheel of the stone circle.
But whatever lies behind the door
there is nothing much to do
angel or devil
I don’t care
for in front of that door
there is you
The looking trick on that last word again, this time
more intense. Then my playing, my
voice, and Naomi leapt up histrionically for the last verse.
My death waits there among the
leaves
in magicians mysterious sleeves
rabbits and dogs, and the passing
time
My death waits there among the
flowers
where the blackest shadow cowers
lets pick lilacs for the passing
time
My death waits there in a double-bed
sails of oblivion and my head
so pull up your sheets against the
passing time But whatever lies behind the door
there is nothing much to do
angel or devil
I don’t care
for in front of that door
there is...
I looked at each one of them
in turn, as if carefully considering yes now just who does lie behind
that door? The anticipation on their faces was gorgeously pathetic. After
the optimum pause had elapsed, me maximising the tension but not quite reaching
the point where they lost interest and someone said hey what about
Eastenders this afternoon eh?, I put down the guitar and smiled at the
ground. “Thank you.” (And if you know where I lifted that rather prickteasish
coda from, then give yourself a pat on the back, friend. If not, then you and I
may not have sufficent things in common for us to ‘gel’ and I’m not into
spoonfeeding, so you can feel free to fuck off right now.)
“Wow,”
said Lucy.
“Blimey,”
said Matt.
“Err,
wow,” said Bob.
“Naomi?”
I said.
“I
feel weird.”
“Good
weird?”
“No.”
“Never
mind. So that’s it- ‘wow’ and ‘blimey’?”
Lucy
was shaking her head, of which she looked pretty off. “No erm, I mean...
blimey. You know, wow.” They all laughed at this -except Naomi- and I
tried to join in, which wasn’t easy. I honestly couldn’t see what was funny.
“I
feel weird. Not good weird. Bad weird. Not good.Y’know, like-”
“You’ll
be all right hun.” Lucy put her arm around Naomi’s shoulder, which seemed to
mollify her slightly. “You’ve got a lovely voice Alex.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah,
s’beautiful mate.”
“You
know like, wow.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah
like, blimey.”
“Not
good weird. Bad.”
I
pushed the torch forward a bit, towards them, and scrutinised. Even with the
light shining more or less into their faces, their irises had all been devoured
by pupils. They were there- good.
“That’s
talent,” said Matt. “Hey, what did you say you studied again Alex?”
Plastic
people...
“Alex?”
“Sorry,
what Matt?”
“What
do you study?”
“I
study people. I study them in the way a botanist studies a flower, or a
physicist a molecule: only by dissecting, by taking the subject to pieces, can
one appreciate the true cold beauty therein.”
Philosophy,
why?
They
all frowned, looking puzzled and worried, and I realised that I had stupidly
said the bit I had meant to think and thought the bit I had meant to say. They
were there all right: trouble was, so was I... “Just a joke, don’t worry.
Philosophy, I study philosophy. Who wants some coke?”
Apart
from Lucy, who claimed that coke made
her ‘a dead mardy-arsed cow’, we each
did a line or two off the back of the guitar. For once in Leeds, as in
deference to this unholy evening, there was no wind to make this difficult.
That done, I quickly got out the poppers and passed them round, taking a huge
snort myself first. (Oh and by the way, the only one with any experience of
either drug was Lucy, and between us we had to give the other three a little
lesson in the partaking thereof, one taken straight out of the Ladybird book
‘My First Substance Abuse’. I mean, just what exactly is wrong with kids
these days?) I then sank about a quarter of the tequila in one, and looked at
the others questioningly with an inane grin. As did we all.
You
know the drill: you’re having a caning session, and soon you get the telepathy-through-expression
thing, the exchange of facial language. Are you as fucked as me? Yeah- why
are you? Yeah- good innit? Fucking wicked mate. (Or however you and your
chums might phrase it.) Except it wasn’t quite that simple. Naomi was gone,
dying, vanishing and lost; Lucy was clearly loving it, moving her head from
side to side, eyes closed; Matt looked bleary-eyed shitstinkingly pissed (his
bottle was nearly finished); and Bob looked puzzled about something, as if
there was some heatgenerating device -stove, iron, vibrator- he was suddenly
not entirely sure he’d turned off before coming out. Then whatever it was hit
him and his thin dry lips curled into a smarmy little smirk. Though heartily
tempted to stand up and kick the smile right off his face and into the long
grass never to be found again, restraint ruled the day. “What is it Bob?”
“It’s
just something I heard once about studying philosophy.”
Cue
some secondhand fuckwitted piece of apocryphal donkeyshit. “Really, what’s
that?”
“A
question right? In an exam? An essay question yeah? Yeah?” The cocaine had
clearly got to him. I nodded that yes, I was with him thus, and that if he
started going too fast I wouldn’t be so proud not to mention it. “A question,
like an essay, you know for the exam or whatever, yeah?” He was looking round
at Matt and Lucy and Naomi, desperate for them to grasp the finer points of his
discourse. “And the question is... ‘Is this a question?’ There, what do you
think of that?”
“Wow,”
said Naomi.
“Fucking
hell,” said Matt.
Sweet
Jesus...
“And
d’you know what the answer is?” he continued. “Eh? Eh? D’you know what some kid
answered and got full marks? I’ll tell you. He wrote, ‘If this is an answer.’
Just think about it- a whole essay question, and this person wrote-” he counted
carefully on his jittery fingers, “-five words, and they get the highest
mark. ‘If this is an answer’.” He folded his arms, waiting for this to sink in,
‘QED’ written all over his ratty face, quite clearly mistaking being ‘on’
something with being ‘onto’ something.
“Wow,”
said Naomi.
“Pretty
clever, I like, I like,” said Matt in a
‘smug-oriental-and-therefore-presumably-comic’ voice. That’s right. He did
voices.
“For
fuck’s sake.” The cocaine had made me fizzy and itchy, both hot and cold with
adrenaline- liquid blood was rushing into my brain and there didn’t seem to be
enough room for all of it. I could actually feel a pulse hammering insistently
behind my eye, eager to get out. “It’s not fucking deep cos it’s not fucking true.
Jesus Bob, it’s just some bullshit urban myth generated by idiots who either
don’t get what philosophy is or who try to denigrate it and trivialise it into
nothing.” I took another hit of the poppers, holding it out for whoever wanted
it. “Fucking hell.”
“Yeah
sure Alex,” said Matt, accepting the little brown bottle and taking a snifter.
“Fuck. Erm, what was I..? Right yeah, urban myth or legend or whatever. Doesn’t
mean though, doesn’t mean that somewhere that question wasn’t actually set
and that someone answered like that. I mean, lots of myths are based in
truth.” He had said this in a conciliatory and friendly manner -just opening my
mind to another possibility, carefully presenting it for my perusal- and his
amiability would probably have soothed me at least slightly were it not for the
smug so there look on Bob’s face, as if we were in primary school and
Matt was his older brother who had just duffed me up for nicking Bob’s packed
lunch.
“I
have no doubt whatsoever that such an essay question was once set and that
someone answered it such Matt,” I said. “My bone of contention is of such an
answer getting any marks at all, never mind a high one. Jesus fucking
Christ people, I don’t know what you think the criteria for marking philosophy
essays are but trust me, they don’t hand out good grades for being a smartarse.
I mean... hey Lucy, you study, what, English wasn’t it?” She nodded. “Okay, an
essay question for you. Erm, right. ‘Does Hamlet’s tragedy stem more from a
fatal flaw within him or is he more a victim of circumstance?’”
“Well,
it’s obviously a bit of both-”
“Yes
but I obviously said which is it more?” (I’d actually, tautologically
perhaps, said it twice: not as if she or anyone else would’ve noticed.)
“Oh
right yeah sorry. Erm, fatal flaw.”
“You
think?”
“Well,
yeah. Because all tragedies, in the true literary sense, stem from-”
“Thank
you, that’s enough!” I turned to Bob and Matt. “See?” They didn’t. “Because.
You have to explain your answer, why you believe it. Lucy wouldn’t just
write ‘fatal flaw’ and hand it in, would she? Fuck, she may as well write ‘I
don’t know and I care even less’ and then wipe her arse on it.”
Bob
and Matt both looked at me as if I’d just broke the tragic news to them about
Father Christmas’s non-existence: crushed, disappointed. “Yeah,” said Matt
eventually, “but it’s quite a cool story.”
“Sure
it is, for people who like to believe that philosophy or any arts subject for
that matter are full of smartalecky little wankers who don’t really have to
work. If you wanted good marks you’d have to write ‘if this is an answer’ and
then go on to explain why, with truth-tables, equations, talking
about epistemology and semantics and so on for a couple of pages. It wouldn’t
be quite as memorable or ‘cool’, but at least you wouldn’t fail the fucking
exam.”
“Fucking
hell,” said Matt.
“You
get my point then?”
“No
no not that Alex, just got this fucking mad coke rush. Jesus.” He
was rubbing his face and gasping. I looked at the Bob and Naomi- I could tell
the same was true for them. “Jesus that took a while though- what’s that all
about Alex mate?”
It’s
‘all about’ the poisons I’ve fed you fucking up your nervous system- if I cut
your head off it’d carrying on burbling fat Manc twatshit for five minutes as I
booted it down the street. ‘Mate’. “Dunno, thought this stuff was quite
good.” It was, I knew it was: my teeth were filing each other into small sharp
points. Oh well, better late than never eh? Small sharp points, grinding
ever smaller and sharper. “All the better to
eat-” I stopped, and made a mental note to sort out the
saying-thoughts-and-thinking-speech thing, before the whole evening became a
complete waste of time. “Oh well, better late than never eh?”
“Yeah
sure,” he said.
Lucy turned to me. “So
what’ll we do now we’re up?”
“How
about a dance, m’dear?”
She
looked round at the others: Bob was trying to skin up and making a very poor
fist of it; Matt was drinking and smoking; and Naomi was swaying and drooling.
Each one looked very locked into their chosen activity. Lucy shrugged and uncurled
her arm from round Naomi, who whimpered as if left precariously unsupported.
“Ar eh Matt, come here and give her a cuddle eh? She’s not feeling too good.”
Matt did as requested and Lucy stood up with arms outstretched, faltering
slightly and giggling. She looked both vulnerable and capable, very much of
both somehow, and I suddenly felt a deep and aching need to know exactly what
noise she made as she approached orgasm. Even if it meant just asking politely,
‘sounding her out’ on the subject. Waving such thoughts -currently all too
frustratingly fruitless- to one side, I grabbed one hand and pulled her round
into me: she was quite tall and her bottom was about level with my balls,
standing spoons. I put my arms around her, just under her breasts, guessing
their weight. “Oh,” she said, “be gentle with me kind sir!”
“Oh
I’ll be gentle, for now.”
“Why
only now?”
“Maybe
you forgot, but later on we’re all gonna get naked.”
She
wriggled -in my grasp, not against- and went mmm in a
sexual yet still highly ambiguous manner, one which made me wonder ‘what are
you- a pricktease or a slut? Do you hate being raped or live for it?
These musings were brought
short when I, we, heard voices -all Geordie- in the distance.
“ANYONE
THERE?”
“WHO’S
THERE?”
“WHO’S
THAT?”
I
turned around (swinging the pneumatic Lucy with me as I did, as if she were a
hostage) and saw flashing orange lights that seemed to be -no, that definitely were-
coming nearer.
I
am Alex Towers, welcome to my world.
“C’MON,
WHEREAREYA! WE’LL FUCKING FIND YA!”
Panic
set in amongst ‘the gang’: Lucy wrestled herself free from my clutches, hissing
“Bill! It’s fucking old Bill!”; Bob hurriedly stuffed his weed, his ripped-up
Rizlas and the spliff he had been building into my guitar; Matt calmly said
“ssh everyone” and leant forward and turned the torch off with a snick;
and Naomi started vomiting into her lap. Still standing in darkness now, with
the orange strobes coming nearer, I was so unruffled by this development
-because of the drugs and who I am and the fact that only a fool would fuck
with me- that I had time to ruminate in turn upon my housemates’ various
actions: (1) I didn’t know Liverpudlians used the term ‘old Bill’, I had up
until then thought police to them were always ‘bizzies’, so I had at least
learnt something that night; (2) Bob had probably already been caught by the
law in possession, or -no, no, infinitely more believable- one of his loser
mates had and scared him shitless with the story of it; (3) Matt was either
always good in a crisis or currently too pissed to care, probably both; and (4)
what I had said to Naomi would be a ‘moment of discomfort’ was proving to
actually be a loud agony, an agony that, judging from the groans she emitted
between wretches, in no way surprised her and was very much her ‘lot’. Either
way, it made it instantly apparent to the Geordies where we were sat. Oh
well. “WHADDYA WANT?” I shouted towards the encroaching orangeness.
“WE’RE
GONNA ROB ALL YA MONEY!”
“YEAH,
AND THEN BEAT UP THE BLOKES!”
“YEAH
AND RAPE THE LASSES!”
“Well
I think that rather blows your ‘old Bill’ theory out of the water, don’t you?”
I whispered to Lucy, who, like the others, was attempting the tricky martial
art of hiding under herself. I sighed at their lameness and turned to the
voices. We were sitting in a bit of a dip, and I now saw the orange lights, and
their holders, standing slightly above us, about 150 yards away. The lights
came from those blinky little plastic arrangements, those small yellow buckets
wearing seethrough hats that you often see by roadworks or holes in the road.
There were three of them, wellbuilt: I couldn’t make anything more out from the
pulsing suns dangling from wire in their fists, but I realised that all my
dreams had come true as one hand went into my pigsticker pocket and curled
around the springloaded handle. I would show Bob, Lucy, Matt and Naomi exactly
what I was all about. “YOU CAN FUCKING TRY!”
“OH
YEAH?”
“YOU
FUCKING HARD NOW?”
“YOU RECKON?”
Am I the only person who
automatically, exclusively and comically associates Newcastle accents with the Big
Brother voice-over? (‘Dee thairty-woon...’) The only person who
can’t take them seriously- who feels the bizarre need to start singing about
fishies on little dishies? I turned to them. “FUCKING HARDER THAN YOU THREE
CUNTS PUT TOGETHER!”
“THEN
FUCKING BRING IT ON!”
“CUNTS,
EH?”
“YEAH
COME ON BADMAN!”
The
flashing lights moved steadily down the incline towards us.
“Oh
fucking hell this is fucked, what’ll we do?”
“Shall
we run, just get out of here, hey Alex, shall we just run?”
“Alex
Alex I’ve got me mobie, shall I call the police or something?”
“HhhheeeuurrreccgghhhhohGodthisisn’tgoodthisisbad.”
“Look,”
I said, “we’re not calling anyone, and we’re not going anywhere. We were here first,
so they can just fuck off. Okay? And,” I bent down and turned the torch back
on, “we may as well have this on, know what we’re up against. But you’ve all
got to stay calm.”
The three were now standing
just outside the clearing, about twenty feet away. They were, as I said,
heavilyset fellas, and though obviously by their accents not from Leeds, still
townies: Mr Buyrite clubbing trousers, 50p patent leather shoes, shortsleeved
I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Polyester shirts with crappy pseudo-oriental designs
that probably passed as ‘exotic’ in their drab little world (a red a white and
a blue cos they’re good ol’ British boys), overgelled curly fringes with
shaved back’n’sides, one earring per ear and meaningless tattoos done when
drunk by someone probably even more drunk. ‘Hardmen’. “Stay calm,” I
whispered to my hapless chums, before turning to the intruders. Their little
lamps were still pulsing, making the place look like an outside nightclub, and
the effect was kickstarting the MDMA I’d eaten: I wanted to stack shelves, feed
the birds and gurn like a goodun- fuck, I wanted to rave hard in the graveyard.
All very pleasurably inappropriate. They stood in silence, legs apart, having
all clearly watched at least one more western than was strictly good for them.
I said, “And what the fuck do you want?”
They
laughed with what they no doubt judged to be ‘menace’, and placed their lights
on the ground, stepping into the clearing.
“Money.”
“Drugs.”
“Your
head on a fucking plate mate.”
I
walked up to them. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.
Wouldn’t mind sticking it to old redhead there neither.”
“Yeah.”
“You
fucking know that mate.”
Time
to play the hero: time to stand in front of Lucy and defend her honour. “If you
touch her, if you lay one fucking finger on her, you’ll be the
one with his head on a plate you thick little cuntfuck.”
The
one in white looked mildly impressed at my... I don’t know, spirit
perhaps: he then walked up to me, calmly grabbed my face (a large handspan, I
had a thumb in one ear and a pinkie in the other) and then pushed. I hurtled
backwards, caught myself quite nastily behind the knees on a gravestone, which
I backwards-somersaulted over to land on the grass. And there I lay in silence,
completely still.
“Right,”
said White. “Anyone else wanna act the badman? No? Good.” I couldn’t quite see
from where I was, but could all too easily imagine my housemates’ feverish
headshaking. “Now, what drugs you guys on?”