Bored... ... ...

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

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

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

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

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

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


X

The Look

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-  -  -

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Thoughts & Wishes to All, Shane. X

Dedicated to Anne Spieswinkel

So Long Johnny

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

Johhny Merryfield. Born 1974, Bellshill, Scotland


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

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

---

A full Memoirs post will follow shortly...


Thoughts as Ever, Shane. X

A Brief History of Work

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Degrees of Loss

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#2 
60 Rosaline Road, Fulham, London, SW6

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

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

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

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

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

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

#3 
The Snail Bank

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

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

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

- - -

Thoughts and Wishes to All, Shane. X

For The Drunks Among Us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

*

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

He didn’t.

*

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


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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


That Fateful Night

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


The Me-effect – The By-product of Murder

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      My Thoughts and Wishes To ALL, Shane.X

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