tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-89192358204070588442024-03-08T11:00:55.733-08:00- So Dog We Were...-Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.comBlogger19125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-82854587486406559382012-12-23T14:46:00.000-08:002012-12-26T02:11:38.196-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://sodogwewere.blogspot.fr/2012/12/quitewhere-he-came-from-no-body-knew.html"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD4a0nb5-cZ7jggSil-5JrlMbZQXjkTvI3YYbHSBxMYNdbXqjeam3U3Nxj7n7R42l4IxWtdlDPv-Mt_wvHYr2GcVP70DWHG3QU8c7_c8jZJifTeFaIkpOURutu_z4QhVwjdsogmzweD9c/s1600/rpm.png" /></a></span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Quite
where he came from, no body knew. He was mysterious like that. All
that we knew was he rode in one day on a Harley Davidson, wearing a
full-body leather motorcycle suit and was smack bang in the middle of
a mid-life crisis. His hair was thinning on top, and dyed that
coppery ginger colour which pensioners like and makes you look even
balder than you are. In his early fifties, standing down in the
forecourt like that, all 6 foot 3 of him, waiting for Mum,shades and
a cigarette: that was Steve, RPM, soon to be known as The Rubber
Prick Man.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><i>He's
fucking loaded! Mum said. He's always got cash-on-the-hip and aside
from the shop he's got a house in Windsor, </i>and
<i>a flat in Kensington! Fucking Kensington!!! But I gotta play this
careful, let the arsehole give me things... not ask. </i></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
shop Mum referred to was a Motorbike shop on the prestigious Fulham
Road. Steve had secured an initial date with that boast, but to mum,
who'd lived every kind of bullshit con there was, everything was talk
until she'd seen it with her own eyes. Well, now she had seen it, had
been escorted around and met the salesmen and mechanics before being
sped of to Windsor where she was shown around the house and
introduced to Steve's sister who lived with him. When she returned
home she was a fluster of excitement. For the first time she seemed
like she'd been on a proper date, unable to keep the marvel of it all
to herself.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Yeah,
he'll be coming round again tomorrow,</i> she said. <i>He's taking me
to a posh restaurant, or so he reckons.</i> She looked at me with a
smug underface and a touch of hatred, like she'd finally made it, as
if I'd never believed she would.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Steve
visited almost everyday after that. He never came up to the flat but
stood down in the forecourt, surveying the hordes of Irish gypsy kids
who'd come out from nowhere and gather around his bike while he was
taking his safety helmet off. Over off the balconies the older
traveller men were watching the bike too, figuring out the fastest
way to strip it down if it was ever left alone for five minutes. I'd
seen it before, the gyspies going at a car or bike like piranhas,
stripping it back to the bare chassis in minutes, the owner returning
and staggering around shell-shocked not quite believing what was left
in place of his beloved vehicle. So Steve waited down with the bike
until Mum came and scared the kids
away with her drunken hissing and language they could understand. And
it was grace to Steve's daily stints waiting in the yard that he
picked up the initial nickname of RPM, the neighbours not knowing his
name and referring to him by the last three letters of his bike's
number plate. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steve
wasn't guarded or wary about flashing his money around. He wasn't one
of those types who plead poverty as a front to ward of prospecting
gold diggers. Steve flashed his success around and seemed proud of
it. He hadn't been born into money and his motorbike dealership was
not a hand-me-down. He had built up his business over a lifetime and
now wasn't going to dress down and pretend he'd failed. So Mum didn't
have to play Steve careful; he began showering her in gifts and money
without needing to be prompted. But 'giving' is not the right word.
It was not charity, and Steve was not a charitable man. He was an
entrepreneur: he invested money and gifts in Mum in order to get more
back in return. I guess he priced Mum up and worked on a specific
profit margin which he thought the sex and company was worth. And
though Mum never had the need, she still in a roundabout way let it
be known that she'd never feel like <i>giving-out</i> if that
electricity bill she had sobbed about earlier wasn't settled first.
To Steve it was probably nothing, though maybe somewhere, beneath the
padding of his wallet, it saddened him. I hope. I hope so for his
sake. Even the most scrupulous capitalists know that some things
should not be paid for; that some things must transcend money to be
really worth any thing. It's true, if you procure company in the
wrong way, you may very well end up feeling more alone than the
lonely.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Steve's
major problem was that his life had become one long, ongoing
transaction. He had gotten used to buying his way thru life. He
understood that his money was the last attractive thing left about
him and used it to get what his looks no longer could. He signed
cheques and handed over notes for everything; put things in peoples
top pocket to have them in his. The first time he met me and my
friends he slid a small lump of hash into Paul's hand before walking
off all hush-hush about it, the sound of rattling chains on his boots
and jacket, the smell of leather left in his place. That's how he
survived. But, in fact, he wasn't a bad looking man. He had a good
head: a rugged, muscular face with slight side jowls. He was tall,
had been well built (but was starting to overflow his waistband a
little now), and he had that kind of warm, grandness in the skin
which fame, money or moderate whisky consumption often affords.
Physically the years were beginning to tell, but he was free of that
hard ageing which comes through stress and unheated apartments. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">In
many ways Steve's Harley and leathers represented everything he
wanted to be but wasn't. It was an acquired image that didn't quite
seem to fit. The biker thing <i>was </i>his mid-life crisis. It was
one final jab at trying to be the real deal, without the restriction
of the desire for success taming his speed around corners. Now that
he was successful – had other people running his shop, his days
free, financially set – it was his time to really get down and live
a bit of the real life he'd skitted around the edges of for so long.
Of course it would be impossible. His safety nets were internal and
nothing he could do to unhinge them. But he was trying. He was trying
to connect with his real self, the animal, the being beyond material
things, where it's just you and the gallows and death, where
existence is magnified and life finally means a great deal. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So
the image of Steve in those first days was of a cool, if slightly
pathetic 53 year old man, someone with money, who smoked dope,
dressed in leather and wasn't modest about talking about his Hell's
Angels connections and how he could have fifty of them down at a
click of the fingers. For a while we all lived off his legend,
allowing ourselves to be fooled as much for us as for him. As mum
sped off on the back off his Harley, her blond hair blowing up behind
her helmet, short black skirt and no knickers, I'd spread the tales
around, Steve's legend growing as he weaved out the estate onto more
scenic routes.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My
mother's idea of playing the long con was giving it away free for a
fortnight before getting moody because a blank cheque wasn't
forthcoming. Steve never grasped the idea that an expensive gift or
fancy meal didn't translate itself into ready cash, and while mum was
eating or putting the flowers in a vase she was just as poor as ever.
Money was the real and only gift mum wanted, and without money she
could never enjoy the finer things in life anyway, constantly
thinking of the cost of such things and how she'd rather have the
money in her purse. It wasn't money hunger, it was about
independence. And that was her downfall: she could be bought (and
everyone knew it). It's probably why she hooked but never reeled in
the big fish. When your most intimate fantasies, stuff which often
takes months or years to earn, can be acquired for twenty quid on the
second date, it cheapens the thrill and kills dead the intensity of
desperately wanting something from someone but not sure if you're
loved enough to get it. So Mum didn't ask for money outright, but
Steve learnt that if by chance he didn't pay mum for the loan of her
body that suddenly that body would become unresponsive and unwilling
to do anything more than sit crossed legged and drink his store of
alcohol. And if my mother's downfall was selling off her love,
Steve's was willingly paying for it – and always taking what he'd
paid for.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As
is common with all jobs, from salesman to doctor to lawyer to whore,
employees begin to despise the customer. When you are at the whim of
someone, constantly put out and yet forced to wear a customer-service
grin, it's only natural to revile them, despise the prison they are
to your freedom. Mum, as had happened with so many of her previous
lovers, now suffered a vicious and cancerous hatred for Steve,
despising the very mention of his name. And she didn't keep it quiet.
After a glass of vodka her face would wash over with an evil
manifestation of herself and life and everything in it would be
viewed through a veil of hate and disgust. The most fantastic and
lurid obscenities would fly out her mouth. Steve was accused of every
vile crime and misdemeanour one could imagine and was ridiculed on
just about every level of his existence. From the top down:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
thinning-diarrhoea-coloured-hair;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
big-pock-marked-nose;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
turkey-neck;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
medallion-man-gold-chain;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
man-tits;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
vile-chest-fluff;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
loose-overhanging-gut;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
tiny-circumsized-jewish-cock;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
stiff-shit-legged-walk;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
tight-squeaking-leather-trousers;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
skimpy-Kawasaki-briefs;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
hideous-pink-arse-pimples;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
overgrown-kneecaps;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">his
heavy-footed-plod;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">his
chain-rattling-presence... </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">There
was nothing which didn't finally disgust Mum and come under her
scorn. But more than anything else, her most severe rancour, that
which came between her first and second bottle of vodka, was reserved
for Steve's super-glued-wallet and his apparent tightness of pocket. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
was a weekend and Mum was supposed to be spending it with Steve in
the house in Windsor. Mum had been cursing the thought of it all
week, saying to herself that he better make it worth her while. She'd
already, previously, had words with Steve's live-in sister, and ever
since had been silently brooding and building up a jealous hatred of
her. Mum was convinced she was trying to force her out, turn Steve
against her. Mum also despised the fact that Steve's sister was also
his accountant and showed a mighty interest in his financial affairs.
On that Saturday Mum flew into an initial rage when the sister asked
Steve for the weeks dining receipts with mum so as she could declare
them as business expenses. It was a bad time to have said such a
thing: 3pm into Mum's drinking day. Wild drunk, Mum screamed:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><i>Oh,
I'm a fucking business expense now am I!! Well, I suppose ya better
put down the finger fuck and the blowjob he paid twenty quid for too!
Nah, din't think so. If ya'v got summin to say Barbara fucking spit
it out.... Like, I'm a whore, is that it? Jealous coz I aint turned
into a fat sexless ball like you. And don't think I won't fucking
slap ya one coz ya his sister. Don't matter a fuck to me who y'are.
He'll choose me over y'r fat fanny any day! </i></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">The
mistake Steve made was taking his sister's side. Not in any real
pro-way, but in trying to calm Mum down and saying she was drunk and
didn't know what she was saying. Mum left it, but from that point on
she sat stewing in an internal world of bitterness, nauseated by
brother and sister and pulling ghastly drunken faces of repulsion if
one of them so much as smiled at the other. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">So
it was no great surprise that Steve's car (Mum being too drunk for
the back of the bike) crunched its way back across the forecourt that
same evening. I was sitting out downstairs when it arrived. Mum
fumbled the lock and stumbled out the back, having for some reason
refused to sit in the passenger seat alongside Steve. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><i>You
fucking pervert!!</i> She screamed in through the driver's window,
Steve sat staring blankly ahead through his shades, motionless, as
the breeze of Mum's hate swept over him. As Mum stormed off she did
that thing that drunk women do, whipped her shoes off, nearly
tripping over in the process, staggering on flat-footed and veering
wildly. Somehow through her drunkenness Mum saw me and beckoned for
me to follow. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>That
cunt's sick!!!</i> She hissed. Then turning back, screaming: <i>FUCKING
SICK CUNT!!!</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">At
home Mum sat down. She looked at me with a face like she had
information that could blow my life wide apart, wondering if I could
be trusted or not. Apparently not. She turned away, looking out the
window, her tongue in the side of her mouth, as the last hour of
light passed by. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">It
took a full day for Mum to break her silence and spit the story out.
She told me how she'd gone for a lay down in Steve's room and while
there had rifled through his cupboards. She then made a point of
telling me that Steve and his sister shared the same wardrobe and
sock and underwear drawers. She paused, staring at me, not even
breathing. And that's when she reached down into her handbag besides
her and pulled out a huge black rubber dildo, holding it by the base
and eyeing its length like it was her nemesis. She said she'd found
it in the shared drawers, concealed in a pair of Steve's sports socks
and under his sister's folded knickers. . </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>It's
Steve's?</i> I asked</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Uh
Huh,</i> she said. <i>It's fucking HIS alright!</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Though
there was no evidence to suggest who the dildo really belonged, or
what hole it was used in, Mum supposed a sordid, incestuous affair
where Steve and his sister were going at it behind her back,
finishing in a climatic double pronged fucking, Steve pounding away
at his sister's front while the dildo buzzed away in her arse. To Mum
it all made perfect sense:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
shared house;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">both
celibate;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
sister against her;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
sister being the firm's accountant;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Steve
wandering around the house in just his pants;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
KY jelly in the bathroom;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
shared closet space;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the
shared sock and underwear drawers;</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">the
secret, perverted smiles. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Though,
up until the weekend, it was all circumstantial evidence. But now Mum
had some hard, concrete proof: THE DILDO. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">That
evening when Steve came around Mum was especially smashed for the
occasion. Without wasting a second, unable to keep it in any longer,
she produced the dildo, waving it about in Steve's face as she
accused him of having an affair with his own sister and fucking her
with the dildo in the arse. Steve was so shocked he kinda just froze,
his body unsure how to react against such fantastic accusations. He
made a few preparatory vocal sounds, but finally could do nothing but
let out an incredulous laugh and put a hand to his head in disbelief.
In the wrong drunken gaze, he could even have looked guilty as
charged. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>You've
been rumbled,</i> Mum said, dashing the dildo at his feet. <i>RPM –
The Rubber prick Man!!!</i> Steve calmly stepped out the way of the
dildo, then turned to leave. As he made his way out he stopped and
laid a fifty pound note on the arm of the sofa. <i>That's for the gas
bill, </i>he said without turning around. Mum stared at the note. The
bridge of her nose ruffled. She was about to scream she didn't want
it, but thought better of it. Instead she stood there steely silent,
her eyes of hatred following Steve's back out the door.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">That
wasn't the end of Steve, but it was the beginning of the end. Now Mum
had confronted him once and broken through the pride barrier of
asking outright for cash (and getting it) she now had no qualms about
doing so again and again. Steve always gave her what she demanded but
it was obvious it was having a wearing effect on him and that
outgoing expenses with no return was where he pulled the line on love
or lust. In a way Mum got what she wanted: no fancy restaurants, no
expensive flowers, no Harrod's chocolates, no shopping sprees –
just the money instead. With Steve's worth stripped back to his
wallet he became ever more of a prison to Mum. It may even have been
that she'd gotten use to all the extra cash and could maybe not do
without it if Steve were just to leave. As a consequence Mum felt
totally submissive to him and so reviled him with an even greater
vigour. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Steve,
now down to mundane living, moody receptions, indifference,
drunk-sex-only, a human cash machine, suddenly seemed out of place in
and around such hopeless dreams. No longer dashing back and forth
between restaurants, leaving with mum on the bike, enjoying every
last second of life, he suddenly looked as unfulfilled and
downtrodden as anyone else. In a series of steps his legend began to
wane. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">The
first brick crumbled properly on the day Paul joined Steve out in the
forecourt and paid him back in kind by handing him a joint to light
up. Steve took the joint, looking quite unsure as to which end he
should light. He finally guessed right, sparked the thing up, and
took a series of quick long puffs which made him cough choke on
inhaling. Paul watched him curiously, realizing that he'd maybe never
smoked a joint in his life. Five minutes later, as Paul was in mid
conversation, Steve flushed over white and spun around and projectile
vomited. He became unsteady on his feet and said he was having heart
palpitations. Paul helped him into the stairwell, where he sat in the
dark, alone, for forty five minutes. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Steve's
legend was further diminished by Mum refusing to ride on the back of
his bike. She said it was uncomfortable, and with the winter on its
way, too cold as well. So Steve had to visit in his battered red
Volvo. Without the bike to sound his arrival or impress the
neighbours he visits went mostly unnoticed now. That was just before
his hip problem. He blamed Mum for that, saying that using the car
had forced him to sit in unfamiliar positions for hours and had
brought on tendonitis in the hip joint. The result was until the
inflammation went down Steve could no longer wear his tight leather
motorbike gear and had to limp around in a pair of ultra baggy,
cotton tracksuit bottoms from the market. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But
the blow which finally put pay to Steve's legend was the Hell's
Angels fiasco. I think he could see that he no longer interested
anyone, that in a few months he had gone from a leather clad biker
with a sexy blond on his arm to an old man in comfy dress, driving
around in a rusty shit heap with a filthy alcoholic slumped in the
back who only wanted his cash and wouldn't give out even for that. In
order to recoup some lost respect, he finally delivered on his boast
of knowing the Hell's Angels and said he'd have them out to settle a
violent dispute Mum was having with a second floor neighbour. Steve
said that on Mum's nod he'd have thirty Hell's Angels at the
neighbour's door. Without the slightest delay Mum gave the nod and
then immediately staggered off to taunt the neighbour, warning:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><i>The
Angels are coming for You! Watch out! </i></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">It
wasn't a bluff. Steve knew the Hell's Angels all right, and though
there were nowhere near thirty who thundered into the estate, there
was still a good dozen. They looked mean too. Until they removed
their helmets and revealed themselves as a group of old men, not one
pre-pension age. A bunch of scruffy old duffers filing up the stairs,
smelling of piss and beer (mostly piss) and crowding outside the door
of number 27. Mum was too drunk to see that this was some old crony
version of the most vicious outlaws in the Western World. She stood
at our balcony screaming some drunken obscenities out to the world
about <i>never fucking with me again!</i> Steve, RPM, The Rubber
Prick Man now made his way through the crowd of bikers on the landing
two floors down. Once outside the door he looked at the ragtag,
greasy army and gave <i>the eyes</i>, meaning <i>You ready, Boys?</i>
There was lots of nodding and a couple of coughing fits, and Steve
frapped hard on the door. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><i>Come
on, don't be a coward an open up,</i> he shouted, with 15 men behind
him. <i>It's time to sort this fucking mess out.</i> </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Before
Steve had the time to knock again the door opened and a fat middle
aged woman came out in velvet bed clothes, and besides her, her
scrawny pint sized husband, and behind him two dozy, half-dead,
skeletal Alsations. The husband in vest, jeans and no socks or shoes
leant over the balcony and lit a cigarette. Steve moved back and the
Angels moved in. The fat woman, known to all as Podge, started
screaming and shouting and pointing up at Mum. The Angels quickly
took her in hand and calmed her down. As two held her an old man in
heeled boots, a confederate bandana, and bow legs, said: <i>Ok, we're
here to listen. You tell us your side of the story and then we'll go
and speak to your neighbour and see what she's got to say.</i> </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Podge
began telling the story of a fridge her husband had sold Mum, how it
packed in after two weeks and Mum wanted her money back. Now and
again the husband would nod in agreement. The old Hell's Angel
finished by patting Podge sympathetically on the shoulder, <i>here
here now, </i>and sending a small group of men up to see Mum and get
her side of the story. Mum ignored their questions, preferring
instead to storm downstairs, arrowing in for Podge with a pointed
finger, calling her a thief and a cunt and a liar. An hour later Mum
and Podge were sitting together smoking and drinking and creasing up
in laughter over the sorry state of the OAP Angels as they milled
around, talking about bikes and asking Steve the price of certain
repairs and modifications and odds and ends in his shop. Steve came
over, as tall as he was when he'd first arrived on the estate.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><i>Happy
now ladies? Friends again?</i> He
asked. <i>It's amazing what can be achieved by just sitting
down and talking things out! </i></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Soon
after that Steve gave the official notice that Mum and Podge's
dispute had been settled and that Podge's husband was going to
exchange the broken fridge he'd sold us for one that worked. There
had been no door smashed in, no flat ransacked, no husband and wife
tied up and tortured, and no thirty man arse-fucking of Podge's 22
year old, crack addicted son, as Mum and I had promised him. What was
worse, because of the commotion of the bikes, and the activity up the
stairs and along the landing, the entire block had come out to watch
the Angels go about their business. People here wanted to see blood
flowing not some vigilante mediator group encouraging a dialogue
between the feuding neighbours. Still, thrilled with the outcome, the
Angels poured back down the stairs, walking around the forecourt
giving high-fives and hugging each other. Then, in perfect
synchronisation, they jockeyed onto their bikes, kick started their
machines and roared off out the estate, weaving in single file
towards their afternoon naps. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">And
with the Angels gone so they roared away with the last piece of
Steve's legend. His number was up here. Now, even if he paid the
local kids to watch his bike they'd rob it too, knowing that the
stories of Hell's Angels and biker gangs was all a myth and that
Steve was as alone and as powerless as the rest of us. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Steve
hung around and continued seeing Mum for some months longer but now
sneaked in and out the estate wearing a long black coat and sepia
tinted glasses. Never knowing what the real deal really was anyway,
Steve cut a lonely shadow as himself in those days. He had come
seeking life and thrills and his real self, but it turned out that he
had been his real self all those years and was rather looking for
escape. With his tendionitis better Steve made one last visit on his
Harley, turning up down in the forecourt on Christmas day and calling
Mum out. Mum was surprisingly sober. At first she refused go down but
finally warmed to the idea, slipping into a tight black dress and
descended the stairs out into the Christmas chill. And for the last
time Steve kick-started his own bike and sped off with Mum on the
back, not knowing it then, but on the road to rejoining his old life,
the shop, the success, the parts orders, carburetors and cylinder
heads. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">And
as the unhappy couple sped away the Christmas jingle was in the air,
drifting out and mixing with the mist. <i>And then </i><i>they
sang a song, the rare old mountain dew, </i></span></span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
turned my face away, and dreamed about you...</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Got
on a lucky one</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Came
in eighteen to one</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I´ve
got a feeling</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>This
year´s for me and you</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>So
happy christmas</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I
love you baby</i></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>I
can see a better time</i></span></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="line-height: 0.61cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Where
all our dreams come true.…</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-69207321537192439072012-12-12T19:42:00.001-08:002012-12-14T02:07:05.775-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEGhKJ6XXrUUvh7hYWG5tx96vKbtx1eTwtn4iN1iFG5WGi0HDVHyTk86yxt5kFEpPmTpI16o5WCfnfVkVmFrV_UFDniiJpypYKfolwne9epHtKPcHUst_zotaEVneHsgBoEUK9rQor368/s1600/nigel3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEGhKJ6XXrUUvh7hYWG5tx96vKbtx1eTwtn4iN1iFG5WGi0HDVHyTk86yxt5kFEpPmTpI16o5WCfnfVkVmFrV_UFDniiJpypYKfolwne9epHtKPcHUst_zotaEVneHsgBoEUK9rQor368/s1600/nigel3.png" /></a></div>
Maida
Vale, North London, is a dark, anonymous place. The streets there are
wider, and longer; the houses taller and with flat roofs. The Avenue
we lived on was so long you couldn't see to the end. It just ran
down, five floored neo-Georgian houses on either side, gradually
converging and disappearing into the vanishing point. The trees were
different too. The small, residential pear and crab apple trees of
West London were done away with in preference of towering
London Planes – huge gothic monoliths which dwarfed and shadowed
the lives and told of the unmistakable and fantastic isolation that
existed there. The buildings themselves had become a landlord's
dream, each floor divided into two adjacent one-bedroomed flats and
rented or sold to the newly emerged Single-buyers' market during the
property boom of that time. It was an area where people lived alone,
beneath high ceilings,with their closets and their thoughts and their
ghosts. And because the area was built up, residents living on top of
one another and not side by side, it made for a detached ,
indifferent community, people coming and going and no one quite sure
which house they disappeared into or what floor they went up to.
People in Maida vale didn't know their neighbours. Even the most
frequent and familiar faces remained a mystery. They could live in
your building or the one down the road – who knew? And who cared?.
If you cared who your neighbours might be you would never have moved
there in the first place.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
the late evenings the surrounding district turned into a light show
of the lonely. In the illuminated windows of the apartment buildings
people and shadows mooched about, eating, drinking and dying alone.
There was a bizarre mix of young careerists and entrepreneurs
alongside actors and writers and artists. People would dress up in
the costume of their own show – some cigar smoking city gents,
others as 1960's screen goddesses – projecting their fantasy lives
and real depressions out into the world. Now and again an
exhibitionist would wander naked past a window, or could be spied
somewhere in the background getting undressed or making out as if
they've just come from the shower. Though varied, all the lives had
one thing in common: the obscene bareness which lingered in the rooms
around them. It was a bareness not much different from that which
existed in the black windows of the unoccupied flats around. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Of
all the private night shows in the area, the most haunting spectacle
was projected each night from a flat in the building directly
opposite ours. The building was eerie enough in itself. It fell
between two street lights, taking no light from either, and so sat
back in a dark recess all of its own. Up on the top floor, in one of
the converted attic rooms, was a square window blocked out by a red
curtain. The curtain was never opened, and at night, when the room
was lit up from inside, the window glowed bright red and on it was
cast the silhouette of a man, alone, standing there face on and
holding a large kitchen knife. From our flat on the ground floor it
seemed like he was staring straight down at us, and if you looked up
at him for long enough the street would disappear from your
peripheral vision until all that existed was You, the square of red
,and the black knife wielding silhouette upon it. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">During
the first months of our stay in Maida Vale I became obsessed with
that window and the thought of who was behind it. I spent my nights
staring over, imagining any number of grisly, bloody scenarios of
what was going on inside the apartment. Even Mum took an interest.
Looking up at the knife wielding silhouette she'd say stuff like:
<i>Someone should phone the police to that cunt! What kind of a
monster would stand up there like that!</i> Sometimes she'd wander in
the room and just stand there eyeing the shape up in the attic flat
with hatred, as if the man reminded her of something else which had
happened in the life.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">I
couldn't be certain it was him, but in the daytime a man would leave
the building and march off with his head to ground like the day was
his enemy. He was a shabby, ill looking thing, maybe thirty, with
greasy black hair and always a good few days of stubble about him. He
dressed in dark, faded clothes and, regardless of the weather, a
plain burgundy scarf with the tails thrown back over his left
shoulder. He always had a cigarette in his mouth and walked so fast,
slightly stooped, that he was forever striding through a cloud of his
own smoke. Like that he'd head off down the road, returning a little
while later carrying a white plastic NICOLAS wine bag.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">It
was a wet, late spring morning. Mum and I were returning from her
weekly cigarette and booze shop. As we turned the corner Mum
clattered into someone, the vodka bottles clashing together in her
bag. The man, momentarily knocked out his stride, swerved around Mum
and rejoined his line, marching on without so much as raising his
head. Mum kissed her lips and was about to shout something when I
said: <i>That's him! Mum, that's the man up at the window!</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Through
his drifting cigarette smoke Mum shouted:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i>Oi,
is that you standing up there every evening with that fucking knife?</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">I
may have imagined it but the man's stride seemed to shorten for a
step as Mum's words reached him. But that was all. Otherwise he
continued on his way, without replying, a musty, oaky scent left
trailing n his wake. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">After
Mum clattering into his existence it seemed to wake him up a little.
Now, during the daytime, he'd occasionally open up his window and
lean out smoking. He also bought a couple of dark green exotic plants
and put them out on the ledge. Whenever Mum saw him out the window
she'd wave up or shout HELLO! He still continued casting shadows most
nights but it was no longer as obsessive as it had been and barely
lasted half an hour. His isolation had been interfered with, touched,
and I guess he felt a little stupid and self-conscious lingering up
there with a knife and knowing Mum and I were watching him and knew
who he was. For us, having had seen him, seen he could be knocked off
his stride like anyone else, he was no longer the terrifying presence
he once was. On the contrary, he then seemed to take Mum's interest
in a totally different way. She stared up at the window now with
something secretive and excited in her regard, her breasts pushed
out, as though she thought he could see her too. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">It
was not so long after that, that I first heard the name Nigel. Mum
said it in a deliberately affected manner, gloating, letting the word
linger, like someone does who's newly on first name terms with the
boss. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">
<i>Nigel... ... ... ... Him over the road! </i>She'd
say.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Mum
and Nigel began a strange correspondence, Mum shouting things up to
him and Nigel responding by a series of hand signals, or dropping a
cigarette or ten pound note down. If it was ever necessary for him to
physically speak he'd pull himself in, close the window, descend the
stairs and cross the road – sometimes just to say he didn't have
any cigarettes. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">So
it began there. Like that. An odd cigarette, first thrown down, then
brought across, then Nigel smoking one himself and making an attempt
at talking from his uncomfortable stooped demeanour. From cigarettes
it turned to wine, Nigel inviting Mum over to share a bottle. But
that kind of social drinking wasn't for Mum. She was of the old order
of drunks, drinking to forget people and the world – not to
celebrate it. So Mum refused the wine invitations, secretly confiding
in me that she was still wary of going over to Nigel's, of being
alone with him, in his domain, where his stoop may straighten and his
upper body widen out. And it wasn't an irrational fear. Even while
making efforts to be sociable Nigel remained quite a peculiar man: a
little troubled and a lot lonely, in a kind of dark, embittered way. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">By
the beginning of summer Nigel was a regular visitor to my mothers
bedroom. He mooched in, did his business, smoked a cigarette, then
mooched back out, keeping his head down and rarely uttering a word.
Mum said he was like that even when they were alone, often sitting on
her bed and staring at the floor until given an overwhelming hint
that he could touch her. Behind his back Mum mocked his sexual
performances, saying that he would have these weird trembling orgasms
and his eyes would momentarily roll round to the top of his head. She
told me that once she even had to hold him down to the mattress and
grab a firm hold of his cock as it was involuntarily spasming away
and spitting sperm all around the room. It was apparently due to
these intense orgasms that Nigel would flee so quickly after sex, his
head back down as if re-joining a secret world of shame. It also came
out that Nigel was on some kind of long-term medication. He said that
alcohol mixed with his tablets were the cause of his strange climaxes
Mum never pushed to know what exact medication he was on , but we
generally supposed it to be either tranquillizers or
anti-depressants. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Unfortunately
for Nigel his brief sojourn between my mother's legs coincided with
her latest bout of chronic alcoholism. From the woman he'd first
bumped into in late spring, by early summer she was nothing more than
a squidgy lump of fuck on a bed. Something a little better than a wet
hole in the mattress, but not much. Though perhaps that suited Nigel.
Perhaps it was the only sexual relationship he could be at ease in,
doing it to someone who couldn't judge or mock him, revelling in that
kind of passive sexual violence that is afforded someone from having
an unresponsive body at their disposal. Sometimes, listening in
outside the door, Nigel would ram it into mum with such force that it
sounded more like a knife attack. As he was leaving he'd look t me
before looking down, and for the first time I noticed he had a
somewhat swollen face and a slight, yet unmistakable, bulge to his
eyes. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">It
was a week or so later when it all blew up. Nigel had been visiting
every day, bringing Mum drink and cigarettes for her services. As the
week wore on Nigel took on an increasingly ill demeanour and at times
seemed unsure of where he was. On the afternoon of his very last
visit I found him wandering around in the hallway with his trousers
undone and wearing only one sock. He seemed drunk and was talking
jibberish. I tried to usher him back to Mum's room but he fought of
any touch, swinging his arms wildly, his face shot through with
terror. He finally disappeared down into the kitchen and sat on a
chair with his hands out flat on his thighs. After a few minutes he
rose and returned back to the bedroom, once again stooping and
avoiding any eye contact. He closed the door gently behind him.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">It
was Mum's drunken voice I heard first, an instinctive,
semi-conscious, growled insult as she must have come around. Then I
heard her shouting for Nigel to STOP IT! Finally she was screaming
hysterically, shrieking my name amongst other things with no let up.
I flew in to Mum's room and saw her terrified face beneath Nigel.
Though screaming she was frozen to the bed in terror. Nigel was on
top of her, in the missionary position, naked, his entire body
thrashing away. My first thought was that he was in some kind of
deranged, murderous rage, attacking her, but it became quickly
apparent that he wasn't attacking Mum at all, but having a full blown
fitting seizure. Mum was bawling through the ordeal, her distressed
drunken face looking more hideous than ever it had done. I neared the
bed to try and help Mum. She was now rigid as a board beneath Nigel,
her eyes shock open in fear and fixed on the fitting body on top of
her. Nigel's face had drained grey-blue and froth and spittle were
foaming out his mouth. He was still having severe body jerks, like a
jack-hammer left fallen to the ground. I Tried to pull him aside, off
Mum, but it was impossible. Not only because of his trembling limbs
but he also seemed to have taken on a mysterious weight which ground
him in his seizure. Mum began panicking again, screaming that he
wasn't breathing, that he was suffocating. Nigel's face was certainly
void of oxygen and his eyes bulging forward of their sockets. Not
being able to pull Nigel off I lent over and held both his arms into
his sides, subduing the violence of his seizure. But barely did I
have him in my grip than his body quit trembling, slowed to a stop
and slumped down heavy across Mum. Now I could move him. As I did Mum
scrambled free and out the bed, her legs giving way as she hit the
floor. Mum fell and collapsed into a drunken, naked sprawl against
the dresser. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i>He's
dead!!!</i> She screamed, her face almost parallel to the ground. <i>Is he
dead?</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Nigel
was face down on the bed, quite motionless. Bizarrely his penis was
still erect and a thick globule of yellowish cum had oozed out its
mouth. But he looked dead, his face drained even of the bluish tint.
Mum tried to pick herself up but collapsed back down before barely
getting her arse off the carpet. She crawled over to the bed, pulled
her top half up, and kind of swayed backwards as if getting Nigel
into focus. She began shrieking again, but this time a shriek which
expressed horror at what had passed not that which was passing. It
was a different sound, not so piercing and carrying subtle undertones
of grief and tragedy. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i>Shut
up,</i> I shouted, <i>he's alive! He's fucking alive! </i></span><i>
</i></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">It
was only a slight movement I had seen, but he had definitely moved. I
suddenly felt elated,. Overcome with the need to cry. <i>He's alive,</i> I
said again,<i> he's OK</i>. Nigel now stirred a little more. His eyes opened
slowly like emerging from a sad dream. He was lightly groaning. I
pulled a cover over his embarrassment. Nigel put a hand across his
forehead and shifted himself into the recovery position. In the
recovery position he met Mum's evil face, staring at him with a
vicious hatred, his welcome back to the land of the living. He asked
for a glass of water. Considering Mum's state it was maybe the most
preposterous request he could have made. A tremor of vile hate
rippled across Mum's face. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i>Er,
yeah, ya'v got water in ya own fucking flat! Dont ya think its about
time you fucked off back there! Bringing this shit into my house. </i></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Then
she reached forward and whipped the covers off Nigel, leaving him
laying there naked. <i>You disgust me,</i> she hissed. Y<i>ou fucking
animal!</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Nigel
never did get a glass of water. He struggled to a sitting position on
the other side of the bed, his back to Mum, and painfully pulled his
clothes on. Shoes with no socks, shirt not tucked in, he rose and
left.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">So
Nigel suffered from epilepsy. That's what the medication was for, why
he had such strange, climaxes, why he sometimes seemed confused, why
his face and eyes were a little bloated. It was also probably why
he'd become a young recluse, living in fear that something like this
would happen. Whatever the truth, Nigel was never welcomed back again
and Mum kept a special dislike for him which never waned.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">After
that episode Nigel reverted back to his old night time antics with
added vengeance. Only now, rather than just standing motionless at
his window holding the kitchen knife he'd wave and stab it about,
finishing his show of hate by turning face on and opening his arms
like a deranged, self-adulating vision of Christ. He also stopped
hanging out his window in the daytime, and the two plants which had
adorned his ledge for the past few weeks mysteriously ended up
smashed to smithereens across our front yard. These things were all
signs, signs it was time to be moving, that our tenure in North
London was just about up. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-77429511981787027322012-12-04T11:16:00.000-08:002012-12-24T15:19:43.276-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg06N9Du4eRGQ5IZDLViVS19Mvqa_u183pzKtkIHcdpzUQ17_pJnEJhROpSAJyvJ9I7SE1D70FTx9j7mO5wmmk-fTqlVPbpW-9l2fqgOHINTJ4c6FoQMo0s7CRm8ENhkPk_kxv6c6b7GDs/s1600/fatalan.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg06N9Du4eRGQ5IZDLViVS19Mvqa_u183pzKtkIHcdpzUQ17_pJnEJhROpSAJyvJ9I7SE1D70FTx9j7mO5wmmk-fTqlVPbpW-9l2fqgOHINTJ4c6FoQMo0s7CRm8ENhkPk_kxv6c6b7GDs/s1600/fatalan.png" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Long
before first ever meeting Fat Alan I knew all about him, right down
to his most intimate details. For example, I knew that he was from
Manchester; that he owned the Pig & Whistle pub in Latimer Road;
that he weighed 504lbs; that he had a penis no bigger than a seven
year old; that mum had to ward his belly away with one hand while she
wanked him off with the other; that he broke wind as he came; that
he'd sometimes shit himself just to procure a strip down wash; that
he was so fat his arms weren't long enough to wash his own hair; that
he had his underpants specially made; that he wore a towel nappy to
bed; that his toilet had been reinforced, that the u-bend was twice
non-standard size to accommodate his colossal spill; that he drove a
car that had had the passenger seat removed, the dashboard modified
and the driver's seat doubled in size; that he was 43 but had already
had two heart attacks; that he'd started binge eating while nursing
his beloved mother through the last stages of terminal cancer; that
he'd been charged but not convicted of molesting young girls; that he kept promising to write Mum into his will but
never did. Each time mum returned, two or three evenings a week,
she'd tell me all about him, screwing her face up in disgust as if
trying to wring the memory right out of her skin. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">God,
and he's got these disgusting sores on his arse where he sits all
day,</span> </i>she said. <i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And the same things are now beginning to appear
under his arms and chin. It's the moisture and friction or something.
The fucking pig. I'd love to just empty his fucking till and make
off... but he watches that thing like one of them hawks.</span></i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Far
from despise Alan, Mum's stories made me pity him. Not his obesity or
handicap, but imagining that he must have harboured genuine hopes
that mum liked him, or at least cared about him as a person who was
probably living out the last days of his life. Sometimes I'd almost
bring myself to tears pretending I was him, overhearing Mum gross
herself out on the vile details of her visit and making fun of
everything from his laboured breathing to the hairs which sprouted
out his toes. After all, he was not only supplying Mum in free booze
but was also paying for her services as nurse, cleaner, and part-time
barmaid. On top of that he had to suffer her alcoholism and
bizarre personality shifts, hold his tongue as she raged, screaming
through his bar that he was a pedophile, and put up with her various
indiscretions with the punters, listening as she got flash-fucked in
his own bedroom, on his own bed. My heart kinda went out to him. And
then I met him. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">I
only knew it was human and not a stalagmite of waste from a
liposuction clinic as it had ears and arms. It sat spilled over a
tiny wooden barstool in the kitchen, a hideous blancmange of fat and
skin, preparing the pub-grub for the orders below. Arranged in a
semi-circle around him was everything he needed: fridge, microwave,
knife draw, crockery, sink, chopping board, cooker, bin, etc. From
this layered blob a pair of arms were shooting out this way and that,
furiously multitasking: cutting, peeling, chopping, dicing, rattling
pans into flames, dumping things into pots, checking the grill,
slamming it back, adding milk, boiling water, prodding steaks,
cracking eggs, opening cupboards, grating cheese, emptying tins,
binning rubbish, turning sausages, turning dials, pressing buttons,
taking plates, dollop of mash, spoon of peas, ladle of gravy, pushed
along, shouting: <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>NO: 21 SHEPHERDS PIE AND CHIPS!</i></span> All of that while
still having the time to acknowledge me and toss me a can of Coke
from nowhere, his mouth breaking into a delicious grin when I missed
the catch, his way of showing he could still catch people off guard
and beat them to the draw. I watched this thing curiously, the head
sank into the mound of neck, the neck furrowed out onto the
shoulders, a huge filthy, grimy wifebeater vest containing his main
bulk, curtains of fat and skin draping down off his arms, his elbow
pads somewhere along his forearm, his groin lost beneath a huge flab
of gut, the legs in black cotton pants, and finishing him of, a pair
of bare, swollen feet that kept lifting off the floor and struggling
about as he wobbled and reached from side to side. Just them Mum
appeared at the door. Knowing I was watching her she looked over
towards Alan, pulled a look of repulsion and shook her head in
disgust. Then she waggled a curled finger and mouthed for me to
follow – she had something to show me. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Out
in the garden mum put a hand over her mouth and doubled up and
staggered about in hysterical laughter as a pair of Alan's pants hung
on the line and billowed in the breeze. They were pegged up from
either side of the waist. Me, Mum and both the barmen could have
comfortably fitted in them. Mum pulled at them and showed me the
undercarriage of the crutch, the horrible brown stains that not even
an intensive 90 degree wash could remove. Now we both staggered
around laughing, grunts and squeals escaping from us as Alan screamed
out a finished order from upstairs. Mum looked up to the kitchen
window and said something about<i> <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">the fat cunt taking the order down
himself</span></i>. She snatched my can of Cola from me and going back over
to the washing line poured a good spill of coke in the seat of the
pants, turning to me laughing as it leaked out the underside like
watery shit. She was a good few drinks down, right on the cusp of
wild humour turning into meanness.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He'll
notice,</span></i> I said.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>He
won't fucking notice! Who d'ya think hung 'em there, coz it weren't
fucking 'im. Anyway, when I put them on him he has to lay on his back
with his legs off the bed. He can't even see me over his chins and
guts! </i></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">After
being shown the handicap toilet, the modified car, the special
banister rail and the small two floor platform lift that got Alan
from bar to kitchen to bed, we rejoined Alan in the kitchen. Mum went
over and stood near him. His fat hand squeezed her bottom and he made
a comical beeping sound. Mum tensed and straightened and jumped back
just out of reach. She asked if she could do anything to help but
Alan said, <i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Nah, yer alright luv, just yer presence is help
enough... ain't nothing like a beautiful woman to make the rigours of
work worthwhile, int that right lad?</span> </i>his words floating
over to me.<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"> <i>Int that right, ya Ma's a beautiful woman?</i></span> </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">I
didn't answer.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">He's
shy that one,</span></i> Mum said.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Aye,
yer did say so. I do remember yer saying t'same.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">From
declining any help it wasn't long before it had quickly
turned into Alan relentlessly asking for things, and saying stuff like <i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">would
ya be a doll</span></i> and <i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">would ya help a sick man out and pass us that there Luvvy,</span></i> etc.
Soon Mum was in constant demand. Not in the way of the cooking of
the food but fetching stuff, taking it away, clearing the work space,
sent downstairs to deliver messages to the barmen, loading the
dishwasher, tying off binbags – all the while having to dodge
Alan's hands from groping or slapping her backside. As Alan gave out
orders and talked as he cooked it became apparent that he had a
bitter contempt towards the mobile, forever calling them <i>lazy
cunts</i> and suspecting them of doing nothing, cursing the bar staff
and threatening to sack the incompetent and skiving cleaning lady. A
few times his bitterness even carried over my way, joking that I'd
been <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>put on pause</i> </span>and asking if it was nice <i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">to watch yer
mam run off her feet?</span></i> There was something very selfish in Alan,
him even getting worked up over the quality of ingredients he had
been shopped. At one point he ordered the head barman up and showing
him a butcher's bag of mincemeat screamed how was he expected to
serve that tripe to his customers? He hurled the bag of raw mince into the landing where it burst and spewed out into a meaty mess over
the carpet. The barman silently turned his back, cleared up the mess, soaped the
carpet and left. I saw him pacing around out in the garden, smoking
furiously while shaking down his right arm and gripping and
ungripping his fist.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">I
hadn't been in Alan's presence for more than two hours and already I
despised him. He had that slippery, fat fingered, bureaucratic way
about him – something sadistic and hating of the life sat at his
mercy before him. Then another thing came up. Every time Mum was
reluctant to carry out a certain chore Alan would turn to his wallet,
offering to pay Mum an extra few quid for this and that. He went so
far as to lay a ten pound note on the top of a tray of chicken
innards and told mum it was hers if she'd clear them away and go and
dump them in the park around the back for the dogs. Mum took the money, flung the innards out into the garden and stood down in
the bar drinking for ten minutes instead. Other times, on occasion, Alan
would raise an arm and look at mum and she had to run a towel over, dry the pit and apply some cream. In the afternoon he began harking on constantly about his feet and ankles hurting and how they
could do with a rub and a soak. He seemed to be joking at first, but
after an hour of this he then had mum crouched down on the floor
fondling and squeezing his feet, cracking the bones in his toes. Mum
looked at me while she did it, now drunk through and putting on an
exaggerated face of hate. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">At
just gone five, when the last of the grub had been done and all the
plates and cutlery returned, Mum helped Alan tidy the kitchen and
load the dishwasher. Once finished, like he did every evening, Alan put an hour in behind the bar. He never really did anything, just stood up at the end, held up on crutches, scrutinizing everyone
with suspicion, watching every order taken and making sure there
wasn't a pack of peanuts or a double measure given away or pinched.
Sometimes, for no reason, he'd waddle over to a table and demand a
pint of beer back from someone, saying that they'd paid for beer and
not froth. He'd empty the pint away and pull a new one, reprimanding
one of the barmen and making him watch how to pull a pint before
waddling back over and giving the client an exact replica of what
he'd just taken away. If a child was in the bar, even if it was 14,
he'd pull beastly faces at it as you would do a baby. With a huge
fake smile and loud voice he'd repeat how he loved 'people' and
'family'. Whenever the young hawkers came in the bar selling their
stolen goods he'd call them over and give them the <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Five Minute
Green Light</i> </span>but made it clear he'd not tolerate drugs being
pushed on his premises. He was too stupid to realize these were
junkies and not the dealers – the only 'pusher' of misery around
was him and his beer pumps, it eventually being pissed away into some
of the sorriest homes in the area. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">The
takings of the bar caused more bad will and suspicion than anything
else. With Alan not physically able to be downstairs all day he was
permanently paranoid at what was going on with the tills and if there
were scams being pulled. To deal with this he'd send down for the
till receipts and all the paper money three times a day. Not that
that would stop any small time scams, but it would stop scams in the
hundreds (or find out about them immediately). It was over the till
takings that real sadistic side of Alan came out. He had this habit
of after having received the receipts to have Mum go down and bring
the money up. He seemed to take a perverse delight in putting her in
that position, knowing that she'd probably never handled that much
cash in her life, that it was her instinct to run or pocket a note or
two but she couldn't as he had the receipts and the tally. At the
same place where earlier he'd chopped up food Mum now placed the
money down in front of him, his beady eyes on her all the while,
almost as if it made him hungry watching. Mum would lay the money
down, another little dream gone with each pile. When it was all down
Alan would kind of cup his fat hand and push a fifty Mum's way. As
she took it he'd tap her hand as if that was love and they were to
say nothing more about it. But that wasn't love; it was paying for
love; it was business. It was what allowed for the pretence of love,
the pretence of having someone in this world who actually cared a
damn. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">With
love paid for upfront and the till takings locked away in a strongbox
under the sink it was time for Mum to turn her real tricks. Before
the evenings entertainment got underway she'd disappear down the
corridor for a few dulling slogs of vodka that'd hopefully get her
through the ordeal, may even give her some sadistic pleasure in
carrying it out. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Ok
chuck, me an yer mam ah gonna go make ourselves scarce now fer a
bit... get the ol' blood flowing in me fer t'morrow. Y'help yerself
to Cokes an theres them crisps and peanuts up there. There's TV in
main room, videos an' all... and, er, do mind them naughtier ones at
back o' cab'nit, hey, like a good lad.</span></i> Alan looked at Mum as if
to get some assurance that what he'd said would suffice. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Come
on</i>,</span> she said, drunk and cold, <span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>lets get this over with!</i> </span>Mum
eased Alan down the landing, up two steps and then stood with him as
he caught his breath before ushering him into the bedroom. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
the front room I sat not watching TV but waiting for the time to pass
and mum to return so we could go home. There was a weird smell in
this place, something like a public changing room at the swimming
baths. Music and drunken laughs and celebration floated up from the
bar downstairs and carried something of a wartime depression with
them. From the bedroom I could hear Alan had gotten all angry about
something, telling mum that she had to remove them gradually. Mum
came out, went into the bathroom, filled a basin with water and
returned. Now imagining Alan, laid out naked on the bed with a
pathetic little hard on, his arms not even long enough to touch
himself until his mistress arrived, his bulk didn't seem comical
enough and in no way pitiful or sad. In a way it felt like the right
punishment for the right man, and that for all his meanness and
bitterness and contempt a fitting turn of events that he was the real
invalid at the whim of another who had everything he wanted. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">There
was no noise that came from the sex, after all it was a pinch wank
and maybe a finger up the arse. It was all one way traffic with no
stop lights, Alan's pressurized little balls choking up their
contents within minutes. It was doubtful as to whether he could
physically penetrate someone anyway, and even if he did he'd not have
the energy or acrobatics to do much more than that. After twenty
minutes Mum would come out in a dressing holding the basin of water.
She'd empty it and shower and then we'd be getting ready to catch the
last bus home. It was always the same when I went there, the same
routine that eased Alan into the last days of his life.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
the same year of the affair, </span>one morning while being helped down to the bar by the cleaner, Alan had a third and fatal heart attack. He
died holding onto the special handrail he'd had fitted. As we didn't
have a telephone Mum arrived at the bar that evening, alone, to the news of his passing. The barman had kept the pub open thinking Mum may know
what to do and what would happen with jobs, salaries and the like.
But Mum was as much in the dark about these things as anyone. Between
the three of them they sold out the last evenings drinks and divided
the takings evenly. Mum left with a crate of vodka, some stray
bottles of whisky, a gold watch, a carton of cigarettes and a box of
Monster Munch crisps. She arrived home that night in a taxi, drunk
and sad.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Alan's
dead,</span></i> she said strangely, <i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">the fat cunt just keeled over and
died this morning.</span></i> She wasn't being mean or heartless, those were just her
words and how she used them. Somewhere inside her something still had
gone, even if it was only an easy ride. I helped her in with the
booze and crisps and in the dark she sat and smoked, the clinking of
the bottle against the glass, like a rattling ghost, through another
lonely night. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-91505317699615621202012-11-20T12:27:00.001-08:002012-11-20T12:27:27.914-08:00Coming Soon... Hey All... just a little note to let you know that there'll be a few more days before the next post arrives. At the moment I'm working on a long awaited text for my other site and that has taken priority over everything else. I'm three pages in and will hopefully post on Thursday.If Friday doesn't find me dead or something worse, a post will follow here shortly after. From then on in it should be uniterrupted sailing for the rest of the series which I'll write to a conclusion leading up to the NewYear. The little break also gives me the opportunity to reflect and think over the second half of these writings and make sure the texts don't become lost in themselves, that they finally add up to something more worthwhile than any individual post. If not all becomes lost and a waste of time, because these lives I relate were not lived and died for entertainment value... there was something much more bleak and tragic behind them, soething much more lost than taking a bad turn or drinking a glass too much.<br />
<br />
Thanks for staying with me...<br />
<br />
<b><i>My Mother's Sex Life #11: Fat Alan....</i></b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
to follow soon...</div>
<br />Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-75719165327901937882012-11-12T13:46:00.001-08:002012-12-24T15:17:35.714-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://sodogwewere.blogspot.fr/2012/11/my-mothers-sex-life-10-mr-patel.html"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipeY97m6YlkLHi1705ITcaUpZRKu_3pbeULbthvtGAiT53YanVub9EDX4soK-HlqMrf-MzzJwP63a-e8lJGP_Hj_-VGSmN1JC-h4BxhpX83ZRTbw_g4S7vGz_r7tDpnD7MpryzBTselEI/s1600/mrpatel.png" /></a></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
Hobbs Hotel was a mid-priced tourist joint in the heart of central
London. It was also a hotel with a 'DHSS Welcome' sign in its window,
which meant it accepted government housing cheques, and by virtue of
doing so turned a profit all year round regardless of the class of
clientele it took in. It was a classic honey trap. Past the luxurious foyer,
past the Indian porters with their burgundy backed waistcoats, past
the reception desk with the leather signing in book and antique
wooden key racks up behind, you entered a back world of blood, puke
and filth, mothers rushing around with armfuls of shit splattered
sheets, naked, dirty children following, bawling; drunk men thumping
down doors for entry; schizophrenics wandering the halls arguing bizarre equations with themselves; perverts peeping from
spyholes; half naked prostitutes skipping from one room to the next;
wrinkled old women, the colour of smoked mackeral, dressed up like
dead movie stars; fat guys with their doors ajar, laying atop their beds with acorn sized
erections. All this and more, perfumed over with the stench of dirty
nappies and boiled cabbage which floated up from
the residents laundry and kitchen below. Though,unfortunately, by the time you was
being led through this commotion you had </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">either </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">already </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">given over your pounds sterling or had nowhere else to go. </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">In
an attempt to keep the disparate mix of clientele separated as best
as possible, the hotel had a system for rooming its guests. Generally
the real bad problem families (mostly Irish gypsies) were kept
out of sight in the basement rooms. Single women, stable couples,
and the insane were mixed throughout the first floor. And poor, but
relatively clean families, were put up on the top floor. That
left the second and third floors free for tourists and business
guests. If you'd have stripped away the main front wall the floors
would have resembled something like the different coloured strata in
rock face. We were on the top floor, with two adjoining rooms between
us. Mum had a room to herself and the other I shared with my brother
and sister. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">The
manager of the hotel was Mr Patel. He was a small, slight, well
groomed Indian man of around forty five who had given his lot in with
the British. The first time I saw Mr Patel he greeted us from
the taxi as we arrived. The second time he
was standing outside the door of my room with his hands behind his
back and a long, thin, light brown, bulbous headed cock poking out his
pants. On seeing me he spun around panicked, hunching up and
dropping his keys. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">
– <span lang="en-US">What? Where
is your mother? he stammered, his back to me, stuffing his penis away
and zipping himself to attention. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
– <span lang="en-US">She's in the
other room, I replied, we've swapped.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
– <span lang="en-US">Swapped?
You've swapped!That is strictly forbidden. Whatt'if there should be a
fire? How da bluddy hell am I suppos'd to know where you are, where
is at your mother? You cannot just swap willy nilly like this! You
cannot!</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mr
Patel still hadn't faced me. He'd said all this while fluffing his
crutch flat and walking briskly away, hoping I'd not seen what he
knew I had. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
– <span lang="en-US">Tell that
mother of yours that I'll be back, he called out. This will just not
do!</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">I
watched Mr Patel hurriedly take the fire escape. The light flicked on
and through the round, wire glass panel of the door I followed the
back of his head, his shiny, brilliant black hair as it went down the
stairs. With myself the wrong side I pulled the room door shut.
I stood and waited in the corridor. Barely a minute later the lift
rang open and Mr Patel's polished shoes and silver suit stepped out.
He looked at me and made a move like he was going to give chase. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
– <span lang="en-US">Get in your
room! He screamed. Get in your bluddy room!</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">*
* *</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
despised Mr Patel. She smiled and flirted for him and let his hands
find places they shouldn't, but in private she hated him like I'd not
seen her hate anyone barring my stepfather. The problem was that mum
had made the terrible mistake of giving sex for the promise of
favours, transferring power from seller to buyer. And once she had
started down that road there was no turning back – at least not
until she received the ultimate pay-off: a move into permanent
accommodation. Of course, Mr Patel had no official say in such
matters, he was no more than a small private landlord, but he assured
Mum that his word carried heavy influence and he could procure speedy
rehousing with the right letter of recommendation. Though,by way of reason, our rehousing wasn't at all in his interest. That would take Mum away from him,
and he had no desire for that happen. To get around this
problem he'd create difficulties and instances to save us from. It
would finally turn around to be mum in debt to him and not the other
way around. The pussy she had already banked was then used to pay off the new debts, leaving the one she thought she was fucking for still
outstanding. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">For
example, one day Mr Patel called up and told Mum we had to come down
to the reception. When we arrived he handed Mum a computer printout
and stood there with his hands clasped in front of him, staring at
her. Mum asked what it was and Mr Patel said it was a phone bill for
97 pounds which I had rung up, and which had to be settled
immediately. Mum scrutinized the bill and pointed out that there were
calls to foreign numbers dating back from before we were even in the
hotel. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
– <span lang="en-US">Don't worry
about that, said Mr Patel, I assure you it was this one here who did
it! Look, phoning them dirty sex chatting lines!</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">That
was true. Out of curiosity I had phoned up a few chat lines but had
promptly hung up as soon as someone answered. But the calls home to
India at 3am in the morning, made while we were living the other side
of London, were not mine.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mr
Patel told mum that if she didn't pay he'd have no option but to
report us to the Housing Authority which had placed us there. He said
he couldn't have that, that if all the tenants rang up such bills
he'd be bankrupt within a month. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">
</span><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
– <span lang="en-US">And don't
forget, he said, when you are thrown out of here YOU have made
YOURSELF homeless and will not be rehoused again.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
looked away, knowing she was being done. Visibly she steeled herself
against something. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">
<span lang="en-US">> Well, I can't
pay it in cash... You know that, she said. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mr
Patel took the telephone printout. – Cash! Cash is not your
problem! He cried. No, don't worry. We can wangle the cash from
Social Security. But to do that, I would be doing a favour for you,
not for myself. Understand? </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
pulled a sour face. She understood alright. She understood Mr Patel's
wicked smile just fine.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">As
we went back upstairs I asked Mum what would happen. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">
<span lang="en-US">> Well, I'll
have to fuck him again now won't I, she said, and shivered like he
was already inside her. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">From
then on Mr Patel made himself a regular visitor to my mother's room.
After a while he even stopped knocking, letting himself in with his
master key at his choosing. He also tried to worm his way in with me.
Seeing I occasionally swung a cricket bat through the hallway he
began talking of cricket, of Sachin Tendulkar and how Kapil Dev was
the greatest all-rounder the world had ever seen. He told me that his
uncles were down in reception watching England vs Australia and that
I should go and join them. As he said that he lit his eyes up with
excitement, but I saw past that, to the slyness underneath, and the
words 'little bastard' that held up his smile. I replied that
cricket was boring on TV and didn't interest me. Over a period of
weeks Mr Patel adopted various strategies to get rid of me so as he
could fuck Mum in peace. To each suggestion I turned my nose up and
shook my head, until he deplored me for the distraction I was,
sitting the other side of his cheap partitioned walls as he drove it
into Mum full of rage and anger, demanding that she call him a 'paki'
all the while. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">
<span lang="en-US">> I'm am not a
paki! I am not a fucking paki! He'd scream, finally letting out an
deep animalistic roar as he pumped my mother full of climax and hate
. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">As
the months went by in The Hobbs Hotel, and it dawned on us that we'd
be there for some time, my mother became more and more miserable,
finally sinking into an acute depression. This depression was the
catalyst which sent her spiralling into her most dire period of
alcoholism, leaving her bed-ridden for months and almost sucking the
life right out of her. During the onset of this oblivion Mr Patel
would be in and out her room in no more than five minutes, sometimes
up to four times a day. Now it was sex for nothing. Mum was incapable
of bargaining, and wasn't conscious enough to know she had anything
to bargain with. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">
<span lang="en-US">> She's OK, Mr
Patel would say to me as he left her room, just sleeping it off. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">As
the days and weeks drifted by My Mother became a recluse – haggard
and loose and dead in the bed. She befriended a young prostitute from
the first floor and used her to run her booze and cigarette errands,
and only left the room herself once every second week to shuffle down
to the post office to cash her Social Security book. She was in such
a wretched state the even Mr Patel stopped entering for sex.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
was now down to pure existence. Alcohol had mollified her so much
that it was as if her bones had been removed. She was now just a
huge, loose, dirty sprawl of fuck on a filthy bed that men would walk
in on, empty into and then leave. In the dark of the room, barely
eating, surviving mostly on alcohol, her skin had bleached a deathly
white palour, like she'd been submerged in water for weeks. It got so
desperate that every few hours I would creep into her room to make
sure she was still breathing, and to turn her around so as when she
vomited it would be over the side of the bed and she'd not choke to
death. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Sometimes,
as I crept around the room, Mum would sense my presence. She'd cry
and moan that we had to get out of this place. At times she'd try to
rise, her pathetic drunken face full of the strain of trying to right
herself, crying through the frustration of incapability before
collapsing back down into the pit of passive life she had become. The
only thing she could do was reach out for her glass and drink some
more. And when, as often happened, she dropped the glass or put it
down straight off the edge of the bedside cabinet, I'd hear her
ghostly whinge through the walls and go and replace the glass and
refill it too. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">The
room itself was then permanently in semi-smoky darkness. It smelled
like a vomit factory, her sick bucket and floor full of thick, slimy,
yellow bile cut through with slithers of congealed blood. The bed was
a soiled, decomposing mess – almost something organic. As Mum
rarely got out of bed there was never the occasion to change the
sheets or flip the mattress over, and so over the piss and vomit and
tears were laid blankets and towels and clothes so as Mum had a dry
warm patch to lay on. The floor was a litter of bottles, plastic
bags, bits of half eaten food, clothes, crisp and cigarette packets.
It had become a chamber of infinite misery, my mother's struggle now
drifting through her unconsciousness, a low drone of pain coming out
of her and reverberating around the room as tears leaked out her eyes
and soaked her pillow. She was dying, and somewhere beneath the drunk
of alcohol she knew it too. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mr
Patel no longer even passed. Instead he'd either phone up to my room,
or collar me as I passed through the foyer, making sure I had checked
on Mum and that she was still alive. He said that another death would
ruin him. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">
<span lang="en-US">> I cannot put
up with this much more longer, he'd say. That top floor is beginning
to pong... my other guests are complaining! </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">At
least three times a week he threatened he was going to report mum to
the DHSS and have us removed, but I guess having two rooms let out
for two thousand pounds a month stopped him doing anything quite that
drastic. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
never did really pull herself out of that period of drinking, at
least not while we were in the hotel. The place had become
insufferable to her and, no matter how much she may have wanted to
get sober, her overriding need was to black out the hell that life
had become. She did however calm down enough to begin eating properly
again, and once she had gotten some strength back she cleared the
room out and cleaned herself up. She was still drinking in excess of
a bottle of vodka a day, but now was at least out of bed as much as
she was in it, and washed and applied a little make-up. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">After
being seen a few times, and at least semi-conscious, it wasn't long
before Mr Patel was sniffing around again and pulling her against his
groin and whispering sordid innuendos into her ear. The major
difference now though was that he had experienced the downside of My
Mother's wildness, had realiszed she wasn't for keeps (even under
hostage) and had decided that it was maybe time to fuck her for the
ultimate payment he had always promised. So, in my mother's clearer
moments, life was just as obscured as before, only then by Mr Patel,
his angry, clenched face all she could see as he drove it into her
and released his pent up anger against the British, or his own secret
shame of having put his lot in with them. Whatever the reason for the
rage that channeled through his sexual endeavors, within a week, a
smiling Mr Patel, overjoyed that he did indeed hold some petty sway
in local government, handed mum a letter which said that on
recommendation of the hotel's management we were the family most
likely to benefit from immediate rehousing. The DHSS had found us a
final, temporary property to move into until such time that permanent
housing became available. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
lit up with relief. Sure, it was still only a temporary fix and we
hadn't seen it yet, but it was a two bed-roomed flat all to ourselves
and we would be the only ones with the key. As Mum looked over the
letter again, and I strained to read it too, Mr Patel somehow worked
his way between us, linking his arms around our waists and smiling as
if there was a photographer to catch the moment. But there was no
photographer, just a grotty, ill lit corridor with worn red carpet
stretching out in front of us, and the smell of dirty nappies and
boiled cabbage drifting up the stairs. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
pulled away from Mr Patel, letting his hand fall to his side. For a
second he looked like he was going to reach for her once more, but
then stalled and resisted. Mum was free, and as they say: that was
the end of that.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"> </span></span>
</div>
<br />Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-83571098151821220762012-11-07T14:09:00.000-08:002012-12-24T15:16:46.274-08:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://sodogwewere.blogspot.fr/2012/11/my-mothers-sex-life-9-carlton.html"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjz2lOY-Uqq1_qah6Khh11dGjqcazx2LDqt3nJgL1ZHfCyJMPoKQLvW7P3tubLGkM2cx9TcVtjjgUDNAlAjmdo6Us7I8KeTYRc0tjzV88oraDmyLJcBJGg7uwFccg9pWyVF4o_D7K94nKk/s1600/carlton.png" /></a></div>
<span style="line-height: 0.5cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="line-height: 0.5cm;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
What have you got another new boyfriend? I asked</span></span><br />
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US"> >
Yeah, well I might 'ave! Why, what's it gotta do wiv you? </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US"> > Is
he coming round? I asked. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"> >
Don't start ya fuckin' moaning! You aint even seen 'im yet... Ya might
like 'im. He's a taxi driver.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"> >
That black man who dropped you off yesterday?</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
looked at me like I was too clever to live. She drank a drink and got
a little meaner. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"> >
When he comes I want you to make yaself scarce! He'll run a fucking
mile if he see's that miserable face a yours. He won't be here for
long and I need the money so don't fuck this one up for me, please!</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">His
name was Carlton and he arrived in the same battered blue Ford fiesta
I'd seen drop mum off the night before. I always knew when mum had
fucked the taxi driver or given promise of it as she'd get out the
front passenger side with no tights on and sometimes carrying her
shoes. And it was never drivers of Black taxis, always the penniless
mini-cab drivers, those men with greasy hair and dry scalp, unshaven,
bead seat cover, always fourteen hours into a never-ending shift,
always one fare away from absolute ruin. I watched Carlton get out.
He was a large, round shouldered black man, a little heavy by the
chest and stomach and with an irregular, buttermelon shaped head. He
wore a plain red t-shirt, beige cotton trousers, and leather sandals
over bare feet. His skin was not the healthy, shiny reddish brown of
West Africans, but a dusty, sepia tone which gave the impression he'd
been out in London's smog for too long. He walked like a man low on
confidence, or a man who had no place to go. His face was one you'd find on a heavyweight boxer come the end of his career. He had
a damaged left eye – paralyzed and half closed over like he'd been
hit with an iron. He was either a gentle giant or someone who'd
sustained some kind of deep brain injury. As he loped up to the front
gate he must have seen mum as suddenly he let out a huge smile and
visibly, withdrew into himself. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">From
upstairs I listened to the talking in the hall. Carlton's voice was
timid and kind, with a London accent. It seemed so out of keeping
with his appearance that for a moment I wondered if it wasn't someone
else who'd sneaked in on his back. Mum asked him how his day had
been, which was another surprise. She didn't usually ask her lovers
such stuff, just led them straight to her bedroom while they both
cursed different things in their own individual hells. Carlton said
he was exhausted and would like a tea or a soft drink. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US"> >
You don't drink at all? asked Mum. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"> >
I do... sometimes. But not when I'm driving and not to get rat arsed.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US"> >
What, an ya don't get <i>rat arsed</i> on that fucking wacky backy ya
smoke, Mum said, a slight whip on her tongue, on the defensive. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">After
learning that Carlton didn't drink I stopped listening. It was fine.
He could fuck my mother all he liked. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-large;"> <span lang="en-US">*</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 0.5cm;">The
thing with Carlton was that he was extremely shy and nervous. Even I
seemed to rattle him, and I was a creeping ghost myself. The only
time he was confident or extrovert was when he was sitting in the
front seat of his taxi. There he was in control, knowing what to say
and who not to say it to. Not once did he ever seem out of sorts when
he had his back to people and road signs in front of him. But outside
his domain, without all he knew at flicking or braking distance, he
appeared lost and didn't quite seem to know how the world worked or
his place within it.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Carlton
was never one of my mother's steady lovers. He was one of a number
who came around on the weekly, like a debt collector, and was either
let in and paid that weeks installment or was ignored until he gave
up and mooched off cursing and thinking he should get a new job.
Unlike some of the others Carlton never turned up unscheduled. He
arrived only on his day, always on time, and even then somehow seemed
surprised he was let in. Sometimes he even took Mum out. On these
days he'd pull up out front, beep three times, then whisk mum off as
she pulled the passenger door close behind her. I'm not sure where
they used to go. Mum used to say 'Lover's Lane'. After an hour or
so they'd return, the engine in the car then subdued, cruising down
slowly, a purr in the darkening evening, Carlton dropping Mum off and
then crawling away with two beeps and fading tail lights into his
last shift of the night. Mum would enter the house and climb the
stairs, a plastic bag full of booze bottles clinking away, her own
melancholic jingle. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">That
went on for some weeks, then one day I opened the door to Carlton and
he was stood out on the doorstep with an armful of books. I watched
him curiously – the books. They were those huge, colourful, square
things, ages 4 – 6: Mum was gonna teach him how to read and write.
Carlton hurried up the stairs. Mum met him in her vomit scented
dressing gown. Higher Education for Adults. She shot me a drunken
glare and closed the bedroom door.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">I'm
not sure if Carlton ever really wanted to learn how to read and write
or if it was just a rouse to grant him further access into my
mother's bedroom. By the same token I'm not sure if Mum ever really
wanted to teach him or if it was a rouse on her part to keep a good
man who had probably realised he'd never get any more than what he
was getting already. Whatever the truth, the books weren't just for
show, and now, besides the grunts and moans of animal language there
was a more uncouth, inadequate one: English. Carlton pronouncing over
and over C – A – R : CAR. Carlton Has A Blue Car. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">So
Carlton was a gentle giant. He was shy and warm and not just there to
nail my mother and leave. But for all that, and even with time
passed, Carlton never lost his timidity. Apart from opening the door
to him, or being given a quick once around the block in his car, he
kept himself for my mother and I never really got to know him. Maybe
in part he was embarrassed and uncomfortable in front of the kid
whose mother he was fucking? If he was then it was a debt he didn't
mind paying. Over the next year Carlton kept up his visits, kept up
his English lessons, and kept himself to himself. All that really
changed was his car gradually fell apart, less and less of it
arriving with him each week. Then one day there was no car at all:
Carlton arrived on foot.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">By
the time Carlton neared the end of his stay between my mother's legs
we were living in temporary accommodation the other side of London. I
returned home and found him sitting at the kitchen table with his
nursery books and a travel bag full of belongings. Down and out.</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US"> >
Shane, Mum said, I've got something to tell you: Carlton's staying
the night! </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">She
said it like it should annoy me, like it was my punishment for
something in her life. I shrugged. It would be the first time Carlton
had ever stayed over but many others had. It meant nothing. And
anyway, Carlton was better than most. As I walked away I felt Mum
planning and scheming, her contempt burning through me so as I could
make it out the other side. A little later that evening mum came
wandering into the living room,naked. I pretended I hadn't seen her
and kept my head down and looked at the TV. She stood there staring at
me, waiting for me to acknowledge her. I didn't. She cleared her
throat theatrically. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US"> >
Er, Shane, she said, stopping, playing out the moment, I've spent
the night with Carlton... We've talked a lot... and I'VE decided: HE'S
moving in.... and YOU'RE MOVING OUT! I want you gone by the morning. Get packing!</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">I
was only just fourteen. I ignored her and listened as she backed out,
felt her way around the door frame, before staggering and falling
back in her bedroom. The next morning I crossed her in the kitchen.
She was naked and out of it again, trying to buttera slice of stale bread. When I passed her she sucked her teeth but was too drunk to make eye contact. She cursed, but it was neither a curse word or
anything English, just a vicious sound put in my direction. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">Carlton
lasted four days. My mother drank a lot and would now come staggering
out the bedroom not only leathered drunk but also with a huge fresh
joint hanging out her gob. Her hair was matted and she'd walk off,
not sure where, as if her programming was completely fucked. The
bedroom became a cube of smoke, Carlton occasionally visible through
it, laying on the bed in his shorts and staring over to where the
television was. On the last evening there was a lot of drink and a
lot of weed, and when that was half through there was a lot of
crashing and screaming before Carlton came backing out the bedroom
holding his trousers and shoes. My mother was screaming about him
raping her and wanting to fuck her up the arse, calling him a cunt
and an idiot and insulting him about not being able to read or write.
Just as Carlton was bending down to pull his trousers up a huge,
square, colourful book, ages 5 – 7, hit him in his bad eye. Mum
screamed in delight and hurled the next one, books smashing into the
door frame and hall wall. Carlton looked sad and shocked and for a
moment, scared, human. He couldn't understand the ferocious change
that had swept over Mum and the sudden hatred that she saw him with.
For the first time he looked at me, really looked, but I had nothing
to tell him. This was the English language, and he knew it better
than me. And like that, bleeding and half naked, Carlton fled for his life, and we never saw nor heard of him again...</span></span></div>
<div style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-52514058846681770482012-11-03T10:21:00.000-07:002012-12-24T15:14:10.827-08:00<b><b></b></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://sodogwewere.blogspot.fr/2012/11/my-mothers-sex-life-8-wolverhampton.html"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSuU172dgdgGwjAYbz-zv3VdNmxlRdi9gQ6w9trNEU3I5gzmnDDrzIS6qtQQNKaCOfHbq1kJ2J6FGwtYWp4g1gjHhdVjBpe1ztPVmTMiXr26fngxNnhTXCRcgr2EXfUhTeZKB9akz75ag/s1600/tommy.png" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Wolverhampton
Tommy was a repulsive little shit of a man. Barely five foot six, he
was an assortment of unwanted parts: short fat stumpy legs; a huge
gut that spilled over his waistband and took his grubby vest up with
it; a stocky, compact head; no neck as such to speak of; a chest that
looked like it held a shriveled heart; and arms which were too small
to do most of the things they had evolved for. Apart from a thinning
pitcher's mound at the back, Tommy had a full head of grey hair. When
washed it became a natural bouffant, though usually it was slapped
full of Bryl Creem and combed flat to the scalp, a little dry tuft at
the back curling up, giving the impression he had a filthy neck. What
wasn't in dispute is that he was a selfish man, a pair of
black-framed National Health specs helping to further magnify only
that which was in front of his own existence. A gambler, a drinker, a
semi-dosser, he lived off a diet of chips and fried bread and
mushrooms. His teeth were grey and loose and ground down flat like a
herbivore's. He had a habit of peering over his glasses like he
was an intellectual, or a judge; a pencil constantly behind his ear
which he used to pick out horses and fill in crossword puzzles. Each
morning, except Thursdays, he could be found sitting at the kitchen
table, surrounded by bread crumbs, his balls spilling out his baggy
y-fronts, the fronts patterned with piss marks and melted butter.
After breakfast he'd dress in a pair of One-Size-Fits-All jeans,
dirty white sport socks, a pair of backless comfy slippers, and over
his vest a red and blue striped bathrobe. Like that he'd run down to
the newsagents and pick up the racing paper along with some other rag
with even less news in it. I guess Tommy was a kind of stock lot of
middle-aged British men at that time, masquerading as the
disillusioned white working class, but really, avoiding work at all
costs and scraping by on reversed shirts, cheap Bic razors, pots of
weak sugary tea and penny accumulator bets. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Why
my mother shacked up in a bedsit with such a man is a mystery. Even
after years of reflection I have no answer. Tommy had nothing going
for him, no wooing feathers at all. More than the junkies and the
perverts and the ultra violent (who at least had a kink to entertain
mum with) it was men like Tommy who baffled me. I couldn't understand
why she'd let such a dull excuse the intimate pleasure of getting
between her legs. It was sad. It was sad because of what it said
about Mum: that she needed no reason to attach herself to someone;
that any warmblooded creature, no matter what their looks or
intellect, was company enough; that loneliness has no standards and
bypasses all natural quality control. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Tommy
wasn't even a decent fuck. Neither was he blessed with an arm-sized
cock. From what I could discern the sex was miserable and made worse
by his meagre resources. Tommy fucked like a man with heart trouble.
I used to lay on the floor, in the dark, listening to his three
minutes of bucking and heaving, Mum reviling him, hating him,
sometimes raining her fists down on his back and shrieking as he
hogged and slobbered away. It wasn't a serious attempt to get him
off, more something to try and bring some passion out in him, turn
him into the hulk, a monster who'd flip her around and drive it
straight in her arse without a word. But it never happened. After
three minutes Tommy was done for. He'd roll off like a fattened
leech, back to his side of the bed, straight into Crossword Position,
flicking the light on and adjusting his glasses as he took his folded
newspaper and began rubbing words out and putting new ones in – mum
besides him, unsatisfied, drinking herself unconscious and puking
over the side of the bed. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Whatever
animal Tommy was, in himself, he seemed strangely content. In fact
that was his only real quality, well, that and his ability to pass
huge chunks of time, always finding something slow and delberate
to do. His days and weeks were all planned out; times and days
and dates he would do things. Everything from getting up to going to
bed was accounted for by a time. Even his drinking, an alcoholic, but
Tommy never drank a drop before 4pm and never after 12. But by far
the weirdest calender event was his
weekly strip down wash. As he wouldn't use the communal bathroom he
had his full-body scrub, every Thursday morning, right there in the
room, stripped naked and standing on the previous day's newspaper.
With a saucepan of hot water besides him, he'd be there, in full
glare of everyone, soaping his cock and bollocks and then squatting a
touch to clean the crack of his arse. It was during his wash-time
that Tommy's unfortunate physical characteristic became apparent. His
arms were so short, that when he lathered his chest, he looked like a
grown up thalidomide baby. And all the while he was doing this, his
pants, which he'd washed in cold water and rang out in the sink, were
stretched over the kettle on the stove, steaming away so as they'd be
dry for his 10am jaunt to the shops. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Bizarre
habits, that are usually borne out of poverty, came to Tommy via his
unrelenting attempt to scrimp through life without ever having to
work. He had kinda stripped all the fat off living and was down to
economizing with the bare bones, arranging them in different ways so
as to keep his life standing. He'd do stuff like keep potato peel for
soup, or fry them to a crisp and munch them between doorsteps of
buttered bread. Teabags too. He found that with six used teabags you
could strain them to get an extra cup. His bets were the same. He'd
somehow make the racing last all day, placing multiple petty wagers
across the cards, criss-crossing them in double, trebles and
accumulators, working it so as there was hope right up until the last
race. At fifty he was already a part of the old boys crowd, counting
out pennies in tens and sliding each little pile across to the
cashier. Only it was amusing when the old boys did it and you kinda
hoped they'd win: nobody hoped Tommy would win. The cashier took his
pennies with contempt, avoiding his brown nicotine fingers on the
way. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Without
ever really doing anything disgusting Tommy disgusted people. All his
scabby ways seemed to hint at more perverse stuff he'd maybe get up
to alone. Mum was always looking at him with a deep hatred. As she
drank herself silly she'd stare evil at him as he sat there in his
glasses and vest, filling out his crosswords. That's when mum would
get ratty and start picking fights, hissing nasty comments at him.
Tommy would unscrew the cap of his whiskey bottle, turn a measured
drop down his throat, then slowly recap the bottle and put it back on
the side. The deliberateness with which he lived riled mum even more.
She liked her men to do things without the fear of consequence, to
drink whiskey fast and get drunk quick. This rationing of liquor and
life that Tommy had mastered just made her being with him that little
more incomprehensible. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">A
beautiful woman, Mum could have had almost any man she wanted. Though
maybe that was it: she didn't want to choose but to be chosen. She
knew any woman could sit in any bar and flash some knicker and serve
it up on a plate, but to be wanted, really wanted, was something
quite different. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
lived with Tommy for over a year in their bug ridden bedsit in Earls
Court. Holed up in that decrepit building, with communal bathroom and
toilets, they did everything in the room under one another's glare.
With not even a toilet to retreat to, hatred wormed its way in, both
beginning to despise the others' habits. Tommy would hate how mum
would just lay there blitzed all day, always naked and falling about,
giving him eyefuls of things from weird angles, which rather than
turning him on turned him off. He's mantra at the end of it all was
“Will you please cover that cunt of yours for Godsake!” She in
turn despised him right down to the way he smoked – hand-rolled
cigarettes squeezed between his thumb and forefinger, inhaling the
smoke like it was the greatest pleasure on earth. It was mutual
hatred, and as there'd not been any love to begin with it was more
bitter than most. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span lang="en-US">By
the time mum eloped with Tommy's sister their relationship was really
over and dusted. Of course, Tommy was still furious, kept going on
about deceit and betrayal, suddenly becoming infected with a violent,
vicious, bullying streak which came out in threats and stalking. It
was his selfishness again. Suffering only his own soreness and not
registering at all the hell that he himself was to be around. That
she left him for his own sister, well, no-one knows how Tommy thought
about that as he never once broached the subject. Mum always said he
only wanted her back so as he could leave her first. That made no
sense to me at the time, not until years later when I was beaten to
the trigger myself. Then I understood. Finally, however, Tommy did
get mum back, though not entirely and not to himself. It was an
incestuous affair involving his own sister, his new girlfriend and
Mum – a fourway split over many months. I guess that's as good as
Tommy ever got, though three minutes, between three women, well... I
guess like always the girls had to pleasure themselves.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span lang="en-US"> </span></span></span>
</div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-8840316199637444322012-10-30T14:42:00.002-07:002012-11-02T03:24:42.457-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://sodogwewere.blogspot.fr/2012/10/my-mothers-sex-life-7-pat-lesbian-years.html"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqzWVyzw72QNwCob5ThReiIlUcz7ce4grEDUp7FB-RES-MUTdBKIAymPb5YlAa_maZMDvwj0B0Cmo8gmB54vs8-uUei7p4MpZ3CC9pBA85ObC4qF4JllXujN84PxbruoSN3O9ooZFhjEU/s320/sexlifetransparent.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">It
began with a set of three Polaroid photos. Mum held them like playing
cards, close to her chest and slightly turned in. Over the top of her
hand Mum looked at me with a drunkard's contempt. She looked from
cards to me, from me to cards, and then she played. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">The
first photo was of a middle aged woman laying naked on a double bed
with her legs open like she was giving birth. She was a small,
stringy, muscular thing with short cropped mousy hair and a wide grin
revealing a top front gold tooth. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
Who d'ya think took that? Mum asked.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
looked at her blankly, embarrassed. Hesitantly I said, You???</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
didn't reply. She snatched the photo back and handed me the next one.
</span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">In
photo two mum had joined the woman on the bed. Now they both lay
there, legs parted and overlapping, my mother smoking a fresh
cigarette and caught so naturally that death could have been in the
frame. It was one of those photos. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
So who took that one then, smart-arse? She said. I offered no answer.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Mum
took photo two and replaced it with photo three. This one was
different. It was of a butch looking ginger haired woman, standing in
the middle of a room in just a leather jacket with a pair of huge
sloppy tits falling out. The woman was squat with fat, dimpled flesh
around the thighs and hips. She had a large bushy 60's cunt, and hanging off her
left foot was a pair of skimpy white knickers with a crusty yellow
discharge sat in the crutch. I'm not sure that's what I was supposed
to be focusing on but I couldn't help it. Somehow that stain told me
more about what was going on than anything else. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US"> >
That's Sandra, said mum, she took the photos of me and Pat. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">I
gave the picture back to mum. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
Well, what d'ya think? She asked</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
Who are they? I answered</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mum
looked at me full of some weird omnipresent hate. > My girlfriends,
she hissed, WHY!</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
didn't answer. There was no answer when mum was poisoned towards life
like this. Instead I slowly crept away, praying she wouldn't call me
back, off to find my brother and tell him that mum had turned
lesbian.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">*
* *</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Over
the next weeks, whenever Mum arrived home, she spoke endlessly of
Pat. She spoke of how violent Pat was, how she'd go out causing bar-fights and looking for
tear-ups with men. She described how Pat would headbutt, punch and
glass people, boasting that she was barred from almost every bar in
London's Earls Court. .As most fights seemed to have originated over
someone eying mum up, Mum appeared proud to have had inspired such
protective violence in someone. Then Mum said the weirdest thing. While
relating Pat's evening rampages of drink and terror, she mentioned
that Pat was Tommy's younger sister. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
Wolverhampton Tommy? Your boyfriend? I asked.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
Well what other fucking Tommy do I know, said Mum.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">So
it turned out that mum had left brother for sister, and if that
wasn't incredible enough things would get a whole lot more fucked up
and interwoven still. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">#</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
Ow am yer cock? Heard a lotta 'bowt ya. Yo aw-roight fer a bit'ta TV?</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">Those
were Pat's first words on meeting her in the flesh. She was standing just inside her flat in faded jeans, moccasins, and a transparent white string
vest, her nipples playing peek-a-boo through the trestles.
She was small and thin but wiry and muscular. She was a kinda oblong shape, like she'd been hung out to dry by the shoulders. She flashed me her
gold tooth and her brown smokers teeth and I liked her. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In
the front room, in a brown armchair, sat Sandra. Though very butch
looking she was still the woman of the two. Her blond/ginger hair, short at the back, was
styled a bit like a Teddy Boy's and a lot like an OAP's: puffy and highly sprayed. She slouched back in the armchair in a pair of
cheap, shapeless, market jeans, her belly spilling over the
elasticated waist. She didn't speak, just puffed cigarettes,
swallowed beer from the can, and looked ahead like she was pissed of
with the space in front of her. In the hallway Mum and Pat were
kissing and laughing as if they had a private joke going. Then they
trailed off down the hall and the bedroom door slammed close.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">I
watched Sandra. I couldn't help thinking of those knickers I'd seen
in the photograph and the tufts of dimpled fat which were around her
hips. In the dead, grey screen of the TV I could see her sour face.
She kinda repulsed me, had the same effect that certain dairy
products have on me. She was now crushing her beer can as she drank
and making me uncomfortable. From the bedroom we could hear mum and
Pat. They sounded like they were dreaming and kept hitting up
against the wall. After a while the noises stopped and Mum came
wandering into the front room. She was wearing the skimpiest of night
shirts which only half covered her sex. She walked past us and over
to a small cabinet from which she took a bottle of whiskey. As she
left she turned her head away from Sandra and gave a theatrical
shiver of disgust. Just after that Sandra hurled a half can of beer
at the TV, squeezed into a gaudy unfashionable leather jacket and
left. It would be nearly a year before I'd see her again, fondling
Tommy's crotch in a beer garden as they talked about happiness and
marriage. Mum was sat on Pat's knee opposite, looking beautiful but
not looking at anyone. Brother and sister, each with the others old
flame. Four people. All alcoholics. All desperately miserable.</span></span> All pretending they were happy.<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US"> All chasing something. I won't go into
explicit details of what would unravel next, though I guess it's
obvious. It took place in a grubby bedsit, in a grubby bed, and
lasted many months. </span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
was during my mothers relationship with Pat that I saw the most
overtly sexual behavior of women. Erect cocks had been aplenty, and
the male animal with the crazy leer of sexual lust on his face had
become something of the norm. I had also seen my mother doing the most
explicit things, though without registering any sexual bleep in me.
Now I would see third party females partake in the carnal delights of
the flesh: Pat eating my mother out in the back of a taxi; covertly
masturbating on a bus; walking around in see-thru tops; going to market in a fur coat and nothing more; relaxing back and pissing from park
benches; knickers parted and glimpses of cunt at strange unexpected
moments; things which peaked my interest and left a world of random
erotic images in my head, some to the point of obsession. Still, for
all of that, sex was a very small part of the equation, swamped ten
fold by the drinking and violence. Compared to the times legs gave
way, stomachs upchucked, beds got soiled and eyes got blackened,
fucking was barely registered at all.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Even when Mum was openly living with Pat, kissing and fondling in public, <span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">I never seriously thought of her as a lesbian. I saw it as a kind of novelty, something outrageous... rode in the
slipstream of my mother's audacious front. Sex was one thing but sexuality was something else, and though I knew the names and what they meant I was too young to understand past word and meaning. And if I ever thought that Mum was playing on the
fashionable gay or bi-sexual tag of the time, going through a phase of deliberate experimentation, I was wrong. My mother's sexual relationship
with Pat was genuine and passionate, and continued over many years, even passing
through periods of sobriety. It was an on/off affair, but would ultimately be my mother's most enduring romance of her life.</span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
suppose the apex and decline of Mum and pat's relationship was
Christmas Eve 1989 when Pat tried to strangle my 15 year old sister
to death. Rachel had confronted Pat and blamed her for my mother
hitting the bottle again and the consequences that would have on everyone.
Pat, drunk to high heaven, flew into a murderous rage and got my sister
by the throat, throttling her with no intention to stop. It took my
mother, brother and I to wrestle Pat to the bed and prise her fingers
loose from my sister's neck. After finally succeeding Rachel
collapsed to the floor on jelly legs, her eyes bulged and bloodshot,
making sounds like a dying pig while scrambling
away in horror of what her mother's lover had just done to her. When
my sister had recovered enough she wrapped herself up and left the flat,
returning to our old home, to her dad, never for us to live together
again. The broken family had just split some more.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">By
1999, fifteen years after my mother first showing me those Polaroid
pictures, the lives within and around them had changed drastically.
Tommy was back in Wolverhampton, alone, and no longer speaking to his
sister. Sandra had had two kids and now lived the other side of
London with no partner. Mum was in a stable, long term relationship
and had all but stopped drinking. And Pat had gotten married and was
living with her husband in the same flat in Latimer Road. Pat told
Mum she had married out of loneliness, that as she was getting older, and the years were beginning to take a toll, she wanted someone to share the
life with. It was a convenient, sexless marriage but it worked and
gave them both company and support through the illnesses both had picked up from years of alcoholism. Pat had cirrhosis of the liver, and Matt, her husband, suffered from a series of nervous disorders alongside the mild
onset of Parkinson's disease. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US">It
was Matt who called out the blue one day and told Mum that Pat was ill
and she should come and visit her. When Mum arrived Pat was wrapped up on the sofa and looking extremely poorly. She was still
recognizable, only now her hair was completely grey and she was thin and frail in a way she
never was before. She still breathed neat whiskey fumes, and still sucked
in her cigarettes through half clenched eyes, but the passion of hope
and life were gone and now she smoked and drank to die, not as a rebellious act
of living. She was jaundiced and emotional and on seeing Mum she
broke down and sobbed like a child, clinging on to a memory of what had been. Mum, although not ill, had put on weight and the
booze had affected her skin and lapped away at her beauty. There were
no words, just two people holding each other while commiserating the
death of beauty and health and the end of those faraway and bright
wild times. </span></span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When
Pat had recovered her Northern steel she poured a whiskey and lit
another cigarette and told us how her liver had deteriorated further
and probably wouldn't last the year. After everything I was still
fond of Pat and to see her tendered by mortality endeared me to her
further. She wasn't hard; she wasn't vicious; she wasn't a drunk.
Now, she was just scared, and we're all that. That day passed like
the clocks had been turned back. For a while Mum and Pat talked and
reminisced and even spat hate against people like they used to. By the time we were fixing to leave Pat seemed to have sprung back to life and was as sprightly and as light as she ever was. She'd been granted one more day of health and spent it with the love of her life. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span lang="en-US" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Two
weeks later, in the early morning, the city damp from overnight rain, the phone rang and it was Pat. She
was panicked and scared and said that she had woke up and the entire
right side of her body had turned dark brown and her liver was
swollen like a football. She said she'd phoned an ambulance as she
didn't want to wake Matt who had been working night shifts. Matt
would not work that night. At just gone 3 PM Pat was pronounced dead
and another little door was closed on history. My mother didn't cry,
not openly anyway. She was just silent, thinking and knowing that her
time, all our time, was coming very soon.</span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span lang="en-US"><br /></span></span></span></span></div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-70542734732770530842012-10-29T11:36:00.001-07:002012-10-29T11:36:54.123-07:00My Mother's Sex Life... Frigid<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">Oh what a surprise... an apology of sorts.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Please Excuse the delay in posting. Mother's been fucked ragged these last weeks and is in the recovery position. A girls gotta have a break... It can't be all fun, fun, fun...</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">A new post will be with you tomorrow... certainly... almost... maybe...</span><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;">Shane. X</span>Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-9847036602813077882012-10-23T12:19:00.001-07:002012-11-01T15:17:39.298-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBOrLhAVPJ2qok2j56Ytxv9_HagBF5GEske49rSF3orSlue15HuMXrAE8UDff4FysgOrtWtVfzdWPbGeSzaZxSvcXqMf7Hp2rDXtT-nlSyhoxyHfqqcR39DPkyEeaMed9VkZyNJEf5hgw/s1600/twins.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBOrLhAVPJ2qok2j56Ytxv9_HagBF5GEske49rSF3orSlue15HuMXrAE8UDff4FysgOrtWtVfzdWPbGeSzaZxSvcXqMf7Hp2rDXtT-nlSyhoxyHfqqcR39DPkyEeaMed9VkZyNJEf5hgw/s1600/twins.png" /></a></div>
<br />
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">They appeared at the top of the
road as if they had come from nowhere. Both men were thin, both
medium height, and both were chortling out cold mist as they made
their way down. From the distance they were at it was hard to see who was
in front. They seemed to walk with some fatal force on them, coming
together and veering across the pavement, shouting and pointing in
each others face before staggering down towards us some more. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> > Yeah, that's them, said
Mum, looks like they've come good for once. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">As they came into view proper I
watched them more closely. I was a little mystified as Mum had said
they were identical twins, yet the two, now almost to us, couldn't
have looked much more dissimilar. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Rodney, the oldest, the one in front, had
short fine hair, a raw shaven face, and blood plump lips. He wore
bleached jeans and an expensive puffy brown leather bomber jacket.
Tattooed on his neck was a gliding swallow. Rather than give off
the impression he was tough or free, it seemed to mark an
incarcerated sadness within him. The other one, Andy, had no
locked-up sorrow. He tottered along, a hit's length behind, his eyes
closed and hands trembling, an open-temple of hurt and misery
without the slightest attempt to conceal it. He had a wild
uncontrollable perm, wore thin framed glasses, and sported a weeks
old stubble with open itchy sores sat beneath it. His dress was a
mis-match of gaudy sports wear, blue tracksuit bottoms tucked into
his socks and an oversized skiing jacket with a large pink V across
the front. The only real physical characteristics the twins seemed to
share was the same thin, runny nose and a dense, apish skull, like
something that would take a cricket bat quite well. Heroin addiction
was another common charge. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> > By the state of ya shadow
I take it ya got it done then? Said Mum, casting her eyes at Andy who
was now stopped and stooped forward like an overhanging tree.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> > Course, darling, said
Rodney, I told ya it'd be kosha.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mum put her hand out and watched
closely as Rodney counted notes into it. As he finished palming Mum
the notes he started talking very quickly, saying he was late for an
appointment he'd only just remembered about, creating a divergence.
Without giving my mother a chance to speak he was edging his brother
along and rushing him up.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> > Oi, and the fucking book! Said mum, waggling an index finger. Rodney gave a laugh and
then handed the book over. He nudged his brother, making him
stumble into a wall. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> > Wake up, bro, he said, get
it together! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: black;"> And that was that until the following week. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">It was that Income Support book
which first brought the twins into my mother's life. Mum had found
it along the high-street but didn't know a post office that would
cash the payments without ID. Asking around she was put onto the
brothers who said they knew a place but it'd have to be a four way
split. As there were three months of payments in the book Mum agreed,
and each Tuesday she'd meet the twins along the neighbouring street,
hand over the payment book and half an hour later she'd return to
collect it back and receive her share of the spoils. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Mum got to know The Twins
better she started meeting them outside of payment days. She
introduced them to the Black House and allowed them home to shoot
heroin in her bedroom when my step-father wasn't there. It got to
just about everyday the twins would come searching her, passing by
out front to gauge the situation or chucking tiny pebbles up at her
back bedroom window. Mum started hoarding their stolen goods and even
got involved in other Post Office scams revolving around stolen payment
books. Mum would go around cashing the smaller payments which
required no ID. As long as you had a face that either looked honest or
promised a blowjob the postal clerk would rubber stamp the crime and
finger off the notes. For whichever reason, Mum never had a single payment refused.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Most evenings now The Twins
climbed the stairs of our house and hurried sniveling and smelling of
beer into Mum's bedroom. As Mum poured herself neat vodka the twins
would sit on the floor and cook up their heroin or crush down pills
to inject. It was an intense thing to watch, made even stranger by
the mundane conversations The Twins kept going, speaking of everyday
trivialities while performing such a taboo act. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Being addicts the twins would
often finish bare-chested or dropping their trousers while searching
out veins. There was always a lot of flesh and masculine smells on
display. Mum sat on the bed and watched the Twins wildness with a
weird kind of admiration in her regard. It's not easy to explain,
but she seemed proud of them, as if their recklessness with heroin
and needles somehow gave them the right qualities in other areas of
their lives. Even I could sense the sexual thrill of young men,
half-naked, uncaring, feral, their bodies lean and sculptured through
a lifetime of running, not a spare ounce of fat anywhere, bruised
and scarred, kissing needles and handing them back and forth. It
wasn't long after that that my mother found excuse to remove her own
clothes, returning from the toilet with her jeans unbuttoned, or
changing into her short nightdress and slipping her knickers off as
the boys sat on the floor cooking dope with a view of the false
prophet between her legs. From there it was only a matter of time
until one of The Twins progressed to the bed while the other took
his shot; one twin fucking away as the other blew out his greatest
veins; my mother getting off on something abstract, as neither of The
Twins really had the slightest thing in the world to offer her. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Still, in a sense, there was at
least some romance. There had been a gradual progression towards sex
over weeks and not just a gangbang striking up out of nowhere. And
the twins weren't nasty or violent or dangerous in the ways most of
the men around the Black House were. The Twins' problem was that they
were always together, and only very rarely was one without the other.
The possibility of my mother separating one and having him to herself
wasn't an option. It was both or none, not either/or. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In regards to that fierce loyalty the Twins had for each other, it made the fighting and arguing weirder still. The Twins were always jostling and arguing. They would frequently
square off and fight and attack each other. Between their four eyes at least one was always black. It wasn't so much that the twins
despised one another, it was the more they despised the curse of seeing what they
had each become reflected in the other. It was inescapable and
went far deeper than the cosmetic changes they had made to look
apart. They were indeed identical twins, something that became clearly obvious the more
time spent around them once you could see past their haircuts, clothes and accessories to the replica shapes and features below – a grim mock of each other. So when Andy fucked my mother as
Rodney shot smack on the floor, each caught glimpses of themselves
in that moment, felt the tragedy and horror of their own lives, not
even able to close their eyes on the way to ground. I suppose
they were damned, together, caught in a wicked hall of mirrors.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My mother never had both brothers
at once. She probably would have. Her previous wasn't too
encouraging in that respect. I guess it was the Twins who weren't
interested in that circus. So it was always one fucked or got
pleasured while the other took care of his drug business or relaxed
into it on the floor. Then they'd swap around, like lovers awkwardly
changing positions. The closest it ever got to a <i>ménage à trois</i> was the
three of them laying spent in the bed, my mother in the middle with a
junkie twin to either side, curled up and drifting in their own
moment of numb bliss, looking like a family who had been tenderly
laid to rest together.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">It was one day when we were alone,
the summer having crept in and the house in light, that Mum said: </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> > You know The Twins knew
Puggy? They used to run together sometimes. Rodney described him down
to a T... even remembered the old Breton t-shirt he always wore. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Puggy was my mother's great love,
my father, a junkie who had been murdered some years before. I didn't
reply. Mum seemed lost and sad, and in that moment I understood it
all.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mum ran with The Twins herself for
some months and then the scams run out and I suppose the excitement
of what was new and wild became everyday and as boring and straight
as any other get-up. The twins stopped coming around as much and
sometimes now mum would hide or send me down to tell them she wasn't
in. So The Twins would then head to the Black House, pay their beer
entry in, and spend their day dossed down there. But it wasn't easy
for them. Due to their drug habits and their reputation for having
light fingers, they were only just supported in the house. Not even
arriving with huge cuts of expensive meat for the stew won them any
friends. It remained an uneasy relationship, no one much seeming to
like the brothers on the floor with the spoons. Even my mother during
these times would cut a huge void between them, taking the side of
the West Indian men as they joked and picked arguments with The
Twins. And it was one such day which spelled the end of the twins
stay.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> Andy was on the floor cooking up
a fix. As always he was carrying on with some casual talk, asking
people about small things and making throwaway comments as he
measured out his gear and water. Rodney was besides him, passing
things over and commenting on how Andy was cooking the shot. he'd say things like: Enough bro! It's fucking evaporating! You don't need to
cook it so long. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With Andy having sucked the shot
up and now pushing the liquid up level in the spike, Lloyd kissed his teeth at him and mocked him. Andy,
jokingly, called Lloyd a 'nigger'. Lloyd laughed it off, said he was proud to be a 'nigger' then cursed Andy alluding to his
pale white skin. Andy waved him away, this time labelling him a
'Black Cunt!' The moment he said it shadows passed across the sun and
the room fell dark like a violent storm was on its way. Andy couldn't help but feel the tension as the cold weather front moved in. His reaction was to ignore it, hope it'd pass, as he poked around for a vein in his hand. </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> > You can call me NIGGER,
you can call me BLACK BASTARD, but NO MAN call me BLACK CUNT! Spoke
Lloyd with vicious retribution in his voice. From under the bed where
he sat he reached out a long handled demolition mallet and calmly walked
towards Andy.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">The first blow put Andy over on his
back. He lay there choking from the force which had hit him in the
chest. Lloyd raised the mallet above his head and brought it crashing
down on Andy's chest again. Andy doubled up like a folded mattress,
his glasses shooting off. Rodney scattered back. The mallet hit Andy again, making him convulse like he was being resuscitated.
Then Lloyd began kicking, all over – vicious, ruthless boots
turning Andy over onto his stomach. Somehow, through all this, Andy
had managed to keep hold of his needle. It seemed that was his ultimate
struggle. Lloyd stopped kicking and now
towered over Andy, screaming, OUT!! OUT!!” Andy crept painfully
towards the door, drops of blood marking his progression. He had
difficulty crawling any faster as his right hand was still clutched, gripping the spike. Lloyd, through a thick mist of drunkenness, somehow
spotted the needle and understood it was that which had kept Andy going. In
his most vicious act of the assault Lloyd brought a hobnailed boot
crushing down on Andy's hand, pinning it flat to the floor and
bursting the fingers. He ground his heel in. Andy lost grip of the
syringe, but still, even with his hand crushed and useless, tried to recover it. Lloyd brought his boot down on Andy's hand, once then twice more, then on the needle itself, shattering the white plunger. Andy gave up and crawled on, crying, without his fix, his hand dragging,
making noises like a wild pig or something. Lloyd watched with fire
eyes as he inched towards the exit. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Rodney, who had stayed well away from the fight now came to his brother's aid. Lloyd kissed his teeth in
Rodney's face as he passed, but let him help his brother - get him out
the Black House. As Rodney came around to Andy he stooped and
deftly picked up the needle, sliding it in his pocket. He consoled
his brother, right close up, his nose to Andy's face, asking him questions, if he was Ok to move. Andy just nodded his head each time, whining. Rodney rushed and unlatched and opened
the front door. Bright, fresh light swamped the Black House. Then,
Rodney, the eldest twin, bent down and shuffled his younger brother
up, gripping him around the back and under his armpit. he kinda ducked low so as Andy's arm
with the crushed hand fell around his neck and dripped blood down
the front of his jacket. And like that, Andy only just able to
walk, looking like he'd been in a bomb blast, Rodney helped his
brother out, and slowly, painfully, The twins, first and second,
staggered away from the dirty war...</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span></div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-81911356921462081372012-10-15T16:26:00.000-07:002014-10-30T11:32:31.775-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWrR1GBqZaLzl9iKPriuQv6xOa3cTHAolwGxXi4i_VaK9BRypIwOF1T4_TLnnOgWrmm_k9-xAIYZBVOsJj2iPAnEk6PC7t0g-PG7oR6g3CUKNOurCYHdOBfeoaaTxMuj7OdLtXi39eEQU/s1600/doc.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWrR1GBqZaLzl9iKPriuQv6xOa3cTHAolwGxXi4i_VaK9BRypIwOF1T4_TLnnOgWrmm_k9-xAIYZBVOsJj2iPAnEk6PC7t0g-PG7oR6g3CUKNOurCYHdOBfeoaaTxMuj7OdLtXi39eEQU/s1600/doc.png" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Before
the sky was the roof. And in the roof, above the ceiling, amongst the
pigeons, lived The Doc.</i></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That
was all I knew.
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For
a long time The Doc was something of a mysterious presence in the Black House.
There was no description of him, no details, and no stories; just
passing mention of his existence and a general concern for his
well-being. The sole material evidence to support the talk that he was even up there in the attic was a drop down ladder hanging out the
hallway ceiling, leading up into a square of
dark. Apart from that The Doc was just a name, someone the new arrivals asked after, and those staggering
out, with leaking sexual organs, would holler a drunken farewell to. It was a strange, revered status The Doc held, something akin to a shaman, like he was a higher wisdom in
contact with higher beings after having exiled himself due to some higher knowledge only he was privy to. From gleaming scraps of information from the daily references to
him I was able to fathom that he was: old, male, feeble, that he drank, and was not a doctor but a Murdoch: a one Murdoch Charles
to be exact.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At that point in time, when we arrived in the Black House, The Doc had been up in the
roof for eight years. In all that time it was said that not once had he
ventured out and, apparently, only came down for a brief moment every
few days. But he wasn't completely isolated. Each morning The Doc would send word down from his secret abode nominating one of the female residents to shop and deliver his beer order for the
day, and in the evening to run him up a helping of stew or
whatever had been boiling away on the fire. It sounds a
chore no one much would want, but to the contrary, The Doc's desired woman
always appeared thrilled at being designated,
some even squealing in delight when word arrived that she was <i>The
Chosen One</i>. Indeed, there were even sentiments of jealousy
and resentment if one woman was preferred too much over the others.
And it was like that, how to me, as he'd become to everyone else, the
elusive Doc felt like a very real and integral part of the Black
House.
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
was a bleak winter morning. Phantom winds howled and whistled about outside. In the Black House the fire was dead, just a pile of grey
and white ash with burnt beer cans poking out. Although the windows
were covered with newspapers and blankets, a cold, steely light got in and bleached the room in a harsh reality. The place felt open,
broken. It was as if the windows were missing or the door had been left open or
something. The thing which usually sealed the room, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">closed everyone in and made things intimate and
final, was missing. The few drunks who were present seemed miserable, a slow creeping sobriety making them appear almost
thoughtful. Lloyd sat on the bed and kept upending an already empty can of beer down his throat, and Bridget, behind him, was straightening
out cigarette ends and lighting and smoking the tiny stubs. My mother
sat across from me. She had a kind of weathered, commonplace love and
care in her face, a kindness that sobriety afforded her and for
moments at a time returned her back to me. She was with Vangine and it
seemed the Doc wanted my mother to take his beer order for the day.
Mum screwed her face up like she'd taken a spoon of something she
didn't like. Vangine, a huge bustling West-Indian woman </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">famous for
laughing her huge boobs out her top, was whispering into Mum's ear,
urging her to take The Doc's order. Finally my mother relented. As
she left for the roof she looked at me and said: No Following!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I didn't. I sat where I was listening. I heard Mum climb the shaky steel ladder and curse as she
clambered into the roof. Then I heard no more.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
was no more than ten minutes before Mum was back. She had the very
first evil manifestations of alcohol consumption in her face. She
gave a swing of her shoulders as she entered, a deliberate strut of
self-satisfaction, her backbone straightened in pride or just a
little more hardened to life.
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">> Come on, she said,
waggling a finger. Up, you're coming with me.
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
left with mum, me in baggy chewed clothes and her in a short skirt,
bare legs to the elements, bruises on her thighs and shins, smoothing
her hair down as we hurried off up the road. In the off-licence Mum
told me to grab what I wanted. It was strange as we had no money and
was the reason why the house had been so miserable that morning. I
watched mum as she broke various beer cans free from their plastic
rings, pointed out half bottles of spirits and ordered cigarettes and tobacco. I
asked her where she had gotten money from. She looked at the Indian
shop keeper, then at me, and then she said:</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">> Fuck, if I strained a
shit out you'd wanna know what fucking colour it is!
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
didn't ask again, but my eyes were on Mum, trying to figure out what
the hell she was up to this time.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From
that day on it was my mother exclusively who shopped The Doc's beer
order, took him his food, and every two weeks went and cashed his
sick money for him. Of course, it wasn't her choice. She just agreed. Ultimately it was The Doc who decided, and he decided
upon her. As little as that seems to say about someone's desirability it
was none the less flattering, being wanted over all others, and by
virtue of being the 'chosen one' my mother leap-frogged the other
women in the house and became something of a VIP.
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still,
even now with my mother being a regular visitor to The Doc, talking
of him as the others did, there were still no descriptions of him,
nothing to give a sense of who this reclusive being was or why he kept himself up in the attic like that.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
was late one night, into the early hours, the fire just a
deathly ember in the dark, that I caught my first fleeting glimpse of
The Doc. I heard the metal ladder moving and then someone step
lightly down into the hallway. I lay there on the floor, hush still,
my eyes fixed open. In the dark of the room I could make out a few
drunks strewn about unconscious, and far away, somewhere near the
bed, a sole cigarette seared and burnt down in the night. All was
quiet and low and dark. And then I saw it: a shape. It was so vague I first thought it was
maybe just my eyes playing tricks. I squinted but could see nothing.
Then I heard a rustling sound, a beer can being trod on, someone
searching about, a sniffing nose, a foot pat down, more rustling... a
scamper. Right past my face swept a pair of stick thin bony legs,
and above my head a pair of long dangling bollocks passed by,
followed by the acrid smell of stale shit. I lay there excited but
burning up with fear. Once past me I could see more. The naked, lower
half of an old black man, walking about in a loose night gown. I couldn't quite discern his features but could make out his silhouette, long dreadlocks
hanging way down his back. Feeble but kinda sprightly this thing was rustling
through the garbage and clothes which littered the floor.
Occasionally one of the sleeping bums would stir or groan and the
figure would freeze, wait, then scamper off to search some more.
Then, for no clear reason, it let out a series of excited breaths
before rushing off out the room and back down the hall. I
heard the ladder rattling and squeaking once more as The Doc returned to his dweling place in the roof. My eyes now
accustomed to the dark I looked over to where Mum was, unconscious on
her back, her face like a someone who'd died a painful death. The
fire flared one last time and then died itself. Shadows fell into
themselves. I was just a heartbeat in the dark. I closed my eyes and went to sleep myself.
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
next day I told mum what I had seen. She looked at me like I'd asked
her permission for a glimpse into hell. I stared her out. Calmly, putting on an air of boredom, she said: </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">> Yeah, that was Murdoch... The Doc.
That's all ya need to know.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">> I think he was
robbing people, I said.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mum
gave a disgusted look. She circled her lips, then turned away as if
deliberating whether to blow away another little part of my
innocence or not. Looking over towards the papered windows, she said:
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">> Well no, smart arse,
he wasn't <i>stealing</i>... he was looking for dirty knickers...
Fucking sniffs 'em don't he! And don't ask me why... just don't!</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
didn't. Instead I laughed. Ha, a knicker sniffer. I'd heard of such men
but never thought they really existed. I also didn't realize it was a
sexual thing, just found it bizarre that anyone would like the smell
of old knickers, especially the kind you'd likely find in the Black
House. Generally they were only ever changed if they'd been shit.
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
Doc, once just a word, was now a creeping presence in the house.
Knowing when he came out, and why, I'd lay in wait for him, trying to catch a glimpse of him, maybe see the face </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">this creature</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> who now partly terrified me. Always
late through the night; always half naked; always he'd come – a pair of
thin bowed legs and swinging balls, scampering about in the dark,
rushing off once he'd found his queer life force. But still, for all the
nights I spied The Doc, I was still in the dark as to what he really looked
like. There was a shape, a movement, a smell...c but no more. I was more than curious. And as Mum had stopped saying "no following!" I
decided one morning that I would follow, that I too would visit The Doc.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From the main room I listened as my mother climbed the ladder and disappeared into the
roof. After some
minutes I too snook out and scaled the ladder up into the
darkness...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was the smell which hit me first, smarted my eyes like
my mother's peroxide hair bleach did. Standing in the entrance of the
roof I looked around. It was dark, but not totally. I could
just make out the intercrossing rafters and the floor beams. To my
right was the wall of the side of the building, and to my left, a little ways down, was a section of the roof thrown open in half light. It was a point
to work towards. How The Doc got up and down so easily was now a mystery as
even I had trouble and had to stoop under the rafters while balancing
myself along the tops of the beams. I crept towards the light, which I could now see was a little section of the roof partitioned off, fabrics hanging
over the crossbeams so as to define a confined space. With each
tentative step the horrendous smell in the roof became more piercing
and apparent and the surroundings began to reveal themselves. Just about every beam was coated
with a thick crust of pigeon shit, small wispy feathers stuck and sat
everywhere, sometimes in little piles on the fireproofing. It was so
bad that the particles in the air tickled and stuck in my throat. On reaching the partition
I could hear my mother's voice on the other side. She wasn't really speaking but making strange sounds. From the light in what I took to be the Doc's room the attic was now clearly visible. Out in front of
the made of space, the other side of the roof arch, were strewn and
piled thousands of little tied bags of shit. The smell of excrement
was atrocious. But not fresh excrement, this was stale excrement, like some kids whiff
of in junior school. And it wasn't all neatly bagged either. There were free turds all
around, sat shriveled on the dusty yellow insulation that filled the spaces between the floor beams; shit smeared
thick up the beams and over the rafters – hand marks in it where you
could see it had been wiped off. Now I baulked and checked where I put
my hands to keep balance. That's when I stumbled and caught sight of
mum, her hair and back, her upper clothes removed, sitting on a milk
crate on the floor alongside a sordid shack of a bed. I made no attempt to hide myself. I was glad to
have gatecrashed the party, hoping Mum would rush me off out of this
place.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I
came fully into the light. Mum saw me,
but not before I saw the hideous mess of bones and filth and death
that was The Doc. On a self-made bed, atop a pile of
filthy rags and clothes, a man who looked like he was well into his second century
lay on his back with his legs parted like a frog. I caught his face,
nothing more than a skin covered skull, dark West African black, his
head on a cushion of long serpent dreads, sickly yellow eyes with the
rim of the irises cataract. Down below, nearest to me, his feet. The
undersoles were filthy and crusted and his toe nails were two inches
long and bright yellow with clusters of some weird fungal build-up
all around. His thin, bow legs were dusty and scarred and covered in open pink welts which resembled sexual organs. Then
there was the blond hair of my mother, now tossing back, revealing a white hand
with painted nails holding onto an horrendously thin brown cock, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">glistening with saliva, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a
disgusting purple helmet peeping out the
top.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mum
shot back, her mouth still shaped in the small '0' she had been sucking
the Doc's cock with. The Doc's outstretched right hand was caught full of sloppy Irish tit. A cheesy, acrid, dairy smell now floated in the air. On the floor
were more shit bags, unfolded soiled nappies and bottles and jars of
dark yellow piss all piled up and sat around. The Doc's long yellow
toe nails were the last things I saw before turning my back and
scarpering, now not caring if I got my hands coated in excrement or
not, breathing in the pigeon's dust and feathers as I hurried back
into the black. </span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back
down in the flat, amongst the early morning drunks, I sat waiting for
Mum to come down in a mood after me, maybe even belt me. But she
never did. She returned after her usual twenty minutes with cash for The
Doc's booze and, as usual, money for herself. She shot me a mean
look, then put her coat on and hurried off out. .</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So,
it's sex again, I thought. It always is. Men don't pay women to go to
the shops and they certainly don't care who goes for them. And
neither was it desirability that my mother was showing at being <i>The Chosen One</i>, rather she was squirming with the
joy of a lucky break and the thought that she'd made it, that she
could chemically chase away the winter's cold a little easier than yesterday. As for The Doc, he was
revered for his money and nothing else. An old miser, he had been
hoarding away pennies and pounds for the last ten years and now had a
little saving that would barely pay three months rent in the real
world, but here, in this Other World, relative to the absolute
nothing that everybody else had, he was the Black House's most
eligible bachelor. To get a little of what The Doc had people
would do just about anything. So, in a way, he was a shaman... a
witch-doctor – for in sober days he could conjure up spirits, and as
long as he was safe and happy and alive, the Black House would be healthy too.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unfortunately
The Doc wasn't happy and alive for too much longer. He was indeed
ill: stomach cancer. Refusing any medical help The Doc sat out his
illness alone, still refusing to come down even when he could no
longer get out of bed. So one afternoon, in the freezing month of
February, four of the men went up and got him. They carried him down
with all the pomp and respect he was owed, and sat him in the big
comfortable armchair over by the fire. He sat there like that, rotting away in
silence, for almost three months. By that time he was way past wanting
or needing any sexual relief. He was so ill that all he could do was
drink, smoke and occasionally eat. When he was finally too weak to
even do that himself, Vangine, the only woman he'd never chosen to
take his <i>beer order</i>, nursed and took care of him,
pouring liquor down his throat when he wanted it and force feeding
him mashed stew when he would take it. And like that, refusing all
medical help and wallowing in pain, The Doc wasted away before us, slowly sinking lower
into his chair and shrinking into his own filth. The smell was appalling,
like an old scabby dog curled up with an arse full of dribbling
ulcers. Though, like everything, we got used to it, became desensitized,
until finally shit didn't smell at all. And then one morning I woke up and the Doc
was staring straight at me, as if he finally recognized I was the boy
who'd disturbed him in the roof: he was dead, just a reflection in his eyes of
the future to come.
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After the paramedics had taken what was left of the Doc's body away all that
remained was the rotting, decomposing armchair he had died in. It was burnt right through to the springs by all the acidic bodily
fluids The Doc had expelled. The men pushed the chair out, carried it
downstairs and dumped it out along the big steel communal bins. For
weeks it remained there, eaten through and stained black by death, a
reminder to everyone of certain dark nights in a certain Black House with death wincing away through the night.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Above
the ceiling, after the roof, is the sky. And in the sky, past the
pigeons, nothing stretches on forever...</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com20tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-8425155034528633702012-10-10T15:40:00.000-07:002012-11-01T15:26:16.943-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgMY6iy1sOAsP3HwW-HK9rNuCv-sdpAKqV7ZLESWttJAnzf-VDtYgMyHGOzSvm2bD1W9Kvs1sPIWrb4s83i8sBYNAGzjjomfZGEJY0Vx_gTrs585ul_54_QcfwevDrDjGdHXAh_qNs3PE/s1600/lloyd.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgMY6iy1sOAsP3HwW-HK9rNuCv-sdpAKqV7ZLESWttJAnzf-VDtYgMyHGOzSvm2bD1W9Kvs1sPIWrb4s83i8sBYNAGzjjomfZGEJY0Vx_gTrs585ul_54_QcfwevDrDjGdHXAh_qNs3PE/s1600/lloyd.png" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some
men are wild and dangerous and untamed by life's beating. You can
spot such men miles away. They have a look, something distant and
animal in the eyes, something that lacks reason or emotion or knowledge
of consequence. They snarl and lash out at pain rather than learn to
cower from it. Such men cannot be governed with Good Boy Drops, and
if they do ever tow the line it is never in defeat but
through craftiness and cunning. Such men live in a state or permanent
violence, the capability of it wriggling through their skin and
movements and words. They are men who become dominant without making
any attempt to be so. They over-power and strike fear into others
with nothing more than their presence of being. They are men capable
of honest murder. Lloyd, a
tall, lean, scarred and violent Jamaican drunk, beaten like an animal
for the first fifteen years of life, was one such man.</span><br />
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My mother
met Lloyd in a filthy drinking den in West London called The
Blackhouse. Lloyd was shacked up there with a half-crazed Northern
Irish drunk called Bridget. The two ran the house, a place without
gas, electricity, or hot water, renting out floor space for beer to
local dossers and junkies. The group, some days twenty strong, lived
in the single main room, flopped out on old sofas, in rotting
armchairs, or on cushions on the floor, with Lloyd and Bridget
sharing a decomposing bed up against the near end wall. The room was
permanently in darkness, the only light coming from the makeshift
fire in the old grate, kept going with anything that would burn, the
smoke and fumes snowing down and covering everything in a thick layer
of black soot.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">At
40 years old Lloyd had been hardened and sculpted by a savage
existence . Unwashed in years, marinated in piss and sweat, tribal
marks across his cheeks, his body tagged and scarred like a lover's
tree, he spent his days sat on the edge of the bed, drinking and
smoking, the orange flares from the fire lighting up glimpses of his
foreboding presence, brooding in the dark of his own shadow. His
dress was meagre, a filthy string vest and a pair of soiled grey suit
pants, the leg swinging a good inch above his ankle, the waist flush
to his firm stomach, the zipper broken giving sight, now and again,
of his large limp cock which he'd whip at out at turns and fill
cartons and bottles with urine. Lloyd was the first of my mother's
lovers who taught me that there were reasons other than love or lust
why two people may shack up together, that cosmopolitan hadn't won
outright. That sometimes, still, sexual partners are chosen on a more
base level, the match up not always coming down to external or even
internal beauty. But I only understood that years later. At the time,
I couldn't for my life fathom why my mother would give herself to
such a flayed and cross-hatched soul as he. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">There
were three important events which led to the announcement of my
mother's affair with Lloyd, and their subsequent running away
together. The first was Lloyd one evening boasting: </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
> My Wood's as long and as
thick as a can of Special Brew!</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">The
other West-Indian drunks hissed and cacked laughter, strange shapes
sprawled around helpless in the firelight.
My mother didn't laugh. Rather she kinda stifled a giggle, and in a
drunk voice,barely audible, somewhere between sarcasm and admiration,
she said: </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> >
Yeah, alright Lloyd... I'd have to see that one to believe it, eh! </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">The second
stirring of a great change was when Lloyd one day pulled the blankets
back on Bridget, revealing a bruised and wasted sack of human bones,
deathly white and soiled through, her anorexic legs splayed by
drunkenness and serial rape, her cunt a black hole of stench and
filth, teeming with life. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
>
Dis Irish pussy is rank, he said. She no good no more. NO GOOD NO
MORE! If you want a little Wardog come and take some scraps! Lloyd
sucked his lips and flicked a hand out in disgust.<b> </b>Wardog,
his erect cock poking out the fly of his pants, crawled in the bed
and on top of Bridget. There was no struggle, no words, just Wardog
moving about and Lloyd, his head cocked back, laughing and gargling
throatfuls of extra strong beer. Up until then no man could or would
have touched Lloyd's woman. It was a no go hole; something Lloyd
guarded over with murderous protection. But Lloyd had eyes in another
direction: my mother, and she wasn't missing a beat.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The final
thing to pass was a repetition of the first, Lloyd exclaiming again
how his cock was as thick and as long as a can of Brew. This time my
mother remained quiet. Not a peep. She lowered her head and sat there
with the shy, embarrassed smirk of a school girl, the spotlight of
silence lighting her up. I knew then, everyone knew, she had fucked
Lloyd. That same night my mother encroached further on Bridget's
man, joining the squalor of the bed, the three of them sleeping and
living in it together, being perfumed by a common stench.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">In the
gloomy, dustbeam days of The Blackhouse, Mum would now sit,
cross-legged, on the edge of the bed, alongside Lloyd, no tights or
underwear, Lloyds left hand never much coming out from under her
short skirt. Bridget lay behind, wrapped up in a mound of filthy
blankets, drinking away with dirty tears leaking out and curling
around her ears. No matter the drunk she was, she still suffered the
pain of losing someone, of coming around to pangs of loneliness and
tears in the moments between oblivion. It was a bizarre thing,
Bridget, somehow terrified of my mother yet fearless of Lloyd,
instinctively hissing insults at him as she made her brief cameos
from unconsciousness. More often than not Lloyd would help her back
to nowhere with a vicious backhander. From that point on Lloyd was
with my mother and Bridget became a kind of living fuck hole for all
and sundry... a place for every dosser to unload into, whenever and
however they pleased. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was not
long after that, that one day my mother turned on Bridget and
slapped her one in the mouth. Bridget, a woman kicked and beaten
through a thousand loves, broke down and bawled like a lifetime of
hurt was pouring out of her. It was as if she had finally gave up.
That slap seemed to knock her entire metabolism into freefall. In the
course of a week she underwent startling physical changes: aging
beyond her years; losing her teeth; her hair thinning and turning
grey; the skin on her face sagging away from the bone. She became
feeble and weak, and if she was already a chronic alcoholic now she
was bed-ridden too, not rising for the last few months we were
present in the Blackhouse.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">But the end
of the Blackhouse wasn't the end of my mother and Lloyd. It was the
prologue to what was to come. Everyone knew it, but somehow my mother
couldn't see, that how we left Bridget is how she would become. So,
in one of my mother's most incomprehensible decisions, she went solo
with Lloyd, moving into a hell hole of drink and poverty in London's
Elephant & Castle. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">As Mum
stuffed bin-liners full of clothes and shoes, and Lloyd took them
downtairs and dumped them into a supermarket trolley, I understood a
little of what mum saw in him, why it had come to this. It was a
progression – the ultimate battered woman's trap: for my mother to
have a lover, one she could have around the house, could walk the
streets freely with, could advertise to the world, he needed to be
stronger and meaner than the threat she was leaving behind. I saw it
that day, my step-father, a man of purported violence himself, hiding
out downstairs, afraid, as Lloyd strolled through his house, sucking
his teeth, a black psychotic history of hate and violence, all too
ready to unload. With him my mother could live without fear of
reprisals; woman of the most savage man in town. Only, of course, it
wasn't any kind of real freedom at all, she had done nothing more
than move into an even stricter, tougher prison. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">I don't
know the full hell of which my mother lived that year of her life but
I know it was hell. It was a time of horrendous sexual and physical
abuse. She was locked naked in a first floor flat, supplied with
gallons of extra strong beer and vodka, and when Lloyd wasn't there
was guarded over by another man. For eight months she lived like
that, until one day, during a visit to the unemployment office after
her welfare never arrived, she slipped to freedom leaving Lloyd high
and dry – without drink nor fuck and just himself for consolation.
Home alone from school there was a buzzing and hammering on the front
door. Peeping from the upstairs window I saw someone vaguely familiar
standing down in the yard. It was a woman with medium length, greasy
blond hair, a swollen misshapen face, dressed up like a whore and
screeching in Jamaican patois. I stared in disbelief, something
forgotten registering in me. Somehow, by instinct or luck, she
stepped back and looked up, her sad, drunk eyes finding mine. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> >
Shane, it's me, she screeched, Mum! Let me in... QUICK! I've left
that cunt and he'll be around 'ere any minute. He's gonna fucking
kill me!</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Lloyd
never did show up that day, nor the next, or the next. After a week
my mother's swollen face had gone down and she was back to something
of the woman I remembered. Then, after a moment of calm, she became
restless once more, drinking herself silly and spending her time
looking out the back window, pissed off at something, drunk and
nodding away with a menacing look about her. Then she was gone.
Willingly, for whatever reason, she'd left to return to Lloyd, to
take her beating and live another bout of booze and violence. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
second time she escaped from Lloyd it was serious. She'd jumped out
from a first floor window after Lloyd had found out she'd been
fucking the man guarding over her. He, Jacob, had fled for his life,
leaving mum to take a whirlwind of violence which passed by in a
deluge of fists and boots. It culminated in a full can of beer being
hurled in her face, cracking her cheekbone and splitting her left ear
in two. Locked in the bathroom she somehow squeezed out the small top
window and dropped to freedom, scrambling off to A&E where the
doctors initially thought she had suffered a fractured skull. In fear
of her life, scared Lloyd would somehow track her down, my mother
snuck out the hospital after being treated and bedded, and made her
way home. She arrived late that night, her blond hair caked in dried
blood, no make-up, no tights, no shoes, and the entire left side of
her body kicked into the colours of a beautiful autumn. She could
barely move. For two days she hardly spoke a word, just drank neat
vodka to dull the pain and hid out in the back room, constantly
asking if the front door was double bolted. But again, Lloyd never
came looking.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When
mum recovered she told me about Jacob, a Nigerian lodger charged with
preventing her escape. He did that pretty well, but unfortunately for
Lloyd the two fell for each other and began fucking right under his
nose. But it wasn't that which was my mother's great fear, she'd
already taken the beating for that crime. Rather, it was Lloyd's
boast: No woman leave Lloyd three times! And he meant it. This was my
mother's second time, and we all knew she'd end up dead if she ever
went back for another round. As drunk and as stupid as she was, she
never did.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
was some months later when mum came back from the off-licence, stuck
her head in the door, and said:</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
> Er, there's someone 'ere to
see ya!</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">I
looked out the door, and there, to my horror, was Lloyd. He was once
again living in the Blackhouse, back together with Bridget, and had
invited Mum around to drink as if none of the past year had ever
happened. It was weird sitting around there. Lloyd back in the bed
with Bridget, Mum back in the chair across from them, from where it
had all started, giggling at his boasts which were the only jokes he
had. For anyone entering the house there was no hint of the history
which had unfolded between them; between anyone. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Little
did anyone know at the time but this was the tail-end of the
Blackhouse and the end of Lloyd and Bridget. Three months later
Lloyd was arrested for the attempted murder of a junkie named Rodney
(one of my mother's multiple lovers from that period). Lloyd had put
his chest through with a mallet after Rodney had called him a 'black
cunt'. Found not guilty, Lloyd was set free to unleash his violence
one last time, beating Bridget to death in a frenzied attack over
nothing anyone present understood. At the age of 43, Bridget, mother
of two, suffered a fatal stroke while being relentlessly punched and
kicked. This time Lloyd was charged with manslaughter and taken away.
He was sentenced to an unspecified amount of time in a psychiatric hospital. Just over four years later he was judged 'cured' and set
free. In that freedom we never saw or heard from him. At first
there were apparent sightings of him, and then the
myths and rumours started up. But whatever the truth, Lloyd was never of the flesh,
just a vexed, psychotic, soul in time, as much a victim of history
and circumstance as anybody else...</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-36559560335167367142012-10-03T20:55:00.001-07:002012-11-01T15:32:34.825-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijwiBOIIxY3rVQdCJM5nCKaZXJ58nMleJyvk34ynS6kFcPA8dzFJBzxtZISujspnpXEMeWCbht9pRZI7XwfEqRV8NfZYLsqKDFOvc_B5CH1kc5TvKRWbmkVIHKJNPfdd6Ls98-1FovQgA/s1600/chris.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijwiBOIIxY3rVQdCJM5nCKaZXJ58nMleJyvk34ynS6kFcPA8dzFJBzxtZISujspnpXEMeWCbht9pRZI7XwfEqRV8NfZYLsqKDFOvc_B5CH1kc5TvKRWbmkVIHKJNPfdd6Ls98-1FovQgA/s1600/chris.png" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 0.5cm;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 0.5cm;">There
was always a reason why my mother fucked someone and it was never
through love. Whistling Chris earned the keys to the </span><i style="line-height: 0.5cm;">city of her
cunt</i><span style="line-height: 0.5cm;"> on account of being the regional manager of the travel
agency Thomas Cook, and promising her free tickets to anywhere she
wanted to go in the world. He also wasn't short of a few quid in the
meantime, which was good, because Mum was too worldly to be able to
be peddled dreams.</span></span><br />
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">A
tall broad softly spoken man with thinning ginger hair, Chris would
stand around the back, staring up at my mother's bedroom window and
letting out a shrill, single whistle every few minutes. Initially it
was a way to make sure he never came around to the house while my
step-father was in, but gradually it became a way for my mother to
keep him at a distance, hide out the way when she had her own money
and didn't need him to bankroll her oblivion. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Some
evenings Chris would be out there for hours, standing as stiff as a
board in the bitter winter night, his full length ,black felt coat
buttoned right up to the chin, nose frozen pink, face drained white,
mist coming out his mouth,whistling and hoping Mum would either give
<i>the sign</i> and flick her bedroom light on and off, or send me
around to fetch him. On those nights, as I followed him back home, I
could smell the cold night air on his coat. Chris, long strides, head
down, cursing, as the wind blew his thinning hair down, fanned flat
against his forehead. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Once
inside, the colour refilling his face, Chris would clench and wriggle
his fingers, and rub his hands together furiously to warm them, the
rubbing transforming into that of someone ready to feast, as he
climbed the stairs towards my mothers room. Mum's bedroom door would
be open and she'd be sitting drunk on the bed looking away like she
hated him. Chris would enter, not saying a word, and close the door
behind him. Id tiptoe up stairs and sit outside the bedroom door. I'd
listen to drinks being poured, strange laughter, sudden turns of
anger, apologies, kissing, and finally Mum groaning and Chris
grunting and swearing as my Mums body hit up against the wall. It
never lasted long, ten thrusts being about the best Chris had. Then
my mothers vodka bottle would be clinking against her glass again and
I'd hear the sound of alcohol gulping out. More often than not Mum
would wander out naked and stumble to the toilet. On her way past
she'd bend down and say: “I've gotta get rid of this cunt but he
won't fuck off!” As she sat on the toilet, the door open, listing
over to one side, piss whispering into the bowl, I'd peer into her
room and see Chris's thick, pale arm hanging down off the bed, his
gold watch, a cigarette between his fingers, burning away like a fuse
on love. It was a sad image of man and loneliness; something horrific
unfolding on a dull, black night. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Sometimes
Mum would hiss a “pssst” at me, beckon me down the landing and
tell me that in five minutes I was to bang on the door and make an
excuse that a neighbour was here to see her. Soon after that Chris
would come out hastily dressed, still buttoning up his coat. He'd
ruffle my hair, drop a few coins my way, then hurry down stairs and
back out into the cold black night. Less than twenty four hours later
we'd hear the first whistle again. I'd peep out the window to confirm
what it meant, then nod at Mum, and say: Yeah, it's him. Mum would
pull an evil face and turn away and think. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">One
night as I fetched Chris he asked me of Mum and if she was drunk. I
said, Yes, she's always drunk, but tonight she's especially drunk! He
pulled a face. Sympathetic. Like he understood. Then he said, Come
on, we'll go to the offy and you can pick whatever you want... SHE
can wait for me for a change!” In the Off-licence I chose sweets
and crisps and a big bottle of pop. Chris took two cans of beer and
two half bottles of real Smirnoff Vodka. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> Don't
let my Mum see them, I said. He laughed and shook his head and
showed me a deep pocket either side of his long coat. That's what
these are for, he said, dropping a bottle in each pocket. You can't
leave a drink around your Mum... It's bad when it gets to that. Then he
said: Why don't you go around all the off-licences, tell them your Mum
has a problem and ask them to stop selling her drink? If they won't
listen, well, I'm sure a brick or two could find its way through their
window. Chris looked at me, serious, then smiled. I was only ten. It
seemed like a good idea. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When
we got home Mum was stood swaying in the downstairs hallway, waiting.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> What, getting all chummy with Chris now are ya, she said, glaring at me
like I'd fucked her life up. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> We
only went to the shop.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Er,
well where's mine then? she said, suddenly making a vicious drunken
grab for my sweets, getting a bag of crisps and stamping them all
over the hallway.Then, turning on Chris.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> Chris, why don't ya tell him what you've been arrested for? He may
not be so fucking fond of ya then! </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chris
didn't reply. Mum continued, with added drunken venom.</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Peeping
in young girls' bedroom windows, wern't it? Er, two counts of indecent
exposure on Wandsworth Common??? Nah, y'aint told him that av ya!
What ya thinking, if ya friends wiv him you'll get express access
to my cunt?</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Chris
knew the set up too well to kick back. Best just to wait the
moment out, hang in there until the alcohol affected another part of
her brain and her hatefulness was replaced by some other absurd mode
of being. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Mum
finally turned and led Chris upstairs. She fell twice going up, Chris finishing by steadying her into the <i>Fuck Palace</i> like she was an
elderly invalid. I was glad it was him tonight. At least he seemed to
care about Mum, about me, had a job, and maybe even had a heart.
With them gone I sat down in front of the small TV, the sound off, drinking my soda and sharing my sweets with the mangy
dog. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There
was a strange quiet from my mother's room that night. No animal
sounds. No fighting. Apparently not even any fucking. A little later,
longer than usual, Chris came back down. Unusually he was as properly
dressed as when he'd gone up. As he left he said that Mum was way
out of it, that I'd better go up and make sure she was
alright. Entering her room I found Mum on the floor, naked. She was
on her side but with her buttocks twisted awkwardly around and parted, as
if someone had been on top of her. Her left arm was suspended off
the floor, her hand limp, stringy, clear vomit hanging
like slime off her fingers. She was conscious but could barely speak:
El me up! El me inta' bed! </span><br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">I tried to lift Mum up but she was too
heavy and her head rolled back and cracked violently off the floor.
For a moment her eyes disappeared, and then came back, and then she
looked like she would cry, and then like she'd forgotten how to. I
left her there like that, just laying there, her eyes open and her
brain on freeze, looking at me, maybe pleading for help but unable to
express it. As I was leaving I saw something glinting from under a pillow on the bed. I pulled the pillow away, and there they were, two
half bottles of Smirnoff Vodka, one already almost empty. It just
had to be. Chris, after all his care, ideas on how to stop Mum
drinking, was paying for sex with alcohol. Worse, as this time he
seemed to have got her totally helpless and raped her in the
arse. Though that's not certain as Mum was too fucked to even
know who or where she was let alone what had happened to her while she was
there. One thing that is sure is that I never spoke to Chris again
after that night. I realised that maybe his clothes and hands were
cleaner than most of Mum's other lovers, but his soul was just as black. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">That
was all but the end of Whistling Chris. He lingered on for a few more
months and then one night he came around and left almost immediately.
I went up to see what had happened. Mum was laying on her back, on
the bed, dressed. She said coldly, Chris has gone and won't be coming
back. Then she unbuttoned her tight, drainpipe jeans and pushed them
down, taking her knickers with them, and exposing her cunt. It was
bright fire red. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;"> I
always dye<i> IT</i> red when I've a new lover, she said. </span>
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: black;">Looking
at her cunt I thought of Chris: his ginger hair, his long black coat,
his gold watch, his soft voice, his pretend friendship and his lies
about getting Mum sober. Then I left too. Mum's new lover wasn't
new at all. She'd been messing around with him for at least the past
few months, only now it had gotten serious. His name was Lloyd, and
he was a wild, murderous, burnt and scarred Jamaican from the Black
House... perhaps the single most danger to my mother's life at that point in time.. </span>
</span></div>
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Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-30513972879290628762012-09-29T17:30:00.002-07:002012-11-01T15:37:06.035-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am sitting on the floor watching TV when something wet lands on my back. It's sperm. Little John has just shot his load. My mother is a drunken sprawl of flesh on the bed. She empties another drink into herself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Little John was little. An inch bigger than a dwarf but no more. He looked like he'd been given the wrong head, it being a size too big. In his mid-forties he already had a full head of grey hair, the back and sides cropped short and the top longer, wavy and pushed back with stubby fingers. He was always fresh shaven, which is not clean shaven, and looking at him you could somehow hear the sound of him slapping alcohol on the tender around his face. He worked as a security guard, though what he guarded was a mystery. He used to come around every Thursday and had a habit of asking what colour knickers my nine year old sisters was wearing. In his inside jacket pocket, protecting his heart, lived a quart bottle of HAIG whiskey. Every now and again you'd hear him twisting the cap off, seething, then spinning it back on again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Apart from the few seconds when he wriggled about on top of mum, and the ten minutes after, he was always in uniform.
Sat naked and smoking on the edge of the bed the two cut a tragic still of life. My mother with her sagging stretch-marked gut and Little John, always in those grubby white sports socks, his genitals scrunched up and looking like something a bird would peck at. That's when it would start, the hitting. Mum would clench her fist, and without saying anything, would start waving it at little John. It was alcoholics' sign language, meaning:<i> You want some of this? I' give as good as I get, me.</i> Little John would watch, his face flushed red with spirits, laughing and rubbing and patting mum's back in admiration. Mum, her head full of drunk, unable to speak words for a moment, just remained there, swaying, her eyes fixed on nothing, shaking her fist at invisible forces which taunted her.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then she'd slur: <i>Shane, fucking get over 'ere!</i> And as I approached, she'd say: <i>Watch this little John!</i> And punch me full welt in the face. We'd all roll around laughing. Then I'd clench my face, come back in, and she'd do it again. Then again. Then him. When my face was scratched, bloody and as red as theirs I'd go sit back down with my back to them and watch TV, feeling not much of anything at all.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I don't know what it was but mum would always become angry and mean after sex. Like she despised the man who was next to her, blamed him for some huge wrong in the world. She'd sit there wearing a stony face, not speaking, stewing in a drunkenness that very few will ever see, a hatred nourished over months and years and gallons of neat, 45% proof spirits.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> It was almost three years, on and off, that Little John visited mum. In that time he lost his job, lost his bottom teeth, took on a filthy grey pallor, and ended with a drunkard's dry stubble and pasty, flaking skin with burst blood vessels across the nose and cheeks. As with many people who finally descend into the pit they've been circling around for so long, he fell in with just the clothes he was wearing. The very last time he visited mum his blazer was crumpled and split at the seams; his jumper full of holes and misshapen; his shirt filthy – the collar soft and sunken and the neck brown with grime; his trousers stained all over with blood, piss and semen; his shoes broke through, the upper coming away from the sole, the heels worn down, the thick grubby socks visible in turns as he tramped up the stairs. And finally, his quart bottle of whiskey, his appalling attempt at having style, was then replaced by a white carrier bag of bottles and cans, clinking away, warning the world he was close at hand. He was so dirty that even mum refused to sleep with him, screaming something about 'cock cheese' and telling him he needed a bath.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So instead of fucking mum, he sat on the edge of the bed, shared his drink and leered at my sister, asking innocent questions that somehow always revealed what colour knickers she had and may be wearing. And if once they looked sad sat there naked, now they looked even more miserable and downtrodden dressed – two people who had nothing to offer each other but dull lights and sad music and maybe grief-stricken memories of what someone's company and skin once felt like and had meant.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By that time my fear of the unknown had left, my familiarity with Little John allowing me to laugh and swear and throw things at him, my mother in hysterics as I called him a “drunken dirty cunt” and poked fun at his shoes and piss stained pants. Little John was so drunk that he no longer knew what was an insult, an angry wind or someone offering help. He just sat there with a bemused grin on his face answering in words that was from no language at all, a kind of middle ground that saved his soul for another night.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Little John didn't so much as leave willingly but was pushed out by other competition: not one, but two dominant males: Whistling Chris and Lloydy Baby. The first was a Travel Agent who hung around street corners peeping into womens' bedroom windows, and the latter, a tall, scarred, murderous Jamaican straight out the Black House. Though I 'm sure, a couple of scummy lowlifes like that would be of no interest to a group of highly cultured readers like yourselves?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">- - -</span></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="http://sodogwewere.blogspot.fr/2012/10/my-mothers-sex-life-3-whistling-chris.html"><b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My Mother's Sex Life #3 Whistling Chris</span></b></a></div>
<br />Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-41066142093009996682012-09-26T21:16:00.003-07:002012-11-01T15:42:20.721-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The
following texts were initially posted in the comment section of
Dennis Cooper's Weaklings Blog. Each day a new update would appear,
the intention being of going through my mothers entire sexual history
over a course of a few weeks. As with many things I start it was
never finished. Over the next week or so here I will reproduce the
initial Weakling posts followed by new texts, thus completing the piece. I have also included the initial
conversation between Dennis and Myself which led to the writing of
My Mother's Sex Life. There is an introductory post on
snooker legend Alex Higgins which was never part of the
original texts.</i></span><br />
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">-
- - </span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b> Introduction
to My Mother's Sex Life: Alex Higgins</b></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alex
'Hurricane' Higgins was a genius. He was a genius at playing snooker
drunk. No one has, or will ever, do it any better. Two times Embassy
World Champion, Higgins modernised the game. An outlaw of the baize, he played and lived like someone who knew he had less time than the
others. His career was a jagged mountain range of dangerous peaks
and hard, rocky lows. Even when sat in his chair, as his opponent
slowly played out, all eyes would be on Higgins: he was the game.
Watching him sat there: smoking, drinking, brooding, sniffing,
twitching, his eye-lids closing over, a dark mood arriving... was
poetry. One of the last Real romantics to hold a cue he was a man
who defined an age. In unequal measures Higgins was a scoundrel, a
drunk, a drug user, a gambler, a hustler and hallowed sinner. His
list of crimes includes: pissing in the plant arrangements during a
live televised game, abusing match referees, head-butting a
tournament director, fighting with opponents, cracking up or breaking
down mid-game, flouting stuffy dress codes. The ultimate anti-hero,
Higgins was the People's Champion: a loser who sometimes won but
mostly lost, and in that struggle, his many downfalls and few
successes, he somehow epitomised life itself. In 1985, the evening
following on from his shock early exit from the Snooker World
championship, Alex Higgins, 'The Hurricane', 'The Peoples Champion',
'The Drunken, Flawed, Wife-beating Genius', fucked my mother in a
toilet in a bar in London's Earls Court. Knowing that thrilled me and
provoked me into taking an inordinate amount of interest in my
mothers sex life. I began keeping a diary, a record of the freaks,
criminals, desperados and mental degenerates who passed through
her...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>* * *</b> </span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Introduction
to My Mother's Sex Life: An exchange with Dennis Cooper</b></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>Me:</b>
Dennis, OH, I missed the Alex Higgins post!!! In the sidebar of my
site he has made it in as one of the artists/writers/Down n'outs
that have been a major influence on my life. In 1985 he fucked my
mother in a toilet in a bar in Earls Court (London). We all loved him
after that.</span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.56cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>Dennis
Cooper:</b> Shane, Hey, man! Higgins fucked your mother? Whoa. That's
pretty wild and cool. Yeah, I was way into Higgins' playing for a
while back when watching him play was technologically possible, and I
think aspects of him probably ended up in one of my characters even,
if memory serves. </span>
</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Me:</b>
Yeah, that's absolutely true about Higgins fucking my mother. But
it's not that surprising, most men in London between 1984 - 1989
fucked her (or the other way around). Ray Davies from the Kinks was
another of her lovers (though he wasn't famous at the time). There
was also Dubai Charli, but i don't suppose you wanna know about him?!</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Dennis
Cooper:</b> <span style="color: #222222;">Ray
Davies?! Your mom certainly was popular among the gods. Wow. Dubai
Charli: I don't know, ... do I want to hear about him? You know me. </span><span style="color: #222222;">Do I?</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>* * *</b></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><b>My
Mother's Sex Life #1 - Dubai Charli</b></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #222222;">Dubai
Charli was an arab, rich as well, at least that's what my mother
said. She met him as she served drinks and fiddled the till in the
Copthorne Tara Hotel in Kensington. As the story goes, at the end of
his first night, Dubai Charli approached the bar and gave my mother
a folded up piece of paper. Later, when she opened it, rather than
finding a phone number there was a crudely drawn picture of
a cunt, and below it, three dollar signs and a question mark. My
mother turned the paper over but the other side was blank. Strange.
It meant only one thing: he was coming back.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;">The
next night Dubai Charli was back. He received large measures and
short change. When my mum knocked off, for the first and only time,
she fucked him for free. Understanding it was just sex, that there was
no long term relationship con to be had, my mother remembered the
three dollar signs. From then on Charli paid fifty quid a go, neatly folded each time and put in the back of a box of Opium perfume. For his money Charli got to fuck and knock her around a
little. Nothing too serious: a split lip, black eye, bruised ribs,
etc. Mum said it was better than market make-up and didn't run in the rain.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #222222;">I
never saw Charli, but I did see his handwriting. Every month an air
mail letter would fall through the letterbox and land on the loose
wooden floorboards of the hall. Inside, on paper more expensive than
money, he would signal his arrival:</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #222222;"><i>Arriving:
XXX. Wear: XXX. Phone: XXX.</i></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #222222;">A
week or so later mum would get all dressed up and disappear. After
two or three days she'd return drunk and bruised and counting out what was
left of the cash. The back row of her perfume cabinet began to look like a
scale model of the tower blocks around the back. That went on for
about a year, I suppose. Then Charli's letters stopped, mum quit
dressing up and eventually her supply of Opium perfume ran out.
Charli was gone, just a scent in a time that no-one now remembers. I
remember though. I remember lots of things.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /><span style="color: #222222;">After
Charli there was Little John, though I seriously doubt that a dwarf
dressed up as a security guard would be of any interest to a cultured
man like you?</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="line-height: 0.5cm; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #222222;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #222222;">- - -</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><a href="http://sodogwewere.blogspot.fr/2012/09/my-mothers-sex-life-2-little-john.html">My Mother's Sex Life Part2</a></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-7103794336039023072012-09-21T16:21:00.001-07:002012-09-21T16:21:58.841-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
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<br />
Hey Baby, what can I do ya for? Ya want me ta blow ya? Not today? Oh well, you take care now Honey, ya hear... and don't forget where's I'm at!<br />
<br />
Hey Baby, you looking for a date? Okay, Baby... well that don't matter none. I'll blow or wank ya for five an' sit on yer cock for fifteen. Why, we do it right here, Honey... what'cha want for five bucks? This is ya No Thrills Saver Brand right here: the bare essentials, barely covered! Now get it on out, Baby... Don't worry none.<br />
<br />
Danny!!! Oh d'here be a God an' he wants head! Oh, yuh know... working muh little pitch as demand demands. Wha??? Well I'm always here, Honey... 24/7, ya culdn't a looked none too hard. Yeah, I can still work dat magic .... sum things nevva gonna change, baby.<br />
<br />
Oh Sweet shittin' Jesus... d'hat thing looks like its just about ready ta getcha into a whole lotta trouble! What's exciting ya so? Ya getting none of d'em ol' bones at home? Yeah, but some women don't like d'at shit, dammit! An if she not liking it, even IF she do it, she ain't gonna do IT well. Oh, I'll fix ya up, Baby... I'll fix ya up real good.<br />
<br />
American, me? Get outta here! It's just my thang, innit. I'm from right here in da Bush. Born right where we standing. You better believe! Yep, that's right. Now whatcha want going on? Huh? You want to what? Oh no, not tonight Babycakes... there ain't no ways to sunday you getting anyting outta d'at hole tonight. No way. Yeah, I can do it, but you know the drill: ya pay me rock price now and I'll shit tomorrow. Well, I didn't know you'd be passin... an as good as I fuckin' am I can't crap on demand! An' anyways, You... taking the long way round after last time. Oh yeah, I seen ya.... I seen ya baby boy, head down over yonder... sneekin' on by like the worlds got a memory and knows exactly whatcha been up to! Well, tomorrow, Baby... I'll drop a load right on ya chest.<br />
<br />
The two of ya? How the fuck am I gonna do d'at? Oh, Ohhkay, but no touching or munching... I'm not clean down d'ere for d'hose tings... I been out since the gone home. Oh, well if ya like it like d'at you eat away... I ain't complaining if a man wanna pay double for rotten fish. I got no problem with d'at... I was just saying is all! No, ain't no American me! Whys y'all keep going on like that t'day! Damn! And it's 25 dollar now ya 'ear? I charge to another market and d'at market is a fluctuating price. Ya sure ya got the reds? Lemme see? Uh, OK. Let's go.<br />
<br />
Pins? Whatcha talking about wiv ya pins? You want ME to put PINS in your DICK? What pins? lemme see! Oh d'hey ain't so big... I thought you was like talkin' dhose BIG hair pins or summin. Yeah, I do that... two bucks a pin, ya hear, and I don't want ya bleedin all over my hands, the last thing I need is to be catching HIV or whatever the fuck it is again!<br />
<br />
Hey Stendhal da man! You down for some of this fine nigga ass? A bucket of fried finga lickin chickin? Oh, I's remembr'ing you's a BIG boy... I's a big girl, honey! I'll blow ya right here for five? Never mind d'em, d'hey jus drinking their beer... don't'even look no way no more. But dhey get theirs... don't you worry none, dhey get theirs!<br />
<br />
Yeah, I got a pimp. The greatest damn pimp there ever is: CRACK cocaine, Honey. D'hat's muh pimp right there! And what the hell bizniss is it ta you anyway? You want summin? No? Then fuck off bitch!<br />
<br />
Look Honey ya caught me at the wrong end of ma shift... I'm half clucking here. Ya give me a lick of the rock and I'll blow ya before getting off? Wha, Ya got nuffin? You never got nuffin! Then you getting nuffin, Honey... there's no credit down here, just pure honest to goodness pussy and d'at come at a price! Five dollars ya hear... FIVE DOLLAR!!! No, I'm not American... God, what is wrong wiv you's people here tonight. Ya expect me to be coming out here as muhself? Dats some fucked up shit right d'here! I”m just ME for my man, Baby... I'm just me for my man.<br />
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<i>Monologue of a Crack Whore on the Shepherds Bush Green - S. Levene 2012</i>Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-48524073801981383152012-09-19T18:27:00.000-07:002012-09-20T09:59:51.194-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
It's pitch dark, we're on the floor, leaned up against the bottom of Alan’s bed, both stripped to the waist. The buttons of her denim shorts are open and my hand is down there, blocked by tightly crossed legs that are unyielding to all titillation. The weird immature nibbling she was doing to my neck has stopped. Now she is crying, and where she’s trying so hard not to she keeps letting out whooping hiccup noises in the dark. I freeze and stop all play. I don't want to remove my hand but I do. I can tell it’s the sex which makes her cry. <br />
<br />
What’s the matter? I whisper, What’s wrong?<br />
<br />
She shakes her head.<br />
<br />
I kiss at her tears, thumb them away from under her eyes.<br />
<br />
Hey Boo, I say gently. Hey?<br />
<br />
Now she completely breaks down. She rips away and hugs herself into a tight ball of sorrow, her hands clasped around her knees and her head hidden in the space that's left. She's rocking and sobbing. I look at her, bored. I've never seen this before but I feel as though I have. I’m ready to hear how she’s probably been sexually abused, how some bastard uncle from years ago has fucked up her life forever and my life tonight. I don't think I care, but maybe I do. More, I think I care as a wild card entry that may get us back to where we were.<br />
<br />
I say Hey, one last time, and put an arm around her. As I do that she topples over into me and lays within my arms, still cradled up as she was, the top back of her head finding its way under my chin. Oh God. I can smell something in her hair, on her scalp, that shouldn't be there, but I don't know what it is. Her reaction to my comfort raises my hope. Once more my hand begins wandering south, re-testing the water, this time over her shorts. Again her clenched thighs bar the way. My finger tips come up dead against the tough denim seam that protects all I'm after. I curse Levi Strauss and his anti-cunt jeans! I don't force none. I can tell this isn't a game of open the locket. I remove my hand and let out a huge pissed off snort and reject her, muttering just loud enough so as she can hear: “Fucking Bitch!” I light a cigarette, slam the packet and lighter down, and sit there smoking as loudly as I possibly can.<br />
<br />
Her hiccuping crying starts again. It sounds like there's a fucking bullfrog in the room. I calm down a little but pay no attention to her. Then in the dark I sense something, a slight easing of her sobbing, a movement, now short little sobs and I know something is coming. I turn around just in time to see her face crunch up, her mouth bawl open, and her large milky teeth in the dark: “I’m only THIRTEEN!!!” She bawls “I’m scared.”<br />
<br />
Almost as soon as she says that Alan has leapt up and flicked the light on. He done it so fast, I swear, I saw him freeze-framed for a moment in midair as if he'd been lit up by electricity himself. He’d been pretending he was asleep. Laying there listening. <br />
Right, get out, he screams, Get the fuck out!!!<br />
He’s talkling to her, not me.<br />
She’s sitting up in shock, her arms clutched around herself covering her breasts. She’s hardly any breasts to cover. I pass her her jumper and turn away. Her bra is to her other side with tissue paper in it.<br />
<br />
I told ya she was fucking jail bait, Alan says.<br />
<br />
When she hears that she lets out a huge caterwaul, like her entire life has just been shattered.<br />
<br />
I’m sorry! she blubbers. I'm sorry!<br />
<br />
I look at her. As the tears wash her make-up down her face the years peel back and drip one by one in black drops off her chin.<br />
<br />
19, 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12????<br />
<br />
Right before my eyes she transforms into a bawling child.<br />
<br />
Fuck! I say. I feel like I should dress her in different clothes and try to cheer her up. <br />
What time is it? she asks. I’ve got no money, just a bus pass. She must be talking of her free school pass. Jesus Christ.<br />
<br />
Alan tells her it’s 3am. Her face collapses again as she thinks of the night and the dark streets and child rapists – of having to wander around alone, miles from home, until the tube starts up.<br />
<br />
Do I really have to go? Can’t I stay here until the morning? It's nearly the morning now.<br />
<br />
No-one answers. She drops her head and puts a hand over her eyes. She’s crying again, real sopping wet tears. There's a string of saliva connecting her lips. But she’s also playing peek-a-boo. I can tell. Everytime I look her way she whines a little harder. Alan watches her like you'd watch a captured thief.<br />
<br />
I need to use the bathroom, She says.<br />
It’s still in the same place, Alan says.<br />
<br />
She scoops up all her things – handbag, bra, bits of tissue, strawberry lip balm, 6-inch heeled leather knee boots – and scampers off to the bathroom, her face a mess of cheap run mascara and bright red lipstick. <br />
<br />
Alan listens. He's still standing at the lightswitch. As soon as he hears the bathroom door lock he looks a me and says: Fucking pervert! I seethe and flap an excited index finger in mid air, like it was a close call. And don’t call me a fucking pervert, I say. Who was laying there listening and wanking?<br />
Go away, will ya! he says. I’ll come an vist ya when ya doing 20 years for child rape... ya sick cunt. <br />
I didn’t do anything, I say<br />
Not a guilty man ever has , he replies. I told ya she was still in school, did I not?<br />
Well I’m not gonna ask for fucking ID am I? Jesus.<br />
Aye, there it goes again: the nonce case... Uncle Shane!<br />
<br />
Alan rests quiet for a moment, listening to the running water in the bathroom. When it doesn't stop he says:<br />
Now tell me, and be honest about it now, would’ya still ride her?<br />
What? She’s only thirteen!<br />
Sure, but if she wasn’t thirteen... if she was nineteen?<br />
Oh yeah. If she was nineteen, why not? But she isn’t.<br />
What if she was nineteen but looked thirteen?<br />
I laugh and wave him away.<br />
There ya have it, boy-O, he says, a good fer nothing sex case!<br />
<br />
Our nonsense is cut short by the flushing of the toilet. We get serious again waiting for Her return. When she opens the door and enters she's changed again. Her make-ups been redone, her breasts are back on, her long dark back-combed hair is fixed, and her tears are stemmed by a thick dam of black eyeliner. She takes a little sip from a quarter bottle of Gin, spins the top back on and puts the bottle in her handbag. She’s 19 again and looks it... and more.<br />
<br />
I look at Alan, and Alan looks at me. Then I look at her, and she's standing there with her lips a little moist... and maybe this night isn’t quite ove yet.<br />
<br />Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-21697242116995260952012-07-27T05:39:00.001-07:002012-08-04T05:37:32.071-07:00<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="background-color: white;">In Love's Down Tango I found myself in a twirl. I wasn't sure what was
real or what was not. The city became a place of instant memories and
nostalgia. Thoughts of what had passed only five minutes ago seemed
</span><span style="background-color: white;">idyllic</span><span style="background-color: white;"> and golden. In the
freshness of those summer mornings I'd rise and feel joyous and
alive. I'd smell my own skin because it reminded me of her, shower in
cold water and sit at the window as the great heat made its way in. I
prickled with existence, like I was a part of everything. The floral
scents of parks and gardens that blew in on the early breeze cleansed me of something that
soap couldn't touch. I collapsed back on life and let it carry me
away. Suddenly the cool, damp shade under pine trees, us alone, in
huge lost parks, seemed like perfection... like nothing else could
ever get better than that. In that time, every past pain and sorrow
became a thing of celebration: a journey to salvation – to the very
moment: staring across at someone so outrageously beautiful and have
her stare back with eyes just as intense and </span><span style="background-color: white;">needing
as mine. In those eyes I could have sank and died and not have cared
a damn. Sometimes I just laid back and let happy tears leak out,
thinking of meadows and sunshine and water and sky, and all things
free and wild.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
love's down tango I'd steal secret glimpses of her reflection. On
subway trains, in blacked out windows, my gaze fixed on her neck.
That's when she'd drift, as if having mental orgasms, sensing my
eyes on the tender of her prey. As we rocketed through tunnels I felt
hollow, like I had no stomach at all. In less than two weeks in a
dirty bed, a lifetime of hurt and pain had been fucked, cried and
kissed away. What had only yesterday been a bleak world on the
unlucky side of death, was now bursting with hope and promise. The
entire place had been transformed. The factories billowing smoke over
in the distance now inspired me, so too the river. The flats,
which had towered up around the back all these years, no longer held
dark connotations. Even the old disused power station took on a a
kind of historic and abandoned beauty. Some days we'd walk under its
shadow and talk of industry and poverty and love and death. All
things were to be celebrated. All things had led to her.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
Love's down tango I got swept away. Strange currents pulled at me and
dragged me off. I became romantic to the point of gibberishness. I
wandered the city, down tree-lined avenues of shade by the river, my
head drunk on what was behind, all around and up ahead. I tore off
leaves and rubbed them into my hands, sucked in the fragrant air like
it was something healthy. The sounds of life and nature would bring
me out in tears of joy. Poetry flowed out of me: sentimental nonsense
trying desperately to express what I felt. I became humane. I fell in
love with scabby mongrel dogs. I started saying things I didn't mean,
and other things I meant so much.
One warm evening, with the dusk sitting on the horizon and the
last echoes of day ringing out, I told her: “This city is of You
now.” The moment was intense. We both felt it, a darkening
overhead, as we stared at each other in terror. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
Love's down tango I became a fool. I'd jump up on seats in packed
public transport and declare how much I loved her. Other men cringed
for me... seeing themselves in my madness. I felt no shame; only
pride. I'd walk around town kissing and blessing the homeless. I'd
gatecrash counselling sessions and tell the depressed that there was
hope. I'd touch blind people on the forehead and tell them: “now
you can see!” No one had to be poor if they could feel like this. I
bought a writing desk and planned books and novels, films and radio
plays. At work I sought out promotions. I Brushed my teeth twice a
day and showered before and after sex. Then, one late morning, I washed
my hair with washing-up liquid and dried it with a towel from off the
floor. She called me a “disgusting dog!” and said that she was leaving. Sitting on the edge of the bed she re-did her
scarlet lipstick, clicked her little mirror case shut, put on her
blacked out sunglasses and warned me not to come looking for her or phone. She said she'd contact me when she was
ready. I tried pleading with her, blocking her path. I smashed my
head and fists off the door, screaming: “No! I'm sorry!” Then,
facing her, I slid down the door until I was sitting flopped out on
the floor. She remained on the bed, her legs crossed, clutching her
handbag and turned the other way looking out the window. I shuffled
aside and said: “So go then if you're going.” I reached out for
the culprit towel and draped it over my head so I couldn't see. I
heard her rise, heard her footsteps, heard the rattle of the door
handle. In a desperate last attempt to stop her leaving I threw myself out and gripped a hold of her ankle, curling my entire body around
her shoe. “Don't leave!” I begged. “Please don't go!” She
just stopped and stood there, as calm as anything, staring forward
and saying nothing. After a moment I saw what a tremendous fool I was
being and let go. She lifted her leg and stepped free like I was a
monstrous piece of dog shit. That was the first bust up.
I lay in its aftermath shaking and sobbing and having panic attacks.
My mind and body doing strange things. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In Love's down
tango I lost all notion of<u> </u>self-respect.
Saving face seemed futile, and anyway, I was glad to break
down because of her. It seemed to validate something. After each new
bust-up I'd show up at old friends at crazy hours, frantic,
dishevelled and without socks. From the public phone box at the top
of her street I'd call my Mum in tears, begging for help and asking
her to send a taxi to come and collect me. I lost control of my
actions. Weird impulses would have me obsessively redialling her
number, sometimes for hours, until she'd finally take it off the hook
or smash it against the wall. I'd pay kids a quid a time to knock on
her door and deliver love-letters and flowers. One time the kid
returned with a bunch of stems where she'd gone crazy and ripped
all the heads off. She'd told him to give them back to me. “I think
she's mad with you!” he said. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">“Did she pay
you?” I asked. He shook his head. I gave him another pound coin, took the stems and dumped them over her garden wall. Once I sat on
the bench across from her house for three days until she finally came
out and took me home. People became embarrassed watching me; my
family ashamed to see tears in my eyes again, tears that I hadn't
even cried through a childhood of appalling emotional squalor. But
this was different: it was my tragedy proper. I had fully invested in
this one and was not just a kid hanging onto his mothers skirt and
being dragged along to the next fiasco. I was struggling with new
feelings and strains inside my body. Things that didn't physically
hurt but seemed to penetrate right to the core of my existence. I
felt insane, sane, happy, sad, lost, found and dangerous. I was a man
capable of marching off to war. I cared so much and I cared so
little... both extremes at once, leaving me confused, unstable, and scared of myself.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
love's down tango the nights crackled and fizzed
and deep songs drifted out the stereo. The room seemed like a square
floating lost through space. It was just us now – astray in a
universe of black where things carry on forever but get further away.
The only light we had was two little red and green LEDs on the
stereo. From the bed we'd stare at them. They became a point of
sadness absolute, both of us sobbing away in the dark as it dawned on
us just how useless it was and that no-one was really going to be
saved. As the last song drifted off to nowhere and left a throbbing
silence in its wake we'd hold each other tight, stare into each
others eyes, and wait for Armageddon. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
Love's down tango day was always night. Some kind of uninvited
darkness now joined us in the room, its hanging presence causing
silences and long, forlorn thoughts that were no good. We were a
tragedy unravelling, a train heading for the buffers, and everyone
was wondering what <span style="background-color: transparent;">k</span>ind
of impact we'd make. I started cutting love letters into my body, and
she split herself up between multiple personalities – each as crazy
as the next. Some nights she'd turn her head and when she turned back
she was someone else: her eyes wide and glaring, covering up in shame
and itching and shrieking like I had stripped and violated her. She'd
run out the house, 3am, waking the street in just her knickers and
vest, tugging at her hair as she collapsed to the floor, screaming:
“I know what it is! I know what you are!” From the upstairs
window I'd curse her, call her crazy, chuck her heels at her, tell
her to “fuck off”, then I'd follow for four miles, trying to
cover her with a blanket, saying “Sorry” and lying about other
things as well. One night we ended in a park, alcoholics and bums
cigarette glows and coughs on the distant benches. Under the same fig
tree I had once found a dead cat hanging we cuddled up and went
to sleep.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In
Love's down tango I was a dangerous man. I lost myself in films and
books on crimes of passion and sat staring at my hands and wondering
just what they could do. I discovered much about myself in those
desperate times, and as the forces of love and hurt and jealousy and
obsession converged I realized absolute<u>ly</u> that one day the
cure I had found to my past ills would be the same force that would
blow my future apart. We started talking of death pacts, of going
down together, dressing up for marriage and walking ourselves out to
sea. Nights descended into pits of depraved perversity, the both of
us making insane pledges and promises and gripping on so tight so as
madness didn't drag us off completely. Sometimes it seemed like
another morning would never arrive. And then, just in time, her face
would show a little more clearly and her body would come out the dark
and be shivering slightly in the thin early morning light. Somehow
the early bird calls, with industry waking up over the rooftops,
heralded yet another depression – something not ours, rather a
general gloom that for a while we had escaped. We started putting
blankets up against the windows. We slept through the mid summer
days, the heat trapped in the dark of the room, a fan whirring but
only circling hot air. We'd both writhe and sweat through separate
nightmares, straining and reaching out for release. The descent was
on. We closed our eyes and let it
swallow us up.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Oh,
the world was so delicate then. I was almost scared to walk for fear
of going right through the ground. I clamped up and stuck, not
wanting to twist and risk losing what I had. I sat through dark quiet
nights watching intently, looking for early signs of the apocalypse.
One night, out the silence, I told her she would destroy me. Her
crazy eyes lit up and widened. She gripped me by the hair, pushed her
face right up to mine and stared a universe deep into my soul.
“You'll destroy me too,” she said, through streams of tears, “I
think I want to die.” On the first morning of autumn I woke up and
she was gone. At first I panicked, then I surrendered, then I smoked
two cigarettes, and then slept for thirty six hours straight.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In Love's down
tango she shaved off all her hair. I opened the door and stood
staring at her in shocked disbelief, her eyes crazy as moons, tears
welling up as she smiled and said “I'm back!” Later that night
she became a familiar looking stranger and said she felt like a
prisoner. She asked: “Are you sure you love me so much that you
want me to be here even if I don't want to be?” I meant to say “no”
but instead I said “yes.” Then I said: “I saw Grace yesterday.
She was sat in the park, under the old school shed, drinking and
reading the old graffiti and looking out with such sadness.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">“Did you fuck
her?” she screamed.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">“Of course not.
Would you be able to fuck with a broken heart?”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">“That's when I
fuck the best!” she said.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">“Then I suppose
that goes to show how different we are.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">“If you ever
fuck anyone else, EVER, I'll kill you!”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">“You're crazier
than me,” I told her. Then I said: “It's all very sad, now.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">Without saying a
word she rose, left the room, and went downstairs. When she returned
she was holding a large kitchen knife. She laid it calmly down on the
bedside cabinet then stepped out of her dress, and naked, climbed into
bed.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">I stared at that
knife for three days. It sat alongside her cigarettes and lighter and
ear-rings, and made me think of terrible things: of having to grab it
first before her. Then she said: “I want you to cut me. While we
make love I want you to cut my breasts. I want to bleed in this
fucking bed!”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">And
so we fucked. So hard we almost became one. As I thrust she cried and
looked at me with such intensity I thought I was a Devil or a God.
She dug her nails into my back and clawed
out trenches of flesh: slithers of my skin under her fingernails. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">“The
knife...” she whispered, “take the knife!” Laying beneath her I
stretched out and took the knife. I ran the tip of the blade down
between her breasts. She closed her eyes and lent back, her arms
splayed like she was about to be crucified. I stared at her, the tips
of her milky front teeth behind her partly open mouth; her head
tilted back and at an angle; her neck stuck out and taut in total
trust. I thought of the knife, of pulling it straight across her
breasts, of how ill it would make me if gaping wounds opened up and I saw the
knotty flesh before the blood. She opened her eyes and looked at me
all dreamy, her head swimming in a sea of eroticism. In that instant
I chucked the knife down and told her I couldn't do it, that I didn't
want to hurt her like that. She groaned and deflated in anti-climax,
like I had finally delivered her the greatest disappointment imaginable.
Then she collapsed down close, crazy passionate again. She bit hard
into my neck, released, then hissed a vicious death threat into my
ear. She said she wanted me to talk to her, call her all the whores
under the sun... tell her of men, strangers, who'd rape her and force
her to do hideous things in front of me or her parents. As I told her
all she asked she squirmed and shivered and shuddered about on top of
me, having orgasms that looked more like an exorcism. During the most
intense pleasure I ever gave, I wasn't even hard. When she was finished
I rolled out from underneath her, terrified at what I had just seen. Later that same night she started up
with real life horror stories, telling
me about her and friends picking up men, following strangers on the
metro, sucking them off in doorways and elevators... of being
gang-banged in stairwells. When I begged “STOP!” she said I was
wanting to revise her history, put her in chains and deny her her
liberty and womanhood. She said she needed to tell me these things.
That she wasn't the pure angel which I had created of her in my head.
September became an ill month, each day infected by some repulsive
history that she needed to get out. Vile things would now come
randomly from her mouth. One day, on the number 14 bus, as we were
curled up together looking out at the passing shops, she told me that
it was in just that very same position that she was first fucked in
the arse by her best friend's husband. I removed my arms from around
her and watched the world alone. From that point on we took to
dressing in black jumpers and dark shades and moping around town
like two figures of doom. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In love's down
tango I stopped sleeping and stayed awake reading tragic poetry from
people who had chucked themselves off bridges. I longed for those
innocent days when she'd stood outside the train station, in a light
red dress, the summer exuding
directly from her. Now I sat there through the nights,
watching her as she slept, seeing hideous shapes manifest in her
body... her beauty now looking like a deformity. There were times
when she'd open her eyes, still drunk on sleep, and for a moment,
deprived of memory, she appeared beautiful again. She'd give a shy,
dreamy smile, and then the data of her life would re-load and she'd
look crazed and lost and sorrowful once more. When I slept, her body
felt like a huge black negative presence besides me. The smell of her
sticky summer skin and cropped unwashed hair infiltrated and plagued
my dreams. I'd dream of the river and turbulent waters, and that
furious space either side of the bridge supports where the water
divides and rushes around and sucks and pulls down. I'd groan and
fight off dream demons, her pushing me away, hitting and elbowing.
“Fucking stop it!” she'd hiss. Our pains and torments were no
longer endearing, but a burden. That insane obsession and fervour
that we had promised to save each other with was now the same force
turned inside out and set against us. She kept asking if I loved her,
and I did, and I said “Yes!” During the last two months we tried
to recreate the first, but the music didn't work no more, nor the
candles, nor the inspired verse that love had once forced out by pure
overload of emotions. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In Love's down
tango I became ugly. Gaunt. Ill. Depressed. A stranger to myself.
Inside I was even worse. Our love had turned rotten and unhealthy,
but it was still love and it was still better than tanything I'd
known before. Just having someone I wanted seemed to fulfil a great
need in me. When she wasn't with me I'd start imaging what she was
doing - who she was doing it with. I'd ring and kill the phone or
just hang there silent. She knew it was me but couldn't prove a damn
thing. I knew it was crazy but couldn't stop myself: love is a mental
illness. In the evenings I started going down to the river, alone,
staring over and off the bridge into the big black swirling eddies,
or walking around town and picking out the tallest buildings which I
could throw myself off. I was miserable in my own skin, and we hadn't
even crashed out yet. Now when we'd meet I'd sit around hung with
gloom, somehow hoping that my distress
would re-ignite something in her: even pity. But forces inside myself
were working against each other. While one tiptoed around this house
of ice the other took to it with a hammer. My mouth would just say
things, and as soon as it had I was apologizing. I started asking
questions, getting suspicious of her absences, interrogating her
after she'd passed an evening out, accusing her of everything she was
capable of and suspecting her of being capable of so much more. Then,
in a sudden burst of toughness, I'd throw her out and tell her never
to come back again, that she was “history!”. A few hours later
I'd be at her door, standing in the garden in the rain, screaming
that I couldn't live without her. I started hinting at suicide,
calling her up and saying “Goodbye” then, not taken at all
seriously, blackmailing her outright with it. Those old tricks that I
despised so much in my mother, that I'd promised I'd never repeat, I
was now employing for the same ends. The few nights we did manage to
spend together from then on were maybe the saddest memories of both
our lives, lost somewhere between insanity, hatred, bitterness and
base animal sex. </span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: black;">Just before the real cold British weather set in,
before the trees were completely bare, before the last of the birds
had migrated, before one of us was ticked off and zipped up, love was
finally driven off the cliff: she left for foreign soils and booked
herself into psycho-therapy. The only contact I had was for her
father and he refused to speak to me. On Christmas day of that year,
on my pleading, my sister made an international call, and through
tears, gave news that the body of a young man had been dredged up
from the river and it was almost certainly me. She still never
phoned. And all her father said was: “pass on our condolences to
your mother.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;">In Love's down
tango the city smelled of Her. Walking around alone, in the winter of
that year, I was tortured and mocked by memories. In specific places
I saw our ghosts; heard echoes of time: us laughing, little things we
had said, desperate promises we had made. In bars I saw us sitting in
the corner, alone, secretive, withdrawn from the world outside. There
wasn't an inch of city anywhere which offered any respite. For a
brief moment I'd lived joy under London's sky and going back to
the rot of yesterday was now punition too much. I became a prisoner
of my city... of my memories. My own existence goaded and tortured
me; I reminded myself of so much. In Love's down tango I went on a
pilgrimage of pain. I retraced my journey so far, crying and making
no sound. Sadness and despair just poured out of me. People looked on
me like I was a freak... like I'd just staggered away from a bomb
blast, unaware that half my head was missing. Mothers would shield
their kids eyes as I passed, hold them in tight and block out my
vision. There is something about real grief and hurt in a man which
terrifies people. It terrified me too. In Love's down tango, in that
fleeting, mystic twirl, I opened my eyes, and for a moment I saw it
all.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br />Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8919235820407058844.post-17142517529332940212012-07-05T22:59:00.000-07:002012-07-05T22:59:15.752-07:00So Dog We Were...<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: maroon;">I've seen the
animal in man. That beast that pisses in sinks, shits in plastic
bags, has to soak and cut and prise the socks from off its feet, has
become indifferent to the stench of its own arsehole, lays around
wrapped up in filthy blankets snarling at life and rotting away by
the pound. I've watched men regress into neo-savages, committing
murder, rape and incest with no strategic end in mind. I've seen our
species fight and bite and rip and fuck one another to pieces. I've
watched the unloved become the unloving and the loveless become the
lawless. I've seen beautiful people destroyed by the high cost of
living, selling their bodies and organs for a moments respite from
the daily grind. I've known streets of endless misery, city-sized
slums full of the walking wounded, tower blocks used as a human
rubbish dumps: 300 ft of isolation and depression, whole families
staring out and down, wondering what mark they'd leave if they hit
the floor from there. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: maroon;">With
fresh young eyes I watched life pass by, a certain freakshow
interspersed with occasional views of purported normality. I stared
lost at bare feet as pre-teen brother and sister put on peep
sex-shows for an assortment of waifs and strays, dreamed nightmares
over the amphibious leers and panting tongues visible through the
gap in the door. I've seen women beaten senseless, dragged around
by the hair, forced to lick the kitchen floor, locked in cupboards
with broken noses, doused in petrol and set alight. I've seen men
kicked half to death, hit with bricks, bars and mallets, faces and
wrists slashed open, a false eye staring at me from the bottom of a
glass of beer. In the hush of night I've watchd an old dreadlocked
cancer patient hunting around in the dark for soiled panties to
sniff, his emaciated thighs like violin bows, the silhouette of his
long lank penis and swinging balls. I've seen that same man rot away
to nothing in his chair, sat their stuffed full with death one
morning while the rest of the house knocked back courage and cured
themselves of the shakes. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: maroon;">In the back-end
of nowhere I've known young girls who became mothers without ever
having seen a cock. Fathers thrice over who thought the clitoris was
a garden plant. I've known company directors escape the boardroom to
dress up in nappies and bonnets, lay in a cot, bawling, wriggling
their legs and faking innocence. I've seen orgies of pigs:
incomprehensible gang-bangs strike up amongst chronic drunks;
alcoholic women laying spread-eagled on highstreet benches,
masturbating while screaming RAPE! On screens, I've seen everything
from armpit licking to shit-eating. I've seen Arabic looking girls,
dressed in nothing but a hijab, crucified to railings and gagging on
twelve inches of white cock with the Stars and Stripes tattooed along
the shaft. In retaliation, I've seen fifteen of the dustiest Arabs
gang-raping a small town beauty queen, close ups of her tears and
suffering as one rams it in her arse without lubricant or warning.
I've been sent links to videos of amputees, midgets, mongols and
She-males. I've seen horses and pigs being sucked off, and dogs
eating pussy. In HD I've seen sheep, cows and chickens get it –
living props, perfect for web cams and Shock TV. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: maroon;">I've seen
faceless erections poking through zippers, shoved through holes, men,
women and beasts dancing jubilantly around them. I've seen cunts
gang-banged out of all recognizable shape, laying spent around rooms,
their only use then to help remove nicotine stains from filthy
fingers. I've studied necks and faces, stretched taut and deformed
during the climax of despicable acts. I've seen my own mother drink
and fuck her way through 20 years of grief, falling out of taxis
naked and crawling up the front yard with bloodied tits and bruised
buttocks. I've made up the numbers in the most squalid dens and
witnessed the human animal partake in the most debauched and
intangible practices: groups hunched over spoons, each drawing up a
measure of life before shuffling back to their individual hells. I've
seen families brought up on grease and potatoes and tomato ketchup;
parents in competition for Special Offers and fighting over reduced
cuts of meat. I've seen teenage rent boys forced to deep throat podgy
middle aged men; wrecks of humans crawling around the streets looking
for scraps of food; amputees glued to skateboards in a desperate
effort to adapt and survive. I've seen people riddled with body fungi
and gangrene... abscesses and ulcers the size of tennis balls eating
them alive. I've seen people lie, steal and cheat, and try to pass on
awful diseases. I've seen junkies with AIDS cuddling up together
through dark silent nights, sobbing over regrets and old memories and
cancerous lumps and lesions. I've seen men of money turning squalor
into a profit; supposedly reputable people crippling his brothers and
sisters with financial strongholds, using the most ruthless tactics
and schemes to extract from people what they haven't got. I've seen
banks play the long-term con, burying people in credit, gambling on
them defaulting on loan payments: loans scrupulously worked out so as
they'll just about be repaid come the the average age of death. I've
seen it all and joined in the feeding frenzy, eating as blindly and
as heartily as anyone else. With the rest of the pack I've been left
crying and growling at the moon, calling out and cursing unknown
enemies. I've drank Starbucks coffee from the same place as you,
taken your traces of lipstick off the beaker, and with a swallow of
stale caffeine said, “The world is so beautiful now!” </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: maroon;">I've stared into
the distance and seen the old infrastructure of nature, the last of
the trees and mountains and fields that haven't yet been chopped
down, drilled through or ploughed flat. I've seen man visit every
remote inch of the planet, map it out in 3d and real time video. I've
seen the cheerless kept alive on hope support machines, the
downtrodden and completely-fucked-over still with ignorant faith in
their fellow beings. I've seen the lowest and most despicable acts
from just about everyone. Modern, sophisticated man is nothing more
than a successful marketing campaign. Behind the pedicures, enemas,
and PH neutral cunt juice is the animal we've tried so hard to tame.
If in public we walk on hind legs, in private, we drop to all fours
and eat off the floor. And I'm not alone. We all know what our
species looks like stripped down, sprawled out naked on the mattress,
folds of belly, flabby sex leaking piss and cum, and sucking on
antacids. That's the horrific reality of it... the sick dog we've become.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>Memoirs of a Heroinheadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17401281805284793756noreply@blogger.com9