Memoires of a Heroinhead

Dear Alan – Letters to the Last Days of Youth

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:38:00 +0000

.
Letter #1

Dear Alan, Do you ever think of the years 1988 – 1993, that incredible six year long summer we spent together which built in heat and intensity and culminated in you knocking back a bottle of Pernod before ramming your motorbike head-first into the metal railings of Greyhound Park? I only ask because I do, I think of those days a lot. And even though we've not seen one another for almost 20 years I still often wonder where you are and how your life panned out. I imagine you probably grew a beard, became an alcoholic and eked out a meagre, rural existence somewhere, fishing with string and tin cans and using cow shit for fuel... Though I always was romantic in those ways. But that's not really why I write. It's more because of July of whatever-year-it-was, that Sunday morning which brought you to my door, fresh out of a suicide attempt, smelling of aniseed and with a face so laden with drink that it was hanging an inch off the bone. That last great Sunday... I'd like to talk about that.

Dear Alan, I wanted to punch you. You stood there an embarrassment to the art of standing: stooped over and swaying like one of those heavy-bottomed toys which never fall over. Your lipstick was smeared, your eye-liner was run and your long, blonde hair was wiped down flat across across your brow: you looked like a water colour of my mother which had been left out in the rain. For eight seconds you didn't speak. Then you said: “I'm going home, Boy-O... back to Ireland, NOW!” Do you remember? You said that we were killing ourselves but that fate had decreed you was to live. Jesus! Normally you'd knock me up with a joint or a quarter bottle of scotch still rushing with your back swill. The last thing I expected were tears and incoherent tales of how you'd smashed yourself into the railings, survived, seen The Light, and was taking the evening ferry home. Then it was me who couldn’t speak. I had no choice. My closed mouth was all that kept the tears in. And it ended like that. No questions, and no trying to convince you to stay, just those little sounds which precede total breakdown and that desperate bear-hug which always erupts on the point of tears so as men don't have to see each other cry. Four floors above nothing we held on for life, and with the smell of your leather jacket in my nose, I stared across to the park, at your mangled bike which was still caught up and smoking in the railings. And with that embrace we said goodbye to youth and entered the depression of adulthood, that phase of life where we try to reconcile ourselves as people and search around for the things we lost on the free-wheel down. And do you remember how you handed me that little yellow piece of paper with your Irish address on it? Through quivering words, you said: “Now, you make sure you keep in contact, Boy-O... Now you fucking promise me, ya hear!” I pushed the paper away and told you I didn't want your address as I wasn't good at keeping contact and preferred people who were gone to be stayed gone. Really I was just angry and hurt. It wasn't true I never kept contact, it was just I'd never had anyone to keep contact with. When I closed my door I broke down. I wasn't so strong as all that. You should have known! You should have stuck the note to my door, put it through the letter box, given it to my mother, something... not let it drift off over the balcony and flutter away like an early autumn leaf. I suppose we were both weak people acting tough... a perfect breeding place for regrets.

God, how it really feels like it all happened only yesterday, like I could descend four flights of stairs and come out into that life we once lived. Does it feel like that to you, Alan? Do you live that same shock I do each day, looking in the mirror to see two decades of drug and cigarette and fast food abuse staring back? You wouldn't recognize me now, Alan... I've changed so much, and not all for the better!

Letter #2

Dear Alan, things come and things go and memories come in and arrive on strange winds which I have no real control over. Sometimes a shifting sun can set off a shadow that takes me back. It's as if I'm being constantly thrown around all over the place. To write things down in the order in which they happened is as impossible as it would be useless. The order in which bullets come out a gun is not important, all that matters is the order in which they hit you. That's a weak defence for my writing on whim and asking you to excuse me for abandoning any kind of chronological order. But these words are about emotional order. Time-lines show nothing but how we got to where we are; they completely miss out on who we are. Fuck the clock. The horrors of war are all lost in time.

Alan, I'd like to talk about innocence... maybe our last ever truly innocent day. I suppose there could be many, and maybe you even have your own marker or maybe you just never think of things like that? Still, for me, it's of that day when I was fifteen and you was a little older and we were laying out in the cool of the milky grass, smoking hash and listening to the shouts and cheers of the cricket game. Do you remember how that felt? The sound of leather clacking off wood and young boys and adults jumping up bare-chested and whooping with joy in the afternoon heat? We lay a good distance off, on our backs, with the dark orange light of the sun behind our eyelids. In that hypnotic state you suddenly said, “I've got some speed,” something we'd talked about wanting to try for months. I opened an eye and squinted across. You remained on your back, eyes closed behind your shades, though quite aware I was looking. You pulled a smug smile. God, you was serious! Do you remember how I was suddenly so excited? How my shadow descended over you and how you remained still and teased me more. I called you 'Fuck Face' and prodded and poked for details, demanding you let me see it. You didn't respond, just remained there: a grin and a pair of black shades, arms flopped down by your sides. And then, very slowly and deliberately, you opened your right hand and in it was a little rectangular wrap of paper. It was as if you had an inch of sun right in your palm. Barely had I time to see it than a cricket ball went fizzing by, followed by the stamp of some sweaty kid. As he approached you closed your hand, and for a moment it was gone.

Fuck, what an evening that was A kind of loaded revelation. Do you remember? How we experienced one of the greatest highs of our lives? Me, terribly shy and finding it difficult to talk was suddenly thriving and couldn't keep the words in. Everything I'd ever read or skimmed or saw was there on the tip of my tongue and accessible. For a moment I really did feel a part of the world. My elbows didn't feel awkward and bony and my speech wasn't broken or punctuated with 'ums' and 'ers'. And you was the same, shivering with ecstatic speed chills, incessantly rocking away and twisting your hair, a history of Celtic mythology in your dilated pupils as the last Central Line tube rocketed us home. That weekend was the start of real drugs and alcohol, discovering Soho and all her sleazy Rock Clubs and hangouts. Things changed after that. Not for better or worse, they just changed... we were changing. I think we realised that drugs didn't only have to be taken for fun, that they could also be used to give us things we lacked. No matter, along with cigarettes, hash and alcohol, amphetamine also became a regular fixture – and it wasn't too long after that that our mothers' lipsticks started disappearing...

Alan, I hope you think back fondly on those times – you must, really. It'd be a crime not to. Being seventeen and sat crimping each other's hair and doing one another's make-up... Placing tabs of LSD on each other's tongue like we were taking Holy Communion. Do you remember? And what of the time you told me on the 260 night-bus that you was in love and couldn't stop thinking of that mysterious girl who had asked you to dance? And then I suppose you felt very weak and embarrassed and so got angry and punched yourself flat-fisted in the nose. I still remember that bloody, drunken, embarrassed grin you gave, your eyes still smarting and your face twitching from the real pain underneath. I think it was the first time you had hurt in any way but a physical one. Then you made out like it was all an idiotic drunken emotion, and we twisted it around to something cool and wrote 'Love's a Bitch' up our necks in black eye-liner. Fuck, we didn't even know what love was... but we were so fucking right! Still, I wonder what happened to that girl? If she ever forgave you for assaulting her in the Astoria nightclub after you came around from a drunken stupor, mistook her for a squat, stubbled biker and punched her out. And then I have to wonder how you ever fell in love with her in the first place. That really was fucked up. I suppose it just goes to show how vulnerable and needy we really were. And do you remember how we were thrown from the club that night? Our arms twisted up sore behind our backs then rammed head-first through those claret coloured double doors. God, how cool we thought we looked! Tumbling out onto the Soho pavement in cowboy boots and tight stretch jeans and rolling into the bin bags like the Saviours of sleaze. I think it could only have been stupidity that had us back at the club door, banging and kicking away for our jackets, screaming: “Fuck You!!!” at those vicious looking bouncers the other side who threatened us with terrible beatings and broken kneecaps. And d'you remember when our jackets were eventually slung our way, how we were too frozen for them to make much difference? Then, just as we were taking comfort from the thought that we'd soon be being driven home in a warm taxi we realised that the bastards had lifted our wallets. We were left penniless and had to walk 25 miles home down the frozen A40 with chattering teeth, rattling bullet belts, goose-pimpled tattoos and only youth and cigarettes to keep us alive.

And what about that time when we were both tripping and were convinced we were pilots in the first great war? You wore shades and your grandfather's old cannonball crash-helmet and I sported swimming googles and a child's boxing headguard. Dressed like that and barefooted we ended up on your motorbike, speeding down to Heathrow where we thought the Spitfires were. Do you remember how as we came to a stop in some late afternoon traffic we spotted two policemen on bikes on the other side of the A-road, staring at us in utter disbelief and motioning for us to stay put? We made out we hadn't seen and zoomed off. It was only the genius of the central divide which stopped us having our idiotic asses slung in jail for the night. Instead , we drove home and strutted around like fighter aces until the acid wore off. You know, that was one of only three decent trips I ever had? My norm on LSD was to flip out and climb the walls, always begging you for guidance out from that world. Those drugs just weren't for me, Alan... especially the hallucinogens. If any drug fucked me up m!ore than tobacco it was LSD. It was bad enough having the ability to see what was there, let alone what wasn't. And anyway, I didn't want to see inside myself or others... I already knew the pile of shit that us humans are. Soon though I discovered my drug: opiates. I annoyed you in those times, I know... drifting off on awake dreams while you were wanting the companionship and brotherhood of old. You liked the image of opiates but not their physical effects... or maybe the effect they had on me? We kinda parted a little then, do you recall? You was flying high and I was dredging along the murky depths. We soon only ever met when you came down and I came up. And the days we had no drugs or alcohol at all we stayed locked in our respective rooms, listening to music and writing poems about death. Looking back on it now we were already halfway to having a psychological dependence on drugs... social occasions had become impossible without them.

Letter #3

Dear Alan, how's your mother? Is she still alive? Did she ever come to terms with you being a 'transsexual'? It's weird, she accepted it so willingly in me, and yet in You it split her life and faith in two. Do you remember how she started buying and reading all the rock and metal mags, searching for proof that guys who dressed in patent leather and wore make-up were not queers? How relieved she was when she found out that it was much more likely that you was a child-sacrificing member of the Church of Satan... At least confession and a few Sundays in church could cure that! And do you remember how she flipped out at the thought of you returning to Waterford in stilettos, lipstick and eyeliner? How she threatened to disown you if you took the ferry looking like that? In an attempt to flee your present life with respect and enter your new one on the same footing you did the opposite of what most late teens do: you left the house looking like the Bride of Frakenstein and changed into dull, itchy, rural clothes around the corner! I would have understood, you know. Still, I'm glad my last image of you was leaving Wolfe House with your hair crimped and wearing my red leather jacket. Though Alan, I have to tell you, you looked so fucking pathetic and really always did! You were just the wrong shape for glam rock. I only ever told you you looked cool because I wanted to get out and get fucked up and if i'd have told you the truth we'd never have left my bedroom. Excuse me for that. It was mighty selfish. But that's what happens when you stand somebody drinks too often.

While on the subject of family, what ever happened with your father's inheritance money? I heard tales of you pissing it all away during a six month bike ride around Ireland with a shaven-headed gypsy girl? What was that about? And then I heard even stranger rumours of you and Finbar taking advantage of a freshly broken arm and stage-managing an accident in a supermarket in Ballycullane? Veronica told me that you laid down in a patch of spilt milk and settled out of court for fifty grand? Fuck, I hope it's true... it's hearing of such victories which keep me going! And speaking of broken bones, Jesus, I still cringe in horror when I think of that awful time you asked us to break your ankle so as you could get the summer off work to watch the World Cup. I know you'll not have forgotten that. Maybe you're now even suffering from some permanent damage we imparted? Me, twenty years on, I still spring awake some nights to the crack of snapping bones. There's a story floating around somewhere that it was me who finally put your ankle through, but as you know it wasn't, it was that sadistic fuck Paul. I tried, but my brain just wouldn't allow me to bring that steel bar down on you with sufficient clout. I hurt you, but no more. That's when Paul stepped up to the helm, licking his lips at the ghoulish prospect of disabling a friend. Do you remember how he even took the precaution of packing books under your inner calf so as to further weaken the intended point of impact? You was lying on your side, half off the sofa with your right leg outstretched and your outer ankle exposed. After agreeing that Paul was to hit you on the count of three you scrunched up your eyes in anticipation of the pain to come. If you was ever going to raise your hand and back out you was sorely out of luck. Paul, showing a glint of humanity, hit you when you wasn't expecting it, on the count of 'two'. Oh Christ, that depraved sound! It was like the crack of a gunshot. And how you shot up in the air, screaming in agony... then worse, all 180lbs of you instinctively coming back down on that foot, which folded. On the floor you shrieked like the banshee, tears streaming because the pain was so intense. ANKLE SHATTERED IN 11 PLACES: that's what the x-ray showed. And sure enough you got the summer off work and together we all watched the 1990 World Cup, the Republic of Ireland crashing out to Italy in the quarter finals.

There was something special about those times... for me anyway. We were living at the arse end of one of London's most notorious, run-down and crime ridden council estates, and yet there was a kind of magic all around which made life glow. Dreams existed in that place. That's what it was. When the day was done and the night came down, God, staring out across London at far off twinkling lights could make you cry. Do you ever think of things like that? See also a beauty in the broken homes and social problems and the human fallout which we had to live besides? Ponder over shared cigarettes like they were kisses? Or remember snippets of useless conversations which have no right to be memories at all? I do, constantly... they all seem like clues to some huge mystery which is woven through existence. In the last years such small things have taken on such seemingly great significance. Maybe that's why I'm writing to you? I don't know. I don't know what these words are for??? They just are.

Letter #4

Dear Alan, why on your return to London in the autumn of 1995 did you purposely search me out? I never really did figure that one out. It was eighteen months after you'd left and you found me sitting outside The George in Soho in the same place we had always sat. Do you remember how you kicked me awake from my eastern dreams? I didn't recognize you. You had shaved off your hair and was wearing biker boots and leathers. I thought you was one of the Outlaws looking for trouble. I was properly full on opiates by then. I suppose we had both stopped pretending... or almost. Almost as I have to admit that I wasn't really as thin as I acted. It was a put on: the limp wrists and sucked in cheeks, as if I was barely strong enough to hold myself together. That's what happens on the crux of addiction when you're still playing around with it. The vomit was real though. Do you remember you patted me on the back as I threw up outside the Intrepid Fox and said you was leaving? I held up my hand and kept my head down, dry retching as you disappeared for the last time. I didn't even look back. Secretly I was glad you was going... there was too much between us, and one night in a lifetime means nothing to me. Still, how did the abortion go? That's why you were over. Young Girl X was up the duff. As you'll never reply to this letter, I hope it passed OK. I still think it's crazy that you couldn't get an abortion in Southern Ireland. Crazy. And did you ever have any children? I reckon you probably did and probably don't have any contact with them. I don't quite know why I imagine that??? You just seemed emotionally very cold towards family and the like. I never had children. I wouldn't bring something with a vertebrae into this world. And that's not a damning indictment of the state-of-play; it's a damning indictment of me: I just wouldn't dump my hand-me-down genes onto someone. And anyhow, you couldn't bring up a child on my morals, and I couldn't condescend to the morality that a child would need to find its bearings in this world. That's the thing with parenthood, you have to deceive from the start. In a way it's a great tamer of immoral men... a social means to get the infidels under control and thinking in the correct way. Imagine that, at twenty eight, you have to start believing in Santa Claus and happy endings again! No, barring some kind of terrible accident, I will never be a dad.

As for the clubs and Soho, well, that all ended ugly too. Rumours were rife that I was shooting dope in the toilets of the Wag Club, and though that wasn't true, it brought out a sickening, square, conservative side of Rock music which I came to despise - everyone becoming morally responsible and damning me for bringing “that shit around 'ere!” Each member of the flock suddenly had a band member who had died from a smack OD, taking their rotten dreams with him. The entire nightclub fraternity first ostracised and then stoned me. Can you believe that? What with every other scenester pretending they were junkies, painting their eyes black and sitting around itching their forearms! And yet, when they thought that someone had actually gotten into that underside of things they cast him out. Really it was all about unfair competition: the pretenders worried about having to compete for cock action with the real deal. So, I was ejected from that clique and banned from entering the clubs I was working for! A little after that my friend Ewan died. When it was discovered that heroin was involved I was warned out of Soho altogether, threatened that if I stepped foot in the square mile again I'd be the next one getting buried. Well, you know me, the first thing I did on hearing that was take a RETURN ticket into town. Nothing happened. One club promoter made a spurious attempt to attack me with a broken bottle – only to be miraculously restrained by some passing eighty year old invalid! I saluted and bowed out the scene.

Final letter #5

Dear Alan, the time has come to thank you for not fucking my mother – it's always the hallmark of genuine friendship. Though you did have ample opportunity, and that was hard enough to live with at the time. D'you remember those evenings that we used to pass in my bedroom having smoking sessions? By midnight we'd be completely wrecked, just sat there staring into the immediate nothingness. The night seemed so terribly lonely and sad in those moments. Sadder still were the noises which came through the wall, from my mother's room next-door: her groans and screams as she fucked her way through the lodgers (even those with rent arrears!) It still touches me to remember how you never once remarked on it, just always stretched across and turned the music up to drown it out. You was the only friend who knew anything of the real problems that were going on in my home. Then of course there was that terrible afternoon when you had to help me lift my mother off the floor and put her on the couch. Do you remember? Gravity had really gotten a hold of her that day, and no matter how we tried to lift her she always flopped about and dragged down heavy in some other place. It was as if her bones had been removed. Again, you never made a thing of it... not a word. We just went outside and shared a silent cigarette on the balcony. That's when she started calling: “Allaaaaan.... Alllaaaaan...” I called back asking what she wanted. She screamed: “I want Alan, NOT YOU!” And so you handed me the cigarette and went to see what she wanted. What she wanted was pretty damn clear: when you opened the door she was lying bollock naked on the couch with her legs spread, a hulk of dribbling meat, like something that had fallen off a Francis Bacon painting. I was just behind and pulled you out the room before you could see too much... and you'd already seen too much. As we got back outside we heard the thud of her body as it fell off the sofa and landed on the floor. I looked at you. “Just leave it,” you said, “just leave it.” And for the first time in my life I did... I just left it.

Anyway, my mother's much better now. She's completely off the drink and hasn't touched crack or heroin in almost four years. Once she gets off the methadone she'll be completely clean. But the thing is this: you really have missed your chance, Boy-O! Ten years ago she went through the menopause and now even the mention of sex makes her shiver with disgust. It's still hard getting my head around that. Most adults find it difficult to imagine that their parents still have sex; I find it difficult to imagine my mother NOT having sex. But it's happened: age has tamed the old girl. In that way, it's really very sad.

Oh Alan, surely all this didn't happen as long ago as the years say it did? But if not then how come we're all getting old, and some of us have died, and my mother's an OAP? Time's passed Alan... time's really passed and it makes me sad to know it. It's such an impossible thing to comprehend. Can you fathom it? It makes me think of this mental retard I knew growing up called Chris. He was in his thirties and I was nine. We used to ride our bikes together, but mostly he just sat on his and watched. Years later, whenever I'd bump into him, he'd start up with these retarded innocent questions... over and over.

“You got the time, mate?” he'd start off with. Then: “Have you seen Johnny lately? How's Johnny? Have you seen Johnny?” Then he'd ask: “What year is it today?” I would tell him that the day doesn't have a year, and he'd reply “Everything has a year!” That's when he'd start up with: “Where does time go? It must go somewhere? Do you know where time goes? Funny thing, time! Where does it go? Do YOU know? Time, it must go somewhere?”

Well, now I'm the mental retard, and I'm asking you: What year is it today? Have you seen Johnny lately? Where does time go? It must go somewhere? Do YOU know?
- - -
Alan, what a life its been. I think I'm tired. Other than our bones we'll never get a break... that's just one of those happy endings I was talking about. The marks they're really beginning to show. I'm starting to look like the life I've led, and I suppose you don't look much better. If you have news don't send it my way... we're different people now, and this letter is to who you was then. I prefer to remember you like that... Young, wild and sacred, kicking back at life while smarting from love's first tender blows. That was You and that was Me and that was another time...

Take Care, My Friend... In Loving Memory of a time that was... Six summers yours,

Shane, X

Coming Up For Air...

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Fri, 11 May 2012 00:53:00 +0000

For those of you checking for a new post or feed, the wait is almost over....

There'll be a new Memoires post put up within the next few days. It will be a post about youth and love and friendship and lipstick on the eve of adulthood. It will belong to the nostalgic set of posts which get put up around here.... I suppose they all do. It will start with a motorbike crash and not get much happier than that.

It's 02.55am on a lonely friday morning.... I'm suffering from a badly cut hand and lack of sleep. If you're after poetry it's in the works. For now, it's one last cigarette then the night is mine...

Take care All... it's an empty world full of people... Shane. X

SICK

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 03:03:00 +0000

.
Sick. We were sick. We lay in bed, wrapped up in filthy blankets, smoking, sometimes fucking, doing animal things, you know... like being sick.

Sick. We were sick. Sick in bed. Sick in life. Sick by life. Sick. And we made each other sick.

Sick. Watching TV for days on end, sweating furiously but too bored to pull the covers off. Filthy feet. Filthy legs. Separated by a valley of cigarette ends. Stuffing our faces full of fatty, greasy foods. Shutters down. Apartment crawling with bugs. Toilet blocked. Sick. We were so fucking sick.

Sick. Not dope sick. Life sick. Diseased by pasts and visions and sounds and leather belts and erect cocks and murder. Sick. We were made sick by all these things. Sick. Sickened by cunt. Wet mushy drunken gang-banged cunt. Sick. We were sick. I was Sick. She was sick.

Sick. Locked in the apartment, blankets up against the windows, dust in the sunbeams, Repulsion looping on the DVD player. Sick, the room smelled of sick. Two diseased lovers with open welts, leaking abscesses, strange bumps and sores and scars. Sick. The days made us sick. Fresh air made us sick. We stopped answering the door, muted the TV, and silently gagged when the buzzer rang. Sick. We looked at each other in terror, sick, a mirror of ourselves, sick. And in the bed we lay, puking up milk and yoghurt in our sleep, choking to death on the trauma of the life we had seen. Sick. That's what we were: Sick.

And outside, the grimy, slick, lit up city became a hostile place. We concocted stories and plots, sick sick things, of a world of enemies encroaching upon us. Sick, we listened through the walls, eyed neighbours through the spy-hole: big, warped, looping faces, coming in, examining our door, the apartment bugged. Sick, the postman working for Interpol. Sick, police surveillance in the building opposite. Sick. We invented laws, sick laws, laws that said the flat couldn't be raided between 3 and 5am. So we'd rise, sick, in the early hours, cracking eggs and frying sausages and bacon and cabbage and bread; stuffing our mouths full of sandwiches dripping oil and ketchup, then, climbing back into bed and pulling the blankets tight around our necks so as we couldn't smell our own arseholes. Sick. The times were sick. We were sick. The hours were sick, and they dripped on by.

Sick. We slept like the sick: feverish, groaning and tensing up, our hair wet with sweat and stuck to our brows, mucus, dribble, crying through dreams, clenched fists and ugly faces. Sick. We were sick. Saying, “It hurts! It hurts so bad!” Drifting off into worlds of black, The Sins of our Fathers seeping out our skins. Sick. Ravaged by life. Sick. Sick to the bones. Turning grey. Fingers dark yellow. World shut out. TV on. Lines of bugs filing up the bin bags. Insane erections leaking watery cum. Tampons kicked to the bottom of the the bed with the socks. The flies gathering. Death getting near. Sick. We were so terribly sick.

Sick. 114 missed calls. 33 new messages, battery low, notes under the door, sick:

“Where R U?” [sic]
“Called to read lekky meter. return monday @ noon” [sic]
“Sis, Are You OK? Call me.” [sic]
“Your shower's leaking into our apartment!” [sic]
“24/7 Plumbing emergency services: need access ASAP!” [sic]
“Whats happening? Please answer phone. Getting vry worried!” [sic]
“Monday noon. Called, no answer. Please leave meter reading on door.” [sic]
'Domino's Pizza Wednesday Special. Half-Price. Free home delivery' [sic]
“Sis, I know your there. if you don't give sign will call police!” [sic]
“Ceiling and bathroom carpet ruined. phoning agency. It's raw sewage! PIGS!!!” [sic]

Sick. We did what we had to do: sent a text; pushed the notes back under the door; held our livers and crawled back into bed. Sick. We were made sick and we spewed it all out. On the floors, into bags, on the blankets, on each other, we were sick. Bright yellow bile, lumps of intestine, slithers of liver, black jellied blood. Sick, our kisses were sick. In the 69 position we were sick. Sucking and licking and bobbing like children, retching on each others pleasure. Sick.You tasted of curdled milk and fresh-smeared shit, and God knows what I was to you. Sick, our future was SICK. Our love was SICK. We were SICK, doing animal things, you know... like eating grass, getting better by being SICK.

To The End of Rotten Love

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 02:38:00 +0000

.
There's been a murder, a young girl, and now I can't sleep.

It happened a little over four hours ago. I woke up to a symphony of banging and screaming coming from the upstairs apartment. In the dark, I lay on my bed, listening to the ruckus. It was a wrestling match. Two bodies tumbling around, kneecaps and elbows making blunt thuds overhead, then someone scrambling to their feet and bounding heavy-footed across the floor, screaming. I lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out like the bored.

From within the melee above I could make out two voices. One was that of a young girl and the other a man. The girl was hysterical, sometimes shouting insults and at other times shrieking as if desperate to to be let loose. The man made mostly angry sounds, like something driven mad. His only comprehensible words were: “WHORE! SLUT! WHORE!” Both voices were ruined with alcohol, a hateful rasp that writhed through their insults.

Woken for good, my eyes adjusted to the dark. On my back I concentrated on the fight, following it back and forth across the ceiling while trying to work out which part of whose body had hit what. At times the thumping and screaming became so bad that I was unsure of just where the fight was coming from. It was as if my neighbours to the left, right, behind and above were all going at it, like the entire apartment block had gone insane and all the occupants were participating in some surreal, early morning, communal bust-up. My bedsit quaked. From the far wall a painting worked loose from its fixing and fell like a dead-weight. It hit the floor standing and stayed there. In a rage I hurled a shoe at the wall. That fell and stayed there too.

The light is on and I am up, sat on the edge of my bed in front of my laptop. A text screen is open. As I listen to the domestic above I try to type it up live. I cannot. When I try it comes out like this:
Two in corner, struggling. girl screams. Man enraged. Heavy thudding. Sounds like they're jumping off fucking bed. running, across room.. away. Voices not clear.. shouting. The man is shouting. Girl responds. an insult. Banging; footsteps??? Door slams shut. Someone (man) kicking door. Girls voice. Quiet.
I give up my live reporting. It's impossible to write and at the same time try to figure out what the noises are. It's equally impossible to decipher any words – not that I really care. Really I just want the dispute to end so I can get back to sleep. The fight starts up again. I light another cigarette and sit crouched over smoking and listening. Sad lonely shouts and screams accompany me and the night. I think fuck it and cook up a hit. With domestic violence on repeat in the background I slide a blunt, Sunday night needle into the back of my calf, pinning a newly surfaced vein which forks up from around my Achilles heel. After the shot the girl upstairs sounds like she's in the bathroom. Maybe she even is.

It was about then that things started breaking. I could hear them hit the wall and shatter as I sat trying to align a flame to my cigarette. In between the bombardment the man was bawling: “I loved you!!!!” I loved you!!!!” For his declarations of spent love he received an ashtray, or a plant pot, or some vicious reminder of the inadequate size of his penis. And so it went on... My apartment being battered by the fight above; my paintings all worked crooked from the vibrations. I sat on a chair near the wall, tranquillized. Like a change of light, a sudden melancholy came over me. The sounds of the upstairs domestic were then all too familiar – something I'd lived before. They romanced tears, though not totally sad ones. I closed my eyes and nodded forward. History filtered down through the walls and filled the room, and for a moment, I drifted away... … …

The room smells of spilled Martini, mint chewing gum, and the bottom of my mother's handbag. The noise of the fight sounds like it's coming out of an old radio. In the dark, behind my closed eyes, I can make out shapes; they scare me. I am back in time, alone, eight years old, standing downstairs in the cold, dark back room where the slugs live. My fingers are in my ears and I am humming and dancing to block out the sounds. Up above, mum and dad are going at it. When enough time seems to have passed I uncover my ears and hope to hear silence. Instead I can still hear the fight, my mother hitting off the wall and crashing down into her perfume cabinet, the bottles bouncing around and clacking together like beach stones. I re-plug my ears. The next time I uncover them I hear my father tramping down the stairs. I pray that it's over, that mum will keep her mouth shut and let him disappear to bed. But before I've even time to harbour any real hope there's a flurry of insults from my mother and then dad is bounding back up the stairs only to have the door slammed flat against his even flatter nose. Dad charges the door. He bursts in to furious squirts of Chanel 'bootleg' No.5, mum rushing at him, blinding him with perfume while screeching out my name. I replug my ears and dance and hum some more. I don't want to hear my name. My name means I must go and hit dad over the back with a cricket bat and I don't want to. The thought of hurting dad hurts me. It hurts so bad I could cry. It's not love because I'm only eight and don't know what love is. More it's that tomorrow Dad's promised to buy me new shoes. How can I hit a man with a cricket bat when tomorrow he'll buy me new shoes? Buy me something more than what I need with money more than what we have? I can't. I block out the sound and dance some more. Even at this young age I know the morning always comes and we must face up to what we've done in the dark. Filtering down from up above were those same sounds again tonight: the same chase; the same screams; the same foul, acerbic drunken insults – a lifetime of rotten love, piercing the night and floating off over the city. Real-life drama. Something to listen to and try to work out – that was all. So I sat there in the early hours, alone, listening to the past and the present and feeling kinda sad.

It's 3am. The fight above has been going on for over 90 minutes. I am back, perched on the edge of my bed, staring at the disjointed text I had written earlier. The main light is off and my standing lamp lights up the bottom half of half the room. The couple upstairs are taking a break from knocking each other's teeth out and for the moment are content with screaming at each other. But not only insults, there's some kind of dialogue going on, even if it's not what can be called conversation. Eager to know what has kept two lovers fighting for so long and what has woken my night I take to standing with my ear against the wall. From what I could figure it seemed that the couple had spent the night out drinking. At some time during the evening the man had begun seeing The Great Whore of Babylon wriggling through his girl – a temptress, her hand feeling out the contours of bulging erections through tight trousers as she swept past strange men; cocks crawling across the floor towards her; his sweet girl – dick-charming – her head thrown back in laughter, showing off a long sexual throat, a serpent for a tongue, her eye catching his and humiliating him further as he watched through the distorted lens of drunkenness: a 360° haze of people laughing and jeering, him stood in the centre, impotent, self-loathing, swaying while watching: his girl, drunk and loose and arousing cock after cock after cock. It all came out; an insane jealousy. Weeks, months, maybe years or torment and imagined happenings. The girl swore off his nonsense. That only enraged him further and brought him about her once more, this time with an ungodly screech like you'd maybe give while finally exorcising your nemesis. Heavy footsteps shook my apartment once more before the fight tailed off into some nearby room, culminating in an almighty crash against something. From the struggle worrying noises surfaced, the girl gagging and flapping as if being throttled while the man shrieked like something gone wild. The throttling sounds didn't last long. By the time I had placed them the girl was free and scampering across the floor, the man warning, “No, no, NO!!!!” In the room directly above I heard the window banging and rattling, and for a moment the girl's anguish was free and real, cutting the back of the city in two. The word “whore” was the last one to taste the night before the girl's scream was dragged back in by the ankles, the window pulled shut, and the fight privatized once more – now with kicking and full-combat violence. Stood below, my heart thumping, I seriously contemplated calling the French emergency services. I verified the number, thinking: “I should call the police.” Then I thought: “I certainly SHOULDN'T call the police”, that “someone else will surely do it.” But it's 2012, we've heard it all before. It's entertainment for those without cable TV. I don't have cable TV. No-one made the call.

At 03h37 the girl was on the floor and I think she was being kicked. I could hear her whimpering over in the corner and making scratchy sounds like she was curling herself up. It made me think of a hamster I used to have. Standing beneath the spot where I assumed she was I banged on the ceiling with a mop. Immediately the fight stopped and the man hissed something at the girl. I heard no reply. Her silence was answered by what sounded like her being stomped... one, two, three times. Listening to such stuff made my belly empty and nervous. My legs felt weak. I banged again. For a moment all was calm, and then there was movement and the girl pulled herself up. I thought of my mother, and it all started again.

During some moments the dispute would quieten down. Like when fighting dogs rest still, locked onto one another, froth and blood on their coats, catching breath before tugging and ripping at each other some more. It was like that. Only now, as the fight wore on, it was increasingly the man's rage I could hear. The young girl seemed done for, and soon she even stopped resisting, just succumbed, and like me was surely hoping for an end.

Listening to the racket of the fight was no longer fun. It hadn't been fun anyway, but at first it was something to do to after it had so rudely woke me up. Now I hung below, genuinely worried, a pained expression on my face, concentrating on the disturbing one-way violence from upstairs. I took my phone in hand and typed in the emergency number '17'. I stared at the number. SE-VEN-TEEN. It didn't seem as serious as calling '999'. I thought hard, paced the room and then closed the phone.

The problem was that by calling the police I'd risk being arrested myself. My apartment was chock full of used needles, heroin, old wraps, filters and black market methadone bottles carrying weird names that just weren't on my passport. And even if there are many police who'd wave that aside in lieu of a real serious crime, there are just as many others who'd arrest me, and maybe even suspect me of having something to do with the dispute I was reporting. So I thought about calling the police and then I quickly thought against it. I toyed with the idea of tidying away all incriminating evidence and then phoning, but that would have taken a good hour as I'd also need to scrub the blood off the doors and walls. Also, when you've been using smack for so many years and are accustomed to being around needles and spoons and wrappers and blood, you stop being able to see these things, and so tidying up and hiding it becomes impossible because you can no longer see what you're supposed to hide. So I left it. Everybody left it.

I suppose we all thought someone else would call the cops, or they'd just arrive. They always arrive when it's you. So the fight went on, and though it didn't escalate or seem to get any worse it never stopped, lingering on like a dying fire, occasionally flaring up before settling down again. And it was on that flame that tragedy blew in and gave this night to history.

* * *
First there was a thud, then the ceiling shuddered; and then there was silence. Mid-fight the dispute suddenly stopped and I was left sitting on my bed with my head cocked listening for any sound at all. There wasn't a tinkle. Not a footstep; not things being picked up; not exhausted voices calling a truce, not the bed rattling as the two lovers made up – nothing. I sat there in the strange silence, trying to figure out what had happened. I eyed my unaligned paintings as proof that I hadn't imagined it all. Death or injury never entered my mind, more I imagined that the lovers had burned themselves out, or that the alcohol had worn off and they were sitting across from each other huffing and bleeding and all punched out. But it was weird, like a film that just ends with no music or closing credits. It's over and you wonder if it's a mistake or artistic choice while waiting for some kind of confirmation either way. For some time I sat on pause too, and when nothing happened I hit the light and climbed into bed.

It was a good twenty minutes later when I sensed that the world outside was astir. It was nothing distinct, nothing audible, an intuitive understanding that sat in the air, like when a door is left open or someone is staring at you on a packed train. It just didn't feel lonely enough for it to be 4am in a french ghetto. I got up and made my way to the double set of front doors which lock me in. The outer door leading to the street is on rails, and when closed there's an inch gap on either side which is perfect for spying from. In the dark I stood peering out. Fifty yards down, outside the entrance to the main building, were two police cars. Past the police cars and falling out of shot there was a loose crowd with more arriving. As I watched a twirling blue light lit up the night scene and an ambulance drove into view. From the apartment blocks way down lights were on; whole families up against their windows or out on their balconies staring across. For a moment my view blacked over as my neighbour came out in his bed-clothes, barefooted, and stood there smoking. A man, a stranger, joined him. He asked what had happened. My neighbour mentioned the earlier fight then threw his hands up as if not sure if the two incidents were related. I wanted to go out and take a look at the action, gauge if this was worth staying up for or the anti-climax to what had seemed a pretty decent if terribly sad bust-up. I thought again of the drugs and paraphernalia lodging with me and stayed put. In the pitch dark I lit a cigarette and hung there silently like some guilty spectre watching the mayhem it had caused. Not being here was about the best thing I could be tonight. Up above there were noises afresh; not fighting, footsteps, some other activity going on in the apartment.

For some time nothing happened and then two cars came slowly up the forecourt. They stopped a little distance off. Three plain clothes officers wearing orange police armbands got out and made their way down towards the crowd. Almost immediately there was some out-of-sight commotion. An armed, black-booted, uniformed Policeman briefly appeared, made some kind of a gesture and then went running off back into the building. The three plain clothes went running after him. I decided it was time to get dressed and get outside. I rushed into my bedsit, pulled on some clothes , wrapped up my gram of smack, and pushed all the drug paraphernalia into a bin bag. I gave my hob a quick wipe down for traces of blood, carbon, and cooked heroin, and then went outside to join the crowd and act as innocent as everybody else.

Outside I greeted my neighbour who was now standing a good way down from his door right on the outside edge of this side of the small crowd. He was visibly excited with wide night eyes. Over in the entrance of the building there was a lot of commotion and activity – police and a number of residents. My neighbour told me that the police had just taken a boy away, and that some time before that the paramedics had entered with a stretcher. I asked some questions but they didn't register. My neighbour was too preoccupied with what was happening inside the building. His worried and dramatic behaviour infected me. I stood peering anxiously over towards the entrance, which was now unofficially a no-go zone.

“Did the fight upstairs wake you too?” my neighbour suddenly asked.
“Yes;” I said, “I thought my ceiling was gonna come down!”
“Do you know why they were fighting? Over what?”
“God knows,” I said, “I think they were drunk.” He gave a bored, tragic look, like alcohol and domestic violence was a given, even in France. When I mentioned just how long the fightc had raged on for he seemed surprised. Like me he had heard the fighting but unlike me had drowned it out with a set of headphones, only to wake hours later with his R&B then replaced by police radios and oscillating lights. I stood with him for a moment and then worked my way around the crowd to where I had a proper view into the foyer of the building.

Inside the building the police were talking to two girls. One girl, maybe nineteen with distressed mousy hair, was squatted down under a payphone on the wall, crying, with a blanket pulled around her shoulders. The second girl, around the same age, was also visibly upset. She stood over the first girl and every now and again would wipe away her tears with the backs of her thumbs. Around the foyer of the building there were similar scenes with other neighbours, but they seemed more shocked than upset and even while being questioned kept looking over at the two girls and the policemen near the phonebooth. From what I could pick up the two girls had been in the room next door to the fighting couple and had called the police. I think they had also entered the room where the fight had been, but that wasn't entirely clear. After taking in all there was to see in the lobby I made my way back around and reported it to my neighbour. He in turn told me that he'd spoken to a friend up on the second floor and apparently the girl who'd been involved in the domestic was quite badly beaten and shocked but it didn't seem any more serious than that. He spoke of the amount of time the paramedics had been upstairs, and said if it was serious they'd have been out and gone a long time ago. So as not to complicate things I agreed. I hung around for another quarter of an hour, and with nothing moving, and the cold starting to bite, I called time and returned indoors.

Inside, out of the cold, I lit a cigarette and hung around in the dark once more spying out the gap in the door. For some time nothing happened and then the police were pushing what was left of the crowd back and making space for something. My neighbour, still outside, was now speaking on his phone, relating to someone what was happening. A paramedic left the building and backed the ambulance right up to the doorway of the building. With the view blocked, I left my apartment once more and joined the hardcore gore seekers hoping for a nightmare or two.

I could tell by the attitudes of the police towards us that no good news was going to go into the back of the ambulance which we were rallied around. They treated us with a kind of contempt, like we were criminals, trespassing in on something that should be given space and some kind of private dignity. I suppose most of us were there only for the drama, I was, but equally, many of those with guns and badges had only taken the job for the promise of such excitement, and more: to be the good side of the police line... even closer to the gory, bloody details. Neither of us had to be there, and even if we did, we didn't have to look. I eyed one of the policemen, a tall, athletic thing in black with a little paper-boat cap on his head. He looked like some militant Mcdonalds' employee. He stood there with all the indifference of duty in his posture. Now that WAS cold; my heart was racing.

To the back of the foyer the lift door opened. We all jerked to get a look but it was only a single paramedic and nothing more. He rushed over towards a door leading to the stairwell. The door opened and he helped manoeuvre a stretcher through the narrow space and into the lobby. On the stretcher was a body. The night hushed and drama became a mighty sad vision on four wheels, the sound of squeaking metal and solemn paramedics going about their work.

I couldn't see too well as the police were doing their best to block the view, and anyone idiot enough to try and force through was liable to be arrested. But I saw enough: a small body, supine, covered neatly with a white sheet, the sad and unnerving contours of the body beneath letting me know how slight the young girl was and bringing home to me that I had stood below and done nothing as she'd been systematically beaten lifeless. Death was in those elegant, covered shapes... something much more horrific than blood and guts, as it showed not the horror but only the consequence. There was no time to notice anything else. As quickly as the stretcher had appeared it was just as quickly gone, and then one paramedic rushed around to the drivers side of the ambulance as the other two remained in the back. The ambulance moved away and soon all there was to see were the other people on the other side of the crowd, all silently trying to process what they'd seen. The night suddenly seemed weird, like it really was the middle of the night. I left the crowd for the final time and walked the fifty yards back to my door. On the way I passed my neighbour. I looked at him. He looked at me. Without saying a word we both lowered our eyes to the ground, and then I was home.

- - -
The crowd is gone now but the police are still here and more have arrived since. I suppose that there will be a lot of work for some people through this and the dark nights to come, and I know a family will be woken up to tragic news and one young boy will not see freedom for a very long time. It's hard to take in and make sense of such an event when it happens, and although by tomorrow the world outside will carry on as usual, in here, something has changed and I'm sure this place can never be the same again.

It's now almost 5am. The morning is still dark and no hint of light will reach here until seven. I turn my light out and retire to my bed. It's dark outside, but not as dark as it should be. It's quiet outside, but not as quiet as it should be. Once again the world has been broken and I go to sleep to faded screams. Through the gap in my door I can see the blue light of a police car. It's hypnotic and sad, and soon in this grim night I shall find my peace.

Thanks for bearing with me Everyone... Shane. X

3000 Days in The Lost

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 16:41:00 +0000

.
It's been years now; so many years. If I think of just how many and what I've missed I'll become sadder than the word was ever meant to mean. I miss my home, my city – the dust of where I'm from.

I never knew London was so much a part of me until I became estranged from her. Up until then I mostly only ever cursed the city. I saw a rottenness within her of which I wanted no part. Only once in 30years did she ever really seem beautiful, and that didn't last long before the river turned back to the brown sludge of before and the streets and parks reclaimed their former hopelessness only then with an added air of cruelty. Though how things change through longing. How you can miss even the most terrible lover if they are suddenly no longer there; how you can see only the beauty then, when the world revolves ugly with their loss. Now, I'm exiled from my great prison, outside trying to sneak a peek back in via films, news reports and You Tube clips. I'm becoming crazy with it. Not insane crazy; rather profoundly sad nostalgic crazy. My heart is turning black, like a flower rooted in the wrong soil, I'm rotting from the inside out.

It started innocently enough, looking at Google maps and visiting the areas where I used to live and had grown up. I'd take virtual walks around, zoom into certain windows in the hope of catching a glimpse of someone I knew or a familiar ornament I had once touched. I enjoyed those virtual strolls, but they left me desperate and profoundly miserable. Finally I had to stop. It was too hard visiting those places, being almost able to suck in the diesel fumes and yet aware that not even ten metres from my door was the modern, driverless, Lyon metro system, and then thousands of miles of alien and foreign land. I could walk for months, years, and still never get to the place I needed to be. That's when I started to create something of a fantasy world within my apartment – setting up an atmosphere designed to fool myself into believing I was back home.

Mostly I do this with audio and visual tricks. I'll go online and download an entire day of British television programmes, loosely following the daily schedule. I'll set them up on an automatic playlist and run them through my TV. Anything laying around the apartment obviously French I arrange out of sight. The round two-pinned electrical plugs and sockets are an instant giveaway and so I take great care to cover them. Cigarettes are removed from the packet and left loose in the ashtray. On my bed I'll litter about a selection of old, ash filled books – always the ones which travelled with me from London and have the Pound sign on the back. With the scene all set I'll swallow a triple dose of methadone and lay myself down. Sleep is crucial. Nothing works without sleep. And it need not be long. London is a place you have to wake up to. And it's on waking, to Kilroy Silk's morning call to prayer, that the illusion really begins, and for a moment I feel that it's only six inches of brick wall which separates me from home.

Sedated, subdued, something, I'll lay on my bed and let the morning and afternoon move across the sky, distant sounds filtering in like those dull and unremarkable afternoons of the past. I'll smoke, get a coffee, and lay back down leafing through yesterday’s paper, circling TV programs to watch -- which is just about as surreal as it gets and probably as far away from sanity as I've ever been at any stage in my life. Sometimes I'll pause inbetween what I'm doing to watch a piece of the crap on the box: watch some fat guy break down and admit he's addicted to whores, or learn that cane toads in Australia are regarded as amphibious rats and some farmers blow their bellies out with shotguns. Once again the hours of my day are defined by the familiar jingles of TV programmes, buzzers going off, and comfortable voices drifting around the room and telling me to tune back in tomorrow. And I'd love to; and I will; and I'd really fucking love to.

In the evening, between Cash in the Attic and Eastenders, I phone mum. As we speak I imagine I'm just the other side of town.

“Is that the TV playing in the background?” she'll always ask.

“Yeah,” I'll reply, though I don't tell her that the news she can hear is from 1998 and Frank Sinatra has just died. For the remainder of the evening I'll lounge around, France blocked out in every direction, conjuring up images of what it must be like outside in my imaginary London. I think of the dusk and how the evenings fall with a distant tincture of tragedy this time of year; of how the street lights must just be flickering on and how the last of the days news is being scavenged from the vendors outside the stations or picked like strips of flesh from the upturned milk crates on the newsagents' floors. I imagine lit up buses with rain speckled windows, pulling out of their stops and rejoining the evening traffic, smoke drifting out the back vents as they crawl slowly into nowhere. I toy with the idea of hooding up and going out – maybe to score, or running down to the chippy to pick up a Jamaican Pattie and a Galaxy Caramel. I imagine the grime of High Street, the pavement a slippery mush of dead leaves, sodden cardboard and tramped rotten fruit. I'll let my disembodied consciousness, my Minds-Eye-Googlemap-Street-View, wander down dark back-streets that once led home. It's eerily quiet. Life is confined behind brick walls and Chubb-locked doors. The only hint of the problems housed inside is the occasional hallway light and a glimpse of the top few stairs. The church is an ominous dark projection parked on the corner; I hurry by. I can see everything. As I lay in bed alone, 560 miles from home, not a soul for a friend, not a number to phone, my head a time capsule full of my past. – I close my eyes and imagine it all.

I want to go home. I miss home. I'm sick from longing. Not always but it's always there. The days television schedule has run through and I'm sane and back in France. I don't want to die here. I want to die in the place that killed me. I want my history. The whole disgusting beautiful ugly abused and rotten lot of it. I want the London rain. I want the summer evening walks along the mansions by the river. I want my memories. I want my old invisible footsteps. I want to revisit the places where mum tried to kill herself or where we found her shacked up and bruised with her latest no-good fuck. I want to pass the registry office where I got married. I want to pass my fathers old house and pretend he's still inside mulling over past hustles and planning new ones. I want to read the local papers. England: I WANT YOUR JUNK MAIL! I want to know what deals the pizza place is offering. I want to have the numbers of all the local mini-cabs firms in a tin box by the telephone. I want to understand every word and be involved in social activity again, even if it's only being the local junkie. In France I'm not even that. Here I'm just a silent shape; a blank canvass of human form that comes and goes and sometimes buys a kebab and checks the mail. I am unexpressed. No one knows me. Here I have to offer away all my cigarettes to express something that would normally be free in words. I must hug and kiss tramps to show my politics. I have to activate 'fake call' on my phone, and stand talking to a dead line for five minutes so as people can see my natural body movements and expressions. Really, it's the only way. “No, Georges Bataille wrote that,” I'll say. “Yes, GEORGE BATAILLE!” And now they know I enjoy literature, because I cannot tell them in another way. And clothes, clothes suddenly become important. TOO important. They help to speak my words, a wealth of words no-one would ever listen to anyway, but hears never-the-less – hears and forms an intuitive picture of who you are. I have to find other ways to be discovered here, desperate ways to bring myself out of The Lost. France, listen to me: I'M SAD AND I'M DOWN AND I'M LONELY... NOT EVEN THE DOGS UNDERSTAND ME! Your cafés are killing me, and it's not the passive smoke (that's been banned!) I can't even kill myself comfortably in public any more. You're doing your best to drive me out, and I WANT to go, I NEED to go, but I CAN'T go. France, I am on my knees...

And that's how it goes. Some days are not as bad as others and some weeks pass by more sedated than the last. Apart from maybe the first few days of summer where light tranquil winds waft the smell of the river and life over town, there is no beauty here. It's all cafés and bars and cigarettes, square ordinary people with 20/20 vision wearing glasses and lounging around with intellectual haircuts. These days of love and life are nothing more than a cinematic fantasy. Even the guy with the harmonica is a fraud, and the scandalous news is he's not even French but Romanian!. The Bohemians are bulimic... vomiting up their excess culture just to 'get it out'. Bulimia in Bohemia – a sophisticated Hollywood or a depressed heroin ravaged Bollywood, I don't know. Oh France! Oh France! Shoot me in the head and Vive La France... Just send my body home.

La Fin.

Bored... ... ...

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:31:00 +0000

.
I mean: I'm bored. Like picking at the wall bored; or, laying on my bed just staring up at the ceiling bored; constantly thinking of calling my dealer bored, while in my head going: No, no, I can't! But knowing that yes, yes, I will. I look at the TV – nothing interesting there. Think about writing – that makes me ever more fed up. I stare with contempt at my bookshelf – now I'm depressed as well. I let all my muscles relax and slump back down, making huffing sounds and calculating how I can make not enough money go even further. It's impossible. “No, no, I can't!” I tell myself again... Unless I walk to work every other day, smoke only a third of what I usually do, and live of pasta and butter. Then I could. For a moment my boredom had left. My unrealisable planning and conniving had kept it at bay. But now it's back, and so is the ceiling and it's EXACTLY the same as before. I light a cigarette and smoke it laying on my back letting the ash drop from its tip and crumble all over me. I hope I burn myself. I hope I set myself on fire. How I feel right now I'd just lay here, stare at the 60 watt lightbulb as I burst into flames. Ha! That'd be perfect. I could blame someone for that. The one thing I musn't do is move, get up and dial that number... That number that this is all about, that the thought of calling is drilling down into my head, trying desperately to find some brain matter to connect with and overpower my helpless and unwilling body. I hope it does. God, please let it do so! But NO! That number I will end up dialling I must not! And I must get this stupid idea of a pasta diet out my head because it's returned, and each time it seems a little less impossible and a little more manageable.

In the space of the last paragraph and these words I have been dressed and stripped twice. Both times it was the same. I jumped up and said “That's it, I'm going to phone, fuck it!” As soon as I was dressed I kicked off my shoes again, wandered around the room, rested my held on the cold glass of the window pane, then went and slumped back down on the bed. I closed my eyes and thought of the brittle winter sun.

The killer is this fucking boredom. A kind of cancerous restlessness that has invaded every cell of my body. I am not thinking of anything. I'm certainly not thinking about unbuttoning my jeans and taking my cock out. That would be madness. Yet here I am, trousers off, flapping my dick about, doing strange things to it, trying to sustain a hard on while looking at the ceiling which isn't a turn on at all. My cock gets a little hard, but hope doesn't stay too long around here and just as quickly it's limp again. That's due to my wandering mind. I leave it be, out for an airing, as bored as me. Instead I pick more paint off the wall and lay suffering in the dull afternoon, sounds a humdrum in the distance.

I'm staring at my phone. I shouldn't but I am. In my mind I am going through all the angles again, trying to dredge up some deciding factor either way. Only that must be a joke, as this moment was decided eleven years ago, as the Millennium night exploded to my imploding heart and I lay in the dark sobbing to the fireworks and the bright colours in the sky. It was all decided then – even before... way before. I cry sad tears. It doesn't seem right. I let them roll. I should definitely call now. I need to call. But I musn't call. I won't call. The tears have dried, idiot! Don't be such a wuss! We can all think of sad things, especially on afternoons like this; especially when we're bored. Get up and fix the apartment, find a film – like last weekend – enjoy it; think of writing – live and exist of this day – let the boredom make boring literature. Oh I WILL!!! Thank God I'm alive! I jump up, back into my trousers, but it's hopeless. Even pulling the leg on I almost can't be arsed. I don't bother to button them up. What's the use? I'm not going anywhere. Only I am. I know it. You know it. The whole goddamn world knows it. That phone which is laying near my head, which I intermittently pick up and bite and suck and play with in my mouth, which I dial my dealer with then kill the call before it rings, we all know will very soon be used to order smack. That's how this piece of writing will end. Every junkie knows it, every reader knows it... even the fucking keyboard knows it. This is a fated piece of text, and not even the unpredictability of human behaviour can stop it. So why try?

Bored! God I'm bored. The bed feels uncomfortable, like all my muscles ache. How long have I been laying here anyway? Have I been crying? I feel like I've been crying. Or concentrating. It's hard to tell. I think I have a cold. There's only one way to fix that. My stomach hurts. I want to sleep. I Can't sleep. I'm so sure I can't I haven't even tried. I'm bored with trying to sleep. I need for it to just happen. I can make it 'just' happen. But no, no I can't. I musn't. But fuck, oh fuck I know I will... we all know that. Oh my God, what is this energy that is suddenly in my body? What the hell am writing? What the hell am I doing?

My jeans are being tugged up, I'm jumping into a nice fit. Jumping so I can't think. Shirt on, tucked in, scrunched up. This is it... I know from experience this is it! Fuck you bare naked walls! Fuck you unread boring books by shit authors! Fuck you 7 million films none of which interest me! Money, money money... Where's the money. Don't think about it! You've thought about it and decided this. It's OK... it works out. Shoes. Where are my shoes? There's one, where's the other? Phone Sonia first! If she says an hour find the shoe while time's passing. Cigarette. I need a cigarette, just in case she doesn't answer straight away and this doesn't end here. Fuck it's ringing! Was it even me who dialled? Yes!!!! That's her voice and there's mine. I can hear it like I'm not in my body, putting an order through for a very bad end to the month. Fifteen? Fuck, I'll be there in ten. I'm coming. Shoe, where's my other shoe? Jacket??? Fuck, where's my hat? Money,? Phone? Ah, my shoe! Brilliant. Heel trodden down, no time to fit in properly now. Gotta run. Worry about shoe and comfort later. I'm rattling my keys... I'm turning off the light.. the door is open and the dull afternoon opens up to a blast which is me hitting life. I'm not bored now, oh I'm not! I kiss the wall, turn off the light, close my door, don't bother locking it. I'm on my way, I'm going... Fuck, I'm already gone, running, unbored as hell, chasing life, chasing smoke, chasing dreams, chasing ghosts, alone, totally alone, and I'll see you all sometime soon or maybe in no time at all....

X

The Look

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 23:14:00 +0000

.
“Did you get it?” I'd ask “Did you get The Look?”
“Nah, don't think so,” she'd say. “She was normal. Just miserable”
“Hm... Ok. Try the next one. If it's the man with the swept over hair you'll definitely get it from him.”
“Won't you come in with me?” she'd say.
“No, he knows me. He won't give The Look if I'm there. You never get it when they know you. When they know you you get something else, something like the shutters coming down and a pump action shotgun being cocked.... You'll learn about that later. For The Look, that works on an air of complete and utter surprise. You'll have to go in alone for that.”

Anne came out the pharmacy shaking her head in vain. I gave her a curious look. “And you was served by the moron with the pigeon wing of hair?”
She nodded. “He served me like anyone else. I'm starting to wonder if The Look even exists,” she said “or if it's maybe some kind of a problem with me?”
“Oh it exists!” I told her, “but it's a subtle thing, like when US Presidents shapeshift on Youtube – you have to be receptive of it. We'll hit the next one together. You just stand by and watch.”

The next pharmacy was a little affair in a gentrified part of town. It was wedged in nicely between a family owned bakers and an organic greengrocers which sold mostly cherries and pumpkins. I peered in through the pharmacy window, around the cardboard cut-out display of a beaming family all off their heads on garlic pills. Behind the counter was a young pharmacist, natural blond hair, PH neutral skin and a neck which looked like it would smell of peppermint drops. I turned to Anne and nodded. “Perfect,” I said.Then: “How do I look?”
“Great,” said Anne, fixing my shirt collar and stroking my jumper down flat and respectable. She straightened herself, ditched her cigarette, and followed me in, the two of us looking like liberal bank workers or people with money pretending we had none. When the young girl heard us talking in English she glanced up and sang a big friendly “Bonjour!”

“BONJOUR!” we both replied, looking around and pointing like we were in a church or something.

Standing at the counter I looked into the pharmacist's polished enamel teeth, her young elastic lips, and then her clear helpful eyes as she positioned herself in preparation to concentrate on some heavily accented french.
“Erhm, I'd like some 1 mil syringes, please?” I asked, candidly. I watched as her smile disintegrated, furrowed like a brow and struggled to stay curved the right side of Customer Service joy. Her eyes widened as if she was trying to breathe through them.
“Pardon? What???” she asked, having heard perfectly but taken aback.
“Some 1ml syringes,” I repeated “I'd like five Steri-Boxes.”
“Five???”
“Yes, FIVE... I've got loads of drugs!” I quipped, milking it and standing basking in my own idiotic cleverness.
I paid with a note. The pharmacist pushed the boxes of needles my way and dumped the change down in a saucer on the counter so as to avoid the slightest risk of accidentally touching my hand. Then without uttering the customary “Bonne Journée!” she disappeared out back – probably to have a full strip-down disinfectant scrub.

“There, did you see it! Did you see IT!!!” I cried excitedly to Anne, as we left the shop. “Now That was The Look! A good one too. Did you see it?”

Anne looked at me like I was losing my mind. She said she hadn't seen a thing, that the girl had served me as normal, had been indifferent all the while, and then went about her business. “Whaaat???” I asked in disbelief. “She gave me The Look... she gave us both The Look! God, are you seriously saying you didn't see it?.”
Anne shook a no from her head. I put the needles in my bag and thought, “maybe she's right... maybe there is something wrong with her.”

- - -

It took a while, almost a year, but finally Anne did come to recognize and bask in the magical properties of The Look. She saw it just as clearly as I – sometimes even seeing it when I had not – straight-laced pharmacists shocked into a state of confused incompetence, the human animal within them struck dumb, on pause, the mouth slung open and the brain struggling to control the eyes whenever we said the word “syringes”. Not that the word in itself was so shocking, it was more trying to marry the word with the people stood in front of them: me in classic pin-stripe shirt and jumper, and Anne in smart professional town wear, both well groomed and speaking in the Queen's own tongue.

Getting The Look became a game to us, something we'd do to jolly up our day or give it a little taste of adventure. On a whim we'd whip into a chemists and ask for needles, both of us watching eagerly to see whether or not we'd receive The Look. It was something akin to buying a scratch card or chucking a dime in a one-armed bandit, that mystical thing which could dictate if we'd have a lucky day or not:

Get The Look = winning ticket/good day.
Not getting The Look = losing ticket/average to lousy day.

Some weekends we'd even rise early, dress in our best clothes and travel around the city trying to procure The Look. Thinking back now I remember holding hands and running and laughing, and somewhere the sky was blue, life was in the air and we sucked it down without the slightest fuss.

The problem was that whenever we were canvassing The Look it mostly always took place during a very specific period of our lives. It would be that period where we'd be having a prolonged break from heroin, after having paid off our debts, having brought a new wardrobe of clothes, after having caught up with all the latest books, films and music, then suddenly having nothing much to do or buy – money building up in the bank, and at home a stock of clean needles gradually building up in the bedroom. It always started with the needles and then progressively other things would creep in: listening to the Heartbreakers; watching heroin DVDs and punk documentaries; looking at our old junk photos; reminiscing about scoring and the characters we'd met. Some nights we would get teary eyed with happiness and nostalgia, and even the couple of bouts of sickness we had shared together we built up into a tremendous feat, laughing and grimacing at how torturous those days were. That's how it always started. Then the hats and scarves would come out, the loose round tops, exposed necks and love bites, cuts, perfume that smelled of centuries old musk. We'd triple our methadone doses and wander around the city. We'd, sit outside cafés, visit chemists, go home, chuck the needles with the others and spend the evening watching more of the same heroin films. From that point on it was never long before Anne would arrive home one day and I'd say: “I've got a surprise!”
She would know what it would be; any other surprise would have been a huge disappointment.

“Where is it?" she'd ask.
“In the kitchen,” I'd tell.
“Is it any good?” she'd shout through, sitting down at a syringe and spoon laid table.
“Oh, it's not bad,” I'd say, my mind drifting away behind world heavy eyelids.
“Oh yeah, it's good!” she'd say. “Fuck, it's so good.”

Coming out of reverse we'd start in first gear: heroin once or twice a week. By the end of the month we'd be raising an hour earlier each morning so as to get a decent fix before leaving for work. Slowly our stock of needles would whittle away, our cash too, and six months later we'd be scraping around for a quid to buy new works. At that point needles were never bought for fun but out of pure necessity. The Look could go fuck itself – and anyway, it was quite obvious from the burnholes in our clothes and the dried blood in our fingernails just as to what ends we were doing in the chemists.

It would have been around that time when we'd begin to postpone our rent, juggle the electricity and water bills, stall paying just about anything we could, post off hard luck stories telling of deceased relatives and asking for special permission to pay in instalments, sell our DVDs, take loans out from the bank, and invent surprise costs so as we could wheedle money out of Anne's parents. When you're at that stage in the game you visit the ATM machine with a Bible and your fingers crossed, 'insufficient funds' about the best result you're likely to get. And because of all the bad cheques we'd been cashing (saving the real money for smack) it was never too long before our bank cards could no longer take the strain and sought refuge inside the cash machine. As mine had a lower overdraw limit than Anne's it'd always be the first one to go, signalling the moment to begin battening down the hatches and preparing ourselves for the inevitable H bomb which would follow. We'd start regulating our methadone intake, rationing out what we had and swallowing a dose every three days so as when Anne's card would be finally recalled we wouldn't be left completely fucked. For a while we'd struggle on like that: using methadone, but always thinking of heroin and scoring whenever we could.

Then one day I'd say: “I need new shirts... I've no fucking shirts!”
And Anne would say: “I need shoes! I can't go to work in these... the fucking heel's hanging off!”
And I'd say: “The electricity’s gonna get CUT OFF! Maybe we should take care of that first?”

For a month we'd loaf around the apartment depressed and thinking of heroin. We'd score obly very occasionally and not really enjoy it when we did. Then when we were paid we'd find an extra ounce of resolve, knock back a double dose of methadone and instead of going out to score we'd go out shopping. We'd buy shirts, shoes, belts, socks, scarves, skirts, CD's, DVD's, new music, magazines. We'd reload, reculturalize, and rebuild relations with our landlord, our bank manager, the in-laws, and the outlaws. We'd take all the used needles to the exchange dump and leave without taking any freebies. Soon we'd be back in the cafés, back doing weekly shopping, in and out of changing rooms, and arriving home with all manner of gadgets and accessories for the apartment. And then one day, on a whim, walking around in our new clothes with bags from Zara, H&M and Mango, I'd duck into a pharmacy and return smiling.
“Did you get it?” She'd ask. “Did you get The Look?”
And I'd say: “Yeah, I got it! Dressed like this how could I not!”
And she'd say: “It's not fair! I want The Look... I want The Look too.”
And I'd look at her, with eyes when love was new, and I'd say: “Go get it, My Love... Go knock 'em dead!” And she'd know, we'd both know, that this was life and it was about to start again...

My Thoughts & Wishes to All, Shane. X

So Long Johnny

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:01:00 +0000

.
Now...
Johnny was the kind of guy who'd get you in a headlock then playfully twist and grind his knuckles deep down into the top of your head so that it hurt like hell. Or, he'd put his palms against your ears, push in until your world went silent, then lift you six inches off the ground. At lunchtime he'd twist your arm far up behind your back and walk you around the playground like one of those machines which paint the white lines on a football pitch. And on the school coach, as you sat quietly looking out the window, he'd suddenly elbow you in the thigh, screaming “Dead Leg Time!” laughing, knowing he'd rendered you lame for five minutes. On Saturday mornings he'd knock on your door and greet you with a headbutt that'd burst your nose open. He'd invite himself in, throwing darts at your bare feet while chanting “Dance! Dance! Dance!” Out in the street a pair of strung together boxing gloves would land your way and before you'd even had chance to untie them he'd be about you, a flurry of punches busting your face up good; Johnny dancing around with his arms raised, singing “Champ! Champ! Champ!” In the school yard he'd lead you over to a group of girls, promising you a share of the spoils, then the moment you made your presence known he'd suddenly knee you in the bollocks, laughing as you went to ground. Through watery pain seared eyes you'd watch him walking off with all three girls – an ugly deformed kind of a boy, skinhead, big ears, bleached Levi jeans, brown Bomber jacket and white bouncy sports trainers. From behind you'd fantasize about clumping him around the head with a solid lump of wood, but never did dare due to an irrational fear that he'd only get crazier still. In the front yard, summer time, sitting on granite coloured bins, he'd talk about becoming blood brothers and when you agreed he'd pull his pen-knife across your upper arm and an ugly weeping mouth would open in your skin. He didn't want to be blood brothers; he just wanted a valid reason to stab you. What a boy Johnny was, and what a CV he had:

Johhny Merryfield. Born 1974, Bellshill, Scotland

1983 : Moved to London
1984-85 : Sherbrooke School (Best fighter)
1986-88 : Henry Compton School (Best lower year Fighter)
1988-89 : Elliot School (2nd best Fighter)
1990 : Expelled for pulling a knife on PE teacher.
Became a Chelsea Headhunter
Multiple petty arrests (violent conduct; vandalism, etc)
1991-93 : Hardcore Football Hooligan
1993 : Known Heavy Criminal.
1994 : Knightsbridge Crown Court - GBH. Guilty
1994-96 : Wandsworth prison
1996-98 : Crack addict
1998 : Arrested and charged with murder
1998 : Knightsbridge Crown Court – Murder – Case thrown out,
insufficient evidence
1998
-2002 : Multiple arrests (theft; robbery; handling stolen goods;
benefit fraud, etc)
Heroin & Crack addict

Oh how I hated Johnny Merryfield. How relieved I was when my own family imploded and split up and we finally moved away. Over the years catching sight of him from a distance every now and again – bouncing down Edgware Road with a black eye and stitches in his cheek; leaving a bar in Chelsea with an unconscious girl strewn over his shoulder; running out of Dixons with a laptop under his arm and tattoos up his neck; looking at knives in the window of the Army Surplus store; getting on the No.11 bus with a bandaged right hand; gripping someone up by the neck and screaming on Goldhawk Road. Then fifteen years after having moved away, of hearing his antics filter through via old friends and newsaper clippings, there I am scoring heroin with him in Donnelly Court. No teeth. Face full of scars. Thin as bones. Broken nose. Walking cane. Shaking hands. Begging and crying for me to lend him two quid so as he could get a rock of white as well. Johnny Merryfield – The bully bullied by life. Scary-no-more. Lifted six inches off the ground by crack cocaine; arm twisted tight behind his back by heroin; brought to his knees, and if I'd have taken out my cock and said “Suck that, Champ! Dance! Dance!.” he would have done it. I gave Johnny five pounds and he seemed confused. It was more than he needed and I owed him nothing, Johnny scored and then quickly hobbled away. I watched him leave. He wore the same bleached denim trousers, only now dirty, out of fashion and an inch too short. His trainers were almost the same, only now a cheap unnamed market version with the back sole flapping off.
“Take care Johnny!” I called as he hobbled away. “And watch out for those Compton boys!”. Johnny didn't look back, just held a clenched hand in the air, like the old communist workers raised fist of solidarity. Not that Johnny was a communist or gave a fuck about things like solidarity, his fist was clenched because it held his rocks, I know, I was clutching mine in exactly the same way. I raised my clenched fist too. “So long, Brother,” it meant, “I'm glad you are as you are.” And I never saw nor heard of Johnny again.

---

A full Memoirs post will follow shortly...

Thoughts as Ever, Shane. X

A Brief History of Work

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 11:52:00 +0000

.
One day I will tell you of the time I worked as the school's milkboy, delivering the fresh crates to the classrooms each morning, then in the afternoon, collecting the vile, curdled, stinking empties, for 25p a week – which is slave labour now, and was slave labour then. I'll tell you of how, after a couple of weeks, I got bored and lay on the stage, in the assembly hall, chucking the bottles across the room while laughing and banging my feet as each one exploded and shattered; how the  teachers congregated at the entrance, waiting the arrival of the school nurse, as they thought I was having an epileptic fit - when really, all I was having, was a whole lotta fun. One day I will tell you of that.

And of the time I landed a paper round with John Menzies. How I rose at 5am each morning and delivered yesterdays news, in the snap cold, pitch black mornings, with all of Central London's paedophiles in hot pursuit. I'll tell you how that comforted me, as at least then (I thought) my sister would be safe. I'll tell you all, and of why I kept my round a secret, as only poor children had to deliver papers to earn money to save up to buy their own clothes and new school uniform. One day I'll write about it: John Menzies, Pimlico, 1987, of how I pissed on the priest's Daily Telegraph, tramped it in dog shit, then posted it through the vicarage letterbox, and how the following day I was refused entry to the newsagents, and my paper round was then the burden of some other poor unfortunate's soul.

And one day I will tell you of the time I worked in the Five Star Car Wash on Shepherds Bush Green, and how we dusted and polished dashboards, shook out and hoovered floor mats, then drove the cars through the wash, hand buffing them the other side. I'll tell of how the tight-fisted owner, a big fat cigar smoking Turk who dressed in fur and gold and had a fleet of second hand Mercedes, how he'd send his family members through the wash with a twenty pound note placed under the passenger seat to see which of his workers would pocket their good luck rather than put it in the kitty - the kitty which no one ever saw shared out. I'll tell of that. I'll tell you all.

And of how, when I was 15, I passed myself of for 18 and landed a labouring job with Kone Lifts. And how one afternoon, while having lunch with Joe and smoking thai weed on top of the elevator, I fell down the back, my spine bent to snapping point, and Joe clutching a hold of my legs to prevent me from falling 100ft down, to certain death, into the concrete pit below. I'll tell you of that, and of how, when I told my mother she completely freaked out before asking me for the next week's rent in advance: “Just in case!”

And one day I will tell you of the Video Rental Shop where I was taken on for work experience from a YTS scheme, and how I worked 12 hour shifts for not a penny of pay; how one Friday evening I stole a copy of: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, before ringing the till open and walking out, leaving three hundred plus pounds for some lucky soul to find.

And I'll tell you of the time I spent working at Hyde Park Police Station as an apprentice electrician for Blenheim Electrics, of being treated like a piece of shit by everybody except a man called Ray; of how I hit the head bully across the kneecaps with a scaffolding pole when he tried to strip me naked as part of an initiation ritual, which would end in me being tied to the roof and laughed at for hours before being ordered down to make the tea. I'll tell of that.

And of how I worked for just about every Soho nightclub, handing out flyers while dressed up as an alien with a plastic spaceship sellotaped to my head. All that, for free entry, two drinks vouchers, and a whole lot of trouble from rival club promoters. I'll tell all about it, and off how when Ewan died (their main leafleter and my best friend) they disowned me, blamed me for his death for introducing him to heroin. After that I was no longer welcome in the clubs, and what's more, they grouped together and barred me from the funeral, said that if I attended there'd be another death! All those people Ewan hated so much, putting him in the ground, fake tears behind blacked out rock sunglasses, as now they'd have to find another great guitarist who'd be prepared to record for nothing, and hand out leaflets to boot.

One day I will tell you of it all, and of the years I worked at Vaughans Ltd, employed as the Head Baizer, cutting out and gluing green felt onto the bottoms of reproduction antique lamps; of how I wired 24 armed chandeliers and shot smack in the toilets; of how I went to war with the managing director after he illegally made three workers redundant, and how I brought the place to daily standstills until they'd had just about enough and tried to blackmail me after finding used syringes in my bag. And how, when I wouldn't surrender my position, they offered me £15,000 to accept and sign a dismissal for gross misconduct, which I did willingly , but not before trying to get the work van thrown into the deal - though on being reminded that I couldn't drive, I conceded it was a fair point and took the cheque, and a whole lot of drugs, and that was the start of the good times. One day I'll tell you all about them.

And of my next job, working for Financial Training, employed to pack boxes, yet somehow, two years later, finding myself in the manager's chair wwith a three quarter million pound annual budget - which mostly went on luxury chauffeur driven cars, heroin, and crack cocaine. And that was the start of the even better times. Until I was dismissed a year later due to “horrendous expenditure abnormalities”.  I agreed to go as long as they paid me up until the end of the month. I was leaving the country anyway. One day I'll write about that.

And of my first year in France when I faked enthusiasm and went grape picking in the countryside. How after two days I was a broken man, cursing at how inhumane the work was,  phoning my father-in-law and having him drive 300km, into the thick of the Beaujolais hills, to rescue me.

And one day I'll tell you about my 18 months with Arctic Spas, travelling an hour and a half each morning out into the middle of nowhere, then walking for 25 minutes through fields of cows and horses, to repair, modify and test top-of-the-range jacuzzis, and how one day while on a maintenance call in the Grenoble mountains, ten below zero, I slipped with a screwdriver and pushed the thing three inches down into my hand. I'll tell of how the fire brigade had to come and save me and take me to the nearest hospital, from which I fled as soon as I'd been stitched up as I was getting ill from opiate withdrawals, was more than 4hrs from home, with no methadone, no medical insurance, and no passport. I'll tell you of all that.

And about the time I worked for Envie Rhône, a 'Program of Insertion' for social misfits, the insane, and those on pre-release from prison. I'll explain of how we fixed-up washing machines, fridge freezers, and ovens, and how the conditions in that place were like stepping back 100 years with every law and safety regulation ever fought for IGNORED. I tell of the workers, all on short 3 month contracts, blackmailed, so if they said anything their contracts would not be renewed, and then it'd be either back to prison or the mental hospital. Then,  when I complained, having no place to be sent back to, the entire company and every social institution of the region closed ranks and tried to force me out, and when I wouldn't leave (or shut up) they contacted an old success, an ex-prison tough, and had him threaten me, to stop my action “OR ELSE!”

And one day I'll tell of the weeks I spent working in the Beaux Art Museum, how I stood there from 11am to 6pm with my hands behind my back surveying the public and giving them directions when I was lost myself. I'll tell you of how we were allowed to play phone games to pass the time, and  how I pretended I was playing Zombie Shootout or Clubroom Billiards when really I was writing, something they wouldn't have permitted, just in case I was writing about them - which of course, I was. I'll tell all about it.

And also of the time I worked in the Town Hall. Of how I was paid to follow behind the Mayor, fanning his wind to either side as he went, making sure that his councillors, riding in his slipstream, didn't die of intoxication while trying to lay a successful knife in his back before sailing on by. One day I will tell of all that, and of how on Saturdays I had to dress up like a low class waiter and lead soon-to-be unhappy couples into the marriage room with a low sweeping bow, then walk them down the aisle - the Bride to my right; the Groom to my left - inviting them to take seat on the ornate King and Queen, wood and velvet chairs.

One day I'll tell you about all these things, only not now and not here, as time's ticking on and I'm just not paid to write.

(This post was originally posted in poem format. You can find a copy of the original posting HERE)
---
A New Memoires post will follow soon...
Thoughts & Wishes To All, Shane, X

Venison Wild

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:46:00 +0000

.
It was a dark wet shiny night. I lay on a mattress in the back of a stolen van, a cold wind seeping in and annoying me from the loose back doors tied close with string. In the front seat driving was Lee Laws, a nineteen year old wiry blond crook, and in the double spread passenger seat besides him was first Paul K, and to his left, Alan. All three boys were in their late teens or early twenties, and all three were repeat criminal offenders. I was too, only I was much younger and my crimes much less serious. There was barely a week passed where one of us wasn't up in court, and for the two years I'd known Lee he had spent over half that time in Feltham Young Offenders Institute. In the back of the van, partitioned off from the others by a metal grille with square holes just large enough for the last inch of a joint to be fed through, I lay down smoking and looking past the ends of my feet at the motorway lights as they filed by in relentless and uniform fashion. I was fifteen and we was heading out of London, into the black of the country, to rob a house which Lee had already cased and said was safe and easy.

After getting bored watching the lights and the purple sky I closed my eyes and listened to the stories of the older boys. They talked about girls, and crimes and upcoming court appearances and arrests and how they'd replied “No reply” to three hours of intensive police questioning, no matter how heavy or mean it got. Lee Laws was especially shrewd in that way, or so his stories made him out to be, though others said he was “the biggest squealer in West London” and that being caught with him was like being caught red-handed-bang-to-rights. I didn't know what the truth was, but I know Lee Laws looked and talked the part, and I know I had visited him in prison that summer and had sat there as his girlfriend kissed a sixteenth of hash into mouth. I also know it was him who'd spun into the estate two weeks ago in this white van with all the wires under the steering wheel ripped loose and twisted back together. The truth on nights like these doesn't really matter. Stories float in and are as true and as real as the places they carry you away to. Sometimes, when the van quietened down, I'd raise myself from the mattress and on my knees make my way over towards the front of the van. From behind the partition I'd stare out at the rain and watch the windscreen wipers at work. At other times I'd focus on the motorway, miles and miles of dotted lights with black fields to either side, stretching off across wherever. Occasionally we'd pass another car or see one whipping through the wet in the opposite direction, but mostly on this black wet night it was just us, driving out of town in a stolen Sherpa van and telling stories as we hoovered up the road. In a way I wished we had no destination, that we could just drive – drive and never stop and the sun would never rise again.

“Right boys, now listen up,” said Lee, with a good inch of a joint poking out his mouth. “When we get there don't be going all fucking doolally and grabbing just any old thing. Most the antiques are pure shite, reproductions, and worth fuck all. What we want is the silver, the two carved bone ornaments in the hall, and the painting above the old fireplace. Any jewellery, money, cameras, small things like that, take 'em. But remember, leave the pots and the vases alone.”

Alan and Paul nodded away to Lee's instructions. I laid on the mattress in the back, more than blissfully stoned, smiling and thinking about taking the pots and vases anyway – struggling out into the night with a huge fake Ming vase that was no good to anyone. I started laughing out loud at this mad world of thoughts that was playing in my head.

“Oi!!! Shit for brains, r'ya listening?!” Lee shouted, darting a roach of the joint at me. “No fucking around, OK, or it'll be ya first an' last time out wiv us. Got it?”

Sucking the last bit of death out of the roach and holding the smoke, I nodded. Then I exhaled and the van was quiet and Lee and the others were intent on the road, and I wondered if the conversation had actually occurred or not.

By now we had been driving for maybe ninety minutes, maybe longer. The City was an unimaginable length of distance behind us. In my stoned mind I imagined it as resembling something like Bethlehem, only without a saviour. Even the big green reflector direction boards were not out this far, and the lighting on the motorway had changed too – was duller, darker, creepy – a row of thinly dispersed twin lamps down the central divide. Sometimes a little square of light would glare out in the black of the fields, a lone house or cottage and nothing else.

For a moment the stories and talking had ended, and the joints had stopped circling. We were all heavily stoned, sat or lain out in the hash-smoke filled van, withdrawn into our own individual existences. In moments like that the only thing we all had in common was the shiny wet road ahead. In the back of the van I now concentrated on the sound and the feel of the wheels, understanding worlds of different stuff from even the most subtle changes. It wasn't long after that that I heard a dislocated noise beneath the van, felt us slow and drift to the left, and made out the night time click-clicking of the van's indicator. It made a part of me feel sad, forlorn – I could have willingly lain in the back forever. I felt the van turn and all my insides and brain seemed to turn with it. What light there had once been from outside was suddenly quenched and the road underneath was slippery, bumpy and uneven. Trees and bushes scraped and beat on the sides of the van, and for the first time I became aware of the rain pelting down on the roof. I got to my knees and took myself to the partition, looking out the window from over Paul's shoulder. From what I could make out we was on a well travelled country lane, that may or may not have been an official route. Whatever, it had surely been cut out by smaller cars as the van had a hard time passing through and the added weight caused our wheels to sink and spin and go nowhere every now and again. The only light now was from our left headlight. We'd knocked the other one out hurtling over speed bumps in the city. The van dipped and jerked and bumped and made awful dying sounds. The few tools we had in the back jumped up and crashed back down on the metal floor. We all peered out, looking for something to show up ahead.

It was the sound of gravel under tread that initially told us we were approaching some place. At first little spurts of it and then a constant scrunching. Pestle and mortar. Up ahead, picked out by our headlight, the road widened and a few black shapes came into view. The place smelled. It wasn't unpleasant, just different, like a hamster's cage or rabbit hutch or muesli. It was a farm. The van crunched into the opening and turned right, and there, as if it had just materialized from nowhere, stood a house – perfectly still and black and empty. Lee slowed the van down, turned it around so as the back doors were facing the house and then stopped. With the engine still running he just sat there with a huge thin grin scarred across his face. I started to say something but my voice seemed so loud in the cut of night. Lee shussed me up with a raised hand and a pained expression, as if even though there was nobody around they still might hear. That's what living in the city does to you. It's a kind of paranoia. After that we all spoke in whispers, and tried to act as silent as the night.

In the front, with the cabin light on, Lee and Paul slipped into black gloves. Lee gave a quizzical look across to Alan and held his hands up and wiggled his fingers. Alan shook his head. Lee scowled, before screwing his face up in suppressed laughter at Alan's amateurish mistake. He turned my way.

“Give Alan your gloves,” he demanded.
“What? No, they're mine. I need'em. The police have my prints!”
“Give 'em over ya plum! You're not coming in with us. I want you here.. keeping dog. And if you hear so much as a ghost's fart you're to hit the fucking horn, OK.”
“But You said I could come in with you!”
“Next time. Give Alan your gloves. While we're gone get the doors open and skin up a zoobie... but don't cane it!.”

Begrudgingly I fed my gloves through the grate to Alan. He yanked them from me and was soon spreading and wriggling his thick fingers in them to get the right fit. “Perfect! Just a right good perfect fit!” he said, knowing it'd annoy the shit outta me, as if my gloves fitted him better than they fitted me. I didn't really care. My heart was beating furiously thinking of entering a strangers house and taking things. I'd really only wanted to go in so as I wouldn't be left outside alone. Finally it was the joint thing which won me over – the chance of having first dibs on one I had rolled and top-loaded myself. It was a novelty too novel to turn down. The only other time I was anything other than smoking cardboard was on those rare occasions I had a note and bought a ten pound draw myself.

Down under the steering wheel Lee flashed a torch, turned it off and handed it to Paul. Paul took it and then did the same. Then Lee took out a second torch, flashed that one too, turned it off; and kept it for himself.

“Ok,” he said, very seriously, “we can get in round the back. All we have to do is put a small pane of glass through. There's no alarm and no dogs. Let's go.” The boys filed out. I unstrung the back doors; went around the front and sat in the driver's seat.
“Lee,” I whispered “Can you turn the van around so as I can see better?”
“No. Never. Just incase we need to make a quick getaway.”
“Oh, Ok,” I said. Then: “Lee?”
“What?”
“Where's the hash?”

A huge grin spread out across his face. “Don't miss a fucking trick this one,” he said, taking his kit out his back pocket and handing it me. “Hash is behind the rizlas... and don't take the fucking piss!”

I took the Gary's kit, fondling the Rizlas to make sure the hash was really there. It was. I closed the door and watched in the wing mirror as the boys headed across the gravel courtyard, made their way to the right of the house and then disappeared. I sat in silence for a moment, the whole of Britain black and wet and deadly silent around me. How I'd ever see anyone in this until it was too late I didn't know, but I was dog and so dog I was.

I was sitting in the front seat, the small cabin light on, crumbling a good pinch of hash into the head of a joint that was sitting up on the dash when I heard the sound of breaking glass. I stopped what I was doing and squinted hard into the wing mirror. Another little pop rang out and a thin piece of glass shattered on the ground and tinkled like one of those Chinese wind chimes. I continued with my joint, one eye on the wing mirror. That's when I saw it, to my horror, a light flitting about high up in one of the attic windows. At first I wondered if it was the boys already in the house and up top, but no, it was too quick. The last shard of falling glass had barely stopped singing. I jumped out the van and sprinted off in pursuit of my friends. When I arrived around the back Lee was sidled right up tight against the door with a strained look on his face, his hand the other side trying desperately to locate the door latch to release it.

“There's someone inside,” I hissed, “There's a light upstairs!”
“Fuck off , Shane,” said Paul, who'd never really liked me, “you're just shitting it!”
“I'm telling yas there's someone inside! Lee, there's someone up in the fucking attic.”

Lee withdrew his arm out the door. “Where?” he asked/whispered. I led the way.

Back around the front of the house I pointed up to the window where the light had come from. Of course, now it was black and as indifferent as any other. I sensed someone looking down at us.

“Lee, I swear there was a fucking light. I din't imagine it!”

Lee stood looking up, figuring whether to take me seriously or not. He seemed to have pretty good information that the house would be empty but something was niggling him. While we were looking up at the window a very feint light then showed itself, but this time coming from the middle windows. It originated from somewhere deep in the thick of the house. This time we all saw it and went sprinting for the van. As we got in I warned Lee and Paul to be careful as my joint was sitting unrolled up on the dash. Then I regretted top-loading it. With the boys back it'd be roach supper for me again.

Lee started up the van and put his foot down. Desperate to get up some speed he kinda pushed and urged the van forward like he was giddying on a horse. Then we were up and running, skidding back through the soft wet path, me holding the doors closed as there'd been no moment to slam and tie them shut. I watched Alan take my half prepared joint and twist and screw it into a cigarette, in that clumsy brutal fashion he had. Secretly I still harboured small hopes that he'd hand it back for me to spark up, but he didn't. He lit it himself, took five or six huge holding drags and then passed it on to Paul. All the while Lee was speeding in the wet, through black roads that led to god knows where. I sat there in the back, waiting for the joint to be tossed my way, my heart pounding and thinking of blow-outs and 100ft drops into blackness.

* * *

It seemed like an eternity that we had been in the black, driving around dangerous country drops. The joint had left me completely wrecked. I was back laying on the mattress my mind chasing a million different inter-connected thoughts which I could visualize in my head. At one moment I even imagined that I was in my bedroom and it was somehow being driven around Britain. Every now and again I'd hear Lee droning on about joining a different motorway home as the police may be waiting for us along the common route. He kept saying that, over and over. I gave a look up and out the wind screen. God it was really black out there. Visibility was reduced to maybe a metre ahead by the power of one fading headlight. It felt like a film, or a video game. Everyone felt like that, I think. No one was talking. We were all staring straight ahead, tuned into the moment, focussed on the cosy light we illuminated in the dark, all in the zone, hypnotized by the road ahead as we drove on an endless spot.

I saw as little as anyone else, though being in the back I felt and heard it more. Lee had suddenly shot up straight in his seat with his foot hard pressed on the brake. His arms were out straight, gripping the steering wheel and fighting desperately to keep control of the van. Something big bounced of the driver's side and made a god-awful sound doing so. As it had happened I was hurled back on my arse on the mattress. The van skidded, trying to take a grip in the wet. And then it stopped, .the pit-patta of rain on the roof and steam converging from all sides.

“What da Jesus!” screamed Alan. “We fucking hit something... we' hit something!”
“What was it?”asked Lee. “Did anyone see it?” We shook our heads collectively.

I scuttled over to the back of the van, pushed the doors open a foot and peered out. Nothing, just darkness, the smell of wet bark and exhaust fumes.

“Maybe it was an animal,” Alan said.
“What kinda animal?” said Paul, “This is England! D'ya think it was a six foot badger?”
“Ya never know what lives out here, boy-yo. Back home there's an all manner of unknown tings, sure... live out in da forest at night which no-one dares know about.”
“Maybe it was a scarecrow,” I said, seriously.
“A fucking Scarecrow, Pffff!!!! Fuck off back to LaLa land, Shane. A scarecrow!”

That's when Lee turned an unhealthy shade of grey, the colour suddenly drained from his face. “But you know what, yeah,“ he said, ominously, “I think he's almost right. Only I don't think it was a scarecrow but a man.”
“A man? Who would be out here? Walking the rain, going nowhere?” asked Paul.
“A tramp. A local,” I said. “There must be some people who live around here and these carrot-crunchers love walking around in the splodge, kinda like watering themselves.”

Paul turned round and darted something vicious at me. It wasn't a joint roach, but a cigarette filter or something. It meant shut it! It was the peak of nerves before tension, before the van fell deadly silent for a moment. Then Lee started to speak. His face was rigid with shock, cut out against the black backdrop of the window with the windscreen wipers ever so mechanically squeaking away. When he'd finished what he had to say he was looking at us in turn, as if this was a night where our lives would change.

“I think we've killed someone,” he'd said, all trance like, “I saw the head. An eye. It took a second out to look at me like one of those weird flashed messages they're not allowed to advertise with. I really think we've killed someone.”

We all sat staring back into Lee's ghostly and handsome chiselled face of fear, the hash buzz prickling through our eyes and skin. Lee's eyes were even wider, the pupils huge and agitated and full of night tales. Swept along in the moment we were all thinking the same thing: even if it was an accident, we were in a stolen van, with one light, not a driving licence between us, we were all stoned and we all had repeat criminal offences behind us and more pending. Then there was the house we'd attempted to burgle. God, we'd be fried, even taking into account it was only a carrot cruncher we rammed down. It was Alan who broke the silence, a calming pragmatic Irish voice:

“We're gonna hafta ged'out an take a look, boys. It'll do us not a bit of fecking good sitting here, sure, imaging what we've done and scaring the bejesus outta us. And if it is a man, maybe he's not dead? Maybe we can help?”
Lee shook his head. “And what if he's not dead? He'll have seen our faces. I think we should just go.”
“We can't just drive away, Man! To do that'd make it ten times as serious. We'd be tried for being evil, man! I'll tell ya d'hat for nuffin.” Now Lee was nodding. Then we were all nodding. Lee chucked Alan a torch. “You lead the way,” he said, “I don't want to see it.”

The three older boys slipped out off the van and into the wet. I opened the backdoors and joined them as they came around the sides. Alan and Paul led the the way, I was a foot behind, and Lee behind me – though not so much as he'd be alone in the dark. We cut a long diagonal line across the road, to where whatever it was would have landed up. Alan shone the light around, showing up thick and inaccessible bush and tree to either side. The road really had no right to be here at all. And then without quite realizing it I was jogging and then pushing on between Alan and Paul who'd now stopped. The light had caught something and had opened up. And there it was, in the road, a head and a large sad eye, the rain running off it's face like tears: we'd hooked ourselves a deer.

*

The animal wasn't dead. Close to it, but not quite. It was just laying there subdued, eyes looking at gathering swamp flies, a slow and drowsy heave and fall of its chest, a composed exhaustion of life. Spilling out from its underside was blood, deep red in the yellow light and running across the road in streams with the rain. There was also blood and mud on the bedraggled fur near its front hoof.. Lee, who had practically melted at the thought of having killed a human now reformed and once more took the lead. He walked in, and without a word knelt down, clenched the deer's nose and mouth and in a loving, minute long embrace, he snuffed the remaining life out of it and then laid its head gently down and remained there like that for a moment with his eyes closed.

“Can't let the poor thing suffer on like that,” he eventually said, “That'd be the same as driving off.” And just when we thought Lee maybe had some kind of deep soft humanity, he added: “Ok, let's get the fucker in van.”

“Wha?” I or one of the others said, maybe all of us.
“The van,” repeated Lee, walking off “I'll back it up. Let's get it inside. I know a South African butcher who'll take this off our hands.”

Shocked, I looked at Paul and Alan. Paul and Alan were looking at the deer. The deer was looking at something no man can ever see.

Lee backed the van up and on rejoining us climbed in the back, stood the mattress up against the side, then hopped down. With Paul's help they dragged the deer around so as it was slumped dead longways with its head towards the exhaust. He and Paul grabbed the top end of the animal and Alan and I took either side of its middle. We tried lifting, but weighed down by death, the deer was having none of it. It sagged and got heavy in all the wrong places making it impossible to lift. Lee said we should lift it by the legs. Somehow that idea seemed too painful and no-one was very keen on doing it. Instead, in a clumsy, awkward fashion we all lifted it's top half into the back of the van and with Lee pulling on it the rest of us heaved and pushed, inching it slowly into the back of the van. When it was finally inside we all slumped down wet and exhausted staring at this thing which we had come across. Alan, Paul and Lee were laughing in amazement, and between heavy breaths talked excitedly about its size and saying how unreal it all was. Alan grabbed an old A-Z off the floor, laid it on his lap, then took out his spliff kit and began skinning up a joint. I watched Lee who was poking a twig in the deer's ear.

*

The laughing had been going on for a while before it dawned on me that the gufawing and snorting concerned me. I turned around, heavily stoned and confused. I could feel a bemused smile across my face, the smile I always got when I was stoned and baffled and fifteen and not sure if anything at all was actually happening. I tried to figure out what the joke was, but I couldn't. All I could decipher for sure was that it concerned me. “What?” I asked, “What???” When they saw my face, my stinging red eyes, they laughed harder.

“Would ya look at the state of that cunt,” said Lee, pointing at me, “he's out his fucking tree... wrecked! D'you think the Deer'll be safe back here with him?”
“Will it me bollix,” said Paul. “You seen the ways he's been eyeing it up! Oi, Sicko, no fucking dodgy business when ya think no one's watching, OK? If your hands start wandering or you try and mount the thing you'll be walking back to London!”
“Yeah Shane, go easy on her she's had a rough night!” was Alan's input. Everyone was cracking up, their laughter echoing in my stoned and cushioned head. That in turn set off my own thoughts and I was then bursting red too and laughing like a madman at the bizarre images which were playing out in my mind. And then I blinked, or breathed, or something and it was suddenly like nothing had ever happened , and I was left wondering had I just started cracking up laughing while the others were talking serious? I stared around at them for a moment, confused, but now they were with grave faces and surely they couldn't have been laughing??? Only they had been... I was sure of it. Then the words hit me. Not what they said, but what they implied... what had started their laughter.

“You must be fucking joking,” I suddenly cried, “I'm not getting in the back with that thing!”
“No?” said Lee, “then I suppose we'll see you back in London in about three days, because you'll be trotting home.”
“I don't give a fuck. I'd prefer to walk!”

Lee looked at me like you would a kid who just won't go to bed. Then his evil eyes gave way and he said I could budge in with Paul and Alan on the way home.

*

I slammed the back doors shut, tied them as tight as I could from the outside and then joined Paul and Alan in the double passenger seat. Naturally I was on the far left, squashed right up against the cold metal door and leaking, draughty window, last in line for the spliff as usual. I didn't mind. I was sitting wasted anyway. They could keep their puff, I just didn't want to lay in the back with a dead deer.

Lee started the van up and pulled off. We sat mostly silent, like we were grieving. Out the radio floated the voice of a weird talkshow host called Caesar The Boogieman. It made the journey seem fantastic and the world kinda sad at the same time. We stared at the blackness out the window, and then at a sign, and then there was a motor way – a huge concrete river that would take us home.

The ride back down the long stretch of motorway was monotonous and sleepy. All that changed was a joint was occasionally passed around and then we'd zone into the road again pondering the universe and imaging atmospheres that didn't exist. Crammed in the front, with the widows closed, the smoke went to my head and made me feel kinda hollow and strange. I didn't know whether to laugh or be petrified, or if reality was a fantastic dream or a hideous nightmare. I was wasted and didn't want to sit on it in silence as it crept up and turned me insane. I started getting lary with my older friends, saying crazy things, stoned things. The boys laughed along, but I don't think they were laughing at what I was saying.

“Skin up, you cunt,” I then said, staring at Paul. I got a slap around the head for that. Everyone laughed.
“I'm second on the zoot!” I demanded, “Don't want no skinny little roach this time!” They all laughed and the joint bypassed me anyway. Sucking on the roach of the joint I'd said I didn't want Lee looked across with red rabbit eyes and said, “What, you given up inhaling!” They all laughed. I had given up inhaling. I was too stoned. But I'd been caught and was embarrassed. I replied: “No, I could smoke the lotta you under the table. I'm not even stoned yet, just mellow!” They all cracked up again. Everything I said was one huge joke.
“Alan, you got any speed?” I suddenly asked. And now the older boys were laughing so hysterically that Lee had to pull the van over so he didn't drive it off the road. Now at a stop they all rolled up in true hysterics, laughing uncontrollably and squealing like pigs. I sat in my chair feeling hot, staring ahead with a childish smirk, feeling immature and out my depth. And then it flushed over me – pulled down like a sheet, my mouth was suddenly as dry as a desert and I thought I was gonna choke. My colour and strength drained like a bath with the plug removed. I was throwing a whitey and needed to be sick. And everyone laughed that little harder still.

After vomiting out the side door I sat there in silence sweating and praying a joint wouldn't be passed my way. Of course one was, a big fattie for me to spark up. I waved it away as my friends knew I would. Lee lit it himself, and with it sticking out his mouth like a parsnip he pulled out and drove on, soon joining the city ring road and looking for the correct exit.

By now the best part of night had fallen. It was still dark but the sky no longer had the depth of colour that it had an hour previous, and way over in the distance there was breaking light. By the time we came off the A road and landed in the city proper the joints had stopped passing and everyone was tired, dreading first light and was anxious to know what we'd do with the deer. Lee repeated that he knew a South African butcher in Hammersmith and that he'd be there now, preparing joints of meat for the day's trade. He said we'd go there, unload the deer, get paid and then get home. It seemed like a bit of a tall story, and I think Alan and Paul were with me in secretly wondering if the animal in the back could even be eaten (let alone sold), but it was worth the chance, and Lee did know some pretty dodgy people. Anyway, if the sale fell through we'd dump the thing and be home in just about the same time anyway.

Inside the city the rain had stopped but the air was still wet. It was almost 6am and now light, but kind of early morning light that is still dark and makes you think of hospital visits and bad things. There was a mist all over town and the street lights were on their last minutes of time. Lone people jittered away at bus-stops and steam poured from the tops of some buildings and drifted on out. Lee rolled up to the lights on Chiswick Highstreet. We sat there real drowsy, looking at the morning which had broke the night. And that's when all hell broke loose.

The Van suddenly started rocking and banging and scratching and thumping away, and making horrendous animal noises. Alan was thrown forward and we cracked skulls. Then what sounded like a team of panel beaters were at work on the sides of the van, but real angry panel beaters, grunting and crying in pain as they hammered out the frustrations and pains of their existence. I turned around, I think we all turned around, and the head of a deer came smashing against the grilled partition, a crazed retarded eye of an animal trapped looking through. The deer must have only been stunned and unconscious and had now come around and was trying it's damnedest to smash its way to freedom. This was its buckaroo for life.

I think our first thoughts were the police. It was 6am in a decent neighbourhood, on the highstreet, and our van was alone at the lights thumping and crashing and emitting horrendous screams that not even the damp in the air could muffle. All shook up and flustered we clambered to get out the van. The deer seemed hellbent on getting through the partition and stamping us all to death. Out in the street Paul reckoned we should just leg it and leave the van, but we didn't as our prints were all over the place, and in its two weeks under Lee's charge had been involved in a plethora of local crimes and robberies. Running away would beat the immediate problem but come 10am, when the police would have had time to apply for arrest and search warrants, we'd be fucked. So we didn't run. For a moment we didn't do anything. Just stood around in a panic as the van rocked and thumped and the back doors bounced to the tune of the trapped beastnside.

Lee rushed back to the driver's side door and searched behind the seat for something. He returned holding a length of lead piping. “Come on,” he said to me, “Come on!!!”

Round the rear of the van he handed me the lead pipe. “Take that,” he said, “and when I open the doors get ready and crack it on the head!”
“What? That thing will be all over me before I've even swung!”
“No it won't! It'll take it a moment to even realize there's an escape. Now quit stalling and get ready to hit the thing or we'll all be fucked!”
Well I couldn't, and I told Lee as much. There's no way I could bash the animals head in. It was maybe the most innocent thing in the world at that moment, and after its struggle didn't deserve that. I didn't have it in me to do. Death in a beast that size is something real and something serious, and when it isn't quick or doesn't work with the first whack it is something horrific and traumatizing. To kill a thing by brain damage is sick and I wasn't going to do it.

“You fucking pansy!” Lee said. “Give me the fucking bar and I'll do it. You open the doors.”
Ok, I could do that. I could open the doors. Secretly I thought Lee or anyone else had no chance of doing what he suggested anyway. As I moved myself in front of the doors Alan arrived alongside Lee weilding a hammer. Horrible thoughts of cracked skulls, shattered bone and animal noises went through my mind. I thought of the deer, and of rodeo ponies and of racehorses rearing up in the stalls, and then I untied the double back doors and in almost the same movement pulled them wide open and got out the way. And in that moment, in the shrill misty morning with London just waking up, there was a moment of sheer unadulterated natural beauty:

The deer burst forth out the van – a leap to freedom and life, a sleek tan flash. It landed in the road, skidded, turned real low to the ground like a motorcycle then came up straight, found its hooves and shot bolt off right down the high-street. Lee hadn't even time to think of swinging the lead pipe in his hands and Alan looked pathetic and weak and the hammer so small and insignificant against this furious and passionate piece of life that had just shot out the van. And we all saw the beauty in that, and in the same moment we knew the deer had more right than just about anything to live, and was glad for it.

In pure amazement we rushed around the van to watch the deer. It galloped across an empty crossroads, through a red light, onto the pavement, back out in the road. running like crazy.

“Fuuuuckiiing hell!!!!” is all anyone could say. Then: “Let's get the fuck outta here!”

And that's what we all wanted, but we couldn't move. We were grounded to the spot, all still staring down the road after the deer as it ran on, zig-zagged through the early morning cars, flared up then ran some more. The lights of the high-street went from amber to green and from green to red and back again, but we didn't budge, just stood there staring. And when finally the deer was out of sight we stared some more, at the calm of the empty road, at the lifting mist, at each other, wondering if it had ever happened at all.

Three Degrees of Loss

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:03:00 +0000

.
Three pieces about loss following the death of The Man I Called "Dad."
---
#1
Nightmares

The nightmares began the day my father died. Harrowing, torturous things which come to me as soon as my eyes find sleep and leave my body contorted and struggling to wake. Sometimes they toss me around and leave me fighting all night and at other times I manage to pull myself from their grip almost before they begin. But they do always begin, and it's been so long now that it feels like they've been plaguing me forever.

The dreams are always different and the dreams are always the same: My father, dying, stretching out for me and pleading for help. Sometimes he is in a hospital gown in a hospital bed. The bed is in a room and the room is white. It is all that exists in the universe. There are no windows, but it is dark outside. You can feel it, an infinity of black nothingness stretching out into forever. We are deep into dreamscope.

I am standing either just inside or just outside of that room. I have a profile view of my father from the left. He is on his back, slightly propped up in the bed. A sheet covers his body up to his neck. He looks smaller than I remember, weaker. He looks dead. His face is drained of all tones but grey. Over to his right is a machine. A calm green ripple runs across its screen. It's the only real colour in the room. My father opens his eyes. The skin around his cheekbones stretches a little tighter. Without moving his head he shifts his eyes across so that they are looking at me. Like that he speaks, his mouth talking to the space above his chest. He always starts by using my name. His voice is normal but quivers with fear.
“Shane, is that you? Shane???”
“I'm here Dad,” I say. He becomes agitated. Not at my presence but because someone is there and not ignoring him.
“Shane, where's the doctors? Shane, why are there no doctors? Shane, it hurts. I think this is it. I can't believe it. Two hours ago I was fine and now I'm dying. Death's here. Shane, this is it. Shane, do I look bad. Shaaane?”
By now his upper body is uncovered. His face is stained in hard and ugly ways as he tries in desperation to reach an arm out towards me. He looks like an old religious painting. His eyes are straining so far in the corners to keep fixed on me that they're almost looking back in on themselves. He starts saying my name over and over....
“Shane... Shane.... Shane. Shane, I'm dying. Can't you do anything? Can no-one do anything? Shane, it hurts. I'm hurting. Living hurts.”
I want to tell him he'll be OK but it seems useless to say that, and I don't want to admit nothing can be done because that seems even more hopeless. And so I say nothing. I stand there and I want to run. He is reaching out to me with ever more desperation. I'm not sure if he wants help or human contact. Whatever, it scares me. I want to cry and I don't want to cry. I need to cry. But I don't cry. He's never seen me cry and to see my tears now will only terrify him further. I want to tell him I love him and have always loved him and that HE is my father, but I know if I tell him that now, here, like this, it will surely kill him. And so I do and say nothing. I stand either just inside or just outside of the room, watching the strain of his reach and the strain in his eyes. And though he doesn't know it, that look he is wearing, that perverse, twisted face of desperation, is the first manifestation of death in hs body, making it pull strange and ugly shapes. It's a real nightmare. And as my father struggles to live, I struggle to wake – we struggle together. I am somewhere between two worlds and for once I want the waking world.

In another dream my father appears out of a smoky distance. He's limping and in pain and looks like he's come home from a long hard war. His head is bandaged and there is blood, red on white, as he limps out of the dust of time. He's not old but more as I remember him as a child, as my father, invincible, The Man with Tattooed Hands, a gold tooth, and a square and solid jaw. There are tubes up his nose, black sensors on his body and a drip in the tender region of his wrist. He limps on in pain and he tells me it hurts and that I'm good with needles and could I remove the drip. He is deteriorating by the second and his lips have a faint blue/grey tint. He looks awful, kinda braindead, but he isn't – he's just scared. His eyes and cheeks are sucked in. It's like his body is eating him up. He's heaving and spluttering and a constant groaning is rising up from his chest. “Yesterday you was a boy and I was your age,” he moans. “Yesterday.” He says other stuff. I can't make it out but I know it's sad. He groans in pain but never stops to allow me to help him. He staggers right on past like he can't stop even if he wanted to. To stop is to die and to carry on is to die too – just a longer way about it. I don't fight his wishes, there's nothing I can do. He's not dying in a way which can be helped, and it's not his physical pain which is my nightmare. I watch him walk on. Trailing behind him are tubes, a leaking drip bag and wires torn from a machine. He is heading towards a shed, a shed which is an airing cupboard, the same airing cupboard that my mother's cat crawled into to die.

There are other dreams, a thousand different variations of the same theme. And in all these dreams, no matter how bad or ill my father looks, the worst thing is that he's always fully conscious of his condition. He is living through his death, aware that it is in him and taking a hold. That what only yesterday was an abstract thought is now here, conquering him. But my father is never conquered in the dreams - he never dies, just suffers on. And that is the real, real nightmare.

Each night, at the peak of my father's pain, my eyes shoot open and I wake exhausted sat up boltright in the bed. And in the dark of the night, with the aura of the dream still fresh, I light a cigarette and lay back down, blowing out smoke as warm tears run free and curl up behind my ears. And some nights I let out a squeak of pain and sob “Dad... Dad”, but mostly I don't. I just lay there in the dark, on my back, in silence, not wanting to sleep any more. So agitated I'm awake and up, writing or mopping the tiles or doing the dishes or arranging my bookshelf. When the sun comes up I'll bed down, I say, it's much more peaceful that way, and cooler. I tell myself it's the summer and that the heat is unbearable and that when winter comes I'll sleep much better and at normal hours. And I will. I believe that. It's just been a long hot summer.
-----

#2
60 Rosaline Road, Fulham, London, SW6

The house doesn't look the same any more. The door's been painted, the crumbling front wall fixed, the missing windows replaced and the weeds from the front yard pulled up by the roots. But the house is still there, and no matter what repairs it has taken it still faces the east, still takes the best part of the sun on summer days, and no doubt the back rooms are still dark and suffer from damp. I think often of that place. It's a good memory, even the bad times. We were all there, all young, all alive, and it was home, as tragic as it was. But a new family lives there now, maybe a happier family – I don't know.

When my father died early on this year he was no longer living in the old house. He'd moved out years earlier after my best friend had succumbed to a slow and suffocating death up in one of the top rooms. He said he couldn't bare living there after that, that death seemed to have a permanent presence in the place and was always on the prowl. He said he could feel it in the rooms at night, creeping in on him as he sat watching TV alone. By the end he'd moved everything down into the small front room that looked out onto the street, living there without visiting the other rooms in the house. Then he moved out, into a property opposite.

In a way, my father living across the road was even better. While visiting him I could then look out his window and stare over at the old ghost and reminisce of all the comings and goings, the tragedies, the fights and all the broken people and lives which had staggered to and from it over the years. Somehow, like that, it took on an even greater significance in my life. I suppose because I could no longer enter inside that it felt more like an encased chapter which could no longer be meddled with, or meddle with me. From my father's new place I could watch the old house and fantasize about getting back inside, taking a walk through the rooms and seeing how the new family had arranged them and if they'd discovered the loose floorboards under which I'd hid many young secrets. And while my father was still alive it remained like that, a presence across the road and something which housed an era of memories which seemed to grow dearer each year.

But my father is dead now and the council has taken back the property he died in. The name Levene has no residence or business on that road any more. To see the old house now I must specifically go there for that reason, and even then I could only pass by as slow as I can to try and savour the moment and remember how things happened and how we all used to be. If I go there now I'll be a wanderer; at home and with no place to go. When my father vacated his space something else went with him, but it's not quite clear what. That's when I started searching

60, Rosaline Road, Fulham, London, SW6. That's what I'd type into Google Maps. The address. I'd zoom right in and visit the street, walk down to the house and turn into the yard. It felt real. Other times I'd zoom in 400% on the house and look through the windows, examine the brickwork and guttering, searching for some trace of our old existence there – a name scrawled somewhere or a piece of brick I remembered knocking out. After I'd make my way up the street and think of how we'd play football out in the road all summer long and how we'd peddle our bikes to freedom around those streets. I'd go down to the opposite end of the road, the place where Josh's garage used to be, and imagine how my father used to look coming around the corner after losing all his money in the betting shop and with only twenty paces left to figure out how he'd raise money to feed us that night. Other times I'd follow the route I used to take to school and observe all the things that have changed just as much as all the things which have stayed the same. It seems like a different time now. Just invisible footprints and dead skin in a street I still think of as mine. And the weird thing is, after all that happened, after all the blood and years of life that was spilled in that house, if it came on the market tomorrow, and if I had the money, I'd buy it. I'd prise open that encased chapter and risk more tragedy. I'd move in, alone or with a lover or a dog, amongst all the old ghosts, visiting the little corners of the house where mighty things had once happened.

Sometimes, just for tears, I wish I could go back.
-----

#3
The Snail Bank

I think it's only normal. After the passing of my father I've been preoccupied with death: His, my own, and everything from bugs to plant life. Somehow death and dying seems more real, and at the same time, more mystical than before.

I pull a petal off a flower and look at it. “That's death right there,” I think. “It's in my hand... gone for all eternity.” At the bushes, across from the bench where I sometimes sit and smoke and read, I look at the symmetry of the leaves and try to work out what birth and life and family and death really is. I try to understand why the death and rebirth of leaves and flowers seem so natural and acceptable, and yet the same birth, growth and death in humans seems tragic and flawed. At home I stare at the dead flies and moths on the window sill and it seems impossible to believe that they can never be re-animated. That even given infinite time these things will never again Be. A fly – It's hardly made of anything. Why can't such a little thing be fixed? It's hard to understand. There is no understanding. One moment things have a conscious existence the size of their known universe, and the next, the lights are out are we exist no more.

From my bed, as I write, there is a bug making its way nimbly across the floor. It's a small black rain beetle. They get in here all the time, crawling in from out the cold and wet of the plant beds just outside. My instinct is to jump up and squash it flat. But I've given up killing bugs, instead I drive them into a glass and then rattle them to freedom out the window. The other night I even went outside and picked up all the snails which had slithered out after the evening rain. I carefully unstuck them from the concrete and moved them out of harms way so as they didn't get crushed by the evening crowds. Why? I don't fully understand, but I know it's because my father's dead.

- - -

Thoughts and Wishes to All, Shane. X

For The Drunks Among Us

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:46:00 +0000

.
I'm not sure if it's the booze which turns me psycho or if it just brings it to the fore. In any case it mattered little: It was a freezing December evening and I was nineteen and hanging off Leatherby's balcony - fourteen floors up, above a spiked metal railing with gravity and the weight of a gallon of beer and whisky conspiring to pull me down. And while hanging there like that, with the muscles and tendons in my arms stretched to snapping point, I realized I had gone out too far, that I was no where near strong enough to heave myself back up and over.
“So this is how it's gonna go down,” I thought, that I'll hang here until I can hang no more and then drop down to a useless, messy death below. So when they somehow managed to pull me up, a man wound tight around each wrist and tugging my arms out of their sockets, I collapsed back over the safe side of the balcony wall, clean cut sober, and promised: “I'll never drink again!”

They had no choice but to arrest me. Even if I hadn't have refused to come on out. An opportunistic play of sheer idiotic drunken lunacy: crawling under a police van as it sat quietly at the lights on Wardour Street. They at first must have thought I'd stooped low to pick something up, and when I hadn't resurfaced by the change of lights had sent one of the officers out to find out what the hell I was up to down there. He must have spied the back sole of my shoe or something, disappearing under the van, as next I heard his astonished voice: “Guv, you'll never believe what this fucking idiot has done! Fuck, we've got ourselves a right one 'ere!!”And then I heard the back doors of the Sherpa van push open, and looking out under the back axle I saw at least six black booted feet drop to the ground, and then four eyes were peering in at me and demanding that I come out. I refused. "I'm never giving myself up!" I screamed, “Fuck the Brits!” Over across the road I could now see an assortment of various other ankles and shoes, and further back down the road a man was down on his stomach, pointing my way and saying, “I can see him... I can see him!!!” Of the gathering crowd, brought together to watch my drunken 'non-protest', there seemed to be quite a healthy split of opinion: Some were urging me on, and others were a little less sympathetic, advising the police to run over me and invert my spine. They didn't. There was a much easier solution than that. Two of the officers knelt down, grabbed a hold of a foot a piece and tugged me on out of there – me trying desperately to claw into the tarmac and screaming all the while. When they finally had me out they cuffed me straight and then rolled me over for the big unveiling: an imbecilic young face, red and smiling with the drink and saying: "Go on then you bastards, beat me up!" They didn't. And I swore: I'd never drink again.

So it seemed like a dream when I found myself that Christmas Eve swaying on the edge of the underground platform, staring off with contempt into the pitch dark of the tunnel and praying for a tube train to come along so as I could chuck myself out in front of its thunderous rage. And as I stood there rocking like that, and sucking in the smell of carbon dust and electric current, the double rows of white fluorescents above seemed to glare and fade and glare and fade, pushing and pulling me in and out of some cynical world of self-hatred and bitterness. And I thought: "Fuck you!" to the sickly couple petting on the seats behind me, and “Fuck YOU!” to the young boys just over there smelling of Stella Artois and kebab and Xmas joy, and “FUCK YOU!!” to the sober Underground worker standing at the far end of the platform and looking down at me (or maybe just looking down). And sometimes the place seemed upside down and topsy turvy, and other times other worldly; the large pasted advertisements appearing ultra bright and ultra real and ultra evil like they'd been put there just for me. So then I'm laughing bitterly at some deranged thought which has passed through my head and before I'm even finished with that craziness I'm then dreaming of bed and imagining trying to stub out my last cigarette so I don't set the place up.

And then I felt a breeze. And somewhere far off into the black of the tunnel a spark shot out like a sharp elbow. Then came more cool black air and with it a low constant rumbling and I edged myself a little closer to the platform's edge. The rats scurried for safety well before the first bolt of electricity bandied down the tracks, and for a moment I wasn't sure if it was the drink playing tricks on my eyes or if the tunnel really was alive with blaring light and noise. But there was no mistake about it: a tube train was hurtling down the tracks and headed my way.

Since I didn't much fancy flinging myself out onto live rail, being electrocuted first and then decapitated, I knew I had to time this to perfection. I thought of toppling off the platform, not really jumping but kinda just relaxing and falling into the trains path. I reckoned that with the drink in me and the speed these things blast through at I probably wouldn't feel a thing. And barely was it decided that that was how I was going to enter history than my face was being blown back and I was growling and laughing at compartments full of people in their Christmas merry as they flashed by all blurred, the train inches from my nose. And I thought: "Fuck it, next year!" and then swore I'd never drink again.

And so I'm in a house in Chelsea with my brother and some weird girl who we'd met as we left a bar. We'd followed on behind as she danced off in front, bare-footed, screaming over and over: "I'm late, I'm late! The rabbits late! Follow Me.... " An upper-class, schizophrenic, problem child, left alone by her father and so she'd ventured out searching for bad boys like my brother and I. Well, she had found us. And the house, OH THE HOUSE, Jesus! Antiques and paintings and silverware and cameras and jewellery and now the trash of my brother and I acting as a counterweight against all that opulence. And with no talking, no discussion, not a single word at all, we'd been led in and straight up to her bedroom. And this crazy, unwell-bred girl, with a protruding forehead, pushed out by a deformed frontal lobe, was then showing us her forearms and tops of her breasts boasting how she cuts herself up with broken glass and sees a psychiatrist twice weekly. On hearing that I said to my brother: “We could be in here... I'll fuck her first!" And the girl heard. And now she was no dumb rabbit but Alice, on the bed, washing down a handful of psycho pills with red wine before pushing her trousers and panties down and laying there with her legs crossed but her muff out. And as planned I went first, though not as planned Madcap Alice was suddenly up on her knees, waving around a huge real psycho knife and warning me to stay back and not to rape her (all the while screaming that I HAD raped her). And then, when she felt she'd done enough to prevent me from violating her, she asked: “Are you boys hungry?” Said she'd fix us up a full Sunday Roast (from scratch) but after that we'd have to leave. Then just as quickly as she'd lost it, she lost it even more, saying that she needed DRUGS. Any DRUGS. So I said that this was Chelsea and that The Kings Road was packed six to a doorway with the homeless and that we could easily score DRUGS there. My brother found a bottle of Scotch, named it his, and we left.

Back outside and the night air was frosty and cut through with ice, but we were warm with booze and excitement and I had a hard-on and maybe my brother did too. And because I had mentioned the homeless and drugs and how easy it was Madcap Alice had then gone skipping and dancing up to a pair of beggars dressed in sleeping bags.
“Can you get me DRUGS!" she asked. And she wasn't even sane enough to know that there are different drugs, and that no-one in the entire history of scoring has ever tried to score just 'DRUGS'. So I pulled one of the beggars aside and said: “Look, the girl's completely cracked! My brother and I just wanted to fuck her a bit but she turned all mental and threatened to kill me. But tell her you can get 'DRUGS' and come on back. She's alone in her father's three storey house and it is packed to the top ceiling with every kind of shit that could probably help you guys out!"

And so Alice is once again out in front, leading us all back to hers, having started up with the rabbit nonsense again. My brother hands me the bottle of scotch like it's a relay baton and then goes dancing away too, trying to catch up with Alice and fuck her before I or the beggars do. I hang behind with the beggars, still dressed in sleeping bags and looking like winter caterpillars up on their hind legs. The beggars are either merry with the prospect of getting out the cold or they have realised that this is for real. As I stagger along sipping at the whisky, each one is at either of my ears asking again about the house and drooling and rubbing their hands together as I describe it over and over again.

We're in the Hallway of Madcap Alice's house. The beggars are staring up in astonishment at the low hanging chandelier.
“It's a reproduction,” says Alice, “everything's a fucking reproduction!” The beggars don't seem to mind though, and Me, I think: At least there'll be no trouble replacing everything then! Once again we're led up into the bedroom, only this time there's five of us. Alice is the only one who sits. The pills she'd swallowed earlier seem to be coming on strong as she's rolling her head around and laughing and saying weird things as if she's tripping. But she's not tripping. She just thinks that's how DRUGS make you behave. She's seriously whacked. Getting down to business one of the beggars asks: "OK, so how much DRUGS do you want?" Madcap Alice pulls out some notes from her jeans and says: “This much!” She's not got a single clue as to how much cash she's even produced. Still, as crazy as she is, she is not crazy enough to give the money to the beggars. Instead she gives it to me, maybe as payment for raping her, and that's even worse. I stuff the notes in my pocket, my brother now diving in and trying to take his half. I fight his drunken hand out my pocket and tell him: “Later!”

The beggars say that to get the DRUGS they have to make a phone call. Madcap Alice, really out of it now, flings a hand towards the door, as if to say: “It's somewhere through there.. I don't know!” With the Beggars now roaming the house (casing the joint), my brother and I collect a few select things ourselves. I take a fake Ming vase, a brass fire poker and a Toby Jug while my brother fills his pockets with Silverware. Now resigned to our fate – a wank in the dark before sleep – we decide to call it a night and tell Alice that we're leaving, and that the two beggars are ordering her DRUGS, but to be very careful as I think they're planning to rob her. But Alice isn't as stupid as she is crazy, and she realises that I've told her that but am preparing to leave with a body load of stuff myself. She says that my brother and I can keep what we've taken and just to go, that EVERYONE MUST GO! My brother and I agree, and so drunk to hell we head off, now with Alice firmly behind us making sure we go. As we make our way down the stairs and off through the open plan living room we pass the beggars who are on the phone. But it doesn't sound much like DRUGS they're ordering: "Yeah, bring the fucking van, mate... I'm tellin' Ya, we can empty this fuckin place!" And then I wake up on a night bus and I'm kicking to rouse my brother as it's pitch black outside and I think we've overshot our stop. And we have. And it's raining and it's freezing and we're walking the five miles back home, weighed further down with the odd and useless bits of antiques we have. And my head seriously hurts, and my ears and the base of my skull are frozen. And not only am I trying to hold myself up but my brother too, and if this walk doesn't kill us I promise: I'll never drink again.

So I'm trying to light a cigarette but I keep missing the tip and it looks like the flame and tip are aligned but they're not and people around are pointing and laughing. And then the cigarette is lit, but I still can't get a drag off the thing, and it's there I realize I've kinda lit it in the centre and it just gives up the game and falls apart. I fumble another one out the pack and try again. And that's when the thick end of a pool cue cracks me a good'un right around the side of my head, and the fat loud-mouth guy in the QPR football top who'd been my best friend all evening is now accusing me of having made moves towards his old lady. I hear the wrap of the pool cue off my knuckles as I raise my hands to defend myself.

And it's a black wet night and I can see the moon and a fist keeps punching me in the face. I don't even try to stop it, just walk on into it, undefended, telling the fist I'm sorry and to calm down for just a minute. And then the police are there, blue swirling lights and radios in the night, and I'm saying: “Nah, he's my mate... he was tryin' t'help. It was someone else altogether who did this.” And then the police are gone and My Loudmouth Friend has his arm around my shoulder, shouting a drunks' whisper into my ear : "Nice one for that mate! They would've 'ad me back in The Scrubbs! Fuuuuck!” And then I'm back inside, being paraded around the bar as some kinda “Stand-up Guy”, and that's really amusing as without my friend holding me up I'd be a dribbling drunken pile on the floor. And I'm smiling, a huge wide affectionate idiotic thing, as My Loudmouth Friend shows me off to each table: “Look how I fucked his face up and he STILL didn't rat me out!” And everyone is patting my back and shaking my hand and somewhere in the haze I take a drag of a cigarette and it's strong! So now my head is spinning and the room is spinning and sounds are far away and then real loud and every thing and everyone has this blurry halo of light around them and I feel detached and heavy-headed. And then I'm falling back down into my seat, across from HER, and I'm not sure what is real and what is not or what has happened or what has not. Then my friend is back, crashing a pint down on the table in front of me, an inch of beer jumping up and out over the lip of the glass, and it's the last thing I ever want to see. And I think I'm sliding down off my chair, like a piece of meat or a dogs exhausted tongue, flopped out and struggling to see and so I'm squinting or peering or doing something, over across to the girl who started all this trouble. I put a cigarette in my lips and let it dangle. I'm thinking of fucking her and I imagine I look pretty smoky and sexy and cool, but now, I'm not so sure I did. And certainly the beating was real. I can feel it in my face, a swelling numbness that normally only dentists dish out. But maybe it helped? Maybe my friend's punches saned or sobered me up, as his woman now looks quite different too: Older, fatter, stupider, more vulgar, less leggy, less sexy, less fuckable, unfuckable, unanythingable, and God. is that hair on her face? And I swear: I'll never drink again.

And then it's broad daylight, around eleven o'clock (maybe), and I'm staggering down the centre of the road of Kensington High Street and I've got my cock out and I'm pissing along the white centre divide line. Cars and buses and taxis are hooting me but I carry on regardless and I think I put my dick back inside my pants while it's still pissing. And I did. So I scream: “ROCK N' ROLL!!!” and swear, I'll never drink again!

And then I'm in France, and I'm at a companies Christmas do, and I'm not sure how I got there but I recognize three people and so suppose they must have invited me. And before we've even finished our starters I've started: throwing food about and having a great time. And I go to the toilet and return with the handle off the door, and we're all laughing except one boy who I don't know and who seems to have taken a passionate dislike to me. And as a drunk the most annoying, boring fuckers are the sober, and no matter how blind drunk you are you can always see a sober man: and this man was SOBER. So now my attentions are on him and I start up with clever quips and subtle insults until the entire table is laughing him down. And I'm knocking back the wine and peering at this shit through two scrunched up eyes, and someone is obviously enjoying my insanity as they keep topping up my gtlass – and every time it's topped up I empty it again. And it's soon that I straighten up after my latest throatful of Beaujolais to realize, once again, that I'm floating on a different plane to everyone else, and I'm suddenly not sure if the table are laughing at Him or Me. Then I realize it's ME! I'm being ignored, pacified, my insults waved away and HIM opposite is being told to ignore me. He's won! Even my automatic refill has stopped. So now I'm seething, staring at him through a haze of drunken hatred and planning his murder to the chip of cutlery on plate. And then the entire fucking table jumps and everyone is pushing back, except Him, who's now leaning right across with a fork to my eye and screaming something about me pouring wine and candle wax over his Foie Gras and that he's going to kill me! And then I'm being dragged crashing through the restaurant, over tables and through romantic meals, towards the exit where he's gonna beat the crap outta me. And I don't know if he does or not because the next thing he is over the other side of the road, at a bus-stop, crying and being comforted by his girlfriend. And now I'm crossing over to apologize, staggering around in the oncoming traffic, halting cars and apologizing to them too. All the while his girlfriend is warning me off, shouting at me to “Just leave it!!" and “FUCK OFF!” So I do. Home. But the walk is a turbulent one and I'm making it with my eyes closed. I've a vague feeling of having lost my jacket, keys and money. And then I realize: I have lost my jacket, keys and money. And I'm laughing about it, a caustic bitter laugh ringing out in the shrill night. Staggering forward is hard enough, so going back would be impossible. “Fuck You Jacket, keys and money... FUCK YOU!”

And then I'm on the floor and the back wheel of a moped is spinning somewhere near my face and a boy who looks about ten is besides me in a helmet. And he doesn't hit me or anything, just rises and gets back on his motorcycle and scoots off. And the city lights are a blur above me and I'm not sure what are lights and what are stars or what is the moon. I try to rise but can't. I'm eating French pavement, and French pavement tastes the same as any pavement in the world. I feel sick. My leg hurts. I've lost my jacket, keys and money and home seems centuries away. And now my head is spinning, a vortex or noise and light and pain and liquid, all swirling around and pulling down and coming up. And as the vomit shoots and splutters out my nose and mouth I feel as if I'm dying. And I am dying. And every time I think I'm done another part of the evening comes rising up and spewing out. And now my eyes are open and once again I can see. The sick is all upon me and has collected in a sticky pool around the side of my head and in my ear. And it's bad, but it's better than before. And soon I'll pick myself up and drag myself on home, but before I do, and while I'm here, and once more just for fun: I swear, I'll never drink again!

*

A Song for The Drunks. Love to all the Dogs, Shane. X

The Remains of The Day - A History of Murder and its Aftermath

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 21:12:00 +0000

.
It all started with a scream. I heard it from the top of the road as I made my way home from school. Somehow I knew it was my mother's pain. It was a scream from nowhere and of unbearable suffering. And it didn't stop. It was 1983 and my mother had just been informed that her lover, my father, missing for over a year, had been discovered: murdered and dismembered and stuffed in two black bin bags in the flat of serial killer Dennis Nilsen. It was an event that would blow lives apart. I was seven, and Hell was on its way.

*

My father, Graham Archibald Allen, was born on the 31st October 1954 in Motherwell, Scotland. He was a healthy, athletic child, raised in a stable home by two strict protestant parents. The youngest of two he grew with attention problems and failed miserably at school. The only thing he excelled at was football, at the age of fourteen making Motherwell's youth team. But Motherwell, not even the promise of professional football, could contain my father. By the age of 15 he had discovered Glasgow, alcohol and cheap prescription drugs. By 17 he was out of school, out of pocket and out of home. Having been laid off by the steel works in Motherwell and with nothing else for it, he made his way down south to London. It was there, 10 years later, that Graham Allen would one night meet another fellow scot by the name of Dennis Andrew Nilsen.This meeting would entwine these two Scotsmen together forever, and the events of that night would eventually go down in British crime and folklore history. One man would be remembered as 'the 14th victim', and the other for carrying out a string of macabre and gruesome murders.

My father arrived in London, penniless, in the late autumn months of 1971. He intended on finding labouring work with one of the many small building contractors who hired workers for cash-in-hand with no questions asked. Like many a young scot before him, Graham Allen hit the city only to find that the tales of easy employment had been greatly exaggerated, and that there were not jobs you could just step into straight off the train. To find employment would still take some effort, and what's more, it would also take a few quid. My father didn't have a few quid. He couldn't buy the early papers which advertised the latest jobs and didn't have the fare to travel to well known pick-up spots. Instead he walked his way into Central London, to the bright lights and the sex shops, a place notorious for runaways and a place where one could make a quick illegal buck and then move on to pastures new.

Whatever happened it didn't happen how my father had imagined it would. From the quiet industrial town of Motherwell, via the shit and pish of Glasgow, he was suddenly slumming it rough in London. Homelessness however wouldn't last long. After making a few contacts he was soon taking advantage of the lenient squatting laws of the time, living in abandoned buildings and stealing electricity from the mains supply. With a roof over his head, warmth and a few quid in his pocket my father suddenly had time to kill, and it wasn't long before he was sucked into the sleazier side of city life: Cheap strong booze and whatever pills were doing the rounds. This time though the pills weren't swallowed down with mouthfuls of beer but whacked up in syringes. It wasn't long after that heroin was on the agenda. Less than a year later, at eighteen years of age, Graham Allen was one of the city's many officially registered heroin addicts. He funded his habit through a mixture of government unemployment money, begging, stealing and robbing tourists around London's West End.

One of My father's regular drinking haunts, and one of the few places he was welcome, was the Kings Head pub in Leicester square. It was there where he met my mother, Lesley Mead, a blond haired blued eyed barmaid employed by her father who was the publican. Within weeks of meeting the two had fallen in love. But it wasn't simple. My mother was already in a relationship and had a child with a well-known local criminal, and so Graham Allen, the young Scot, became a badly kept and barely tolerated secret. But some secrets could not be kept hidden, not even badly, and in early 1975 my mother fell pregnant and nine months later I was born.

If my birth affected anyone it was my step-father. It was he who would raise and provide for me and he who I would call 'Dad' all my life. It was no secret I was not his by blood, but that didn't matter, he loved me with the same indifference as he did my brother and sister. What my birth did change however was home life. Graham Allen was then openly creeping in and out of my mother's bed and for all who knew them they were a sure item. Nevertheless, my father couldn't afford to support three children (two not his own), a woman, and a raging drug and alcohol habit. So more than anything else it was out of convenience that my half-surrogate-family stayed together. It was a fucked up situation for all, but it worked. Kinda.

In 1978 the squat in Liverpool Street where everyone was living was cleaned out. Due to having three young children my mother and step-father were officially rehoused into a two bedroom maisonette on the other side of London. They made the move and set up house together, though by this time their relationship was nothing more than a business arrangement. They slept in separate rooms and led separate lives. My mother's separate life was of course my father, and it was no surprise that this 'separate life' found itself in paying digs less than a hard-on's length away from the new family home. During that year Mum spent every available moment she could with her lover, and like that, with no-one even really noticing, my mother had flown the roost.

Living together in a single room, and without the fear of having to account for the bruises, my parents' relationship took a downward turn. It became very stormy, very violent and very unhealthy. There were substance abuses and infidelities on both sides which led to frequent violent quarrels and separations. For this reason my mother staggered in and out of two lives, returning back to the family home when her face had taken enough punishment or when she was sick of living in a single room with a volatile junkie who spent every spare penny on smack. Back home my mother could stay for minutes, hours, days, or weeks. No-one, not even herself, would know how long for sure. The only certainty was that eventually she'd leave and end up back in Graham Allen's arms.

My memories from this time are very diluted and hazy. I was very young and wasn't aware that these days were the calm before the storm. My memories of my mother are few and far between, and memories of my father are even more fleeting. Other than the night he disappeared I only have three:

1) Finding him unconscious and being taken away by paramedics after a drug overdose.
2) Playing football with him in the street and using dustbins for goalposts.
3) Slashing his wrists open with a meat cleaver during a violent argument with mum

There are a few other memories but they are very vague. I remember a Breton striped top, bleached denim jeans, thin legs, brown hair and a Scottish accent. I'm not even sure if those are real or implanted memories – descriptions of him which I claimed as my own. I just don't know.

*

During the last five years of his life my father was in and out of prison, in and out of rehab, and in and out of life. His living was hard and his addiction was harder – it was completely out of control. He was not just a drug addict he was a junkie. If that wasn't enough he was also halfway to becoming a chronic alcoholic, and with alcohol he got psychotic and even more violent than usual.

The 1980’s only brought more suffering to my father. He was in prison again on charges of heroin possession and was kicked off his drug program. To ensure he still had a heroin substitute to fall back on he took up the hobby of robbing chemists. With his drug habit unstable and drinking ever increased amounts of alcohol the relationship with my mother became ever more unhealthy and violent. On two occasions she ended up in hospital after taking beatings at his hands. The second time this happened was on Christmas day of 1981, when over Xmas dinner my father leaned across to kiss her and instead bit half her nose off. That act summed up their relationship. It was an intense melange of sex, violence and impulsive acts.

*

The night of my father's disappearance in 1982 brought more of the same. I remember him arguing with my mother and demanding money for heroin. He was drunk and cut and she had taken refuge inside the family house. His violent demands took place from outside, standing on the window ledge and shouting through the glass. He was hung up their like some perverse embodiment of Christ, black blood coming out his mouth where he'd punched his own face in, and screaming for my mother's purse. That was the last sight either my mother or I saw of him. Well, that and then finally climbing down before casually skipping the low garden wall and disappearing into the night. That image haunts my mother, and what haunts her even more were her very last words: “Fuck off... and NEVER come back!”

He didn’t.

*

During the year of my father's disappearance, my mother always believed him dead. This wasn't the first time he had disappeared, nowhere close, but it was the first time he had disappeared and hadn't made some kind of contact in the following days. That was a given. Even if it was just to say: 'I fucking hate you, You Cunt! PS: I'm in prison!' Or even worse: 'I fucking hate you, You Cunt! PS: I'm in Scotland!' But no matter where he ended up he always wrote. This time he never did. My mother just hoped that he had succumbed to a peaceful, painless death and had quietly overdosed somewhere and died alone. Of course, secretly she hadn't given up all hope. I know she hadn't. Somewhere inside her she would have been desperately hoping for her love to return, and probably she still is now.

It was during 1983 that news started breaking across the country of a “House of Horrors” in north London. A man had been arrested there after human remains were found clogging up the drains outside the house in which he resided.. As with the entire country my mother was gripped by this story and followed in shocked interest as the gruesome tale unfolded. It turned out that over a five year period, between two houses in North London, 16 young men had been murdered, dismembered, and disposed of. Of course, my mother never imagined for one moment that her future would be tied up in this bizarre event. The news broke, went from the front pages to the second, from the second to the third, and then faded away completely awaiting the big trial. It was one afternoon during this quiet period that all hell would break loose in my life. That day my childhood would end and something without description would take its place. And as I mentioned: It Started With a Scream.

*

I never did make it into see My mother that day. Before I was even in the front yard a neighbour had gathered me up and was leading me clear from the wreckage. All I saw was the police car parked outside, my open front door, and a view down the hallway and out back into the kitchen. Sitting at the table where my dinner should have been were two uniformed police officers, and standing just back from them were two men in suits. My mother was out of sight, just a piercing noise that cut through the next ten years.

Inside my neighbour's I was soon joined my my elder sister and my younger brother. We all sat there, in the late afternoon, in a living room which wasn't ours, and as our mother's world collapsed two doors down we stared blankly at depressing cartoons on the TV, waiting for news and to be given permission to go home and see mum. I don't know how long we stayed there. I don't remember too much more of that afternoon. My next memory is of waking up, it then being dark outside, and my brother and sister fast asleep on the couch. Sitting up I sensed something was broken. Maybe the night? It was open and alive with lights and noises and worried voices. The adults were up, and in and out: we were all waiting for something.

How long we remained at our neighbour's, or what state Mum was in when we finally saw her, I can't recall. I don't remember seeing her at all that night although I know I must have. I imagine that the adults took care of her, kept a close eye as she drowned out the pain with alcohol and waited until my stepfather finally arrived home in the small hours of the morning to sit with her. All I know is that in the morning my mother's bedroom door was closed and the house was a few tones darker. My mother had barricaded herself up inside. It was my stepfather who explained what had happened. He was in shock too. He wasn't Graham Allen's greatest supporter (he had lost his woman to him) but regardless, Allen had made up a part of his criminal gang and they had worked together robbing tourists in London for the past ten years. So my step-father told us the news, but not even he could tell us about Mum and how her world had imploded.

When I was old enough to be worth telling, or when mum was drunk enough to be able to tell it, she explained the day of the scream.

She was in the kitchen preparing our dinner when there was a knock on the door. She opened up to find two plain clothes detectives, a uniformed policeman and a police woman standing on the doorstep. They confirmed her name and asked if she knew a Graham Archibald Allan. Initially she thought he had been found alive and was in trouble again. She let the police in and led them out back into the kitchen where she began attending to the potatoes.

“So what's he fucking done this time?”

It was somewhere here that the police told her to sit down and then explained that a skull had been found and from the dental records it had been positively identified as that of her lover. It had been retrieved from Cranley Gardens: 'The House of Horrors' in Muswell Hill. My mother says she doesn’t recall anything else after that. I suppose that's when she began screaming and her noise drifted on up to me, wandering down the road home from school. During that time there wasn’t police counselling or shock support, and so my mother was told the news and then left to scream the pain away with only the neighbour left to try and calm her. How she didn't try to commit suicide that night or the following days is a mystery. Though soon she would. As time ate away at her and she dulled her brain with vodka and martini, death and the desire to die crept closer. Very soon suicide would be the House Speciality. My brother, sister and I would be the only forces to stop it. For a while we tried, and then we just didn't care.

That Fateful Night

We know what happened before the murder, and we know what happened after, but no one really knows for sure exactly what were the last few hours of my father's life. At the pick up and the actual scene of my father's death there were only two witnesses: One is dead, and the other doesn’t recall much. From what I can piece together they would have went something like this:

My father skips the wall and heads into the centre of town. He somehow gets money, scores heroin around Piccadilly, has a few too many drinks and decides to head home. As he wanders down Shaftsbury Avenue in Soho he is accosted by Mr Nilsen. Nilsen, seeing my father's drowsy state decides to try his luck. He offers him the promise of more alcohol, a warm taxi ride, a bed for the night and something to eat. My father, probably with sinister intentions of his own, accepts. They arrive at Nilsen's north London flat at around one o’clock in the morning. Here’s what Nilsen describes as taking place:

“the thing he wanted more than anything was something to eat. I had very little supply in but I had a whole tray of eggs. So I whipped up a large omelette and cooked it in a large frying pan, put it on a plate and gave it to him. He started to eat the omelette. He must have eaten three-quarters of the omelette. I noticed he was sitting there and suddenly he appeared to be asleep or unconscious with a large piece of omelette hanging out of his mouth. I thought he must have been choking on it but i didn’t hear him choking – he was indeed deeply unconscious. I sat down & had a drink. I approached him, I can’t remember what I had in my hands now – I don’t remember whether he was breathing or not but the omelette was still protruding from his mouth. The plate was still on his lap – I removed that. I bent forward and I think I strangled him. I can’t remember at this moment what I used... I remember going forward and I remember he was dead.... If the omelette killed him I don’t know, but anyway in going forward I intended to kill him. An omelette doesn’t leave red marks on a neck. I suppose it must have been me.”

Nilsen then undressed my father, masturbated over him (he denies having sex with the body) and then moved him to the bathroom where he laid his body in the tub. He left him there for three days. During this time Nilsen would continue to wash, brush his teeth and do his toilet in the presence of my father's dead body.

On the fourth day Nilsen removed my father's body from the bath. He laid a plastic sheet on the floor, dumped the body on it, and systematically dismembered it. First he cut off the head, and then the hands and the feet. Next he opened up the torso and removed the internal organs. With the insides removed Nilsen severed the body at the waist and removed the arms. He disconnected the legs from below the knee. During the following days he gradually diced the flesh and flushed it down the toilet. To dispose of my father's head he boiled it for hours in a large pot on the stove. The skull with the flesh boiled from it, and my father's bones, were placed in two black bin bags, tied and stored in the cupboard. And that's where they remained. Nilsen was apprehended before he had the chance to get rid of them, though not before he had the chance to kill one final victim. I suppose my father's post-mortem claim to fame is that it were his body parts which were discovered blocking the drains of Nilsen's apartment building and which led to Nilsen's arrest. It's not a great historical footnote, but it's better than most.

I have explained the death in detail not for shock value or to be crude, but to give some idea of the horrendous news which was forced upon my mother that afternoon. I know the relationship between My mother and father was violent and unhealthy, but it was still love, and as we know, love is often twisted and never a logical emotion.

*

The months immediately after the death are vague. I hardly recall a thing. I think my mother was shell-shocked and maybe only thoughts of revenge kept her alive. She stayed locked in her room, the house growing darker, and alcohol keeping her afloat. My next proper memories of the event come during the build up to the trial.

The case was all over the papers again and there were journalists coming daily to our door. My father was the only victim they didn't have a clear recent picture of and they were offering up to two thousand pounds for a photo. It was during this time that we really discovered all the facts of what had happened. It would be the catalyst which pushed my mother into the abyss.

The last sane thing, or the first insane thingmy mother did was to attend Nilsen's trial at The Old Bailey. She had been warned by journalists not to attend as there would be gruesome stuff on display directly related to her lover's death. Mum ignored all warnings. I think more than anything she was there to try and reconcile something in her head, that she wanted to see Nilsen, the monster who had done this, and at least be able to soothe herself with the knowledge that he was a complete psychopath and what had happened wasn't preventable. Only Nilsen wasn't the monster she had imagined. In fact she said he looked “plain and normal” that- staring at him gave no hint to what he had done. There was no reconciling what had happened with the man who had done it – Nilsen looked as normal and commonplace as the judge. It wasn't a monster on trial but a human being, and then it made even less sense. My mother never hung about for the verdict. She left halfway during the fourth day of the trial, after my father's skull and the saucepan Nilsen had boiled his head in were brought before The Crown as evidence. It would be more than twenty years later that her sanity would finally catch up to her.

Post-trial I remember my mother drinking suicidal amounts. Drunk she would do nothing but cry and sit on the floor alongside a small stereo listening to old love songs and staring at the tender of her wrists. With the story now out of the media the victims' families were left at home alone without even the small comfort of the nation's empathy to help absorb the event. There were no more journalists offering comfort as they scavenged the victims for scraps of untold story, and no more newspaper reports mentioning their names and telling of their plight. It was over. The murderer was in jail and other news was more important. The victims now only had the torture of solitude and silence to take comfort from, and that was no comfort at all. My mother's drinking and suicidal tendencies spiralled to a climax. She could no longer take it any more. She decided that The Blackout was for her.

*

It was one afternoon, during the summer of 1985 that I saved my mother's life. I was only young and I was only coming home for lunch and I was only just in time. Fifteen minutes later and I would have found her dead and then I don't know what I would have done. As it happened I found her worse than dead: I found her dying. And that is an even more brutal and traumatising thing to see.

I remember the house was dark. But a weird darkness, more a sense of it, like how you feel when a door is shut that should be open. There was also no smell of food and that was strange as well, as I was home to have lunch and then return to school. I peered up the stairs. My mother's bedroom door was closed and the the landing outside was in darkness. I called out but there was no reply. Hungry I dumped my bag and headed into the kitchen to make a sandwich. With two slices of bread spilled out on the table I took a healthy knifeside of Peanut Butter and began spreading it. As I did so I heard a noise. It was faint. I stopped what I was doing and listened. There it was again, drifting down from upstairs, and sounding like someone in the midst of troubled dreams. I laid the knife down and followed the sound down the hallway and upstairs. Outside my mother's room I stopped and listened. Coming from the other side of the door was the same murmuring noise, only this time clearer and with the added sound of wheezing air or something. I knocked on the door and called out to Mum. There was no answer, just the same groaning noises as before. I knocked once again and with no reply I opened the door and froze. Covering the floor was broken glass, empty Martini bottles and hundreds of dropped tablets. And then I saw her, Mum, sprawled out on the bed, her eyes faintly open, and bright white foam frothing up and out of her mouth. She wasn’t conscious. I knew that much. I didn’t call or touch her. I couldn't bare to. Laying there like that something disgusted me about her and scared me right through to the bones. That was my mother and she was hurting and not well and maybe even dead. I turned and scarpered, off to get some help.

I can't remember what happened or what I said after knocking on my neighbour's door. What I do remember is her pushing past me and sprinting off, two doors down, and into my house. Moments later she was back, passing me without a word, down her hallway and straight to the telephone. At that moment my step-father arrived. He had been in the betting shop and on returning must have seen me upset outside my neighbour's and her rushing from our house into hers. Having called an ambulance the neighbour came out to meet my step-father. She pulled him aside and frantically told him something. Together they rushed back to be with my mother.

I wasn't allowed upstairs. I was ordered to stay down and outside. My job was to wave the ambulance in just so they didn't drive by or do something silly like that. After more than an eternity the ambulance finally arrived. Three paramedics stomped in the house past me and up the stairs. There was some commotion, paramedics leaving and returning with equipment and a stretcher, but my mother wasn't brought out. I didn't know what they were doing. Ambulances were supposed to get people to hospital quickly. It turned out they had to pump my mother's stomach on the spot and fight to keep her heart going. After a while they stretchered her unconscious body down the stairs and out into the ambulance. I really thought she was dead. My last vision was of her laying in the back of the ambulance, just her head visible outside a thick red emergency blanket, and white foam still frothing out her mouth. Then the back doors of the ambulance swung closed and it pulled off, the sirens flashing and wailing as it went into the distance.

I wasn't taken home. Instead I was once again left with the neighbour while my step-father went to remove my brother and sister early from school. When he returned he dropped them off and then left to make a meeting he had for the evening. Once again we were left waiting with our neighbour, this time for news if mum would live or die. In the early evening we got news. Mum was extremely ill but would survive. The hospital said that if she had have been found just fifteen minutes later that she would have already been dead. It made us all cry. It was too close, and at that moment in history we all loved our mother dearly.

Mum passed five days in intensive care, and remained in hospital for almost three weeks. She had been pumped and resuscitated so intensely that her entire chest and stomach was one huge bruise. I remember the day of her release, us collecting her and being happy that she was sober and seemed clear in words and look. She was frail and so we took a short bus ride home. Her sobriety wouldn't last long. That same night she got paralytic drunk, fell off the toilet and split her head open. My brother sister and I dragged her body into the bedroom and pulled her up on the bed. That's when we knew that all was not fine, that there would be more ambulances and more anxious waits. Over the next seven years she would attempt suicide on at least ten occasions; twice very earnestly. It got so bad that we had to hide all the knives (and forks) in the house. We spent the next few years on permanent suicide watch.

That episode, and my mother's then chronic alcoholism, highlights some of the knock-on effects that the murder had in our household. It shows the secondary victims. It also shows what became of my childhood, and just how far the murder had affected my mother. For my part I hold no ill will towards Nilsen. I'm honestly not sure life would have been any less traumatic if my father was around. And anyway, we cannot spend our time pondering the butterfly effect of our own and everyone else's actions. If we did we'd never move an inch, and even that would probably hurt some poor soul. They're not my reflections as a conscientious adult either. I have never felt ill will towards Nilsen, and I’ve never blamed him for my mother's alcoholism and the hell which that conjured up. After everything, we still determine our own actions. My mother choose the bottle; it didn’t come to her. It’s the same with me: I choose the needle. We must live and die by our swords. We cannot blame our enemy for us taking up arms. That is a bitter and all consuming road to take.

My mother's repeated suicide attempts very nearly led to me, my brother and sister being taken away and placed into Council Care. If it wasn’t for the stability that my stepfather offered we would have surely been carted off, separated, and brought up by middle-aged religious nuts as their ticket into Heaven. Fortunately, just as much for them, that didn't happen. Another thing that didn't happen was mum looking after us. From that point on my mother would stop being a permanent fixture in our lives. She would spend the next few years drifting from bottle to bottle, from lover to lover, searching for a man who no longer existed. Each time she found escape in someone he would mistreat her. She'd return home skint, covered in blood, and with a big bag of rattling vodka bottles. For a while she'd stay and then without warning she'd be gone. Just like before, no-one knew where, and no-one knew if she'd ever return again.

My mother's behaviour followed me all the way through my young and teenage years. As I grew older I learnt how to cope with her better, but unlike my sister I was never able to ignore her completely. I always had that lingering fear that the day I did would just be the day she was for real and my punishment for turning her away would be to have her death on my conscience. And so I stuck with her, as did my brother, phoning ambulances twice a week after fake suicide claims. But it wasn't all bad. There were also some good times and some fun memories – like the time she punched out my least favourite teacher. In the midst of all the perversity there were still moments of love and joy, and even odd days where I could be a child again. They were precious days, and it's those that mean the most.

The Me-effect – The By-product of Murder

After the death of my father I was all that was left of him. In my mother's eyes I was him. My brother and sister were from different blood and as a result my mother's attentions turned mostly towards me. This caused jealousy between my siblings and our relationship secretly soured as my mother heaped her drunken affections my way. Little did they know, they were the lucky ones. My life had become horrendous. My mother would keep me besides her at all times. I would wrestle knives out her grasp, watch her drink her death, see her break down, attempt suicide, and watch her fuck her way through a myriad of different men. She would also call me to her room, and in tears claim she was dying from terminal cancer and had only months to live. It was all unwanted attention. I didn't want to be my mother's favourite. Still, I was a boy and I loved my mother and I would have defended her to death. She was untouchable, and she still is.

Concerning my heroin addiction the actual murder has little direct association with it, but the physical death of my father and his image I began to compete with did. I am the by-product of murder, but not the product. Some of the problems I have are the waste fluid from that event.

In many ways I have (unintentionally) given my mother back what she lost. I have recognised her needs and fulfilled them. I have become a cleaner, non-violent version of my father. I am him without his worst faults. I have become a more rounded version of the man my mother loved. Yes, I'm a heroin addict, but even that gave my mother something back which she had lost. I doubt she enjoyed seeing me sticking needles in myself, but in a way it was like having my father back and sitting there all over again... a confirmation that he still lived on in some physical form.

Heroin, and the kind of image that gives off, is a part of the reckless, wild side of boys which my mother has always fallen for. She has never praised me for taking heroin, but in her reactions to it and to the footstep's that led me there, I sensed an admiration. And it wasn't just heroin. My wilder acts have always gained my mother's attention. And though she would scold my actions, there was always a little sparkle in her eye. The way she would report the incidents to her friends told me she had secretly enjoyed them. She enjoyed my first cigarette, my first joint and my first whiskey. She enjoyed my first arrest and then watching me stand in the dock of the Juvenile Court reciting Oscar Wilde. She enjoyed my first trip, and my first line of speed. She enjoyed the fights, the late nights and the love bites – me returning home with some woman's passion tattooed up my neck. It impressed her. She was watching the return of my father, and I was willingly playing the part.

Of course, I am not my father. There are huge differences between us. From what I know he didn’t read, didn’t write and didn’t paint. He had no artistic or intellectual hobbies. He wasn’t into literature, philosophy, sociology, politics, film or chocolate. Nothing. Just junk, love, alcohol and violence. All that really connects us is heroin addiction. That's no small thing, but it isn't very much either. Still, in part I have given my mother back what she had taken from her. I often think if I hadn’t she would have been dead years ago.

But drug addiction, as with any behaviour, doesn’t stem from one event. I cannot tell you all the parts of this, but I can tell you it would have probably happened anyway. The truth is, the idea of using drugs first came about as a way to overcome shyness. After that there were silly, immature reasons for first trying heroin. More than anything else to live up to a certain image and to exude a certain recklessness. That was probably aimed at impressing not only my peers but also my mother. Of course it also pissed a lot of the right people off and that was just as rewarding. But drug use and drug addiction are two very separate things. I soon found that heroin gave ME something. Not my mother, not my father, not my peers or my image, but ME. It gave an inch to an unbalanced leg. It made me feel more stable. Up until then a strong fart could have toppled me.

This is why I don’t hold any ill will or shove the blame towards Nilsen. It is also why I equally hold no ill will towards my mother. I stuck needles in my veins for me. As an intelligent, stupid adult I took my decisions and I will live with the consequences of them. I will not do what others have done and portion the blame for their mistakes and problems to others. I will not become bitter with life or death. I accept it all, and it's all my fault: the good and the bad. I'd have it no other way. I am happy within my body, and every bruise, and every scar and every smile and suicide rescue has contributed to that. I am my own history; the answer to my own equation. I cannot regret the past, none of it, without regretting myself. And I don't regret myself. I'd not rather be anyone else.. not even You.

It is now 28 years since the murder. My mother is two thirds on her way to death and I am even further along the line. Nilsen is still alive and languishes in HM Full Sutton maximum security prison in Yorkshire. He is 66 years old. My mother is drink and drug free, finally kicking the heroin and crack habits that she picked up later on in life. She no longer is haunted by the murder and can talk freely of it. She continues to hate Nilsen with a passion and hopes he is never released. I on the other hand would one day like to see him free. I would take no pleasure from him dying in jail. My mother would slap me for saying that, but what's a backhander at my age? It's just something you wipe away.

My Thoughts and Wishes To ALL, Shane.X

Link: Guardian article on Nilsen from 1983.
Tags: Dennis Nilsen. Dennis Nilsen's victims. Serial Killer. True life crime. Mass Murder

The Killing Fields

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 18:57:00 +0000

.
During the Vietnam war a term known as fragging occurred. It involved the deliberate killing of bastard, abusive or gung-ho commanders and was usually carried out by a small group of soldiers during battle conditions so as the death would look like an accident. Initially it was done with grenade pins and later more surely with a nice quick bullet in through the back of the skull. These killings were fuelled by fear, young men sick of being harried out in front of machine gun fire or fed live down underground tunnels. Fragging was not a way out of fighting, if anything it was a collective reaction against an abuse of power. These men did not sign up for 'certain death' or ever agree to be a human Trojan Horse, but that's what they were used for. Fragging also happened during the very unique circumstances of war, a time when Men are the law, and walk not only with right of way but with the judges hammer and executioners pistol as well. In light of the nature of fraggings, and the circumstances wherein they came about, nothing much was ever made of them. They were mostly covered up and only one ever went down in any kind of official way.

Today another kind of 'fragging' exists, though very different from the killings described above. The fraggings I write of are not executed in far away places with high-tech weapons, are not collective decisions, and the death is neither a quick nor painless one. It also doesn't involve grunts killing seniors officers but rather scar-tissued addicts killing their foot soldiers. I suppose the only real similarity between the wartime fraggings is that someone is killed in very ambiguous circumstances and their death is brought about by fear – albeit a very different kind. These killings of junkie by junkie are also very hard to find any moral argument for. They are silent, secretive, selfish acts of humanity (yes, HUMANITY): a way not to die alone.

*

It was Marge who first tried to infect me with the HIV virus, and a few years later my best junk buddy John. How many others would also have tried to pass on their bad blood if they ever had the chance I dread to imagine, though not many ever had that chance. After wizening to this trick the first time I became something of a junkie recluse, only mixing with other addicts when I needed to, and only on very rare occasions fixing in the same room or toilet.

Of the two incidents mentioned above they each affected me differently. Marge's attempt left me angry and afraid while John's, because we were friends, deeply saddened and hurt me. But below any raw or seething emotions I could also kinda understand why they had done what they did – though understanding certain motivations did not in any way justify or make it easier, it only served to make it an even more terrifying thing.

As the years passed and I spoke to other addicts about what had happened, or explained it to doctors or drug workers, nobody was ever really shocked. Most addicts had similar stories, and most doctors had heard similar stories. Though by far the most disquieting feedback came via a friend called Bill who chaired an HIV support group twice a week in Leyton, East London. Bill told me that a huge number of the people in his sessions had confessed to intentionally trying to pass on the virus and those who hadn't could mostly still relate to another's motivations for trying to do such a thing. And then Bill calmly told me something which almost blew my socks off: he admitted that he himself had done the same just after being diagnosed. He told me how he'd then go out his way to pick up guys and harass them into having unprotected sex. He said it was never to coldly kill, that that would have been easy but pointless. He explained it was important that people couldn't blame him any more than themselves... that he took comfort in knowing that someone else suffered the same emotions and regrets as he did. Bill said that one of the initial reasons he had started up the support group was because it was a healthier way not to be alone with the disease. Really Bill only confirmed what I already knew. And after he had we both sat there in silence, in a bar in Hammersmith, staring out on a winter evening which suddenly seemed to bite more cold. These were sad, lonely and desperate times, and not even the rowdy City Suits and flashing, wailing slot machines could drown out the view from there.

To some it may still seem like two bizarre incidents blown up into something they are not, that I was just unlucky. But the real fact is that the fragging of junkies by junkies, the intentional passing on of Hepatitis C and HIV in IV drug circles is rampant and common practice. And though no junkie passing this blog will probably admit so much, may even deny it, it does exist and if you ever sit in on an HIV counselling/confessional group you will hear similar stories, though many not quite as fortunate as mine. It will come to pass that what I write of is much more than bad chance: it is murder on a time-delay fuse.

* * *

Marge was a 6'3, lanky blonde haired transvestite. For the first 12 years of adulthood he had been the lead dancer for the Royal Ballet company, only leaving after his tits got so big that they hindered his performance and his crack and smack habits got so big that they hindered his ability to travel and stay away for long periods of time. His dancing partner was his lover who had died from AIDS way back in the early days of the disease, though Marge was always adamant that he himself had been lucky and tested negative. Now in his late forties, with just as many years of severe junk dependency behind him, Marge's ballet days were over, condensed down into three scrap-press-books of reviews and newspaper snippets intermingled with cut-outs of The Queen and Channel No.5 perfume adverts. Nowadays Marge made his living in less stretching ways: sitting down along the Holland Road with an array of pastel artworks laid out before him. He sold each one for two quid – though there was the option to haggle. Of course his artwork's aren't what funded his drug habits. They were his excuse to sit out begging and not feel like a beggar. People would buy a painting for double and tell him to keep it in the bargain. Many would disregard the scribbles completely, preferring instead to get straight to the heart of the matter and toss coins at him. Marge would at first eye the coins in disgust, then the moment the philanthropist was out of sight he'd scoop them up, count them, and then moan at how tight fisted the British were!

When Marge was especially hard up I'd lend him cash to right himself and then join him sitting outside for the evening as the coins rolled and bounced our way. I wasn't there to beg or because I needed money, I accompanied Marge as he wouldn't work the evenings alone yet needed to to repay me. So I was there as a kind of lowly guarantee that he wouldn't be assaulted or have his drawings kicked and stomped into the ground. Not that I ever stopped much. I only sat out with him maybe ten times and most of them we were spat at or a bottle would shatter against the wall behind us. Only once were we physically attacked. Marge freaked out and pulled a dirty syringe on one of the drunken yobs and ended up getting arrested. The truth is I wasn't there to protect Marge, or I was, but only so as he remained healthy enough to beg what he owed me. I knew if I didn't escort him out and babysit him I'd never see my money again. I'm not sure if Marge ever realised that I was the lead ball weight on the end of his chain. If he did, he never objected.

During that time I was still a newcomer to the needle and Marge was one of a group of new users I had gotten to know from the needle exchange. But Marge wasn't like the rest. He was well-spoken, cultured and had a kind of nurtured intelligence (which means he had been taught how to eat properly). For those superficial reasons he didn't scare me half so much as the people who lingered around him. God, these were some serious C.H.U.D'S*, only they lived uptop with us and were slightly more deformed. Some would sit down in the street behind Marge and I screwing blunt needles into leaking abscesses. Others would lower their trousers in a doorway and quickly ram a needle into their femoral artery. These users scared the shit outta me and I didn't like being anywhere near them. There was something so dirty and hazardous about the needle in those early days – even my own used works would trigger panic attacks. Marge however didn't scare me; he just alarmed me. Especially his behaviour around syringes. He seemed to be obsessed by them. He had this thing where he'd act like Mummy-nurse and remove and cap needles from nodding junkies bodies. He'd also accept needles full of pre-cooked dope in the street and bang them up without a thought (skin pop them right in through his jumper). It was scary business, and was the first thing which made me question why anyone would be so carefree around other's spikes' and blood. Some nights as we sat out in the dark I would watch Marge and wonder where he'd be now if things had have gone right? Probably an alcoholic... he had that kind of a face, and his nose was a wine taster's wet dream.

I think looking back I wanted a friend. I was scared of what I was doing and wanted someone alongside me crazy enough to do the same, yet sane enough to be responsible. Marge seemed like that person... and he was interesting. He could talk about whatever the subject turned. I suppose I thought we were alike. That the only real difference was that Marge had been stewing in the shit longer. But really Marge and I were not alike. Marge had been twirling with the devil so long now that he had become confused over who was who. He was your friend if you bought him a beer and your lover if you bought him a hit. But if you sat besides him and had nothing you was suddenly an irritating inconvenience. He'd get all bitchy and use his knowledge to damn your interests and pick holes in your favourite author's or artist's works (as well as pick your pockets). He used that old junkie con of warning you of every trick and scam in the book while performing them on you. That I had caught Marge stealing off me the first ever time we met didn't help me trust him much. I never pulled him for that theft, preferring instead to watch him as he talked and smiled, and stole small scoops of brown whenever he thought I wasn't looking.

It was during my second month of intravenous drug use when our relationship soured and would never be the same again. Marge, the great opportunist, would try and rob something from me which I wasn't so fond of at the time but was trying desperately to keep: life.

It was a bright Sunday morning in the middle of Autumn. I had woken up to find myself clean out of new needles. The only place I knew I could get any on a Sunday was the Boots chemist on Kings Street – though they closed at 1pm and it was already past the hour. I was stuck at home with heroin, citric, filters but no clean needles to whack my morning fix up with. But it wasn't a tragedy and wasn't the first time I'd been caught out like this. I was still relatively new to this side of heroin use and wasn't organised in making sure I always had what was needed to have a fix. I was always lost for something or having to run to late-nite chemists for extra works or Vit C. So that morning, with no official needle exchange open, I gathered up my equipment and headed off to Marge's to see if he had any fresh spikes he could give me.

Marge lived in a little flat connected to the Lime Grove hostel: one of West London's major drug wash-up shores. Most addicts in the borough would end up being filtered through there at some point or other. And it wasn't a bad deal: free board and food and a cell check twice a day! It was packed to the tiles with mostly long term, mentally ill addicts who'd wash their smack down with Tenants Super and whatever downers or sleepers their stench had forced the local GP to prescribe them. Marge wasn't in the hostel proper but had somehow managed to wrangle one of the permanent flats on its premises. That was kinda like everyone's dream in those days: to get one of the self-sufficient Lime Grove flats. They were the after-junk-life paradise offered up by the God of the Hostel. The only catch was that to get one you had to be either sober or dying, and that's why for there only being five flats up for grabs the hostel was able to 'permanently' rehouse 50 people a year. That its success was based on its rate of eviction no-one seemed to care about. Housing and evicting fifty people were better statistics than housing only five. Anyway, these little apartments sat just below, down where all the hostel residents could see and drool over them. There were no throw out times, no bars on the windows, no sign-in desk. It was freedom for the lucky few; a place to secretly kill yourself in peace. Only for the lucky few who had ascended to Hostel Heaven it wasn't so much a paradise as an open hell: a den of addicts all cohabiting and thieving off each other. As everyone had once dreamt of getting out the hostel now they dreamt the same of this place. Only this was permanent and there were only two ways out, and neither was a very attractive proposition. So it was a dream turned to shit, and this is where Marge lived and where I knocked him up that bright autumn Sunday afternoon.

The noise that came down through the intercom wasn't static. It was Marge's rattling lungs and groans of pain which let me know he wasn't well. Then there were some crashing sounds, a posh “fuck”, the intercom bouncing off the wall and hitting the floor, another groan, and then Marge buzzed me in. I climbed the flight of stairs to his flat and followed his tall frail and aching body down the little hallway and into his bedroom.

“You've caught me without my make-up, Darling,” he groaned, painfully easing himself down on the bed and pulling a loose cover up and around him. “Oh I'm sick... Poor ol' Marge is sick... not even a fucking filter since last night. And that wig is useless! Just makes me sad.”

I followed Marge's gaze down to a blonde hairpiece on the floor. It was sad. It was cheap and sad and I could imagine him tearing it off and having a breakdown because there was no gear.

“And, er, what message have the Gods sent with Thee?” asked Marge, this time sounding pathetically cunning.

“Needles, Marge. I'm all out. D'you have any fresh spikes?”
“Ah needles... Well I'm certain I do if you have a teeeny bit of gear for me, Oh yes!”
“Yeah, I got a fix for ya... I'll even split the bag. I just need some needles.”
“Oh YUMMMEEE!” he exclaimed like a big posh baby, now springing to life and catching a touch of his usual theatrics. “Now that's a good wake up call! Ok, needles....”

Marge looked around in a small cupboard near his bed. As he rifled through bags and packets of shooting equipment he asked some questions about how I was getting on with the needle. I explained I wasn't organised yet and that injections still took a while and I'd without fail leave huge marks and still had trouble hitting even the huge veins, though I did always manage. Marge closed the little cupboard. I saw him pull a face. Then he was up and rifling through what would normally be sock drawers. “Oh Fuckery, I was sure I had some,” he cursed, “let me go upstairs and get one of Bill. Bill always has needles... and no gear!”

When Marge returned he was empty handed and fidgety. “Can you believe it, Bill's not fucking there? Fuck. He's always there!”

“Listen Marge, it's OK... just leave it. There's a couple of others I know. Someone will have one.”
“Yes, no doubt.... after all this is Shepherds Bush: The Horse's Stable! And what about splitting the bag?”
“I have to sort myself first, Marge. It'll be the same deal with the next man. If they give me a spike they'll want a hit for it or start crying! I'll leave you a small hit, enough to put you right, then I'll pass back around later after I've got sorted and scored again.”

For a moment Marge looked distraught and pissed. I saw the Bitch had entered him. Then he composed himself and said: “OK, look, I've got one needle that I was saving for me, but I'll let you have it... I've still plenty of half-decent used ones. But don't forget this... It's very rare someone gets my last works!”

I smiled, but my mind was already on Marge. I could see what was happening. And like a fool I watched as it unravelled, convincing myself that no-one would be that mean... that I must be wrong.

“Ha, got it!” cried Marge, holding up a needle and throwing its packet back into the cupboard he had previously searched.. “My last one! OK, get the gear out and lets make ourselves pretty.”

I got out the small bag of gear but my thoughts were now on the needle Marge had produced yet kept a hold of. Not only was I concerned it may not be a fresh spike but was also worried because Marge had laid it down next to his own dirty needle. I wanted to be absolutely sure I got the supposedly clean one and that there would be no bizarre mix up. Into my spoon I emptied a 'junkie's half' of the bag. The rest I gave over to Marge. Together we cooked our hits to liquid.

“I'm ready, Marge, give me the needle.”

“Ready already? Now who's a Hungry Henry!”

Marge handed out the needle and then paused. He withdrew it. I had been waiting for it... this is how I knew it would go down. I somehow knew that needle was never intended for me to hold (and inspect). “Look, roll your shirt up,” said Marge, “ I'll show you how quick and easy it is!”
“Oh, that's OK... I want to do it myself... I prefer that.”
“But you'll be here all afternoon Shane, Darling... and I can't get myself well till you're finished. I need to soak my feet in the tub to get my knackered old veins up. Please, I'm sick. It'll take me seconds to pop fresh veins like yours... seconds.”

Marge knew what I was thinking. He knew what I was thinking because he knew what he was doing. “You're worried about the needle aren't you? God, I wish I'd have let you open it now. It's clean, Dear... you saw me throw the packet away.”
“Yeah but it's what I didn't see. I didn't see you take it out the packet....”
“Look, it's a fresh spike!” He said holding it up, “Now stop being such a drama queen and get 'em out!”

The needle looked clean, it did, but so do many of mine if I get a clean hit or have to transfer the gear to another needle for some reason. And of course now Marge had plucked off the orange cap and broken the seal which is the only other means to verify it by once it's out it's wrapper. It was too late. My situation was this: half my bag of heroin was in a needle I had doubts about, and the rest of the bag was in Marge's syringe which was 100% dirty. The gear was gone. I finally convinced myself I must be wrong and rolled my sleeve up and stuck my arm out. Without even using a tourniquet Marge looked over my arm. He was in a hurry. “Ah, there's a nice fat vein sitting up right there... I'll get that without even tickling ya!”

Marge put the needle against my forearm and made to insert it. That's when I cracked. I pulled my arm away but not before the needle had scratched my skin. Marge jumped with fright.
“But Darling what are you doing! I would have had that!”
“Marge let me see that needle... I want to see it!”
“Oh Gawd, I thought we were over that! It's a fucking brand new spike.”
“Then give me it... I'll cap it and do mine later. That way I won't keep you. Hand it over...”
“But Shane it's clean, let me ju....”
“Marge give me the FUCKING NEEDLE!” I screamed.

If nothing else Marge was a coward. When I shouted he kinda lost all coordination of his body and became flustered, caught between doing something drastic and doing nothing at all. Finally he put the needle down on the bed besides me. I picked it up. It was perfectly clean on the outside, but right down inside, where the needle enters the barrel, was a tiny dot of dried black blood. The needle was dirty. It had already been used.

Now I was panicked. I hadn't taken the shot, the needle had not even been in me, but the very top of the spike had pierced my skin and brought blood. It was enough. I called Marge a “Cunt” and hurled the needle at him in disgust. He could have it. If slipping someone a dirty needle is where he had got to then he could have it – on me! But I wanted no part. No excuses, no “you're wrongs.” I just wanted to leave and be alone.

At that point it was the dirty trick to get a fix that annoyed me. I wasn't aware then that Marge was HIV+. He had previously spoken freely of the disease and while admitting his lover had died from AIDS he was always adamant that he hadn't contracted the virus. He didn't seem to care about the stigma of the disease and so I reckoned: Why would he lie? I told myself that that concern was fine, that his crime was being afraid to lose his get-well fix and nothing more.

It was five months later when I realized it was something more... Much more. Over that time I still saw Marge about but I never spoke to him anymore. Something too intimate and unwanted my side had almost passed and there was something that disgusted me about it. Even in his face I now saw shades of something else, something ferociously selfish which I couldn't stomach. So I avoided him. But on this day in question I couldn't avoid him. He came stumbling out a building and almost crashed right into me. We both swapped a cold “Hello” and Marge asked how I was as he tried his best to move me along down the street. His behaviour was the same as it had been the afternoon he'd tried to spike me up with a dirty needle. I looked around wondering what he was up to that he didn't want me to see, and there it was, the building from which he had come from: The Terence Higgins Trust: group therapy for people living with HIV and AIDS. I almost fainted. And if I didn't regard Marge as such a piece of shit at that moment I would have held onto him to steady myself.

“Marge, what are you doing here... In there?”
“Er, Oh there... just meeting a friend.”
“So where is he?”
“Good question... though it's not a 'he'. But come on, let's go.”
“What you're not gonna wait?”
“I can't and anyway she's not there. Come on.”

I didn't say anything, just followed Marge down the road and feeling panicked and caught for breath. As we walked I kept asking Marge the question in my head but could never get it out. It seemed like a pointless thing to do. Marge would only deny it further. Finally I did ask, just as he made his excuse to turn off down a road which took him in the opposite direction to where he was going.

“Marge, are you HIV positive?” I asked. He stopped, raised his head and looked me in the eye. He didn't deny it; that was his answer.

I felt sick. I wanted to cry and run at the same time. I also wanted to lay an uppercut right on his jaw and stamp him into the ground. But I did none of those things. In one of the stop situations of my life all I could do was raise a weak voice and say: “What about the needle Marge... what about the needle?” Marge kinda threw his hands out, like he had no answer. And what did I expect him to say? And even more: what did I expect him to care? Humans are intrinsically selfish. Our first care is usually of ourselves. As I asked Marge about the dirty needle all my care was for Me. I couldn't give a fuck that He was maybe dying; I just hoped I wasn't. And sadly that's just how it is.

Heroin changed after that moment. I saw a danger and a dirt within it that I had never seen before. Of course I knew about the diseases and the risks before, but I figured as long as I didn't share I'd be fine. I never for one moment reckoned or planned against the chance of someone intentionally trying to infect me with HIV or Hepatitis. That was low, but it had happened. Not even two months into injecting and AIDS was a real and serious issue.

I didn't sleep that night. I laid awake thinking of Marge and that needle and the little prick of blood it had induced. I wondered if Marge had killed me and if the disease was in my body. I imagined pink and blue things swirling about in my blood, attaching to things and duplicating themselves. I thought of those terrifying adverts from the mid 80's that was my generations equivalent to the thought of nuclear warfare. At gone 3am I was up and in a real state. At that lowly hour I called my good friend Verity and sobbed down a phoneline what had happened. Verity, a one time nurse, couldn't do much right then but arranged to come and meet me in the morning. Until then not even huge amounts of smack could calm me – my mind couldn't be subdued on this one. Me, a severe hypochondriac at the best of times. Even when healthy I was convinced I was dying of cancer, and now I'd been given good reason to believe I was really dying. Well, that was too good an opportunity for my body to turn down. And so it panicked away... all night fucking long.

With the light came Verity and with Verity came hope. We met in a lousy café on the Goldhawk Road and over scalding coffee and and endless chain of cigarettes I went through what had happened. Verity asked me loads of questions. She was especially interested in the needle and how old it was. From pure calculation we was able to be sure the needle wasn't used in the last twenty four hours and was probably much older. Verity told me that the chances of me being infected was very very slight (for HIV at least). She said there was a bigger chance I could have contracted hepatitis C but even that was quite doubtful. She asked how long ago it happened and I told her five months. “Well, you need to get tested... it's the only way to be sure. It'd show up now if you've caught anything.”

To be tested scared me. In ways I didn't want to know and yet so badly needed to. What I wanted was a kind of low risk gamble, and so I kept questioning Verity over and over, trying to get her response down to a suitable level. It was only when she told me that she thought I had less than a 1% chance of being infected did I like the odds and agree to take the test. Though I made it clear that if the test came back positive that all romance was dead and I'd kill myself that same day. And I meant it.

To cut it short I got tested in a little clinic in Hammersmith. I had to wait 48 hrs for the results and two days later I was given the all clear. Verity was sitting besides me as the doctor spilled out the good news and gave me my test results. On hearing the news Verity began crying and I began thinking of Ace and wondering whether his phone would be on yet. What a great day it would be if after all these months of worry I could score early and get back home and sink into oblivion properly. Now that would be perfect! After having my life saved it was only right that I risk it again... if not what would be the point in having it back? The thought and the day was temptingly delicious in its coldness. The doctor babbled on some more but I never heard a word. Before leaving he referred me back to The Needle Exchange for a session on safe injecting practices. Of course I never went. I wouldn't need to. From that moment on I never ever shared a room with someone injecting again, and only on a handful of occasion ever had someone inject in my presence. The life scared me, and the people even more.

The next time I saw Marge was two years later. He was on crutches and looked like he had a stroke. His head had been cracked wide open from the base of the skull and circling across and round down to the ear. He was out of drag and had lost all sense or care of appearance. As he hadn't finally done me any damage I went over to gloat about testing negative and to ask how he was. He told me he had his skull fractured, that another addict who we both knew called Mick had walked up to him in the street and hit him in the head with a mallet. Marge had been in hospital for the past 8 weeks, was clean, though was scoring as he spoke. I kind of REALLY enjoyed knowing someone had done that to him. Had fucked him up for the rest of his days, permanently affected his head, speech, sight and walk. He was a dirty thieving cunt anyway, though it was harsh dues for that. Normally we just let it pass.

A few days later I saw Mick and asked what had happened. “Did the fucker rob you, Micky?”
“Kind of,” he replied.
“What d'you mean 'kinda??? Did he or didn't he?”
“He gave me AIDS.... on purpose. I tested positive three months ago.”

I couldn't believe it. What Mick told me was almost an exact replica of what Marge had done to me. Only with Mick it was worse as Marge had been slyly giving him dirty needles over a period of time and pretending they were from the clean pack. Where I had wizened to the trick Mick hadn't and had unknowingly been shooting up with dirty needles every time Marge was about Aghast I told Mick my tale. That's when it went really strange. Rather than wishing he was me, I saw he wished I was him. That it wasn't fair I'd escaped with my health and he hadn't. And in his eyes was a look of revenge. One less violent and more calculated, and one I suspect he will exact on someone other than Marge.

John

It was years later when my best junk friend John tried to infect me. In reality he was nowhere close and his pathetic attempt would never have worked anyway. At that stage I was too wary of other users to ever do anything silly. But he still tried and that's the thing, and that's what made me sad.

I had known John for about two years. I met him one day when there was not much gear about and he scored for me. He was a tall, stick thin Dubliner with water coloured eyes and a beautiful thick accent. He reminded me of past people and we became friends – mostly because whenever I'd bump into him I'd buy him a rock of his choice or put a score in his pocket. Our friendship was that. We never met up socially, or had a meal together or anything like that. We passed on the dope scene and I often helped him out. That was it, though we bonded never-the-less. He earned my respect by only once in two years ever calling my phone and asking for money. Even when he was ill he never used me as an option, and there's not many who'd be that precious with something. From that I took him as a loyal, decent person. And he was: John was a good man.

As the months passed I had an inkling that John maybe had HIV. There were weird happenings which I couldn't explain through junk logic. Like how I'd arrange to lend him money until he got his government payment, and on the areed day I'd turn up at his hostel with the cash only to be told he was in hospital. A week later he'd turn back up, clean of crack and heroin, and give me some fanny about a muscle problem, or a lung infection. I never doubted the reasons he gave, just the way he shrugged them off as if they were everyday and nothing serious. But I knew it was serious. Anything that would have a junkie laid up in hospital half sick is VERY serious. God, I've seen addicts with limbs hanging off through gangrene who wouldn't go to hospital for fear of not getting out the same evening and being sick or subdued with inadequate amounts of methadone. So for John to be in hospital on the day he was to get money was bizarre. When it kept happening I marked him down as one of the many 'closeted' HIV'ers on the injecting dope scene. John never did tell me and so it was only ever speculation.

My penultimate morning in England was a grey affair. It was a biting cold march day and I was to meet John to say goodbye. When I met him he was in the middle of some weird methadone sell whereby he'd earn £180, and so our last morning together was spent trawling around Shepherds Bush trying to track down a one legged addict called Jack The Peg. When we eventually found Jack – slopping down a free breakfast at The Great Commision Ministry Church – he told us through a mouthful of soupy porridge that he needed to cash his sick benefit before he could buy John's methadone. All together, walking at the pace of a man with one leg and two rusty crutches, we pigeon stepped it (Jack in the singular) down to the Post Office and queued up behind the dead, the pregnant and the insane.

Jack was in front leaning his weight on his walking aids. John and I towered behind him. As we got up to next to be called Jack spun around and through a mouth still mouldy with milky cereal, said: “I 'ope ta Christ they accept me facking ID! If it's Vijay ee'l refews fer'shure! Made me walk all t'way ta Hammersmith last fortnight... Me, wiv a missin' fackin' leg!”

John seemed unmoved by the news. He must have been used to all the piss around himself and took it as normal. But me, I was in a rush and could never bare such fucking around anyway. We should have already scored and been home by now. Who the hell 'Vijay' was I didn't care; I just hoped it wasn't him who was calling us forward.

When Jack turned around and shot us what would have been his teeth if he'd have had any left we knew that his ID had been accepted and the cashier was fingering off crisp twenty pound notes from the small pile to the left. Once given his money Jack held the notes up above his head and delighted shook them in the air. It meant nothing to John or I, but to the others in the Post Office it meant he was now going to go and blow the lot and get extremely fucked up on the tax payers expense. And that's exactly what he did. Within thirty minutes. Same as us.

“Who ya's scoring offa?” asked Jack.
“Ritchie,” said John.
“White City Ritchie?”
“Aye.”
“I'll have ta hide then. I owe 'im a score.”
“What you're after scoring yerself are ya Jack?”
“May as well, fack it! what's an extra twenny?”
“I'm gonna get of Ace,” I said, briefly entering the conversation.

John knew what I meant: let's drop this annoying cunt and get sorted. But he kinda pushed me back against my belly and made a sign to quieten down. As we walked on John pulled me ahead.

“With Jack in we can earn. One of each, sure as shite... Now dat roight d'ere'll be our little goodbye treat.”
“Fuck that, John... I'll pay the extra myself just to lose him!”

But John was an addict used to scheming and scamming, and turning down a couple of free bags wasn't possible for him. This was like finding a little sparkle of Klondike gold – even if it meant hauling a cripple up a steep mountainside to get it. It was another little make for John and he was thinking of tomorrow and I wasn't. Tomorrow I'd be gone. In a place where money couldn't help. John would still be here, fretting about the days to come and how to avoid having to regret selling his entire supply of methadone.

It would have been a long slow trot to Ritchie in White City had it not been for Jack the Peg pulling up lame halfway and waving John and I on ahead saying he'd catch us on the return run down to collect his bags. John and I rushed off, made the call and met Ritchie without any fuck around. Sorted we headed back down to where we'd left Jack and dropped him his bags off. Now John had his little gain safely in his pocket he couldn't give a shit about Jack any more, or get away fast enough.

“You don't wanna be anywhere near the loikes 'a him while carrying. Sure enough da feckin' police stop and search him every other day if dey don't! If you're within pissing distance an' dat happens, well, you're just as likely fooked yerself!” That was John's justification on leaving Jack behind so suddenly. Me I just didn't need justification. He walked too slowly and that was it.

As we hot-footed back to John's hostel John said excitely through mouthfuls of March mist: “Dat bag we made d'ere, da B, it'll be our parting fix for all dis shit man. You'll come'on up ta mine, ya will, we'll spoon and share it, sure... loike sharing a drink. A proper farewell, ya know?”
“What? Are you talking about sharing a spoon or a shot? I won't do either, but I hope you're talking about a spoon.”
“To hell wiv all dat bollix for a day, Shane. Fook! You're leading da fooking countree, man... ya gotta say a propa goodbye, now... Sure ya can dis once share a little fix wi' me?”
“Oh No, I won't. We don't need that to say goodbye...”
“Well at least ya'll come on up? We'll draw ta'gedder. Ya can do that at least, will ya?”
“John, please,” I said, not wanting to argue or fuss over something so insane on this last morning, “let's just separate the bag and that'll be our goodbye. You've bought my last fix outta this place. That's a nice enough memory, no? Our goodbye we'll say in words or a hug.... not blood.”
“Ah com on ta fook now Shane! We may neder see one another again, man. You've gotta at least draw up wi' me... ya gotta.”

I didn't argue the point, just told John “no” over and over. It got so much that I even told him he could keep the entire bag. That we'd say goodbye like everyone else, and then he'd go up to his room in the hostel and I'd traipse on home to mine and through time and space we'd raise a needle to friendship and history. John wasn't happy with my snub, but he got to keep the entire bag of smack and I think that's what bought him.

“And d'your really leaving? Ya phone won't be on after tomorrow?”
“Really, John. Tomorrow morning I'm outta here. The plane's booked and I've transferred my script to a hospital over there. If I stay I'm even more fucked than if I go.”

As I hugged John goodbye he cried. Just like a baby, he held on tightly and cried.

“What'll become of us, man?” he asked through tears. “What da fuck will become of us?”

I hugged John back and told him to take care and that one day I'd return and take him back to Dublin. And then he cried even more, and now he couldn't stop.

*

John's tears are the last visual memory I have of him. I never saw John again after that, though I did hear from him.

It was over a year that I had been in France. I had gotten clean and then gotten dirty again. So it was good news one day when my mother phoned.

“Shane, there's a little surprise coming over your way! That fucking Irish John has just been around here, bought me two rocks of white and left twenty five quid to get you three of choice and post over. And you ya little bastard, you never told me he 'ad AIDS! An I've been sharing my fuckin' crackpipe with 'im!”

I didn't say anything for a moment. It was a shock. AIDS and I heard it in capital fucking letters too.

“What, he's HIV?”
“Worse... full blown! Been put on full incapacity benefit and so he was around here fuckin celebrating! He was all hugs and smiles saying he feels rich! When I asked how he got full incapacity, because I'm only on half, he told me that he was HIV+ and had now gone full blown!”

“Well I didn't know!”

“Well he says you did 'cause I fuckin' asked 'im! And you know the friendly way he talks, he said: yeah, I told Shane... he knew!”

I told my mum that I really didn't and then told her of him insisting on sharing a fix with me on the morning before I left. How even knowing he was HIV positive he had really tried twisting my arm into sharing a needle with him. My mother cursed him and called him every kind of a cunt. It didn't stop her having him around though. Why would it? Nothing bad had finally come from it and John bought her rocks of white. What crackhead but a very bad one would turn that down? I wouldn't either. Two months later though and John was history. Not dead... Robbed my mother and disappeared.

After discovering John was with AIDS I was at first sad and then extremely angry with him. I also had mixed emotions of fright and nausea knowing that it was once again that close. I started imagining silly scenarios of what could have happened and worked it up that it was a narrow escape. It wasn't really, but maybe there was a part of me that did want to toast a goodbye with someone. Have a friend that close that I felt comfortable to do such a thing with. When my emotions settled down I was still angry, and then that passed and I remembered how John had cried when I left and how the memory of his home town had cut him in two. After that I started to recall snippits of things he had told me and how he so badly damned the needle but not heroin. It now made complete sense why. Heroin hadn't killed him; sharing needles had (or being duped into sharing a needle, who knows?) John felt hard done by. I then remembered him cursing his cousin with a vengeance, saying that he was the cunt who first pinned him up and got him on the needle. I also remember him saying his cousin had died from septicaemia. I suppose then that not only was it his cousin who had introduced him to the spike but had probably also infected him with HIV. I suppose, like Marge, John wanted someone else to experience the fear and hardship of what he was going through. That he didn't want to be all alone with what he had, but travel the road with another who was the same. But it's cruel. Humanity is cruel. And make no mistake about it what Marge did first and John did later, were human behaviours that are shocking and selfish but not incomprehensible or uncommon. They were just living up to the animal.

The thing is we suffer terribly alone, and a little less in company. It's why support groups kinda help. But no matter how many people we have around us when we die, when death comes every man must face it alone. In the hospital bed, or laying flapping on the kitchen floor: it's a dire lonely place. A man will never be as lonely or out on a limb as the moment he dies. I know, I've seen it, actually seen death enter the body and come out the other side. The fear and loneliness which that brings about. That's our fate. That's what it all leads to. No matter how much we run, or how many we drag along with us, when death comes it corners us, and every man will die alone. It's the only destiny we have.

My Love and Thoughts to ALL...

Shane. X

* C.H.U.D = Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller

Poems of the Underclass......

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 02:43:00 +0000

(This post is for Subscribers ONLY. It does not appear on Memoires.)

Poems of The Underclass

Free verse poetry from Shane Levene

It's time to make a little history....

The Classifieds: Wants & Needs

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 21:57:00 +0000

There are some things I want to say and some things I need to say. There are some things I'll never manage to say and others I'll never try to say. The differences are immense. What follows is an introduction of sorts to a new series of posts which I have planned for Memoires. In its nothingness it explains a lot... maybe even why I needed a break from this place and maybe why I couldn't write here even if I had wanted to. Tonight, for the first time in months I wrote my way through the death of an evening. The words I wrote came out something like this...

I want to write of dark hair, strange perfumes, obsessions, orgasm and death. I need to write of these things. Of tragedy, and violence, and poverty and tremendously poor love and even poorer lovers. I need to write of the rooms I've killed myself in, and the people who've watched me die for entertainment because we'd sold the TV. I want to write of the pillows that I've wet with tears, the beds I've burnt with cigarettes and passion, the walls I've decorated with paint and blood. I need to write of why I'd be a terrible father and why I'd be a great father and why I'll never be a father. I want to write historical love letters and explain to beautiful people why sex made me vomit and it was ME and not them. I want to tell the world of the little shop owner and how he orders chocolate just for me, and how my French is good enough to get what I need and bad enough not to get the rest. I want to write of why I painted the bookcase orange, and then black and then pink all in the same day... Of why I loved my shoes this morning and hated them this afternoon. I need to write of why I say "I wouldn't change a thing" and then change them all the time with words. I want to report back the people who'll misunderstand that last sentence, who with all their two thousand years of collective stupidness will confer and declare my life a scam. I want to tell you of the young, almost beautiful Albanian beggar girl who sits out on the Rue des Augustins, and how every forty five minutes a man visits her, changes the baby over and empties her of money. Of how when he thinks no-one is looking he'll turn a good twist of whiskey down his throat, and how when he thinks no one is really, REALLY not looking he'll land a solid kick around the back of her ribs. I want to tell you of the automat video machine and how the perverts come early in the morning so as they can rent films without the annoyance of having to shop for porn with someone peeking over their shoulder. How that happened to me once and I ended up arriving back home with 'Finding Nemo' and wanking over a fish. I need to write of all those crazy things I do, stuff that makes me certifiably insane and then argue just why I'm not. I want to explain why I sometimes piss in the shower and why my computer is full of viruses, bad writing and watersports porn. I need to write of why I cry for London and how I have reoccurring nightmares of my mother dying and me never having got back to see her. I need to write about life. I want to talk about death. I want to draw words with wings and let them fly away...

-----

Memoires of a Heroinhead Part 3... The Deaths Head Moth...

A new series of posts

Coming Soon... X

The Heroin Agony Aunt / Letters to the Editor

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Mon, 18 Jul 2011 20:27:00 +0000

.
Come gather 'round my pretty punks...

Memoires of a Heroinhead has a new page!

It is here and is essentially a select collection from the private emails I've received over the past two years asking for advice on issues around drug use and addiction. In their own way these correspondences are as interesting as anything else on the site, and as with everything posted here they translate into an enormous amount of time invested - my own, as well as that of the readers and senders. These mails, and the effort that goes into then, touches on an important yet unsung part of Memoires: that even if posts are often few and far between, the site is just as active as ever behind-the-scenes (mails and comment replies taking up ten times the volume of word space than do the posts themselves). That being the case, I've decided to bring some of this unseen material to light.

For the moment I've concentrated on the advice mails, but I've huge amounts of interesting stuff in my mailbox and so will also be running a Letters to the Editor section on the same page. These Letters will be mails sent in which posed simple questions which made me think and as a result either made me expand upon, clarify or revise my thinking on certain relevent subjects which make up the heart of what Memoires is about. Often that is not drug addiction, but politics, poverty, literature, child abuse, philosophy, etc. My real agenda is to expand Memoires so as in years to come it will sit as a huge body of my work and give answers to much more than I ever intended.

This is for the future.

-----------------------------

Here, once again, is that new content: Aunt Agony

Keep your eyes peeled on the sidebar for future page updates, and yes, readers can email me their problems or questions, although please keep in mind that only very select correspondences will be posted on Memoires and they will have everything to do with my replies, and nohing to do with the questions (no matter how well put or genius they may be).

Hope you All enjoy...

My Love and Respect as Ever, Shane. X

The Sinner's Eye - The Culture of the Needle

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 17:21:00 +0000

The first time I ever saw a needle I was five. It was being pulled out of my father’s arm by my mother as he lay slumped and motionless on the floor. We had found him like that one evening when my mother had care of me. I remember her slapping and rubbing his face before frantically running off in search of help. I stood outside in the warm dark night, petrified and alone, looking into the distance for my mother to return. She soon did, her distressed silhouette picked out the dark by ambulance lights. Twenty years later I too would be laying slumped on floor, and in a hideous repetition of history my mother would also be withdrawing a needle from my arm.

In the following post I will detail my own romance with the needle, why I did/do that, and the places and people it has led me to. In my travels I've seen and experienced an underbelly of city life in all its perverse glory. It was never beautiful, often sickening, yet always fascinating. This is the story of The Needle as seen through The Sinner’s Eye.

Like the majority of injecting drug users I did not start off that way. For me it was an economic decision I took one year into my heroin addiction as a means to keep the job that was funding my habit. My first dalliance with the needle took place one blustery autumn afternoon in a homeless hostel in West London. It was a place with anti-suicide bars fitted to the windows and emergency alarms in each room. I had gone there in search of a beggar girl I knew named Katy and had burdened her with the responsibility of fixing me up for the first time. With intent junkie eyes she would hold the syringe up to the fading light and flick expertly on the barrel. Seconds later she would slide it painlessly into my mid-arm and press. That plunge would send me down a one way street of self-abuse and would be the precursor to over 50,000 (and rising) shots of heroin. But I do not regret the needle and I neither damn nor curse it: as it killed me, so it saved my life.

After that first shot I wandered home with the remaining needles of the pack. I had closely observed Katy and had questioned her as how to cook up, hit a vein and inject oneself. Later that night, after an entire evening deliberating over it, I decided to have a go myself. I was petrified. But not at the prospect of overdosing, more of the inknown, of what lay beneath my skin that I could hit, tear, puncture or damage. Still, I went ahead, cooked up a fix and then naively tried to inject it. Oh, it was a disaster! What had looked so straightforward in the hostel and at someone else’s hand, now seemed ridiculously difficult. Every time I tried to hit a vein I only managed to puncture it and leave large blue bruises in my trail. Even in my hands, with veins the size of a thick bootlaces, I could do nothing but damage and bloat them double. Finally I gave up and for the last time in my life I smoked myself to sleep.

Come the following morning I tried again. This time I did manage to hit a vessel, but each time I pulled back on the plunger I also pulled the needle out the vein. On about the twentieth attempt I succeeded in drawing blood and in an awkward amateurish manoeuvre I repositioned my fingers and emptied the syringe into my bloodstream. For a few seconds after, surprised that my fist hadn’t bloated up, I sat in shock and kind of moved my eyes from side to side, up and around registering things. When I was absolutely sure I was still alive I relaxed... and then it hit me. Up my arm and itching through every small blood vessel in my head. My pupils contracted as the pressure built and suddenly I was there, nodding over onto the table without even having time to withdraw the syringe. But that wasn’t the end of my injecting debacles... it went on for weeks before I could get a clean quick shot and months before I had experienced all the little lumps, bloating and swelling of missed and bad injections. But no matter how terrifying or hairy it got, I somehow enjoyed the process. And more than that I enjoyed the marks that I was imposing upon myself. It was a thrill, and finally I had some visible mark for the invisible pain I was trying to tame.

But being on the needle entails a lot of work. That is if you intend to stay alive. One of the first things you then learn is where you can pick up free, clean needles, vitamin C and filters. This invariably leads to the local Needle Exchange or some equally anaemic, bleached and sanitized place. I turned up at mine (The Old Coach House, Devonport Road) on the second morning of my IV life. I registered and went through the rigmarole as a soft spoken counsellor masquerading as an ex-user went through the perils of shooting and gave me a leaflet on safe injecting. He also sat me down and with picture cards of the venal system pointed out where the body’s main arteries and nerves ran. He said I must NEVER inject around those areas. He explained that if I was ever unlucky enough to hit an artery, and supposing that I survived, I would wake up sick in hospital with limbs the size of tree trunks. Of course, more than anything this freaked me out and my hypochondriac brain suddenly (and against my desire) jumped to attention. In a few nervous seconds I had blinked and memorized every image into my head and it seemed that just about every site was loaded with potential peril. For the first few weeks I poked around gingerly convinced that I would hit the nuclear button. Of course, I never did and since then I’ve stuck a needle in all those dangerous places, every junkie has. And thats another thing you learn, injecting isn’t quite as hazardous as it is made out to be.

The local needle exchange was open 3 days a week from 9am to 5pm. During that time users could walk in and collect up to 50 clean works a day, sterile water, vit c and small yellow returns bins with the bio-hazard sign printed menacingly on the side. That is the idea of the ‘exchange’. One is supposed to fill his/her small bin and return it. In ‘exchange’ he/she gets to take home new needles. In reality, not many addicts make use of this service and the exchange program doesn’t strictly enforce it. What they are more concerned about is having users not share. Like most addicts I know, I never really made regular use of the return bin either. Instead I’d let the needles pile up until my place was stacked with boxes and containers of syringes. Three or four times a years I’d have a clear out and overload the returns bin. Other than the Needle Exchange, addicts can also pick up clean works in chemists or some clinics. Chemists usually have a limit of 2 packs (20 needles) a day, and disgracefully often don’t have ANY in stock. The Needle Exchange, Chemist and clinic schemes are all free. However, if really desperate or if the chemist is out of free needle packs, you can also buy them. That would cost £2 for a packet of 5 1ml insulin points.

But needle exchanges and pharmacies, although not unpleasant places in themselves, do give the first hint of what lays in store for the intravenous user. I remember sitting waiting in the needle exchange one day with two skeletal junkies sitting opposite. Both were as pale as chicken skin, both looked crippled and both were covered in cuts, rashes and sores. They were resting head to head and drifting somewhere very far away. They looked like something you’d find slumped in a mass grave. It was only when one opened the eyes and drooled: “Have you got a cigarette, mate?” that I realized it was female. Her hands shock as she took the cigarette and she stood outside in the cold, sucking in huge lungfuls of smoke and looking like the future didn’t exist. It was a small thing, but something which stuck in my mind and scared me. I had not seen such people amongst my smoking friends. They had all been younger and fitter and frankly, more alive. This was something else... a different kind of addict altogether. And though it repulsed me, such people would soon replace my old smoking crowd and make up my circuit of friends and contacts.

There are a couple of reasons for this, but probably the most relevant is that the smoking addict and the injecting addict are two different types and clash too much. For example, the smoker may be sickened or disgusted to have someone inject in close proximity to him/her. The injector sees smoking as sacrilegious and cannot bear watching plumes of smoke disappearing and wasting into the atmosphere. Also there is the message that injecting gives out... that you are not only addicted to drugs but self-destructive and reckless in its pursuit. It is almost as if there is no hope after heroin and so you kill yourself before it kills you. But no matter what the reason, my smoking friends were soon all gone. They passed by me as if on some conveyor belt into history. With their hands over their mouths they receded into the distance and as they watched me advance to the place we’d promised we’d never go they cried: “Oh, Shane... how could you!”

Well I don’t know? I just could. That’s all. And very quickly I discovered that the universe of the intravenous user was a world apart from those which I had served my apprenticeship with. The haunts were darker, the misery worse, the addicts older and more pronounced. Everything was 2 shades darker black. I suddenly found myself in a place full of mirth, dirt and disease. For the low of heroin I would journey to and through that darkness. I would meet the diseased, the dead and the dying and have numerous acquaintances go down with AIDS and hepatitis. Amongst the army of junkies that I would cross would be the armless, legless, toothless and reckless. I would see men injecting in their penises and women bent over, peering through the legs into a mirror in order to hit a vein on the back of the thigh. In one homeless shelter I would sit and watch as half a dozen groaning addicts cooked up in a single spoon and then all poked their blunt dirty needles into the same cotton filter and drew up and shot together. They would look at me in bemusement when I would shake my head at the offer of joining in.

But by far the worst place I ever had the misfortune of entering was a junkie squat on St Stephens Avenue. It was a second floor flat in a partly demolished building and was literally held together by needles in a twisted ongoing sculpture that all the users living there collaborated on. One could not take a step without having to dodge an open spike and blood and blood graffiti sat an inch thick on every wall. It was inhabited by such a squalid bunch that the consequences of even stepping foot in there would terrify me. Unfortunately, these people were my friends... well, kind of. A typical household would be something like this: Firstly there was Nick. A tall, medium built addict with horrendously crusty skin. He had thick black greasy hair which showered dandruff in the light beams. Nick would take an obscene pleasure sticking and twisting needles recklessly into himself. He had such a crude injecting method that the tracks on the rear of his forearm were huge purple scars the thickness of an index finger. Next there was Grace. Worryingly thin with the skin on her face stretched taut over the skull. She had taken on a kind of translucent jaundiced appearance and made her way around with the help of an old walking cane. A 25 year dope veteran, it took her up to three hours to get a fix. Two weeks after me leaving London she died of liver cancer. Then there was Scamp the resident amputee. He was as grey as the London pavement -. only much dirtier. His left hand had been removed after a huge abscess had all but eaten it away. He now had a useless, half-paralysed and withered left arm which hung down like something that shouldn’t be there. He was HIV positive. Along with Skamp, wrapped up on the same filthy mattress, was his HIV buddy John. This man was so dismally wasted that he resembled but bones vacuum packaged in skin. He was forever in and out of hospital falling foul each week to a new debilitating infection. Miraculously he is still alive... well in theory anyway. Finally there was Jo, a Portuguese addict with not a single tooth left in his head. His mouth resembled a clenched anus that was attempting to suck all his features in. He had the greenish yellow tint of a depressing bar. A paranoid schizophrenic he would eventually be imprisoned for beating his girlfriend to death. Of course many more passed through the house or stayed a night or two but these were the regulars. On a good night this crowd would sit around a syringe strewn table with a huge mountain of melted wax burning away in the centre. In the low light they’d shoot dope and squirt their blood sizzling onto the flames. It was one of those rare occasions where the people were scarier than the shadows they cast.

And that was just one small group of addicts in one West London squat. But the more I got into the injecting side of heroin the more such users became visible. At one point it was all I could see. Ghosts which had once skulked by unnoticed were now everywhere. Bus stops, doorways, street corners, parks... I couldn’t walk five minutes without passing some distressed type with swollen bloodstained hands and looking like Death with the flu. The city became like a Kirchner painting: long, dark, oblique shadows lurking and hanging ominously against walls. It was a nightmare town. And then I’d traipse home, shoot up, and scrutinize my own face in the mirror looking intensely for any signs of disease or decay. But don’t get me wrong, not all injecting addicts look as I’ve described. And for everyone that does there is another that shows absolutely no obvious signs of drug or needle abuse at all. I don’t quite fall into that camp, but if I keep my mouth closed, and wear a nice pressed shirt, only my mother and lover would know.

No, the diseased emaciated junkie is a consequence of lifestyle and what he/she is forced to do to maintain a habit. And the junkie collective that I described earlier were all just that. Their lives and addictions were very hard on them and only by pooling their money, scoring and using together were they able to keep themselves supplied in heroin. There was literally no money for anything else. They ate what they found and smoked from the butts they’d collect in the streets. They usually used clean needles, but if they didn’t have them at hand they’d be all too quick to pick up the gun and wager their lives on shooting a blank. Whilst sticking needles in their groins, armpits and necks they all slurred the junkie spiel of getting clean, getting washed and getting a job. But they talked with infinite sadness and there was not hope in one syllable of any word they said. I think they knew they were The damned and getting clean and talking of what they’d do had like everything else become a little part of their fixing ritual. In truth, the strain of getting clean would probably have finished them off even quicker.

Still, regardless of how squalid some of the people and places were, or how much it appalled me, in different ways I was just as trapped within it. Ok, I did not live like that and I’ve never shared a needle, nor a spoon, but my needs were the same and even if my arms were cleaner I was still sticking the same needles into them 5 times a day. And it was that which kept me a familiar face amongst these crowds. Against any genuine desire to become friends I kept a contact and a presence amongst other users for very certain reasons: they were good contacts and as an addict you can never have enough numbers. But there was one other reason, and that wasn’t half so callous or calculated: sometimes I just needed a little company... another human besides me so as not to feel so hopelessly alone. Sometimes it was just a pleasure to fall asleep and wake up with someone else in the room. And that is why, no matter how dirty some places were, or how foul and rotten some addicts seemed, at least they were there. They understood without question and had an agenda more or less the same as mine.

But intravenous drug use goes further than clinics and junkies and palaces of needles. It even goes further than the administration of drugs. That’s its primary motivation but it also touches upon issues of self-harm, obsessive compulsions, and needle fixations. As I got more experienced with the needle I started to realize that I actually enjoyed inflicting these marks and scars upon myself. That outside of getting heroin quickly into my bloodstream I took other pleasures from it. Often I’d be standing on a bus or train, holding the overhead rail and leaving my shirt sleeve fall down to reveal an armful of tracks and bruises. On occasion I’d even jab a needle into myself a few extra times just to highlight the harm. I know some addicts who even when clean continue keeping their track marks fresh and visible. But this self-harm is not a call for help, it’s more a call for recognition... for the world to recognize you’ve been hurt, punctured and broken. It’s a cry for attention without the tantrum, the tears or the breakdown. I know very few injecting addicts who are ashamed of what they do... on the contrary, they are proud of it. And I understand that, because in that act, in the marks and scars it leaves behind, there is a bizarre sense of fulfilment and achievement. In it the addict has found a means to show a hurt or trauma that is not expressible in words.

It’s now almost 10 years that I have been living life on the needle. During that time I’ve shot up in parks, cars, toilets and on buses. In addition to my arms, legs, stomach and chest, I’ve also injected in my fingers, toes, palms and forehead. I’ve hit nerves, arteries, joints and bone, and have suffered every imaginable lump, bump and swelling. I’ve poisoned myself 4 times with ‘dirty heroin’, had abscesses the size of golf balls and I’ve Od’d twice. On my entire body I have only one visible vein left. In my determination to self-medicate I’ve lost family, friends, lovers, two Cockatoos and a dog. My bank is in the red and so after 34 years I have less than nothing.

As I write this it is 24 hours since my last injection and that seems a long time. Previous to that it was 72 hours and previous to that 7 days. The longest I’ve ever been heroin or needle free is 5 months. But I do have some qualities and I use them to convince the few people left around me that I’m changing... that I’ve finally seen the light. And as I sit there with my perforated escape plan laid out, I busk and dance my way around all the awkward questions. At one point I even promise to stop smoking and cut down on the chocolate. It’s then I realize I’ve gone too far, that I’ve said too much. The place kind of deflates with disappointment and without even looking up I know what they’re all thinking, “He’s not getting better... he’s getting worse!” And I can’t blame them for that... I’m thinking exactly the same myself.

Thanks as ever for reading...

Thoughts & Wishes, Shane. x

The Light Lost Light

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 10:47:00 +0000

The light lost light and darkened. It felt like there was a great storm sitting overhead and I knew he was gone. I closed my eyes and listened, but for a moment the world was quiet with me. I thought of schoolyards, and dinner bells and distant summers and better days. I heard the engine of a plane, and then the motor of the fridge, and then I cried.

Mr Raymond Paul Levene

12 September 1943 - 28 April 2011

The Greatest Influence I Ever Had.

Love Me Tender in the Ghetto - part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:38:00 +0000

“No twos, no threes, no lugs!” That's what we used to say when sparking up a cigarette and not wanting to share it. Thirteen years old and preparing our lungs for coughing up tar. Billy with his wonky eye, looking off-centre and smiling at things which didn't exist. Beautiful, sad days... sun soaked west London with hopelessness spread out to the horizon. An eternity of orange tiled rooftops and the occasional spluttering chimney.

In the forecourt there'd be grubby gypsies stripped to the waist, banging and bashing away to give some worth to the worthless. Someone suddenly taking up an old fashioned boxing stance, sweat glistening off his chest as he jabbed and hooked away at unknown forces. The sun cooking pale Irish skin red, engine oil bubbling with the tarmac, the heat rising and the world wavering through it the other side.

A face over the balcony on the fourth floor. Darren Brown, eyes all pupil and jittery as hell, keeping dog of the non-existent police teams creeping up the stairs to bust him for his last remaining crumbs of crack. Two months later entering the only successful rehab clinic there is: the morgue. Flattened on the Westway. Splattered to death trying to get back home to his pipe quicker than humanly possibly.

I saw the blood. A dark shadow of scarlet which went nowhere in all directions. There were flowers too. A single bunch. “How Romantic the poor are,” I thought, “or maybe somebody got married?” I Laughed. The end of Darren Brown! That evil cunt who had taken me at knifepoint and forced me to commit robberies to fund his habit, sending me into a wild Africans home while he was still there. Me chucking half defrosted fish at him as he lunged towards me like a huge bear with yellow teeth. I made my escape: a 20ft drop from the back window, landing on Daniel Kinsella who was sucking the entrails out of a roach he had picked up from somewhere. A pair of Adidas Samba's catching him in the bristle of his adolescence. An horrendous tough jaw, twisting out of shape and his fists instinctively clenching because something had hit him. A dull thud in my ear, the side of my head red, throbbing sounds from bust eardrums: “God, I'll never hear the sea again!” I thought, as we legged it back to the relative safety of the Estate, pursued by a clucking, screaming, knife wielding crack head.

“Did you get the camera!” Darren hurled, collaring me in the underpass, the sharp end of his blade pushing to pop my eyeball. Oh, I was so glad he got splattered. No one deserved it more. I hope it was a Skoda that hit him. They were so uncool back then. For a moment I did believe in karma, then I thought about myself, blowing up frogs in the Greyhound Park, and hoped not.

Sometimes, as the sun went down, we'd sit around in the cool shade of the back, listening to insects and the sound of wind rustling through wild trees. We'd hand joints around and burn the dried grass down to stub. After a while we'd lay back and stare up at the slowly changing sky. Sometimes it'd be shot through with pink clouds, warning us that tomorrow may not be so great. Someone would always talk. A slow, stoned, drawl of hope and mystery. Some of us had dreams, but others were too clever for such things. I had no dreams. I wanted nothing but the very moment.

At around eight, or whenever dusk was, the dogs would come out. Thin, scabby things that looked like they'd been vacuum packed in their skin. Sniffing and pissing on dandelions, or crouched down and snarling amongst broken bin bags. As the day disappeared completely behind the flats the grass would tone dark and then go black. Faint breezes would start up and the grass would push out and ripple like thousands of little legs. The city smelled like magic and would make us cry. With the right light and sounds behind it, life seemed so worth living. Just after that the illusion would be broken. Lightbulbs would flick on in the apartments showing up silhouettes of the despicable things living inside them. Thin straggly women with knives or bottles or both... beer bellied men raining punches down on unknown things. For many of us they were the shapes of things to come. It was bad, and those were the good years.

“What are you looking at, Billy?” I asked
“Time,” he said
“Can you see time?” I asked
“I can feel it,” he said, “time to go home.”
“Do you want to go home, Billy?” I asked
His wonky eye now settled on me and a feint, tragic smile spread across his lips.
“Do you?” he said, as a question to the question.

It was now just the two of us. Laying out in the dark of the back, the night bringing in a chill, and the milky summer grass then damp and cold beneath us. I emptied the last cigarette out the box. “No twos no threes no lugs!” I blurted, as my only answer to the long forgotten question. Then I struck a match and lit up the hell around us. Billy smiled anew, it was just something we said. The night was down upon us. Soon the bars would spill out and our lives would be ruined again. Love me tender in the Ghetto. Billy would get his 'twos'. I could taste the sulphur in my mouth. The sweet end of the match

****

A little one for the archives, or maybe just something to proove I'm not also in the only successful rehab. Take Care All... Life about as mocking as ever, but sweet with it. Love and Thoughts, Shane. X

Tony O'Neill - The Junkiest Writer in Town

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 13:01:00 +0000

It's not a great time for great literature. Our libraries are potted out with dustbins for a good reason. But there are a few writers who are on the offensive, who are making words dangerous, exciting and readable again. Amongst that lot stands a poet... You'll spot him by the eye-brows: His name is Tony O'Neill.

Tony writes about junk. That's the blurb anyway. He does, kinda, but more than the junk of smack, Tony writes about the junk of modern life: those who are left behind with the free Nokia phones, and the fucked diseased livers. The kind of new age grime that limps into the linoleum waiting rooms of methadone clinics... that finds itself entwined in dirty sheets... that's coughing blood before it's even thirty years old. The junk that wakes up in crumpled blood-splattered suits... that goes to Las Vegas to lose... that marries into hell... that escapes one ghetto for another.... that is surveyed by airport security... that flings dead cats from apartment windows... that masturbates to celebrity doctors... that Hollywood cannot make worse... that rehab cannot make better. McDonald's, Methadone clinics, Sunset Boulevard, Murder Mile, piss drenched stairwells, underpasses, alleyways, waiting rooms, healthcare, deathcare, no-care, porn shops to pawn shops, sodomy, overdrafts, lobotomies, botox, detox ... all shot through with rotten, broken dreams and .5ml of amber coloured hope. A mix of the real and the hyper-real-surreal. A black comedy of the truth, and so not a comedy at all. When you read Tony O'Neill, that is what you get... that is the real junk of the junkiest writer in town.

Still, for all of the above it doesn't make anyone a writer. At the very most it can just give you something to write about. And many people do. Pens for syringes is not a new or original escape plan. There are untold crappy authors out there who spend their days writing about injections they took twenty years ago, boring us to death with the history of how they almost killed themselves, trying desperately to rework the mess into something huge, coherent and meaningful. It's almost as if they think that their story alone will sell them. But it's never really the story that sells, it's the words, and even more – the poetry of the soul: that which cannot be bought, taught nor stolen. And it's there where Tony rises with the greats: his words become bigger than his subject... bigger than the influences that are forever mentioned alongside his name. So today, just because somebody has to, I'm going to be blasphemous:

Fuck Burroughs!

Fuck Bukowski!

Fuck Dr Hunter Thompson!

Things have changed, and things are changing. Smack's the same but the world we escape from when using it is a whole different place. It has come about that there is more to be said than even the greatest could say... That voices do get old and tiresome once a new one makes itself heard. Tony O'Neill is a new voice, and he is saying new things in a new time: our time. A time even more fucked up than before.

So do yourselves a favour and go and track down some of Mr O'Neill's work. Buy, borrow or steal his books... it doesn't matter... it's that urgent. This post is not an advertisement and is even less about selling hard copies. It is about passing on the word. And the word is Tony O'Neill. And the word is out.

War Every Day - Songs from the Shooting Gallery

Down and Out on Murder Mile

Sick City Signing

Tony reading at the KGB BAR

http://www.tonyoneill.net/
Tony O'Neill Wikipedia
Two short shorts: 'Hammersmith' &'Live bed Show'
Short Story: Notes from a shipwrecked harbour
Tony O'Neill books on Amazon

Brutalists

PS: For those of you who are already familiar with Tony's work, please take a moment to leave a small review over on Amazon (or some other like place). Just saying "Fucking Brilliant!!!" would be enough... You can even copy and paste if from here.

Take Care All, and a new Memoires post will follow shortly...

Shane. X

The Dry Season

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 18:19:00 +0000

In far away places men were being killed. I watched it on the TV as I cooked up smack, fell asleep to journalists embedded in a war zone that was safer than their home streets. The biggest risk was friendly fire. It was 2001 and Afghanistan was smoking and choking on democracy.

In the streets of London there were marches every day. The mosques had become underground bunkers where rallies and demonstrations were organised. Inside, you could even keep your shoes on – that's how pissed off Islam was. As I wormed my way through the crowds, en route to meet a dealer, I would read the banners: “Stop The Afghan war!” “Troops Home NOW!” Sometimes I'd even shout a cliché myself. But I didn't really care, or had stopped. The Morning Star was then just a paper I held so as not to look too inconspicuous while standing at disused bus-stops. Politics had become a luxury, and came (if at all) at the end of a long line of other more pressing matters. Out of touch, my thoughts were not of black oil or corrupt foreign policy, but rather of a light brown rock that I knew only in 'theory' came from the same place.

During the first two weeks of bombing, as mighty Allied Forces took cities fighting back with catapults and stones, heroin on London's streets was rampant. It was so rife that it was actually easier to score junk than to buy the Vit C needed to cook it down with. And then one day, without warning, I received a call from a friend asking if I had any numbers, that she was having problems scoring. That call was the first hint that the war was actually going to effect me, and by seven o'clock I was half sick, frantically redialling the numbers of the twenty or so dealers I had, only to find every phone turned off. The single response I received beeped through in text: No Bisto bro. Gravy drowt. shld b bk on in day or 2. He never was.

In a dingy, one bedroom flat, dark forms sat huddled against the walls, jittering and waiting for time. Every so often I would rise and answer the knocking on the front door. From out of the cold, in would crawl another sweating junkie, eyes struck wide open and cursing. They'd all ask the same: “Anyone on? Anything?” Murmurs and “fucks” would rise up around the room, and then sniffling and groaning. As phones clipped shut, the latest corpse would flop down and join in the aching. But apart from Grace none of us lived there. It was a flat that had turned into our own bunker, the place we had gathered to rack our brains and kill our phones - to try and find a score in London.

I never did get sick that night, though only thanks to two dirty tricks. One from me, and one from the person I scored from. It was another user, a user who hadn't yet got wind of any supply problems. I phoned him and asked if he had a bag he could sell me, that I'd pay double. Seeing a quick profit he said he had two bags he could sell. I met him and he sold me the last of his stuff, unaware that the money I had given him may just as well have been fake, that he would make no profit this time, that there was no-one to score off. His trick was when I opened the bags they were triple wrapped and a third the size. But it was gear, and it was enough, just, until the next day.

The next day I was ill. We all were. Twelve of us laying around in Grace's living room and kitchen, cursing the world and trying to find a comfortable second in the discomfort. There were junkies stripped naked and laying on the bathroom tiles, others wrapped up in blankets and huddled against the wall, Grace thrashing about on the bed, moaning and hurting and cursing how bad it was. The rooms were full of mucus, shit and tears... our disease was seeping out our bodies. We were all down with the same flu and the real fucker was this: our pockets were full of cash. It got so bad I even heard Portugese Jo praying, either that or cryng. There's not so much difference.

“There must be one fucking dealer on!” someone would moan. On that we'd all try our phones again. “It's ringing!!!... shssh!” another would start up excitedly. We'd all sit hushed, hanging on with bated breath. We'd hear: “What, just White? Ya got no B?” Then we'd all deflate and sink back into our own individual hells until a new thread of hope arrived. Ideas would come and fade and old names of old dealers would surface and become important for the first time in years. Even the rip-off merchants hawking light weights of God-knows-what were worth considering, but no one had anything, rainy old London was dry.

On the third day, three hundred mil of methadone between the lot of us, we got wind that there was smack knocking about in Ladbroke Grove. We put in together for a taxi and four of us hobbled into the back of a beaten up Ford Sierra, wiping our snot on our sleeves and pointing out the quickest way to get there. “It's just a fucking red light!” we'd scream, “ignore it!'

On the way we passed the usual scoring haunts down Uxbridge Road and around Shepherds Bush Green. Far from being empty the meeting points were chock full of addicts, hanging around, all as sick as dogs. They were not waiting for their man though, just standing there because somehow it felt less hopeless - in and out of phone boxes, living to the redial button and the “We're sorry but the mobile you have dialled is switched off.. please try ag.....” And then the receiver would be walloped into the cabinet as more money rattled down BT's throat and clinked into the belly of the beast.

In Ladbroke Grove we were served by a small west Indian dealer with a violent kind of beauty carved into the left side of his face. He came cycling into view with a whistle and we followed his back wheel as he carried on past us and turned off into a small alley. The bags he was selling were half size, half heroin and twice the price, but it was something. Anything to get well - get well and give us eight hours of health to track down something better. That was the deal.

After scoring we didn't return to Grace's flat. It would have been too cruel, and the junkies who had wanted no part in the risk of the deal would soon change their minds once they saw our illness recede and heard our voices start to draaaaawwwwl. But then there would not have been enough, and there was no more from that source. What we had just bought off Ritchie had put his phone out the game too. So we split up and went off on our own to escape heroin sickness and have at least half an hour relief before the panic started again.

That evening Mikey phoned me. Everyone knew Mikey but I had a good relationship with him and so enjoyed the privilege of knowing he was holding first. Thinking only of myself, I told him immediately I would buy every bag he had. I did. He turned his phone off as I stood with him and said he didn't know when he'd reload, that heroin into the country was not getting through. Other than that he didn't know why, just his man higher up the chain was also on the sidelines, also waiting for the call. We were all waiting for the call.... just it never really came.

The gear Mikey sold me was the worst I'd ever had. It cooked up red and left a weird furry black residue in the spoon. It had no effect, but stopped me getting ill and so the teeniest quantity of heroin must have been in it. It got me through the next three days and I was sure by then phones would start coming back on. They didn't.

Over the following days and weeks junkies and dealers interests were put into finding out the reason as to what was causing the heroin shortage on the streets. It turned out that US troops on the Iran and Pakistan borders had accidentally blocked off one of the main arteries of traffic, and so the smack due for England was kinda going through a heart bi-pass operation. There was heroin, tons of it, a 'bountiful crop', 'huge surpluses', but it was being rerouted around Asia and Europe and no-one really knew through where or how long it would take. It took more than three days, I know that, as on the fourth day I crawled home from work sick, found all my numbers off again and this time didn't even have the reserves to go and join the junkie coalition who had pooled their nothingness and sat moaning and wailing around Grace's. Instead, I crawled into bed and cried. I was ill and so out of sorts I just cried at the world, and for the first time really cursed the fucking war, and even more passionately than the humanitarians, I wanted an end to all the bombing and devastation. But my tears were not for humanity, they were for me. And personal tears are always more genuine than any others. All tears are personal. Really.

After discovering a possible cause of the drought and why my life had been so abruptly gatecrashed and turned over, I started paying much more attention to what was going on overseas – at least the part of overseas that affected me. I became a firm supporter to have the US troops out of Afghanistan... at least away from the fucking Pakistan border. These arseholes weren't even blowing up the poppy fields, they were just loitering, fucking everything up without even trying. That's how bad America had become: they could fuck the world up by just being in it.

During the proceeding month heroin was almost impossible to get. Now and again bits and pieces would filter through, but it was so inconsistent that one could not hang a proper habit on it. Sometimes the gear was rushed through and hit the streets at dangerous strengths, other times it got through cut with dangerous agents. But mostly gear got through because it was bash, no smack in it at all, and so was more or less legal traffic. It was a truly horrendous time. Junkies were scoring twenty four hours a day. Buying a bag here, finding it was shit, travelling there, making calls, receiving estimates, going to the next man: the same. The next: the same... and so on until we either found a gouch or bankruptcy. It was a time of huge frustrations and desperation, and was made even harder due to the hike in price that the fake dope was going for. Most dealers had tripled prices and cut the weights, and to top it all they were selling gear which we'd have returned at any other moment in history. But we couldn't just stop and wait, that's not an option when you're full on smack. Waiting is illness, that is why the addict is very vulnerable in many ways. He is always against the clock and if someone holds out long enough they'll get what they want for the price of a bag – because a bag can be worth as much as a man puts his health at. Bags are health. Bags are measures of life. That is a proper junkie fact.

Of course we tried to score methadone in that period, but that was hopeless also. All the addicts who usually sold theirs to fund heroin habits were now drinking it themselves. You could could buy green water or piss, but neither served any useful purpose, not even to cheat a urine test. We were all clean anyway. Some junkies tried desperately to harass the substitution clinics for methadone, but that was even more useless than phoning dealers. They'd fall in the clinics ill, cry, beg, vomit and shit themselves, but methadone maintenance clinics don't care for defecating or dying addicts, they want redemption. They want you to walk in and dump your rotten soul on the table and tell them you're giving up smack because it's killing you, not because there's none to kill yourself with. Even the most caring MMT nurse is unmoved by real junk sickness, unless it was brought on by their words – their sadistic means to have you proove you're serious about quitting by forcing you to turn up sick. But the real option of walking in sick and being treated is not an option at all – not even for those addicts who found God when their last tenner went up their arm. Even if you turn up at hospital, in a condition that would put anyone else in intensive care, you'll be kicked out. You would die before anyone in healthcare would give you so much as a fucking codeine pill. So you sit it out, and the tragedy is this: the dealers will always get to you before the system. They are better organised and certainly more caring. At least they gain something from you, and so stand to lose if they don't kiss your pains better.

During the second month of serious drought the situation improved, though without ever returning to normal. Every other week there would be word of “drought.. drought” but at least one of my twenty or so dealers would then always be on, and holding half decent gear. There would be no more days spent laying around in Grace's squalid flat, pooling resources with the sick and dying and muttering prayers to a God which none of us believed in. Once again, We were all flying solo.

It was almost a year later when things finally returned to normal. Afghanistan had been set up with a new dummy government - which wasn't quite as westernized as everyone thought - and as military presence dropped in the area US forces accidentally unblocked old supply routes and once again Britain became swamped in smack. Prices returned to normal and then continued the pre-war trend and dropped to record lows. On the streets there were now more junkies than ever, and the bumper crop which the Foreign Office had told us about soon began arriving by air, sea and mail. Methadone maintenance clinics did not have any significant increase in enrollment, and the small rise which there was remained just a statistic, as once the streets were playing the correct tune again the addicts who had applied did not even turn up to their first initiation meeting.

And so it is, nothing ever really changes and certainly not by accident. Drug traffic and supply is a circle which turns and is just as monotonous and regular as heroin addiction itself. But it is in that habit, that monotonous revolution of the wheel, where lies its true strength. To stop anything we must change, and change is a very scary and destabilizing thing. When that change involves the loss of dollars and when the world is run by dollars, change is almost impossible. It's not the junkie who needs rehab; it's the world. A blue planet floating in an eternity of shit.

As you read this Britain and Ireland are once again in the midst of heroin drought, and this time there seems no end in sight. 2001 is horseplay in comparison. Have a thought for all the lost souls who are at this moment even further away from themselves than ever. Junkies or not, there's a heart behind the hand that holds the needle, and it's very often broken.

Take Care All,
My Thoughts and Wishes, Shane. X

Online Independent - Heroin Drought 2011 (with Yours Truly)

The Songs of Memoires

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 23:43:00 +0000

The appalling things I uploaded last week and had the good humour to call 'songs' are now here:

Out of Time, tune and hope - The Songs of Memoires

If five weren't enough to scare you away for good, well there's now been a few more added... and more are on their way...

Leave comments below or just send me a turd in the post...

All My Thoughts, Shane. X

ps: New Memoires post to follow very soon...

Hope for the Hopeless

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 11:47:00 +0000

“It's gonna be a good year.”
I say that every year
while laying in bed
with a dead laptop
making love to myself
and dealers
of certain cards
Surrounded by walls
breeding dry-rot

But this year IS gonna be a good one
for somewon
We've a one in seven billion
chance
Nothing's ever guaranteed
No matter who
your daddy is

For 2011
I'm betting the lot
Taking the SP
Doing my bollocks on
the gammiest legged
laziest eyed
outsider in the race

The horse I'm hanging on
they don't even bother to shoe
or shoot,
anymore

In 2011
the drought
of life and lonliness
will end

In 2011
The world is gonna pay
double.

Hey everyone, if you've made it through the Suicide Season, well done... keep well and keep healthy and keep hope.

Love & Thoughts, Shane. X

And The Rain Came Down

noreply@blogger.com (Memoirs of a Heroinhead) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:44:00 +0000

On the first day of spring 2003 the rain came down. I was running, across the road, past the Halal butchers, up Percy Road, over the curb at Haydyn park, past the school. Splodge, splash, slap and an inch of rain would burst up from under my sole. I was drenched through, and cold, but getting warm. Just up ahead there was a boy, hooded and marching off briskly in the drizzle. I slopped up to him and grabbed a hold of his shoulder. “Ace, sorry man, the rain came down and we got stuck under a fucking shelter!”
“Tchah! Fuck off, b'fore I open up ur face, geez! Making me wait around with hotrocks in muh pockets for nuttin'. Nah! fuck off away from me, tchah!”
“Ace, I'm sorry......”

At that, Ace turned around and we both stopped . His fist was clenched and I could almost feel the dense slap of it hitting me in the face, the blood falling in the rain, bursting open like an ink splodge and being washed away.
“I fucking warning you, yeah, you junkie cunt, stay away and don't call me no more! There's ten junkies to every fucking dealer, I don't need to be a waiting for no one.” And then he brought up a huge lumpy gob of phlegm, spat it on me and moved on.

Still not wanting to let the deal go I followed, silently, right up close. As he made to turn the corner he caught a sight of me behind him, turned around and stood up tall.
“You fucking following me now, geez!!! You want me ta put ya down on da floor? RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW!!!” Ace was up against me, pushing me back down the street with his chest. I reversed with him, wanting to get away but knowing it was too late. He didn't even punch me, just kind of smashed his palm into side/top of my head and knocked my hat off into the rain. I stumbled back, then scrambled clear. Ace didn't pursue. Instead he put his hands in his anorak pocket then bounced off in the wet, hollering insults and bobbing from side to side like the little gangster he thought he was.

The rain is relentless. It is now coming down in big cold blobs. I am running again, back to mum who I left waiting for me outside KFC. She couldn't keep up the chase to get to Ace and so I had gone on alone. On my way back I am fumbling in my pockets for loose change. The streets look slippery. London has never been so wet. A cold, irritating sweat is running off my skin with the rain.

“Did ya get it?” my mother asks as I hurry into KFC completely sodden. I shake my head. “Wot? He wouldn't serve ya? Ya fuckin' joking me ain't ya Shane?? He didn't give it ya? The Cunt!”
“Come on, we'll have to see Ritchie”.

Ten minutes later Mum and I are are pulling our jackets tight under a dripping 207 bus stop. I am peering out into the downpour down the road and mum is looking up. We keep seeing Ritchie but when he gets close it's not him.
“Where is this cunt?” I ask mum
“Phone 'im Shane, it's well over fifteen minutes! Tell 'im it's fucking pissing down!” I look at her.
“If he doesn't care we're fucking dying I'm sure a bit of rain won't wet his conscience.”
“Well fucking tell 'im we're sick, that we'll go somewhere else!” We had our moan, the same moan we always have, the same moan every junkie has, and then we bottled our anger and waited some more.

It is almost noon. At least five buses have splashed by and unloaded their charge. Ritchie still has not arrived. I pick out some loose change and try to dry it. My mother looks extraordinarily angry. I must look the same. “I'll go and phone him.” I say. Mum doesn't even reply.

“Shane, bro, listen up, you're not gonna believe this, but I'll be 'arf an hour, bro, tops! I'm just cutting da ting up. Serious. Take a coffee, dry off an' I'll beep you in thirty and give you a little bump for free, yeah? I know you like d'em big rocks!”

That I came walking slowly back told mum that not much would be happening soon. She screwed her face up, “''Ow long?”
“Half an hour. He says it's definite and he'll bump the rocks up.”
Mum's face looked as broken as the sky, kinda grief stricken.
“Come on, we'll get a coffee and wait.” I said
“He should fucking pay for it!” She replied

The rain is still coming down. It is not beautiful. The water in the gutters is over-flowing and rushing its way to drains like wild rapids. We are in the railway tavern café dripping wet. My socks are soaked because of the splits in the soles of my shoes. Mum is sipping a cup of scolding hot coffee and staring out into the mist. From every straggle of her blond hair rain drips and seeps in under her jacket. She looks so uncomfortable and makes me feel ten times worse. I turn and stare out into the downpour too. Occasionally we ask each other: “How longs it been?” Thirty minutes pass like an eternity. Cars splodge by and the occasional person runs for shelter. There are two thin girls, shivering, laughing and dripping wet, now taking cover just outside the window. They are blocking our view. A thin, vulgar arse in bright pink leggings - God, my life has led to this. My phone beeps. Text message: I'm around,T.

“Was that 'im?” Mum asks, jumping to life with the phone.
“Nah, it's Trooper, he says he's around.”
“Well lets fucking go to him then! Fuck this waiting shit. That fucking Ritchie won't be fuckin half an hour anyway, fat fucking chance!”
“Nuh, we've ordered. I'm not doing that. We'd have no fucking dealers left if we worked like that. Anyway, by the time we've phoned Trooper, got to him and waited, we'll have probably seen Ritchie and be home. If he's not here after 30 we'll leave” I rolled mum a cigarette. We kind of used them as timers. After about the tenth mum asked me the time.

“That's 45 minutes, shane. This cunts taking the piss!”
“Ok, fuck him. Lets go see T, hey?”
My mother nods.

We're both squeezed in a phone booth. It smells of urine and stale alcohol. Mum's wet hair is in my face as she tries to listen in down the line.
“Yeah T, we want three and three.”
Mum pulls an urgent face and holds up four fingers.
“Hang on, Four... Three B, FOUR W... yeah, four.”
“Be at Da Barrier in ten.”
“T, make sure you're there or text, I've no credit on my phone?”
“I be d'ere.”

Again we are splashing through the wet. Mum is running and I'm walking very quickly. My socks are squelching and my feet feel heavy. Every now and again mum stops to catch her breath. I frantically check the phone not wanting to miss the meet. The rule is addicts wait but dealers never do. They circle once and if you're not there they leave. If that happens the chances are they'll refuse to serve you again. Occasionally you'll get a call “Where are you, bro?” But that's as loving as they get.

When we reach the barrier there is a man there with only one arm. His face is jaundiced, almost flourescent. “You waiting for T?” I ask. He nods. We look at a bench nearby but it is soaked through.
“Whatcha after, the B?” he asks sniffling and nodding.
“Both.” I reply
“Both huh? Nice. Er, Mate, if I give ya two quid d'ya think ya could sell us a couple of hits of the white? Even just a pipe?” I lie and tell him it's not for me. He flattens his hair back using the rain as gel then starts jittering and fidgeting about. He's annoying the shit out of me. He's jabbering away talking nothing just to pass the time. Half of what he says is not even to me.
“It's fuckin hot here. I don't like meeting here. Got pulled 'ere once. Known T long? Fucking hot cunt. D'ya live round ere? D'ya have a phone?” I tell him I've a phone but no credit. He says something about pressing the hash key, dialling sixes, fours, asterisks and plus signs and like that you can make free calls. “That's what I do.” he says. I don't even ask why he hasn't got a phone. Same as I don't ask why he hasn't got an arm. I know. I know it all. There's only a few stories in this part of town. We stand together in the wet waiting for Trooper to show himself through the rain.

As Trooper rifles through counting the notes I have given him, water is hitting his dark brown hands. “It's too much!” he laughs “You must be fucked, geez!”
“What you talking about? Four and three = sixty.”
“Four and three? Whatcha chatting, Bro, I only have two and one! Thats what you ordered, man?”
“T! Come on!!! when have I ever seen you for that? When? You got nothing else?” T shakes his head “Nuh, I'm all out, gotta reload, bro. Two, three hours.”
“Fuck! The two? What are the two, white or brown?”
“White”
“Give us that. Will you defininitely be back around later?”
“Yeah, jus call me bro, call me.”
I take his crumbs, give him mine and the we both head off in opposite directions.

Mum knows something is wrong. The deal had taken too long and she must have seen Trooper handing me notes back. She looks at me like she's on the verge of a breakdown. “Don't tell me he didn't have no fucking white! Please don't fucking tell me that!”
“There's white, but only two.” I say
Mum's disappointment serves her well. Where she had panicked imagiining there was nothing now two sounds like heaven. Normally she would have had a full grand mal seizure because of that. At a quick pace we splash off home. The rain doesn't matter any more. Fuck the rain. Who cares about a little rain!

§

It's just gone two. The crack is all gone and I've one small hit left from my bag of smack. We're standing out in the open of cathnor Park. The place is being lashed and blast cleaned by the deluge. This time we are waiting for Dan. Normally we only see Dan when we're desperate, want small deals, or just to keep contact, but this afternoon he was the nearest dealer who would come out in the wet and so he picked up our business.

“Why does he want to meet us near the fucking swings when it's pissing down!”
“I don't know??? This is where he meets people... he thinks it safe.”
“Safe? Two adults hanging about in the rain near a fuckin childrens playground! Silly Cunt!”

As I'm already soaking wet I go and take a seat on the rubber swings. I sway gently back and forth. Mum gives me a horrible look then wanders over and jumps on one too. She looks at me and kind of screws her face up so as not to laugh. In the rain we start swinging. At first slowly and then faster and faster and higher and higher, mother and son, laughing, off our heads on crack cocaine, waiting for a two bob dealer to appear from God knows where and keep us happy. Just as I'm about to go right over the top bar I see a dark shadow slinking past over by the far side of the railing. It's Dan. He looks horrified and completely pissed. I jump off the swing and go and meet him “What da fuck, bro!” he screams “You're hotting the place up wiv dat shit! Fuuuuck!!”
“Yeah, and you're late AND it's raining AND it's even hotter two adults hanging around a kids park in the rain. That's hot Dan. What's the B like? Your last stuff was shit?”
“Pfff, 6 outta 10, so so from all reports. But the white's kickin'! Honestly. My phones red for that shit!”

Dan gives a sly little down turn of his hand, slips me the bags and takes my notes. He doesn't count them but puts them straight in his pocket. I clock that, knowing if I'm ever short I can meet him light and he won't realise until later. I sort the little blue bags (heroin) out from the white (crack). The white is ultra small. That's why he said it was good. Whenever a dealer says it's 'good stuff' he's preparing you for a small deal. He notices me feeling the size of the bags and the puzzled look on my face.
“They're point three, bro, bang on.”
I knew that was bollocks, but so was arguing. You pay your money and take what you get.

Mum must have seen the deal ending and had gotten off the swing. She is now walking slowly up ahead waiting for me to catch her up. “What's the size like?” is the first thing she asks as I join her.
“Small, but he says it's good stuff.”
“ ” she says nothing, and I'm thinking the same.

I'm looking out the window, the rain isn't letting up but getting worse. It is settling in for the day. The afternoon is dark and oppressive. I suck in a huge pipe of crack and nearly choke. My throat burns. Before I can say anything mum comes wandering in: “That's fucking shit! It's all fucking soda! God this'll be good. I knew we shoulda waited for T to come back around.”

I load up an extra big hit and suck it down. It makes me feel sick. 'Shit' doesn't mean it's not crack, just it's weak. It still gives enough to settle us down. If it wasn't actually crack there'd be a riot.

Not even an hour later mum is fidgety and irritable. She looks wired sad and sits down pretend watching the TV. I look at her. “D'you want a bit of the B?” She shakes her head. I look at her again. Then at the TV. Then the floor. “Are you thinking the same as me?” I ask. She nods, then says;. “D'you wanna phone?”

We scrape together more money. I probably give mum advance rent for the next year, and then we are pushing our arms into jackets and walking at a fast pace down towards The Church on St Stephens Avenue. The rain has not let up and now the evening is pulling in. The city smells of wet concrete and supper. We stand under the stone arch of the church and wait. A familiar black shadow comes floating by, it's Trooper.. “Just one of you” he says out the side of his mouth. This time Mum slips out I remain waiting. Every five seconds I check to see if she's coming back. Then she is back and looking amazingly happy.

“Everything ok?” I ask suspiciously
“Yeah, OK!” She replies handing me my two bags of heroin “The whites all in one, in a fucking piece of tissue, we'll have to divide it at home.”
“Did he give you extra?” I ask, knowing her sudden happiness has all to do with what came out off Troopers hand and nothing to do with life or the world.
“Did he fuck! I'd tell you if he had.” I don't press the issue. There's no point.

It's almost midnight, my crack is all finished and I've just taken a fix of smack. In the bedroom I can still hear my mother's lighter flicking and then her pottering around rushing from the hit. I'm pissed off. Her crack lasts a full hour longer than mine. “Just taking it slow tonight,” she lies “d'you wanna do my recycle?”

I make the inevitable mistake of doing that. Taking her days crack pipe, filling it with half a centimetre of acetone, swirling it around, pouring it out on a ceramic tile, setting the liquid ablaze, and then scraping up the brown residue that's left with a razor blade and getting four extra pipe loads of recycle. Of course, that overrides the effect of the smack and thirty minutes later I'm wired again and cooking up another fix.

It is just then that mum comes in. Her eyes are wide as saucers and she begins pacing around as though she's committed some awful crime. I look at her. I am feeling the same and have my wrist tied off and am jabbing for veins in my fist. “Er, Shane, d'you think there'll be anyone on?” she asks.
“There's always someone on,” I say, “Sinbad'll be on.”
She nods slightly and stands there looking at me with the needle. The she looks at the TV. Then at the floor. “Shane, are you thinking what I'm thinking?”
This time I nod and say “yeah,” pressing my needle down millilitre by millilitre. “We'll have to go out though, Sinbad won't come to the door.”
Mum walks over to the window. She pulls the curtain back to reveal a deep black night. The wind is blowing about and the rain is still falling relentlessly, being picked out by the street lights. There is nothing out there but wet and cold. The city is asleep... almost. We make our call, slip into wet jackets, then scurry downstairs and out into the night.

On the second morning of spring 2003 the rain came down. I was running, down Uxbridge Road, past the burnt out postbox, under the bridge, across the lights, onto the grass. My shoes were sinking down in the mud and I was slipping to meet my man. Sinbad. Shepherds Bush Green. Two and Two. The last dance of the night.

Hope Everyone's well... the post is a bit scrappy in places but I'll edit it over the days... Love & Thoughts as ever, Shane. X

**Note 1: B = brown. Heroin; W = white. Crack**
**Note 2: What is described in the above post is an exceptional day. From my experience (in London), scoring is simple and straightforward. 90% of the time it is done and dusted within 30 minutes. Most my dealers had cars, bikes or little scooters. It'd be one call and 10-15 minutes later the bell would be ringing.