Real Life of Reginald Arthur Wolfe [Working Draft]

*Dear reader, I am releasing this version of the Real Life of Reginald Arthur Wolfe as a working draft. Please give you’re feedback, tips, and comments to improve the work and contribute to its completion.

Boyhood

—

He used to take me in the sauna. Not for too long. He had a certain wisdom in these things, always able to train me to my just over my edge, and no more. It was a skill it would take me a decade to master for myself. Still, I was young to be in a sauna. Father had a way of initiating me into the activities of manhood he felt important. Standing naked in the changing room without shame. Cigars and brandy on the nights he’d get drunk at home, pouring his heart out over some song from Denver, or Elvis, or Sinatra, depending on the mood that took him. These became regular moments in my childhood and adolescence. And it became one of our long-standing rituals over the years, to train together and take a sauna if there was one. He would, at certain opportune moments, remind me about the money he paid for my membership.

The first time he took me swimming was a quintessential example of how he liked to educate me. We changed in the usual white and beige changing rooms that are all alike to the commonest gyms. Pool was around 20 meters. One of those up and down lane arrangements. I was four or five years old. And I had never had a swimming lesson. Father had decided it was time to teach me how to swim. I was excited. I loved water. I would sit in the bath for long stretches of time as a child. Taking deep breathes and staying underwater for as long as possible. I loved how the sound changed. How the pressure relieved tension in my body. How easy it was to move and range in the lowered gravity effect of submersion.

Father simply told me to enter the pool at one end where the stairs where, but remained standing by the side. Then he gestured for me to come towards him. I turned to get out of the pool. His face contorted and he pointed at the water. Sensing my mistake and now a little embarrassed, I made my way down the stairs. With each step the water came higher on my small pale body. It felt pleasant. A strange sensation. Both warm and cool. The smell of the chlorine was new to me. It seemed to change the colour of everything. Sound had all this space and echo in it. Yes. The pool was a curious place for me.

Father was gesturing again. A hand signal which seemed to mean, ‘Come here.’ I came to the side of the pool, opposite where he stood above me. He was athletic and, as I have been told many times, brutally handsome. He had dark, melanic curls, green eyes, a well defined jaw and an intense, near violent quality to his presence.

‘Now swim.’ He said. Pointing to the other end of the pool. Without waiting, he began walking along it’s length. I hesitated for a moment, and then began to follow my father along the side of the pool by using one hand over the other on the grooved tiles and kicking my legs a little. After a few meters he turned around. I was now beyond my depth. Though I didn’t know what this meant. His face was extreme and angular. I began to feel afraid, the pressure building in my bladder.

Many years later, when I began experiencing devastating migraines which would render me paralysed, water was my only refuge. They would be of a magnitude beyond anything else I have experienced. I would vomit continuously from the intensity of pain.

Excruciated to the point where I would whimper and cry. Groaning in the high welt and long vowels of a man being tortured beyond desperation. If I was unlucky, this would go on for a period of 12 or more hours. And would leave me incapacitated for two or three times as long. Pain killers were useless. Often making me feel the well to vomit even more urgent.

One day, at around the age of twenty five, I stumbled on the only effective treatment that I could use to mitigate the pain. A migraine had struck me whilst working in the fields of a commune I had been living on. Lithuania has a continental climate. With powerful fluctuations in heat and air pressure. The political situation of where we was living had become untenable, and we was fighting a losing battle to resolve the situation amicably. I knew a migraine was coming when I felt a sudden pressure change in my skull.

In a few minutes, I had lost my sight completely, with the field of vision turning white. Using a stick and guided by my girlfriend at the time we made our way back to the house of her Grandmother. Where we had been staying since the debacle with the other members of the commune, including her older cousin, who ran the show. The Grandmother lived in a huge, Soviet built home, free standing, with it’s own orchard, vegetable garden, barn and stable. Hot water could only be produced by a huge, red, convection wood stove in the basement.

Groping my way up the porch stairs, I had a realisation, this migraine would be the worst I’d ever had. I had never completely lost my vision, or experienced such an intense and sudden change of pressure in my skull. The only hope of relief was to run a bath and to ask my girlfriend to attempt to massage my body, which had gone into a state of hypertension.

—

Perhaps I liked University so much because it was so safe. I could be intellectually competitive and even violent within certain parameters. I could be challenged and met with precise criticism. I could learn to duck and dodge and weave. To strike at the heart. To be extremely persuasive and eloquent in my argument and thoughts. I had the opportunity to write, to explore ideas and test them out. Does life determine consciousness, or consciousness determine life? I remember that question. That got me really heated up. I remember exploring Marxist thinking then. I found certain flaws within it. I discovered then the framework though. The dominance hierarchy. Though at the time, I did not recognise it as such. I saw it in Marxist terms, as, ‘the superstructure’. Now I can apply the framework Jordan Peterson has shared, which reveals that this superstructure is the framework of culture within which we live and are born into. It is by necessity of entropy a dead and decaying structure. It provides enormous benefits whilst being tyrannical and judgemental to a great degree. This is the trade. Protection for control. As a problem, human freedom versus survival, this trade has been a necessary sacrifice as far as our current evolution has seemed to have been able to solve.

As a young child Reginald had seen his mother and father quite often fight. He’d been a relatively gentle boy. Though he could be cruel to cats. Sometimes he hurt his cats. Or would try to trap them. He never wished them to leave him. He had boundaries. He would take a small children chair. One with wooden legs and struts. He placed it on the landing, and then would hunt for the cats. They were young then, still able to move and run around for themselves. Young nonetheless. He would place the kitten under the armchair. And then attempt to keep them there, by placing his hands in front of whatever exit they attempted to take. It was never successful for long.

Sometimes when he would hunt the cats he would pick them up by their four legs together and hold them at the ankles. Sometimes he would squeeze them too hard. Harder then he knew was okay. Sometimes the cats would squeal and meow. Reginald gained some small pleasure from this that he couldn’t understand. Mostly, however, it made him feel guilty.

By the time he went to school Reginald was a creature of great imagination and images. He would charge around the playground, sometimes alone, sometimes with a companion, rarely with the group. He would then find ways of creating meaning and mystery in all the objects around him. A special stone buried into the wall was a source of power and magic for their adventures. He was often able to find and ride some of the best toys in the playground. Mostly they went on adventures. It was high on a hill, the school. And it gave him the sense of being in a place of great wonder and scale. Safe on the tiered leaf of some enormous tree, overlooking the canopy of the forest.

Reginald remembered the school play. He was to be Joseph, and to guide Mary to the manger. It was an important part to play. He enjoyed it. Did it well. However, by the time he came to secondary school, he was extremely shy of drama. Was unable to express his ability for mime. It was largely due to the position he had found himself in with his peers. Martin B., for example, the leader of his troop, a big burly black boy from one of the roughest neighbourhoods in Woolwich. Itself a rough place. London’s poorest post code at the time. Something happened. He found himself bullied at his second primary school. Never quite able to fit in the way he had at his first. Sure he’d had a couple of fights in his first school. Had even lost the first one. It didn’t stop him from being a full member of the class. At his next school however, he encountered malevolence. His teacher was an India woman with a great capacity for cruelty, specifically for her male students. She would hit us with our exercise books. I didn’t feel very safe getting changed for P.E there either. One of the women would come into our changing room at the moment we were likely to have our trousers down. The boys also were a different breed. At least they seemed it. At first I believe I played alone. Stanley, a large, creative and extremely playful African boy would join me. We’d mix up our favourite cartoons. Samurai Jack. Gundam Wing. Dragon Ball Z. The other gang, the one I later gravitated to, was Martin B, Daniel and Chukwadi. They were into D12 and Eminem. Things I knew nothing about. At my first school, Plumcroft, I had made fantasy adventures with hawks companions and flying ships. We sailed vast distances. I took risks. I remember giving Rosy a love letter and a little gem. I’d climb the climbing frame. I did hit my head one time on it. That was okay. Anyway, Rosy rejected me. It hurt. That was all part of the game though. By the time I was in St Peter’s, I barely felt attraction to any girl. Hardly dared let myself, lest it be the subject of ridicule. Sandra always liked me though. Always. I felt it from a young age. Danielle I found pretty. She was hard and angular at times though. I was far happier pursuing Charlotte in my teens. Or Tes. I was always hyper attracted to women. From an extremely young age. I dated young. I had sex young. Thirteen or fourteen. I used a lot of manipulation to make it happen also. Blackmailed my mother essentially. Josie lied to her parents. It was a big mess. We caused a lot of drama. We got to have sex though. Safe sex. I remember lighting the candles. Helping Josie relax. I gave her a massage. We used to speak for hours on the phone. Hours. Late into the night. How did I even get to school? I do not know. What a wild and crazy part of my life. So much uprooting and chaos. Just so much chaos. I never knew where I’d be leaving from school. Where I’d be living next. I remember Josie’s mother had to drive me to the hospital that time I cut my finger open. I lied a lot back then. A lot. For years after I lied. I am happy now to be working and living as honestly as I can. It gives me health and happiness, even when it is painful.

—

Kidulthood

I stare out the window. A pale frothy band of cloud float across the bare perceivable blue. Below them, a band of blue grey cover. It all appears not to move. The sun is high even now, breaking out over the rigging. All those rows of canopy. The two translucent, whitish and slightly brown plastic brown sheets I see taunt and static. Behind them the rows of black cramped matt wrapping. Like cut to dry umbilical cords, with tendrils of bloody capillaries dangling from them. The sky has changed now. No more hard edges, now it blends together like a Turner. Like the sunrise at Norham castle. And the scene reminds me of the immense hard work it takes to get things done. To realise and maintain this ship of dreams. But what is a dream if it cannot be enjoyed? Why toil if our hearts know no celebration and our bodies know only struggle? I wonder.

When the riot broke out, it wasn’t long before someone went down. Cookie was bleeding so much, the blacks thought he’d be knifed. We never found out. The blood was profuse. It mottled his wirey red hair and covered his blood freckled cheeks. There was blood on the sandy grass. I could see him for a few moments at a time between the pushing and shoving. He was out cold. Many surrounded him. That was were the heavies were. Leo, a huge unit, was swinging wildly, McKiernan with his arms out, deflecting. It was a spectacular sight… Battle lines in a school between blacks and whites, like something out of a Chapman song, or those pictures I once saw of Little Rock, only, this was more a savage neolithic turn out. Stranger still, it was happening at an all boys Catholic school, and the year was 2006. I remember being in that division. In those ranks, seething with fear and frustration. Feeling the push and ebb behind me, seeing the my counter parts opposite me. Moses. Martin Best. Many of the toughest kids in our year were black, though the numbers favoured the whites. It was around this time I saw Joe come storming through the lines like Achilles come for his reckoning. Joseph Augustus, soot black, charged in his muscled and lean frame and powerful fists by his side, wide. Explosive. Despite the deepening gap and extreme racial tensions in our school, Joe was my self-appointed protector. His presence kept me safe from those in my own year with older brothers. All that was about to change.

I always liked to wake up early. It gave me a perverse pleasure to be alone. To be out before any rush. I’d jump on the bus. Hoping to catch the beautiful, serene Jessany Friday on the 486 bus. If I was alone, I’d simply enjoy seeing her. If I happened to be with others and saw her in the evening coming home, it was far more likely I’d try to hit her with some spitballs through a McDonalds straw. I’d spend the rest of those early mornings roaming round the Broadway, a relatively large shopping mall and district in Bexley which housed the south east terminus for buses running through London to Kent. Most mornings, I spent with kids from my year, getting McDonalds, graffin’ or trying to catch the girls from Townley Grammar in their stark, pressed, delicious grey uniforms.

But many mornings they weren’t as a early as me. And I’d be alone. After awhile I noticed two older kids kept turning up and talking. Black Joe Augustus, and Kieran Young. They were three years older than me. Joe was exceptionally strong and a prodigy on the football field. Kieran was known as an ace graffiti artist, one who knew all the top names and sites in South London and Kent. For some reason, they got along. And they’d spend an hour or so before school hanging around on the benches beneath the clock towers, talking about fights they’d heard happening between the two biggest gangs at the time, RA (know by the dual moniker, Racist Attack and Red Alert as it’s code name: a derivative of the National Front) and the T-Block, an all black crew hailing out of the Thamesmead area, and of course, girls they wanted to fuck, who was graffin’ what, music, movies. All that kind of bullshit.

That time I went down something spectacular. Such a strange day. In that big open park with the girls from the Grammar school. I think we’d had a few drinks. How we ever used to get alcohol I don’t know. We’d hassle people in the streets, or walk straight in and try our luck in the Off-Licence. Imagine that. Little rows of low shops on the High Street. We. Still children. Would wait close by. Fear in our throats. Pretending not to feel any fear. Just children outside — no more than thirteen when we first tried — picking up the same booze only the street bums and alkies would buy.
The girls would meet us in the field by the wood. The grass was open and green there. Then led into a wood chip path. I still remember that wood chip. How it smelt. Dry, like red dust. The trees were dense and the undergrowth just light enough to walk through. An open space with some tree stumps was our seat.
People tended to avoid the wood. Not us. It was our residence, our home away from home, the place where we could all go and be together without needing permission, no negotiating with mothers, brothers, fathers, sisters, no rules or constraints. No watchers. No one to justify ourselves to. None of that. Just us, the sunshine expanse and wide-open freedom. With the added advantage of girls and booze thrown in.
There was a cost.
We weren’t the only ones enjoying the liberties and free-roaming places like Danson park and the Broadway. As soon as we had come to make our own way, gangs had sprung up around us like thistles and weeds. Choking the available space. It could be dangerous to be out alone. Yet in a group, with girls, and a rare commodity like booze? Confidence was high. Well, then you, what we didn’t know at that age, was that it could also make you a larger and more opportune target.
I was dangling on the monkey bars with Callaghan. They were set just inside the wood. We’d talked a couple of the girls we liked, Georgia and Roberta, into coming with us. These two to us were the most busty and beautiful of the group. Roberta with her flax blonde hair and freckles and cold eyed stare, Georgia dark brown, warm and with a savage sense of humour.
Somehow I managed to damn near knock myself out.
Up on the bars with Cal, we was swinging around and showing off. Pull ups, holds, all that kind of stuff. Cal, athletic and handsome, held himself taunt with his arms straight below him to the bars. I had to beat him. Raising myself up, I began to spin into my arms. Rolling towards the bar to drop into a German hang.
That was a mistake.
I slipped. My left hand slipped off the bar. My head slapped one side just above the temple. Then richoette into the other at the back of my skull. My view went black. I remember the lurch as I hit the ground. Cal saying, ‘O shit!’ and Georgia gasping. Roberta had been watching from a little distance, and, seeing what had happened, immediately disappeared out in the woods.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re gonna be alright,’ Georgia cooed at me. There was no blood, but a strong dark haze over my vision.
‘I’m fine. Let me up!’ I said, trying to stand and failing.
‘Stay here I’m gonna get the others.’
‘But Berta’s gone!’
Cal was already running.
Silence came over the scene.
It seemed we were suspended there in time for a few minutes. Georgia looking over me, holding my face in her hands. With a gentle movement, she lifted off my tight cap and began to stroke my head.
‘Uh… what happened to him?’
The voice of Tim.
Somehow I was transported out into the field. They must have carried me. It was beautiful there. The grass so long and full of fresh smelling. Some part of me was enjoying the attention. The not having to do anything but lie there. My head throbbed. I lay on Georgia’s jacket, her kneeling beside me. Taking in the whole view, the light swell of late spring air. The crumpled sky blue of a jumper by my head. My vision was coming back.
I could see figures in the field. Behind them, a dark blob congealing in my vision. I heard a shout go out in fear.

It was then I realised we were not alone.

They’d been shoving me off between them for a few minutes by this point. I could still stand. Trees surrounded us. I tasted stale booze in my mouth and the smell of aluminium. Everything rotated at odd angles. The high trees, the brown, mulch ground, the light, the leaves, the faces of my assailants. A multitude of colours and shapes. Like a kaleidoscope. All their various movements. Powerful arms and feet. Deep jackets and hats. Jabbing and shoving me. Even long haired girls, who seemed sly and quick. The whole body of them moving with me along the path. I had one goal. Even if I had to crawl, I had to make it out of the woods, to get out of the kaleidoscope and onto the High Street.
‘Fucking loser.’ One spat.
‘Slap him Charlie.’
I felt pain transmit itself from my jaw. Another shove. I staggered.
‘What a tramp.’ The same voice said.
‘Kick him! Kick him! Come on! Kick him,’ somewhere in the crowd I heard a voice that I recognised.
Dull thuds. I span around with my fists wide. Started again to walk forward. A sudden weight against my back legs brought me down. I fell to my knees. I could see the sunlight piercing through the trees. Then dust and leaves covered my sight and they began to kick at me as one body.
The ground swallowed me in a whirl and my body was graced with rubber soles and laces.
After a time, they backed away somewhat. I sensed a new arrival Slowly I began to get up. The mood shifted and the crowd had become quiet. A pair of legs came to stand before me. I looked up into a familiar face.
‘Hello Mikey,’ I said.
The young gang leader considered me through cobalt blue eyes. Then a flicker of recognition.
‘Chris?’ He sputtered through a thick lisp. ‘Chris from Shooters?’ He turned to the crowd and began to remonstrate.
‘Oi! Oi! This is my pal. What are you lot doing? He comes from my ends. What did I tell you about touching people from my block?’ He drawled, lurching at them.
A few in the crowd started to mumble.
His thick lips drawled the words out. The I could feel the crowd hesitate. Unsure of themselves. Mikie put his hands on my shoulders and lifted me to my feet.
‘It’s cool now Chris, you hear? Is cool.’
There it was, that lisp again. Of all the people to end an ambush, Mikey Farraday was the saviour I never suspected.
A sense of relief came over me. My body relaxed. I looked at Mikey and tried to smile. I could taste freedom. I looked deep into Mikey’s blue eyes, took in his scared face and big pink lips and for just a moment, I believed myself delivered.
Then that lip curled. And with a sudden twist. Malice.
I was struck right around by the force of the blow, and as I fell from his out stretched fist — blackness.

When I awoke the trees were still there. I could hear the birds again.
The mob was gone.

My face was a mix of blood and chip bark. Swelling around my eye and lip. I put shaking arms against the ground and lifted my face and chest up. It was heavy. To breathe ached my ribs. Chip bark was stuck to my lips. I turned over. As I did my bag slipped from my back. It had been covered in silver spray paint.

Soon enough the others I had set out with that morning started drifting in. First on the scene was Callaghan. He was disturbed.

‘O shit o shit o shit.’

‘What’s up Cal?’ I said, with blood in my smile. ‘Do I look good?’

‘Mate. No. They fucked you up. You alright?’ Cal kept his distance. His hands were open. I realised he was approaching as if I were a wounded animal, one that might make a vengeful sudden strike.

I shrugged and tried to stand. It felt like trying to stand on a paper plate.

‘Give us a hand.’

I held my hand outstretched. Cal started forward. Through the thicket there was a noise. He stopped. Looked up. Again then noise. Someone was coming. Fast.

Cursing as he broke through between a hazel and holly bush, it was little Harrild.

‘Those fucking cunts! What did they do to you? Mate if I was there things would have been different. They’ll see. We’ll call up Ebon and my brother. They’ll get Jonsie and them. This is getting settled.’ He bounced around all cat in a cage, his small shoulders swinging.

‘Listen, before you do all that, get me up, I want to go home.’ I said.

‘Yeah yeah, alright’. Him and Call lifted up.

‘Oi!’ It was the voice of a girl.

It was Georgia. Coming down the path from the field. I took the sight of her in. Pink and gold. The green behind her. As she come closer I saw things. Her black hair scrunched. Tears had blackened her eyes. There was a red bleed coming up on her cheek.

‘What happened to you?’

‘She tried to stop them.’ Callaghan said, shame heavy in his voice.

‘Yeah, Mikey’s girlfriend and them ones roughed her up.’

‘We had to pull her away in the end.’

I stared at her. I never asked. I never asked why didn’t get involved. Why they didn’t try to help. It seemed a waste of breathe. Sometimes these days, if the moment comes to me, like it has today, I ask myself why. Why did they not help me? But I know the answer now. I knew it back then. It’s still taken more than a decade to sink in. It’s the same reason most people do most of what they do. They are afraid.

They had plenty of cause to be afraid. Plenty of cause to fear. The gang that had come for me was by far the most notorious of our year. Where we was drinking and chasing girls, having a few fights here and there, Mickey and his boys were regularly giving beatings, stealing cars, dealing drugs and, it was said, carrying blades.

Some might have considered me lucky.

I knew why it had been me. I didn’t even need to think about it. That was crystal clear.

It was because of little Chris Murphy, our trist in the lunch hall two weeks before. He’d been flinging peas and mash potato at someone. I didn’t take to kindly to this, and told him where to go. He stood up. Asked if I wanted some as well. Chris had an older brother in our school. He was known to be in one of the gangs. It was why he thought he could get away with throwing scoops of mash potato and peas at other kids, older kids, one’s that wouldn’t defend themselves. I stood up. It wasn’t a smart move. Not only did he have an older brother in our school. No.

Little Chris Murphy was one of Mickey’s crew.

—

Remembering all the fights I’ve had.

The playground was asphalt. That hard concrete with lumps in it. I remember the area was fenced, giving it the impression of a huge cage. Like one of those fighting cages you seen on television these days. It was suited for it’s purpose. Many fights took place in that cage, and even more took place outside it. Besides this playground was a row of prefabricated classrooms. Usually where history was taught in those days. This was before they were demolished and the new blocks were built. On this occasion I’m remembering Joseph Fortuna. He was a clown of a kid. Italian descent. Fairly quick and athletic Skinny and average height. He had an older brother who looked the spit of him, only with a larger, hooked eagle beak and bigger shoulders. He would have made a good roman extra in some movie. They both wore the same hair cut. Close buzz back and sides with thicker fuzz on top, about an inch long. Mouse brown hair.

It was a beautiful day. Just like like today. Faintest wisps of white high in a blue sky. Everything below the highest reaches seems bathed in white from the Sun.

We’d been on the playing field, mocking up a game of football with the year elevens. They were a good three years older than us. A big difference at that age. They had man hands, huge shoulders, faces that seemed chiselled hard like soldiers.

As we played some of them brothers of the older lads got rough here and there. They took liberties. Like tripping Callaghan over. Or lifting little Ryan off the ball. He was too slight and quick for them to tackle easily. Some of us, myself included, took offence to this. We began to wrestle back, eventually the game turning into a kind of melee in which the older boys seemed intent on toughening us up. For our part, we was determined to toughen up as much as we could. It went on for a good half hour, with plenty of us picking up bruises and cuts. A few dropped out. It was too rough. I relished it. Though soft and gentle as a boy, adolescence had begun to fill me with an instinct for challenge and need to channel my will. Facing older boys at school, was a outlet that brought me a boldness and courage I didn’t always have with my peers. I sensed somehow that I was safer to challenge them, that they would respect such a daring. Boys my age, experienced had shown, held grudges when beaten. And boys with older brothers and grudges where especially dangerous. As I was to find out, repeatedly throughout my time at St. Columbus.

Eventually, we heard the bell, and turned in. Most of us were covered in dust and sweat, shirts flapping about our waists, ties loose or off altogether. After it was over on the playing fields, we spread out to pick up our bags, blazers and the rest. I ended up wandering with a year ten lad I knew called Kieran, and another who had taken a liking to me, Joe. Joe was a black guy. He was fast, tough and extremely strong. Yet somewhere in him was also a gentleness, a rare compassion that wasn’t weakness, but a strength. This was something extremely difficult to show in an all boys school. Especially one which was increasingly gaining a reputation as one of the most troubled schools in Greater London, if not the country.

After following these two a little ways, having my hair ruffled and Kieran pushing me playful telling me I was a tough guy, I remembered I had left my bag by the prefabs. My next lesson was art, so I’d need to double time if I was to avoid being late to class. Something I regularly achieved.

As I came back around the corner between the toothy cage playground and those squat grey buildings I walked straight into Michael Corrain and little Joe Fortuna. Michael was a year ten, tough, with a skin head said very little. It was rumoured he knew Kung Fu. Well him and a friend, Jason, were roughing Joe up. It looked like it had crossed the line and Joe was visibly hurt and upset.. Something in me rose up. I told them to leave him alone. He had Joe by the collar. I remember Joe’s toes being a little ways off the ground as Corrain’s gripped fist held his collar and his face was turned, counter-wise to face me. He put Joe down, ‘O you want some do yah?’ he said.

In a flash he was closing in on me. I remember ducking down as he came over me with his arms outstretched. Something in my body took over. I thundered up, fist first. Then I hear a whack, and felt a terrible pain shoot up my right hand and arm. Before I could check the damage my feet were already running. I turned briefly to see if Corrain was coming. For a moment he was bent, one hand on his knee, the other on his mouth, then he pushed his friend away and came sailing after me. As I turned back, I saw ol’ Joe Fortuna running next to me. Turns out we needed every meter of the hundred or so head start we had. Joe’s face oscillating between grinning and plain fear. Door after double door with the threat of Carrain catching us. We made it into the art block. I rushed into class, making lame excuses, and took my place at the table. That’s when I noticed my hand was covered in blood, and the knuckle was throbbing like a car engine.

—

I remember the night quite clearly. We’d been to the Anchorage Hotel. Big pub off the corner. Right by the underpass for the motorway. Don’t know how we got there. Must have been the 422. Trouble bus. Anyway. We order beers with our school blazers on, ties removed. It was enough for them. At some point we got up and sang karaoke. A lot of karaoke. I cannot remember what songs. Probably Frank Sinatra or Eminem. Our Dad’s music, the music of some place far away. By the time we left it was late. School night though. I’m pretty sure a Thursday. As me and Joe got on the bus, I had this sense in my gut that trouble was coming for us. For me. The whole time home I had it. I was sure it would be in Cherry Orchard. Place was becoming infamous. There were regular reports of knifings. Even in the papers. Occasionally, stories of an execution would filter out on the street. Even to us young pups living in what was more like the suburbs. We heard tales shotguns and bats being pulled on dealers we knew when they went in there. At that age, it was all story and rumour.

Either way, one thing I remember from that night is the yellow ban of a London bus.. The railings you hold onto when there’s not seats. Well I remember holding onto that. The bus was empty. Big Joe talked. A little slurred. Big Joe. Fat Joe. Egregiously fat. With that scar over his eye. Made him look like a hard bastard to me. Especially with all those patterned buzz cuts he used to get from Vel’s. He also had size on his side. He was about three times the size of me. He was probably 70 kilos at the age of fifteen. Most of it candy fat, no doubt but he could punch. We’d all seen that. A good guy to have around. I always told myself.

Anyway, we pass through Cherry on the 422 about midnight. Not so much as a mouse is moving. No skags. No dealers. No beamers. Most nights you’d find um’ cruising through the neighbourhood, jacked up, like sharks on the prowl. Not tonight. Tonight things were smooth. Calm. We made it all the way. Off the bus, onto our street. It was 100 meters or less from home when it finally kicked off.

I remember his face. His eye swollen, it looked like it was coming out from his face. I’d stepped Joe into the road to keep clear of him. That big dead weight. The fella on the corner was probably twice the size of Joe. I think we were fourteen or fifteen. It’s hard to remember. Could have been spring or winter. It wasn’t a cold night. Just our blazers on, and a light coat. I think. Any way, I edged Joe into the road. I’d stopped her, frozen on the spot, and then noticed him beyond her with his hands raised. Just out of the streetlight, where the roundabout started. It was steep that roundabout. We’d played on it so many hundreds of times as children. Climbed the trees. Wrestled. Used it as a island you had to reach in our games of ‘Manhunt’. It was the danger zone. And the of the two trees at it’s base only one was your promise of safety.

Joe’s eyes and body swivelled to track the him as we approached. We were walked in a wide arc in the middle of the road. No cars parked either side. Strange for a Thursday night. Maybe it was a Friday. Any way, he’s shouting her with his hands high. She said something real quiet… There was a pause. Then his hands are moving. A jolt. Then pushes her hard. She almost goes down.

I feel Joe bristle next to me. He had a thing about hitting women. His old man beat his mother a few times in front of him and his brothers. Once Joe himself tried to get involved, and his Pa cracked him one good. Actually, maybe that was how he got his scar… I don’t remember now.

We were about level with them now. Joe with his Manson lamps staring at this full grown Nederthal and his missus. They’re getting heated up now. I’m trying not to look and just keep Joe walking. It’s none of our business, after all. I don’t want any trouble. And who does Joe think he is anyway? I’ve seen my old man and Ma trade slugs. Mum hits as good as she gets. I remember she broke that cup on Dad’s head that Sunday breakfast. We’d just come back from doing the shopping. Dad liked the two of us to do the shopping, then make breakfast together. Anyway, then he had to take her to the hospital. It wasn’t pretty. Her pinky. The porcelain had severed some of the tendons. It was always crooked and blue after that, Ma’s pinky. Dad’s head didn’t even have a scratch.

I remember the blood in my ears when the big fella stopped pushing his girlfriend around, stood up straight, and looked right at us. After an agony of silence. He says:

’What are you looking at?’

A moments pause. I breath deep.

‘Fat cunt.’

Everything began to move slowly then. I’m ready for Joe to go. So’s I kept my body between Joe and this other lump. I’m using my hands to hold and angle Joe straight ahead, as if he was a blind man crossing the road. To my surprise, he didn’t resist. I craned my neck and said, ‘Nothing. We don’t want any trouble.’ We kept walking along. We passed them. In about thirty seconds, I’ll see the house.

We was about half way onto the roundabout when I felt them. Him thudding across the tarmac. By the time I turned he was already on top of us. In those moments, time both dilates and acerbates. It takes on the duality. I remember, as I saw this towering man running towards me, first raised, something inside took over. As he made the last half meter of ground — I remember twisting falling, then I saw my fist sailing up, going right towards his jowl. It connects. The charge becomes a fall. There’s a heavy hairy hand on my school shirt. I feel the buttons pop as the hand cuts down them. The white cotton sprayed with blood. In a moment I’m swept up beneath a the mass of him.

We’re tumbling then. Rolling into and down the grassy knoll of the roundabout. The angle of the hill pulling us perpendicular, back towards the road. I’m wrestling and punching as hard as can. He seems sluggish. Almost a limp weight. I cannot see or hear Joe or the girl. Just him and the smell of grass and pine needles. Just my arms and the smell of blood and that fat blob of adrenaline in my nose.

After a length of time I can’t recall — somehow — I… I managed to get my forearms around this guys neck. Then I’m sitting with his bull and his head in my lap. I’m sat uphill to him. He’s heavy. Something not right with him. Like a limp weight. No resistance. I thought he’d lost his will… That’s when I heard her. Screaming. The background come into focus again. was then I realised I had stopped him from breathing.

‘I’m going to let you go. You hear me? It’s over. I’m going to let you go now.’ And so I did. In the darkness of the streetlights I felt Joe hovering behind us, near the trees. Nothing seemed to move. The three lanes spread out before us. On to the left, another to the right across the hillside. One directly downhill, curving east at a sharp descending angle.

I stayed on my knees. Breathing hard. My shirt was torn. My jacket and blazer covered in mud.

Then he slowly gets to his knees. Looks hazily at me, and — as he smiled — he puts his hand on what was left of my collar, and begins thumps the side of my head with his fist.

The rest I have no memory of. I can’t remember how I got up, but I did. And when I did, I all remember is her screaming as my arms began moving. Then my feet hitting the ground as fast as they could. ‘What have you done to him?!’, What have you done to him?!’ her shriek in the silence.

I felt sick waiting for to Ma open the door. It was like waiting for Christmas morning, waiting for that door to open. Black wood. With little grooves. That big gold knocker in a knot. White window seals. Always clean. Ma’s face when she opened the door — I can’t see it.

He was in my dreams for weeks, man… I would hear this thud as his head hit the back of aluminium sign and wake up, sweating. Or I’d be staring a grey painted sign, with blood being splattered on to it. Mostly I saw him. Him on the ground. Rolling. Rolling. Rolled himself off the curb. Rolling back and forth. Like he was on fire. And in the darkness I could always see his eye. Caved in. Covered in blood. Swollen and loose like it was about to fall out…

And her scream.

—

The years were passing for him.

We were on our way out. I remember all I wanted to do that night was dance, have some laughs. I remember coming up to the bus stop. We’d done all our prep. I’d began sipping from a small bottle of vodka that I’d just bought. Myles was on my right. We were talking about something. I don’t know what. Maybe the club. Maybe a girl. Maybe it was about one of our friends. We knew how many of us we’re coming together that night. Where we were going. So we’re walking down the hill, out of the offie besides my old man’s local. I’m in black skinny jeans and winkle pickers. I know that much. I’ll never forget wearing those shoes. That hard leather and fine shape. Wearing them in them cut my feet. I always had broad feet. But winkle pickers… for dancing they couldn’t be beat. I still see her vaguely. She’s there at the red bus bench, bunched up. White coat on. Small as she can be without crouching down. As we approached I heard the first one. It thonk’d off the glass. At first I thought it came from under a car. We were coming closer now. I saw her turn a little, shaking. Then I noticed her face was wet. Another thonk on the window. Heavier. Louder. I looked behind the shelter. Into the woods that stood on the hillside behind it and saw, as my eyes adjusted, three boys. I could hear them laughing and egging each other on now. They must have been a year or two younger, judging by their voices. I felt my heart pumping. The words leaving my mouth before I’d even had time to think things through.

‘Sod off and leave her alone!’

They stopped for a moment, startled. The last stone thrown hit the bus stop. The girl was looking between me and the floor now. The boys looked at me, Myles stood a little way back.

‘You heard me. I said move on…’

They still stood there. One of them slowly turned. The other looked at him.

‘I said go on. Get out of here. Next stop. Down the hill.’

I pointed with my thumb and wrapped knuckles. Two of them had begun to retreat.

The middle one however, slim and tallest, he had menace in his eyes. He started coming at me.

‘What if we don’t.’

He started toward me. The other two turned back around now. I felt Myles close by. Waiting. I stood behind the bus stop, a little way into the wood, facing this little pack of wolves. Suddenly he started coming fast. As he did, I balled my fist, stepped forward, swung my hip and hit him as hard as I could. A overhand to the face. Like a coil that had been cut from the ceiling, he collapsed. The night was dark. And the street lights seemed to make things feel hot. They’re yellowish white incandesce glowed around me for a moment.

Already the boys were picking up their fallen friend. Arms under his shoulders. Lifted up like a wounded soldier. They’re growling by this point. Saying who will be coming for revenge. At this point, Myles steps forward.

‘Yeah yeah, bring it on, bring um all on,’ he says.

‘We’ll be waiting.’

I put my hand on his chest and tell him to stop. He does for a moment.

‘Bring your whole crew. We’ll mess um all up just like you!’ pointing at the kid in the middle, he skips, lands and throws a fist low into the air in taunt.

Their friends face doesn’t look so good. The lip is blown, blood is flowing freely and growing huge with puffy swelling. A bus pulls up. Double decker in fast. I start towards it. Myles grabs me by my coat hem.

‘Where you going?’ he said.

I watch the girl step lightly onto the bus and move quickly to the back seats downstairs. It’s around 2000. The lower decks still has people coming home from visits to family and friends. The top looks empty. I sense safety and pull myself against his weight…

‘Come on! I want to get out of here.’

’No, no, no. We’ve got to wait for the others.’

I’ve got one foot on the open bus doors.

‘What, here?’

‘Yes, here.’ He said.

‘Don’t be such pussy. All the boys are coming. If they come back we’ll spank um’, what you fretting about?’

‘I don’t want trouble Myles. I want to get out.’

The bus driver closes the doors as I step back onto the street. A moment passes as the bus rises up on its hydraulics. Then the engine turns and it rolls away.

Everything inside me begins to scream.

Four more buses were to pass us in the next 20 minutes. Everyone that did felt like a dagger in my breast. Every bus that passed deposited more and more of our friends. Not just boys, the girls too. Slowly. Some of these lads I’d known since I was able to get out of the house alone. Some I’d known since my days in primary school. Those I’d had my trials and tribulations with. Some had even been a leader to me at one point, or a bully. As all children can be to one another. Others of those assembled I’d become fast friends with over the twelve months before. A couple I’d just met. There’s fifteen or so of us at this point. I am desperate to leave this place. Myles is recounting the story every chance he can get. My little flask of vodka is nearly gone now.

—

I took the beating.

When the cars swung in over the bus stop, the bodies rose out. I stayed planted on my feet. I remember the crowd of my friends began to disperse. Of course, they hadn’t seen these kids throwing stones, or the one that came at me. They had only heard the story. Myles only, stayed within the circle of the encroaching menace. There were many of them. And they were large, angry and powerful looking men, mostly dressed in black. Later I was told the stories of others they bashed. Baseball bats and bullproof vests.

I consider myself lucky, looking back.

He leant against the car. One of the larger, fatter men. I remember them wearing a lot of black. The car was also black. Typical of crews back then. He leant against it with his hands dug into the back of his trousers by the waist. The place where, in London, knives and guns were kept for ease of access. My heart stopped as he asked the question,

‘So… which one of you pricks hit my brother?’

I look into the car and see one of the kids. He looks younger now. It’s not the one I hit. But his skin and face chub resembles the man with a lisp, thick set shoulders and a crew of seven more men surrounding me. People started looking at one another. I raised my hand, bringing my eyes from the concrete to his face.

‘That would be me.’

Arms began to move. My eyes zero’d in on his hands as they came from behind his back. God knows how it would have helped. Maybe I would have turned and run into the forest. Not that it would have helped. They had me surrounded. It was too late for that.

They were empty. A surge of relief enter my body as the first blow landed. One shot cleaved open my eyebrow. Another into my ribs. Clean hit. Staggering me backwards. Something inside me was prepared however, my feet planted themselves, my arms came up to shield me as boxer blocks blows.

Then fist began to reign down with a fury I had never experienced.

Fist after fist after fist, until I my forearms felt like they had been shattered. I was backed up against a tree. Once I went down it was kicks. Kicks into the ribs and knees. By this point I had curled into a ball, my knees and elbows out, my back against the tree.

Their breathing was hard by the time they left me alone. Turned out however, they only wanted to give me a kicking. They didn’t kill me.

What I am trying to understand, is who am I? Did I bring this reign of misfortune down upon myself? Is suffering and disaster disproportionate? Or is it just? Is it my fault? Is there something I can do to rectify this? Is the hope and promise of transformation true? Is it possible in this day and age? Is it possible for me?

Was any of this real? Or do I exaggerate? I mean, if they had really wanted to hurt me, would I have been covered in bruises, and hospitalised? I did go to hospital. Yes. Jessica. Jessica. How you loved me. How I loved you.

For some strange reason, the pub is almost entirely empty. Save for one of two fellas that I know of vaguely, I’d seen once or twice in the same group as Papa. Though not his friends by any great stretch of the imagination. They sat me in a chair in the centre of the pub’s east wing. More chairs were found. Several people crowded round me. I swayed on the chair. I remember the face of a big friendly kind, it was Stewart. One of the few black men that drank in that pub. I took a longer glug of the whiskey and tried to focus on his face. I swayed forward and sight went dim. That’s when I felt a hand holding up my shoulder. My vision came back into focus momentarily, Stewart had one had pressed to prop up my shoulder. The other he had his open phone in his hand, he looked at me intently with his mouth a little open.

‘Heh Nick. Hallo? Yeah Nick. Nick? It’s Stewart. Can you hear me? Yeah. Alright? Yeah, eh, we’ve got your boy here. Listen, he’s looking a little worse for wears…’

We sat in the waiting room of the hospital for about fifteen minutes. It was an both a pleasant and uncomfortable time. At once because I could see the kid I’d punched just an hour ago sitting adjacent to me with his own father, his nose bloodied and his lip badly swollen with blood. I looked a lot like him at this point I guessed. For some time I felt uncomfortable that he would let his Dad knew it was me that hit him. I had images of his Dad and my Dad getting into a fight. But he didn’t make a sound, whether he saw me or not is a mystery to me. He just sat their quietly. I reckon he did though. I reckon he wasn’t all bad, this kid. And his father was just a skinny, average looking man.

My Dad and Myles were with me. Dad was in a shirt. I think he’d been out somewhere. Myles sat next to me, offered me an ear phone, and put a film on for us using his iPod. It was the Disney movie Up. I remember watching the start and all I could think about was her. Jessica. Was she safe. Would she be afraid of me. When could I see her. I felt deeply nauseous. The hospital was packed with people. Many of them drunk or having had accidents from drinking. It wasn’t the first time I’d been in a hospital thinking about Jessica. It certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Thinking about it now. It must have been incredibly stressful for my father to raise me as his child. I guess I’ve always given as good as I got.

Turned out however, they only wanted to give me a kicking. They didn’t kill me. I remember th fury they displayed was like, was like, well I don’t know quite right likely what it was like. It was unlike anything I had experienced before. To be the receptient of such hate. Reckless driven hate. Concentrated into a fist and a curse. Shot through the body and into the body of another.

I withstood all I could. All the damage I could bear. When I came against the tree, the measure of relief was brief. Though it protected my back, it also offered me up as a punching bag. A static target. As I shrunk against the reign of blows, with my forearms now pulvirised, the weight of my body began to sag against my will. I felt heavy and drowsy. My elbows, the major defence against this attack, began to weaken and fall. Soon I was sliding backwards agains the tree. Sagging down to the ground. As I reached it, the punches turned to kicks. Hard heels and toe caps in my ribs. Construction boots and Timberlands if I remember. One brown with blood splattered over it.

The world grew dark then, for a moment I saw nothing but blackness. When I woke up, the car doors where closing. Myles was shouting something indistinguishable from the traffic. The engine turned and, in a moment, they were gone. The survivors came struggling back in drabs. Myles was the first to return. I believe also the last to leave. He’d managed to distract a couple of them. Picked up a brick and threatened to throw it at the car. They chased him off then. Maybe it helped. Maybe not. Who can say with these things. I was so damn glad to be alive, instead of shot, or stabbed and left for dead. Yet I was fairly broken, I could barely stand. The vision before me was wide greens, street lights sharp. I felt my face pound on the left and right side. My lip had been exploded open, my right eye gashed deep, bleeding heavily and swollen to the size of a child’s fist.

Like shedding an old skin.

I remember Myles touching my face gentle as I tried to sit up agains the tree. ‘Looking’ good there buddy.’ He said. ‘You’re looking good.’

‘Yeah. Yeah. I’m alright…’ I mumbled back. ‘Dad there, Dad probably there. He maybe there.’ My eyes rolled in a hazy motion. My hand waved as I gestured towards the pub across the road. The Red Lion. My father’s local and most visited boozer. I believe it was a boy called Joyle then, who came back next. I didn’t know him. He seemed weak and effeminate. As Joyle arrived he put his hands to his mouth. Myles turned to looked at him, then put my arm around his head, and signalled to Joyle to lift me from the other side.

‘Help me with him.’ He said.

I mumbled many thing in this moments, I cannot remember what I was saying. Probably pointing at the pub again. My ribs were badly bruised and it was difficult to breath. As we came out from the woods, we saw the others come into view. Sandra had arrived now. The one we’d been waiting for. My old friend. She’d always wanted me to jump her. She knew it, and I knew it. It just never happened. She let out the natural shock, ‘Oh my God. What did they do to you?’

Myles told me once, long after, that he never forgot the smile I gave her. Big and goofy, with blood smeared between my teeth, and one huge, blood caked lip. We crossed the road, slowly. In the tender arms of Myles and Joyle.

By this point, most of the guys and girls are around. Many are in shock. Some talked about revenge, other’s are asking what happened, some are telling the story, or the story of other things like it that had happened. Some are trying to talk to me. But I can’t see them and I can’t talk. All there is is the pub in front o me. Safety. The promise of whisky or something hot and strong to ease the throbbing in my face. They carry me in there. Through the door, Matt Will held it open I believe. For some strange reason, the pub is almost entirely empty. Save for one of two fellas that I know of vaguely, I’d seen once or twice in the same group as Papa. Though not his friends by any great stretch of the imagination.

Myles was very tender. He came with us to the hospital once Papa arrived. Before that, he’d carried me into the pub. It took the blokes in there a moment to recognise me. When we first entered, they had no idea what to do with me. I said my father’s name and they softened somewhat into a state of the anxious extended when you share bad news at a family gathering. I asked them to call him. They offered me a drink. I believe I asked for a triple whisky. They gave me a glass near the brim on which to sip. It made me glad at heart, that. Tomorrow, we meet again.

It seems I am writing a story I have told many times. Story of shattered dreams, heart brake and misfortune. It is a good story to tell. A hard won story. A tale of beauty and tragedy. Who is to say otherwise. Where will it begin? When I met Jessica? It’s a pretty great night to remember. Yes it is. What makes it a story that needs to be told? Well, that a young man can go through such an experience is really quite something. It reveals the nature of pain. Of our pain. Of my pain. That makes it worth telling all on it’s own. Fuck. The scene with father in the apartment. Father depressed. I’d been trying to find myth and metapohor, perhaps I do not need it. Perhaps to write it raw is the only way to write it. To feel and bleed it from the fingertips . No less then your soul reaching into to Soul shards. That’s what they are. Like Chopin and Chekov. Read Chekov by the way. It’s necessary . Writing is a conversation with the world. It’s the most intimate conversation you can have with the whole world. With whoever is willing to sit and listen. How exciting is that eh? To offer that.

‘Tell me your story, yours, and I will tell you mine.’ No less, no less honest than sex really. Can be more honest. It can be.

—

Canterbury

—

It was a dry and lovely October morning. Nothing was moving, except for the wind.

Gender & Queer Theory

They didn’t know he was gay. Just me. I’d worked it out somewhere between the second and fourth seminar. He hadn’t come onto me. By now we were eight weeks in, and the girls still didn’t know. Ten of them. Becki, with the prim nose and freckles. Hair pulled back. Elizabeth, red haired Glaswegian. Always flaming mad. Amy, fierce in a bland kinda way. Hard to remember the rest. And Joe. Joseph McNeary. The intellectual. For me was the very essence of University intellectual cavity caught in the headlights of the real world. One tiny revelation at a time. It proved the system was working at least.

So he came in. Walked around the desk with a swagger more defined then usual. With a severe face. I knew something was up immediately. Just from the way he was coming in. The glass room of the seminar made it like a hothouse. Bottom floor in a hexagonal building designed and built by a prison architect during the seventies. Who knows what for. Anyway. He swans round, pulls his chair out, drops a stack of books on the desk, and says:

‘Men do the fucking. Women get fucked.’

Well I never saw a room fill with bristles and wet cunts as quickly as that in a school before. Nor since I believe. They were in a state of shock. Didn’t know what to do with themselves. Neither did I, being honest. I remember so much about those days. This time the shock was palpable. We’d heard him say all manner of outrages.

‘The state has a monopoly on violence’

Or

‘The legal system, by definition, has to be a failure. Or else it would not exist.’

And when he set questions like,

‘Does consciousness determine reality, or does reality determine consciousness’

Fuck me. I remember being so fired and pushed in those classes to turn up each week with gloves and a mouth piece.

In reality though, I had a lot to learn. I spoke too much. As always. Fighting for a corner I’d yet to understand or know. Bounding over objections. Steam rolling. Being in a daze when Joe, with occasion, would step in on long, abstract jaunts into the unknown. They dazzled me. I could rarely keep up. Yet always felt he had something important to say. It was naturally. You couldn’t speak I this way, having read so much, seemingly, and say nothing. At least, that’ was what I believed then. Not so much now.

It’s funny what stories we tell ourselves. The stories we tell ourselves. It’s just that. Perhaps this is a key for me. To realise the difference between internal narrative and objective narrative. Perhaps. Perhaps this is the case. Where to go now? What would that look like? Dual narratives. Chapters divided by internal and external? A dual mode of narration between third person omniscient and first person? Surely that’s been done before. What other forms work? What compels us in this work?

— I remember a time I shit myself. I was at my Father’s finances family home. I played some video game with her younger brother. He was around twenty I believe. We we’re playing some game. I do not remember it. It was on a playstation. Glass TV stand. Grey Tv. One of those big box styles they had before flatscreens came along. I remember Dad smelt me eventually. Took me into the bathroom and pulled down my trousers. There it was. Pressed against my buttocks and inside my pants. I think he took me home then. I cannot remember. He bought me a Gameboy for his wedding. It kept me occupied. I remember wandering around all the tables. He’d spent quite a bit of money on that wedding. At the Rangers House, Blackheath. I wonder who he was to do that. A lot of people came. Lots of people love Dad. He’s quite extraverted, handsome, funny and can be exceptionally charming and playful. He was playful with me. I remember the game of football we played with the young guys up Shooters Hill that one time. My motor skills were quite limited then. One of them was able to push the ball past me lying on his hands and chest. He pushed it in with his forehead.

Just live.

I am doing my best. I would give it all up. Please take away whatever it is that does not serve me towards a good and Godly life. You took the job, for which I am grateful. It seems I am not meant to have much money at this point in my life either. For this I am also grateful. I trust that you know where I need to be. I am working to trust it as deeply as I can.

What is influencing my decisions. How do I make better decisions? How have I always made decisions?

It is a difficult thing to imagine. How one makes decisions. I remember when I left University for the first time. Between being kicked out of Kent and finally giving up my dissertation the following year. How did I make that decision? I was angry at my father. The stability I deeply needed to tackle that mountain was severely disrupted. I did not have the requisite variety to cope with that. My strategy was to go to Ireland. Where it was quiet and peaceful. So that I would have somewhere I would not be disturbed. To finish my dissertation there in a couple of weeks. When I got there, I found a wall. My body was in pain. My mood terrible. Patrick himself was isolated. A highly gregarious man. He suffered terribly to live alone in this way. As a support, at the time, he was a high liability. That’s not to blame. I would also if I chose to live that way. I may need periods of solitude. Without a doubt. Yet I thrive on social interaction. Thinking about it now, it was unwise. Though it seemed the best move I could make.

I must admit that in those forlorn days, I thought hourly of death and it’s release. That which helped me survive was my time with Martin D. I would walk to the nearby farm and help there daily if I could. That gave me a sense of progress and accomplishment. It also helped me get out of my head and into my body. I decided in those darkest moments that I would leave my degree. I saw no future or potential for myself studying literature. It seemed a highly theoretical and pointless cul-de-sac by that point. I did not have teachers like Vybarr to keep me sane. I enjoyed trying to make sense of the lives of others and fictional characters. To derive truth and meaning from their plight. I lost this with my dissertation however. I set a bar so high it was impossible for me to climb over at that time. I also did not find a way to lower my expectations. To refocus. I was not as I am now.

That was another decision I made. Lying on the carpet in the dining room at my Grandparents house. I felt utterly broken and defeated. A waste of potentiality. I decided then and there that I would somehow find a way. That I would commit utterly to becoming the best human being I could be. Wherever and whatever it took me through. I made a solemn vow.

I could join the church as a priest? Many things. Many things I could try.

What to do now though. I have not the faintest idea. Money cannot stop me. It is merely an obstacle. Merely an obstacle. I can surpass it. I can overcome it. I simply need to know clearly what I want. Clearly. Clearly. Clearly.

To take stock of myself. To ask what it is I need. I have time. What else can I do?

—

—

Story: Canterbury (Lauren, Waitrose: Eva & the African)

We’d play fight a lot. Run around the house with the hoover and she’d slap me with it. On the thigh. On the arm. Across the head if I was particularly cheeky, or if she was feeling mad that day. The balance of power may have been skewed. I was freewheeling a lot of the time through my days. Hours of study in the library punctuated by the gym, training myself, or training her. It was a habit of improving people, that often got me into much of my trouble.

I remember working at the Waitrose during that time. A couple of months after joining there was a new guy that joined us. He was a large, strong and proud African. Surely a capable guy, but a bastard nonetheless. He would seem very agreeable and pleasing to those who held power over him directly in title. Though I do not have to imagine hard to know he must not have enjoyed working there too much. A man of his age and physical capabilities. Perhaps in his mid thirties. Perhaps having moved to England for a better life. For himself or his family. I was a boy of nineteen or twenty, and the same rank as him. It was my shift one day. I asked him to do something for me. Bring the trolley’s in from outside. In my book, a regular request. At first he ignored me. When I persisted he exploded. Stating that I was not in charge. I was not his boss. I said that though this was true, I was the one responsible for the shift and that he could carry out the task anyway. He refused. I confronted him about it. At this point he became animated. Grew taller. I stood my ground. Always the brave fighter eh? When he realised people were watching. He began to walk away from me. Not being given satisfaction, I followed him. We turned into the middle aisle. It must have been a quiet day, I don’t remember there being many customers. It didn’t matter anyway. All there was was the challenge. This furious man standing before me. I was furious. Such a petty thing to refuse. I wanted the job done and this situation resolved. He waved his hands in the air. Threaten to kill me. I stood before him and said, ‘Go ahead and try.’ And met his stare.

Sometime later we was in the branch managers office. David was a large man, with an nose of equivalent size. Another man was with him. What was said escapes me now. I remember this man making the accusation that I had called him a black bastard. Those words have never left my mouth. A bastard is just a bastard. It doesn’t matter if he’s pink or green. I fought the accusation with passion. Too much passion. My sister, being of Ghanian decent. I brought her into it. Sitting there in this little green and beige office. The colours of the supermarket with these talking heads. Talking heads. Yes. That’s one thing that pains me. Talking heads.

Whatever we said, they didn’t punish either of us and we never worked the same shift again.

I remember fucking Eva at the Christmas party that year. My God I was vicious with her. We’d all danced around and got sloppy drunk at the local brewery. She kept on throwing herself at me. Mostly I ignored her. Danced with the others. Had some laughs. She was good looking, in a made-up, insecure kind of way. We got heavy on the seatte at her friends place. Her make up running down her face. We’d been so eager that we neglected to turn the light on. Doing our dance in the dark something beastial. Legs out high. Bouncing deep. The moon was out that night and poured the room with just enough light. I was laughing the whole time while she moaned. Someone opened the door. I thrust a pillow at Eva, at the same time stooped up, grabbed her black dress from the chair and slung it across my shoulder. It didn’t cover much. As this anonymous person entered our dark chamber, their eyes met mine int the first moment. I saw surprise turn to confusion and then to fear. Eva moved herself a little to cover her pussy. Still in shock, our nameless guest one registered the movement and glanced quickly to the sofa. Then, finally realising what was happening and regaining control, they jumped back, hand over eyes, and slammed the door before them.

I left her on the sofa after that. Covered her with a blanket and took off. The street air was cold and crisp. So cold I could see frost on the streets. The city gate was a few hundred meters to my left. I lit a cigarette and began to stalk and roll my way down the street. I was feeling pleased with myself. The world seemed empty. Just how I liked it. I passed by the stream and stopped to finish my cigarette. Lauren would be at home. Waiting most likely. This was one of the few times I deigned not to bring the girl home. Sometime later in Spring I would take Alice to watch the Propeller Company perform Midwinter’s Tale. I remember sitting before that troop electrified to my core. Ecstatic in the performance. The mastery. The vulnerability. To dress as women. To fight and rock out. The white blue light of winter. The uniforms. I almost forgot the girl sitting next to me. It’s a similar experience when I watched Chilli Gonzales with Morven. Not quite the same. For I took Alice home that night and we had ecstatic sex. Lauren must have heard it all. Not that Alice made a lot of noise. She was very good at keeping quiet.

(What would I have liked to have been said? What is the truth I am trying to tell with this story? Where is the lesson learned?) For me it is that one of two actions were appropriate. To walk away completely and report it. Or to stare him down, until it became physical or he walked away. Why? Why for a supermarket job? Because it meant far more than that. It meant freedom. It was a question of freedom. I was willing to die to not be dominated by this man. If you wish for freedom, you must be willing to die for it. That’s the price. The price of freedom is death. Not security. Not liberty. Not fraternity. Death.

Why do I write? To extinguish my naivety. To embrace the monster in me and bring him out into the light. To show the world my ugliness and barbarism, and the ugliness and barbarism of the world. And redemption. And beauty. That is my purpose. To fold my experience into beauty for the purpose of transcending what is dark and brutal inside of me. Inside of each of us. That’s all it is. That’s all it ever has been. To express myself. I must believe.

—

Lauren pursed her lips and twirled the green cocktail shaker, then she opened her eyes wide and upturned her mouth into a broad smile, ‘Yeah, I’m just here with K, he’s just gone to the bar.

It didn’t seem much more than an ordinary night on a campus somewhere in England. The usual goings on where going on. Cheap booze. Students in casual dress, drinking the long endless evenings away. Or so it seems to people that young, with the worlds possibilities and promise arrayed before them.
That wasn’t what was important. What was important, what was important this night specifically, was acts of two young men, who were just coming out from an gathering of poets some time around eight o’clock in on the evening in question. And why it was important, at least for our purposes, was because one of the men was going to spend that night doing something which would change the course of his life forever. As for the other, his life would be changed, though in lesser way, by the tragedy he would witness. It was his role to see a friend and comrade fall, to see him fall prey to his own weakness and the summons of circumstance. Our story begins like a poor man’s Hamlet (who could do nothing but kill his Uncle and suffer in the end, however long he waited), for something was cooking our hero piping hot, until the harmtia brewing in his blood was ready to boil over, and as they drove step by step towards the bar, it’s hot effusive boils began to make themselves known to the world outside.
The bar was light a sickly orange neo, dimmed in the corners, but especially bright under the bar and behind the bottle rack, the shape of the place spread and tucked in the corners like a square bracket around bar. There was pool table, unused tonight. Here and there were small groups of people, drinking and talking quietly. And, in a far corner, was a pair of young women, also drinking, also talking quietly.
K strode to the bar with a purposed, restless grace, his movement alone seemed to drag the other man with him. He reached the bar before J, taking a brief moment to pause, he waited for the barmaid. ‘What a lovely creature,’ he thought to himself, a sigh releasing itself inside. ‘Behave yourself,’ he remonstrated.
J arrived a moment later, having stopped and scanned the place from a few paces back. He moved much like a well oiled tin man, each gesture chunky, definite in it’s mechanic, yet smooth, emotive, emphatic.
‘What happens, right, for me,’ he began, his words delivered in a stop start staccato that was matched at each pause with a terse gesture of his hands. J’s speech was a considered impenetrable by all except those rare few students who made the effort to study him and do their course work. He made points every sentence, and every point a digression, every digression a point in some system beyond anyone else’s capacity to keep score of, except perhaps K, but K knew J wasn’t interested in keeping score, Truth didn’t keep score, it only enjoyed chasing it’s own tail, just as he, J, only enjoyed making the digressions into points, and the points, into digressions, and ‘is, I’m reading Ballard at the moment, so it may frame it all — Ballard has this brutal, brutal proclivity to make assertions about the grotesque — like, he’ll show you an image,’ — J raises his hand like a robot from 1984 holding an invisible crystal ball — ‘and, in the image is something grotesque, like a mangled body — but he’ll make it immediate and visceral by saying that mangled body isn’t any old body. It’s Elizabeth Taylor’s mangled body. And she was in the car with a known sex addict when the Crash happened, so what happens…’
‘J, hold on. Before we get started…’ K turned to the dark haired woman behind the bar who was now waiting and eying him and his strange friend doubtfully.
‘Two lagers, a double gin and tonic, and a shot of gin on the side,’
The barmaids eyes had been drawn a little wider, and now narrowed with inquiry,
‘You want Bombay or ?’ she spoke in with a clipped tone.
‘Yes. No. Actually. Beefeater’s. Lot’s of ice. And lime. Lime in the glass. Please.’
The two men stand in silence, facing the bar taps. One is blinking rapidly, the other breathes so deep his shoulders lift and drop in a rhythmic pattern. The drinks are poured.
‘Keep them coming,’ he said, handing her his bank card with an unconcerned air, turning to J before the words were finished.

K mulled the wet butt in his mouth and twisted his eyes outward with that special intensity which comes after the first hard and fast beers. He chased them down. The bar was its usual Friday night hum, and everywhere people were crowded together, drinking from those plastic imitation glasses, and talking. Talking loudly. He pulled. Tobacco turned to ash in a consuming crackle that was almost audible above the music and clatter of voices. Scanning into through the long glass windows of the garden into the bar, he noticed the pool table had been removed. He looked at the bodies mulling about and felt disappointment dull his contempt. ‘Not even a game to be had, only worthwhile thing in here,’ he thought, and slung back the gin. The hot liquid hit him with full perfume and tried to choke the grimace, forcing a crooked smile and bulging eyes.

She was still sat in front of him, with that sad, petulant face she had, rolling her rings around her fingers with anxious eyes. She had a habit of pulling her hair back with one hand before raising the glass to her mouth. It was a mannerism he detested.

—

‘Why can’t you drink normal like? Why can’t you just have a drink like and be like other people? You’ve always got to turn it into a performance? Everything. Always. Even having a drink with you its like you’re being put under the altar!’ he had said to her, snarling, the words rapid and clipped. Lauren lowered her eyes, ‘look, it’s just a fucking habit alright? I can’t help it,’ she said, in a slow confessional tone. He looked into her eyes, boring into her face and felt a sudden rage. ‘Can’t fucking help it. Can’t fucking help anything can you?’ placing his hands on the table, his broad shoulders opposite her, he pushed himself into a stand with a slow and weighty air, and, glowering, walked towards the door, and into the bar.

Lauren sat with her hands together, and her cheek rested propping up on her elbows. Her shoulders hunched about the glass, she rolled her eyes, looked around, and began twirling the little green cocktail stick in her glass. The smell of sugar, orange and the whack of vodka wafted into her nose. The sound of the bar became a blur, a background to her thoughts. Why was he so cruel to her? Why could he not see, wasn’t she only keeping things open and free like he had said they were? He could he be so cruel, so contradictory, when in those moments that had together, alone, in the bed, he was so sweet and tender, so fierce and loving.

‘Lauren?’ a familiar female voice. ‘Hey, yes it’s you!’ standing at an angle, glass held to her mouth by the straw, was a blonde haired girl in a dress which curved around her full figure, just her lisp around her words. ‘Hey! Hey Sam!’ The blonde girl waved to her friends, who shuffled into the bar bench close by, under the large black umbrella with the heater in its neck, and sat down with her back to the table. ‘You look great, how are you doing?’ her words edgy, her eyes darting around.

—

Manhood

It was a long black watch. We used to round the mall in about thirty minutes. For most people it took an hour. His step was always short and sharp. Like a cartoon army major. At that age I didn’t understand what drove him. What it was that made him so restless. It wasn’t until many years later, as we took a walk along the beach beneath Dover that I began to understand. I asked him, if he ever felt afraid. ‘I’ve always been afraid,’ he said. We had just climbed the hills and chalk cliff between Folkestone and Dover. In that English jungle, it’s air sweet with must and water vapour, I felt the boundless hope of my youth and the strength of my young bones. On that walk I was the faster. Not for haste, not with any sense of rush, but with the self-possessed air of a man willing to look a fool for what he hoped. That his father could be saved, and more, that his father could find a way to love.

There was a contention about money in a cafe on the cliff side. I sat outside on the wall, not wanting to enter. There’s been times like that, when the desire to escape from all normal conventions of society was incredibly strong. My desire to be free of petty constraints, in speech, in movement, in my own psychology,

All this pales though, if it is not grounded in the ground of conscious loving. To be free psychologically and cruel with your freedom, this is perhaps a stage we may go through, but it is not the direction of the journey I now wish to take. The journey I wish to take is to be free to act with integrity to my souls deepest impulse. And to have the courage to do it always as a service for love.

Practically this means finding myself in places where I am doing what I love. Letting go of the things that do not lead me to presence and love. I am here writing. Yet when I read of late… I feel nothing. I do not feel the profound. My voice is not charged with presence and love — at least to my interpretation now… Perhaps I am changing reality to suit a negative image. All thought… To be free of the internal conflict of the mind. Free to hear our heart. That is the true test.

—

I’d won my freedom. At what cost I was to find out later, perhaps. After that trial, I went to live with in the home of my Grandparents. They lived mostly on a boat or out in Switzerland with my aunt. In many ways that was like having the run of the house to myself. Except for occasional troubles with maintenance, which were taking care of, things went smooth. I managed to talk my way into a new University, Queen Mary, one of the best in the country, and in the top ten for literature at the time. I went there and quickly got two jobs. On working at the SU bar, another in the Senior Common Room, a much better gig with great pay, and lots more responsibility. I had a girlfriend who was fiercely loyal and encouraged me to grow. I was doing well academically, despite some run-ins with two female professors. I was swimming regularly at London Fields on the Charlton Lido. Fit, pretty strong. Later I began to find myself in trouble. I was never a particularly social kid in school or at University. Not with my peers. I’d hand pick a few I felt were worth their salt. The rest I largely observed and kept up a healthy distance with. It left me without many friends when things became rough. I tended instead to turn to my partner or family for support, or the boys… Less and less though. However, at that time, they weren’t able to support me emotionally. My father was actually a huge liability when I was taking my degree. He would encourage my drinking. And give me money which I spent on booze and cigarettes at Kent. By the time I was at Queens, I was far less dependent on him. I had a source of income and low rent, no rent actually. Over time it went wrong. There was a flood in the house. After the flood, chaos ensued. Family intrigued. Violence. All this stuff. Any way, I let this chaos overturn me. Even when I made my way to Ireland to finish my dissertation, I wasn’t able. I sat, staring at my research. Feeling utterly lost. Utterly without the ability to make it through that test. Utterly without meaning. I did not have the habits and mental techniques. So I suffered acutely. Everyday progress felt further and further away. I became more and more tense. To the point of agony. Perhaps it was all in my head. I wonder why I am going into this now? Is it the time with Evangelos? The visualisation Joe talked me through?

I was highly competitive at University. I am highly competitive. That’s one of the reasons I did not mingle too much with my peers. Many were boring. A minority were sick and twisted, and some few were eloquent, sharp and opinionated. I was almost never taken by surprise, or beaten in a debate. It was an arena I enjoyed very much. I wish to find somewhere I am well able. Somewhere I belong.

—

Today’s Topic — Abundance.

For most of my life, money has been available to me, at a cost. The only times I have gone hungry were due to either neglect or a self imposed fast. When my mother kicked me out aged 11. I simply didn’t eat for three days. This was my greatest protest. Before that there were times when you could say I starved, love starved, not from want of money or materials. I think this is a common case today. Perhaps it always has been. I am not wise enough to say.

However in my own experience, love was the scarcity. My father said many times how he saved me, my mother and half sister from destitution. He still does from time to time. Saved us, as he liked to put it, ‘From living on a council estate.’ Sometimes he would be inclined to describe more graphically, after returning to my mother after an absence of some years: ‘when I came back, she had holes in her knickers. You’re sister too.. Had to buy her a whole new wardrobe. Dirty cow. She had nothing at all.’

As I mentioned before when I was eleven, my mother decided it was time for me leave. She informed me I’d be moving to live with my father as she was choosing to renovate the home we had been living in since I was a toddler. To do so, she remortgaged it. Through this process, I believe she found herself in a romance with her mortgage broker. Peter. Peter was a strange cat. He would insist that the Galatic Police were due very soon to arrest President George W. Bush the Second. He would point at the trails of planes and complain about the hazchems and neuronetoxins that we’re being dumped on us from above. Peter watched very strange movies. Owned a midnight blue SMEG fridge, the first I ever saw. Had a house looking over Dulwich park and sold cocaine on the side.

Needless to say, my mother, a recovering alcoholic of seven years, developed a taste for this affluent mortgage broker, and for his cocaine. They went to work on the house together. A joint project you might say. I didn’t understand all this at the time. I did not understand why my Mother took me shopping buying me several hundred pounds worth of Star Wars lego. It didn’t seem so bad at the time. I was enamoured with Lego and dreamed of being a Jedi Knight. I would get to spend time with my father, my grandmother, her dog. Dad, whom I rarely saw and who had just been through his first divorce, would be all mine — we could make lego together and play videogames. And the very worst it would be temporary, she promised, just a few weeks. I came to visit her at the house several weeks later, after returning from a festival trip which my auntie took me on. Upon my return from the wonderful Womad festival, it was made very clear that I was no longer welcome.

My mothers new boyfriend decided it was time for me to get stuck in on the house. I still had my camping kit on when he poked his finger in my face holding a trowel and told me to get my own finger out. Needless to say, I didn’t react well.

So began a long history of one parent announcing a new partner and my presence being undesirable. I guess I could have done more to be a better son. But if I’m honest, I was far too furious. And beyond that, I had no idea what was going on. So, starting at age 12, I began drinking and smoking and pursuing young girls like that was all there was. I fought with my teachers, (literally) strangers, grown men; I was found, isolated and given a hiding by two local gangs. I lived with friends whose mothers and fathers bore me with varying degrees of patience for months at a time. One very kind couple even began giving me lunch money — I hadn’t seen my mother in just under a year, and for three months I’d been living at the end of her street.

It was after they offered to adopt me that I finally took off. I still don’t fully understand why. But I am thankful for their kindness, and wish I could express it somehow.

As the years went on, I would return to my parents for money whenever I came into financial difficulty. Particularly my father, who I would drink with. During my first term at University I became £300 deep in overdraft fees. My stepfather at the time was a kind man. Peter disappeared from my mothers life. It turned out he had a heart attack some time later. Mother often said she left him because he tried to siphon money from her mortgage. My mother, though loving, is not one for historical accuracy, so take that with a pinch of salt. Anyway, her next squeeze, and boy, he was a big one. Patrick. A unit of a man. Irish He worked with ex-cons and young offenders in Brixton teaching them personal development, anger management and therapy. He himself had fought, forked, robbed, dealt and dived all his life. He talked me through how to have the overdraft fees waived and it worked.

Like many would be students and travellers, I worked a job to earn money before going to University. I sold guidebooks in the Maritime Museum. I spent all my time there studying the books in the shop on ships, astronomy, history and science and writing poetry on the backs of long strips of tickets I printed just for that purpose. I read at home and played historical strategy games and the vast space opera RPG, Halo. I drank. I drank pints and large gins at the local pubs with company far, far older than me. I smoked twenty a day. I revelled in misery. There were some glimmers of hope and industry. Reading Anna Karenina was a major project. I would turn it’s pages obsessively all the while crushing the embers of my own romance. I loved that young girl. We would make love until the Earth seemed to shake and shattered us. Sometimes when we fell apart exhausted and smithereeded in ecstasy — a strange terror would grip me and I would begin to cry and tremble — there were times when I would lose my mind, folding and hyperventilating until waves of unspeakable anxiety overtook me and I passed out.

There were other books and lovers and work and games I worked on in those day. But I remember them less well.

When I ran out of money in Greece, as in India and dozens of times while at University in Kent, I would call my father. Ask for money. In Greece I had tried a couple of jobs. One was as a tour guide taking people drinking around Athens clubs. After four days of approaching tourists in the sweltering heat, I’d not managed to convince a single customer. Another job I was given was by a Swedish man, selling pay per click banner ads on his website for Scandinavian tourists. It was all commission and the prospect terrified me without a trace of excitement. I never made a single call.

So I came home and went to University. My vision of travelling around Europe by train had utterly failed. I never even made it out of Greece after landing there. So weeks after I left, my cousin started a company called Babelverse. It took him all over the world and brought him a wealth of experiences. I returned to England and began studying in Canterbury. After months living on tinned tuna and pasta, spending all my borrowed money on cigarettes and expensive Belgian beer, to see my cousin take off and go to Chile, then Silicon Valley and Japan. It felt like I had thoroughly missed the boat.

All this time I wrote in a journal. The contents of which are filled with agonising over one relationship and then another. Or poetry to the same effect. None of it any good. And very rarely any of it I shared.

In Canterbury I took a job. One at first. And then at some points I was working three. I struggle to remember the third. Being a mentor to a young man with Asperger. One of the most fascinating and challenging experiences of my life. And working in a Waitrose as a checkout supervisor. A miserable experience. I attending the interview riding the waves of a back-to-back acid trip. A double dose on both sides. The folks asking me to create a tower out of newspapers, organise a TV advert and all this other bogus must have not realised they had fangs and horns and shimmering faces and that I hadn’t slept in 48 hours. They made me a supervisor.

But I was planning on speaking about abundance. This is what comes out when I ask myself to write about abundance. How curious.

Abundance. What I’m speaking about is love. Love and an absence of love. Or a perceived absence of love. Hephaestus was limp, they say, because he lacked a mothers love. Blind also, to the needs of a woman, as Aphrodite sought her satisfaction elsewhere. Now for my own life, sexual intensity and satisfaction was abundant, sometimes superabundant. But love, love was conspicuous and often it was absent.

Abundance. That’s when the flow is turned on. When you believe that what you need is coming to you. I’ve been working awhile on this one. I had the strange privilege of a thirty three year old bombshell falling in love with me once. She certainly had abundance of money figured out. £500 a day. Her own place paid for. Nothing else she could want. Except of course, love. Love of self. Love of the world. Love of her life, her gifts, those whose lives she touched.

Abundance. My life is now full of abundance. Abundance of self-love and discipline. Abundance of good company. Noble friends. Beauty. I am able to meditate and create each day.

—

Coming down into the airport I was ignorant. What I believed to be a homecoming, was really a descent into hell.

‘Alright’

Was all he said. Lines furrowed his brow and the eyebrows were pushed together. His hazel green eyes bright. Always intent. My skin was darker than his by a measurement of months. His hair dark and curled at the fringe. The longest I’d see it on the fringe. My own was a muddy brown crop coming back from the buzz cut I’d given it six weeks before. He looked fit. Standing before him, I rolled my shoulders back and said,

‘Yeah, I’m good. Hungry after that flight. I want something to eat’

Silence. He turns and walks towards the lift. Hands in his jean pockets. Shoulders in a v-shape to his chest. He has these huge shoulders, Dad… When I think of Sisyphus, I always think he must have had Dad’s shoulders. And those lats! I follow him. One hand on my duffel bag, the other on a backpack strap to keep the weight taunt.

We pass by armed police. The hold themselves in blue and black. Vests on, with machine guns and two pistols apiece. Gatwick Terminal 5, June 2013. After weeks in India, always carrying some kind of narcotics, from valium and ketamine to maurajana and LSD, having bribed ponda many times, it was an odd feeling to pass by the British Constabulary in all it’s seeming blueback jacket impunity. I realise now, that it’s all a matter of how much their paid.

I trail him down the escalator, muttering things at him as we practically trot out into the carpark. I see him stop sharp up ahead. Turn half a step. Mutter to himself. Then he strides off in one direction.

He was displeased with me. As usual. And I must have been talking while we looked for the car, because he wasn’t impressed.

‘Been off to India. Swanning off to get enlightened probably. Load of nonsense. Pontificating. Airy Fairy. Could have been working so I don’t have to give you money.’ I imagine something like this may have been going through his head.

We walk around the mid level car park. I can feel the bag in my shoulder. I throw the duffel back up to counter balance.

No sign of the car.

He stops for a moment. Scratches his head and lets out a half sigh, half hum. Then stalks on.

‘Do you remember what level it was on?’ I ask.

Silence. We go round again, step by step. I check my watch. It’s been twenty minutes since he first said ‘Alright,’ to me at the arrivals gate.

‘Dad isn’t it better to stop and remember where it is?’ I said.

I feel him begin to steam inside. Like a pressure cooker. A vat of oil beginning to bubble. He’s moving fast. It’s a struggle to keep up, to even keep him in sight when he turns a corner now. Up a floor. Down two floors. The cement block of Gatwick’s Short Stay Car Park, and the same inscrutable palette of blue black motors, here and there the flash of a red one. Throwing the duffel bag back up against my shoulder. I switch the grip and throw the backpack onto my shoulders.

The duffel bag slips off.

‘Dad, come on. Can we stop for a minute?’

He continues on. I follow him round the ground floor now. Cars are passing us by. I’m slow to see one coming. The driver horns. If I had a hand free I’d stick a finger up. But by this point, I just spin out the way. The thought of a tatty sandwich or muffin from Starbucks is driving me to distraction.

I run to catch up with him. I’m muttering now about chasing cars and memory loss. Then I have a brilliant idea.

‘Dad let’s stop and get a coffee. I can’t think straight.’

There you go again. Thinking it’s all about you.’ He said.

‘What would I want a coffee for?’ he said.

I’m a little taken back.

‘Well… if we sit down we could find the car quicker. Maybe you’d remember where you parked it.’

‘I know where the car is. I don’t need you and your pontificating to find the car. It’s not free to drive out here you know. Costs money. Diesel. Parking tickets. Why don’t you get your mother to do something for you for change? Have her wake up at five in the morning to come pick you up after all your swanning about. Yeah. Not likely.’

I tried to shrug and tease him a little. He was beginning to seethe. We go up four floors. That’s three of five in the left hand complex. Another two to go, if it’s in this complex and not the other. Which could mean anywhere between fifteen minutes or forty five, depending on how well Dad’s memory is working and our luck. The bags are making me hot and angry now.

‘Dad if we stop and get a coffee maybe you’ll remember where the car is.’

Silence again.

‘This is stupid.’ I said. Throwing my duffel bag to the floor. ‘This fucking stupid.’

We were roughly two cars length apart. He’s mid stride towards the elevator. I was between the car lane and the parked cars.

That’s when he turned, like a solider he swung on the heel.

He was coming at me.

‘I’m SICK. Of your SHIT.’ His face exploded red.

Long strides.

I see the swing, feel the fist on my left cheek. I turn with the blow, staggered backward.

I feel his hands on my shirt. Then my vision turns. I no longer see him from inside my eyes. Just cold fury on the rise. We stagger and roll. Quick steps. Swift blows.

Now his back hits the elevator panel. My forearm against his neck. Fist raise high to strike. I hold him their. Looking into bulging eyes as he scoffed for breath. It left me sick and disturbed to my very core. Like meeting Fear for the first time in the flesh. To know ones Father is human, and could be beaten, is a terrible thing.

—

Myles Mcmorrow: Of all the men I’ve known, Myles has been the most prolific with women. Hundreds. To sleep with him became — for women studying in Aberyswyth during the years 2010–2013 — a badge of honour. He was exceptionally talented at it. He’d trained to play the violin until Grade 8. No mean feat. And had a job early on in a Co-Op. He always had a job Myles. Was always popular and fit in well. I remember him always being happy go lucky, fierce when he needed to be, and emotive. Though he would often over stretch himself and push the boundaries. His was constantly distracted, in my memory. By all means, he did well. His dream, as I last understood it, was to become an actor. He was practicing his craft in pantomimes.

He now works a small startup offering events and training for people designing websites, or UX, otherwise known as User Experience. Speaking to him now I find him flat and cynical. Years ago I found him infuriatingly foppish, lacking in conscientiousness and always late. He read my journal years ago. When we were in India. Himself and Elider. A gay man who fancied Myles like crazy. It would irritate Myles somewhat, to a severe degree sometimes. I remember being in a hotel in Jaipur. We met some French girls, that distracted Lids for a while. He like to be impressive with his French. We took them up to the roof out of hours and swam in the pool. None of us got anywhere with the girls but it was close. I remember one, black hair whet to her skin, black bikini over pale skin. She was attractive. The next day was the Amber Fort.

I was disagreeable and disengaged then as I am now. I was ego driven and curious more in moments with animals. Such as Nasi Kala. The Elephant. She let me climb her trunk immediately. I felt that animal. I was present with her. Back then I had the same troubles with money I have now. Always borrowing a little here to keep me out. To keep me adventuring.

I left Myles in the airport in Mumbai. He flew back from there. I had some time left I believe. Did I return alone? Ollie stayed in Nepal with Bryce. He had become tremendously sick, as I and Myles had been, for several days. I did not want to leave him, but the pathogen did not seem fatal, just highly unpleasant.

I remember the guys we met out there. Studied philosophy. One would go on to work in Africa. TJ. Extremely fit young man.

I remember the woman I met their. Camile. Came.

—

I was more relaxed after the rounds. Still, the what she had said to him about the toilet needing another flush was on his mind. He chose not to care. It was his father that he confronted about it.

‘Your woman… she’s got some passive aggressive issue going on.’

‘No she doesn’t. Did you wash the toilet?’

‘I flushed it. It’s clean. If she wants a row she can have one, for now -

‘Don’t start!’ he said.

‘… I’m choosing to bite my tongue.’ I said, jutting my chin towards the door.

He started downstairs. Shuffling past me with that fine blend of submission and menace that my father had mastered over the years. It was so innate now, you would find it hard to know what it meant unless you know him well enough. I did. It meant two things. One, he had been beaten. Two, he was not going to be cowed simply because he had been beaten.