The first time I ever saw a needle I was five. It was being pulled out of my father’s arm by my mother as he lay slumped and motionless on the floor. We had found him like that one evening when my mother had care of me. I remember her slapping and rubbing his face before frantically running off in search of help. I stood outside in the warm dark night, petrified and alone, looking into the distance for my mother to return. She soon did, her distressed silhouette picked out the dark by ambulance lights. Twenty years later I too would be laying slumped on floor, and in a hideous repetition of history my mother would also be withdrawing a needle from my arm.
In the following post I will detail my own romance with the needle, why I did/do that, and the places and people it has led me to. In my travels I've seen and experienced an underbelly of city life in all its perverse glory. It was never beautiful, often sickening, yet always fascinating. This is the story of The Needle as seen through The Sinner’s Eye.
Like the majority of injecting drug users I did not start off that way. For me it was an economic decision I took one year into my heroin addiction as a means to keep the job that was funding my habit. My first dalliance with the needle took place one blustery autumn afternoon in a homeless hostel in West London. It was a place with anti-suicide bars fitted to the windows and emergency alarms in each room. I had gone there in search of a beggar girl I knew named Katy and had burdened her with the responsibility of fixing me up for the first time. With intent junkie eyes she would hold the syringe up to the fading light and flick expertly on the barrel. Seconds later she would slide it painlessly into my mid-arm and press. That plunge would send me down a one way street of self-abuse and would be the precursor to over 50,000 (and rising) shots of heroin. But I do not regret the needle and I neither damn nor curse it: as it killed me, so it saved my life.
After that first shot I wandered home with the remaining needles of the pack. I had closely observed Katy and had questioned her as how to cook up, hit a vein and inject oneself. Later that night, after an entire evening deliberating over it, I decided to have a go myself. I was petrified. But not at the prospect of overdosing, more of the inknown, of what lay beneath my skin that I could hit, tear, puncture or damage. Still, I went ahead, cooked up a fix and then naively tried to inject it. Oh, it was a disaster! What had looked so straightforward in the hostel and at someone else’s hand, now seemed ridiculously difficult. Every time I tried to hit a vein I only managed to puncture it and leave large blue bruises in my trail. Even in my hands, with veins the size of a thick bootlaces, I could do nothing but damage and bloat them double. Finally I gave up and for the last time in my life I smoked myself to sleep.
Come the following morning I tried again. This time I did manage to hit a vessel, but each time I pulled back on the plunger I also pulled the needle out the vein. On about the twentieth attempt I succeeded in drawing blood and in an awkward amateurish manoeuvre I repositioned my fingers and emptied the syringe into my bloodstream. For a few seconds after, surprised that my fist hadn’t bloated up, I sat in shock and kind of moved my eyes from side to side, up and around registering things. When I was absolutely sure I was still alive I relaxed... and then it hit me. Up my arm and itching through every small blood vessel in my head. My pupils contracted as the pressure built and suddenly I was there, nodding over onto the table without even having time to withdraw the syringe. But that wasn’t the end of my injecting debacles... it went on for weeks before I could get a clean quick shot and months before I had experienced all the little lumps, bloating and swelling of missed and bad injections. But no matter how terrifying or hairy it got, I somehow enjoyed the process. And more than that I enjoyed the marks that I was imposing upon myself. It was a thrill, and finally I had some visible mark for the invisible pain I was trying to tame.
But being on the needle entails a lot of work. That is if you intend to stay alive. One of the first things you then learn is where you can pick up free, clean needles, vitamin C and filters. This invariably leads to the local Needle Exchange or some equally anaemic, bleached and sanitized place. I turned up at mine (The Old Coach House, Devonport Road) on the second morning of my IV life. I registered and went through the rigmarole as a soft spoken counsellor masquerading as an ex-user went through the perils of shooting and gave me a leaflet on safe injecting. He also sat me down and with picture cards of the venal system pointed out where the body’s main arteries and nerves ran. He said I must NEVER inject around those areas. He explained that if I was ever unlucky enough to hit an artery, and supposing that I survived, I would wake up sick in hospital with limbs the size of tree trunks. Of course, more than anything this freaked me out and my hypochondriac brain suddenly (and against my desire) jumped to attention. In a few nervous seconds I had blinked and memorized every image into my head and it seemed that just about every site was loaded with potential peril. For the first few weeks I poked around gingerly convinced that I would hit the nuclear button. Of course, I never did and since then I’ve stuck a needle in all those dangerous places, every junkie has. And thats another thing you learn, injecting isn’t quite as hazardous as it is made out to be.
The local needle exchange was open 3 days a week from 9am to 5pm. During that time users could walk in and collect up to 50 clean works a day, sterile water, vit c and small yellow returns bins with the bio-hazard sign printed menacingly on the side. That is the idea of the ‘exchange’. One is supposed to fill his/her small bin and return it. In ‘exchange’ he/she gets to take home new needles. In reality, not many addicts make use of this service and the exchange program doesn’t strictly enforce it. What they are more concerned about is having users not share. Like most addicts I know, I never really made regular use of the return bin either. Instead I’d let the needles pile up until my place was stacked with boxes and containers of syringes. Three or four times a years I’d have a clear out and overload the returns bin. Other than the Needle Exchange, addicts can also pick up clean works in chemists or some clinics. Chemists usually have a limit of 2 packs (20 needles) a day, and disgracefully often don’t have ANY in stock. The Needle Exchange, Chemist and clinic schemes are all free. However, if really desperate or if the chemist is out of free needle packs, you can also buy them. That would cost £2 for a packet of 5 1ml insulin points.
But needle exchanges and pharmacies, although not unpleasant places in themselves, do give the first hint of what lays in store for the intravenous user. I remember sitting waiting in the needle exchange one day with two skeletal junkies sitting opposite. Both were as pale as chicken skin, both looked crippled and both were covered in cuts, rashes and sores. They were resting head to head and drifting somewhere very far away. They looked like something you’d find slumped in a mass grave. It was only when one opened the eyes and drooled: “Have you got a cigarette, mate?” that I realized it was female. Her hands shock as she took the cigarette and she stood outside in the cold, sucking in huge lungfuls of smoke and looking like the future didn’t exist. It was a small thing, but something which stuck in my mind and scared me. I had not seen such people amongst my smoking friends. They had all been younger and fitter and frankly, more alive. This was something else... a different kind of addict altogether. And though it repulsed me, such people would soon replace my old smoking crowd and make up my circuit of friends and contacts.
There are a couple of reasons for this, but probably the most relevant is that the smoking addict and the injecting addict are two different types and clash too much. For example, the smoker may be sickened or disgusted to have someone inject in close proximity to him/her. The injector sees smoking as sacrilegious and cannot bear watching plumes of smoke disappearing and wasting into the atmosphere. Also there is the message that injecting gives out... that you are not only addicted to drugs but self-destructive and reckless in its pursuit. It is almost as if there is no hope after heroin and so you kill yourself before it kills you. But no matter what the reason, my smoking friends were soon all gone. They passed by me as if on some conveyor belt into history. With their hands over their mouths they receded into the distance and as they watched me advance to the place we’d promised we’d never go they cried: “Oh, Shane... how could you!”
Well I don’t know? I just could. That’s all. And very quickly I discovered that the universe of the intravenous user was a world apart from those which I had served my apprenticeship with. The haunts were darker, the misery worse, the addicts older and more pronounced. Everything was 2 shades darker black. I suddenly found myself in a place full of mirth, dirt and disease. For the low of heroin I would journey to and through that darkness. I would meet the diseased, the dead and the dying and have numerous acquaintances go down with AIDS and hepatitis. Amongst the army of junkies that I would cross would be the armless, legless, toothless and reckless. I would see men injecting in their penises and women bent over, peering through the legs into a mirror in order to hit a vein on the back of the thigh. In one homeless shelter I would sit and watch as half a dozen groaning addicts cooked up in a single spoon and then all poked their blunt dirty needles into the same cotton filter and drew up and shot together. They would look at me in bemusement when I would shake my head at the offer of joining in.
But by far the worst place I ever had the misfortune of entering was a junkie squat on St Stephens Avenue. It was a second floor flat in a partly demolished building and was literally held together by needles in a twisted ongoing sculpture that all the users living there collaborated on. One could not take a step without having to dodge an open spike and blood and blood graffiti sat an inch thick on every wall. It was inhabited by such a squalid bunch that the consequences of even stepping foot in there would terrify me. Unfortunately, these people were my friends... well, kind of. A typical household would be something like this: Firstly there was Nick. A tall, medium built addict with horrendously crusty skin. He had thick black greasy hair which showered dandruff in the light beams. Nick would take an obscene pleasure sticking and twisting needles recklessly into himself. He had such a crude injecting method that the tracks on the rear of his forearm were huge purple scars the thickness of an index finger. Next there was Grace. Worryingly thin with the skin on her face stretched taut over the skull. She had taken on a kind of translucent jaundiced appearance and made her way around with the help of an old walking cane. A 25 year dope veteran, it took her up to three hours to get a fix. Two weeks after me leaving London she died of liver cancer. Then there was Scamp the resident amputee. He was as grey as the London pavement -. only much dirtier. His left hand had been removed after a huge abscess had all but eaten it away. He now had a useless, half-paralysed and withered left arm which hung down like something that shouldn’t be there. He was HIV positive. Along with Skamp, wrapped up on the same filthy mattress, was his HIV buddy John. This man was so dismally wasted that he resembled but bones vacuum packaged in skin. He was forever in and out of hospital falling foul each week to a new debilitating infection. Miraculously he is still alive... well in theory anyway. Finally there was Jo, a Portuguese addict with not a single tooth left in his head. His mouth resembled a clenched anus that was attempting to suck all his features in. He had the greenish yellow tint of a depressing bar. A paranoid schizophrenic he would eventually be imprisoned for beating his girlfriend to death. Of course many more passed through the house or stayed a night or two but these were the regulars. On a good night this crowd would sit around a syringe strewn table with a huge mountain of melted wax burning away in the centre. In the low light they’d shoot dope and squirt their blood sizzling onto the flames. It was one of those rare occasions where the people were scarier than the shadows they cast.
And that was just one small group of addicts in one West London squat. But the more I got into the injecting side of heroin the more such users became visible. At one point it was all I could see. Ghosts which had once skulked by unnoticed were now everywhere. Bus stops, doorways, street corners, parks... I couldn’t walk five minutes without passing some distressed type with swollen bloodstained hands and looking like Death with the flu. The city became like a Kirchner painting: long, dark, oblique shadows lurking and hanging ominously against walls. It was a nightmare town. And then I’d traipse home, shoot up, and scrutinize my own face in the mirror looking intensely for any signs of disease or decay. But don’t get me wrong, not all injecting addicts look as I’ve described. And for everyone that does there is another that shows absolutely no obvious signs of drug or needle abuse at all. I don’t quite fall into that camp, but if I keep my mouth closed, and wear a nice pressed shirt, only my mother and lover would know.
No, the diseased emaciated junkie is a consequence of lifestyle and what he/she is forced to do to maintain a habit. And the junkie collective that I described earlier were all just that. Their lives and addictions were very hard on them and only by pooling their money, scoring and using together were they able to keep themselves supplied in heroin. There was literally no money for anything else. They ate what they found and smoked from the butts they’d collect in the streets. They usually used clean needles, but if they didn’t have them at hand they’d be all too quick to pick up the gun and wager their lives on shooting a blank. Whilst sticking needles in their groins, armpits and necks they all slurred the junkie spiel of getting clean, getting washed and getting a job. But they talked with infinite sadness and there was not hope in one syllable of any word they said. I think they knew they were The damned and getting clean and talking of what they’d do had like everything else become a little part of their fixing ritual. In truth, the strain of getting clean would probably have finished them off even quicker.
Still, regardless of how squalid some of the people and places were, or how much it appalled me, in different ways I was just as trapped within it. Ok, I did not live like that and I’ve never shared a needle, nor a spoon, but my needs were the same and even if my arms were cleaner I was still sticking the same needles into them 5 times a day. And it was that which kept me a familiar face amongst these crowds. Against any genuine desire to become friends I kept a contact and a presence amongst other users for very certain reasons: they were good contacts and as an addict you can never have enough numbers. But there was one other reason, and that wasn’t half so callous or calculated: sometimes I just needed a little company... another human besides me so as not to feel so hopelessly alone. Sometimes it was just a pleasure to fall asleep and wake up with someone else in the room. And that is why, no matter how dirty some places were, or how foul and rotten some addicts seemed, at least they were there. They understood without question and had an agenda more or less the same as mine.
But intravenous drug use goes further than clinics and junkies and palaces of needles. It even goes further than the administration of drugs. That’s its primary motivation but it also touches upon issues of self-harm, obsessive compulsions, and needle fixations. As I got more experienced with the needle I started to realize that I actually enjoyed inflicting these marks and scars upon myself. That outside of getting heroin quickly into my bloodstream I took other pleasures from it. Often I’d be standing on a bus or train, holding the overhead rail and leaving my shirt sleeve fall down to reveal an armful of tracks and bruises. On occasion I’d even jab a needle into myself a few extra times just to highlight the harm. I know some addicts who even when clean continue keeping their track marks fresh and visible. But this self-harm is not a call for help, it’s more a call for recognition... for the world to recognize you’ve been hurt, punctured and broken. It’s a cry for attention without the tantrum, the tears or the breakdown. I know very few injecting addicts who are ashamed of what they do... on the contrary, they are proud of it. And I understand that, because in that act, in the marks and scars it leaves behind, there is a bizarre sense of fulfilment and achievement. In it the addict has found a means to show a hurt or trauma that is not expressible in words.
It’s now almost 10 years that I have been living life on the needle. During that time I’ve shot up in parks, cars, toilets and on buses. In addition to my arms, legs, stomach and chest, I’ve also injected in my fingers, toes, palms and forehead. I’ve hit nerves, arteries, joints and bone, and have suffered every imaginable lump, bump and swelling. I’ve poisoned myself 4 times with ‘dirty heroin’, had abscesses the size of golf balls and I’ve Od’d twice. On my entire body I have only one visible vein left. In my determination to self-medicate I’ve lost family, friends, lovers, two Cockatoos and a dog. My bank is in the red and so after 34 years I have less than nothing.
As I write this it is 24 hours since my last injection and that seems a long time. Previous to that it was 72 hours and previous to that 7 days. The longest I’ve ever been heroin or needle free is 5 months. But I do have some qualities and I use them to convince the few people left around me that I’m changing... that I’ve finally seen the light. And as I sit there with my perforated escape plan laid out, I busk and dance my way around all the awkward questions. At one point I even promise to stop smoking and cut down on the chocolate. It’s then I realize I’ve gone too far, that I’ve said too much. The place kind of deflates with disappointment and without even looking up I know what they’re all thinking, “He’s not getting better... he’s getting worse!” And I can’t blame them for that... I’m thinking exactly the same myself.
Thanks as ever for reading...
Thoughts & Wishes, Shane. x
The Sinner's Eye - The Culture of the Needle
The Light Lost Light
The light lost light and darkened. It felt like there was a great storm sitting overhead and I knew he was gone. I closed my eyes and listened, but for a moment the world was quiet with me. I thought of schoolyards, and dinner bells and distant summers and better days. I heard the engine of a plane, and then the motor of the fridge, and then I cried.
Love Me Tender in the Ghetto - part 1
“No twos, no threes, no lugs!” That's what we used to say when sparking up a cigarette and not wanting to share it. Thirteen years old and preparing our lungs for coughing up tar. Billy with his wonky eye, looking off-centre and smiling at things which didn't exist. Beautiful, sad days... sun soaked west London with hopelessness spread out to the horizon. An eternity of orange tiled rooftops and the occasional spluttering chimney.
In the forecourt there'd be grubby gypsies stripped to the waist, banging and bashing away to give some worth to the worthless. Someone suddenly taking up an old fashioned boxing stance, sweat glistening off his chest as he jabbed and hooked away at unknown forces. The sun cooking pale Irish skin red, engine oil bubbling with the tarmac, the heat rising and the world wavering through it the other side.
A face over the balcony on the fourth floor. Darren Brown, eyes all pupil and jittery as hell, keeping dog of the non-existent police teams creeping up the stairs to bust him for his last remaining crumbs of crack. Two months later entering the only successful rehab clinic there is: the morgue. Flattened on the Westway. Splattered to death trying to get back home to his pipe quicker than humanly possibly.
I saw the blood. A dark shadow of scarlet which went nowhere in all directions. There were flowers too. A single bunch. “How Romantic the poor are,” I thought, “or maybe somebody got married?” I Laughed. The end of Darren Brown! That evil cunt who had taken me at knifepoint and forced me to commit robberies to fund his habit, sending me into a wild Africans home while he was still there. Me chucking half defrosted fish at him as he lunged towards me like a huge bear with yellow teeth. I made my escape: a 20ft drop from the back window, landing on Daniel Kinsella who was sucking the entrails out of a roach he had picked up from somewhere. A pair of Adidas Samba's catching him in the bristle of his adolescence. An horrendous tough jaw, twisting out of shape and his fists instinctively clenching because something had hit him. A dull thud in my ear, the side of my head red, throbbing sounds from bust eardrums: “God, I'll never hear the sea again!” I thought, as we legged it back to the relative safety of the Estate, pursued by a clucking, screaming, knife wielding crack head.
“Did you get the camera!” Darren hurled, collaring me in the underpass, the sharp end of his blade pushing to pop my eyeball. Oh, I was so glad he got splattered. No one deserved it more. I hope it was a Skoda that hit him. They were so uncool back then. For a moment I did believe in karma, then I thought about myself, blowing up frogs in the Greyhound Park, and hoped not.
Sometimes, as the sun went down, we'd sit around in the cool shade of the back, listening to insects and the sound of wind rustling through wild trees. We'd hand joints around and burn the dried grass down to stub. After a while we'd lay back and stare up at the slowly changing sky. Sometimes it'd be shot through with pink clouds, warning us that tomorrow may not be so great. Someone would always talk. A slow, stoned, drawl of hope and mystery. Some of us had dreams, but others were too clever for such things. I had no dreams. I wanted nothing but the very moment.
At around eight, or whenever dusk was, the dogs would come out. Thin, scabby things that looked like they'd been vacuum packed in their skin. Sniffing and pissing on dandelions, or crouched down and snarling amongst broken bin bags. As the day disappeared completely behind the flats the grass would tone dark and then go black. Faint breezes would start up and the grass would push out and ripple like thousands of little legs. The city smelled like magic and would make us cry. With the right light and sounds behind it, life seemed so worth living. Just after that the illusion would be broken. Lightbulbs would flick on in the apartments showing up silhouettes of the despicable things living inside them. Thin straggly women with knives or bottles or both... beer bellied men raining punches down on unknown things. For many of us they were the shapes of things to come. It was bad, and those were the good years.
“What are you looking at, Billy?” I asked
“Time,” he said
“Can you see time?” I asked
“I can feel it,” he said, “time to go home.”
“Do you want to go home, Billy?” I asked
His wonky eye now settled on me and a feint, tragic smile spread across his lips.
“Do you?” he said, as a question to the question.
It was now just the two of us. Laying out in the dark of the back, the night bringing in a chill, and the milky summer grass then damp and cold beneath us. I emptied the last cigarette out the box. “No twos no threes no lugs!” I blurted, as my only answer to the long forgotten question. Then I struck a match and lit up the hell around us. Billy smiled anew, it was just something we said. The night was down upon us. Soon the bars would spill out and our lives would be ruined again. Love me tender in the Ghetto. Billy would get his 'twos'. I could taste the sulphur in my mouth. The sweet end of the match
****
A little one for the archives, or maybe just something to proove I'm not also in the only successful rehab. Take Care All... Life about as mocking as ever, but sweet with it. Love and Thoughts, Shane. X
Tony O'Neill - The Junkiest Writer in Town
Tony O'Neill Wikipedia
Two short shorts: 'Hammersmith' &'Live bed Show'
Short Story: Notes from a shipwrecked harbour
Tony O'Neill books on Amazon
PS: For those of you who are already familiar with Tony's work, please take a moment to leave a small review over on Amazon (or some other like place). Just saying "Fucking Brilliant!!!" would be enough... You can even copy and paste if from here.
Take Care All, and a new Memoires post will follow shortly...
The Dry Season
In far away places men were being killed. I watched it on the TV as I cooked up smack, fell asleep to journalists embedded in a war zone that was safer than their home streets. The biggest risk was friendly fire. It was 2001 and Afghanistan was smoking and choking on democracy.
In the streets of London there were marches every day. The mosques had become underground bunkers where rallies and demonstrations were organised. Inside, you could even keep your shoes on – that's how pissed off Islam was. As I wormed my way through the crowds, en route to meet a dealer, I would read the banners: “Stop The Afghan war!” “Troops Home NOW!” Sometimes I'd even shout a cliché myself. But I didn't really care, or had stopped. The Morning Star was then just a paper I held so as not to look too inconspicuous while standing at disused bus-stops. Politics had become a luxury, and came (if at all) at the end of a long line of other more pressing matters. Out of touch, my thoughts were not of black oil or corrupt foreign policy, but rather of a light brown rock that I knew only in 'theory' came from the same place.
During the first two weeks of bombing, as mighty Allied Forces took cities fighting back with catapults and stones, heroin on London's streets was rampant. It was so rife that it was actually easier to score junk than to buy the Vit C needed to cook it down with. And then one day, without warning, I received a call from a friend asking if I had any numbers, that she was having problems scoring. That call was the first hint that the war was actually going to effect me, and by seven o'clock I was half sick, frantically redialling the numbers of the twenty or so dealers I had, only to find every phone turned off. The single response I received beeped through in text: No Bisto bro. Gravy drowt. shld b bk on in day or 2. He never was.
In a dingy, one bedroom flat, dark forms sat huddled against the walls, jittering and waiting for time. Every so often I would rise and answer the knocking on the front door. From out of the cold, in would crawl another sweating junkie, eyes struck wide open and cursing. They'd all ask the same: “Anyone on? Anything?” Murmurs and “fucks” would rise up around the room, and then sniffling and groaning. As phones clipped shut, the latest corpse would flop down and join in the aching. But apart from Grace none of us lived there. It was a flat that had turned into our own bunker, the place we had gathered to rack our brains and kill our phones - to try and find a score in London.
I never did get sick that night, though only thanks to two dirty tricks. One from me, and one from the person I scored from. It was another user, a user who hadn't yet got wind of any supply problems. I phoned him and asked if he had a bag he could sell me, that I'd pay double. Seeing a quick profit he said he had two bags he could sell. I met him and he sold me the last of his stuff, unaware that the money I had given him may just as well have been fake, that he would make no profit this time, that there was no-one to score off. His trick was when I opened the bags they were triple wrapped and a third the size. But it was gear, and it was enough, just, until the next day.
The next day I was ill. We all were. Twelve of us laying around in Grace's living room and kitchen, cursing the world and trying to find a comfortable second in the discomfort. There were junkies stripped naked and laying on the bathroom tiles, others wrapped up in blankets and huddled against the wall, Grace thrashing about on the bed, moaning and hurting and cursing how bad it was. The rooms were full of mucus, shit and tears... our disease was seeping out our bodies. We were all down with the same flu and the real fucker was this: our pockets were full of cash. It got so bad I even heard Portugese Jo praying, either that or cryng. There's not so much difference.
“There must be one fucking dealer on!” someone would moan. On that we'd all try our phones again. “It's ringing!!!... shssh!” another would start up excitedly. We'd all sit hushed, hanging on with bated breath. We'd hear: “What, just White? Ya got no B?” Then we'd all deflate and sink back into our own individual hells until a new thread of hope arrived. Ideas would come and fade and old names of old dealers would surface and become important for the first time in years. Even the rip-off merchants hawking light weights of God-knows-what were worth considering, but no one had anything, rainy old London was dry.
On the third day, three hundred mil of methadone between the lot of us, we got wind that there was smack knocking about in Ladbroke Grove. We put in together for a taxi and four of us hobbled into the back of a beaten up Ford Sierra, wiping our snot on our sleeves and pointing out the quickest way to get there. “It's just a fucking red light!” we'd scream, “ignore it!'
On the way we passed the usual scoring haunts down Uxbridge Road and around Shepherds Bush Green. Far from being empty the meeting points were chock full of addicts, hanging around, all as sick as dogs. They were not waiting for their man though, just standing there because somehow it felt less hopeless - in and out of phone boxes, living to the redial button and the “We're sorry but the mobile you have dialled is switched off.. please try ag.....” And then the receiver would be walloped into the cabinet as more money rattled down BT's throat and clinked into the belly of the beast.
In Ladbroke Grove we were served by a small west Indian dealer with a violent kind of beauty carved into the left side of his face. He came cycling into view with a whistle and we followed his back wheel as he carried on past us and turned off into a small alley. The bags he was selling were half size, half heroin and twice the price, but it was something. Anything to get well - get well and give us eight hours of health to track down something better. That was the deal.
After scoring we didn't return to Grace's flat. It would have been too cruel, and the junkies who had wanted no part in the risk of the deal would soon change their minds once they saw our illness recede and heard our voices start to draaaaawwwwl. But then there would not have been enough, and there was no more from that source. What we had just bought off Ritchie had put his phone out the game too. So we split up and went off on our own to escape heroin sickness and have at least half an hour relief before the panic started again.
That evening Mikey phoned me. Everyone knew Mikey but I had a good relationship with him and so enjoyed the privilege of knowing he was holding first. Thinking only of myself, I told him immediately I would buy every bag he had. I did. He turned his phone off as I stood with him and said he didn't know when he'd reload, that heroin into the country was not getting through. Other than that he didn't know why, just his man higher up the chain was also on the sidelines, also waiting for the call. We were all waiting for the call.... just it never really came.
The gear Mikey sold me was the worst I'd ever had. It cooked up red and left a weird furry black residue in the spoon. It had no effect, but stopped me getting ill and so the teeniest quantity of heroin must have been in it. It got me through the next three days and I was sure by then phones would start coming back on. They didn't.
Over the following days and weeks junkies and dealers interests were put into finding out the reason as to what was causing the heroin shortage on the streets. It turned out that US troops on the Iran and Pakistan borders had accidentally blocked off one of the main arteries of traffic, and so the smack due for England was kinda going through a heart bi-pass operation. There was heroin, tons of it, a 'bountiful crop', 'huge surpluses', but it was being rerouted around Asia and Europe and no-one really knew through where or how long it would take. It took more than three days, I know that, as on the fourth day I crawled home from work sick, found all my numbers off again and this time didn't even have the reserves to go and join the junkie coalition who had pooled their nothingness and sat moaning and wailing around Grace's. Instead, I crawled into bed and cried. I was ill and so out of sorts I just cried at the world, and for the first time really cursed the fucking war, and even more passionately than the humanitarians, I wanted an end to all the bombing and devastation. But my tears were not for humanity, they were for me. And personal tears are always more genuine than any others. All tears are personal. Really.
After discovering a possible cause of the drought and why my life had been so abruptly gatecrashed and turned over, I started paying much more attention to what was going on overseas – at least the part of overseas that affected me. I became a firm supporter to have the US troops out of Afghanistan... at least away from the fucking Pakistan border. These arseholes weren't even blowing up the poppy fields, they were just loitering, fucking everything up without even trying. That's how bad America had become: they could fuck the world up by just being in it.
During the proceeding month heroin was almost impossible to get. Now and again bits and pieces would filter through, but it was so inconsistent that one could not hang a proper habit on it. Sometimes the gear was rushed through and hit the streets at dangerous strengths, other times it got through cut with dangerous agents. But mostly gear got through because it was bash, no smack in it at all, and so was more or less legal traffic. It was a truly horrendous time. Junkies were scoring twenty four hours a day. Buying a bag here, finding it was shit, travelling there, making calls, receiving estimates, going to the next man: the same. The next: the same... and so on until we either found a gouch or bankruptcy. It was a time of huge frustrations and desperation, and was made even harder due to the hike in price that the fake dope was going for. Most dealers had tripled prices and cut the weights, and to top it all they were selling gear which we'd have returned at any other moment in history. But we couldn't just stop and wait, that's not an option when you're full on smack. Waiting is illness, that is why the addict is very vulnerable in many ways. He is always against the clock and if someone holds out long enough they'll get what they want for the price of a bag – because a bag can be worth as much as a man puts his health at. Bags are health. Bags are measures of life. That is a proper junkie fact.
Of course we tried to score methadone in that period, but that was hopeless also. All the addicts who usually sold theirs to fund heroin habits were now drinking it themselves. You could could buy green water or piss, but neither served any useful purpose, not even to cheat a urine test. We were all clean anyway. Some junkies tried desperately to harass the substitution clinics for methadone, but that was even more useless than phoning dealers. They'd fall in the clinics ill, cry, beg, vomit and shit themselves, but methadone maintenance clinics don't care for defecating or dying addicts, they want redemption. They want you to walk in and dump your rotten soul on the table and tell them you're giving up smack because it's killing you, not because there's none to kill yourself with. Even the most caring MMT nurse is unmoved by real junk sickness, unless it was brought on by their words – their sadistic means to have you proove you're serious about quitting by forcing you to turn up sick. But the real option of walking in sick and being treated is not an option at all – not even for those addicts who found God when their last tenner went up their arm. Even if you turn up at hospital, in a condition that would put anyone else in intensive care, you'll be kicked out. You would die before anyone in healthcare would give you so much as a fucking codeine pill. So you sit it out, and the tragedy is this: the dealers will always get to you before the system. They are better organised and certainly more caring. At least they gain something from you, and so stand to lose if they don't kiss your pains better.
During the second month of serious drought the situation improved, though without ever returning to normal. Every other week there would be word of “drought.. drought” but at least one of my twenty or so dealers would then always be on, and holding half decent gear. There would be no more days spent laying around in Grace's squalid flat, pooling resources with the sick and dying and muttering prayers to a God which none of us believed in. Once again, We were all flying solo.
It was almost a year later when things finally returned to normal. Afghanistan had been set up with a new dummy government - which wasn't quite as westernized as everyone thought - and as military presence dropped in the area US forces accidentally unblocked old supply routes and once again Britain became swamped in smack. Prices returned to normal and then continued the pre-war trend and dropped to record lows. On the streets there were now more junkies than ever, and the bumper crop which the Foreign Office had told us about soon began arriving by air, sea and mail. Methadone maintenance clinics did not have any significant increase in enrollment, and the small rise which there was remained just a statistic, as once the streets were playing the correct tune again the addicts who had applied did not even turn up to their first initiation meeting.
And so it is, nothing ever really changes and certainly not by accident. Drug traffic and supply is a circle which turns and is just as monotonous and regular as heroin addiction itself. But it is in that habit, that monotonous revolution of the wheel, where lies its true strength. To stop anything we must change, and change is a very scary and destabilizing thing. When that change involves the loss of dollars and when the world is run by dollars, change is almost impossible. It's not the junkie who needs rehab; it's the world. A blue planet floating in an eternity of shit.
As you read this Britain and Ireland are once again in the midst of heroin drought, and this time there seems no end in sight. 2001 is horseplay in comparison. Have a thought for all the lost souls who are at this moment even further away from themselves than ever. Junkies or not, there's a heart behind the hand that holds the needle, and it's very often broken.
Take Care All,
My Thoughts and Wishes, Shane. X
Online Independent - Heroin Drought 2011 (with Yours Truly)
The Songs of Memoires
The appalling things I uploaded last week and had the good humour to call 'songs' are now here:
Out of Time, tune and hope - The Songs of Memoires
If five weren't enough to scare you away for good, well there's now been a few more added... and more are on their way...
Leave comments below or just send me a turd in the post...
All My Thoughts, Shane. X
ps: New Memoires post to follow very soon...
Hope for the Hopeless
“It's gonna be a good year.”
I say that every year
while laying in bed
with a dead laptop
making love to myself
and dealers
of certain cards
Surrounded by walls
breeding dry-rot
But this year IS gonna be a good one
for somewon
We've a one in seven billion
chance
Nothing's ever guaranteed
No matter who
your daddy is
For 2011
I'm betting the lot
Taking the SP
Doing my bollocks on
the gammiest legged
laziest eyed
outsider in the race
The horse I'm hanging on
they don't even bother to shoe
or shoot,
anymore
In 2011
the drought
of life and lonliness
will end
In 2011
The world is gonna pay
double.
Hey everyone, if you've made it through the Suicide Season, well done... keep well and keep healthy and keep hope.
Love & Thoughts, Shane. X
And The Rain Came Down
On the first day of spring 2003 the rain came down. I was running, across the road, past the Halal butchers, up Percy Road, over the curb at Haydyn park, past the school. Splodge, splash, slap and an inch of rain would burst up from under my sole. I was drenched through, and cold, but getting warm. Just up ahead there was a boy, hooded and marching off briskly in the drizzle. I slopped up to him and grabbed a hold of his shoulder. “Ace, sorry man, the rain came down and we got stuck under a fucking shelter!”
“Tchah! Fuck off, b'fore I open up ur face, geez! Making me wait around with hotrocks in muh pockets for nuttin'. Nah! fuck off away from me, tchah!”
“Ace, I'm sorry......”
At that, Ace turned around and we both stopped . His fist was clenched and I could almost feel the dense slap of it hitting me in the face, the blood falling in the rain, bursting open like an ink splodge and being washed away.
“I fucking warning you, yeah, you junkie cunt, stay away and don't call me no more! There's ten junkies to every fucking dealer, I don't need to be a waiting for no one.” And then he brought up a huge lumpy gob of phlegm, spat it on me and moved on.
Still not wanting to let the deal go I followed, silently, right up close. As he made to turn the corner he caught a sight of me behind him, turned around and stood up tall.
“You fucking following me now, geez!!! You want me ta put ya down on da floor? RIGHT FUCKIN' NOW!!!” Ace was up against me, pushing me back down the street with his chest. I reversed with him, wanting to get away but knowing it was too late. He didn't even punch me, just kind of smashed his palm into side/top of my head and knocked my hat off into the rain. I stumbled back, then scrambled clear. Ace didn't pursue. Instead he put his hands in his anorak pocket then bounced off in the wet, hollering insults and bobbing from side to side like the little gangster he thought he was.
The rain is relentless. It is now coming down in big cold blobs. I am running again, back to mum who I left waiting for me outside KFC. She couldn't keep up the chase to get to Ace and so I had gone on alone. On my way back I am fumbling in my pockets for loose change. The streets look slippery. London has never been so wet. A cold, irritating sweat is running off my skin with the rain.
“Did ya get it?” my mother asks as I hurry into KFC completely sodden. I shake my head. “Wot? He wouldn't serve ya? Ya fuckin' joking me ain't ya Shane?? He didn't give it ya? The Cunt!”
“Come on, we'll have to see Ritchie”.
Ten minutes later Mum and I are are pulling our jackets tight under a dripping 207 bus stop. I am peering out into the downpour down the road and mum is looking up. We keep seeing Ritchie but when he gets close it's not him.
“Where is this cunt?” I ask mum
“Phone 'im Shane, it's well over fifteen minutes! Tell 'im it's fucking pissing down!” I look at her.
“If he doesn't care we're fucking dying I'm sure a bit of rain won't wet his conscience.”
“Well fucking tell 'im we're sick, that we'll go somewhere else!” We had our moan, the same moan we always have, the same moan every junkie has, and then we bottled our anger and waited some more.
It is almost noon. At least five buses have splashed by and unloaded their charge. Ritchie still has not arrived. I pick out some loose change and try to dry it. My mother looks extraordinarily angry. I must look the same. “I'll go and phone him.” I say. Mum doesn't even reply.
“Shane, bro, listen up, you're not gonna believe this, but I'll be 'arf an hour, bro, tops! I'm just cutting da ting up. Serious. Take a coffee, dry off an' I'll beep you in thirty and give you a little bump for free, yeah? I know you like d'em big rocks!”
That I came walking slowly back told mum that not much would be happening soon. She screwed her face up, “''Ow long?”
“Half an hour. He says it's definite and he'll bump the rocks up.”
Mum's face looked as broken as the sky, kinda grief stricken.
“Come on, we'll get a coffee and wait.” I said
“He should fucking pay for it!” She replied
The rain is still coming down. It is not beautiful. The water in the gutters is over-flowing and rushing its way to drains like wild rapids. We are in the railway tavern café dripping wet. My socks are soaked because of the splits in the soles of my shoes. Mum is sipping a cup of scolding hot coffee and staring out into the mist. From every straggle of her blond hair rain drips and seeps in under her jacket. She looks so uncomfortable and makes me feel ten times worse. I turn and stare out into the downpour too. Occasionally we ask each other: “How longs it been?” Thirty minutes pass like an eternity. Cars splodge by and the occasional person runs for shelter. There are two thin girls, shivering, laughing and dripping wet, now taking cover just outside the window. They are blocking our view. A thin, vulgar arse in bright pink leggings - God, my life has led to this. My phone beeps. Text message: I'm around,T.
“Was that 'im?” Mum asks, jumping to life with the phone.
“Nah, it's Trooper, he says he's around.”
“Well lets fucking go to him then! Fuck this waiting shit. That fucking Ritchie won't be fuckin half an hour anyway, fat fucking chance!”
“Nuh, we've ordered. I'm not doing that. We'd have no fucking dealers left if we worked like that. Anyway, by the time we've phoned Trooper, got to him and waited, we'll have probably seen Ritchie and be home. If he's not here after 30 we'll leave” I rolled mum a cigarette. We kind of used them as timers. After about the tenth mum asked me the time.
“That's 45 minutes, shane. This cunts taking the piss!”
“Ok, fuck him. Lets go see T, hey?”
My mother nods.
We're both squeezed in a phone booth. It smells of urine and stale alcohol. Mum's wet hair is in my face as she tries to listen in down the line.
“Yeah T, we want three and three.”
Mum pulls an urgent face and holds up four fingers.
“Hang on, Four... Three B, FOUR W... yeah, four.”
“Be at Da Barrier in ten.”
“T, make sure you're there or text, I've no credit on my phone?”
“I be d'ere.”
Again we are splashing through the wet. Mum is running and I'm walking very quickly. My socks are squelching and my feet feel heavy. Every now and again mum stops to catch her breath. I frantically check the phone not wanting to miss the meet. The rule is addicts wait but dealers never do. They circle once and if you're not there they leave. If that happens the chances are they'll refuse to serve you again. Occasionally you'll get a call “Where are you, bro?” But that's as loving as they get.
When we reach the barrier there is a man there with only one arm. His face is jaundiced, almost flourescent. “You waiting for T?” I ask. He nods. We look at a bench nearby but it is soaked through.
“Whatcha after, the B?” he asks sniffling and nodding.
“Both.” I reply
“Both huh? Nice. Er, Mate, if I give ya two quid d'ya think ya could sell us a couple of hits of the white? Even just a pipe?” I lie and tell him it's not for me. He flattens his hair back using the rain as gel then starts jittering and fidgeting about. He's annoying the shit out of me. He's jabbering away talking nothing just to pass the time. Half of what he says is not even to me.
“It's fuckin hot here. I don't like meeting here. Got pulled 'ere once. Known T long? Fucking hot cunt. D'ya live round ere? D'ya have a phone?” I tell him I've a phone but no credit. He says something about pressing the hash key, dialling sixes, fours, asterisks and plus signs and like that you can make free calls. “That's what I do.” he says. I don't even ask why he hasn't got a phone. Same as I don't ask why he hasn't got an arm. I know. I know it all. There's only a few stories in this part of town. We stand together in the wet waiting for Trooper to show himself through the rain.
As Trooper rifles through counting the notes I have given him, water is hitting his dark brown hands. “It's too much!” he laughs “You must be fucked, geez!”
“What you talking about? Four and three = sixty.”
“Four and three? Whatcha chatting, Bro, I only have two and one! Thats what you ordered, man?”
“T! Come on!!! when have I ever seen you for that? When? You got nothing else?” T shakes his head “Nuh, I'm all out, gotta reload, bro. Two, three hours.”
“Fuck! The two? What are the two, white or brown?”
“White”
“Give us that. Will you defininitely be back around later?”
“Yeah, jus call me bro, call me.”
I take his crumbs, give him mine and the we both head off in opposite directions.
Mum knows something is wrong. The deal had taken too long and she must have seen Trooper handing me notes back. She looks at me like she's on the verge of a breakdown. “Don't tell me he didn't have no fucking white! Please don't fucking tell me that!”
“There's white, but only two.” I say
Mum's disappointment serves her well. Where she had panicked imagiining there was nothing now two sounds like heaven. Normally she would have had a full grand mal seizure because of that. At a quick pace we splash off home. The rain doesn't matter any more. Fuck the rain. Who cares about a little rain!
§
It's just gone two. The crack is all gone and I've one small hit left from my bag of smack. We're standing out in the open of cathnor Park. The place is being lashed and blast cleaned by the deluge. This time we are waiting for Dan. Normally we only see Dan when we're desperate, want small deals, or just to keep contact, but this afternoon he was the nearest dealer who would come out in the wet and so he picked up our business.
“Why does he want to meet us near the fucking swings when it's pissing down!”
“I don't know??? This is where he meets people... he thinks it safe.”
“Safe? Two adults hanging about in the rain near a fuckin childrens playground! Silly Cunt!”
As I'm already soaking wet I go and take a seat on the rubber swings. I sway gently back and forth. Mum gives me a horrible look then wanders over and jumps on one too. She looks at me and kind of screws her face up so as not to laugh. In the rain we start swinging. At first slowly and then faster and faster and higher and higher, mother and son, laughing, off our heads on crack cocaine, waiting for a two bob dealer to appear from God knows where and keep us happy. Just as I'm about to go right over the top bar I see a dark shadow slinking past over by the far side of the railing. It's Dan. He looks horrified and completely pissed. I jump off the swing and go and meet him “What da fuck, bro!” he screams “You're hotting the place up wiv dat shit! Fuuuuck!!”
“Yeah, and you're late AND it's raining AND it's even hotter two adults hanging around a kids park in the rain. That's hot Dan. What's the B like? Your last stuff was shit?”
“Pfff, 6 outta 10, so so from all reports. But the white's kickin'! Honestly. My phones red for that shit!”
Dan gives a sly little down turn of his hand, slips me the bags and takes my notes. He doesn't count them but puts them straight in his pocket. I clock that, knowing if I'm ever short I can meet him light and he won't realise until later. I sort the little blue bags (heroin) out from the white (crack). The white is ultra small. That's why he said it was good. Whenever a dealer says it's 'good stuff' he's preparing you for a small deal. He notices me feeling the size of the bags and the puzzled look on my face.
“They're point three, bro, bang on.”
I knew that was bollocks, but so was arguing. You pay your money and take what you get.
Mum must have seen the deal ending and had gotten off the swing. She is now walking slowly up ahead waiting for me to catch her up. “What's the size like?” is the first thing she asks as I join her.
“Small, but he says it's good stuff.”
“ ” she says nothing, and I'm thinking the same.
I'm looking out the window, the rain isn't letting up but getting worse. It is settling in for the day. The afternoon is dark and oppressive. I suck in a huge pipe of crack and nearly choke. My throat burns. Before I can say anything mum comes wandering in: “That's fucking shit! It's all fucking soda! God this'll be good. I knew we shoulda waited for T to come back around.”
I load up an extra big hit and suck it down. It makes me feel sick. 'Shit' doesn't mean it's not crack, just it's weak. It still gives enough to settle us down. If it wasn't actually crack there'd be a riot.
Not even an hour later mum is fidgety and irritable. She looks wired sad and sits down pretend watching the TV. I look at her. “D'you want a bit of the B?” She shakes her head. I look at her again. Then at the TV. Then the floor. “Are you thinking the same as me?” I ask. She nods, then says;. “D'you wanna phone?”
We scrape together more money. I probably give mum advance rent for the next year, and then we are pushing our arms into jackets and walking at a fast pace down towards The Church on St Stephens Avenue. The rain has not let up and now the evening is pulling in. The city smells of wet concrete and supper. We stand under the stone arch of the church and wait. A familiar black shadow comes floating by, it's Trooper.. “Just one of you” he says out the side of his mouth. This time Mum slips out I remain waiting. Every five seconds I check to see if she's coming back. Then she is back and looking amazingly happy.
“Everything ok?” I ask suspiciously
“Yeah, OK!” She replies handing me my two bags of heroin “The whites all in one, in a fucking piece of tissue, we'll have to divide it at home.”
“Did he give you extra?” I ask, knowing her sudden happiness has all to do with what came out off Troopers hand and nothing to do with life or the world.
“Did he fuck! I'd tell you if he had.” I don't press the issue. There's no point.
It's almost midnight, my crack is all finished and I've just taken a fix of smack. In the bedroom I can still hear my mother's lighter flicking and then her pottering around rushing from the hit. I'm pissed off. Her crack lasts a full hour longer than mine. “Just taking it slow tonight,” she lies “d'you wanna do my recycle?”
I make the inevitable mistake of doing that. Taking her days crack pipe, filling it with half a centimetre of acetone, swirling it around, pouring it out on a ceramic tile, setting the liquid ablaze, and then scraping up the brown residue that's left with a razor blade and getting four extra pipe loads of recycle. Of course, that overrides the effect of the smack and thirty minutes later I'm wired again and cooking up another fix.
It is just then that mum comes in. Her eyes are wide as saucers and she begins pacing around as though she's committed some awful crime. I look at her. I am feeling the same and have my wrist tied off and am jabbing for veins in my fist. “Er, Shane, d'you think there'll be anyone on?” she asks.
“There's always someone on,” I say, “Sinbad'll be on.”
She nods slightly and stands there looking at me with the needle. The she looks at the TV. Then at the floor. “Shane, are you thinking what I'm thinking?”
This time I nod and say “yeah,” pressing my needle down millilitre by millilitre. “We'll have to go out though, Sinbad won't come to the door.”
Mum walks over to the window. She pulls the curtain back to reveal a deep black night. The wind is blowing about and the rain is still falling relentlessly, being picked out by the street lights. There is nothing out there but wet and cold. The city is asleep... almost. We make our call, slip into wet jackets, then scurry downstairs and out into the night.
On the second morning of spring 2003 the rain came down. I was running, down Uxbridge Road, past the burnt out postbox, under the bridge, across the lights, onto the grass. My shoes were sinking down in the mud and I was slipping to meet my man. Sinbad. Shepherds Bush Green. Two and Two. The last dance of the night.
Hope Everyone's well... the post is a bit scrappy in places but I'll edit it over the days... Love & Thoughts as ever, Shane. X
**Note 1: B = brown. Heroin; W = white. Crack**
**Note 2: What is described in the above post is an exceptional day. From my experience (in London), scoring is simple and straightforward. 90% of the time it is done and dusted within 30 minutes. Most my dealers had cars, bikes or little scooters. It'd be one call and 10-15 minutes later the bell would be ringing.
The Consequence of Living
God, we were cruel kids. But battered and beaten at such a young age in life, what else could we have been? What chance did we ever really have? When life tramps and kicks wearing 21up Steel toe-capped DM boots, what else can one do but kick back? And so we kicked back, but not at an invisible life that as yet we had no concept of, no, our return blows were directed against people, objects and possessions. We kicked, smashed and bottled our way through tender years, and in our wake we spilt blood, teeth and glass. More than just delinquency, vandalism and violence, this post is about friendship and escape. It is about what happens when young kids are united through abuse and face that world together. In a way it is about hope, in another about hopelessness. It is as much about death as it is of life. For as we live so we die, and in those days we died so much. This post is dedicated to the lost and the broken... this one is for Simon & Shelley... As always, this one is for You.
* * *
Simon & Shelley Maudlier were my best friends. It had been that way ever since I punched Darren Marsh in the throat for going “Urrrgghhh” when the Mayor kissed Shelley after she handed him a bouquet of flowers in front of full school assembly. In what should have been her proudest moment she stood there crying as the school jeered her presence - laughed as the Mayor kissed a greasy-haired girl who smelled of stale urine and burnt wood. As Shelley was led of the stage in tears, a pair of oversized brown corduroy trousers sat down beside me and a grubby nail bitten and scabby hand was placed upon my kneecap. That was Simon and it was the beginning of the first friendship of my life.
Like me, Simon & Shelley were the produce of alcoholic and drug addicted parents. For the first six years of their lives they had travelled Britain and Ireland going from flop house to flop house, from one social service unit to the next. Every time they were on the verge of being taken by the authorities the family would flee, until finally settling down in London. It seemed that from the womb all they knew were vile beatings, social services, alcohol and abuse. At least I had had half an hour of innocence before being hit by life. But not for them, they were born straight into the shit. It was all they knew and it had only ever gotten worse.
At the age of eight they were forced by a drunken carer to have sex with each other. This practice had continued over and beyond that, and for the years I knew them they engaged in sexual activity together. It was in their bedroom one day, whilst we were playing, that they confided in me what they did together. I remember Simon touching Shelley, then Shelley kissing him almost as a token of acceptance for what he had done. They fell back on the bed laughing, both looking at me with dark brown eyes. They showed this to me. They were proud of it. Not proud of the sex, but of the adult behaviours they were mirroring. At the time I laughed along with them. I saw nothing wrong with it. It was almost the same as badly smoking a cigarette or knocking back a teacup full of vodka - it was that kind of naughtiness and nothing else. Now it’s a memory which I can’t ever forget, and it’s sad, because they showed me this and then Simon retook up his Space Invaders game which hung around his filthy neck and Shelley returned to playing imaginary families with her collection of cheap naked dolls which she'd pulled from dustbins. And that image of us on the bed, of the broken innocence that it relates, forever reminds me that this is a cruel and unrelenting world, and that our place within it is a hazardous one. But at the time, it meant nothing. Sure, we knew what sex was - the physics at least- we had seen it all our lives, but we didn’t understand the intimacy or the morals... we had no oversight. All we knew is that adults and animals did it and there seemed no laws concerning where or with whom. It was a reflection of innocence, that is all. But innocence cannot always be understood or accepted, and the events of those years would be a 10 year timebomb between brother and sister that would explode and blow them both off the edge of the world.
After Simon & Shelly's confession and me realising that what was going on in their house was the backside of my own mirror, we became inseparable. 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. We felt tough not just against the other children, but against the adults too. The same adults who had heaped abuse upon us ever since we were born. We were fighting a force much more twisted and perverse than our immediate peers, we were fighting our homes and our histories. We were fighting ourselves.
Not many people realise just how violent Britain is. It’s a cruel, cruel place, especially for a kid in toeless shoes. There is no sympathy and little escape. If you can’t impress with a pair of £150 trainers and a half decent phone, then you’d better be able to impress with something else... and that ‘something else’ is usually violence. So violence became an everyday fixture for a while. Almost every evening we’d return home with some cut or other. Shelley as well. She kicked and punched and bit just as hard as any boy, and aftern when it was finished, we licked our wounds and celebrated our victories together.
Our friendship was an honest and equal one. It wasn’t based on toys or videos or clothes. It was based on understanding and comfort. Apart from that we didn’t have much else to trade. We had nothing alone and even less together. Between us we had half a parent, two pairs of trousers and a dress. My shoes were football boots with the studs removed, Simon’s were leather strapped sandals and Shelley went barefooted - soaking up all the piss, shit and spunk that South West London had to offer. On and off we would spend almost five years in each others company. Five years of escaping the hell which we were born into. With our six fists and our scarred and beaten bodies we used violence and delinquency as a means of escape... as a means to unprise life which had taken lockjaw around our necks. But in escaping one hell we started replicating another: stealing cigarettes and beer and vodka and imitating the actions of our elders. In a certain way we escaped our lives by joining it - we became a part of the hurt and the world that had made us. Instead of fleeing it we copied it, but in our replica world we were the kings of the castle... the abusers and not the abused. We became the enemy.
In the following year we took the beatings but fought back. We’d raise with bloody lips and swollen cheekbones and rally for more. We built up a reputation of recklessness, and if we couldn’t win with our fists, well, there were always cricket bats. There were kids stronger who hit harder, but our relentlessness scared them. When someone screams “Fucking stay down!” it means they’re scared, that they know eventually it will be them running. And we never stayed down. We had mouths and angers that could not be shut. Eventually we instilled fear and terror into those we saw as potential threats: those other cruel kids, with other problems, who were also looking for escape. If we were not strong we would be it, punching bags, the buffer that soaked up our peers domestic problems. We would have become the escape route not only of our parents and their problems but also of the other kids, and that would have been one hell too many. We were on the offensive from a very young age. The bottles and bricks which made up our homes now became objects to throw at the world. And my god, did we throw them.
We threw them at bus stops, policemen and ambulances. We chucked bricks on the motorway and through car windows. We vandalised vending machines, ticket machines and shop shutters. We set fire to post boxes, telephone booths and elevators. We pulled up parks and gardens and demolished garden gnomes. We roamed the streets inciting violence and bloodying the noses of anyone who so much as looked at us. We robbed the more fortunate kids and destroyed the toys of the rich. we done it all. Then we went to bed, woke up and done it all again. We didn’t care for nothing or no-one. Not the living, not the dying not the dead. Everyone and everything was fair game, and that is how we escaped our lives. That’s the exit we took. We were cruel kids preparing to die.
Our lives meandered on like that for the best part of two years and then one morning on going to see Simon & Shelley I received news that they had been carted off by the authorities and placed in a foster home.
“My kids... they’ve taken ma fucking kiz!!!” Bridgette slurred before throwing herself around me and breathing a mouthful of vomit and whisky fumes into my face. And that was it, they were gone, taken away by unknown and distant forces - the kind most children are only ever threatened with. I strolled back home alone and waited for news. I asked at school, I asked my mother and I asked Simon's mother, but no one seemed to know anything. Yes, they would be coming back, but when? well, that was anyone’s guess. Three months later they were back, and the first thing we did was scheme escape plans in the event it ever happened again. And it did happen again. Later in that same year they disappeared once more.
Simon remembered our plan. Within the week a letter was delivered to my house carrying their new address. I was ten at that time and along with my brother we boarded a train to the address just outside London. On finding Simon and Shelley we skipped the wall and all made the journey back to London. We stayed missing for two days, passing the time at a friends house in Shepherds Bush. On the third day we were apprehended by the police on Uxbridge Road and were all taken into custody at Hammersmith Police Station. My brother and I had been reported missing by my stepfather and Simon and Shelley by their foster parents. I wasn't beaten much by my stepfather as a child, but arriving home that day I took ten years in one sitting. I was so bruised they did not send me to school for over a week. I’ve only ever curled my body up to kicks once in my life, and that was it. But of course, in my family that was an expression of love. It was because he loved me that my stepfather kicked my ribs in.
In the following year Simon and Shelley returned, disappeared and returned again. They didn’t seem to mind too much as away from home they enjoyed proper meals, proper baths and proper clothes. We still remained friends but the separations took their toll and as I left lower school and approached my teenage years we slowly drifted apart and spent less and less time in each others company. The final break was when my own family split up and we left west London and was put in hiding from the hands of my stepfather. We were reallocated to the other side of London and Fulham was out of bounds. Contact with Simon or Shelley was impossible and it would be more than twelve years before I saw either of them again.
In that time we had all changed considerably. Our young accepting minds had started examining things, processing all those behaviours we saw, heard and done. Youthful innocence developed into an illness that plagued and ate away at us. We were all sick, suffering from memories and actions that had been forced upon us. With the end of youth and the coming of our real sexual awakenings we realised we had been corrupted... that certain fantasies and shames had been branded into our minds forever. We each tried to eject these, to vomit up our pasts, to reject history, but vomit leaves a very specific taste in the mouth and is a memory all of its own.
So it was, that the events that formed us also repulsed us, and when one cannot reconcile one's history with ones present then the only option left is to split, and that's what we done. But not just friendship and kinship, we split internally: we divided as people and as adults. Shelley became a young prostitute, Simon found his way in and out of psychiatric hospitals, and I ended up trailing them same old streets searching crack and smack and dreaming of the Black House. In the end our youthful hooliganism and cruelty had served for nothing. It was just a natural reaction to a life that was putting the boot in. All it done was deflect the blow - absorb the shock of the impact and delay the consequences for a later day.
More than anything else that is what this blog is about. It’s not about heroin or addiction or murder or abuse, it’s about consequence. But not always consequence of a good or bad decision, more the consequences of independent and external forces which we have no control over. It’s about history and the equation of all our yesterdays... it’s about who we are at this exact point in time. It’s about the consequence of living.
* * * * *
In 2002 at the age of 27 Simon Maudlier finally found his peace. It seems he died as a result of huge amounts of alcohol on top of prescribed medication. He was buried in a communal grave in Fulham without ceremony. As far as I know Shelley is still alive and as late as 2006 was still working the streets of West and Central London. Neither of them, nor myself have any children, and that is probably the greatest gift we can offer this world.
As always, I wish You all well and thank you for reading and making it all worthwhile. My next post will concentrate on my feelings towards Dennis Nilsen, his continued imprisonment and my thoughts concerning his controversial and as yet unpublished autobiography “History of a Drowning Boy”. Until then, take care & take heart, Shane. x
The Man Who Looks Like Life
And then you are down. And you realise you’ve been hit. There is warm blood trickling from your nose. And then someone is pushing your face in the gravel while another puts the boot in. Hard, brutal, ruthless boots to the head and stomach. And then your ribcage rattles and all the oxygen in your body bursts out your mouth. You are defenseless, choking for air as a flurry of blows knocks your head this way and that. And then you lose a tooth... And then your sight... And then consciousness. Only when all is black does the pain stop. And then you wake up. Your assailants have gone - just a white van driving off in the distance. The skin from your knuckles is scraped raw from the struggle. You sit there, in the wet and cold, the cuts and blows stinging more than when you took them. And as you push the blood away and dust yourself down, you ask yourself: “Why? Why me? What did I ever do to deserve that?” And then it comes. You remember. Once again, you had broken all the rules.
My time in France is coming to an end. Five years here have taken their toll. I have lost one tooth too many and the invisible sculptor who chisels with a scathe has began hollowing out the flesh from below my cheekbones. The history that I have tried so long to hide is now unhideable. I’m beginning to look like The Man who looks like life.
But that has not always been the case. In London I was vibrant and full of energy. My face was clear and youthful and sweet. Sometimes I even charmed myself. But looking in the mirror now I feel unrecognisable to the man I was then. And not just physically. I feel something has changed below the skin. I feel I have died a little more.
France has not helped. In fact she has accelerated my decline. My existence here has been a constant struggle. There has barely been a week passed without some kind of drama or worry. If it wasn’t the police knocking down my door, or days spent waiting for my dealer, then it was relationship troubles, exploding ovens or apartment fires. Only the other week I was knocked up at 11pm and informed that my then partner of six years was in hospital after swallowing a belly full of her mother’s Xanax. It seems that life can never just pass, she always insists on leaving a calling card.
Two weeks ago I commiserated my 34th birthday. For the occasion I received one card and one death threat. That put my life here into perspective and I’ve had enough. Enough croissants, enough pain au chocolats, enough random police searches, identity checks and bureaucracy. I am tired of the language, the people and the bars. I can no longer queue quietly for an hour to buy tobacco on a Sunday. I can no more hang around for eight hours in stairwells scoring obscenely cut heroin. I am sick of it all. It’s five years that I have been here, five years that will not tick into six. I am preparing for the exit, ready to flee the country and flash my arse at the last copper I see.
But it’s not time to moon at the law just yet. I am in no position to do it. I’ve barely enough money to put a roof over my death, let alone flee the country. There are also medicaments and repeat prescriptions to think of. Until I can either transfer my script elsewhere or reduce and stop my medication altogether, I am once again constrained to my immediate environment - bound on an upside down cross. Even without the drug worries, five years leaves a lot of attachments. And so before I make my exit I must make certain things good, or at least plug the holes.
One of the latest holes to plug and something which has now become critical is finding a new apartment. A broken relationship and a wandering heart have left me with less than a month to find a place to stay. My habit of not protecting myself and trusting in others humanity has shot me in the foot again. My decision never to officially put my name to the joint property we shared has left me at the whim of another. And that is not a good position to be in, especially when that ‘other’ spends their days wishing upon you a violent and painful death. I should have learnt by now that humanity disappears with love. That if one goes west, one goes west alone. But I suppose I do not want to believe that. The world becomes too sad if that is the case.
My search for an apartment began full of hope and confidence. Me believing that within the same afternoon I’d be in a new place with my own keys. But France doesn’t work like that, there are no simple transactions here. “Six weeks, minimum,” I was told, “that’s the timeline you should realistically plan to.”
"Six weeks! No, that’s impossible. I’ve money for rent and deposit and have an income. How can it take six weeks?”
Eight weeks later I am still nowhere closer to finding a place. In fact, I am even further away friom it. My deposit I blew on four weeks in a hotel and 15 grams of heroin.
But I don’t regret that, money wasn’t the real problem. The real problem is that France is a country of bureaucracy... your money counts for nothing if you don’t have the correct papers. People live in fear of it. There’s no screwing up your payslips and overarming them into the bin here. That would be tantamount to administrative suicide. No, in France people tiptoe down the halls of bureaucracy, praying to all 5495 Gods that they have the correct papers. But you NEVER have the correct papers. And if you do, they’ll invent another one just for you. It is soul destroyingly frustrating, and if you are as disorganised as me, it’s impossible.
So, I didn’t post my dossiers off, I didn’t even fill them in. Instead, I holed myself up and spent my time numbed by opiates, telling myself: “something will turn up... a solution will come, it always does.” Well, that solution hasn’t come yet and now I am in the position where I have three weeks left at my current abode and then it’s shop doorways and pillows under the sky.
But it’s unfair to blame France for my woes. She is another country with a different language, protocol and laws. It’s me who is at fault, refusing to do the things that are demanded of me and trying to busk through the unbuskable. It’s me that will quote laws that do not exist and then stand there to a shaking head and the words “Well that’s not the information I’m in possession of Monsieur. Desolé.” All the little tricks that I had perfected and relied on in England do not serve me here. It seems impossible to get what I want, even what I need. And it’s now too late to backtrack. It’s too late to fill in the dossiers... too late to put my applications through. I’m down to the cardboard, burning my lips on the roach.
The time for property agencies, guarantors and carefully worded contracts has gone. That takes too long and is too long term and legal. No, what I require now is an unscrupulous businessman, someone with absolutely no morals and a nose for money. A person who’ll take my readies and then put me in a rat infested hole that is only worth a third of it’s price. I need that. This is no time for flat hunts and cosy apartment views. It’s a time for handshakes and notes in the top pocket, the oldest contract there is.
And that is me... that sums it up. Nothing is ever quite legit, but always on the edge. I sneak along the line of illegal activity, always something in my pocket which could get me into trouble. I break the rules and I take the consequences for doing so. And the consequence is stress and worry which leads to heroin which leads to sacrifice, unpaid rent and bank loans. This in turns instigates relationship failings, brothers, white vans and bruised ribs. And this, all of it combined, is the real consequence, because it shows on the face and under the eyes. It marks you for life with life and leaves one looking like the Prime Minister after eighteen months in office.
And that is the debt I pay to be able to write these words. They are not just there... they are not free of charge. I acquire them at a 50% interest rate. I will die closer to forty rather than eighty. I have surrendered more than just a few teeth. The truth is, the marks I wear are not the marks of living but the marks of dying, and that is the paradox of The Man who looks like life.
Take care All... Thanks and Best Wishes, Shane.
