Read by Soc Priapist "Our days and evenings were spent together toughening ourselves up, bonding and preparing our offensive. Our first decision was to join a boxing club. We were weak targets for the bullies and in order to walk the streets and parks untroubled we needed to learn how to throw decent right hooks. So one Wednesday we joined Chelsea Boys Boxing Club and on Thursday we knocked each others teeth out. The three of us taking it in turns to square up to one another and direct our anger and pain towards a physical body. But we never hurt one another: we toughened each other up. And as we lay in the park, on the grassy hill with black eyes and busted noses, we joked and laughed as love and friendship throbbed and stung upon our young bodies..."
My step-father was a bizarre person. He was a conman and a heavy drinke, a compulsive gambler and an ex-boxing champ. When I was 6 he left my mother for the arms of a man we only ever knew as 'The Ball Squeezer' and earned his money doing just that: dressing up as a school headmaster and squeezing the balls of his companion for £12 a session. During the remainder of my formative years he was in and out of police cells and courts, charged with everything from robbery to tax evasion, GBH and breach of the peace. Still, this was the man I called “Dad” and even with all his eccentricities and faults he was the most stable thing within miles.
With a nose that had been flattened and busted twelve times, a six inch chib mark running down the left side of his face, and both hands and arms daubed in prison tattoos, he was a young family’s hope... he was all we had. When my mother attempted suicide, or worse survived, it was him that would feed, clothe, and bathe us. But my stepfather was no ordinary man, he was a true eccentric. It was only as I grew older and looked back that I realised something crazy had blown through and coloured my life, and in turn, affected me in many subtle ways. Here is the story of The Man who gave me Wilde.
“God isn’t he ugly!” were my stepfather's words when he saw me for the first time raw and premature in the Royal Free Hospital. “He looks like a little old man!” Of course, I don’t remember him mouthing those words, but that story was repeated to me so often that it stands as my first false memory.
The next memory I have is of him holding me by the ankles and lowering me down into a tomb. “Thats death!” he’d say, peering in over my feet, “Can you see anything?” If he wasn’t holding me down graves or telling me hideous bedtime stories about ghouls, perverts, decapitations or diseases, he’d be inside doing the ironing in a dress. In summer he would spend his days sitting out on the dustbin in the front yard reading Orwell or Darwin and slurping away at huge cups of sugary tea. Every Sunday at 3 pm he would set a table up on the pavement and sit there alone wolfing down a full Sunday roast. More than once he was accused of indecent exposure. He was such a spectacle that the Estate Agents paid him to stay inside whilst they were around taking photo’s. It was the 1980’s and property prices in Fulham had shot through the roof. The last thing Foxtons wanted was a bald, semi-dressed gay man, with an exposed ballbag being the backdrop to 'an exquisite victorian maisonette.'
Besides many other things my step-father was also a fitness fanatic. More than any other man I have ever known he took an obsessive interest in his body, and the shape and contours of his muscles. Standing in front of the curtainless front windows he’d be lifting weights, squeezing his Bull Worker or doing star jumps. Whilst walking us to school he’d often drop to the floor and begin doing pressups. “One... Two... THREE..” we’d hear him blow. Passing under scaffold he’d invariably leap up and do 10 or 15 lift-ups, the veins in his neck pulsating and his face looking like it was about to explode. “I just love exercise,” he’d declare, “nothing feels better than the pain of a good work-out!”
My stepfather was also a ‘gleamer’. That meant he gleamed from the streets, picking up and dragging home anything which could be used. Many an evening and weekend he’d drag me along to help haul an old carpet or mattress back home. As he rummaged through skips I would constantly wander off, petrified that a school friend may pass and see me. But it was not just furnitures that he gleamed, it was gold and money too. Convinced he was in possession of magical powers he would dowse city maps with a ring on the end of a string, believing it would guide him to the city’s treasures. “Gold... gollld.. golllllld” he would repeat spookily with his eyes half closed as if in some kind of weird trance. Walking down the street he would suddenly do a U-turn and without a word and march derangedly back the direction we had just come from: “I’ve got that feeling!” he’d say “my toes are all tingling... I'm gonna find something!” And he did, he found a lot of stuff, but not because he was gifted or had any magical powers, but because he walked with his nose in the gutter seven hours a day, everyday. If a wallet or a note was dropped in West London, the chances are it would be him that would find it. He never saw the days he returned home empty-handed. But we did, and what's more, we felt them.
When my mother finally disappeared from the house for good we were left to his sole trust. Working nights in Soho he had no option but to lock us in the house from school and then go out and pray we’d still be there when he returned. Mostly we were, but on odd occasions he’d have to come and collect my brother, sister and I from the police cells. Finding a note stuck on the door he’d turn up at the station at 1am steaming drunk. Swaying and incoherent they’d chuck him in the cell too and then we’d all wait until he sobered up or until a neighbour arrived and acted as guardian. It was here that the Social Services were first introduced to the family. Initially my step-father despised them, but when he realised he was stable enough to keep us, yet unstable enough to receive their free Christmas and Easter hampers, he used them as he used everyone: to procure benefits or money to fund his gambling, social and drinking habits.
Though a heavy drinker (11 pints a night) my step-father was not an alcoholic. Ok, medically, statistically and practically he was, but in the sense that he had to drink, needed to to exist, no... he was not of that ilk. And unlike my mothers drinking his did not darken a generation or lead to multiple forms of abuse. My Stepfather was a happy drunk and more than anything he drunk to work.... he drunk 'Dutch courage”. And God, doing what he did he needed courage - anyone would. He was a con working the streets of Central London. That's how he put the bread on the table. These cons would involve multiple schemes and ploys, all designed to turn a tenner into a fifty or a pint into a wallet full of US dollars. And for every hustle there was a name:
The Trust Game: this involved working in pairs to befriend a tourist, get him drunk, and finally walk out the bar with his wallet full of cash. After a few drinks, one of the two men would demand the tourist’s wallet in a test of his “trust”. Taking the wallet he would leave the bar only to return seconds later celebrating the fact that he could have disappeared but didn’t. He would then have the punter count his cash and testify that it was all still there. Having had the wallet and now sure the client was worth the drinks they were supplying him they’d repeat the “trust” process a couple of times. Finally whoever was acting as ‘the runner’ would disappear with the wallet and not return. The other (the sitter) would wait with the punter until the police came and give a statement of what happened, claiming that he too had only just met the thief.
Swicking: Pschological trick to get change of a larger note when paying with a smaller one. This would involve buying a round of drinks and offering up a £50 in payment. Every time the barman goes to fetch the order my stepfather would suddenly ask for something else, ALWAYS with the £50 held up like a name card. When convinced the barman has registered the fifty note, it would then be swapped (swicked) for a tenner. More often than not change would be given for the fifty. My stepfather was infamous for this little scam and known and barred from all but three West End bars for it.
Tipping: Loitering around betting shops pretending to have insider knowledge on a trainer/horse. My step father would choose the horse most likely to lose, but convince a punter that he had inside info and the horse had been trained up for the race. He would find someone willing to wager £20 on it and would take their money but only wager a bet for £2. On the carbon copy receipt he'd add a nought and give it to the punter. As the race started he would then sneak out the betting shop just in case the horse romped home... which happened many times.
Pressure Dealing: Selling bum gear to drug users. Either hash that was made from ingredients at home or amphetamine that was baking powder, my father would set up a small drug deal. Supplying a little genuine stuff as a taster he’d conclude the deal with his home made recipes. On the point of handover he’d suddenly scream “Fuck, there’s the police!!! Stash that and get away!!” By the time the buyer had a chance to eye his wrap it was too late. Unfortunately my stepfather came unstuck twice with this hustle. The first time it nearly cost him his life and the second time his freedom.
Rolling: Posing as a homosexual, and then robbing the client either before or during the act. (Sometimes it was old-fashioned Sex for Money with no ‘rolling’ involved.)
Picking: Classic game of trying to remove jewelery or wallets without being detected.
Collecting: Travelling the subway and unblocking the ‘returned coins’ slot of vending machines which had been blocked days in advance.
These cons would start off at 3pm and go on until last orders were called. There was a little team of seven or eight and they all worked together. At the end of the night they’d meet up and pool, then divide the earnings. My real father was also a part of this little crowd, but because of his heroin problem he was not much liked and even less trusted. In absence of being arrested my step dad would fall in the front door and crawl the stairs between midnight and 1am. Reeking of beer and with sweet and sour sauce dripping from his chin he’d wake us up relating the stories of how he had got the money and/or jewellery that was sprawled out on the floor. I enjoyed these tales and literally hung off his every word and description. But mostly I enjoyed hearing about the fights... how my stepfather had fought himself free or knocked justice into one of the crooked crooks. He once told me that he had lifted a man off his feet with an uppercut and then hit him 21 times before he came back down!
But although often involved in altercations he was not domestically violent and only beat me on a handful of occasions and my mother a little more. More than his “love” & “hate” tattooed fists, it was his voice that instilled fear into us. It was the same voice I had heard when he screamed at Mr Evans and then threatened to pull away the jack from under the car if he didn’t remove himself and take the punches that were banked for him. He had a very definite way to let people know that anger had curled his hand into a fist and if they didn’t relent would soon be involuntarily punching away at their face. In every way my stepfather was full of confidence and very often this manifested itself in very weird ways.
With 40 odd years of unquestioned authority behind him he seemed to have acquired a very peculiar and particular notion of self image. He was extremely vain, but not the type of vanity where he was in the least concerned with public opinion. His was a different kind of self-consciousness, a perverse vanity that played to his fantasy of who and what he was. With absolutely no fashion conscience and solely interested in a garments comfort or practicality he would adapt and wear them to his own needs and desires. But not in any sane way. Rather he would tear the arms of his shirt as he queued to buy it, or roll up his trouser legs to the knee. He’d pull the silk lining out of expensive jackets because it made them “too small and constrictive”. In summer he’d cut the toes out his shoes and walk about with his thick yellow feet poking out the top. And it wasn’t just his clothes he’d do that to. I remember being sent to school in a pair of football boots with the plastic studs sawn off: “They’ll do...” he said “No-one will ever know”. Of course the world knew. We were eight year old kids with heads full of football results and the latest trainers. These weren’t even Adidas football boots, but some dodgy German rip-off with about eighteen stripes! And my excuse: “Oh there just to play football in!” didn’t cut the ice, because with no grip I could barely walk without falling, skidding or sliding like a new born deer. That they were also 3 sizes too big and shaped like pre-EU banana’s just added to the misery. I think it was the only day of my youth that I actually sat still.
But my stepfather was not a mean man, and though on multiple occasions I died with embarrassment in his presence, I would in time learn to respect him and even admire him for the way he was and what he indirectly passed on to me. He was crazy, but he was not insane and his eccentricities were not unhealthy ones. He just did not come from a normal mould and had survived, formed and shaped himself.
At the same time he was the hardest, cleverest most stupid man I had ever known. He read Darwin but got it all wrong.... attributed quotes to Conan Doyle when they were from Lewis Carrol. He would surmise and give political solutions to problems after reading just half a paragraph on a subject, and in his life he would pass himself off as a gangster, writer, poet, artist, sociologist, anthropologist, antique dealer, chef, lawyer and professor. In truth he was a little of all those things without ever genuinely being either one. He was a composite of many great parts, but he was not a great man. He was a petty thief and called upon certain characteristics or knowledge in an attempt to wheedle a few quid out of someone’s pocket. He learnt that a literary bore will be more likely to buy you a drink if you can at least listen to his ramblings and stay awake... that another criminal will help you out a tight spot if you show you “know the game.” Instead all these great parts merged and resulted in a man walking around the streets pushing a shopping trolley full of scrap metal. In the summer he done this in his pants, in winter donning a womans fur coat. But it was all those parts that were to fire me into action.... that would push me on the hunt for knowledge myself.
My natural reverence and competition to my father (step), my desire/need to better him, prove his arguments wrong, would lead me into libraries, bookshops and places of learning. In that sense he has only ever had an influence on my intellectual life, and is the only person from my upbringing without the slightest connection to my drug life.
If I started reading Oscar Wilde at 13 it was to understand what it was he was chortling away to. If I then moved on to Orwell and then Dostoevsky it was to argue these books out with him. When I got into politics it was just to outsmart him, to have him back down in the face of real knowledge... to collapse at the realisation of his own shortcomings. Of course he never did... he never felt inferior to anyone. In 1997 he defended himself in West London’s Magistrates Court against attempted robbery charges and stood rattling in front of the judge as though he were a top flight lawyer. He pranced and strutted around the courtroom with all the gestes, pauses and smiles... pulling up thousands of contradictions in the prosecutors claims. And he’d probably have gotten off with it, had he not done it all bare chested and with a neck strung with thick gold chains. But that was him. He felt superior inside... and not just superior, more clever... smarter. He could not be taught, he could not be lectured. He knew it all and more and in no way could he be drank under the table.
With this realisation I no longer tried to bring him down. Instead I sat in silence as he unleashed mouthfuls of ignorance, admiring his prose yet inwardly snorting and smirking at the ludicrous things he was saying. And it was there that I realised he did have one great ability and one that I would never have: he had the ability to sound like he knew what he was talking about... to have you believe that he was a true authority on his subject. In that sense he was a genius and it is probably the reason he was such a successful conman: As for impressing him I never did. The closest I got was when I returned from a weeks school holiday and told him I had fallen in love with another boy. And for 5 minutes he was impressed and for a little less he even believed that maybe, after all, I really was his son.
Now, 2010, he is in his 67th year. He’s stopped hustling the streets and now does it on ebay with first edition books and antiques. But these days I have very little to do with him. Since my best friend Ewan died in his house 10 years ago we lost contact and never really regained it. Soon after he moved out as he felt ‘The Spirit of Death’ was somehow then a part of the place. He also threw me out as a possible prevention against having to find me like that next. He is completely aware of and comfortable with my heroin addiction yet he is very distanced from it. He sees that as too much a reminder of my mother and more, my real father and his one time friend. In a sense I am his living nightmare, a constant reminder of his impotence where women are concerned, a definite confirmation of his lack of real masculinity.
Of the three kids my mother doesn’t attribute any 100% to him. She says my sister probably is his (or Scotch Peter’s) and my brother, well... he’s just a mystery. It was reported that at his birth she asked “What colour is he?” But my stepfather can play blind to these queries and if he doesn't look too deeply he has two certain offspring's. But with me it’s different. Since the age of 8 it was out and in the open that I was not “his” and so looking at me he sees all that I am not. But the truth is I am more him than any of my siblings... I have more of him in me than he’ll ever know. His influence has been great and positive and pushing, but it has never been daunting or dark. I only ever celebrate him and take pride in those traits that he has passed onto me. He’s another hero, and along with two dead drunks is the third poet in my life. Without him I would have no Wilde, no Orwell, Steinbeck or Dostoevsky. Without his stories and descriptions I would surely never have taken a love for words and literature or celebrated all the things that were not worth celebrating. And without that, and without the words I use to recall them, I’d have only heroin and an early death to keep me amused. And if that were the future then it would be so very dismally bleak. No, he may not be my biological father but the fact remains and is indisputable: without him I’d never have been born.
Autumn has always been a very special time for me. I remember London in October: The city full of burnt wood and magic; the cold creeping in off pink skies; the warm evening traffic crawling slowly into nowhere. There is something so sedated and calming in this time. I breathe it in. And with each intake of burnt air a memory drifts into my head.
As a young boy I remember walks along the mansions near the river. It would be just as the light fell, as the parks and public spaces were chained and locked, and mellow winds chased the scents of the freshly dead summer around. Overhead the last flocks of migrating birds would twist and dive by. The final distant calls of nature would sound out and then fade with no reply. So many such evenings I would wander mesmerised down shadowy west London avenues, staring in amazement at the illuminated stained glass doors, the homely hallways behind them, and through large Victorian windows, family get togethers in the living room. I would watch young girls play piano, or peer through huge open plan rooms as families sat and ate supper in the distance. I loved those little walks. The tranquility as the light gave way, as the street lamps rescued the city from darkness, and as life and nature and all things living and dying settled down for the night. For a few brief moments I felt as though I was a part of it all, that I was watching a lost film roll of my own family life. It was with a longing sadness that I dragged myself home, my young footsteps echoing a loneliness that only I could understand.
Later on in autumn, as the evenings darkened ever earlier and cool winds cut chill and whistled through stairwells and lift shafts, I remember being sent on errands to the Fish & Chip Shop. In fear of strange shadows and pursuing footsteps, I would run back home, holding the bag of hot food against my stomach. But in my house a fish & chip supper did not signal a weekly treat whereby the day's food budget had been abandoned in favour of succulent golden battered cod, spiced Jamaican patties, pickled eggs and chips soaked in onion vinegar. No, they were sad events: suppers which signified that my stepfather was absent and my mother, due to the intake of several litres of cheap vodka, was incapable of cooking. Often my mother would use my short absence as an opportunity to gather up all the tranquilizers and sharp knives in the house. I would return home to find her sitting on the side of her bed, wearing a sagged and evil clown face, and either chewing on mouthfuls of pink and green capsules or running a sharp potato knife menacingly up and down her wrist. More often than not the fish would end up splattered against the wall and the chips tramped into the carpet or vomited up into the toilet. On very special nights I’d be hit in the head with the hot bag of food, and then sent off to call for an ambulance on another false suicide attempt. In the early hours of the morning my stepfather would return twelve pints of beer heavier, and finding the house empty, he’d stagger back out knocking up the neighbours until he found the one who had taken us in and saved us from police cells, or worse, the Social Services. I’d hear his deep dangerous voice asking of details and then he’d lead us home, a small rabble of sleepy heads, blankets and teddy bears. But that’s not a autumn memory, not really... that’s just a memory, a timeless reminiscence of days long gone.
Autumn is also the build up to winter, to crystal brittle skies and a silver sun whose distance fails to penetrate the cold. It’s a mid-time, a halfway house between two extremes, a time of beauty and romance and reflection. So I reflect. I send myself to sleep with past images and memories. As the leaves start to bruise and prepare to fall, and as goalposts replace cricket boundaries, so once again I get lost in memory and return to lands that no longer exist. This post was brought out by the season. It is born from changing times and lost and forgotten loves. On the winds of this new autumn, under fading October light, I deliver another piece of myself: The first 31 predominant memories of my life.
I do not remember being born; not many of us do. But I do remember being fed. That is my 1st memory, being held to my mother's breast as she lay on a blanketed bed feeding me. My 2nd memory is of being scolded for knocking over a glass full of Martini... my mother pushing me off my tricycle and onto the floor as she sponged up the wet. My 3rd is the year 1980. I had returned home after my first day at school with that nugget of knowledge: “It’s 1980. Mum, the year is 1980!” My 4th memory is watching my father open up his veins with a small meat cleaver after a violent argument with my mother. I watched from behind a long pleated skirt as my stepfather fought and wrestled him out the house. My 5th memory is a camel ride in London Zoo. Red top, Wellington boots, and beige Rupert the Bear trousers. My 6th recollection is my mother's scream, an unbearable sound that pierced my life and brought me fully into existence. My 7th is learning that my father had been murdered, dismembered, boiled, diced and flushed down a toilet. My 8th is finding my mother choking to death on the froth of an overdose, pills and broken glass littering her room. My 9th memory is of the hospital ward where she laid for a week - bruised, unconscious and full of tubes. My 10th memory is taking a beating from my stepfather and then having my head shaved. My 11th is a dark room, nighttime radio, the glurping of neat alcohol being poured from bottle to glass, burning cigarettes, LED’s and tears. I remember the touch of pubic hair as my mother rubbed herself against my little legs. My 12th memory is realising that my brother and sister had rejected and distanced themselves from me after it was properly understood that I shared a different father. My 13th memory is my mother turning up drunk on my birthday and smashing all my new toys. My 14th is falling off my bike and losing consciousness. I remember pulling a wheelie, a pair of spinning handlebars, approaching concrete ground and then nothing. I came around grazed and bloodied on a public bench with a pair of watery grey eyes peering into mine. “You ‘ad a bit ov a fall young man... you’re Ok though!” My 15th memory is the Black House*. My 16th is my mother spraying perfume in my stepfather's eyes and then his hands, tattooed with ‘Love’ & ‘hate’, smashing into her jaw. My 17th is breaking my collarbone and laying in unbearable pain for 3 days before being taken to hospital. My 18th memory is being hit by the sperm of one of my mother's lovers. My 19th feeling the force of adult fists and kicks. My 20th is my stepfather doing the ironing in a dress. My 21st recollection is being arrested and detained in Hammersmith police station after throwing a grapefruit through Mr Brownhead's window. My 22rd & 23rd are of my mothers repeated suicide attempts. My 24th is being summoned to my mother's room and her declaring that she was dying of cancer. My 25th memory is being hit in the side of the head by a large bunch of keys. My 26th is fleeing the family home with my mother, brother & sister. A secret car ride across London and hiding from my stepfather. My 27th is the window ledge of Hobb's Hotel in Victoria, my paralytic mother swaying on it 70ft above the ground. My 28th is Christmas 1988, my mother's lesbian lover trying to strangle my sister to death. My 29th is White City Estate. No furniture, gas or electricity. It was cigarettes, stolen cars and my mother's final, yet unsuccessful, suicide attempt. My 30th memory is throwing a world globe out off the geography room window and being permanently excluded from school. My 31st memory is starting off on my first days building work at the age of 15. I realised on that day, as i returned home absolutely exhausted after 8 hours of soul destroying work, that I was no longer a child, that the burst-balloon-sponge-cake party was over. I also realised that hell was not an obligatory place of stay and I was not there on her Majesty’s service. There were roads which led to hell and if I was ever to return there again it would at least be in consequence of my own footsteps. In a sense that sums it up. From the fall of my innocence rose my independence, a passionate and dangerous independence that flirts with hell without quite descending into it. But maybe that’s not really a choice? Maybe I am just a blessed and lucky sod?
Anyway, that’s my month of memories... as many reminiscences of my dead youth as there are days in October. But contrary to what it may appear, I have never thought of my young years as a broken or traumatic time. Far from it, my overriding recollections of those years are the memories that do not exist but those which litter and fill in the gaps. The childhood I remember was one of joy and escape... of exhilarating bike rides, hard schoolyard walls and dusty football marathons. I recall late evenings, staying out playing as one by one the other children were called home and finally I was left kicking my ball down dark streets alone. So, in tune with the new season, that is how I see my youth: it was a bruised but not a battered time. It was an autumn and not a winter. And as the new season imposes itself proper and mornings and afternoons sweep cold, my eyes can only blink heavy through golden tones and I can only ride high as once again the scent of burnt wood wafts through another European city. In a way, the combined beauty of 33 autumns is the answer to my unknown equation. The present can never be more wonderful or less hellish than it is right now, because after everything, and before anything else, this is all that there ever really is.
Take care Readers and thanks for sitting out the drought...
My Thoughts and Wishes as Always and Ever, Shane.x
Two months before my 17th birthday my stepfather was released from prison and moved into the family home alongside my mother, brother and I. Along with an electric safety razor, his prison shoes and tattoo's, he brought with him a backpack full of opiates. Geoffrey Smith would be my 1st drug dealer, my second stepfather and the stepping stone that took me from recreational drugs to hardcore opiates. 7 years later, with the exception of my brother, the household will have descended into full-scale heroin and crack addiction... my mother, stepfather and I rolling about sick on the floor, lying cheating and stealing from each other. It would end with Geoff having both his legs amputated, my mother booking herself into rehab, and me fleeing London with 500ml of methadone, a bloodstained shirt and a french lover. This post details the bizarre descent of my family into drug addiction, how we managed through that and the past and present consequences of those years.
* * * *
In 1983, the year of my fathers murder, Geoff Smith held a barful of people hostage with a sawn-off shotgun after he discovered his wife was having an affair with the proprietors 18 year old son. After a 5 hours siege and coming down from a tab of LSD, Geoff exchanged four shots with the police and then surrendered himself and his freedom to the British Penal System. He was arrested and sentenced to 15 years in Wakefield High Security Prison. Of the 15 years he served 9, during which time he met my mother and married her inside. At the end of his jail term, released 6 years early on account of good behaviour, he boarded a train to London. As he had kept his release date a secret no-one knew he was on his way. One dull Friday afternoon I answered the door to a small, squat, grey haired man with pin prick pupils and an Adidas sports holdall. He shook my hand, introduced himself as my new stepfather and said he had come to stay. In disbelief I called my mum and watched in absolute amazement as she jumped into his arms and then dragged him off into the bedroom. It would be 12 years before he left.
The first thing I noticed about Geoff was that he slept a lot. During the first month I only saw him on a handful of occasions. Rather, he and my mother spent their days and nights couped up in their bedroom with a small television set... my mother occasionally staggering down the hallway and into the kitchen to knock up a peanut butter sandwich. I reasoned that Geoff's heavy and long sleeping was a prison habit he had yet to shake off, and to a certain extent I was correct. It was a prison habit alright... a prison drug habit. He had entered the system a drinker and dope smoker and had left an opiate addict, crushing down and snorting up tiny white pills boxed under the name of Temgesi... a strong painkiller doled out to the terminally ill. Geoff bought them by the box load from a friends mother who was dying of liver cancer. The active drug in Temegesic is buprenorphine, the same drug that Subutex, the heroin substitute, is comprised of. But at this time Subutex did not exist, buprenorphine was not yet being used as a heroin substitute.
From the moment I discovered what these little pills were I was intent on trying them. This wasn't the first time I had thought about opiates, I had had them on my mind a long time before Geoff rolled onto the scene... I had been half-heartedly trying to acquire heroin since I was 15, but didn’t know where or how to get it. It was not long before I approached Geoff and asked him for a couple of his Temgesic's. In order to befriend me he slipped me a few outside of my mums knowledge and warned me to not take more than one at a time.... and that’s what I did, and then I floated off to heaven. Within a month I was crushing down and snorting up the pills almost daily... using the same tube as my mother.
This went on for about a year, then our immunity increased and we were on 3 or 4 pills a time... from here on we had problems. Temgesic were very hard to get... They were almost impossible to buy on the street. When our supply was finished we put our lives on hold until the end of the month, until the next repeat prescription was ready. We would live in stretches of two weeks... and when the drugs were gone we’d all sit in miserable silence, staring at a blank TV that anyone was too bored to get up and turn on. Sometimes we’d buy a few grams of amphetamine and try to pass the time that way, but as the come down hit us we yearned for opiates more than ever. I learnt very quickly that you either use opiates all the time or not at all.... there is no comfortable middle ground.
This behaviour with buprenorphine continued for a little more than three years, until the day we received news that the mother of Geoff's friend had succumbed to the cancer that had gradually been monopolising her - our supply was cut dead (though not quite immediately). We convinced Geoff’s friend not to declare the death of his mother to her doctor and collect a final prescription. He done this and we payed him triple the price as agreed, but that was really the finish of it. With our last two weeks worth of Temgesic we schemed and planned our future supply. I convinced/paid my supervisor at work to go to a private doctor for a slipped disc he had suffered. I told him to say the hospital had once given them to him and they were the only things that eased the pain. Geoff’s method was a little more radical. He had a friend hit him in the chest with a huge mallet. Due to the blow he sustained three broken ribs and managed to convince his doctor to prescribe him Temgesic for that. Between the two of us we managed. We didn’t have as much as we needed, though at least we had some. But doctors are very wary about prescribing such strong opiates, especially for back and rib pain, and within two years both had lost their scripts and we were left in the lurch again. It was at this time that I started scouring the streets for Temgesic... approaching homeless people, new-age travellers, and alcoholics. But all avenues were fruitless, until I met Gerald, a new work colleague and someone who showed an active interest in hard drugs.
Gerald was the first person outside my household to even know what these drugs were. He told me he knew of someone that could reconnect the supply line. I met Gerald one evening after work and we travelled to a ground floor flat on The West Ken Estate. Of course, it turned into a Witch hunt, no-one showing up and no pills to be had. That’s when Gerald played his true hand and suggested that I buy heroin instead. “It’s exactly the same.. only stronger.” he said. “I can get that for you right now.” Without even having to think I gave Gerald the money and watched as he disappeared down an alley with a small hooded black boy. He returned a few minutes later, spat 3 small bags into his hand, wiped them clean and handed them to me. I gave one back to him and we parted.
I arrived home excited and proud. I felt like the breadwinner returning with the weeks pay... the food that would end everyone’s godless hunger and revitalize them back into the world of the living. I rolled the two bags on the table in the same way one throws gambling dice: “It’s heroin...” I said “A bag each.” Geoff was very happy, but my mother looked nervously at the bags. She didn’t say anything, but I could read her thoughts. She had lived with a junkie, my father, and she had never joined him in addiction, now, some 10 years later and at the age of 48 she was confronted with her son giving her heroin... heroin she knew she would take. And she did take it... we all did, and Gerald was right, it was exactly the same as buprenorphine only much stronger and much more readily available. After that first bag of heroin I knew I was/would become an addict. The fact is , I was a heroin addict long before I had ever even touched it. As for my mother and stepfather, well they enjoyed it just as much... and soon we were all regularly scoring and spending the evenings together.
Heroin addiction is not like it is portrayed in film or book. One does not take it once and turn into a hopeless and desperate addict. Addiction is a slow process and progresses from gradual to constant use. It always takes a few months and in our case it took almost a whole year before we even became aware that addiction was looming. What started out as a weekend thing soon covered Friday and Monday. Wednesdays also crept in to the mix and before long we were using every evening. The start of the evening became earlier and earlier, until finally we were using on waking... the real sign of proper physical and psychological addiction. It is no coincidence that on entering treatment centres one of the first questions is : “Do you use on waking? How long have you been using on waking?”
The progression from Temgesic to heroin happened over many years, during which time many things changed. I had grown up and left the family home, and Geoff and my mother had given up the flat on White City Estate and moved to a small maisonette in Shepherds Bush. As I was spending most my time there, scoring or using, I decided it would be cheaper and easier if I gave up my apartment and move back in with my mother. We were all using daily by this time and when funds allowed crack also. But the exertions and the expense of drug life was fast catching up on us, and in a bid to keep ahead of the game Geoff and I were constantly borrowing or advancing money . We were living on our next months pay rather than our last. It was a precarious game and one that would soon fail us. We were building pyramids of cards in the wind... We were heading for disaster.
Our first bout of junk sickness did arrive... just as we knew it would. I was out of cash and my friend who would lend me money was not in London that weekend. Geoff had been refused cash at work and instead had been given a cheque... he had a long 4 day wait for it to clear. During the first morning we all sat together in the living room twiddling our thumbs and asking the other: “You’re sure you’ve got nothing? Not even £5???” We emptied out our bags and pockets again and searched under the sofa and down the sides of the cushions... but we were all out, there was not a penny in the house.. It was the first time in our addiction that we had awoken with not even the heroin to give us a morning boot. We were not ill, but we were psychologically uncomfortable. By evening we were all on our backs, snivelling and retching and sweating. Our yawns were so wide and so deep that we almost dislocated our jaws trying to get them out... and when we opened our scrunched up eyes, burning hot tears would stream down our faces. By nighttime body smells and fluids filled the room.... we were so sick we barely had the strength or inclination to go to the toilet. It pained to move and it pained even more to keep still. Buckets of vomit sat unemptied in the room and crusty mucus clung to the blankets and pillows. The muscles in our bodies had had enough... they rejected the brains signals to move, and would spasm now and again completely of their own accord. We each lay in our own little hell groaning and crying and cursing a world that could not float £10 through the window... Not EVEN £10 measly pound. We were in one of the main financial cities of the world, in our street alone there was ten’s of millions of pounds worth of property and possessions, yet if you need money right HERE right NOW you cannot get it... what the fuck is that!?
After 48hrs, real debilitating junk illness had arrived. We were sick through to the marrow of our bones, bed ridden with all poisons of the world breaking out through the pores in our skin. And there is no respite or escape. Sleep is impossible when you are ill – you must suffer hell with wide open eyes. We lay there like this for three long and miserable days, the clock ticking by in hour length seconds. We groaned and swore at invisible pains, cursing the day we were born and the world we born into. We damned the rich and the fortunate and we bellyached about not having a pittance between us. We cursed Geoff's employer and bemoaned the banking system that makes one wait four days for a cheque to either clear or bounce. We cursed almost everything, but we never cursed heroin... we just prayed for that. Each of us sending out silent messages to a God that none of us believed in.
After three days I made an emergency call to my absent friend. She must have heard my discomfort for although she had just drove back to London that morning she said she’d cross the city and bring me some money. I told my mum and Geoff and we sat waiting the three hours for her to arrive. She did arrive, on time as ever, and there ended our first bout of family junk illness.
We lived together like this for the first year of addiction, during which time we sold anything and everything we had. My guitars and music equipment. The video... the DVD player. My brothers fishing rods, golf clubs and stereo. My mother decided that her little collection of jewellery was worthless and so one afternoon we sorted through it and took it along to the pawn shop. Her and Geoff adding their wedding rings to the kitty. We flogged the two antique lamps I had stolen from work and finally we sold the television. We ended up spending our evenings consuming heroin and crack and staring at the square dust patch on the wall where the TV used to be. To raise more money Geoff & I started doing private building work on the weekends... me knocking up cement and him constructing walls that we could crouch behind and smoke crack. Once an elderly client caught us on the pipe and asked what we were doing. We said it was a special substance that is blown into the wall and which hardens the cement quicker. At the end of the day we were paid and told not to ever come back.
But these times, by no means wonderful, did have their worth. Through the joint use of heroin and addiction I bonded with my mother. We had the same concerns and the same priorities and when we got high we spent the time talking and going over the past. She started taking some care of me, scoring for me and making sure I had heroin to get to work. In the daytime she’d pick me up clean needles and return my used ones. She done all she could to keep my injecting clean and free from disease. For my part I helped keep her in dope... leaving her money for a rock of choice each day. As we fell into sickness together love would be shown by the other managing to raise some money and then sharing their heroin with the other. I have memories of hanging around street corners, both of us scanning the street for a sight of our dealer.... rushing home with a pocketful of heroin and crack and smoking or shooting away our illness. Ok, it’s not the usual thing that brings a mother and son close together but it worked for us. Through the ordeal of heroin addiction we managed to understand the others suffering. Her past problems and behaviour suddenly made sense, and in that moment I forgave her all.
The first year and a half was rough trek, but then the good times came. I had been provoking trouble at work due to the conditions and the treatment of some of my colleagues. One Thursday morning I was called into the directors office, fired and handed a cheque written out to the tune of £10,000 on the agreement I took no action. I accepted the offer it in a flash. Two weeks later I landed a top job managing an accountancy company and for the moment our financial worries were over. But as one problem goes, so another fills it’s place, and with my recent payout and my newly acquired directors wage I started scoring crack every evening. And not just for me... for my mother and Geoff too. Soon the household waited desperately for my return from work... knowing that I would arrive with my hands full of crack and smack. It was the crack addiction that finally blew the biscuits out the tin.
Crack is a much more desperate addiction than heroin.... it’s effects don’t last as long and the come down leaves the user wired and willing to do the most daring things to raise money for the next rock. Because I was buying the crack and all were reliant upon my return from work, there was a certain amount of animosity which began to develop towards me. It wasn’t long before money disappeared from my wallet or rocks of crack and heroin started going AWOL. Geoff would go out to score and return with nothing saying he had been robbed or lost the money. Then the bedroom door would close and from inside I’d hear the unmistakable blabbering of crackheads.During the evening the door would open and smoke would pour out like opening a freezer on a hot day. “Oh, it’s just the cigarettes.” Geoff would say “They’ve changed the gauge of the papers!” I didn't care, I was in the living room piping by myself... it was the theft and lies that annoyed me. I suppose they just wanted some power and control over their own addiction... I understand that. It’s very difficult holding a habit and relying on someone else to fund it. My mother was in the middle, and like any half-decent junkie used her position to best advantage. She wandered between living room and bedroom, taking the benefits of both. When Geoff thought she was coming in to collect my dirty plates and cups, she was actually sneaking crack outside of his knowledge... collecting it in rolled up tissue and smoking it on her own later or when we were at work. All these lies and sneaking made for an angry and explosive house. It was not long before Geoff smashed an ashtray into my head and I knocked out two of his teeth with my elbow. We never recovered from that fight or from me pitifully flicking him rocks of crack on my return home.from work.
During the next two years crack and heroin took all our money. I was still living within my means, but Geoff had borrowed, stole and sold all he could to fund his addiction. His latest idea to raise funds was taking on private and undeclared building work... work he neither had the qualifications nor the tools required in order to carry it out. What he did have was an almighty drug problem that pushed him to insane lengths to get money. 50Ft up, fixing the tiles of someones roof for £100, he slipped and slid. He held onto the guttering for as long as he could and then strength robbed him of his grip. He let go and dropped feet first to the ground, breaking both ankles and shattering both shin bones. He was in hospital for 5 months and two weeks after his release he was hit by an infection and both feet bloated up and turned brown. This infection would eventually rob him off his legs and leave him wheelchair bound with a crackpipe hidden under the blanket that covered the stumps of his legs.
With Geoff out of action and all the fuss and expense of hospital visits, my mother decided it was time to quit drugs. She applied for a detox programme, and after waiting 4 weeks she started out on a Methadone Maintenance program. Since that day she has never taken heroin again... though her crack problem still lingers on. After giving up smack she still continued to allow me to live and use in the house, and she still continued to score for me in the daytime whilst I worked. In turn, I continued to keep her supplied her with a healthy amount of crack each evening.
Two months after the amputation of his legs Geoff returned to the house, but in his absence things had changed and so had he. With no legs he used my mum as a servant and shouted orders for crack cocaine at me from the bedroom... threatening to chuck me out the house and phone the police if I didn’t comply. Finally we all had had enough, Geoff too. My mother was in no position to look after a disabled and demanding crackhead, and after months of incessant arguing Geoff left. I carried him downstairs and wheeled him to the Social Security offices. I rolled him to the reception desk and left, putting two rocks of heroin and £100 in his top pocket With no handshake and no goodbye I was gone... though in truth I was expecting to see him later and hear some half-arsed story as to why he was back. But the strange thing is, I, nor my mother have ever seen him again... he disappeared without word or trace or legs. Maybe he was more fed up with drugs than I realised... maybe sitting at the reception, at yet another person’s mercy, he had looked down at himself, at the place where his legs used to be and realised that this was not a good place to be at his or any age in life. Maybe he regretted ever coming into contact with my mother or me. Maybe he chucked the heroin away and used the money to help get himself back on an even keel. On the other hand, and more probable, maybe he fiddled as much money as he could from the social services, wheeled himself back d own the Uxbridge Road and spent it all on crack and smack. If I had to hazard a guess I’d say he done just that.
I continued living with my mother, working, scoring and smoking white together. But I was becoming bored of that life and the crack was beginning to affect me badly. I was turning into work dishevelled without having slept and with a bag full of needles and heroin. I would spend the first hour with my office door closed whilst I searched in desperation for a vein. One employee found a needle in my office and another popped his head over the toilet cubicle one morning and saw me digging for veins and with needles scattered over the floor and a crackpîpe sitting on the cistern. He tried to blackmail me and then left in a rage after his complaint was received as lies and nonsense by my directors... No-one else believed him either. Though I never considered quitting heroin, I was constantly cursing and promising to stop smoking crack. I started going out in the evenings or staying late at work so as not to be around dealers. My mum would score my heroin and her crack in the daytime and by the time I arrived home all that would be left were my bags of brown and my clucking mother. It was in this period that I met a french girl, fell desperately in love and began a romance that would finish with me getting onto a MMT program and then exiting London for Lyon and a heroin addiction on alien soil.
On informing my mother of my plans to leave she had mixed feelings. She was happy for me but her mind showed off other fears. What would she do without me? Who would fund her crack addiction? I felt terrible for this... I felt guilty. I had kept her in crack for the past three years and now I was leaving her with nothing. But my life had taken an unexpected turn, and it was a turn that I had to take. It was a fresh break, away from London and away from crack and heroin. But more than that I had fallen in love.... there was someone other than myself to think of, and I couldn’t keep my partner living in the hell she had experienced in London. The decision had to be a selfish one... I had to leave London and those left behind would have to fends for themselves. If my mother would be without crack, well so would I... we’d have to live that together.
My mother was strangely quiet in the week leading up to my departure. We sneaked crack in the house past my girlfriend, and we took turns occupying her whilst the other hit the pipe. The quiet was only broken by half arguments... my mother throwing bitter and sarcastic comments towards me, yet not having the stomach to finish them. Well she did finally get it out.... on the morning of my departure she could hold her anger nor hurt in any longer. She broke down and started crying and asked what would happen to her? To me? What started off as quite healthy despair and fears ended in her accusing me of abandoning her to the dogs... of getting her hopelessly hooked on crack cocaine and then deserting her. She was also jealous that I had found and chosen another women to spend my life with over her. It all came out and as I descended the stairs with my suitcase of clothes ready to join my girlfriend in the waiting taxi, my mother came running down the stairs crying and threw a bag full of my old needles at me:
“They’re yours!!! Fucking take them to France.... don’t leave your shit here for me to tidy up!!!”
The needles hit me in the side of the head and scattered everywhere.... over 300 of them. Two lodged in the side of my neck.and dangled there until I pulled them out and threw them on the floor. Silent with anger I turned around and climbed in the taxi.
“Stanstead Airport, is it?” asked the driver.
“That’s it, mate.... Stanstead. Get me out of this fucking shit hole!” And with that he moved out and slowly pulled away. And as the blood rolled down my neck and soaked through the breast and collar of my shirt I turned my head and peered out the back window. There was my mother, on her knees in the street, sobbing hysterically amongst a pile of old needles as she gathered them together and put them back into the bag. She never looked up, never looked back, and I didn’t expect her to either. In a lifetime of alcohol, violence, sexual and physical abuse, she had never given me so much as a sorry or a pair of regretful eyes. And as the taxi moved and my mother became smaller, I once again surrendered, “I Love You, MUM!” I shouted “I LOVE YOU!” And as the last word slipped out my mouth and the first tears slipped out my eyes so my mother slipped into the distance... Smaller, smaller, and smaller until finally she was gone.
Thanks for sticking with me everyone... my very Best Wishes to All, Shane. x
18 years ago, just before opiates made an entry into my life, I was living on the White City Estate in West london with my mother, my brother and my dog. Whilst there, I only ever made one real friend... that was Andrew Frankham. Unfortunately that friendship ended at the end of a lump of wood, a dog chain and a skateboard. Andy breaking my finger and me breaking his colarbone and his heart. In the past weeks we have been back in touch and have once again become good friends. Here is Andy's version of me, 15 years old and just starting down the long road of drugs and danger. I hope you all enjoy...
A Reflection of Me
Shane and I go back a long time, twenty years in fact. That we managed to find each other on the anniversary of our first encounter is no coincidence. I’ve never believed in such things; there is a reason behind everything, whether we’re able to comprehend said reason is another thing. When he asked me to do a guest spot on his blog and tell his loyal followers a little something of the kid I knew back at the arse end of the ‘80s I at first felt quite honoured, but then reality set in and I realised I hadn’t really thought much about those days in nigh on ten years. The only things I had distinct memory of were the events that led to the parting of the ways for Shane and I; it’s curious how easily we are able to recall the bad times. So I took it as a challenge to myself; for just over a year we had some good times, and got to know each other pretty damn well. Indeed, we became best mates; therefore the good memories had to be juggling around in my mind somewhere. And just like all my worthwhile writing projects, this meant a little research.
I left White City in 1991. It’s always struck me as odd that a concrete jungle with roads named after Commonwealth countries, and houses named in honour of participants of the Commonwealth Games, should be called something with such obvious racist undertones. An historical irony, perhaps? Even more ironic considering the confluence of culture that pervades every aspect of that housing estate. But this is not about the place, so much as how it pertains to the relationship between Shane and I. For some inexplicable reason I’ve never been able to decipher, since 1991 I would return to White City in my dreams. No matter where I was living at the time, no matter what friends I had about me, White City would always resurface in that darkest of subconscious arenas.
In this dream I’d be doing my thing with my friends, usually the most mundane stuff, and we’d start off in whatever given place I was living at the time. Then, as if stepping out of the back of the wardrobe, we’d be in White City. And it always seemed the most natural thing; after all the dreamscape of the unconscious mind rarely entertains the notion of logic, and so having my current friends in the place of my teen years made perfect sense. But I never ended up in just any part of White City, always I’d step into the forecourt of Wolfe House, the red brick block of flats in the shape of a capital L, signalling the truth of that place. The home of Lost Souls. Within seconds I’d be jumping up to the fourth floor, like Superman taking a single leap, and coming to rest outside a door in the corner of that L. I never lived in this flat, that much I knew, yet I would enter as casually as if it were my own home. The interior always seemed dark, shadows dancing around. I’d never think to look around the flat, after all there was a familiarity about it that I’d find comforting, and so I’d walk up the hallway, passing both the kitchen and the living room, until I came to this one white door. Knocking never seemed necessary, and so I’d walk into the room beyond. Empty but for the sparse furniture and posters on the magnolia walls; one poster in particular stuck out, a group of men in tight jeans and t-shirts, with the words Skid Row printed jaggedly above. From there the dream would segue into a new place, and I’d be back with my current group of friends.
An odd dream, one full of meaning but little understanding. For the longest time it made no sense to me; why would I keep returning to this place? Recently, though, some clarity has come my way. When talking to Shane on the phone the other day, going through remembrances some two decades old, he reminded me that his flat was number 40, and in a flash I saw that corner flat of my dream. For the best part of eighteen years my dreamscape would take me to the place Shane lived with his mother, brother and dog. A place where, for the best part of year, I could most often be found. It seems that even though Shane and I had parted company in a terrible way, a part of me kept returning. I had not let go of the friendship we once shared.
Nevertheless a friendship was quickly struck, and it came to pass that Shane and I were more often together than not. It was a pretty standard friendship really, one full of hours talking about random things; music, books, and all kinds of arty stuff. Even back then we were both creative types. Every night we’d be out in Greyhound Park, the overgrown former grounds of the infamous White City Stadium, once renowned for dog racing before it was torn down in the early ‘80s and the ground bought by the BBC, walking his dog. Even now I can see Shane clearly walking beside me, while his dog ran around. Back then Shane was prone to talk quietly while we walked, head lowered, shoulders hunched, thin and tall, dressed in dark clothes. With hindsight and some understanding of body language, it’s obvious now that the signals he was giving off were clearly a clue as to what was going on within. This was a teenager living mostly in his own private world of pain, and as much as I got to know Shane, there was always more to know. But there was so much that he would not let me in on. He often alluded to something nasty in his past, but would clam up whenever I asked him what. Still, those brief moments of potential darkness never harmed our friendship. And yet, for reasons now clear to me, our friendship was a doomed one.
Shane was a volatile young man, always on the verge of courting danger, and this side of him often caused me concern. But again it was something I understood, for I had my own issues going on and there was a heart born of rage bubbling within. That we were kindred spirits was beyond doubt, but he was heading down a path I could not walk, at least not then. We were ultimately too alike; both intelligent, with enquiring minds, prone to mood swings, and bouts of depression. The main difference between Shane and I, though, was his willingness to dance on the side of darkness, a place I couldn’t allow myself to go. I had my family about me, disjointed as they were, and they continued to anchor me. Shane and his family, however, were living in a world of hurt that my teenage mind couldn’t begin to comprehend. As the months past by and 1990 came about, the feeling in the Levene household began to turn grim. They had two lodgers living there; people whom Shane was spending more and more time with. Perhaps it was because they were new and thus more interesting than I, whom he already knew? Here were two adults, two men, doing the kind of things Shane was used to seeing around him; drinking, smoking dope and generally being loud and obnoxious. They probably thought it was funny; Shane certainly seemed to. Drugs became a regular fixture; to my mind it was usually only light drugs, but I suspect it might have been more. I was wonderfully naive about these things back then! I was spending less time there, the welcoming atmosphere diminishing with every visit. To this day I am convinced it wasn’t a malicious act designed to oust me from Shane’s world, rather a moment of life where a single path was meant to split in two.
Shane’s mother was drinking more and it was becoming nigh on impossible to talk to her with any expectations of common sense; and with her drinking came a more maudlin woman talking about random things from her past. In truth I thought she mostly making it up; the brain addled by the excess of alcohol or dope. As for Shane? Well, I saw him around, but we didn’t spend any time alone any more. I do vividly recall one night where we went out to walk the dog and we had this almighty row about something trivial, Shane refusing to talk about what was troubling him, issuing forth sarcastic comment after sarcastic comment. I was left with a sinking feeling in my heart. The loss of a kindred spirit is a harsh reality, and it cuts to the core. I spent most of that night awake, probably crying.
Over the following few months I became the object of much verbal bashing from Shane, almost always when he was with his neighbour whom I suspected was doping up with Shane on a regular basis. It began to wear me down, even though I still held some hope that Shane and I would be able to rekindle the friendship that had been torn away from me. I still popped up to see his mother from time to time, most often when Shane was not about, always sounding her out to see if reconciliation was around the corner. But nada. I had the misfortune of being there on occasion when Shane did come home, and received the darkest and dirtiest looks, usually accompanied by some slur. It was a hard time, seeing this person whom I once considered a friend now treating me like some intruder in his world. The old sparkle in his eyes had started to dim, and now an evil glare seemed to be cast my way.
It all ended one evening in Greyhound Park. Others had got involved in the growing animosity between us. And so egged on, the rage was beginning to burn. Finally we decided, mutually or not I forget, to have it out once and for all. In mind I still see this moment clearly, although I suspect time has altered my perception slightly and built it into something a lot more dramatic than it actually was. But the moment replays like this:
Shane one side of the park, me on the other. Shane’s crowd of onlookers is notably larger than mine. Shane begins shouting obscenities at me, and I think ‘fuck this’, yet at the same time wondering how we had come to this. I know for sure that I do not want to do this. Then I notice Shane has the dog chain in his hand, and so I rip a wooden slat from a rather feeble fence. We literally run at each other, like two wild animals. None of this sizing each other up, provoking the other into making the first move. As I near him I throw the wood away; still I do not want this. But I am on some inexplicable course than I cannot pull away from. We clash, and I rip the dog chain from his hand (possibly the reason for his broken finger), and we lay into each other. There is none of those fancy moves you see on TV, just two teenagers scrapping, tumbling around on the floor while others jeer us on. At some point Shane is on his feet, and someone hands him a skateboard, which comes crashing down on my collar bone.
After this I remember very little of the fight, I still can’t even remember how it ended. But end it did and for the next week I was walking around thinking that my shoulder was only bruised. At that point I’m not actually aware that a skateboard had been used, I only discovered this later. I saw Shane around still, but I refused to be cowed, although I noted his hand has been bandaged and I felt a guilty glow of satisfaction. But it was a temporary thing cause I knew that whatever we had was gone.
I left White City in 1991, and that was the last time I saw Shane on a regular basis. By this point he was a stranger, his hair long, looking more drawn than I ever saw him before. It weighed heavy on my heart that I no longer knew him, that we’d pass in the street with barely a nod of acknowledgement. When coming home I’d usually walk behind Wolfe House, cutting across the grass and past the rear of No. 1, but Shane often hung around there as he was friends with those who lived at No. 1, and so it became a habit to go the long way home, just to avoid any further hostility and emotional hurt.
For eighteen years I was left with a lack of understanding as to just what had gone wrong. But recently we have got back in touch, and in some ways it’s like we never parted company. But what is most amazing of all is that in the intervening years we have been on very similar emotional journeys, even living through closely linked events, like the deaths of loved ones (a step-brother and a friend in my case), and we’ve found ourselves to truly be the kindred spirits we sensed in each other twenty years ago. Only now more so. And we’re still as arty as we ever were, Shane with his paintings and fiction, and me with my own fiction.
I look back, and now having some context on the events going on in his life at the time, I understand what happened between Shane and me. We saw too much of ourselves in the other and neither of us were at the place we needed to be to accept those similarities, to rejoice in and embrace them. Shane had decided he had to be a certain kind of man for his mother, and so did what he had to do to become that person. He isolated himself from the friend who really cared, turning instead to easier more spendthrift friendships, with people who could offer him exactly what he needed at that point in his life, and so continued down his own path, the one that would lead to the point he is at today. And so that path we were once on, the one that had split so abruptly back in 1990, has finally merged once again. And now, finally, there is true understanding.
As a postscript, let me add that since Shane and I have found each other again, my dream world has not once returned to White City and Shane’s old home. Curious, isn’t it?
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