Mythical Darts & Broken Hearts

In 1999 I fell in love, married and died for the first time. The girl was Buket, the marriage lasted three days and my death 3 years. After all the events in my life it was finally an arrow from a familiar bow that got me... left me strung out on the edge of nowhere staring over bridges into dark waters and looking for heavy stones that would permanently weigh my body down. London transformed from a place of beauty into a prison of smells, scents and memories. It was the only time I’ve ever felt abandoned to the wolves, the only time my flesh was up for grabs... I was so alone I was nowhere, so suicidal I was already dead. This post is of love, obsession, loss and hopelessness. This post is straight from the belly of The Black House

I first met Buket in a dark bar on the Fulham Palace Road. I was returning from the funeral of my Grandad and had dashed in to escape the torrential rains and the devils lightening that crackled overhead as South London turned pewter and erupted into storm. She had sought me out in the darkest, loneliest corner of the bar and had awoken me with a light shake and two large brown eyes

"Have you smoked too much?” she asked in foreign English. I smiled, shook my head and tapped my nose. “No, something else.” I said. I fell back to sleep, but when I woke again she had pulled a chair up to the table and was sitting there smoking and waiting. She told me she was from Istanbul and was working in London as an au pair. We remained there like that until last orders, our chairs inching closer together until our knees were touching . We swapped cigarettes in order to touch each others hands and I lent across the table and whispered things to her just to feel her dark hair on my face. Sometimes I would start sinking into sleep and when I'd awaken I’d catch her looking at me. I done the same... stealing hidden glances when she wasn’t looking... blinking her beauty into my head... a beauty that was so immense it made me sad.

By the time we left the bar the storm had calmed. We stood outside waiting for some advance from the other... the silence of the ‘what now?’ Finally I asked her where she lived and she explained it was on a street at the back of Putney Heath. The Heath is a large expanse of wasteland, parkland & open space. It was there that in the late 80’s a series of brutal rapes had occurred. I told Buket this and then I offered to walk her home

As I accompanied Buket over Putney Bridge the lashing winds and rains whipped up again. I pulled her in close, removed my jacket and chucked it over our heads. We hurried along like this, past the swirling river and off into the mist. When we finally arrived at the house where she was staying we stood once again in awkward silence. I tried to move but couldn’t... for some reason I didn’t want to leave. Beneath the wet and the cold there was a warmth... a warmth that neither of us wanted to detach ourselves from. It wasn’t touch or contact, it was something so much more... an excitement that glowed within us like lava from the core of all existence. I eventually moved off into the rain, but a few metres down the road I turned around and shouted “Would you like to walk a little more?” And without a word she gave her answer and came running.

We finally came to a stop at the bottom of a long shadowy tree lined avenue... an open paint flecked bench offered us rest but not shelter. We sat there, huddled tightly together... cheek to cheek as the rain plummeted and fell like dead birds around us. There was no kissing, no fondling, no words... just two strangers with the same eyes, the same hopes and the same loneliness staring out into a raging storm. And as the trees swayed and bent, and the rains and the gales lashed cars and buildings, we peered out from under my jacket and watched the beauty as nature battered the world and the city... taking revenge on all the cruelties that had been inflicted upon us. This was the beginning of the end of all our past tragedies, the start of the healing process, the beginning of stark truth. But as we know, despair and suffering are never more than a shadows length behind in this life, and as this night beckoned the end of many hurts and traumas so it welcomed the beginning of a new disease... a disease so deadly that it takes more lives per year than any other... on the wings of the storm we fell in love

After that night we swapped numbers and waited in desperation for our phones to ring. We met up and I took Buket on tours of London.... clubs, pubs & parks. Being from the Bosphorus she adored the sea, but as there is no sea in London we gave our hearts to the river. I introduced her to parks and secret gardens, and by late summer she had fallen in love with London's public spaces... she had swapped blue for green. For me London had also transformed... from a place of shadows and mirth into cherry blossom and floral scents. Parks and gardens came alive, and the brown sludge of the river suddenly flowed clear and led to unknown and fantastic places

Buket moved in with me, sharing the house in Fulham with my friend and I. Bed covers were changed, the thick blankets I used as permanent curtains were removed from the windows, and the floor was no longer allowed to be used as an ashtray. It was fresh clothes and a shower once a day... proper dinners and sanitary living. But it felt good and it felt right and as the spring crept off the back of winter, the layers of dirt were slowly washed away.

But it was a rocky romance. It was so intense and desperate that a wrong word from either lip would send the other reeling into fathoms of insecurity and jealousy. And as the intensity grew and suicide pacts beckoned, I realised that this was not a healthy love... it was a draining, exhausting black love... an obsession that had only one logical conclusion: death. I watched each day as this love warped into something new, something bent and twisted... as eyes released tears of history and orgasms become desperate cries of help. We couldn’t get close enough to one other... we wanted to become one, but we were separated by our pasts and an eternity of wants and needs. And it was this that ate away at us like cancer.

During the courtship my drug use was open and honest (well almost). Because though Buket was aware that I was crushing up Subutex and snorting them every few hours, she was unaware that I was in the backroom piping heroin and crack.... meeting dealers in restaurant toilets and that the man who she thought was my manager at work was in fact a drug dealer. Of course, she had promised me that my drug use was my business and that she would not be like the others and ask me to quit, but barely a month into the relationship she blew up and demanded that I stop and abandon myself wholey to her. Unfortunately I was incapable of this... love was one thing, safety was another, and this wasn’t a safe love; it was a dangerous messy affair and one in which I needed drugs to get through the exhausting emotions of each day. Still, I had no choice but to go along with her wishes and feign desire to get clean. We came to the arrangement that she would hold my supply of subutex and anytime I needed or felt like it I would phone her and she’d meet me with 5 little white pills. Gradually it would descend to 4, 3, 2,1 until the time I would no longer need them.

I phoned Buket almost daily after this... she became my dealer, doctor & drug counsellor. Sadly by the time I arrived to meet her my mind was intent on getting opiates into my blood, and with barely a kiss or a “hello” I’d snatch the subutex from her, rush into the nearest bar or McDonald's toilet and crush them down and suck them up. I’d then slide down the wall in relief, waiting the 15mins it took for them to get into my system and attack my brain. I would then return zombie eyed and full of shame, apologizing for my weakness and pledging undying love. But she understood I was there for the drugs and not for her, and it was just another of a million problems that plagued us.

Another problem was her mental illness. She had a split personality and this had been accentuated after the trauma of being repeatedly raped by her schizophrenic younger brother just before coming to London. Actually this was the real reason she was even here, her father banished her from Istanbul & the family house on account of her outrageous tales of incest. Through every pore in our skins seeped darkness... black tales and black experiences. Our nights became a time of stories and dark reminiscences... our wide eyes glowering to candle light as we took it in turn to relate our histories of horror. We told our tales and then lost ourselves in music and love. But now in our glances there was a sadness and a fear... an understanding that we were probably the worst possible thing we could offer each other. Summer was coming to an end, and although love still existed enemy forces were encroaching slowly from all sides.

Buket had planned her return to Istanbul for mid November and we both lived in dread of this date. We made hurried plans so as not to separate... not then.. not forever. Our talks and discussions brought this game plan: We would marry in London, she would head off to Istanbul two days later and I would join her in December for the wedding reception which would be held there. But this trip was not just for the reception, I wouldn’t be coming back... we were setting up life in Turkey, an apartment overlooking the Bosphorus Straits.

We married in November, her in a black wedding dress and me in my funeral suit... the same one I had been wearing when we first met. It was a bizarre affair. I was working on that day and in a large van at lunch time all the firm travelled down to the wedding.... colleagues in work overalls and with black hands celebrating and throwing confetti as we left the registry office. Neither of us believed in marriage, we went through with it because her family were muslim and it was the only way we could openly share the same bed together.

As we sat for drinks in the bar afterwards, just Buket, my family and I, I looked across the table at her beauty. We had married for very specific reasons, but in that moment, in that millisecond of happiness before our hells would collide, I was proud. I was proud of her, of me of my wife, and I think she was too.... for a smiles length of time she was proud to have the name Levene. Though an hour later she would be in fits of fury as I returned from the toilets with a single streak of crusty white powder running from my nose and then nodded into the wedding meal. And as she pointed to my nose, letting me know the streak of residue hadn’t passed unnoticed, I knew.... I knew that in two days I would take her to the airport and would never see her again. There would be no reception... no Bosphorus dreams.. only heartache, divorce, pills, heroin and crack.*

(2)

The Taxi pulled up at 4pm. I bundled Buket's suitcase into the boot and slipped in the back beside her, my breath awash with the nutty scent of piped heroin.We had arranged for the taxi to exit London by a very specific route - a mini tour of all the streets, avenues and bars that had fuelled these past months. It was a blustery English day and the autumn light was already fading. We looked out the window together and watched as London rolled away into history and memory... as the motorway took us out of the reverie and on the 45miniutes journey to Gatwick Airport.*

I was calm.... we was quiet... this was it. I walked Buket to the departure gate, and we stood outside holding one another. “We’re never going to see each other again, are we?” I said.... holding back tears that could not be held back.. “This is the end isn’t it?” She kissed my nose and wiped my eyes... and then she broke down herself and started making desperate promises and gestures of love. Her eyes wide and speaking a hundred thoughts at once. We held each other on last time and I sucked in an audible lungful of air and courage. Trailing fingers broke free and without looking back I headed off, my tears falling freely as I made my way back home. Patting my pocket to make sure the two little bags of heroin were still there.

We kept in contact over the next month... daily phone calls and desperate pleas for the time to quicken up it’s pace. The reception was planned and booked and I had bought my plane tickets and that of my mothers and sisters for the event. But then one dull afternoon, an event happened that would almost kill me and push me fully into the arms of heroin and crack. A conversation so bizarre that I still don’t understand it now. But in that conversation my wife would slip into psychosis, threaten to have me killed and we would never speak nor see each other again.

I received the call at work, it was Buket and she was desperate... crying and swearing undying love: “I need you... can you come earlier... you need to be here now!”

“I can’t just leave like that” I said. “Anyway, I’ll be there in 14 days.. it’s not so long.” And then she changed.... for the third time in our relationship her psychosis appeared and in a click of the fingers she was a different person... someone evil, uncaring and spiteful. “14 days!!! You think that’s not long.... how can you be so fucking cold! I need you and you speak with tiredness... yeah, yeah, yeah! Are you that bored by me???”

"I’m just a little tired...”
“Tired!!! how can you be tired... we only speak once a day... how can that tire you!” And then the phone went dead and so did I... because I knew from experience that when she became like this she was inaccessible... she was no longer there.

That evening I tried to phone, but got no response. I was in complete panic and began phoning her friends and family. Finally I got through to her family home and it turned out she was there but refused to speak to me. Her father however had this to say:

"The marriage is over. My daughter says it was a mistake and she no longer wants to see or hear from you again... EVER! Please send her clothes and belongings over and do not call back!”

Well I did call back... many times but Buket wouldn’t speak with me, and as the realisation dawned that our beauty was dead, I sunk into a depression and a hurt that gave a self-destructive edge to my recklessness. London and her memories began taunting me and I started to die... and then I broke down and cried. This life was not for me.... all the hurt and the pain and the tragedy and the upset and abuse and...and... and... it could keep it... I’d had enough! But life doesn’t care for such despair and 2 weeks later she delivered my friends dead body to my feet, and for a while I gave up... but you already know that story.

It took me a whole year to get over the break-up, and three years of heroin abuse to ease the pain. Since that bizarre phone call with Buket I have never seen, spoke nor heard from her again. We’ve never divorced and I never sent her clothes back. I hold no ill will towards her, and have no desire to see her again... it’s something that is done and dusted. Instead I think and I laugh.... I laugh about my 3 day marriage and I laugh at just how very human it is. All the things that have passed my way, and finally it was the old dart of love that got me... brought me to my knees screaming for mercy. And I’m proud of that.... I’m proud because I can love and I can hurt. I am proud that after everything I am not numb, disconnected and unfeeling. I am proud because I have a heart... an open heart and a heart that can be broken.

Take care All...

Shane. x