STIGMATA: The Indelible Track Marks of Katy Jones

STIGMATA: The Indelible Track Marks of Katy Jones

I met Frank on my third day in a new city. I'd moved from Manchester to Sheffield with my then boyfriend who'd found a job at a steelworks. The building Ari worked in was nicknamed 'Smack' because the sheer temperature as you entered from cold, clanging outside steps smacked you in the face. He'd return home each day filthy and smelling like a combination of doner kebab with extra garlic and a strange odour slightly resembling sump oil. By day three in our new home somewhere along the once-red carpeted top floor corridor of Park Hill flats, the supply of heroin I'd brought with me from Manchester had gone and, as I awoke in my usual pool of sweat, I remembered all I had left was a tiny zip-lock bag containing used filters. The worst part about my situation was the knowledge that there must be at least a handful of dealers living in the same building. Perhaps, even next door.

It was before six a.m, Ari having left already for his twelve hour shift. Ari feared heroin. I hadn't promised to stop, but he saw our move from Manchester as a new start away from the people who could supply my habit. He genuinely thought I would stop. Just like that. After cooking up my filters, which only took the edge off what would inevitably become an increasingly uncomfortable day if I didn't score, I pulled on yesterday's clothes, grabbed my key and left the flat. Huge windows the length of the deserted corridor showed the city's spires and tramways in a panorama of grey, its sky deceptively blue. It could have been summer but for the leafless trees and the prickling cold. Relieved that the lift was working, and smelling slightly less offensive than it might, I headed down and out.

Cringing downhill and past the station, I crossed the main road and groaned up another hill to the ancient stone main library building to look up the time of the next NA meeting. It was closed. Sheffield is built on hills, and each incline oozed out of me putrid heroin-sweat, each step sending electric-shock like pains through my bones. I yawned, brine streaming from my eyes and nose as I muttered self-deriding expletives at not having found a supply earlier in the week, and began my hurried limp towards the city centre. My clothes chafed my skin with each movement. A lone council worker pushed a road cleaner around the pavements, its noise sluicing though my nerves and putting my teeth on edge. I had the idea that if I could avoid asking people who were begging for a hook up and instead sit through until the first fag break in a meeting, I could tag along with whoever was going scoring. If I was lucky, there would be someone selling somewhere close by. I'd known dealers to turn up outside, answering the calls of the nonbelievers amongst the anonymous soldiers, having committed such crimes myself back in Manchester. But I didn't know where any of the meetings were. It was so early that none of the obvious begging spots were occupied. Nothing was open but a small newsagent. I made my way down an alleyway, which opened up into a small square and sat down on one of the benches outside a pub to smoke. Grey clouds were blowing in, obliterating the winter sun and all the joints in my fingers ached as I rolled myself a cigarette from the bitty powder of tobacco in the bottom of my near-empty pouch. Cold and withdrawals eroded my ability to adequately roll the tobacco in the rizla and the result resembled the attempts I'd made as a child with mint from the garden in rizlas sneaked from my Dad. I may as well have had flippers in place of my hands, they were so numb, and after several failed flicks of my lighter, I approached a man who was smoking on the steps of an adjacent building and asked him for a light. He sat on the bottom step, curled in on himself, his number two haircut and days old stubble draped in the hood of a green army jacket. He scuffed the toe of his Reebok trainer on a stone, grinding it into the pavement and looked up at me. His eyes were pools of pupil in which I attempted to see my own.

“You startin' ere then?”
“What? Where?”
He gestured to the sign on the entrance of the building: Kick the habit: start a life.
“What's this place, then? Kick the habit? A rehab? Are you?”
Passing me his lit cigarette to light my own from, Frank eyed me up and down with a smirk.
“Startin in a few weeks if I do us rattle. Came early cos I couldn't sleep. Looks like thah could do wi' joining us.”
“Uh, maybe not: but there is something you might be able to help me with...”
I immediately perked up, the simple thought of having chanced on a fellow heroin user who could find me what I needed alleviating in part the creeping sickness I felt. Frank never made it to the appointment he had at the rehab. As we walked, he told me they were to take blood to determine the amount of heroin in his bloodstream. Then he'd be prescribed the appropriate regimen of britlofex , temazepam and whatever other medications were included in the home torture pack that was to be prescribed to him and handed out by whoever was supervising the detox. His blood test never happened. Instead, we walked in step to the phone box outside the bookmakers across from the post office, from where Frank dialled his dealer. Whilst we walked to the bingo hall and waited for the red Orion to show up, Frank told me about his girlfriend, Katy, who cut words into her skin with the points of needles and filled the words with ink, and I told Frank about Ari and his innocence about my continued heroin use.
“He must be fuckin' blind,” Frank laughed. “Cos I clocked ya straight off.”
We weren't left as long as Frank had expected for his man to to arrive. He was, Frank told me, an early bird, taking advantage of the hours when most dealers kept their phones switched off. I'd struck lucky, indeed. We piled into the back seats behind two men who looked to be in their early twenties. The driver held out his hand for our money as he drove up the hill that passed behind my building, whilst his associate passed over a half teenth to each of us. Flashes of green and concrete shot past through the window's frame, like a double exposure against the grey of my reflected face. Frank wrote the dealer's number for me on the inside flap of my rizla packet after we'd been dropped off outside the old, abandoned court building opposite Sheaf market. The streets were filling up with shoppers and people on their way to work, a few junkies gathering in groups around the entrance, where a woman in a long skirt held bunches of lucky heather in a hawking basket.
I was waiting for Frank to ask me for a bit of my gear for the introduction, but he never did. He hadn't pretended it was more expensive than it really was, hadn't set any conditions on me accompanying him. I was about to head for the stand-alone pay as you piss single toilet and bid Frank farewell when he pulled on my sleeve.
“What you doin' later?”
I told him I'd nothing to do but sort myself out. Ari wouldn't be home til after six.
“Thah don't wanna go in there. Come in t' Pollards toilets wiy us and come back wiy us for a brew and meet our Katy.”
The heroin was good. Frank and I shared a cubicle in the men's toilets of the tea rooms. Old ladies' disapproving looks followed us out and I wondered whether they knew what we were really doing, or if we'd been in there for a sly jump. Outside, we caught the bus and made our way to the back of the top deck, where Frank lit a cigarette. Seeing the powdered tobacco in my pouch, he offered me one of his Lambert and Butlers. We smoked in silence as the bus passed through Wicker, under the railway arches and up the hill towards Pitsmoor, Frank picking at a hole in his tracksuit trousers, bloodstains on the crook of the knee and down the inner leg visible despite their navy hue. He appeared to be increasingly anxious as the journey progressed and took a strip of yellow diazepams from an inner pocket, popping four of them into his mouth and crunching, handing me the remaining one.
Our bus continued past the Northern General hospital and turned right at a church. Men huddled around the entrance to a mosque, others walking in groups towards it in an increasingly thick drizzle that gave the appearance of mist through the steamed up bus windows. With a swollen index finger, Frank cartooned a syringe sticking out of the eye of a Bart Simpson in the part of the window still clouded in condensation, before grabbing the bar, pressing the bell and swinging himself standing.I followed him down the steps, thrown into the wall, and out into the street as the doors opened with a mechanical hiss.
The pavement smelled of rain and dog shit, and the fragrance of cumin, coriander, fried chicken and samosas blew in the stinging wind. The houses were Victorian, small, stone-walled front gardens leading to heavy front doors. Walking back a few yards in the direction the bus had come from, Frank took the first turning into a narrow terrace of smaller houses. There were no front gardens, the coal holes directly on the tarmac. Each pair of houses shared an entrance, a tunnel which led to the back yards and front doors, which were positioned on the sides of the houses. Frank's home was half way along the street. Heavy, yellowed net curtains sagged in the diesel-blackened front window and an empty blue paper recycling bin blocked the front door.
“Round t' back.”
The yard was a scrubby patch of uncut grass with a brick toilet built against a high wall, overlooked by the backs of terraced houses in the next street up, higher up the hill. I could smell the contents of the open-lidded wheelie bins which lurked beyond the low fence dividing the two yards. Frank took a choke chain from his zipper pocket and put its attached key in the lock. It didn't turn. Grabbing a handful of gravel, he threw it at the window, calling Katy. I retreated to the shelter of the ginnel and pressed the door bell, which did nothing.
“'S a wind up one,” yelled Frank, taking another cigarette and throwing me one. “We never wind it up. Shit.”
“No front door key?”
“We keep it bolted. Back's on't sneck. Our Katy don't like being 'ome alone. Like fort knox, this place; 'as to be. Not that we've got owt to rob.”
After several attempts at rousing Katy, we heard two bolts slide, a key turn and a small figure appeared squinting through the crack in the now open door.
“What time d'ya call this, then, eh? This ya new keyworker then?”
Her hair was cut in a half-mohican and dyed pink. Her eyes, still crusted with sleep, were pink-rimmed, a slither of dried dribble clung to the corner of her mouth. She moved to one side to let us through into a small galley-like kitchen. Wrapped in a duvet over a dressing gown, she shivvered, telling us to hurry up and close the door.
“We just ran out of gas. Did you buy any when you were out?”
“Oh for fuck sake. Is it on emergency?”
Katy nodded.
“All gone. It's bloody freezing. You got a tenner for the meter?”
Frank looked sideways and reacked into his pocket, pulling out the remainder of the heroin he'd saved for her. She hesitated, looking from me to Frank, squinting into my eyes, a smile making its way onto her dry, cracked lips and up into her eyes like she'd just realised she'd matched three numbers on her scratch card after all.
“You're not his bloody keyworker, are ya? Why didn't ya tell us ya cheeky bastard?” She punched Frank playfully on the arm and leant over to give me a squeeze on the shoulder. “I'm Katy. Sit down, I thought he'd brought someone home to check up on him, sorry flower, don't mind me, I'm a proper loony tune, me. So, how did you go at t' blood test then eh? Managed to find a vein, did they?”
Katy sat next to me on the big, yellow-orange sofa and reached under the cushion for her works. Emptying the contents of the large, pink, fluffy make-up bag, she began testing the sharpness of a collection of used 1ml orange cap needles against the back of her hand. I reached into my bag and passed her one of mine which was new and unopened. She scrutinised it, checking it hadn't been used and resealed.
"Cheers petal. Can't be too careful eh." She turned to Frank. "So?"
He grinned widely. "I didn't go. We met outside. Took her to meet Taz instead."
"But no gas?"
"No gas. But there's wood in t' coil oil."
"Any coil in t' coil oil?"
"A bit."
"A bit he says. A bit. Right, what's t' time?"
"Not past eleven yet."
Katy poked around between her toes.
"Fuck sake- I can't find nowt when it's this cold. Make us a brew, eh, Frankie love, and stick some hot water in this for us. Please?" She passed him a hot water bottle in a knitted pink cover.
Katy chatted away as she rubbed her legs in search of somewhere to inject. Her body, hands and feet were dotted with Indian ink in the places the needle had entered her, detailing an exquisite map of her years of heroin use, tattoos following the path of her veins like dotted tree roots, assymetrical spider webs, words etched in the gaps between. A memorial to the damage done.
I felt a depression come over me, an emptiness I couldn't put a finger on. I didn' want to return to Ari, to the lies that had become our life. Not even lies- his irrepressable, naive positivity. I didn't want to stop using heroin. Using it suited me fine, but he was caught in its stigma, trapped in his blind faith that his world no longer contained its ills. I didn't have the energy to face him. I wanted to stay right here with people who wouldn't be disappointed in me when I failed to transform into someone who was not me in one easy step.
We didn't have a landline in the flat, Ari and I, and in those days, before the mobile phone became widespread, we didn't have those either. Blissful non-communication. I had a little cash saved up from selling the things we'd not brought with us into our new co-habitation, and also from the car I'd sold because the insurance had been crippling me. All I had to do was to offer a tenner for gas in exchange for a couple of nights' sofa space. I looked at Katy, in her vein-search trance, her lower teeth biting her upper lip in the contortion of the frustrated. I thought of Ari, of his young, frightened eyes, his terror of the unknown: the part of my life which he wanted to put on bleach-boil until it dissolved.
Ari had seven brothers. His parents were happily married. They were converts to evangelism, and, though disappointed in their sons' refusal to participate in their new-found faith, they were generous, loving, accepting of me. Ari's mother had given her grandmother's engagement ring to his older brother, Yaron, and had told me she was saving the wedding ring for Ari to give to me. Touched as I was, I felt, had she know about my habit, she wouldn't be talking about marriage and babies. She'd have been taking Ari aside to introduce him to nice Christian girls. Nicer girls than me. Nicer by far. As I watched the tendrills of blood curl into Katy's heroin and her plunger descend slowly into the barrel, I felt her relief and sought my own. I pulled a tenner from my hidden inside pocket and posed my question. Katy passed me the gas card for the meter and I headed back into the cold.
The Happy Shopper in Page Hall was a small convenience store. The smell of weed merged with the warm air inside. I bought milk and cornflakes, asking the small, middle aged shopkeeper for a packet of Drum.
"Samson?" he asked, pulling out a couple of boxes from under the counter. "Golden Virgin? Two fifty, five hundred gram, top quality pirate gear."
"Gear?"
His eye widened in a naughty-boy grin as he fumbled under the packets of tobacco to reveal a few baggies of what looked like skunk buds.
"No, not that: gear. Brown."
"You have to ask t' boys outside. Bad boys. Not real Muslims. They skip mosque and give us a bad name. Drink alcohol. You drink alcohol?"
I shook my head.
"Good. So, flower, you want GV or Samson? You want a weed?"
"Just the Samson, cheers."
"I do bag for five pound if you want a weed, love."
"I don't smoke it."
He'd taken my money and given me change before I realised I'd forgotten the gas.
"And stay off the hero drugs. You want a good weed, you know where I am. Best deal this side of Sheffield."
I felt a little hungry and as I passed the takeaway, it was just opening for lunch. I bought three one pound meal deals of fishburger and chips before returning to Frank and Katy's.
When I returned, Katy had gone for a job interview courtesy of 'New Deal' for a shop assistant post in Meadowhell. Frank was watching a video of The Fast Show and I handed him the gas card and the food. Once the gas fire was lit, condensation streamed down the window and the atmosphere became passable. The walls were bright yellow and a victorian upright piano stood against the back wall, the only other furniture being a long coffee table, the sofa and a comfy armchair, where I sat to eat. Plants stood atop the piano- a cheese plant, a fern, a small date palm. The floorboards were varnished and swept. Both alcoves adjacent to the chimney breast were stacked with books. I felt at home here. It wasn't that Ari deserved my disapperance: it wasn't planned, as such. I didn't wish upon him sleepless nights of anxiety, wondering where I was. I hoped he'd sleep through my absesnce, believing we'd missed each other. But I didn't work the night shift, and I realised that he'd know what I was up to. I'd disappeared for days when we'd been living between our two flats back in Manchester. He'd always known why. We'd been through the silences, the tears (his) the justifications (mine) the threats to tell his parents (why did I care? I liked them. A lot. I craved the normality of their close family. But not the pressure to conform). I knew I wasn't the girl for him. I knew I wasn't the girl for anyone. But still I moved in with him. Perhaps the fact that he cared was enough.
Katy returned with a slightly flabby man in jeans and ski coat, his long brown hair visible under a blue beanie hat. She'd been asked if she could cover up her tattoos if she were to be offered the job.
"I asked t' stuck up cow if she could cover up her ugly gob and she asked us to leave. Now I'll have no end of grief down t' social. Oh well, I found Mark, so it's not all bad news. If you need anything, his stuff's same as you got off Kermit."
I laughed. "Kermit?"
"Yeah cos he's a muppet- but for fuck sake don't call him that- he likes everyone to call him Taz."

As it happenned, I later discovered, Ari had met someone at work who'd invited him clubbing. He'd come home to find me missing and left me a note saying he'd be in a club under Wicker arches if I wanted to join him later. He'd dropped an E with his new friend, who'd also given him enough speed to keep them working the next twelve hour shift. By Sunday evening, he'd been on such a massive come down, I don't suppose he'd have had the energy to mumble much more than how terrible he felt, had I been there to hear it.
As days rolled into weeks and months, Frank and Katy's became my home from home, my retreat from Ari's six-day, twelve-hour shifted weeks. Ari and I both needed frequent breaks from the tense atmosphere my continued heroin use, combined with his accusing looks and questioning expressions, created.Our two worlds never met and Ari continued his weekly entertainment of E and speed in the Arches on Wicker, just footfalls away from a needle exchange. To mention his drug hypocrisy would be to admit his fears were well-founded. Silence was the superior option by far.
As for Katy's interview, she'd been lucky that time. And the next: an interview for a job in a bike shop, where she'd said the only thing she knew about bikes was that she was a fuckin good ride if they had a few quid spare; they could take her for a test run in the repair workshop, fix her up good and proper for fifty. She came back in fits of giggles, wondering whether or not to be relieved they'd laughed her offer off as a bad joke. But the third time, it all hit the fan. She'd been called up for an interview for a position in telesales. Upon being offered a choice of tea or coffee, she'd shaken her head and told the stiff little balding woman in a twinset that it was ok, thanks, but she carried her own refreshment. Opening her bag, she'd pulled out a can of Tenants Super and cracked it open. What she hadn't realised was that an open insulin orange cap packet had somehow stuck itself to the can, its used, bloodied needle still inside, minus its cap, cascading onto the desk between her and the interviewer.
'Sanctioned. Sanctioned! I've been down t' CAB and they've helped me apply for incapacity- but in t' meantime, what the fuck am I suposed to do? Deliberately reducing me chances of finding work, they say...lucky they didn't call t' poo-lice.' Katy looked up at me, needle in hand, holding her palms outstretched like the junkie incarnation of Topol's Tevier in Fiddler on the Roof, before reloading her syringe with indian ink from an upturned bottle cap on the table. 'I ask you: how's this fucking fair? How? I've already spent me crisis loan.'
Katy went back to digging the final dots of the letter N into the bony flesh of her left ring finger, before starting a T on her pinkie.
'We'll be alright, petal. We'll get through grafting and maybe even get a few quid backdated.'
'No, Frank. It's now or never. I'm booking another appointment for detox. And I want you to come with me.'
Frank stood up from the sofa he'd been lounging on, his hands shooting to the back of his head, elbows out-turned in a triangle of defiant dread. His eyes scrunched up, then opened wide as he dropped his hands and shrugged, eyeing me up and down with a questioning glimmer. A smile worked itself across his eyes. I could see his facial muscles trying to control himself not to let it reach his mouth.
'I've told you before I'd pay you a bit for electric and gas, but the council aren't going to cough up for housing benefit when they're already paying for you two.'
'They are if this is your official address. We'll split it three ways.'
'Even if they did, it'd take ages to sort...'
'Frank, I said I want to detox. If you won't I will. I can't fucking DO this any more.' Katy was shouting now. As she stood up, she nudged the table with her knees, knocking over the tall, plastic bottle of blue ink, which pooled over used needles, empty clingfilm wraps, bits of foil, rizla packets tobacco pouches and cups, flowing around the full ashtray.
'Aggh, for fuck sake, Katy...'
As ink began to seep into Katy's duvet cover, illustrating its white, blood-flacked expanse with swelling thunderclouds, Frank ran to the kitchen for a dishcloth. Katy scooped up the near-empty bottle, attempting to direct the contaminated ink back into it along with grains of tobacco, cigarette ash, fluff and general detritus. By this time ink was dripping onto the floor in various sized puddles, and as I helped Frank wipe it up, Katy began to cry.
'Come on, now, it's not that bad, our Katy.' Frank eyed his girlfriend with a mixture of concern and fear. Until now, I'd never witnessed anything worse than a few jokey tiffs between them, fast resolved with the cure of a fresh score. But this was different. Katy lurched towards Frank, then stopped, as if suddenly changing tack, and hurled the Indian ink bottle towards his face. As he ducked, it missed him by inches, hitting the bottom corner of a huge, clip-framed film poster for Taxi Driver, which crashed from the wall, hitting the gas fire and smashing to the floor. Shards of glass scattered. Katy collapsed into a cross-legged position in front of the fire, her dressing gown falling from her naked shoulders and revealing the extent of her indelibly-inked trackmarks, spreading from thick, wavering branches of blue along her inner legs and arms, flowing out in rivulets and tributaries, her bare feet seeping blood where she'd trod through broken glass.
'Fuck it. Fuck this. Fuck sake. Fuck bollox cunt fuck shit.'
And she began to laugh.

Memories from Sheffield, UK

That was me, twenty-fuck-knows-something,
Back seats of a bus with Kev. "See this blade," he says, eyes straight-forward,
Missing nothing,
Puffing on a pavement-picked re-roll,
"Stash it in yer bag fer us flower?" Think I'm falling for that one?
So he keeps hold of it,
Hands shaking slightly
Like the hardman he dreams of being. Got a teenth of gear on us, and him, his rocks
too,
And I worry more about the knife:
Though the knife won't cut me:
That's meant for some other cunt.
That was the thing with Kev, Couldn't just leave things be. I'd been clean for a while,
Smiling to myself in anticipation.
And Kev's a caring bloke.
Seeing me right, seeing I don't go over
(See the joke,
Him with a blade and the rest? But for us, back then, it was like that:
Like everything was normal
And one day we'd just wake up
And smell the clover) So I tip what I want in the spoon
And Kev's going mental like,
"You planning suicide or wot?"
Cunt tries scooping some out
And we bicker,
Snot flying, Til I agree.
Nuff folks died like this. Never forgot that day.
Kev givving us a dig in the back of me leg and
having to do more straight after anyway.
Looked after me did Kev. Coulda punched his fuckin lights out at the time
though.

MEMORIES#2
No one's got nothing. Fuck all. Seriously.
Nothing. And we're all loitering round the
market, sweating in various shades of
dishevelled grey. It's autumn, and crowds of
starlings are swooping in circles over the river,
ready for migration. "Wish I could fuckin migrate," says Deano.
"Some fuckin decent gear in Thailand, and it's
dirt cheap."
"Yeah. Bollocks to this place."
"Hold up, check it out"
There's Paul with a fuck off grin from ear to ear. And we're round him now like flies round shit,
shoving without remorse to be first in line for
poxy sub-sized clingfilm wraps of the devil's
very own elixir. Me and Sid go together to the men's bogs across
the road in Sheffield's finest fuckin tearooms
and I watch him go in his fem, shaking like a
puppet on meth as he fixes his habitual
snowball. Takes me longer, not sunk to the depths of the femoral, but vein hunting's a proper pain in the
arse these days. And I ain't for snowballin. I'll
save that for the winter down Firth Park.
And as it goes in I'm unsurprisingly
disafuckinpointed. It's cut with so much crap it
barely makes me well. So it's back down the market for a rant at the
former-saviour now-cum-cheeky-cunt. Of course he's long gone. Next time I see him, he's sat in the back yard of
the rehab, crutches by his side and an empty
denim tube where his left leg should have
been. "Fuck sake, what happened? Fuck, mate, I'm so
fuckin sorry, fuck, fuck fuck!"
"One word. No, two, actually. Artery. Gangrene." I can see in his eyes we're no longer
frienemies, just fucked up memories of a life
that shouldn't have been.

MEMORIES#3

We've just scored some fuckin dynamite. Not
had nothing half decent in ages. Joe pulls up his
battered white nova outside a 1930s semi on
Parson Cross and me and Geni step out onto the
tarmac pavement.
We all push past overgrown privet, avoiding broken bottles, staffie-shit and crushed cans in
gone-to-seed grass and push the ajar door open.
When is a door not a door?
When it's a jar.
And up the uncarpeted stairs is a room where
two kids sit on a fuck-stained mattress. They look all of twelve, the pair of them.
Joe exchanges notes and bags with them and
they start cooking up. Well, the boy does.
"How the fuck old are you two?"
I ask as I watch the boy pull the half-empty pin
out of the girl's scrawny arm and set to finding a vein for himself.
Joe and Geni and mirroring the process, 'cept
Geni's holding up the needle to me
"Ladies first, petal, Joe can do his own..."
Fuck this.
And the girl's answering me through half-closed eyes
"Twelve"
And I was right.
Fuck this.
I might be rattling like a cunt but I'm outta here.
Rather have a dig in the back yard than sit through this macabre fuck show.
Yeah, I'm outta here.
The faces of those two kids and Geni's dirty
needle, outstretched towards me forever
etched into my mind.



 © Vee 1993-2012

Gravediggin' Under the Mancy Way Chapter 3

Here's Chapter 3 for you. Artwork by me X

Three

Community Care

   Spid’s a lucky, lucky bastard. How the fuck he does it, only he knows. Okay, I’m lying, cos I know how he did it: Stakki’s sister.

   This place is falling apart and the fact that they were only building it thirty years ago as part of an ‘urban regeneration’ makes you wonder if they’ll be knocking the new places down in another thirty. I wasn’t even born, but the people who remember will tell you about the big lorries of prefabricated concrete driving up and down when they were building the crescents and all that. The Victorian terraces were unfit for human habitation, they’d said. Slums. “Unfit for purpose” is the new cliché: that’s what they were saying about this place ten years after it went up. And they’ll say it again. If we’d’ve had the money to renovate them, or a landlord who gave a shit, the old terraces would have had all mod cons plonked in’em and be in perfect working order: plenty still stand and no one’s pulling those down. Ironic as it is, they’re building near replicas now (just scaled down, hard to believe though that is; the windows and doors smaller and cheaper, without the fireplaces, cellars or character).

   But they wanted to cram people in like fleas on an old dog. And don’t forget the constant need for lining the pockets of the bigwigs, eh? So that’s where the Hulme crescents came in, with their dimly lit so-called deck access and unaffordable, under-floor heating systems. They had the nerve to lie that they’d based the plans for them on the Royal Bath Crescents: even named them after their Georgian architects. Talk about taking the piss. I mean, do you see the resemblance? Any resemblance? Who visits Hulme and thinks, wow, what a beautiful place! It resonates with the spendour of polite Georgian England! Nah, I didn’t think so. S’pose they just thought because we were from generations of poor folk, that we must be stupid, eh? 

   So here we are, just down the road from the beauty of Robert Adam Crescent, where the architecture’s been condemned, and just across from Rolls Crescent and Royce Road, in the place where there’re less cars per population than virtually anywhere else in the entire effin country. Well, if you checked the prices of the insurance premiums round here, you’d think everyone drove Bentleys.  And as for interior and exterior décor, well that’s the only thing about this place that’s looking good. Every wall in Spid’s flat is covered with graffiti. He’s got a foldout table with his decks on and a speaker on each side. I love this old place. It’d probably be dead already without the squatters. Keeping it alive. It’s probably the most vibrant part of Manchester at the moment and everyone wants a piece of it. Musicians, DJs, artists, poets: people are coming from all over just to party and get a piece of this place. It feels like history in the making, well, underground history at least, but we know that’s the only history worth reading. And the parties we have here are fuckin legendary. But tonight we’re going down PSV, or the Lighthouse or the Caribbean Club as it’s also known, which brings me back to Stakki Kays. And his sister, Kiwi.

   Spid’s getting rehoused into one of the new flats. Otterburn Close’s days are numbered. Kiwi filled the forms in for him. It’s not that Spid’s illiterate or anything; we went to school together, just down the road from here, back in the day. That’ll be gone too soon, meet the rage of the bulldozers along with the rest of the place, no doubt. Seems office complexes, commuter hotels and exclusive, gated housing developments are more important than local businesses or educating poor kids these days. I mean, they don’t even give us a Dales. Everyone knows it’s the cheaper version, so what do they give us? Asda. Well, moving on, Kiwi knows how to answer the questions on the form: that’s the difference between her and me old mate. Spid works the odd evening cash in hand for her and they got talking. From a conversation about how the Prince’s Trust gave her a grant to set up in business producing and selling her herbal highs and the free holiday in Crete she got through a women’s charity, they got round to chatting about Community Care grants off the social. And rehousing forms. Either the council or DSS had a total systems failure or Kiwi’s a bloody good writer, because when they’ve finished building the flat he’s been offered, he’s getting a grand to kit it out. He showed me the letters. But back to tonight, and we’re getting ready for a night out and I’ve just put some heavy Conflict on the decks. The Ungovernable Force.

   -You still got them free tickets?

I have to shout over the music, but Spid can’t hear me and keeps shouting

  -WHAT?

Back at me.

   -TICKETS!

He eventually understands but shrugs.

   -Fuck knows where I put ‘em. Be alright, Staks’ll let us in, he put us on the guest list.

   -Sorted.

   -Funny old life, eh?

   -What?

   -Funny old life. Lost the bus, losing the squat and turning into a fockin Norman Normal.

Norman Normal. See what I mean? Where do all these names originate from? Maybe there really was a really normal bloke called Norman once but I guess this one’s more to do with the rhyme than Happy Larry. Larry the Lamb? Who knows. If you find out, drop us a line.

   -You’ll be working in a bank next, Spid.

   -I’ll be robbing a fockin bank if it all goes tits up.

Spid’s sitting on his battered old yellow-brown sofa and rolling a spliff the size of the Camberwell carrot from Withnail and I. He’s still got the same skinning-up tray I painted him for his birthday on one of my mum’s trays way back when we were fifteen. I did the sides black and the wobbly edges silver and on the tray itself it’s got a rip off of the Subhumans Day the Country Died picture, except the snotty, puking punk’s got Spid’s face. Yeah, we’ve been friends for years, me and Spid.

   When the record finishes, the door’s shaking like it’s being kicked in and someone’s shouting to be let in.

   -Open the door you fockin cunt!

   -Ha ha, that must be Kiwi.

Me and Spid are laughing now. She’d been nearly breaking the door down and we hadn’t even noticed. But it ain’t Kiwi, it’s a bunch of people from the squats and buses we vaguely know. No matter, the more the merrier. It’s always like this at Spid’s place, people in and out all hours, punks, hippies, Travellers, students; anyone up for a good time. They’ve got Special Brews and White Lightening; one of them’s drinking from a bottle of Strongbow.

   -Eh, put anuva record on then Gaz

So I’m flicking through the records til I find The Day The Country Died, cos seeing the tray’s made me want to listen to it. I put it on a bit quieter than before so we can hear each other, swear I’m going deaf, the amount of noise I force on my ears sometimes. We get to talking, me and Spid, about the old times, people we used to know.

   -Yeah, Jascha, he was sound; wonder what happened to him?

Last time I saw Jascha we were stopping in the bus somewhere in Devon and the tourists got a bit ratty.

   -Yeah, remember him telling that stiff arse American couple they were parked up in a designated rave zone, and they were breaking the law if they didn’t want to join the party?

   -Gaz, they were Canadian. Yeah, I remember that, fockin comedian he was.

   -And they either believed him, or-

   -Or they were shitting their pants

   -Shitting their pants probably.

   -More likely, yeah.

I stretch and laugh. Good memories, definitely. Funny how those memories always come with some sort of block on the bad parts. Cos at the time, I was whingeing a lot and I remember Spid whingeing a whole lot more, but, yeah, when I look back it feels like it was fuckin paradise.

   -I was pissing my sides when they drove off in their swanky camper.  

   -Good night, that party.

   -Yeah, seriously. Talking of parties, what time’s Dred-Rock start?

   Me and Spid push past the queue outside the Lighthouse and lean up to the ticket window.

   -On the guest list mate-  Spid grins, shoving the free tickets through the slot under the window. See, he’s not that disorganised after all. –Spid and Gary.

   -Alright, go on, have a good night.

The girl behind the window rips the tickets and hands them back to Spid as she starts to serve the next person.

   It’s eleven thirty and the bar and dance floor are still more or less dead. People are mainly sitting on the raised platforms behind camouflage-netting, the so-called chill out corners. The smell of weed hangs with fag smoke in the air and I’m looking around to see if I clock anyone I know. Up on the stage there’s Stakki with his decks on the table in front of the massive wall-hanging I painted for him, a skinny girl with dreads on the decks, better looking than Stakki, but that’s what he asked me to do and for the twenty quid he offered me, it seemed like a bargain at the time. Every time I see it, I always notice the mistakes on it. He’s churning out all the old favourites, heavy dub stuff. There’s always a bit of jungle later, but not yet, and it’s not like the crowd’s going wild or nothing. It’ll pick up later, it always does.

   Shalom’s behind the bar. There’s not even a queue. Spid’s chatting her up like usual. She’s a beautiful woman, no mistaking that: high cheekbones, long, black hair she’s wearing in braids tonight. Full, painted lips, always glossy and sparkly with that lip gloss she’s always putting on. Spid gets all schmaltzy about her sometimes, going on with himself like, ah, Gaz, I wanna know what that lip gloss tastes like. So I asked her once, Shalom, can I borrow your lip gloss a minute? She looked at me in a sort of what the fuck? way, then handed it to me. I unscrewed the lid and I went to paint Spid’s lips with it, Oi, what you doing, you nutter? Shalom was asking, but Spid was pissing his sides, just licked his lips and said, Strawberry. Her skin’s flawless, looks like she’s never even had a spot in her life, all translucent like those bars of toffee you used to get in the swimming pool vending machine, with the little hammer you were supposed to break it with. Yeah, whatever happened to that? It came in a little aluminium tray. Highland toffee, that’s the stuff. Maybe they still sell it to tourists in the Highlands, eh?

   And there’s Stan. He’s sat with the Gardner over in the farthest corner, but he sees me and stands, beckoning me over.

   -Oi, Stan the man!

He looks proper wasted, eyes red and slitty. The Gardner greets me and I sit down.

   -So who was that bird you sent to see me then? Stan asks.  

   -Ah, that was the lovely Tania. She found you, then.

Stan pulls out two tenners and waves them at me with a leer of satisfaction. Here we go. I never meant for him to do one. I know, call me a hypocrite, cos it’s not like I’ve never done it myself. I’m not being funny, but it’s proper pissed me off. Pisses me off that he’s gloating over it like he’s a fuckin hero for pulling a fast one on Tania. Thinks he’s a clever cunt, but I don’t see bragging’s ever had any purpose.

   -You burned her, ya tight bastard!

   -Gaz yer goin soft. You got the hots for her or somefink?

I’m shaking my head, part in answer and part in annoyance. Stan’s still going on with himself

   -She’ll learn one day and by that time she’ll be doing it to some other virgin, that’s just the way it is.

   -Yeah, yeah.

Even the veterans get fucked over every so often, but not like that. Well, now I’m gonna have to tell her something to keep her sweet. We’ve all had our share of shit in this game.

   -Well enjoy yourself, cos she might be coming down later.

   -Nice one! There was twenty more an’ all. Got meself some class skunk from the great Gardner in the sky. So we’ll be seeing her later, then? Maybe then me and her can get together, share a blunt and get down to some serious romance. Nice little body she’s got on her, eh, Gaz?

And he’s laughing like the old pervert he is. He’s well into his forties and Tania’s just nineteen. I might look like I don’t have morals, but like I said, I like Tania and I’m feeling a bit of a cunt for sending her to him in the first place, but losing forty quid’s better than whatever he has in his mind now and I remind myself to warn her off. I just give him an evil and he claps me on the back, cackling and saying

   -Ah, Gaz, soft as shite.

   The Gardner’s the name we all give this bloke who’s sat here, chain rolling and chain smoking his home-grown weed. He’s got sensi, skunk and whatever else takes his fancy, which he calls organic. Two flats knocked through in Otterburn, boarded windows and tin foil lining give his gardening project the perfect hiding place. It’s like summer in Barbados when you go in there. Sunglasses are optional  is his catchphrase when you walk through the door. All lights and fans, and he’s got filters rigged to the vent system so no one on the outside smells nothing, or at least, that’s the idea. Cos every time I’ve been up there, either I’ve got a nose like a sniffer dog, or the gavvers are turning a blind eye. Either way, he does an exceptional trade and never gets busted. Fair play to him, he looks happy enough tonight, and he’s one of the nicest blokes you could meet.

   -Just leave it, Stan, okay?

   -If it’s herbs she wanted, I’ll help her out; always happy to be of service, grins the Gardner. Stan’s laughing and miming someone having a toot.

   -Aah, in that case, I can’t help you, and in that case also, you did her a favour, Stan. But the karma will get you in the end, and I advise compensation in the form of green, my friend.

   -That’s what I was gonna tell you, Gaz, I was doing her a favour. Anyway, right, you don’t know me, I don’t know you: I’m not Stan, I’m just his mate, up from London, ‘cept I used to live here, right? I was just round there when he was out and took the opportunity to do a bit of business with her. ‘Cept she never showed up. The guy let me down. What’s me name?

I just play along with it. He enjoys some sort of fantasy world where he’s some superfly diamond geezer, but everyone else knows he’s just a tosser who has to shave his head really close because he thinks if he does that people won’t realise he’s gone bald. Forty-something going on fourteen.

   -Uh, Rob, yeah?

   -Rob, fockin nice one…Rob. You fockin twat, Gaz, Rob.

   -Alright, but I don’t fockin know ya so I’m gonna do one now.

   -Suits me, ya smelly bastard.

I go back to the bar to find Spid. He’s still chatting to Shalom.

   -Alright Shalom? Look, Spid; if Tania comes in and you see Stan, you don’t know him, right?

Why the fuck I’m bothering to play Stan’s game is beyond me.

   -Gaz, I don’t even know what she looks like.

   -Agh, just forget about it.

   Spid’s winking at Shalom now and shuffling off across the dancefloor, doing her a silly dance to try and make her laugh. He never gives up. There’s a throwback from the sixties dancing too, enjoying the lights, her arms in the air, grey hair long and held under a tie dye headband, pink, wire-framed glasses and a psychedelic dress. She moves in snaky spirals, like she’s still a teenager, eyes half-closed, content. I love it when I see the older ones still having a good time. This place is good like that, you get a real mix of people from all walks of life. Yeah, PSVs ain’t bad.

   -D’ya wanna drink Gaz?

   -Wouldn’t say no, cheers lil sis.

Shalom hands me a can of Red Stripe but I ask her for ginger beer instead. She cracks the ring pull as she’s taking the money off a bloke with loads of facial piercings. Face like a fuckin pincushion. I mean, I got a few in me nose and me ears, but you can’t even tell what this geezer’s face looks like. Maybe that’s the idea. Just as she turns to put his money in the till, the doors open and in walks Tania with a group of her uni mates, two blokes and a girl.

   -Oh, shit, here she comes. You don’t know Stan, right?

Last thing I want is shit off Stan calling me a grassing bastard. Why the fuck did I send her there? Anyone but Stan.

   -I don’t know him anyway.

Tania sees me straight off and runs up to me, tugging on my sleeve.

   -Where’s your mate then?

   -Hi Tan, alright?

   -Oh, don’t act the innocent with me: where the fuck is he?

Tania’s shifting from one foot to the other, hyperactive.

   -Nah, seriously, I don’t know what the fock you’re on about. What mate? What the fock happened to you? Stop pulling my fockin clothes, woman.

I give her my best smiley face, like. Look, I told you before, I like her: I never set her up. I’m as pissed off with Stan as she is. And if you don’t believe me, I want her to.

   -Yeah you do, you know exactly what I’m on about. I always treated you right, Gary, I thought you were my friend.

   -You are my friend, Tan, you’re my mate, you’re cool. I like you. Now tell me what happened.

   -Where the fuck is your so-called mate? If you’re my friend, you’ll tell me where he is!

   -Who?

   -Cockney fucking Stan, that’s fucking well who!

I’ve never seen Tania like this. She was never like this with me before, and trust me, I’ve scammed her good and proper, but all friendly, like.

   -Oh, you went down there, right? What, wasn’t he in?

   -Oh, the bastard was in alright!

   -Hang on a minute, it’s Stan we’re talking about here. Cut the bastard bit out, eh?

Her eyes are like saucers now, like they’re about to pop out of her face.

   -Look, he ripped me off, alright? Now where is he?

I shrug my shoulders and shake my head, all concerned.

   -No, not Stan. Look, I don’t know where he is, but he’s not like that anyway. He’d not rip off one of me mates, no way.

   -Well, the bloke I saw wasn’t even a Cockney!

   -Did he say his name was Stan?

   -…uh, no,but…

   -Well, there you go.

   -What does Stan look like?

   -Black guy. Funki dreads.

   -No!

Now, I’m wondering how I’m going to carry this information to Stan, not that it matters in the end. In the long term, it’ll all be jumbled up with the rest of the bullshit she encounters if she stays on the bumpy old downhill moped.

   -I told you. It was probably one of his mates. He don’t exactly keep the best company.

   -Well, if you see him, tell him I want my forty quid back off his mate.

   -Forty quid? Did you a favour really. You that desperate to get yourself a habit? I told you; you shouldn’t be doing that shit. Do yourself a favour and get yourself a nice bag of skunk and lay off the brown for a bit, eh?

   -Just tell him.

   -I’ll do that.

I feel sorry I ever met Tania sometimes. But when I think about it, I just remind myself that if it hadn’t’ve been me, it would’ve been someone else. And I try to look out for her in my own way.

   The place is filling up, the dancefloor slightly populated. Shalom comes to say bye to me: her shift finished, she’s heading for the New Ardri for the herbal tea party.

   -Been here four hours and it’s only just getting going. Well, I’m off; have a good one, say bye to Spid for me.

But I don’t have to: he must have been watching her from wherever he’d buggered off to, cos he’s already walking over, giving her his best hug and a kiss on the cheek. Like I say, he doesn’t give up easy.

   -C’mon!

Tania’s dragging me onto the dancefloor and jumping around too fast even for the General Levy that’s bassing out of the sound system booyaka booyaka

   -Got some phet if you want some

   -Nah, yer alright

   -You sure?

   -Never touch the stuff

incredible

Now I feel someone putting their hands on my shoulders and I turn round to see Spid, grinning from ear to ear.

   -Alright Gaz, who’re your friends?

   -Tania, Spid: Spid, Tania

Tania’s giving Spid a big hug now. Thank fuck for that. I didn’t wanna dance anyway. Can’t be arsed with dancing, truth be told. She’s trying to get Spid to dance and they’re talking, looking over at Tania’s friend, who’s dancing with her other two mates. They look like right pricks, dancing like a load of corpses, stiff and jerky. That’s why I don’t like dancing to anything except punk. Rarely even bother with that, but you can’t go wrong with a bit of jumping around. Then Tania’s dragging Spid up to the girl she came in with and putting their hands together like Bob Marley and the two politicians, except this is definitely a little more romantic. So much for his dreams of lifelong love with Shalom, but seeing as she’s not interested, he’ll have to fish elsewhere. I hear Tania’s squeelie, girlie voice even over General Levy

   -Sarah! This is Spid, he’s gorgeous, isn’t he? Oh my god!

There’s quite a lot of oh my goding and Spid’s sucking it all up, laughing along with it, taking the plastic pint glass of purplish liquid she’s passing to him and smelling it, giving her one of his quizzical looks.

   -What’s that? Meths? Makes you blind, what, are you an alchie, it ain’t that bad is it?

Thinks he’s funny, but so does she.

   -Snakebite and black; taste it, it’s nice.

He’s slurping out of the glass, downs quite a bit before he hands it back.

   -So you’re a mate of Tania’s, right?

   -I live with her actually.

   -So you’re not her mate then?

   -Course I am.

I leave Spid to do his spiel and get myself back to the corner. Time to sit down. I don’t see Stan any more, thank fuck, but Kiwi’s here, sitting with a group of people we’d hung outside the Sally with last summer, on and off. Kiwi shouts me and a couple of people shift up so I can sit down.

   -You comin to the party after? The bloke next to me spoke.

   -Might as well; where is it?

He hands me a photocopied hand-written flyer with a map on the back.

   -It’s at our place. We’re getting evicted next week, so might as well make the most of it before the twenty eight days are up. Stakki’s going down later with the decks and there’s a couple of bands. Me brother took his decks down earlier, should be massive.

   -Sounds good. Oi, Kiwi, You going to this party?

   -Yeah; come with us. I’m going down in a bit with Aaron.

   -Yeah, I will, nice one.

Yeah, I’m happy I’ll be leaving with Kiwi. Spid comes up the steps and over to me.

   -I’m getting off now, going back to Sarah’s.

   -Who, that mate of Tania’s?

Aaron shouts over at Spid, winking at him

   -Alright Cassanova?

He’s obviously seen something I’ve missed.

   -Sorted.

   -You’re not coming to this party then, Spid?

I hand him a flyer, but he gives it straight back to me.

   -Nah, Gaz, I got business to attend to.

   -Alright Spidster, see yer tomorrow, right.

   -You bet, come round about lunchtime.

   -Nice one.

   -See yer Kiwi.

Spid slopes off, looking over his shoulder at me, laughing.

*   *   *

   I wake up in a darkened room full of people sitting around on various mattresses and floor cushions. Indian throws hand on the walls and some bloke with a guitar is singing some Bob Dylan song. There’s loud techno coming from somewhere else and jungle from another direction. And drums. Nothing makes sense. The floor’s littered with dog ends and empty cans. I rub my eyes, yawning, aching again like a twat on this hard bleeding floor, and sit up. Dawn light’s filtering into the room through an orange chiffon scarf someone’s pinned over the little skylight in the sloping ceiling.

   -Wossa time?

A crusty girl in a worn woollen jumper turns round and smiles at me as I check my pockets. Can’t believe I’ve fallen asleep in public, but I’ve not been robbed, thank fuck.

   -You’ve been out for about four hours; it’s about six, I think.

I remember getting here, just don’t remember coming into this room.

   -Was I in ‘ere when I fell asleep?

   -Dunno, you were crashed out when I came in.

   -Shit. Have you seen Kiwi?

   -Who?

   -Kiwi- Stakki’s sister. Bright red hair.

    -Don’t think so.

My head’s in pieces. I’m getting to my feet now in hot and cold sweats, skin creeping. Mouth tastes like someone’s shat in it, ears blocked, nose and eyes running the Manchester fuckin marathon. I walk the corridor, checking for a bathroom. The second room on the left doesn’t have a door and I look in. It’s like punk pillar at midday, ‘cept these aren’t punks, but it’s full, even the empty bath’s got people sitting in it, sharing spliffs and drinking. There’s a bloke sat on the toilet with his trousers round his ankles and by the stench, he’s actually shitting in public. Well, it takes all sorts, eh?

   -Is there another bog in this place?

The public shitter replies happily as he looks up from his NME,

   -One on every floor, man. It’s palatial, man, patatial…

   -Cheers mate.

   -Let me know how you get on, mate. Do you ever stick your hair up, by the way? I’ve always wanted a mohawk…

His words fade as I head towards the stairs.

   The bathroom on the next floor down has a door, but when I open it, I’m confronted with a girl throwing her guts up, her mate slapping her on the back. Well, at least there’s someone else who feels as bad as me, cos my guts are starting to feel a bit like hers probably do, but by the looks of her, she’s got a considerably longer time to wait until she can heal her wounds. The ground floor bathroom’s locked and there’s a fuckin queue of four people. I seriously can’t be arsed with this, but I need water.

   -Have they been in there long?

A waifer-like girl in a cheesecloth dress shakes her head and the door opens.

   -Save my place, love?

She nods and I head for the kitchen. There’s a massive table in there like the type they have in the costume dramas, the ones the servants prepare the food on, and there’re people all sat round it drinking mushroom wine. They start chatting to me about the mushrooms, how they got them down Heaton park, asking me to join them, but I just go fill up my pill bottle from the tap, telling them to have fun as I leave.

   I don’t have to go outside or anywhere else, because the queue’s died down that fast even the cheesecloth girl’s gone and the bathroom’s empty. Maybe they all went in together, who cares? The washbasin’s filthy, its blue enamel coated in crusty white scum which has obviously been building up over a period of years rather than weeks. We’ve got soft water in Manchester, so you can’t blame limescale for that. I run the tap for a bit, washing my spoon and rinsing out my mouth, drinking a bit, though I make sure I don’t touch my mouth on the tap, cos it’s sprouting black mould. You think I’m not bothered about stuff like that, don’t you? Think I like it? Fuck off. Do you like mildew and shit? You don’t, do you? So why the fuck should I?

   I fill up from my bottle cos the mould on the tap’s put me off and I sit on the bog lid to empty the gear into me spoon, adding a bit of citric from the film container I keep it in. I like this opaque plastic one, matches the clipper lighter I’ve got now. Small things please small minds, my mum used to say. But I don’t wanna think about my mum now. Not now. I give it a bit of a crush with the orange lid once the water’s in and give that a lick when I’ve finished, force of habit. I’m heating it now and that divine smell…I’ll maybe tell you something else about this when we get to know each other better, but I’ll keep it to myself for now…the clear, brown liquid’s formed now and I drop in my filter, feeling the warmth through the plastic as I pull it up into the syringe, then flick the bubbles up and push them out.

   -Hurry up, mate.

There’s someone hammering on the door now and another voice:

   -What’re they doing in there? Shagging?

I put the pin back between my teeth and shove everything else back into my inside pocket, get my shoelace. Roll up my sleeve. See, there is a reason I cut off the sleeves on this fuckin coat, and I’m not regretting it now. So I tie myself off and swap the pin for the end of the lace between my teeth. My fuckin arms are destroyed. I’m feeling around for even a quarter-decent vein and hoping to fuck I find one here, cos I’ve done the rounds all over the place and it’s not getting any easier, and the cunts trying to break the door off its hinges ain’t helping.

   -Hang on

I shout at them through clenched teeth.

   -Well, hurry up, I’m bursting.

   If it was a bloke I’d tell him to go piss outside, but it’s a female voice so I just tell her I’ll be out in a minute. After digging around in all the well-worn scabs, I’m feeling like going in the fem. I’ve tried both arms and hands, between the fingers and I’m not even bothering with the legs at the moment cos it’s just not been happening there lately. I mean, if they call this having a dig, I reckon it’s a fuckin exercise in gravediggin. Seriously, I always said I wouldn’t go in the arteries, but there’s always a point when you stop giving a fuck. Fuck sake. Every time I pull back the plunger there’s a fuckin bubble, and I hate missing. It stings to fuckery. So I try just above the outside-thumb part of my wrist. And I fuckin miss. The vein’s wobbling around, pushing aside every time I try for it and this pin’s getting blunter every try. It’s almost like a fuckin tapestry needle. But here, here…we…fuckin…go…

   I try again and blood’s shooting into the barrel, cauliflowering into the brown. Jesus. My teeth let go of the lace and I push the plunger all the way as fast as it’ll go before the vein’s decided it’s had enough, pull back again and shoot the deep crimson back into my wrist.

   As I stand up, I flush the bog and it hits me like a truck. Not felt this for a long time. This stuff I got off Scarlets and it’s fuckin dynamite. There’ll be overdoses on this shit, trust me. I don’t give a fuck about the cunts knocking at the door any more now than I did before and I take my time, standing up stretching my arms high, arching my back and stretching my neck back as far as it’ll go. I take my time washing the pin, stashing my ‘quet before I open the door.

   -It’s all yours, mate. All yours.

Someone in the queue mutters under their breath at me

   -Fuckin smackhead

But do I look like I give a fuck? I’m way past the stage of wondering how they know. I mean, look at me: when I say I don’t have much meat on my bones, I ain’t exaggerating. And when I looked in the mirror just now, my eyes were pinned like poppy seeds. And besides, It’s not me who’s desperate for a piss: like I said, they can piss outside. If you don’t like it, don’t fuckin do it. End of. And like the saying goes, judge not. But I reckon those who preach it are the most judgemental of all…

  

   The front door’s wide open, mellow trance audible from the front room. I see Kiwi on the decks as I poke my head around the door. Stakki’s crashed out on the floor and a bloke with long ginger hair and a beard’s having a conversation with a woman I vaguely recognise. There’s a joss stick burning in a brass holder, dead pink ends protruding like the spines of a cactus from its central orb, lines of ash surrounding it in a dusty, grey star. Kiwi looks up and grins at me.

   -Where were you? Last time I saw you, you were sitting in the corner in that room with all them drums, knocking about on some bongos with some Rasta bloke, cained out of his box on sensi. Kept calling me daughter of Iration. Said his name was Moses. It was all getting a bit weird for me, so I came down here to see Stakki and you’d vanished when I came back to find you.

   -Fuck sake; I don’t remember how I got there, I just remember waking up in the attic.

   -What, and you missed the party?

   -I guess.

   -So that guy really is called Moses?

Turns out, I find this out later, but Moses had actually carried me upstairs like a kid and put a blanket over me cos I’d crashed out in the doorway of the drumming room and people were nearly standing on me. Yeah, I told you Moses is a top bloke. Heart of gold.

   -You sticking around? Asks the ginger bloke.

   -I need to get some sleep at some point, but yeah, what’s going on?

That’s Kiwi for you, always up for a party.

   -Aaron’s cooking a meal tonight if you’re up for it and Sam’s cooking space cakes for afters.

   -Wicked, I’ll bring me mushroom wine.

Kiwi sticks her tongue out, pulling a Filter record out of its sleeve. –Imagine calling a baby Moses!

   I slip out of the room and through the front door, this gear seeping through my veins like magic. I’m cotton-wool heavy. The sudden brightness outside hits my retina with a stealth of bright white light. Through blotches of light stuck on my eyes, I see a collapsed sofa in the long front garden grass, uni kids sitting half asleep, smoking. The morning’s surprisingly warm for the time of year, the kind of deceptive pre-spring day you get in England which you hope will last, but never does. I’m sitting on the doorstep, scratching my nose and leaning against the brick-built porch. Lighting a roll-up I made earlier and found squashed and dry in my back pocket, I inhale smoke with the new morning’s diesel. Close my eyes, enjoying the opiates, remembering better times from years ago, when I’d have closed my eyes and seen strange landscapes flitting behind my eyelids.

   I remember the first time I tasted heroin. Like magic: pure, fuckin magic. I was with Spid, but he never loved it like I did. When I talk to some cunts who say they didn’t like it, never touched it again, I don’t get it. Then I read about how some people have strong opiate receptors, some don’t. Some have nothing worth speaking of to enjoy it with in their chemical make up. So it’s all in the body chemistry and I’m glad to say, I’m one of the lucky ones. I struck gold. Yeah, the first time it was like going home. We were in Spid’s bedroom, but I breathed in that smoke off the foil and I was in a poppy field, the warm breeze blowing over me, these white and purple poppies everywhere, just swaying, sun warming me. I knew where I was but the image and texture of what I saw was so lucid. Floating, weightless, paradisiacal opium dreams. And I never looked back.

   Even though this gear’s fuckin dynamite like I said before, I wish I could bring back those times. Gotta get home, I’m thinking, get my head down, but I can’t be arsed to move. Some seriously nice fuckin gear, this. I love the way it tastes in my throat, the itchiness of my skin, the whole fuckin thing. Makes me remember why I can’t get clean: I don’t fuckin want to. Ten years I’ve been in this madness and Just now, just now, I can absolutely and bottom-of-the-heart-feelingly say I don’t ever, ever, ever want to let it go.

   Enjoy it while it lasts. After a bit, I open my eyes, the sun cutting into my pupils. I stand, yawning, stretch, and drag myself back inside and into the attic. I’ll get home later. Then I remember: I said I’d meet Spid. And apart from that, I’ve got work to do. There must be some potential earners in here. Like I said, this measly little bit I’ve got left won’t last forever.

*   *   *

   Spid’s looking at the blue translucent resin clock on the mantelpiece which stands amongst various American whisky bottle candle holders and match boxes. Twenty to nine. An X-Files poster on the wall depicts Mulder and Skully in soft, yellowish focus with the words The Truth is Out There. He turns and checks on Sarah. Still asleep, her mouth hangs open, pouting. He’s pulling back his side of the duvet, careful not to disturb her, and standing up, replacing the cover. The ashtray on the bedside table is overflowing with fag butts and roaches. Last night’s bag of skunk lays next to it, now only stalks, seeds and a couple of buds.

   Grabbing his clothes and shoes, he tiptoes over to the pile of clothes Sarah took off the night before. Sitting down next to them, he’s getting dressed, poking her trousers for the sound of keys. Nice one. Checking she’s still sleeping, he slides the trousers towards him, pockets first, and grabs the keys tight in his fist, shoving them into his pocket soundlessly. He’s nearly dressed now, just putting on his socks and boots, treading carefully across the carpet to the door. Sarah hasn’t even shifted. Leaving the room, he creeps downstairs and slips out into the street.


© Vee 1993-2012

Here's the first chapter of a book (I won't call it a novel. Not into the word) I started years ago and finished and refinished and refinished and continue to refinish.
I should stop looking at it, because every time I have a read, there are changes I can't resist making.
I wrote it on scraps of paper, in notebooks, on the back of Aldi receipts, on my hand and up my arm. Not really, but the scraps of paper and the notebooks are true enough.
When I started writing I was well into the drugs bike and freshly obsessed with the needle. Ah, those halcyon days of sucking up blood and splattering it onto the cardboard innards of the novels of Burroughs et al.
Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....
Anyway, here's the first chapter. If anyone likes it, I'll post chapter two.

Love&Inspiration,
Vee X

Cold rapid hands

Draw back one by one

The bandages of dark

I open my eyes

                       Still

I am living

                At the centre

Of a wound still fresh

     -Otavio Paz

               

 Prologue

Spare Some Loose Change

   It’s fuckin freezing under this blanket. I exhale slowly and watch my breath curl away like smoke. My god, I wish I had a cig. As I check the street for promising free-fag material, a group of evening-out wankers push out of the next door take away.

   -Got a spare cig mate?

A Burberry-jacketed cunt with a number one finished in bleach-blonde offers cigarettes around his mates from a full pack of Regal, looking at me like he’s about to piss himself laughing, trying to get the others to enjoy the joke, then they cross the road, running as they see their bus approaching, laughing, smoking-

   -Fock, fock sake, the fockin bus!-

-all dressed in various crease-ironed trousers, chequered shirts and kicker-style shoes.

   I open my resealable silver plastic bag to count the evening’s takings. Not bad, could be better. Too many coppers and five pees, but nearly there. Well there’re always too many coppers in this job, moving you on half the time but what can you do?  Another hour. Feet pass. Mostly steering away, all going somewhere- trainers; knee-length boots; skater shoes; DMs; Indian sandals with socks; strictly-no-trainers-no-jeans-club shoes. I keep my head down most of the time like, except for the odd occasion when change drops into the Man City hat I’ve got in front of me. Service with a smile, eh? Fuck me, it’s cold.

   It’s early March and a sharp wind’s threatening a drab spring. What your average non-pavement boy doesn’t appreciate is the cold. In a job like this, disillusionment creeps up on even the well prepared with alarming ferocity. And you know what, if I had a tenner here now and some change for the phone, I wouldn’t bother embarrassing myself sitting here any longer. But to be honest, I’m beyond embarrassment. I passed that stage years ago. I put it like that so you understand, but what I basically mean is, I wouldn’t waste my time freezing my arse off here, sat on my arse on a piece of cardboard in a skanky old blanket outside Abduls, if I didn’t have a cash flow problem, right? Right. So now we understand each other, I’ll let you take a closer look.

   If I was standing up, which I don’t usually bother with for a long session, more for the casual opportunist opportunities, you’d notice I’m not a short-arse or a tall kind of bloke, and there’s not much meat on my bones, like my auntie used to say when I wouldn’t eat up the carved carcases she forked onto my plate. Always liked my veg, but meat, I still can’t stand it. Used to chew it and gob out balls of the stuff, stick it on the ledge under the table. Still got a mohie: had it since I was in school. Not that I bother shaving the sides every day, or dye it much; well, I’ve got a cash flow problem like I said, so it’s a sort of cacky brown at the moment, which matches this height-of-fashion duffle coat. Wish I hadn’t sold my biker jacket now, but that’s life. I’d put about a thousand studs in it and done some wicked paintings all over it; copied that Exploited picture with all them punk skeletons on the back too off the album cover for Troops of Tomorrow. Looking back, it was worth more than the fifty measly quid I got for it and I bloody hate this poxy duffel coat, seriously. If I ever see Mogga again, I’ll buy it back; swear to god he had to squeeze himself into it cos he’s a fat bastard. I’m not offending him, he says so himself. He was giving me all that lecture bullshit and all the ‘are you sure about this, Scab face?’ shit when I sold it to him, but he was always admiring it, so I knew he’d be chuffed to buy it off of me.

   I cut the sleeves off this cunting duffel thing, fuck knows why, cos like I said, I’m bloody freezing now. At least I’ve got this navy hoodie and the mohair jumper I can curl my camouflaged knees up into in an attempt at warmth; yeah, it’s not a bad one either: Ites gold and green like the Rastaman who gave it to me said. Moses. ‘Gary, mon, jus satta, star’ he said when I offered him a fiver for it. Wouldn’t take a penny for it, not even a pint of Guinness. Yeah, he’s a top bloke, proper sorted, but I’ll tell you about him later, right, cos my boots are moulding themselves to my feet, they’re that cold. My toes are numb and that Manchester drizzle what came down earlier’s soaked my blanket, soaked everything, freezing my arse, which is also becoming dangerously numb. Ah, but here’s a drip of happiness, a bloke on a skateboard stops and hands us a couple of cigs…magic, eh? Minutes pass. Buses pass. Short skirts and stilettos pass, but do I look bothered?

   Check this out. After today, she’ll probably be here every fuckin night, on the dot, well I’d say on the dot if I had a watch, but you know what I mean. Here she comes, head bowed like Saint effin Ophelia, if there is a Saint Ophelia, that is, this wafer-thin girl. Approaching me now in her Hi-Tec squash shoes, white socks, red jeans. I look up at her: dark-haired, hollow-eyed, in an M&S jacket. Earnest-looking.

   -Hello?

She speaks tentatively with a soft RP accent. I mumble a reply; well, more of a grunt, shoving my money bag back into the inside pocket of my coat, looking sideways down the street at the neon curry house signs, the buses. The road and the pavement are Friday night busy. And I’m in a rush now, you know, fuckin aching to get this money changed up and shift. The girl coughs, crouches down in front of me. Biting her bottom lip, hands clasped. Here we go. I have her sussed before she even opens her mouth. I get them all the time; the do-gooder contingent, the god-squad, the wannabe social workers social wankers; social spastics. Helping you to help ourselves. Ok, I know, I’m sounding like a judgemental bastard now, right, but I’ll tell you about judgemental: the ones who spit at me, kick me and do a runner, throw coppers at me, swear at me: Get a fockin job. Scounging our taxes. Sewer rat. There are always the odd ones who are sound: I don’t mind a decent chat from time to time. Takes my mind off the cold. But I prefer most of them to just drop the money in the hat and walk away. I’m not in the job for the conversation. If I’d wanted that, I’d have worked in telesales.

   -Um, excuse me, sorry to bother you, but, um, I was wondering if you know somewhere to get something to eat, uh, because there’s a place behind the university…

Like she’s born and bred in Manchester and I’m not, like. I mean, excuse my sarcasm, but I was working these streets before she was sitting her GCSEs. I’m hoping for the last couple of squid to top up the shrapnel in the kitty so I smile and nod.

   -Yeah, I’m alright, cheers love.

   -Um, and you’ve got somewhere to sleep? The Salvation Army hostel is only ten pounds a night…

Is that all? Like they have vacancies anyway: my left arse cheek they have vacancies, and ten pounds a night to get raped up the arse and your stuff nicked or your head kicked in if you’re lucky? Now we’re talking: I can get the same treatment in one of her Majesty’s overnight suites for free. Now I’m beginning to wish the girl would just piss off. She’s putting people off, squatting my pavement space like a free-ad for a non-denominational cult. She means well enough, but we all know that’s a psuedo-compliment, right?

   -Well, so long as you have enough to eat and a place to sleep…

You should see the way she looks at me, like butter won’t melt, but she’s getting this red glow around the old cheeks and it’s spreading. Roll on tenner time…

   -I don’t suppose you’ve got a spare cig?

   -I’m sorry, I don’t smoke- but I do have something for you: will you read this?

 Surprise, surprise. She pulls out a small booklet and hands it over. There’s a whole bunch of them in her pocket. I fantasize briefly about reaching in and evacuating possible banknotes tucked underneath them, her words blurring into the general diesel engine and car-horn chatter.

   -It’s Mark’s Gospel. I just want you to know that Jesus loves you, whoever you are, whatever you’ve done. He forgives all our sins.

   -Good for you. Sin a lot, do you?

Ha, she don’t know what to make of that one. Just looks at me gone out. So I help her out a bit, get the ball rolling on the business front.

   -Well, ‘ave you got some spare change then, love?

   -I’m sorry, I don’t give money to beggars. If you look to the lord for help…

   -Well, has he got some spare change then?

Ha, that got her. Bloody hypocrite. See what I mean? The tightest of ‘em all, the do-gooders.

   -Who, sorry?

   -The lord.

   -Uh, sorry, I don’t understand?

 I can feel myself laughing now. It’s fun to have a laugh with them now and again. Different planet. Different bloody planet.

   -Has the lord got some spare change? Just you said I should ask him, and seeing as you know him so well, I thought you could ask him on my behalf, maybe he gives money to people like me, so he wouldn’t mind lending you a fiver.

I’m getting impatient now. This is prime time. I’ll put it like this: there’s enough circumstantial evidence in this world to give super heavyweight titles to the argument that the lord doesn’t give a shit about people who ask for his help. If his so-called missionaries won’t help when I ask them, either they’ve misunderstood what he instructed them, or he didn’t tell ‘em owt: you decide. Religion’s only useful to those balancing the books. How much could I get for her leaflet down the nearest second hand bookshop, for example? Sweet eff ay. Get my point?

   -Uh, well, every Sunday, we have a service here…

Now she’s getting another booklet out of her pocket and I’m checking for a stray tenner or even a quid slipping out unnoticed, but it’s not my lucky day. She’s showing me an address on its reverse next to a wishy-washy watercolour of a cross, surrounded by white flowers. Funereal if you ask me.

   -The address and times are on the back. We have a morning and an evening service; you’re always very welcome to come and invite all your friends.

Oh yeah, maybe I’ll pop in some time and relieve them of their burden in the form of a few notes from the old silver plate. Last time the lord’s minions helped me to help myself it was from a wooden bowl, else legging it with the whole plate would have been a distinct possibility. Easy work if you can get it. But with clothes like this and the stink on me like a dog that just got out the river, it’ll be eagle eyes all round. Last time I had a go I escaped with a twenty and a grin like a winning politician on election night, but the speed with which I had to scarper hurt like me lungs were on fire. Should quit the smoking really. It don’t help with the choring: can’t run as fast as I used to.

   I’m beginning to feel pretty frayed around the edges. I’m looking at the toecaps of my boots, checking this big rip in the leather where the steel’s showing through. I’m getting tetchy, the pit of my stomach heaving quietly to itself and I’m not in the mood for this shit. If she doesn’t shift soon I’m gonna to get aggro, and that ain’t good for business, but seriously, it’s like going into a brothel and expecting a sports massage on the NHS with some people, eh?

   -Look, love, I appreciate your concern and all that, but I got a job to do ‘ere.

   -Um, well, uh….pause…Um, well, I’m Sue- uh- what’s your name?

   -Danny.

   -Well, Danny, you take care, and take time to real the Gospel…it’s really good, you know…you might be pleasantly surprised.

    -You’ll get a fockin surprise in a minute, love, I think to myself, or do I say it out loud? Either way, she looks a little upset as she gets to her feet, cos when I light the cigarette I got earlier off some Cockney skater, she does these big Princess Di interview eyes at me, looking up and down the street with this scared animal vibe, then back at me. I can almost hear her thinking: how dare he ask me for a cigarette, when he already had one? The cheek of it! Funny, right? I do a lot of imagining what other people are thinking. Not much of it nice.

   -Goodbye, my friend.

   -Yeah, right.

Back to business it is then, and tonight I’m onto a winner after all. The pubs are kicking out, which can mean a number of things, but it’s all good tonight thank fuck, and the quids are flying into the hat and my lucky break comes with the return of the skater who hands me a fiver.

   -Nice one, you sure, like? I ask him, which I immediately regret. Fuckin daft twat I can be, honest: are you sure?  What is it with all this are you sure stuff?

   -No, I’m not sure, now give it us back. Course I’m sure, else I wouldn’t’ve given you it, would I?

See, like I said, there’s sound cunts just like there are daft cunts and evil cunts. So when the last of the drinkers have left the kebab houses with their steaming food parcels, I pull myself up, slowly. Slowly slowly. For fuck sake, it’s painful. My knees have seized up and I can hardly straighten my back. Definitely time to get moving. I take a well deserved stretch which turns out to be painful too, and yawn. What’s up with me and all this stretching and yawning? Right, let’s go: I’m walking faster with every step.

*   *   *

   Tania’s cursing and slamming the receiver of the payphone down repeatedly like she’s trying to tenderise old mutton for the fourth time in a row. Bastard, she’s thinking, switch your fucking phone on. What the fuck’s going on? He’d told her to phone him at eight and he’d have it all bagged up. Now it’s almost midnight. This is taking the piss. Four hours, and by now Adam and Nathan will be long gone and she’ll be stuck all weekend with Hellie. Fuck that for a game of soldiers, no chance. She’s in a rage now, trying to slam the door of the phone box. Frustrated with its slow-closing door mechanism, she gives it a kick, stubbing her toe.

   -Ow, for fuck’s sake!

She’s walking now, then running for the number 47. The driver raises his eyebrows as she flashes her weekly student bus pass.

   -Rushing home through Rusholme love?

God, that joke gets more irritating every time she hears it.

She stomps upstairs to the back, grabbing the cold, chrome bars as she goes, sits on the spring-hard back seat and lights a fag.

*   *   *

   The fuckin lighter ain’t working. I’m not having any of this, I can feel the flint coming loose like it’s about to spring off and it’s times like this when a walk down the road to the garage ain’t the first thing on my mind. Fuck sake, there it goes, landing in no mans’ land. Hang on…I’m remembering now, there’s a box of matches somewhere. Maybe in the kitchen. If you can call it a kitchen. I look around the room, turning over books, trashed drawings, plates, empty baked beans cans. Fuck sake, don’t laugh. Do you see me laughing? If I just shove it all inside this Kwik Save bag I’ll have more chance of finding the matches or even another lighter. Call it tidying up if you like. Fuck sake, there’s so much chaos in here my feet are crunching like the floor’s sandy. Right: wrappers; tins; newspapers; that drawing’s had it; it’s got to go…

   I’m checking the kitchen now. I got this old Calor gas burner off a skip with Spid, and the chest of drawers it’s standing on. Yeah, you guessed, the cylinder’s empty. Yes, I’ve got it. Ha, look, a box of matches inside this pan. Stuck to the side by some cruddy smee, but who cares. Charred stumps, noooo. Hang on, two matches left. I hate using matches but I don’t reckon I have much choice now. Or do I? I light the lighter with the match, which works better. It’s a bit of a bloody fiddle but eventually I’m all sorted and everything’s getting there…

   Fuckin hands shaking like an old alchie with the DTs, swear to god I miss the old times: no rattle, no sweat, no problems finding a route of administration so to speak, ha. Fuck me, there she is, the scarlet in the brown, feel better before it even goes in… the relief ain’t something you can describe unless you’ve got a habit. I breathe in like it’s fresh air in the Blue Mountains, deep and long, and hit home.

   Cushty again. Now I can relax. I’m sitting in this big old armchair, gouching nicely and if I do say so myself it’s about time I sorted out my shit. I got piles of drawings here, half of them all fucked up with black marks and stuff and coffee rings. Then there’s my painting.

   Yeah, I’ll get on with it tomorrow, sort it out, get some stuff sold. Since I was a kid they always told me I had a talent for art. Yeah, it’s pretty good stuff I’ve done, must be able to make a few quid, surely? I should go round the galleries or something. Ha, me, Gary Fitzpatrick, the big talent waiting to be discovered. What a fuckin tragedy. Seriously though, I could do with making something work for a change. Don’t you reckon? Like Moses would say, Lord have mercy!

PART ONE: Squatters’ Rights

 

One

Wet Phosphorus

  

    It’s easy to squeeze through this cellar window, despite its narrowness: she’s done it before. As Tania drops onto bricky rubble below, the dank, familiar smell hits her in the pitch black as she gropes her way across the room, stopping as she hits a stone staircase. Slight, yellow light casts itself down banisterless steps. As she reaches the ground floor, light from the street falls in distorted rectangles onto the floor of the hall from the part-open doors, the musty odour of abandoned buildings hanging in the air. She creeps along uncarpeted boards, clinging to carved banisters, some of which are broken or missing and makes her way up the wooden staircase to the first floor. An empty room gapes at each end of the corridor; two other rooms face her: one, a stagnant bathroom, another a deep pink bedroom with varnished floorboards. Another flight of stairs and she faces a white door upon which is written in solid black marker pen:

THIS ROOM IS OCCUPIED AS OF 17.2.94. PLEASE KNOCK.

There’s a spray-can painting of a punk putting two fingers up on the bottom half of the door as though the artist couldn’t be bothered to stand up to do it, because the top half of the door is white, but for the writing. At the very bottom, a tag’s sprayed in black filled with green: sKaB 9T6.

   There are three keyholes: one, a Yale lock, the other two, mortises. Above, a roof window leaks orange light onto the landing, at the end of which she can see a large attic room with a wide, broken window.

   -Gary, she whispers.

There’s no response. She’s tapping lightly now, putting her ear against the door. Silence. Knocking louder, she’s calling me and stepping away, leaning against the wall. She’s hearing movement, shifting of objects, but she doesn’t know what I’m doing or why. And I know it’s her, but I ask anyway.

   -Yeah, who is it?

I’ve told her never to bring anyone and I know she hasn’t, but I feel the need to ask her if she’s alone. Come on, call me a control freak if you want, but I don’t want no one snooping around, getting ideas, messing up my patch. Before I got this place it wasn’t pretty, trust me, and I want to keep it like this. It might not be your idea of paradise revisited, but it’s better than a kick up the arse and a night behind the Piccadilly Hotel getting the heat from the kitchen vents. Warm enough, but the cooking smell either makes you want to eat or want to puke: either way, I’m happier here and no one messes with me. So here she is. Again.

   I slide the two bolts and turn the two keys and open the door for her. As soon as she’s in, she’s lighting a fag and sitting down on my bed. Anyone might think we were an old couple the way she acts round me these days but that’s never going to happen. She’s looking at the walls like she always does. She spends hours staring at my drawings and she’s always on about them. Here we go, typical Tania conversation as usual. I’ve told you before that I can draw, but some people think they’re a genius when they’re just basically just arrogant and talentless. Maybe I’m talentless, so to avoid being shoved into the first category, I tend to avoid self-inflation.

   -Have you been doing much painting?

I wonder why she always asks this, because the amount of time she spends looking, she should have noticed by now that nothing new’s been stuck up there for some time.

   -Uh, a bit, you know. Haven’t really had the time.

   -You should sell them you know, get them down on decent paper.

   -What?

   -Your pictures. You’re well good, you know that?

See how them compliments roll in? How do I know if she’s just saying they’re good, though? She’s always fishing for something, is Tania. You know how I met her? A nice girl like Tania, hanging around with the likes of me? I was begging in my usual evening spot outside Abduls, when she stopped for a chat. Gave me a full packet of Marlboro Lights and a twenty.

   -What’s that for? I’d asked her. There was something clingy about her. I’d seen her a few times before in the past week. She’d walk past me and give a nice smile and drop a couple of quid in the hat. After a few times, she’d started saying

   -Hi!

Like that, a sort of tinkly, naughty ‘Hi!’ that if it was written down would have one of those yellow smiley faces next to it. Next thing you know it’s the Marlboro fuckin Lights and twenty quid, and it’s not like me to question a twenty quid note being shoved into my hand, but it was loaded. Next thing was the million dollar question:

   -Do you know where I can buy some smack?

And I laughed in her face.

She hadn’t even known what gear was before she met me. Hadn’t smelled it, hadn’t seen it, hadn’t tasted it. I mean, who calls it smack these days? Do they? Don’t start judging me now, will you, eh? Okay, so it was obvious to me that she hadn’t got a habit, but I asked her anyway and she said no, but she used it. So guilt free, okay? I never introduced her to it, ‘someone else did’. Yeah, right. She’s alright though, is Tania. I like her. That first night she’d gone on about her course, how she was only doing it because her mum and dad wanted her to, blah, blah, blah. She’s a posh bird, always got fags, new clothes, money, new hairdos. She’ll lend me money no questions asked and never ask for it back. I wonder sometimes if she keeps a tab of how much I owe her, but she never says owt. And she’s round me now like flies round shit, not that I’m complaining. Shame really: she’s naïve. She’s safer round me than round some of the cunts she could have met first. Yeah, she could have got herself into some real shit if she’d’ve met someone like Lee that night. I’m alright, me, not like some of the cunts out there. Yeah, I look after her really.

   So here she is with her hair all half-short and half-long with blonde bits and a posh frock and she’s telling me to sell my pictures.

   -I sold a few once. Down in Cornwall, I tell her. –Cards and little paintings, to the tourists and that. It’s too bloody cold now, always raining, they’d get wrecked.

She’s got her sympathy face on now. It’s right funny. I reckon some people would call it patronising, but I like it for some reason. Yeah, I like Tania.

   -You could get a pitch in Market Street: you’d sell loads.

Could I? In my humble opinion, I’d do better sticking with grafting like I always did. Days I never sold nothing and had to beg anyway: think of the time wasted when I could have been making money instead.

   -What, and have the pigs hassling me? No chance. I got moved on all the time in Cornwall. You’re meant to have a license, ain’t you? Bastards. Can’t do nothing without getting exploited by rich cunts.

Tania’s face starts glowing now.

   -Not you, love, you’re nice, I reassure her, like she needs reassuring, but there’s something about her that makes me want to reassure her. Like I don’t wanna see her cry. Like she’s got this invisible sign that says FRAGILE.

   -Nice? Ah, thank you, so are you.

   -So gizza cig then Tan.

So she throws us a fag and I break off the filter.

   -Got a light love?

And she throws us a lighter. She might have it back for a bit but when she leaves, it’ll have been converted into my possession.

   -Why d’ you wanna spend all that money on Marlboro Lights anyway? A fag’s a fag, you don’t have to waste your money just to impress the other students. They all smoke them.

   -Ah, but if they really wanna impress the other students, Gaz, they smoke Marlboro reds.

She’s smiling at me, her big green eyes widening as if to emphasise what an important point she’s making. Yeah, like I said, with those eyes, the way she looks, she’s lucky she met me first and not someone like Lee. Seriously. Like the ocean, they are, the fucking Atlantic ocean, all greens and blues with little starry bits and these tiny cute crinkles when she smiles. I’d not say I fancy her cos there’s someone else I like, love; someone I’ve been into for years, ‘cept I’m the only cunt who knows. Unless she’s psychic, that is. Women seem to know things before you tell them, female intuition and all that. No, I’m not interested in Tania, not like that. Tell the truth, even the girl I’m into probably wouldn’t be speaking to me if she knew my private thoughts. That’s probably why I haven’t told her. Ruin the friendship shit like that does, right?

   -Don’t you ever just wanna get away, Gaz? Why did you come back up here if you were living in Cornwall?

   - The winters are freezing. Like fockin Scandanavia. Anyway, apart from that, it’s a long story. I’ll tell you some other time.

   -No, tell me now, I want to know.

That’s the thing with Tania, she always wants to know now or go now or smoke now. And she always wants to know.

   -Alright, alright. When I was living down in Cornwall…you know Spid, right?

   -Him with the huge Alsatian?

   -Skinner. Yeah. Well, we were living in this bus. He got this ex-GM bus in some auction- did it up really nice- we used to park it up down this place near St Ives, Godrevy point I think it’s called, something like that. They’ve got these random fields up on the cliffs near this lighthouse. It’s beautiful. Used to wake up and see the sun rise up over the ocean; well, it ain’t gonna rise down, is it?

   -No, that’s a sunset.

   -Rise down...but they were beautiful too. Blue skies; perfect, long waves. Gorgeous.

   -So what are you back here for then?

   -Wait, I’m telling yer. Used to wake up and find parking fines stuck to the windscreen. Ignored them. Well, you do. And Spid ain’t got no tax or insurance. He probably ain’t got no MOT neither but who’s askin’? It’s just robbery, all that. I mean, it works, he can drive the thing: it’s his fuckin house, right? You live like that to get away from all that shit. We were kids, really, just trying to be free. We go for a surf one day-

Tania’s laughing at me now, her eyes open wider than ever, her mouth gaping like she’s gonna start dribbling any minute and I can see her fillings are gold, not your usual skanky grey stuff that tastes of metal.

   -You went surfing!

   -What’s so funny about that?

She shakes her head and just smiles to herself in amusement.

   -Nothing, really, it’s just you don’t look like the surfy type.

I raise my eyes to the ceiling.

   -Why, cos I ain’t got shoulder-length bleach-blonde hair and a Mambo T-shirt?

   -Something like that. Tell me more, surfer boy, hahaha, you, surfing, that’s funny.

She’d go into paroxysms of laughter in those days, sometimes I really thought she’d pissed herself for real when she got like that. I just dismiss it and keep talking over her squeals and giggles and eventually she calms down.

   -Anyway, we get back and the bus is gone.

   -No!

   -Yeah, I thought I was tripping for a minute, but it’s definitely gone. We’ve been stopping in that spot two weeks, is all…no one to be seen. Left standing in our wetsuits.

She’s squeeling and giggling again and red as a poppy on Armistice Day. If I was arrogant, I’d say it was a good story, but she’d laugh at anything back then.

   -What did you do?

Forcing the words out between emphysemic wheezes now: seeing her laugh, you’d think it was comedy night at the Apollo, only with a comedian who’s actually funny.

   -Had to borrow some clothes off this bloke we knew in Hayle. It’s a right schlep from where we were; we looked like right wankers.

   -What about the bus?

   -Pigs robbed it. They’d rather see you on the streets than evading their taxes. Robbing bastards.

   -That’s well out of order.

Tania lights another fag and chucks one over to us. She’s gone all sombre now. Changeable as the wind, she is, like smoke from a campfire, blowing in your eyes one minute and in someone else’s the next.

   -Gary, have you got any gear?

Has this girl got chutzpah or what? I guess it’s her who should be saying that about me, but it goes both ways. Yeah, it always goes both ways in this life.

   -Talk about robbing bastards…

   -Nah- seriously…

See, I told you, she’s always fishing for something.

   -There’s a bit left in that bag.

(Yeah, Tania, that bag you’ve been eyeing up the whole time, yeah, that one…nothing left in it to feel anything anyway and I’ve been out grafting since early this morning, so everything’s sorted, and I’ll ask you to sort us for tomorrow: everyone’s happy, right?) She makes a grab for it with an excited little look on her face. Grinning like a cat.

   -Cheers Gaz, seriously, that arsehole Lee wouldn’t answer his phone. Had it switched off all night. He knew I wanted to score, the bastard.

   -You shouldn’t be doing that shit, you know.

  -What, so it’s alright for you to do it, but not me?

   -You know what I mean.

Does she? Does she really know what I mean? I’m not one to lecture, though. What’s the point? So I pick up a pile of my drawings and start looking through them to take my mind off the whole scenario. Things I’ve seen, this pales in comparison, so I’ll let it go. She’s tutting to herself and rolling her tinfoil so she can have a toot.

   -Since when have you been my mother?

So she empties the little bit from the bag onto her tinfoil square and holds her lighter to its underside, letting the melted brown roll down its length, sucking up that sweet smoke like her life depends on not wasting a wisp. Fucking waste.

   -Alright?

   -Mmmmm…

Fuck me, those were the days, eh?

Tania lays down on the bed, arching her back and closes her eyes.

*   *   *

   It’s rained in the night. Pools of wet mix with last autumn’s fallen leaves, merging into a slippery sludge in the gutters. A car horn sounds below. Tania searches for her bag on the floor, knocking over a pan of last night’s vomit which leaves a crusted circle of yellow where the sick has dried to its sides overnight. Retching, she mops it up with a handful of pages from the Metro News, watching the chunks lodge themselves in the grooves between the floorboards before she crams the crumpled sick paper into the pan.  She picks up her bag, wiping her hands on a photo of a fat white man in a suit with the bold caption of Praise for Local Councillor in Refuse Site Bid. The car horn sounds again. She thinks I’m still asleep as she picks her way across the room to the door and unfastens the two heavy-duty bolts and unlocks the mortises.

   -Wait-

I’m laying in a pool of cold sweat that’s not easy, my eyes crusty and watering, bones, back and belly aching like I’ve been flogged half to death and skewered through the intestines.

   -Gotta go, cab’s waiting.

I fuckin hate these shakes. Rattling like a cunt. Every morning it’s the same but I’m safe. If I hadn’t been lucky last night I’d have to get up and go out like this.

   -Yeah, uh, Before you go, you couldn’t lend us a tenner til I get paid? Please?

It’s not like me to say please, but I look at her with my best sad puppy look. I know my pupils are gaping, and she can see the state I’m in. I don’t get some people, cos surely she don’t wanna end up like this, but I understand her too. When it happens, okay, if it happens, she won’t even notice. But I’ve seen that look in her eyes when she’s wanting something; know what I mean? Lady H has got under her skin alright. That’s just my professional opinion and if she don’t believe me, that’s not my problem, capice? She fumbles in her bag, the taxi driver below beeping again, and chucks me over a crumpled note.

   -Til Wednesday, Right? Cheers Tan, you’re a fockin lifesaver.

She reaches over and gives us a hug, which hurts, and a kiss on the cheek, which stings, and stinks of puke.

   -Take care of you, surfer boy, she smiles and winks, giggling a bit. A bit hazybrained still from the night before.

   -Yeah, you too, and clean yourself up, you stink of puke

Before she’s even out the door, I uncrumple the note to find a twenty, instead of a ten. Yeah, I like Tania, she’s a good lass for sure.

   It half kills me to get up and lock the door behind me, but I don’t have the choice. Door’s gotta be locked at all times, can’t get complacent…at least I don’t have to go out right now. Stinks of puke in here as well. I’m sniffing around to see where the fuck she’s vomited this time. There it is, a wet patch on the floor, fuck sake. I’m gonna buy that girl a bucket if it’s the last thing I do for her…the rank, acidic stench makes me gip and I nearly cover her wet patch with my own vom when I see the yellowish-brown matter lodged in the cracks and the sick pan…. my guts churn in the freezing cold as I hurry back to the bed, lift up the mattress and find my stash.

   Chunks of semi-damp phosphorus skit across the room as I try to light the last match, before I remember Tania’s lighter. She might chuck up on me floor and wipe it up with the crossword but I have to give thanks to her. As I suck the luscious brown fluid into this seven-times-used pin, I could kick myself for not getting any clean ones, it’s hard enough finding a vein as it is without this blunt piece of fuckery.

   God, I relish these moments. It’s beyond relief: it’s my fuckin sustenance. I sling the scavvy old pin in the grate. It’s cold enough in here to store frozen turkeys without them thawing. Damp’s clinging to the place, bringing pieces of plaster off the ceiling and bubbling the paint off the walls. With this twenty of Tania’s and the fiver I’ve got left over, I can score myself a teenth. Or get two bags and some coal. Come on, what would you choose? Could go skipping, get some wood for nothing. Wet wood, huh, but there’s plenty of newspaper here. I check my coat pockets and grab my money bag, and out falls that religious leaflet with an empty Rizla packet. By the time I’ve rolled a cig from the crumbs in the bottom of this Dutch Samson packet, I’ve got a plan. I start gathering the general squalour and chuck it bit by bit into the grate without regard to its toxicity: at least plastic bags get wood burning, and it won’t be the first time I’ve broken up and burnt some of the old bits and pieces the students left behind before this place got condemned by the council. Unfit for human habitation. If this is unfit, there’s plenty places worse, but I don’t see no one finding alternative accommodation for them that live there, or exist there, cos the last time I saw the inside of a nice, cosy living room…well, I won’t go into that.

   So everything goes on, from stale chip wrappers to empty yogurt pots, curry house menus, Manchester Evening Newses at various stages of decomposition, club flyers, emptied fag ends (even the re-rolls get re-rolled eventually) blood-encrusted pins and crumpled bog roll, empty match boxes. I weigh up the options of lighting this now and going to find stuff to burn from around the rest of the house or vice versa, or just burning this and going out. Ah, fuck it, I think, getting the lighter and…empty. I flick and flick the mechanism until my thumb’s nearly raw and the sodding flint does one just like the last. Well thank fuck it lasted this long: always gotta think of the positive, eh?

   Outside my door, drips fall from the skylight and run down the walls, following the tracks of the black mildew that peppers the peeling woodchip. The walls are dank with condensation from which small puddles form on the landing, trickling down the first few stairs. Come Manchester monsoon and it’ll be Viagra fuckin falls. So fuckin dark in this place. The tree outside the window’s so tall it’s probably mining the foundations of the big, old house and it’s leafing up now, so it won’t be much lighter in the summer. If I last that long here.

   I’m coughing up phlegm as I head down the stairs and into the biting chill of the morning.

*   *   *

   As soon as Tania walks through the front door, there’s Hellie, with a cheerful TV grin on her face like she thinks she’s stepped out of Home and Away. She’s in her white fluffy dressing gown and teddy bear slippers, fish-slice in hand, frying bacon. The cheerful tone of her greeting precipitates in Tania a deep, laboured yawn.

   -Oooh, so where were you last night?

   -What’s that supposed to mean?

Tania’s sick of insinuations of secret boyfriends and mysterious lovers. Yeah, she’d love to see the look on Hellie’s face if she knew where she’d really been, what a picture that’d be. You could put it on You’ve Been Framed and watch repeats without ever getting bored, she’s thinking to herself.

   -Adam and Nathan were round asking where you’d got to. Seemed a tad annoyed that you hadn’t shown. You were supposed to meet them in Jabez Clegg at nine.

   -I was at a friend’s house. He was having a bit of trouble.

   -Oooh, he, eh? Mum’s the word. Hellie winks and goes back to frying her bacon –Well, I told them you’d call when you got in, okay?

   -Yeah, cheers.

   -Who’s this mystery bloke, then?

   -A mate, I told you.

   -Mmmmm, in the mating sense?

   -Just a friend, Hellie.

   -So how come you were with him all night, then?

   -Leave it out will you, Dad!

Tania watches as Hellie pushes the plunger down on the cafetiere. Always twenty questions with Hellie, but she makes good coffee.

   -Okay, but when we finally get to meet your mystery man, tell him I cook a very nice spag bol and you’re all invited, okay? I will personally cook for you and provide the wine, just for the chance to meet him! Is he older? Is that it? Is he older? Tania, he’s not married, is he?

Bless her heart, honestly, she’s worse than the Australian soaps she’s addicted to, thinks Tania, but she’s so, so off the mark.

   -No, Hellie, he’s not married, he doesn’t have kids and I’m NOT SEEING HIM, OKAY?

   -Okay, I’ll take your word for it, but I don’t believe you. You’re in love: it’s written all over your face. Would you like some breakfast? There’s enough for two here.

   -Just a coffee, thanks.

   -See, lost your appetite as well…missing him already.

She just shakes her head and sighs as Hellie pours two huge cupfuls, topping them up with frothed milk and sprinkling chocolate powder from a specially designed shaker.

   -Ah, wicked, cheers Hel.

Tania sits down at the high real wood counter and lights a cigarette. She inhales deeply, blowing the smoke out across the room in one smooth action as Hellie sits opposite with her breakfast, sprinkling salt and grinding pepper over fried tomatoes, egg, sausages, hash browns, mushrooms and bacon. For a student house, this is the Ritzy end of the market. No en suites, granted, but it’s all been refurbished over the summer vacation, not like some of the places her friends rent in the high Victorian terraces on Furness Road, with leaky roofs and clattering kitchen units and dripping taps. Fifteen rooms, there are, in Adam’s shared house, big old rooms carved up with plywood petitions to make poky little dossers, each complete with its own melamine wardrobe in a selection of chipped off-white or dark woodgrain effect, doors missing or flapping. Where the nice, comfy beds should be are a choice of fleapits, collapsed, broken-springed divans and palliasses, crammed into spaces so small there’s barely room to stand, and no desk. Adam works flopped on his so-called bed, resting on a ring binder to study. So, as Tania sits with her housemate to share curls of bacon fat (the only part she’ll eat), she wonders how people can put up with such filthy, squalid conditions, and vows never to be poor.

  

   Upstairs, she puts a fresh mug of coffee on the side of the bath, running the water hot and adding loads of Matey Bubbles. It makes her smile, looking at the pink, girlie bottle designed to look like a mermaid. Smells different from the one she remembers using as a kid, the blue sailor smelling of hyacinths. She doesn’t understand why, but last time she bought the blue one it just made her cry and cry in the bath, so she never bought it again. So much for no more tears, eh? She wedges her bedroom door open, puts on a Kid Loops CD and undresses, wrapping herself in a towel. Picks out clean underwear, tight, black kamo pants and a close fitting black jumper, upping the volume enough so she’ll hear it in the bath. Everyone’s out at lectures and Hellie’s just left for her ten o’clock, so Tania’s free to wander around naked if she wants. And why not? This body won’t last, might as well try to enjoy it for all its cellulite and flab. She’s been told she’s fit, got a beautiful body more than twice, not that she particularly believes it, but yeah, she’s young and age won’t improve it. Quality of life, eh? Quality of life…

   She’s got a bit of weed in her knicker drawer she’s been saving, so she rolls a spliff, grabs her half-bottle of Captain Morgan to top up her coffee and returns to the bathroom. As she steps into the bath, the heat cuts into her foot. She’s sipping on the bottle now, turning on the cold tap…have a taste before she sloshes it into the coffee, why not? She’ll try calling Lee again when she gets out of the bath. Might go shopping later with that new Visa card as well; get something half-decent to wear for tonight. Stakki Kays is playing Dread-Rock tonight down PSV’s and she’s definitely gonna be there.


 © Vee 1993-2012