The Problem With David Hawkins

1 “The Problem with David Hawkins”
The Problem
with David Hawkins
A Novel
Chapters
Preface [letter to Dr. Hardy], p. 3
Week 1. Cilla Black, The Velvet Underground and Tictacs., p. 9
Week 2. The Emperor’s New Clothes, p. 19
Week 3. My Secret Uncles, p. 27
Week 4. “Something Kind of Hit Me Today”, Et Tu Louis?, p. 37
Week 5. Disentangled Doom, p. 37
Week 6. Revelations, p. 56
Week 7. Socio-political, Perennially Fey, p. 64
Week 8. The Capital of Portugal is Lisbon, p. 74
A. ‘David re-entered’, p. 82
Week 9. Smelly Old Men and Pseudo-intellectuals, p. 84
B. ‘David. Lies’, p. 89
Week 10. The Elitist Triangle, p. 91
C. ‘David, Tonight’, p. 95
Week 11. Cornflakes, p. 100
D. ‘mirror. David’, p. 107

(preface)
David Alexander Hawkins
Westview Crescent
Crawley
CR37 3YF
Dr. Jeremy Hardy
Farnham Counselling Services
PO Box 235
20th June, 2003
Dear Sir/ Madam,
You have asked me to write to you detailing some of the issues I’ve been having
recently before I start the course of therapy. I must tell you already that I am
apprehensive of this course and am attending through protest and against my will. I will
now outline some of things I hate in life:
What I hate is people who are always harping on about being an individual, about being
different, about not caring what anyone else thinks. What is the point about going on
about all that crap? Am I at odds with the world because I believe in normality?
I’m eighteen, my name is David Alexander Hawkins and I’m a normal schoolboy. I
might suffer from some mild form of neurosis but I’ll spare you all that Holden
Caulfield crap. My basic problem is this: a majority of people are ‘normal’ but some
people decide that they’re so important that they have to be different, they think they
can transcend the boundaries of normality. Go on, say it, I’ve heard it a thousand times,
‘if everyone was the same then wouldn’t the world be a boring place’, I’ve practically
had that shit rammed down my throat my whole life. Well let me answer it - no. No, the
world wouldn’t be a boring place if everyone was normal, and let me just say that most
people are normal and the world is not boring. All my life people have been telling me
to be an individual, think for yourself, express yourself. I’ve been told that everyone is
different and that we should all learn to get on in life despite our differences. So there it
is, the thesis right at the core of our whole fucking thought system.
Only it isn’t, it’s the big lie of our lives, of our time, because the fact is that most
people are the same. In every year in every school there’s the kid with no friends, the
kid who’s been bullied every day of his life and why? Because he’s got something
about him that differentiates him from the homogenous mass. Then there’s the fat kid
who has to become the bully just to survive. Or what about the army of fat girls that
have to actually try to pull one of the army of pathetic, desperate, spotty adolescents
that are battling to lose their virginity. And yet these bullies, this social mob, are the
same people who uphold the banner of their own individualism, the same people who
extol the virtues of freedom of expression and all the rest of it. This whole situation is a
lot more complex than anybody really gives it credit for. There are a number of social
factors to consider in the formation of each of us ‘individuals’ and these factors are
what eventually renders fictional all the ideals that are pumped into us on a daily basis,
by the burning legion of Disney, reality television programs, self help books and all the
rest of it - more than that, these ideals are down right wrong!
What I’m trying to say is that at the centre of our culture are two juxtaposed ideas:
the first is what is drummed into us the moment we pop out of our mothers, by our
parents, by our school. We’re all different, all individuals, we must all express our
individuality to standout from one another. If we want to achieve our goals and become
famous this individuality is paramount. Pulling against that is the reality of the
situation, the fact that everybody is the same. By emulating their favourite stars, who
behave exactly as they do anyway, in striving to be individuals, ironically, we all end up
the same – wearing the same clothes, acting the same way, wanting the same things.
And if you’re not just like everybody else you better look out! You’ll be ‘weird’ or
‘uncool’ or whatever. Just because you’ve failed to emulate someone by copying their
fashion and thereby implicitly advocating their dominant ideology (‘we’re individuals
and proud of it and so should you be!’). You’ve failed to be an ‘individual’ precisely
because you haven’t done the same thing as everybody else. There’s an irony in there
somewhere.
There are a whole host of things to consider and the most important of these is
school. School is where people are made. It’s where people develop or lose confidence
in themselves, in their social skills and in their ability. It’s where we each place
ourselves, subliminally, in a social strata (and more literally in an academic one) and
it’s ultimately what forms us. For some, university is the formative stage, but those are
the people who failed to make a mark at school – university or college is a second
chance as it were. A lot of people never get that far though and everyone goes to school
so that’s where our focus will lie.
In school there is always a social hierarchy with the ‘cool’ kids right at the top and
the ‘sad’ ones right down the bottom - most people are somewhere in the middle - most
people also, until they’re at least sixteen actually care about the hierarchy because
naturally you want to be seen at the top. The hierarchy is split into two sub-hierarchies,
between girls and boys with the sportiest or toughest boys reigning supreme in theirs
and the best looking girls riding high in their own. The two dominant groups will be
affiliated but wouldn’t necessarily hang round with each other. In here somewhere you
also have the best looking boy (‘The King’) and the best looking girl (‘The Queen’).
The King is not necessarily at the very head of his hierarchy because males trade not
only on looks but also on ‘hardness’ – most likely the toughest lads will be on top. The
top of the male hierarchy is complex, inevitably though there a few core leaders and
then a plethora of assorted hangers on. This is paralleled on the female side by good
looking girls flanked by the girls that talk the loudest who, in turn, preside over a
multitude of other nonentities. Oh and also, on the boy’s side don’t forget the King’s
men: good looking boys who are good at sport who rank above generic hangers on and
form their own sub-group (in America these are known as ‘Jocks’), all the other boys,
even those technically outranking them in the social strata at large will secretly look up
to or admire these boys, especially The King. So let us recap: on the male side there will
be a main leader (‘The Emperor’), he is the coolest, hardest, baddest kid on the block
and will be flanked by one or two toughnuts, these are in command of a dozen or so
others who are in turn ‘cooler’ than everybody else in the year. In addition, three to five
good looking guys and The King will be deeply allied with this dominant group but
only mix in moderation. All of this upper echelon will be good at sport but the King’s
men will be the absolute best and some, mainly hangers on of The Emperor, will trade
more on reputation than skill. This select group of fifteen to twenty or so boys will be
all the boys that the girls will ever be interested in, regardless of looks, reputation alone
is enough.
The girls on the other hand are lead by The Queen and one or two slightly less
attractive but still very desirable girls, as lieutenants they employ possibly unattractive
(or overweight) mouthpieces who always have too much to say. Each leader will also
have a silent ‘cling on’ sidekick that keep track of each and every detail of their lives
because they lack one themselves, girls who probably know more about who’s going
out with who than the people themselves. So girls have a tripartite structure at the top:
master (good looking girl), lieutenant (unattractive, mouthy), minion (‘best friend’ of
master). To the boys only the master matters but it is sometimes of benefit to befriend
the lieutenant or minion; quite often these lower ranked girls harbour crushes on some
of the high ranking boys but more often than not they are crushed, maybe by direct
refusal, maybe by him falling for their master. Of course, sometimes they are successful
but often it is a one off – a drunken stupor – he ‘just want to be friends’. Girls are less
inclined to be motivated by the hierarchy than boys, quite often this top group is held up
only by the egos of the leaders and their direct dominion over their immediate friends,
more on that later. And that’s only at the top!
There are many middle strata also and these gradually emerge from virtually nothing
in the first year (eleven year olds) to being the majority in the sixth form (seventeen to
eighteen year olds like me). It must be noted here that the dominant groups usually lose
their grip on power at the age of sixteen because The Emperor’s clique will leave
school and also most people have realised what idiots they all are. The Queen’s party
sort of, with dignity, attempts to reintegrate with everybody else and of course a mass
of new groups emerge - with no hierarchical structure as such. All these groups are
formed either as the result of ostracization from the main group or as a reaction to it. For
example, one of the first groups to emerge (almost immediately) is the clever kids,
‘boffins’: nerdy types who have no time for this immature nonsense. They are partly
rejected for being good in class, working hard and all the other things they get stick for
and partly for reacting, by refusing to be part of their stupid power politics. On the male
side a few of them might be good looking, but not most of them, they’ll probably have
a lot of extracurricular interests and exude a stupid ironic attitude to everything. The
girls are a carbon copy of this with two exceptions: firstly, none of them will be good
looking at all, and secondly, they’ll all have boyfriends from outside school who you
never see but are always “20 and gorgeous” (but obviously not because they wouldn’t
be involved such a loser fourteen year old if that was the case). The reason for all these
girls being fat or ugly is because often good looking girls do well in school, get good
grades and are towards the top of the social hierarchy anyway. Good looking girls
cannot help but be pushed to the top and often it’s because they fancy or date the top
ranking males or even The King. By the age of sixteen all of the good looking girls will
have ‘found’ a life and figure highly in social ranks. The Queen and her people are thus
rendered obsolete and, as I said will, slowly, integrate back into the mass.
Around the age of fourteen or even earlier an alternative group will emerge to rival
the dominant. Whether they call themselves ‘Goths’ or ‘skaters’ or whatever these are
people who represent the ‘individual’ against the moron mainstream dominant group.
They are typically unsporty males and girls with a reason to make themselves stand out.
The sad thing about this group is that it is guilty of exactly what they stand against, it’s
just that the focus has shifted. They create their own sub-hierarchy complete with
leaders and social snobbery. The leader of these we shall call ‘The Black Prince’. They
put themselves as ‘cool’ and define sadness by anything which deviates from it -
exactly like the Emperor’s lot. Expect to find drifters here, from other groups - the odd
deserter boffin or pretty girl who wants an image change, or Queen’s lieutenant who
wants her own identity. It all utterly lamentable – they are more embarrassing even than
the dominants because it is so conscious. They’ll all dye their hair, or paint their nails
black or whatever. They’ll all listen to the same music and become quite snobby about
anything else. Characteristically they are sarcastic, caustic even, to outsiders. They are
ironic in tone (even more than the boffins, who are, after all, natural affiliates and
oftentimes bolster the ranks) and love all things morose, pathetic!
Right down the bottom of our hierarchy then what are we left with? Misfits, the
ostracized, and the one kid that nobody likes and even the saddest of the sad wouldn’t
be seen dead talking to him other than to abuse him. For him school is hell, a life not
worth living, for the rest of us he is reassurance that we’re not that sad, that at least
someone is less appealing, more of a dick, than you are. Also at the bottom but just
above the aforementioned misfits are the ‘nobodies’. The generic multitudes that take
up the majority of the register books. These are the people that by their very
self-dominion keep the high and mighty, like The Emperor, where they are. It is from
these people who strive just to hang round with the top guys that the boys define
themselves. These are the people hanging round The Emperor’s lieutenants, the mugs
who’ll do his homework for him, the boys who idolize The King. Because everything is
focused on the boys at the top they are the only attractive ones to the girls, very logical.
In the girls’ camp a parallel does occur but girls tend to hang around in smaller groups
or pairs rather than in packs. The tendency to bitch about other girls means that The
Queen’s position (and that of her lackeys) is never really as strong as The Emperor’s.
A female Emperor can never really emerge because the other girls wouldn’t let it
happen. Girls by their very nature are a lot more heterogeneous in their way of thinking,
in their attention to trivial details and whatnot. This can be explained by the culture of
team sports, which is mentally beaten into the skulls of boys from an early age.
Football, rugby, cricket – all arenas where boys can prove themselves and move up the
social hierarchy – getting picked last is the ultimate humiliation. Girls, because of they
way they are and because of the difference in emphasis and priority afforded to female
sport, don’t have to suffer this ordeal as much. But team sport can be taken as a
metaphor for a lot of stuff. Football is a game that makes stars it is also a game marked
by the fact that everybody plays it and watches it, and those that don’t are in the
minority. How is it possible to be an individual in a team game? In technical terms this
is easy to answer but in theory you can’t strive for the team and for yourself, can you?
And, assuming you can, can you do so by being an individual, by being different? The
answer is no, it’s impossible. Sport by its very nature forces one to adhere to a set of
rules, team sport adds to that a responsibility to your team-mates. On the pitch you can
only express yourself as an individual within the confines of the rules and within the
limitations of the agreed tactics. How can such a fundamentally anti-individualist
game, like football, be at the centre of our supposedly individualist culture? Either the
sport is really individualist or our society is in reality anti-individualist or it’s a totally
inexplicable phenomena. I’ll leave that one there for now... because I’d like to get back
to the school kids.
What I was trying to say with all the hierarchies, Emperors, Kings and Queens is that
in school the myth that everybody is equal is totally shattered. By its very nature school
creates inequality, it separates the ‘good’ from the ‘bad’, the clever from the
unintelligent. It places people in sets for god’s sake! Set One for all the good, bright
ones and Set Six for all the dunces! A similar thing happens socially, albeit unofficially
– nobody ever really talks about it – but it happens, in every school. I know it’s an old
cliché that school is a microcosm of society at large but, in part, its true. The pupils
create little mini-stars (The King, The Queen etc.), these are the ‘famous people’
around school. It sounds silly but you know it’s true. The fame bug, it seems, is
ingrained in our psyches! School looking in another way however, is not a microcosm
of our society but of a totalitarian, police state. A state in which the teachers are both the
police and the government and demand absolute obedience. Looking at it another way
school can be seen as a gangster state with our Emperor as the don calling all the shots
and demanding respect, fear and tribute. So the average nobody kid is trapped between
the policing teachers and the mighty gang warlords of the dominant group. Pretty
horrific stuff!
Normality then is what in this situation? Well actually the answer is just that,
normality is the situation. ‘So’, you’re saying, ‘what have you got your knickers in
twist about Mr. Hawkins, aged just seventeen or whatever?’. My problem is with all the
phoney, mythmaking ideals we’re stuffed with by Hollywood, our teachers, the
television, our parents, each other, everyone – because if my life is to be normality I
don’t want the vain hope, the impossible lure, of ‘individualism’ to hinder and to
distract me. If this is what my life is to be I don’t want to fool myself into thinking that
I’ve... You understand what I’m getting at. The lie, the big lie of our generation, of our
century. It’s impossible to break. Do you think that by dying your hair purple and
getting your nose pierced you’re being different!? Do you honestly, Jessica Reynolds
(alternative via boffin) think that wearing black lipstick makes a damn difference? Oh,
now you’re suddenly expressing yourself, now you’re an individual because you’ve put
on black lipstick! Well fucking done, what are you saying to me in your expression?
Are you saying ‘I wear black lipstick, look at me, I’m different’? Are you? Do you
think you make a difference? Do you? It’s ridiculous, its embarrassing. So that’s what I
mean when I say I hate people who try to be different, because we’re all trapped by
normality.
The key here is survival - we all do what we must to survive and that is normal. It’s
a normal reaction to life to do what it takes to be where you want to be. So why isn’t
everybody there then? Well, along the way things get messed up, distorted and altered.
The culprits for this are other people and those you see on television. Almost all your
aspirations are borne from external impetuses and it just might be that your chosen
ambition is not in line with your current circumstances (tough luck), or just that you
don’t want to work hard enough to get there, or, simply, you just haven’t got what it
takes (tough luck). But everybody has to go through that ordeal and the people who
never get where they want to are the ones who are content to sit back and take a
substitute or in other words they give up and do something else. ‘So how is it’, you
might be (but probably aren’t) thinking, ‘that it is normal to give up working for your
ambitions and its also normal to fight for them as Richard Branson did?’. If you are
thinking that then you’ve missed the point. What the reaction to the situation is doesn’t
matter, it’s the fact that a reaction is made at all that is normal. ‘So everybody’s
normal?’. In a word, yes. That’s right, everybody is normal and that’s why it pisses me
off when people do stupid things to make themselves stand out. So when I see a guy
with a dozen tattoos and thirty face piercing subliminally he’s saying “look at me, I’m
so different” but really he’s not at all - he’s just reacted differently. And that’s what
pisses me off, people getting in my face because they want to show me how differently
they’ve reacted to life. Isn’t it wonderful that someone dressed in weird clothes or has
subverted the norm in some obscure way! It’s bloody pathetic I tell you. I object to
individualism because it promotes this sort of nonsense. Honestly why, why should I be
forced to see that someone has chosen to make an arse of himself? You must
understand me, my problem is not what they are doing or wearing or have done, but the
thinking, the attitude behind it. There’s so much hypocrisy and double standards
involved, there’s so much wrong with it – the pure irony, the selfishness, the sheer
arrogance. By all means get a body piercing or act camp or paint or whatever but don’t
do it because you’re an individual or to make yourself standout, just do it because that’s
who you are - not who you want to be, just who you are. If everybody did that there’d be
a lot less pretension and falsehood in the world.
Yours faithfully,
David Alexander Hawkins
Week 1. Cilla Black, The Velvet Underground and Tictacs.
Unfortunately I've had first hand experience of being a generic, modern teenager for
half a decade and in that time people have only served to reaffirm my misgivings. My
main problem is that I find people boring, I find them unnervingly dull. Most of my
friends are totally devoid of creative impetus and between them would find it difficult
to think of one original, witty thing to say. My interests are almost never in line with
theirs but for the sake of convenience I just roll along living a fake life with fake
friends. The fact is, if I only stuck to people who were just like me I’d have no friends at
all. My life is one of frustration: I like writing but never seem to finish anything I write,
I like reading but have difficulty relating to the books I read, the girls I’m interested in
invariably aren’t interested in me, and if they are as soon as we start actually going out
I lose interest in them. I’m an individual who’s against overt exhibitions of
individualism for the sake of individualism and yet I’m constantly exerting my unique
self on everybody around me.
My parents live in a totally different world to me. They grew up in the sixties, they
should be great people. For me the sixties was all about cultural revolution, Bob Dylan,
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Lou Reed, The Kinks, Jimi Hendrix people like that,
for my parents it was about Englebert Humperdink and bloody Cilla Black. Do you
know that Cilla Black is the second best selling artist to come from Liverpool? That
tells you a lot about the sixties generation. That they were all liberated in the sea of love
or whatever is a media myth. Granted there were a lot of interesting folk around and the
music and film industry underwent a Renaissance of sorts, they set the benchmark from
which the records and movies of today are judged. But, as my bland old parents are
testament to, people were just like they are today, totally fucking boring. My dad is a
high ranking solicitor but do you think he’s got the personality or the imagination to
match his impressive curriculum vitae? My dad, a man who’s idea of a perfect day is
gardening whilst listening to radio four, and he’s only fifty-one! Straight from the
Wogan generation you could say. I mean did these people spend the sixties and
seventies under a rock? John Hawkins, what a name! Incidentally shared with the
world’s premier slave trader from 17th Century Bristol.
My mum is no better. She works in an office, in ‘middle-management’, that’s about

all I know, don’t actually ask me what she actually does though. ‘Middle’ is precisely
the right word to describe her: middle-class, middle-aged, middle everything. Mum,
Linda, please excel at something, for once in your life push yourself to be something
more than the snobby, house-proud, fussy, always complaining in cafés self that you
love being so much. She’s one of those people who when she’s on a night out, will
always give those false dignified smiles as if to say “I’m having a moderately good
night, but of course I can’t be too extreme, I might break”. She called me David, not
after the prophet, not after the legendary British film director David Lean or after David
Bowie but after Dave Jones from the Monkees, how depressingly shit is that? What
type of generic girl were you mum? I’m named after a member of one the world’s first
manufactured pop groups, fucking great. I’ll have to remember to call my son ‘Ronan’
just to exact my revenge. So there you have it, John and Linda Hawkins, your bona fide,
middle-aged, middle-class, high-earning couple.
I have a brother also, his name his Adam. He’s about three years older than me and
he’s currently studying economics in Bristol University. He’s alright I suppose, we’ve
had our moments but generally we get on. In school he was a strange sort, he did well in
class but maintained ties with both his Emperor’s group and with the Black Prince’s.
He went to all the mountain treks and that with the boffins and played trombone with
them. He played sport with the King, he even dated the Queen of his year at one point.
So is this social darling, this communal butterfly an interesting person now? Has he
much to show for his diversity other than stunning grades and academic achievement?
Well to be honest I’m not sure. He’s so level headed and unflappable. He goes out and
gets drunk all the time, but as far as I know never does anything stupid, never pulls a
girl he doesn’t want to or makes an arse of himself. I couldn’t call him boring, he listens
to good music and reads all the right books. I’ll come back to Adam another time I
think...
But in the main most of the people I’ve come across in life are mind numbingly dull.
My parents for sure, but you’d expect it from a couple of old fogeys like them wouldn’t
you. Let’s take someone else: my ‘best friend in the whole world’ Tom Wheeler. Now
here’s a boy that would do anything for me, if he thought I was in trouble he’d be right
there for me. And I like to think that so would I for him but ever more so I think that
nothing binds us but the passage of time. I’ve known him for a very long time, since I
was about four I think and as long as I can remember he’s been there and we’ve been
the best of pals. The thing is he’s just, he’s so... BORING! He’s just a standing
advertisement of our times, of our shit generation. I remember when everyone went
Friends mad before. He was one of the first people who went round saying things like
“I told you so” and doing Chandler Bing hands or Joey shrugs. And inevitably he did it
to impress girls and if they liked him they’d laugh at that inane shit. I just had to grit my
teeth, do you know how much I hate things like that. Don’t get me wrong, I like
Friends, I like Tom, but I hate Tom acting like the people out of Friends! I mean just...
I don’t know, do something, anything else. Tom’s also a very self-conscious person,
socially I mean. He’d always do anything to walk with the Emperor’s lot.
Perhaps I should explain just who this ‘Emperor’ was in my year (now I’m at
boarding school things are a bit different): his name was Louis (pronounced ‘Louie’)
Delaney and his chief lackey was called Harvey something-or-other, everyone called
him ‘Birch’ for some reason. Louis was basically just an immature kid who had
intelligence but refused to apply himself, in the realm of academia that is. In life he was
always talking in people’s ears, gossiping behind people’s backs, making bets about
stupid things and getting people to do his homework. He had a reputation of being rock
hard but there was never any evidence of this at all. Birch of course was solid, he was
certainly very big, but with fat not muscle. I think that in general people actually
respected Birch and they were genuinely scared of him but of his master, an unusual
sort of Emperor, I’m not sure how many people held any respect or fear for him. It was
just always the way that the closer one was to Louis the cooler they were, he was a
genuine wise guy and a bit of a prick with it as well. What an egomaniac. He could
single handedly turn a class against a teacher in moments. His secret was in his
treatment of people on a one-to-one basis. He’d be your best friend if it was just the two
of you, invite you to every party going, no pretension or social snobbery just a plain
nice guy. But then, in the same day, he’d mock you in public, he’d take something
personal that you told him in assuming confidence and use it to wipe the floor with you.
You couldn’t get uptight about it either, because it was always done in such a way that
he was ‘just having a laugh’ and whenever people did have a go at him they’d always
end up looking worse. Louis is as slick as they come but his vicious streak is something
to be absolutely weary of.
I remember this one time, when we were all about fourteen or fifteen we went to
Belgium on a school trip. Now me and Tom were sort of like credible affiliates of
Louis’, not part of his core crowd, but cool enough to hang. One of the few times where
the lines of social exclusion, when the terms of the hierarchy are exposed is on the
coach on school trips such as this one. I remember the back five seats were obviously
reserved for Louis and his cronies. As it happens Louis only really had about eight core
disciples, excluding Birchy that is, and only three of them were on this trip. I’ll just tell
you about the ones that were on this trip now, for convenience. Alex Riker, medium
height, dark hair, smooth with the ladies, never used to play football but always had the
latest shirts, sunglasses, the best trainers and all the rest of it, he was the style guru of
the bunch and on this particular trip was dating Carly “The Queen” Thomson and was
therefore sitting on some middling seat on the bus he’d usually not be seen dead in.
They were practically sitting just behind the boffins in the front! Kevin Granville,
mostly known as ‘Digger’, was a superb athlete who always maintained a number two
shaved head. He was a bit of a thug if you ask me, always talking about who was the
hardest or who was the best at things. He was a boy that girls fancied until they actually
went out with him and found out what a numbskull he was. A stock gang member if
ever there was one. He had the privilege of a back seat, on the far right next to the
window. Danny Williams (everyone called him ‘DW’ after this little mole thing in this
kid’s show Arthur) wasn’t particularly good looking or good at sport. He was always a
joker in class but often not funny. He spent his entire school life trying to make Louis
and Birch laugh. He was the type of person who’d actually get offended if you took his
seat next to Louis while he’d gone to the toilet and by the same token he’d take your
seat at the first opportunity. He had an arsenal of crap impressions and when he
couldn’t think of anything else to do he’d do something like belch loudly in
somebody’s face and find it amusing. If someone had a go at him he’d just shrug it off
and laugh looking at Birch or Louis for approval. What a minion that boy was but he
had a seat at the back, next to Louis. Although there was only four of them they took up
all five seats. Birch occupied two seats and sat as if he had the largest penis in the world,
with his legs spread down the aisle.
In front of them on the right (in front of Digger) were Jenny Drayton and Karen
Jones. Jenny was the heir to Carly’s throne and had been going out with, The King,
Ritchie Anderson for about four weeks, and he wasn’t on the trip. She talked about him
all week until nobody really wanted to talk to her. Karen was her lieutenant and spent
the whole journey on that coach kneeling on her seat facing the back to talk to Louis
and company, until Birch and Digger fell asleep to give her a hint. On the left in front of
them were Owen Dixon (who this story is about actually) and his mate Kris Kane.
These two really had no business to be that far back in the coach but they got there early
to ensure their place. These lads were proper minions, they used to do things like wait
around outside school for Louis when he had detention or something. They used to go
down town to buy him sweets when he wanted to stay and play football or something.
The irony is he’d never do anything like that for them and he used to treat them like shit,
he really did. I remember once he was talking about his birthday plans and how it was
going to be the biggest party ever. Kris Kane was sitting right there, on the same table
as him in Art or something and he said to Alex Riker, “I’m gonna invite everybody, it’s
going to be wild. I’ll even invite Kris Kane” and then Riker gave a little mocking laugh.
Did they forget that the poor boy was sitting there trying his damn hardest to be part of
the conversation. It must have killed him . That “even”, as if to say, even a little nobody
like that, not worth to lick shit from my shoe, but he’s coming to my party. I’ll never
forget that day, it just shows you how arrogant these guys were.
Anyway, where was I? Yes it was in front of Kris and Owen that we were sitting and
Tom obviously thought it was an achievement of some kind. You should have seen his
face he was dying to burst open from the pride, the pride of sitting two from the back in
a fucking coach - and this was my best friend. I sat next to the window and spent most
of the journey looking out of the window and daydreaming. Tom was no great
conversational companion. Just opposite us, on our right, were Matt Danson and
Tommy Chu who were King’s men in the truest sense. It sounds funny but Tommy Chu
was a national ping-pong champion for our age group and that’s quite an achievement.
His parents were from Hong Kong and he was good looking in a very oriental sense. A
long narrow jaw line, perfectly formed eyebrows, always a different hairstyle. Tommy
was quite a catch for the girls. Matt Danson was not as attractive, he did play football
and cricket for the county though. Of the King’s men, of which the only other one,
Harry McBride who’d come straight from public school was not on the trip either,
Danson was the most accessible, the most congenial and friendly. He was so down to
earth, so humble, bizarrely he wasn’t nearly as fancied as Ritchie, Tommy Chu or
McBride (who by the way took and passed his driving test after only two weeks making
him the first in the school to drive). It’s just indicative of our times isn’t it that hotshot
braggarts like McBride are more attractive to girls than Matt Danson. In front of us
were sadder types, a couple of Louis’ gang wannabes (Jon Mason and Dinnish Patel),
some alternatives who kept themselves to themselves and Francis Conner, Carly
Thomson’s little minion. Having been left for the better offer of Riker poor Francis had
to sit next to Jessica Reynolds, then just a disregarded boffin. Come to think of it Jessica
is a lot more interesting than Francis and, once again, its testament to our times that it is
Francis that had to ‘endure’ the ordeal of sitting next to Jessica rather than the other way
round. If Francis could ever dislodge her head from Carly’s arse then maybe she’d
realise that she and Jessica have more in common. As she would come to realise later
(they are now good friends). Just to mention it, I’ve dated all three of these girls at one
time or another, Jessica Reynolds and Francis Conner but also the legendary Carly
Thomson. More on that another time because as it stood Carly was with Riker, Francis
had no life and a spotty face and Jessica was a socially inarticulate, goofy boffin with a
brace.
So there it is, the scene is set. We’d all taken our positions for the ridiculously long
journey to Belgium. It was summer and hot. I hate that, sitting in a coach or something
when it’s really hot outside. The sun was beating on my face and arm and those stupid
sun roofs on coaches always seem to open the wrong way to me. I mean they open
facing away from the direction the winds coming, I thought the point was to bring air in
so why do they open the other way round? Whatever, Tom was doing his best to talk
about football, or anything with Tommy Chu. I had my Discman with me, I remember I
was listening to Queen or something, back when I could actually listen to Queen in
earnest. That’s a sad moment in everyone’s life but it happens, when you can’t listen to
Queen anymore - it’s inexplicable but just hearing the opening of “Bohemian
Rhapsody” sends me towards the off switch. But the day was right for Queen, I mean
their early stuff - “Fat Bottomed Girls”, Bicycle Race”, all that crap. Every once in a
while Tom would knock me on the arm to ask me if I wanted a sweet or to ask for a
nugget of information for his ‘conversation’ with Tommy Chu. Like “what’s the name
of the guy who play’s Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs?”. He must have seen the film
about a thousand times, can’t he remember one name! Michael Madsen, IT’S
MICHAEL MADSEN, OK TOM! For god sake, he must ask me every time he talks
about it. That’s another thing I hate about Tom, he always talks about the same thing,
only to different people. He doesn’t realise that I keep a secret track of how many times
he has the same conversation. He talks about Tarantino films, he says how cool he
thinks it is when Mr. Blonde says “You gonna bark all day doggy... Or are you gonna
bite?”, he does his shit impression which he obviously thinks is good. He must think he
looks something like Michael Madsen but I can tell you he looks more like Quentin
Tarantino. But I must admit Tommy Chu is a really hard person to talk to. He’s got this
stupid cool cat thing going on, where he’s blasé about everything. He just shrugs at you.
He’s got this tone that makes everything you say to him sound shit. “Film X is out on
Friday”, “oh, is it?”. That’s something else he does, coupled with his tone is this
pointless question he puts on everything. “Do you know you know who I like Chuey?”
“No” “Jenny Drayton” “Oh right, do you?”. Yes I fucking do, that’s why I just told you
ignorant imbecile. He’s just one of those people who gets up my nose. He’s not
arrogant like Louis is, or pigheaded, or vulgar like DW he was just so... cool about
everything. So disinterested, so self absorbed. But he’d speak about himself in the same
way. “So who are you taking to the Summer blow out Tommy?” “Sandy Rivello”
(another hot girl, very difficult to get), “Oh yeah? Wow” “Yeah, it’s pretty good” and
then he’d look away, cut off the conversation, what are you looking at Tommy? What’s
so interesting on the floor that you can‘t be civil and have a conversation about your hot
date? Anyway, there I was trying to be oblivious to Tom making a dick of himself in
front of Tommy, which he was always going to do.
To be honest, although I was trying to dissociate myself from everyone on the coach
and trying to fully appreciate the drama of Freddie Mercury’s voice and Brian May’s
preposterously extravagant guitar follies, all I could really think about was how I’d
rather be sitting next to Danson. It’s just one of those things, you know its impossible to
make it happen but somehow its something you really want. Surely it would make
everyone happier. Tom and Chuey were nattering away across the aisle (or to be more
precise Tom was) and Danson was just sitting looking out of the window listening to
his Walkman. The symmetry of it was perfect. If only I could sit next to Danson and
swap places with Tommy Chu. It would be just too much though wouldn’t it, a
manoeuvre involving three people! I mean how complex, what a hassle! Anyway here I
was wishing to move, seven hours ahead of me and only the blandness of Travis’ The
Man Who, the turgid over bloated pretension of Pink Floyd’s Waters era material or
The Velvet Underground & Nico (which you never want to hear on a sunny day on a
coach) to turn to after Queen’s Greatest Hits (volume one). The thought of “The Black
Angel’s Death Song” in that environment is frankly sickening. Lou Reed is so urban,
when you’re looking at fields in between London and Dover you don’t want to be
thinking about the decadence of Andy Warhol’s slightly pervy New York. Do you
know it’s so good to say that to someone and have them understand, not a single person
I’ve mentioned thus far could do that, is it much to ask? I guess that’s why I’m having
these sessions right? Anyway I wanted to sit next to Danson.
In my mind I had such hopes for Danson, that he, like me, was different, that he, like
me, secretly wanted to talk about Lou Reed when everyone else was talking about last
night’s drunken antics. That he, like me, felt strangely at odds with everyone, that he
wanted to say something. I’d created this whole deep, Matt Danson persona in my head.
A companion for me, a long lost soul mate who I could relate to. Well, to cut the crap,
after about three hours or something I asked Chuey if he wanted to sit next to the
window because I wanted to get some air. “No problem”, he said, “done”. Just like him,
cool, nothing a problem, made you feel like a dick for asking. So I’d finally got it, I got
to sit next to Danson - a king’s man with a common touch, the great enigma of Burnham
High. He just gave me a nod at first and we went on listening to our music. I’d put on
The Velvet Underground and Nico just to show the case to Danson. Pretty sad aren’t I.
But when “I’m Waiting for the Man” came on the homosexual overtone was too much
for me. I actually started thinking that I might have formed an unhealthy attraction to
Danson in that couple of hours. I put on Pink Floyd’s The Wall instead. It was making
me nauseous when he knocked my arm.
“So”, he said, “everything alright?”
“Yeah, you looking forward to Belgium”
“S’pose”, he said without much enthusiasm.
“Yeah, it should be good”, I said falling into the void of awkward silence, flailing in
the chasm of eternal embarrassment to find something, anything to say.
“Yeah, I... er, was just listening to some tunes to, y’know...”
“Yeah, and me” “what you listening to?” “Um, oh I dunno”, he took the tape out of
his walkman to have a look, “Summer Ibiza Anthems”
“Oh, um I was listening to The Velvets”
“Oh yeah? Who are they?”, it was like being shot in the heart with a poison dart, in
my head Lou Reed, David Bowie and Iggy Pop were standing there shaking their heads
at me - pointing at me and saying “you’re wrong, you’re wrong Hawkins”.
“Um, The Velvet Underground?”, I said lamely, in vain, “They were a seminal
group in the late 60s. Ever heard of Lou Reed?”
“Can’t say I have”, he said. That was the catchphrase of the moment, everyone was
saying it. Louis and his lot of course, they were saying it weeks ago and even started
saying it in chorus where they’d drag the ‘can’t’ out long enough for everyone to join
in. So when Danson said it he dragged the vowel out in “Can’t” and, as was the trend,
went up at the end as if to say ‘what the fuck?’. Of course Tom said it all the time, and
DW literally said it to everyone who he considered below him in social standing. He’s
so rude that guy, a conversation with say Owen Dixon and he, around that time, would
go something like this:
“So DW have you seen the new Austin Powers?”
“Caaaan’t say I ha-ave”
“You know that bit in the first one when Dr. Evil...”
“Caaaan’t say I do”
“Well there’s a really funny...”
“Caaaan’t say I CARE” and by that point everyone would join in. DW would give
his monkey laugh and Louis would give this fake laugh he always did where he’d hold
his mouth open in silence and lean back - kind of like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas when
he’s laughing at Joe Pesci before he says “Do I amuse you?” (Tom’s got a shit
impression of that to). They were like gangsters in a way I tell you. But for Danson to be
saying it to me, it was so humiliating, to be let down and be let down so heavily by a
clichéd catchphrase. Naturally I was gutted but for some demented reason I persevered,
“You know what they say about this record? They say that hardly anybody bought it
but everybody who did formed a band. You know David Bowie?”
“Of course”
“Without Lou Reed there’d be no Bowie, not as we know him anyway - do you want
to hear some Velvet Underground?”
“No, it’s alright mate”
“But you might like them, you don’t know”
“Well what do they sound like?”
“Well, like nothing you’ve ever heard before to be honest with you, it’s an
experience at least”
“Oh alright then go on”. I changed the CD and put Pink Floyd back in its case
without mentioning it. I gave him the headphones and put it to track four: “Venus in
Furs”, I knew it would drive him crazy. After about twenty seconds he was like “I can’t
listen to that, sorry mate”. He was very nice about it but he was still a generic philistine,
no culture, no interests outside of fucking sport and girls.
We’d pretty much expended our conversation, I noticed Danson gave Chuey a sly
look as if to say ‘get back over here, this guy’s a dick’. See just because me and Tom
were in quite good with Louis and the gang, didn’t necessarily mean that we could just
hang with the king’s men, I mean they were a whole different kettle of fish. They had
their own in-jokes, their own way of talking. Tommy Chu and Danson’s version of
“Can’t say I have” for instance was a lot more sardonic and cutting than everyone
else’s. McBride and Ritchie Anderson (who everyone called ’Ritchies’ for some
reason) wouldn’t even lower themselves to say it, they had their own catchphrases. Like
saying ‘done’ if ever you asked them to do something. Chuey and Danson did it too.
Like when I asked Chu to move. But they were stupid with it. Ritchies would ask
McBride to give him a lift to town, McBride would point at him tilt his head and say
“done”. What a big shot huh. Another thing they said was “you’re giving me grief here”
if anyone lingered on something too long. Sample conversation: McBride: “So when’s
the stud going to see the lovely Miss Drayton again?”, Ritchies: “Dunno”, Chuey:
“You’re seeing her tonight aren’t you”, Danson: “And tomorrow night”, McBride:
“Who’s a little faggot then”, Chuey: “Sush, Ritchie boy’s in love”, Danson (singing):
“When a man, loves a woman”, Ritchies: “C’mon lads, you’re giving me grief here”.
And as he said it he’d shrug his shoulders, make Italian gangster gestures with a hint of
a laugh. Fucking hotshots aren’t they, real Tom Cruise in Topgun that. I asked Chuey if
he wanted to move back, he was like “done”, again! The bastard, he made me feel so
small just because I wanted to move back to my seat. I couldn’t stick another six hours
in that goddamn position, so I began plotting a move to the vacant seat in the back row.
It wasn’t because I wanted to sit with the cool kids just that Tom was so tiresome, and to
be honest I was more than a little embarrassed about the whole Danson miss
calculation. I felt like I’d opened a bit of my secret life to him and he just genericed me,
bastard.
After the third fucking part of “Another Brick in the Wall” finished I’d had enough.
“S’cuse us mate, I’m just going to go and see Owen for his FHM”
“Sure”, said Tom, “done”. Oh my god! How obnoxious did that sound coming out of
his mouth. He was turning from Louis’ golden arse to Tommy Chu’s. Why does
someone as kind-hearted as Tom Wheeler have to idolise these pricks? It’s one of life’s
mysteries, be yourself boy, stop trying to get into other people’s good books. STOP
your stupid impressions, they impress no-one, basically GET A LIFE. I climbed over
his knees to the aisle. I began to walk towards the back. A teacher, Miss Saunders,
shouted at me,
“David find a seat please!”
“Alright miss”
“Lou”, I said, as if under massive pressure from Saunders, “do you mind if I just sit
here till I get Dixon’s FHM off him?”
“Can’t say I do, chum”. That was another catchphrase, ‘chum’ - they tacked it on to
practically every other sentence. Always a pause, then ‘chum’.
“So how’s it going... chum?” Louis asked me, in between us sat DW, who was
always put out when the attention wasn’t on him.

“I’m alright, just had to move from Wheeler to tell you the truth” (people were
always depersonalised to their surname’s in Louis’ lexicon).
“Can’t say I blame you, he’s a bit of a dick isn’t he, I mean he’s alright, just gets over
excited that’s all”
“Yeah, tell me about it”, I said, two-faced as hell, “I just feel sorry for Chu that’s all,
he’s been gnawing his head off for about three hours now”
“Sure he’ll cope”, Louis said detecting my betrayal of my friend. He was so on point
Louis, he was like your conscience and the devil all rolled into one, you’d be eating out
of his hand in no time. Suddenly DW butted in,
“He’s a fucking dick Wheeler is. I mean Wheeler, Wheeeeeler, what sort of pansy
shit name is that? He’s a dick” then he started laughing at his own inanity. He sort of
reminds me of those Hyenas in The Lion King.
“Yeah”, I said, totally disloyal to my friend, then I sighed, “long journey isn’t it?”
“Tell me about it” Louis said, “Did you say Dickie Dickhead Dixon has an FHM?”
“Yeah I wanted to read it to wile away the time”
“Well why don’t we all read it.” DW let off a pervy laugh, I swear he’s a virgin, even
now. “Oi Dixie chick” “Yeah” Owen said meekly, but loving the fact that a) Louis had
a pet name for him, though it was disparaging, and b) that he had a chance to ‘hang’
with the lads or at least offer something to them.
“Pass us that FHM will ya?”
“Um, yeah I’ll give it to you in a minute”
“Dixie please don’t be a dick, just give it here you faggot”, DW started laughing at
that but Owen did give Louis the magazine. Birch and Digger were sleeping so DW put
it on his lap for us to see. Owen had adopted the position Karen Jones had earlier on.
DW kept fiddling with the pages and turning it to find naked women. Louis soon put an
end to it,
“DW please... right, let me or the Hawk sit in the middle if you’re going to fuck
about”, after that he was alright. Then he noticed Owen perching over the seat,
“what the fuck do you want?” DW snarled at him. Louis looked at Owen with the
look of a killer.
“Look it’s alright my darling, you’ll get your magazine back”, then he muttered
under his breath just audibly “little bitch”. DW sniggered and I just covered my mouth.
Owen laughed it off and remained perched over.
We found a questionnaire about men’s sexlife, the questions were pretty dire to tell
you the truth. DW read them out loud,
“How many times, on average, do you have sex in a week? A: less than 2, B:
between 3 and 5 or C: more than 5!” Louis turned vicious then. He called Jenny and
Karen to gather round, he woke Birch and Digger up.
“Right then”, he said, “let’s do this properly. Dixie”, he spoke to Owen very nicely,
“do you want to squeeze in next to me here?”
“Yeah ok”. Kris Kane was sleeping.
“Ok just give that to me DW”, he took the magazine from Danny who went and
perched where Owen had been but before he did so picked his nose and left the snot on
Kris Kane’s forehead.
“Right” Louis said with glee, “this is your magazine Dickie boy right?”
“Yeah, that’s right Louis” Owen said with the voice of a prepubescent girl.
“Ok then, that means you have to answer first”
“um... ok”, “right question one: on average how many times do you have sex in one
week?” Owen didn’t say anything.
“It’s alright come on just tell us the truth”. Owen went bright red, “it’s ok, honestly,
just tell me”
“um, none” Owen said muffled as hell. DW burst out a huge laugh that everyone in
the coach could have heard, Birch and Digger both laughed, the girls felt his
embarrassment, but you’ve got to remember we were only fifteen!
“Question two: how many girls have you slept with in your entire life” Louis asked
with glee. I was reading along with him, the question actually asked about what form of
contraception you use. Owen was silent once more. DW chirped in, in a mock mumsy
voice,
“it’s ok Dixie fairy, you can tell us” and he erupted in laughter again. Louis gave him
a wink that at once acknowledged his japery but also said ‘I’ll control it from here’.
“Well, Owen Dixon, you little stud, how many?” Owen swallowed his pride, he
looked like he was going to cry,
“um... none”, he said as he swallowed his saliva.
“What was that, didn’t quite hear you”, Louis said loud as a bastard, “was that ONE
or NONE?”
“The second one”
“SO YOU’RE A VIRGIN YES?”
“Um yeah”, DW was having a field day, the girls weren’t enjoying it that much, well
actually Karen was but made out to Jenny that she didn’t just to be the same as her.
“Question three, how small is you cock? A: three inches, B: two and a half inches or
C: you don’t have one”. This really was juvenile crap, I mean what was he trying to
prove. “I know”, he said, “why don’t we have a look”. With that Birch grabbed him and
pinned him to the seat.
“Girls, if you would, lets look at what no girl has ever seen before.”
“Louis, c’mon”, Jenny said, “don’t you think you’re going a bit far”
“Caaaan’t say I do Jen love, it’s only a bit of fun isn’t it.” he said, then turning to
Owen, “we just want to see Dixie’s dickie don’t we?”
“Well I’m not doing it”, Jenny said stubbornly, “I might catch something”
“Oh I’ll do it”, Karen said, this was her chance to prove to Digger, whom she
secretly fancied, that she was a cool fun time girl. She lent over and started to undo his
zip, Owen was behind Jenny’s seat so nobody else could see anything. The poor boy
was so demoralised that he didn’t even try to struggle. She pulled his pathetic y-fronts
down to reveal the tiniest penis you’ve ever seen, and to make matters worse there was
not one hair anywhere. Everyone was stunned for a second or two, moments that
seemed like the longest pause in the history of the world. Then DW went absolutely
crazy and everyone, relieved, joined him. Owen naturally started to weep and by this
time even Jenny had lost sympathy and started to laugh, I mean at the time it was funny.
It’s one of the stories of our school lives. Louis was so mean as well,
“got yourself a nice tictac there... chum”, he said to the crying boy, “tell me when
you’re balls drop wont you, I’ll organise a celebration party”.
From that moment on, for the rest of his days at school, Owen Dixon was known as
‘tictac’ and everyone knew why. That must have been the worst day of his life. Literally
for months no-one spoke to him unless to abuse him about his tiny cock. Even Kris
Kane stopped hanging round with him. And all for what? Because he wanted a bit of
social acceptance and was willing to get treated like shit in the process? I have no
sympathy for Owen Dixon because he let that happen to himself, he’s weak and the
weak must do anything to survive - like DW, he’s weak but he hides behind the pack,
makes people laugh, does anything not to be exposed for the little worm that he is.
Owen Dixon subordinated himself, he’s weak and failed to survive, and if they don’t
struggle the weak get crushed eventually. Incidentally Owen went to another school to
do his A-levels and it really was the only way he’d escape the stigma of the notorious
incident. But he’s been ruined for life, he has no confidence at all, especially with girls.
The look on Jenny Drayton’s face was enough but Louis’ horrible comments cemented
it. All I’ve got to say is that I’m glad it wasn’t me.
Week 2. The Emperor’s New Clothes
So know you know a little bit about me. I’ve told you that I like writing, have an
eclectic taste in music and enjoy violent gangster films. You know that I hate phoniness
but you also know that I’m a pretty fake person myself, externally that is. You know
that I seek someone on my own level and supposedly I’ve no interest in the stupid social
hierarchies that pervade school life. However what I’m about to tell you will change all
that, I was, as much as I hate to say it, a social climber and actually was about the same
rank as DW and Riker by the end of the Belgium trip. You see, this story was the stuff
of legend - people would tell their younger brothers and it would stay in that school
forever. During that week I shared a room with Louis, Birch and Riker. Tom was put
with DW, Digger and Dinnish Patel, a real pathetic figure in the social wilderness. Of
course DW pressed to change rooms with me but I didn’t want to. Tom was such a drag
to me by that stage. We talked about the tictac thing all week, it was the running joke,
everything that was small and even vaguely penis shaped became a symbol for Owen’s
lacking member. Because I had been part of the scenario, and in fact the catalyst, I had
instant kudos on the trip. Louis had taken a shining to me anyway and if he was honest
with himself, with Riker off with Carly, DW and Birch were hardly great companions,
the former quickly becoming stale on his own and the latter with never anything much
to say. Birch, despite his deputy status really was a dull guy. He wasn’t too bright, he
wasn’t very funny, he was just big and laughed when everyone else laughed and joined
in the “Can’t say I haves”. If any one of us was ever in the room alone with him he’d
literally say nothing.
By the time we got back to school we were like Heroes. Obviously Louis was the
centre of it and Karen got her dues for actually doing it (although in truth she made
more of it than anybody else did) but I had been the one to ask for the magazine. DW
hyped up his role and played down mine when he told it but Louis’ version, the
important one, starred David Hawkins as best supporting actor. If it was The Deer
Hunter I’d be Christopher Walken to his De Niro, that’s how much he hyped me. I’d
actually been rather quiet during the whole thing. He called me ‘The Hawk’, some
people called me by my second name ‘Alex’ but he called me ‘The Hawk’ or just
‘Hawk’ and he loved it: “Me and the Hawk, just went down to the lake and then we saw
it, Tictac on the edge looking sad as fuck, so we sat down, to give him some comfort
and all, poor little prick. Get it, little prick”.
In truth I’d sort of displaced Birch as his sidekick and impinged on DW’s clown
prince territory. But for me it was great, a real rise in the world. I’d stopped hanging
round with Tom and actually he’d started to go out with Karen Jones so it was for the
best, he was still hanging round the king’s men in school but never got an invite to see
them outside of school out of it. Unlike me, who’d started hanging round with my new
clique buddies almost immediately. Kris Kane had a raise in popularity too, his claim to
fame was that he’d slept through the whole thing. This gave him kudos not with Louis’
lot but with his peers, fellow hangers on. With Dixon out of the picture, Kane assumed
command of this little subgroup: Jon Mason, Dinnish Patel, Jake Weatherby, Dan
Barlowe, Ben Phillips and Ben Rocastle. The type of guys that went straight from
school to play football (not all that well but enthusiastically) and have to get in by six
for tea and then they’d be back out till eight or so. In the summer sometimes they all
rode bikes, they were a pretty nobody bunch, and any one of them would have given
their back teeth to be where I was, and didn’t I know it! While they were still playing
footy, we were going out, getting drunk! Smoking weed. It was a great summer for me.
The main club we went to was called ‘Going Underground’ not after the Velvets but
after the Jam song apparently, not that they played punk or mod stuff at all. Maybe I
should introduce you to the rest of the gang. In addition to Riker, DW, Digger, Birch
and Louis, I also hung round with four other guys and a tomboy. There was John
Walker dubbed ‘Skywalker’ because Louis reckoned that he looks like Mark Hamill
(he didn’t really, just the same colour hair). John was quiet and romantic at heart, he’d
always do his homework on time and wrote in small neat printed handwriting. I always
got the impression that he was in the wrong crowd. I know for a fact he would have
objected to the tictac situation - had he been there. There was Gareth Tucker known as
‘Tucks’ for the best part. Tucks was sort of a mini-Birch but a bit more talkative, he
loved doing stupid things like making pools of spit on the floor if he was just sitting
there on a bench. Then there was Ricky Stevens, who everyone called Stevens but
Louis called him “Ricardo”. Stevens had the potential to do well in school but always
made the gang his main priority, a troubled home life didn’t help either (he actually
lived in his dad’s old house alone because his dad had buggered off to France with his
rich new girlfriend, he was supported by his mum who lived with her mother and by
direct debit from his dad) . Stevens’ was always the venue for big parties and oftentimes
where we’d hang. He was popular with the ladies too in a league above Danson but
below the other king’s men and Riker. Tim Drayton, the last guy I’m telling you about,
was Jenny’s twin sister but obviously didn’t inherit the same genes for good looks. He
was best friends with Digger and together they were just knuckleheads, with Birch and
Tucks they were in the lowest sets in school and if you were to split the group in half
they’d form one: the dumb tough, fight loving, generic gang members with Stevens,
Skywalker and Louis in the other half, and DW somewhere in between (he’d like to be
with Louis but probably more at home with the toughnuts). Then there was Faye
Britton. Faye was a proper tomboy, she used to wear jeans and t-shirt and keep her hair
short. She looked and acted like a boy, but she was obviously a girl in many situations.
She was probably Louis’ best friend, he wouldn’t let anyone have a go at her. Like
Stevens she had parent trouble (abusive dad, mum wanting a divorce), she practically
lived with Stevens most of the time, with Louis the three of them had sort of formed a
surrogate family - it was one of the few sweet things about Louis, the way he really
cared about his real friends. So now you know the gang.
It was about one or two months after the Belgium trip and school had started again, I
was a fully fledged member of Louis’ inner circle and he never wanted to go anywhere
without me and then it happened! Jeremy Carter, to date just a greasy nobody, came to
school wearing black mascara with an Indian bindi on his forehead. Of course the
teachers went ballistic but he’d done it. Soon girls started to Goth up a little bit, girls
like Hannah Davies and Lucy Tanning. Then much to the determent of Louis, boys
started to dress all in black outside of school. Carter organised a ‘true rock club’ in
school and unofficially membership was a passport into the new consortium of
alternatives emerging. Louis was horrified, I remember he said to me once, “what are
all these faggots doing, I mean they’re wearing fucking make up!”. He was so incensed
by it, insulted even. Of course the truth was is that he could feel his iron grip over the
year loosening and he didn’t like it one bit. Still more people joined Carter: Isaac
Cohen, Tina Ford-Davies and Dylan Flischer (the self-proclaimed ‘Jewish Lobby’),
Rob Peterborough (known as ‘Skidders’ because he once ripped a hole right down the
back of his trousers on a slide) and Jon Marks, all former Louis loyalists, now had an
identity, they weren’t outsiders looking in, they could feel truly part of something.
Every time Louis saw one you could see his face sink.
We were all at Stevens’ one night just chilling out. Skywalker was at home doing
some physics and Tim Drayton was at his aunt’s but everyone else was there. Nobody
was saying much so I thought I’d stir things up a bit.
“What do you think about all these Goth types emerging?”. Birch broke his
perpetual silence,
“bunch of fags in’ they”. DW snickered but Louis was deadly cold when he spoke,
“they’re a nuisance”, he was acting like Michael Corleone around the time he had to
order Alfredo’s death in Godfather Part II, he even adopted the Pacino stare.
“When we go to the Underground and a bunch of those dicks are there what’s going
to happen? That place isn’t big enough for everyone you know, we were there first, we
smoked our pot there first and why should anyone threaten that? Speaking of which, do
you want to skin up Tucks?”. Tucks started to roll the fattest joint you ever saw in your
life. I sensed that Louis felt strongly enough about this to try to do something about it,
time for a bit of fun I thought...
We started to smoke the Withnail and I joint, the subject went off the alternatives for
the time being. Riker was doing his best to look cool and reflective after taking a few
drags, he’d split up with Carly at least two months back but every now and then he’d get
cut up about it.
“It’s a shame”, he said, “I thought we looked real cute together. I miss being with
her”. DW sniped jokingly,
“listen to Casanova”, nobody laughed.
“Oh well”, Riker said, and steadied himself. I thought I’d try to lift his mood,
“Riker”, I said, “what’s it like having the same name as a Star Trek officer?”
“ha ha very funny, can’t say I ever watched Star Trek myself, I’m not a loser like
you”
“Whoa there tiger just playing with you”
“Well so was I ‘tiger’” he said, but you could tell he wasn’t. Riker is one of those
people who’s always ready to dish out abuse but never prepared to take any. He was all
image and no substance. Louis broke the brief silence:
“I’m bored and I’m troubled”, he said, “the first time I see one of those fucking
freaks in our club I’ll... I’ll...” he was lost for words. This was my chance to see some
action, to see if they were all as tough as they said they were.
“We need to do something about it”, I said, “I don’t want to see the club lost to those
nancies”
“Like how’d you mean”, Birch said, “Like decking them in or something?”
“Well if it comes to that”, I said, “but how about exerting a little social pressure?”
“Swallowed a dictionary or something?”, Tucks interjected, “you should hear
yourself speak”
“And you should hear yourself speak Tucks”, said Louis, “ he’s right, but what can
we do?”
“What about”, Riker said from nowhere, “just warning them off the Underground,
and roughing them up a tiny bit”
“I’ve got an even better plan” Faye said, equally out of the blue, “why don’t I go in
undercover! Pretend to want to be one of them only for a little while and then we can
rush them from inside”
“That’s great”, Louis said, “but how would you do it?”
“It’s not logicistical”, I said, “but the bare bones of it is good. I think we should all
dress like them for a week or two, do you get my drift?”
“I’m not fucking wearing make up”, Tucks objected.
“You don’t understand, if we all wear the same stuff as them, the black, the stupid
make up, the crap music, for just a week or so it will soon become apparent that what
they’re doing isn’t that special, that they’re just the same as us, and then, to define
themselves they’ll either have to change their style or crumble - disband completely,
comprendè?”
“That’s brilliant”, Stevens applauded, “and we can have a bit of fun with it too”.
“Yes”, Louis said, “but I don’t think we should all do it, that’s too obvious. Tucks,
Birch, Drayton and Digger shouldn’t do it, for one its just totally stupid, just look at
them for god’s sake. And secondly next time we go out I don’t want people knowing
that Birch did something like that, I mean if no-one takes him seriously then we’re
fucked, if you know what I mean. I mean in a fight, what are they going to say if they
knew you guys were wearing mascara. Me, you, Riker and the Hawk here, fair enough,
we’re going to get blown away any way but that’s what these guys are here for. With no
disrespect to you Birchy boy, Tucker, Digsy - we need you to remain as you are, case
we get any stick. Tanks and that lot from the year below are gagging for an excuse to
have a go, when they start coming to the Underground and all, we’ll have to show them
who’s boss - that doesn’t mean a fight, just that we mean business - they’re real dicks
that lot, always having a fucking go.”
“What about me?”, DW pined.
“Well I’m not sure, Faye what d’you reckon?”
“Well if we’re all going to do it, it makes sense for him to do it too, you dig?”
“Yeah, so there you go, you heard her, you’re with us, and you’d be a flake in a fight
anyway”. Riker laughed loudly at that, and DW - who’s weakness is most exposed
when he’s under fire just looked at him. Stevens, who’d been very quiet all night started
up,
“alright, it’s a good plan but when? But what is everyone else going to say? I mean I
don’t want Carly Thomson to think I’m queer, or Sandy or Jenny for that matter. Maybe
it’s not such a hot plan. What’s Skywalker going to say?”
“Oh he’ll jump at the chance”, I said, “and we’ll get the girls in on the plan”
“But who’s going to tell them?”
“I will”, I said quickly without thinking of the consequences. So it was all decided,
we were to become Goths for a week to parody the real ones and make them look like
fools, embarrass the fuck out of those losers and hopefully stop their development dead
in its track, but now I had to confront Carly Thomson with the news and try to enlist the
aid of her girls.
Carly was simply stunning, light brown hair, green eyes, perfect tan, perfect body,
the subject of every boy’s fantasy in our year at least. Granted there were other
stunners: Lydia Foster, the classic blonde piece, complete with Cameron Diaz charm;
and the aforementioned Jenny Drayton, but she had the stigma of being Tim Drayton’s
brother and of going out with Ritchies for a whole year. They broke up only recently
and that meant that to both our group (because of Tim) and to the king’s men (because
of The King) she was out of bounds. Being the oldest year in school at that stage she
couldn’t look up and it was unconceivable for her to go younger, she was pretty
manoeuvreless at that time. And just when she needed them most her minion Jennifer
Phillips found the impetus to join Jeremy Carter’s evil alternative splinter group and
like I said her bigmouth lieutenant Karen had found love, real love, with my old mate
Tom. Poor old Jenny. There was also Sandra Rivello, commonly known as ‘Sandy’, she
was really difficult to win the approval of or to date. Technically probably the sexiest
girl there but she was so nice that she was unpopular with the girls and almost
impossible to date. You might remember Tommy Chu went out with her, but she
dumped him after only a week. That kind of inaccessibility puts her out of running for
the role of Queen. As such she has her own tight circle: Sadie Smith, her generic ugly,
silent partner and Alexia Jones who was really quite overweight and wasn’t really all
that loud either. Come to think of it Sadie and Alexia must have between them had
absolutely zero self esteem. But who cares right? Anyway, back to Carly. Carly had the
grace to be Queen and she never made you feel inferior. She used to giggle in all the
right places and measure her conversation in just the right way so that she’d show you
that you had no chance but let you down nicely.
It was Monday at school and I sat on her table in RE (Religion and that). Thankfully
stupid Zoë McKellen (lieutenant, viscously guards Carly, would lick Carly’s arse after
she’d taken a crap if she had to) was home, sick. My job was thus made easy. Francis
was there also and she kept doing this thing where she’d look at my eyes and then
glance away. I barely noticed it, but it did register as odd. Carly was just doing her work
when I played opening gambit.
“Have you noticed all these Goth types about?”, I said, getting straight in there with
the task at hand.
“Yes, I know!”, she said as if she was going to burst, “isn’t it cool!”. Shit! What was
I meant to do now?
“Yeah, yeah” I said, “it is, which is why I want to ask you something”.
“Oh yeah...” Carly said with a giggle, “what’s that?”.
“Well how about becoming one?”
“What me?”
“Well me too, and Louis and the boys, we were all thinking of doing it”. She gave
me a strange look,
“um, I’m not sure David”, she gave a weird glance to Francis. Then all of a sudden
like a thunderstorm, Francis spoke,
“I’ll do it”, she said, “I think it’d be fun”.
“See, that’s the spirit Francis, Carly are you in?”
“But why? Whatever for?”
“Just for a laugh”, I said heavily blagging it, “but we all have to do it together, that
way nobody’s going to look stupid”.
“Um, yeah ok, it’s pretty random but I’ll do it”
“Great, I’ll tell the lads tonight, we’ll come in on Wednesday all gothed up”
“Great, what fun”. She spent the rest of the lesson planning on what to wear with
Francis.
That night I told Louis that it was all under control but he thought that just Francis
and Carly wasn’t enough,
“I mean Francis barely even fucking counts, I mean who the fuck is she? Carly’s
little friend, yeah whatever. We need at least one more big hitter, someone who people
will take notice of”.
“What about Jenny? I mean she’s a close ally”
“Yeah, Jenny, good one: Digsy can you tell Tim about it? Wednesday his sister’s
coming in, Gothed up. Good, now we actually have to know what to wear. I don’t want
to look like fucking Dracula”.
“I got that all sussed”, Riker said, “just wear all black, a black t-shirt, black jeans.
Get some fucking shitty two quid dog collar thing or bracelet or some faggot thing and
hey presto that’s it!”
“What about the make up?”, Stevens asked. “Oh fuck that” Louis said, “the girls can
have that... and Skywalker here”. They all laughed, it was a common conclusion to his
sentences that Skywalker was a Gaylord and he was pretty used to it by now.
On Tuesday everyone was buzzing with anticipation of our secret plan. I noted more
converts, Dinnish Patel - the little freak was wearing bright purple makeup on his eyes
and a stupid dog collar round his neck. It was already becoming a cliché and we just
wanted to push it over the edge. That night at Stevens’ we talked about how Carly
would look in her new look. Faye always got a bit tetchy when we talked about other
girls. I guess she felt that she belonged to something and that other girls were a threat to
her. She was only really friends with Stevens, Louis and me. Skywalker was seldom
there in the nights (if he had homework basically) and Riker thought she was a bit sad.
The rest were just buffoons anyway, and of course DW who’d been severely muted
since my arrival harboured a secret hatred for her because of the attention Louis
lavished on her. As for myself I’d fallen in love with Carly. Like an idiot I found myself
drifting away, imagining her in Goth gear, then with nothing on but a thong, then in a
bridal dress, then with her boot in my chest, then bending over with me pushing my arm
into her back. I was thinking pretty sick thoughts to tell you the truth.
Wednesday finally came and we all went in looking like Iron Maiden fans. You
should have seen the look on Jeremy Carter’s greasy face - priceless. He walked
straight up to us at break time and confronted Louis.
“Is this a joke or are you real Skategoths?” DW went absolutely berserk with
laughter at that but Louis was in ice-cold Pacino mode,
“and what if we are Carter...old chum?” Before he could answer I butted in,
“we’re not Skategoths”, I said, “we’re real Goths, no American nonsense, no
commercial crap, straight up and down real”. Carter was incensed. When the other kids
caught the sniff of a conflict they gathered round. Carter’s men: Jon Marks, Skidders
and the like came behind him, but they were all quite flaky, effeminate types, boys who
didn’t play sport.
“We’re real Goths Carter”, I said pushing him, “now what are you going to do about
it? Fake bastard”. Carter was enraged, his eyes got bloodshot,
“We’re the real ones, we did it first, we’re the originals!”. DW was almost on the
floor and Stevens laughed at that to. But Stevens has one of those mocking laughs and
Carter took further offence.
“You guys think you can just muscle in on this culture do you? Put on some black
clothes and abracadabra you’re a Goth. Well it’s not like that, it’s a lifestyle choice.
And I believe in it, I believe in the individual, you’re the fake Hawkins, you, you’re the
fake and you’re silent sidekick here Mr. Delaney, I’d expect better from you frankly,
now gentleman I have a Maths lesson to go to” and his people departed leaving us
speechless. You could tell Louis took great exception to being called my sidekick and
what Carter had said went straight over his head. In effect I’d fucked up here, I’d started
a potential gang war and I’d embarrassed Louis in front of his adversary. However
nobody else saw it like that, Louis never mentioned it, he just said,
“we’ll teach him, interfering bastard”. I naturally, kept my thoughts to myself.
I was in the same Maths class as Carter (top set of course) as was Carly, and when she
arrived I almost had a heart attack. Carter glared at me so I went and sat next to Carly
across the room before Francis could get there.
“Um excuse me”, she said when she arrived, “that’s my seat”.
“Oh its alright Francis”, I said, “just for this lesson” - she accepted. Carly was
looking so fine you wouldn’t believe, the dark make up brought out her more beguiling
features, I could have just looked at her all day. She was laughing at me,
“well look at you, Mr. Goth”
“well look at you”, I came back. Then the strangest thing EVER happened,
mid-lesson she looked at me and said,
“do you know what David Hawkins, I think you’re cute, I really like you”, I couldn’t
react for at least ten light years of silence before she tried to cover up, “oh sorry, I
shouldn’t have... it’s ok”. But that gave me strength to speak,
“no! It’s ok, I like you too Carly, I really do, I just never thought...”
“Never thought what? It’s alright”
“I never thought I’d have a chance, I mean you’re so...”
“I’m just human”, she said, “and Mr. Hawkins I’m asking you out”. My heart was
thumping like a maniac.
“Ok”, I said and I meekly touched her hand for fear that I’d melt. I really felt like an
overlord now, fancied by the Queen, practically running the show, Carter called Louis
my sidekick, Carly asked me out. I was finally a somebody, socially I’d made it.
That night I told the boy’s all about it and naturally Louis was supportive, DW and
Faye jealous, Stevens genuinely shocked and Riker pretty pissed off. For some reason,
it must be noted here Tucks, Digger and Birch started to hang around at Tim Drayton’s.
The whole Goth plan had made an always latent divide more open and Louis’ words to
them must have sounded like he was basically keeping them around as henchmen.
Birch wasn’t stupid, just slow and they didn’t resent Louis but from then kept a bit of
distance. They did still hang at times after school but often they went to Tim’s.
“What’s the plan now then?”, Stevens said, “I don’t want to dress like that again I
think we should just forget it, I mean what was all that stuff about real Goths Dave?”
“I was just busting Carter’s balls a bit, tomorrow we go in normally, I’ve already
told Carly”
“Yeah, back to normal”, Louis said, “enough of this nonsense, if those dicks turn up
at the club we’ll just ward them off with Birch and Tucks. Carter will shit his baggy
pants and the rest of them don’t believe in all that shit he was spouting anyway, just
losers looking for somewhere to run to”. That sounded strangely true but also strangely
ironic coming from his mouth, but I was at the peak of my powers riding on an ego high
and as a result just agreed with him.
The next day at school is the strangest day of all time, everyone had come in Goth
gear. All the minion masses. Ok, the boffins didn’t or the smelly poor kids nobody
bothers with but Kris Kane and all his lot, and all the girls. Did nobody have any
dignity? Is it that much power and influence just a few people hold. Obviously Ritchies,
Chuey, McBride and Danson were dressed normally but that was about it. Carly must
have really caused a storm, and hey guess what, she was my girlfriend! When we all
turned up not in Goth attire both Carter and the multitudes were taken aback. But the
thing was they had safety in numbers, we had suffered an ironic backlash. Conveniently
most of those people that day just decided that they wanted to be ‘Skategoths’
worshipping at the church of dickhead Carter. Suddenly me, my gorgeous girlfriend
and mine and Louis’ whole gang were in the minority. People were actually snubbing
us. Well not Carly but us boys. Everything was so fucked, after my day of absolute
triumph. Louis was livid beyond all belief. But we stuck with it, with our ‘normal’
identities. Within a fortnight everything was back to normal and we were back to square
one, only this time we were grateful. What all this pointless exercise proved beyond
reasonable doubt was that the masses were there to be manipulated. When I say ‘this is
cool’, it is cool and damn it, people do it. Only Ritchies’ lot, Carter’s lot and the boffins
lay outside my control. I had stolen Louis’ throne and he’d barely noticed, displaced
Birch and his dunderheads enough for them to only be present when absolutely required
and gained the most beautiful girl in the school. I was the man, the Emperor with a
Queen and nobody posed any threat. Carter’s potential had been exploded and then
imploded by our failed plot, Ritchies was to wrapped up in his “done” and “you’re
giving me grief here” nonsense to realise his. Victory was mine that year, the final year
of school and I had made it!
Week 3. My Secret Uncles
About a month after all the Goth nonsense I was still pretty much The Emperor,
although I must admit most people still looked up to Louis more than they did to me but
he looked up to me, I controlled him and therefore the year. If I was The Emperor he
was like my Darth Vader. I’d fallen for Carly, or rather I’d fallen in love with the idea
of being with her. She was like a trophy of my superiority. I tell you something, she
loved me, I just turned on the intelligence when we were alone and there we have it. She
just thought everything I did was ‘cute’. Zoë McKellen started hanging round with
Jenny because Louis really hated her and made her know it, but Francis also started
hanging round. Let me tell you about Francis, she not an unattractive girl but she lacked
confidence. She’d let Carly walk over her for so long that she had become her blanket,
her shoulder to cry on, the person boys would approach if they wanted to ask her out.
But this was Francis’ break through year. With me and Carly going out and actually
hanging out together, with Louis we were literally the coolest kids in the school. I the
envy of every guy, she the envy of every girl (at first just because of her looks but
eventually as my reputation grew because she had me). Francis became good mates
with Stevens and Skywalker and was thus afforded an individual reputation that she’d
never had in Carly’s shadow - and then! She just grew a pair of tits and that was it, she
was always at the end of someone’s dick. First she gave Riker a blowjob outside the
Underground, then he shagged her upstairs at Stevens’ sixteenth birthday bash. Then
Stevens himself boned her, for about two weeks solid. Even Louis took a hand job off
her once he told me. Francis literally spent the sixteenth year of her life shagging Louis’
gang and her image was raunchy. Naturally Faye wasn’t fond of her but in effect the
group now had their own little sex kitten to play with. Of course her stature grew and
she became a Holy Shrine of sorts to Kris Kane and the like, but she’d never put out for
them only for Stevens and Riker, the king’s men (who didn’t really want her) and on the
rare occasion Louis (although that was more his doing).
She was unbelievable, we’d just be sitting there and Stevens would moan about
having a hard on or something and she’d just go over whisper in his ear and they’d go
off for her to suck him off. Louis was always joking about getting her a pair of shin
pads. Carly on the other hand was terrible in bed. She just used to lay there like a piece
of dead wood, she wouldn’t react to any foreplay or anything, but she always
maintained that she liked having sex with me. Come to think of it, it was probably just
to keep me happy. It was pointless putting her on top because she didn’t know how to
move. Sex was always very mechanical and formulaic with her, but the actual sex
wasn’t what mattered. It’s the fact that she was with me, that I’d conquered the Queen
and I was shagging her. But at the time everyone was at it. Kris Kane and company
discovered the girls in the year below! The king’s men went into overdrive and for the
first time starting sleeping around. Even Faye got a shag - from Skywalker! They even
started going out for a while.
It was very funny, she was so butch and he was so... gay! Stevens and Riker used to
say that he wore the knickers in the relationship but Louis couldn’t handle it, you could
tell. He stopped speaking to Faye the whole time and wouldn’t say why. He wouldn’t
talk to anyone about it but the truth was that he loved Faye, a sort of brotherly love and
he had an irrational Scarface style protection over her. I was beginning to think that he
was Al Pacino in a parallel universe. He just froze Faye out while she was with
Skywalker and eventually she ended it, because she knew as well as anyone else what it
was about. As far as I know she never went out with anyone else. As for Louis he was a
pretty attractive guy but had a real stigma about women, he used to talk for hours about
it. He did have a couple of girlfriends: he went out with this cute library girl type
Bridget Drago for a few weeks. She was just right for him, dark, timid as a mouse and a
virgin (he only wanted to date virgins for some reason) but he was just so controlling
with her. He wanted to tell her who to hang around with, what to wear, when she could
see him. Even Bridget had the character to reject that. Then there was Cynthia
Fairfax-Smyth, the poshest girl you ever met - she was nice if a bit goofy. It was the
same with her only he made more of an effort, he was pretty Romantic sometimes, he
once bought her the biggest bunch of roses of all time just at lunchtime. He was always
buying her chocolate or getting her ‘well-done’ cards for getting good marks. If
Skywalker or Riker had done that sort of thing he would have mocked the crap out of
them but for himself it was different, and he was so proud in the belief that he was doing
the right thing that nobody wanted to stop him. Cynthia knew how to handle him too
but in the end it didn’t work out either. Every boy she talked to he wanted to know why,
he used to complain to me about it.
“What the fuck business has she got talking to someone like Phillip Watts. I mean
who is he? A fucking nothing, a peon, a piece of shit on my shoe, not fit to lick my boot,
and she’s going out with me and she speaks to him!? Am I bad to her Hawk? Am I?
Don’t I buy her flowers and chocolates and give her affection, more than I’ve got but I
give it to her. I practically worship the ground under her feet and she shits on me, she
goes an insults me by talking to him, some fucking freak. She’s probably out there no
sucking Tictac’s tiny cock for god’s sake. What do I have to do huh?”. He got really
wound up about it. Incidentally he finished her for that, for innocently talking to the
boffin Phillip Watts about English coursework. He wanted to know why she didn’t ask
him (even though they were studying different books), he wanted to know how much
she spoke to him, whether she had his number. It was absurd I tell you.
Another time, when he was single (which he is most of the time) he had this rant
when Stevens was blown out by Sandy Rivello.
“Fucking girls man. Who fucking needs them? Ricardo, do you know what mate,
she’s not good enough for you, not even to lick your boot” (he always seemed to be
saying that) “You don’t need her man, you know what I mean. All I see everywhere is
girls fucking guys around, fucking them up (present company excluded of course)”, he
gestured to Carly and Francis, he didn’t even need to imply Faye.
“I turn on the TV, there’s some shit reality crappy game show on, Buy Your Own
House! or whatever the shitting thing is and there you have it? The ponced up woman
who’s presenting it asks the dull-as-fuck couple who’s sitting there ‘Oh, so who’s got
the final say then?’. And always the dopey twat says, ‘well she’s the boss, she wears the
pants, I just lick her boots and her pussy for her cos I’m a stupid twat who needs this fat,
shit, bitching woman telling me what to do my whole life, because I suck, because I’ve
got no balls!’ Where are all the fucking men’s balls in the world? Why should she have
the final say about what house you want mate? Why should you have to go scraping
round the stupid bitch for her to shit on you every chance she fucking gets.”
“Do you have to swear so much”, Francis interrupted. “Yes I fucking well do, and let
me tell you something missy, you could never stop me and no woman will ever tell me
what to do. I swear it”
“Alright, just saying that’s all”, said Francis turning to Carly for support. Carly of
course was too busy stoking my hair to mind what was going on. Louis started up again.
“And another thing: Why don’t they fucking shut up about women’s lib? You’ve all
got jobs now haven’t you? Set One is ninety-nine percent girls isn’t it (apart from
Hawkins here), and you’ve even got your own car insurance companies! If I was in
power the first thing I’d do is strip down women’s rights I swear it. They abuse their
rights, they expect the world to stop for them! Well let me tell you honey, Louis
Delaney stops for no girl! You’re not going to take advantage of me! I wont have it,
you’re not fit to lick my boot I tell you, let alone my cock”, he stopped, looked around
the room, and said cool bastard that he was, “ladies and gentlemen, thank you, good
evening and goodnight”. To which Stevens and I started clapping and mock cheering.
The haunting thing for me is that I actually agreed with him. Maybe not on all the fine
points, but in general I couldn’t understand how men let themselves be... minionised by
these women, especially if they were fat or not even at Francis’ standard. I mean why
bother?
In these testosterone fuelled days, spent putting the world to rights, ruling the school
and routinely humping Carly I still wasn’t quite satisfied. Sure Louis and Stevens were
good company, I mean they actually had opinions on things unlike Tom Wheeler and
all the other people in the school, but they had no, no culture. No yearning for
knowledge, they lacked the impetus to do anything constructive. Thinking about it this
is probably because of the way they’d reacted to life so far. Louis was a smart kid but
he’d put his brains into devising means of social domination: misbehaviour in class, a
cocky swagger, a ‘take no shit’ attitude and a penchant for persistent bullying. By
surrounded himself with tough dumb skulls and other kids smart enough to play the
same game (Riker) or unfortunate enough to need to feel safe in a gang (Stevens, Faye)
or weak enough to hide in one (DW) he assured his social security, and affirmed his
status as head honcho of our year. As a result he had learnt his route to success via
means of destruction, disruption and downright meanness. Louis wasn’t a bad person
but that is the game life had taught him to play. Therefore, anything of interest: Art,
Politics, Music, whatever, just became too much like a chore - too much like school and
because school was not cool, and Louis was, that meant whatever he was scared to get
into was also not cool. What a stifling environment. Of course, while I was Emperor I
did nothing to change any of that, but I still had my secret life at home with my music
and writing to keep me sane - and to tell the truth I rather enjoyed being a big-shot.
During this period of time I started writing again, as I said. I wrote poems to Carly so
that she’d think I was deep but I also wrote some for myself. I think I’ve got one in my
jacket pocket from ages ago... hang on, let me get it for you... things like zipped pockets
on the shoulder of your jacket you never check do you. Oh, here it... hang on... Right do
you want to see it. Hope you can read my writing. This was one I actually gave her:
You make me feel like I’m

The Only
Boy in the world.
There’s a word
I know,
I just want to say it.
You know, I’m feeling fine,

I’m lonely
Without you girl.
It’s absurd
I know,
But let’s just obey it
You’re the bolt from the blue,

I needed
You, and you never
Question me.
I know
That’s why you understand.
A crown I made for you:

Believe it’s
Yours forever.
Can’t you see
I know,
It’s love that’s in our hands?
What do you think? English was my best subject at school, and it’s what I’m off to
study next year (at Bristol like Adam) so I understand the workings of it, maybe one
day I’ll be a writer I don’t know. I’m not happy with this one though. I thought it was
pretty clever to rhyme abcdef over two stanzas but when you read it loud it sounds
clunky. I tried to constrict the lines so that there’s only a set amount of syllables in each
line: 6, 3, 4, 3, 2, 6 - it’s like writing in a prison or something, there’s something I really
like about that. But the words sound forced in some parts, you can see how I was
struggling to rhyme “say it” and “obey it”, that’s pretty shit isn’t it. I’m not sure if it’s
truthful or not, I mean now I’m not going out with Carly, but I’d say that last line is a
lie. Art is not better than life, it’s just more deceitful, the writer can just hide behind the
words. He presents you with the person he’d like to be or presents you with people that
he’s not. Look at The Catcher in the Rye, it’s one of my favourite books that but I’ll bet
J.D. Salinger was never as goofy as Holden is. I mean in that book he’s trying to say
that people should accept what they have and make the most of life right? That’s why I
like it so much, there’s nothing phoney about it, Holden has to learn that if he goes
through life rejecting everything he’ll be a dropout, drifter forever. The “catcher in the
rye” is like this dream he’s got but it can’t ever happen, and that’s the whole point. If
you live for your dreams and not for reality, for life you’re going to be unhappy.
Compared to my poem there that book’s a masterpiece, it’s not phoney at all but then
again where’s the author? He’s hiding, he’s not there is he. Is he Holden? Is he that
teacher near the end who tries to stroke his hair? Is he DB, that brother writing in
Hollywood? The truth is we can’t know, he’s all of them and none of them, he’s just a
ghostly presence - and that freaks me out a bit. Some one like John Donne or Bob Dylan
sure, that’s them on the page or in the song right? The version of them they want you to
know, but with Salinger and Shakespeare it’s different, I mean where is Shakespeare in
Macbeth? Who’s side is he on? That’s why Shakespeare’s so great and Salinger is no
different, it’s like they’re my secret uncles or something, some long lost forefathers
because I can relate to them. Listen to me, I’m getting carried away, but I love this stuff
you know. But really where am I in life? Where’s David Hawkins in that unwritten
book about me? To Louis, to Carly, to Tom Wheeler I’m three different people god
damn it. It’s like I’m Macbeth to Louis, MacDuff to Carly and Banquo to Tom.
Anyway literature’s great, it sure gets me going. And that’s what everyone else
lacked, a passion, something they really loved. Yeah sure the king’s men had their sport
but how much can you talk about the complexities of ping-pong? I mean McBride, he
was just an arrogant son-of-a-bitch and only really talked about cars, getting laid and to
give stick. What I’m talking about is culture, not just books and arty stuff but the bread
and butter of our daily lives: films, music! There’s been so many great films made, do
you think the man on the street knows who Martin Scorsese is? You bet your bottom
dollar he doesn’t! I mean come on! Wake up! There’s so much to see, so much to listen
to. Take out your Steps CD, smash it up and put it in the bin: it’s Dylan you want! The
Beatles! The Stones! Eric Clapton! How much great music has been written and
brilliant films made - how little people appreciate it. These are our art forms,
Shakespeare never made a film or wrote a rock song but Stanley Kubrick did! John
Lennon did! These are the people of our time, why can’t everyone just sit down and
take an interest. Why, oh why, was Cilla Black the second best selling artist from
Liverpool? Why is fucking Gareth Gates a rich man? There’s this play I saw once
called Roots, not the Alex Haley book but the Arnold Wesker play of the same name.
I’ve got this passage memorised from it, I spent hours learning it (check out the accent),
want to hear it?... Hang on, let me ready myself, right: “Do you think we really count?...
Do you think that when the really talented people in the country get to work they get to
work for us? Hell if they do! Do you think they don’t know we ’not make the effort?
The writers don’t write thinkin’ we can understand, nor the painters don’t paint
expecting us to be interested - that they don’t nor don’t the composers give out music
thinking we can appreciate it. ‘Blust’ they say, ‘the masses is too stupid for us to come
down to them. Blust’ they say , if they don’t make no effort why should we bother? So
you know who come along? The slop singers and the pop writers and the film makers
and women’s magazines and the Sunday papers and the picture strip love stories - that’s
who come along, and you don’t have to make no effort for them, it come easy. ‘We
know where the money lie’, they say ‘...so lets give them what they want’”. I could be a
bloody actor couldn’t I! But Mr. Wesker’s got it spot on there, spot on.
So in this time I was writing to Carly, Francis was being ripped a new vagina and
Louis was slowly going insane. For me this was the best time in my school life even the
emergence of Carter as Jenny Drayton’s new boyfriend couldn’t dampen my spirits. I
swear Tim almost killed him. As soon as Louis found out, he promised Jenny not to tell
Tim and so he told Birch to tell him. While I was chasing butterflies in my dreams
Louis had reassumed direct command of his forces and planned a surgical strike against
the frightful undead alternatives. “Vampires and ghosts” he used to call them. He asked
me to come with him to enlist in the ‘true rock club’ and I went, and he made sure to
take Tucks and Digger with him. My mind was totally somewhere else, I’d been
reading Roots and all I could think about was how stupid everyone was. I kept picturing
the people around me in all the character’s roles, with me as Ronnie Kahn. We got there
and Carter glared at us, Jenny who’d fully changed her appearance to suit her new
boyfriend glared also.
“What do you want?”, he asked Louis bluntly. “Just want to hang that’s all.... chum”
“Oh, alright then, so what music do you like”. I interrupted,
“we like the Velvets and Iggy Pop, true Rock and that’s why we’re here”
“Alright then, but it’s not the sort of thing we have in mind as ‘true’ and please, any
harassment from your pet monkeys and I’m going straight to Brady”. Mr. Brady was
the head teacher and what an animal he was! A beast of a man who’d shout until his
eyes were practically pinning you against the wall. Not even Louis could take a telling
off from him without his throat going except for this one time.
It was a year or so before the Belgium trip and we were in Art. Louis thought it’d be
funny to fuck up all the boffin’s drawing with crayons - quite fitting actually. It was a
needless thing to do and the teacher, Miss O’ Hara went straight to Brady. He was a
monster and he told him off there, in the class, in front of everybody.
“Mr. Delaney, you think its funny to defile the artwork of these talented pupils do
you? You think that you’re big or clever because like a retarded child of two you can
take a crayon draw on other people work?”
“No sir”
“Then why did you do it you little imbecile?”, Louis let out a sigh of regret but that’s
not how Brady saw it
“defiant! You’re defiant! Well let me tell you something Delaney, those kids who’s
work you ruined, Dinnish Patel, Jessica Reynolds, Jeremy Carter, Alex Hawkins these,
these are the people of tomorrow, the people of the future you understand. You can play
your games and mess about but ask yourself this: where will you end up? What are you
going to be Delaney? A waster all your life? A person so immature that they have to
draw on other people hard, talented work?! You’re a plague, an outrage and you’ll be in
permanent detention for the rest of the term! I’ll be keeping my eye on you and I
guarantee, on step out of line and down to Set 6 you go - in all subjects!”. Louis, on the
verge of tears but fighting them back like a warrior objected

“You can’t do that sir, I know my rights. And let me tell you something...”
“You answer me back now!? I’ll expel you” “For what? Drawing on some rubbish
drawings? I’ll be somebody Mr. Brady, I’m not stupid no matter what you say, you
can’t tell me that, you...”
“Right I’ve heard enough from you”, said Brady, on the verge of tears himself
seemingly, “you’ll be out of this school young man, I’m warning you”
“No I won’t!”, he said, defiant as Lucifer himself, “nothing justifies how you’ve
treated me today sir, nothing! I’ll write to the right people, you can’t take away my right
to be who I want to be”
“And you can’t spoil perfectly good work! You’ll spend all next term in detention as
well for insolence”
“So be it, but you can’t break me sir, I won’t let it happen”. From that day Louis was
just an absolute legend, not just in our year but in the entire school. Even the kids in my
brother’s year just leaving respected him for it, but Louis was cut up about it.
Something affected him about what Brady said and from that day in class at least, he
was a little angel. He’d banter with teachers but they liked him for it, they treated him
with respect, as a character, but Brady hated him for the rest of his school life. He’d
been embarrassed by Louis and he’d never forget it.
So we were sitting there causing uneasiness amongst Carter’s lot. Only the lobby
were in attendance and Jenny and Jennifer Phillips. Louis didn’t take his eyes off Carter
the whole time. Eventually he got up and walked straight up to his face.
“Right Carter, fucking Jeremy Paxman or whatever your name is, that girl is Jenny
Drayton. She’s with us, she’s not one of you freaks”. Jenny got up indignantly,
“pardon Louis? But hello, I am sitting here and I think I’m old enough to decide for
myself who I want to be with and what I want to do. I’m an individual and that’s more
than I can say for you!”
“Well your brother doesn’t think so, does he Birch?”
“No Louis, he doesn’t”
“So basically stop hanging round with this.... this loser and be yourself again”
“But I don’t want to, what is this? Who gives you the right to tell me what to do?”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just saying what Tim wanted you to hear, he’s
fucking wild about it, do you know that?”
“And basically”, Digger added, “we’ll kick his nancy boy skull in if he wont leave
you alone”
“So what’ll it be Jen? Are you going to come nicely or are we going to have to hunt
some Vampires?”. Carter butted in,
“don’t take this Jen, this is my girlfriend alright, you don’t scare me Louis you’re
full of shit, what are you going to do, beat me up?”, he sneered. “Don’t get fresh with
me, you fuck, you’re not fit to lick my boot you faggot, leave my friend alone, her
brother will eat you for a snack”
“Listen to yourself, do you think you’re tough Delaney? Do you think that by talking
like some gangster you’re going to scare me, you’ve been watching too many movies
my friend. I mean look at you, you little shit - if you want a fight I’ll give one, just me
and you - nobody else!”. Louis was taken aback shaken almost. Birch and Digger were
silent, I was in a bit of a daze from the shock of it, I wasn’t much with it anyway, but it
was me that spoke.
“No! You’ll have to face me first!”. “Oh Alexander, come on I’ve got no problem
with you. What is this one of those computer games you play all night? I wont fight
you.”
“You’ll have to Carter, you’re a freak and I hate you. There I’ve said it, now hit me”
“Not here, tonight, in the park near the Rose. You can bring just four people with
you, not for fighting just for support.”
“Oh, we’re in Westside Story now are we? Alright then, fine - have it your way -
you’re going to die!”. Then Louis came in,
“no, no! Why don’t we have it five on five! Five of you pathetic fools and five of
us!”, Jenny: “Oh come off it Louis, you’ll kill them”.
“No”, said Carter, “It’s fine, this needs to be done”.
“Eight”, Louis said, “you better fucking show up you scary piece of shit”, and with
that we left.
We went straight from school to Stevens’, of course everyone was there. We were all
pretty sullen, Stevens was the first to speak,
“so there’s going to be five of us right? Against five of them. So who’s going to do
it?”, DW looked sheepish, as did Skywalker inevitably. I answered,
“well me and Louis have to be there, who actually wants to kick in some scum?”,
nobody answered and Stevens came back with,
“so who’s actually going to be on his side then? I mean who are the hardest ones,
they’re a bunch of Pussies aren’t they?”, Louis: “Yeah, let me think Dinnish Patel,
freak; Dylan Flischer and Isaac Cohen, they’d rather suck the pope off; Skidders?
Maybe, no harder than Riker say and Jon Marks is the same. These guys are real faggots
there’s no challenge.”
“So who’s with us then?”, I reiterated. Faye stuck her oar in,
“Well not being rude but Birch, Tanks and Digs would just kill them, I mean
literally, they’re not fighters”
“But neither are we”, Louis said in a hurry.
“Well I’m up for it anyway”, Digger said, “kick in some faggot shits”
“So that’s three of us”, I said. What we really wanted was for Birch and Tucks to
volunteer but they weren’t taking the bait, this wasn’t really their fight and Birch didn’t
love fighting, he was just hard.
“Well I’m in of course”, Tim said, “this is about my sister isn’t it”
“Yes Tim, but it’s about more than that, its about our pride, it’s about showing them
who runs the court”, I said.
“Too right”, said Stevens after which the room went silent. Riker hadn’t said a word
and he wasn’t going to, he couldn’t dirty his delicate hands in this matter. DW was
afraid in case everyone found out what a cowardly little worm he is, ‘DW: we all know
mate’ and nobody even expected Skywalker to fight. Then finally Stevens broke the
silence again,
“I’ll do it! Me, Louis, Alex, Digs and Tim”.
“That’s decided then”, Louis said, “now lets started preparing”.
To be honest this prospect did not fill me with delight. I’d never been in a fight
before and you never know how hard someone like Carter or Skidders will be, they
weren’t small lads just sort of gangly, greasy looking with long greasy dark hair. I know
for a fact that Louis would be the smallest guy there. Stevens and I were about the same
height but he was a bit stockier than me, still though, it’s Birch and Tucks I wanted
behind me. Alright Digs is hard but Tim Drayton was more an associate of hard cases
rather than being one himself. Maybe he had the greatest motivation but I’d still rather
Birch. I was already starting to plan that I’d go for the wimpiest guy, I’d worked out
that Carter would definitely bring Jon Marks and Skidders but who the hell else would
he bring? I mean the thought of Dinnish Patel in a fight is really funny and you just
knew that the lobby were not the sort of guys who’d even get involved in a fight.
“Right so who gets Carter?”, Louis asked looking straight at Tim not realising the
pun he’d just made. For the first time I saw cracks beginning to emerge in Louis’ ice
cold, hardman demeanour. He seemed shaken up by this fight and really wasn’t happy
when I said that he and I had to go. I’m sure he wanted just the toughnuts to do it, he
really did. After we devised who was having who we started the half hour or so walk to
the park. Louis had also devised a back up plan, he’d take his mobile and contact Birch
if things start going really wrong. He’d already sorted out a lift with McBride (“done”),
who was already driving his dad’s car in preparation for when he was seventeen.
We finally got there, Carter’s lot hadn’t arrived yet. We waiting for about five
minutes,
“he’s not going to come is he”, Tim said.
“Doesn’t look like it” Louis said, and you could just tell he was relieved. But that
moment Carter’s silhouette emerged from the streetlights, but who did he have with
him? “Oh fuck”, Louis said, “that’s fucking Tanks and Goater from the year below.
How the fuck? Shit!”. He frantically got his phone out of his pocket and told Birch what
was happening, he was about quarter of an hour away and had to wait for McBride to
come. He’d come with Skidders, Jon Marks and those two behemoths, I was already
planning to hit Skidders.
“We have to get out of here” Stevens said, “we’re gonna take a beating!”
“We all have to take a beating sometimes, Birchy will be here soon anyway”, Louis
said, with thinly veiled faux confidence. Carter eventually reached us,
“hello gentlemen”, he said, “let me teach you a lesson!”. He lunged straight for
Louis but Tim took him out with a rugby tackle, Stevens just froze and they were
approaching fast.
“Come on you fat fuckers!”, Louis shouted and charged toward Tanks, the latter
smashed him straight in the face, his nose was bleeding. Marks and Skidders were just
sort of standing about, I’d thought I’d go for them on the sly. But I was stopped by
Goater, this guy was like six foot three or something and I just backed off. Digger went
for him and they had a proper scrap. Tim and Carter were still going at it and Tim was
clearly hammering him. Tanks was just kicking the shit out of Louis, booting him in the
stomach on the floor, I said to Stevens
“come on we have to get him”. We were sneaky though, we got Tanks to the floor
using the classic school boy tactic of duck and trip. But he was a big bastard and landed
on Stevens’ back, immediately he started to pound him. Marks and Skidders were still
standing there like a couple of shit outs. Louis was just a bloody mess and now Stevens
was getting his turn. I kicked Tanks as hard as I could in the balls and he clutched
himself and fell to the floor. Meanwhile Goater and Digger were still at it, both were
bleeding, Digger was cut above the right eye. It was pretty nasty, horrific in fact. Tim
was shouting at Carter,
“You fucking leave my sister alone, you cocksucking shit. I don’t want your dick
going up my sister when you’ve been shagging little boy’s arses”
“Well it’s too late dickhead! I fucked her good and proper and up the arse too!”, but
for all his jip Carter was getting the beating of his life. Tim had actually taken his belt
off and was whipping him with it, “fucking faggot” he kept saying. With Tanks on the
floor I could help Louis but then I realised that Stevens was actually unconscious. I
stamped on Tanks’ head and kicked him in the bollocks again just for good measure. I
was about to leave it but then I kicked him in the head again, right in the face with the
point of my toes, and again, and again, and again I kicked him. He was actually spewing
blood!
I helped battered Louis to his feet and just at that moment Birch appeared with
McBride. McBride was first to speak.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he said genuinely shocked. Just then I noticed that
Skidders and Marks had actually slipped off in the thick of it. Those cowards never
even threw one punch or had any intention to no doubt. Louis was incensed, “what’s
wrong with Stevens? You bastard, you fat bastard!” and he kicked Tanks in the back
who was still being sick. Birch looked horrified at the state of Louis’ face: a black eye,
cut lip, bleeding nose al a De Niro in Raging Bull. Birch went to break it up between
Digger and Goater,
“just leave it alright mate” he said to Goater. They were both looking as bad as
Louis. Tim had since joined us not looking all the bad, his face was scrammed but
nothing much else. Carter was having some sort of breathing difficulty on the floor.
Tanks was still vomiting and Stevens was just cold out, worryingly. McBride still, in
that situation was a dick,
“you boys shouldn’t play so rough”, he said, “you might get hurt”. Birch went and
lifted Steven into his arms, they went to McBride’s car.
“Hang on”, McBride said, “where the fuck do you think I can take him looking like
that?”
“Can’t you see”, I said, “We need to take him to the hospital”. I wasn’t looking too
bad, just a bit of mud on the arm. I didn’t actually get hit because I’d used my cunning,
“I’ll come with you, we’ll just say he go mugged or something”
“Alright then”, McBride said, “but this takes the piss, don’t get any blood on the
seat!”
“What about me?”, Louis said, “I’m hurt”.
“Just go back home, you’ll get over it - and take Digger with you, you don’t want
Jenny knowing what’s happened”
“Yeah ok, but I’ll have to make sure my mum doesn’t see”
“Right let’s get out of here”, I said to Birch, “I hope Stevens makes it”. We were all
so dramatic, like he was dying or something, not a hint of irony. At the same time I was
on a natural high, I’d made Tanks sick as a dog and saved Louis and I did it unscathed.
That night I had to stay at the hospital with Stevens, Birch and McBride buggered off
quicker than you can know. He’d been hurt really badly, internal bruising in the
stomach and something had affected his windpipe, which is why he fainted. God, I
thought I loved him that night, a real friend staying with a real friend, who’d taken a
beating so I wouldn’t have to.
It was Saturday so no school, I could easily blag it to my parents about where I’d
been. Everyone looked shit. We got back to Stevens’ after he came round at about
seven in the morning. Digger had to have stitches on his eyebrow, Louis was just a
mess, he looked so beaten up you wouldn’t believe. But do you know what? I emerged
from that one a real hero. Carter’s parents were sending him to a different school
because it was too rough, so that was the end of the Goths (well exactly, but it was
pretty underground for a while after that). Everyone thought I’d just taken Tanks on and
decked him and staying with Stevens at hospital was just the cherry on the cake. My
legendry status was even surpassing Louis’. I even had my own minion followers after
that, of all people Dinnish Patel, Jon Mason (from Kris Kane’s group) and fucking
Skidders. I just treated them like Louis used to treat Kris Kane, like the minions they
were and by this time Carly was so in love with me and my big rep that there seemed
like no other alternative for her. Things were looking pretty up, weren’t they. Or maybe
not...
Week 4. “Something kind of hit me today”, Et tu, Louis?
It was a few weeks after the fight. Louis’ bruises had started to fade and everyone
was still talking about it. I kept getting surrounded by Skidders, Jon Mason and Dinnish
Patel. They were a pretty sad bunch. They’d ask me all sorts of stupid questions like
Dinnish would ask me, “so who do you think would win in a fight between Skidders
and Jon?”, and I’d be like, “I don’t know, why don’t you see if they’ll have one and
see”, and then he’d ask me, “what about between me and Jon?”, “oh just fuck off
Dinnish”. I’d genuinely say it, and he would go. There’d be times when we’d all go
down town in McBride’s dad’s car: say there was me, Louis, Riker, Stevens, Skywalker
and someone like Dinnish hanging round - obviously there’d only be space enough for
four of us plus McBride - so we’d just leave Dinnish standing there. I remember once it
was a similar situation, McBride, me, Louis, Ritchies and Skidders. Obviously there
was space for all of us but when, the last person in the back (me actually) went in, I just
closed the door on Skidders. He had to walk back to school alone and as he drove off
McBride just gave off this horrible laugh, that sort of stuff was commonplace. But as
much fun as I was having at the expense of others I still felt empty inside. When I
thought about the things in my room at night I used to get these irrational pangs of guilt.
At home of course I was the same old Alex. My parents were just an embarrassment to
me at this stage but we didn’t really argue all that much.
I remember my dad, around this time, was pretty stressed out from work and on top
of it my mum would always be moaning to him about something. We’d just be sitting
there in the lounge and she’d say to him, “John, isn’t it about time we got a new
bathroom”, and then, in that calm middle-English manner (can you imagine Jack Straw
saying it) he’d be like, “darling, not at the moment, we’ve still got Adam to consider
remember, and this one to think about”, he gave me a proud ‘dad’ look. Then you could
see my mum was simmering, “Alex darling could you just go to you’re room please,
your father and I need to talk about something important”. Then they’d have this
blazing row, well more like a mildly unpleasant debate actually. Faye would always tell
me about the ructions that went on between her parents but if that could happen, just
once, in my house I’d be grateful. Dad - where’s your fire man? Do I sound like Louis?
I do don’t I? Sorry, but it’s true. My mother, the only person in the world who could get
ratty because she couldn’t have a new bathroom fitted in time for her parents to stay.
My grandparents were even worse than my mother. Always fussing about, saying “be
careful you watch yourself when you cross the road” and “have you heard about what
happened at number ten? I know it’s awful isn’t it”. My dad’s parents were a little more
common, a little more “if you just watch your head son, you’ll have the world as your
oyster, isn‘t that right John?”. My dad’s family and my mother’s didn’t get on and you
could tell that my dad had become more like my mum than the other way round. At
Christmas my mother’s parents would come to us or we’d go to them but my dad would
always go and see his parents on Boxing Day. But please, can we not talk about my
parents, it depresses me...
I was still with Carly but she was doing my head in. I’d just scratch my head or sigh
or something and she’d say, “oh Alex, you’re so cute” and give me a kiss. She was
beginning to be such a drag. She wanted to see me all the time, in school as well as out
of it. I remember Louis getting pretty fed up with me when I kept having to go to her’s
instead of to Stevens’. When I’d get there all we’d do is go up to her room and she’d put
on her sloppy records. Maybe we’d read a magazine together but most of the time we’d
kiss until we had some mind numbingly boring sex. I mean what’s the point Carly if
you’re just going to lay there in silence? I don’t think she came once in all the times I
shagged her, and I didn’t care. Her folks were boring too. They were always doing
things ‘as a family’, like eating dinner together every night and all that Waltons shit.
The thing I didn’t like about them, especially her old man, was that they’d try to make
you feel guilty because your family wasn’t the same, like they were actually better than
you or something. Carly had that in her too but she was also pretty silly, in the time I’d
known her I actually think she’d regressed to being twelve again. It’s a myth that girls
mature quicker than boys. They do when they’re young but when they hit puberty they
just get stupid. The girls in our school hung round the boys they were going out with,
they’d go and watch them play football (just messing about games down the park not
actual ones) and just wait to get some attention. Girls like that haven’t got a life in my
opinion, and it’s pretty common. Carly, despite being the Queen, was the same. When
we started going out, her life became me. She thought about hardly anything else it
seemed. Now I ask you who is more mature there? The boys who are getting on with it,
playing football, doing stuff they’re interested in - or the lame girls who sit there
watching them? And Carly was so generically normal. Her tastes were awful! Ok, she
knew what clothes would bring out her full potential and she was sexy as anything but
she didn’t have any opinions, she was so... I don’t know, it was like she just had a set of
criteria she wanted to fill and lived her life like that: boyfriend? tick, nice clothes? tick,
some nice girlfriends? tick. And that was about it I kid you not. And I know she was
intelligent because of the classes she was in, so why didn’t she act it? It makes me mad.
So I was pretty fed up with Carly, she was so shit at sex that her beauty didn’t matter
to me anymore, and - being a hotshot - I thought I’d have the girls falling at my feet if
we finished. So one night I broke it to her:
“Carly, I’ve been thinking, and you know - I’m not sure if this is such a good idea.
The thing is that we’ve got our exams coming up and having a girlfriend just takes up so
much time, I mean I like you and all but...”; She just burst into tears,
“Alex how could you do this to me? It’s only October, our exams don’t start till July!
Oh, why now?”, she was just weeping and I drew a sigh. It’s so boring when a girl you
don’t care about is crying about you. My mind started drifting to who I’d go out with
next: Jenny Drayton? Not a chance, she wasn’t even speaking to any of us after the
Carter thing anyway. Lydia Foster? No, she’d just pulled McBride. Sandy Rivello?
Forget it. So that was it, those were the hot girls. I’d have to look elsewhere. The year
below? Too Kris Kane. Alex Jones? Too fat. Rachel Baker? Too thin. Jennifer Phillips?
Too sad. Lucy Tanning? Nose too big. Sadie Smith? Too up Sandy’s arse. Bridget
Drago? Too mousy. Cynthia? No, I couldn’t shag someone Louis had shagged! Jessica
Reynolds? No fucking way. Then it hit me, well not exactly, I’d expended mostly
everyone I could think of, but: Francis! Carly wouldn’t have to know and she was horny
as fuck. I could get the sex I wanted and that’s all it’d have to be, we could just hang in
Stevens’ all the time. Perfect. But my thoughts were interrupted by Carly,
“but I love you, I love you Alex, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”. I won’t bore you
with the rest of it.
So about a week later I planned to make a move on Friday night in the Underground.
They were playing some shit dance tune and I was a little inebriated from some generic
Alco Pops we’d had at Stevens’, we’d been smoking too. The fatal mix of drink and
weed! I saw her there but Carly was there too. She must have had about a hundred guys
around her as word gets round fast when Carly Thomson’s involved. I arrived with
Louis, Stevens, Riker and DW. You should have seen us, real hotshots. Riker was
wearing these pin stripped suit trousers and a real slick shirt. He looked a million
dollars. Louis always looked good and Stevens had one of those hoody tops on, he was
obviously under dressed, but that’s why he looked cool - he just didn’t care. DW was
wearing a generic Ben Sherman shirt and black jeans, pretty predictable, he was a twat
anyway, so I didn’t care about him. I had on this fitted shirt and trouser combo - light
trousers, dark shirt - so that was pretty cool. I’d stuck up my hair with gel in the
fashionable style and I was out to pull. I saw Carly pretty much straight away and she
saw me. Francis was flirting with all the guys who were around Carly and I had to
devise a way of getting her away from there without Carly seeing. After we got our
drinks we sat in this massive Sofa us cool guys always sat in, there was one armchair
that Louis sat in -it was sort of like his throne unofficially. We were just chilling - well
just sitting there actually, the music was too loud to say anything - and Ritchies walked
in with his men. The girls immediately looked his way, some of the ones sitting just to
our right decided that’s when they’d hit the dance floor. They were all over him and he
just didn’t care. He was such a big shot Ritchies, always laughing and looking over to
McBride or Chuey or Danson. McBride was already pulling this girl from the year
below and he had his big hands all over her arse. Chuey thought it would be hilarious to
pinch McBride’s rear and take a photo of his reaction. Chuey always had that camera
out with him. Ritchies was getting the drinks in for them, and I just realised that I’d
been watching them since they came in. I had to do something, anything to stop doing
that. I gave DW a nudge and point out this pretty average girl with big tits. He laughed
like the monkey he was, I was just thinking what a prick I was sitting next to, when out
of the corner of my eye I saw Danson talking to Carly!
For some reason it really mattered to me. I wasn’t jealous or anything but it
mattered. I had to go and divert them. I went straight up to Carly and asked for a word.
We went to the place were we all left our bags and coats where the music wasn’t as loud
to talk. She was pretty drunk and thought I wanted to kiss her, I could tell. Before she
could do anything stupid I just said to her, “no hard feelings ok. Friends?” And she gave
a sweet smile and said, “friends”. It felt like I was in Dawson Creek or something.
Anyway back to my sordid plans. It struck me as I was walking back that if I could get
someone to distract Carly I could move in on Francis without her looking. Then it hit
me: Riker! They’d been out before and if he could rekindle some of that passion they
could at least pull and then talk about their feelings or whatever. I know Riker was
pretty pissed with me when he first found out we were going out but within a week he
was fine. Problem was, Riker was a really shit guy, he’d expect something in return.
What could I give him? I’d just say “’I’ll owe you one” or something stupid like that.
He was drunk anyway, he’d probably jump at the chance. He’d have to get Carly a bit
more drunk too though probably.
I took Riker aside and told him the plan, I put it to him that Carly’d been asking for
him. That appealed to his ego and I didn‘t have to mention Francis that way. He went to
her shortly afterward and they started dancing together. I noticed Francis was kissing
Chuey and he, like McBride with his girl, had his hands all over her arse. I wonder if
girls ever fed up of these lecherous bastards clasping at their butts. I went up and told
Chuey that Ritchies was looking for him, he went eventually and I was with Francis. I
took her to some dark corner of the dancer floor cos I claimed that the lights were
getting to me. Chuey never came back and we were just dancing together. I offered to
get her a drink, she asked for a barcadi and coke - I got her a triple! I had one myself too,
only with whisky. I was starting to blur, the pot we’d smoked had started to give me a
headache and the music was so crap. Anyway without thinking I put my hand on her
butt and she just fell into my arms. I whispered in her ear - “shall we get out of here”. I
was being pretty presumptuous, we hadn’t even kissed yet and I was already planning
sex. She was like “ok, let’s go back to mine”. I was thinking “what the fuck”, she’s was
pretty game for it. It was about a twenty minute walk. Time enough for us to sober up a
little bit, but I was still a bit dizzy.
She told me to be quiet till we got to her room. Her folks had a pretty nice house and
her room had a massive four poster bed in it. She immediately took all her clothes off, I
was just bewildered.
“Come on then”, she said, “I want to get a good fucking, Carly told me you’ve got a
big one”. It isn’t all that big but of course I just got my pants down as quickly as I could.
She was wild! She got straight on top of me and was shagging me like an animal. I
thought the bed would collapse and we’d wake her folks up. I asked her about condoms
and she told me she was on the pill. She was fucking me so hard that it kept slipping out
of her. Then after about five minutes she just slipped off it and started sucking me off! I
mean her pussy had just been around it and she was just sucking it, it was wet from her
pussy! I found that shit pretty horny but being as drunk as I was I didn’t come for ages
yet. Usually I would have exploded even before she started doing that but you know
how it is with whisky. After a while she stopped giving me a blow job and turned
around, on all fours.
“Come on”, she said, “do me like the bitch I am”. I was up there like a whippet, and
she kept saying, “tell me I’m a bitch, tell me I’m a bitch”. That was so horny and I
couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t make any noises myself but she making a real racket.
When I eventually came up her she started making orgasm noises. I’d like to think they
were real, like I did at the time, but thinking about it she was probably faking. Next
thing I remember it was Saturday morning. We went down for the breakfast her mum
had made and Francis was making out like we were a couple already.
What an awkward conversation! Do you know what it’s like talking to a woman
who’s daughter who’s obviously just rutted the hell out of. I felt like shit, my head was
killing me and the smell of the eggs made me feel sick. “I just have to go to the
bathroom, excuse me” I said. I must have thrown up for about ten minutes. Francis’
mum even came it see if I was alright, it was so embarrassing. I thought I better go
home but Francis took me back to her room. We were just sitting there with the same
crap music as Carly had on and she started playing with my cock. I moved her hand
away and she really got offended, I mean really. I told her that I didn’t have time for a
girlfriend.
“If it’s sex you want Francis I can give you that but I need my space you see”. She
erupted:
“You’re just like all the others aren’t you! Stevens, Riker, you, you’re all the same. I
just want somebody to love, I just...” but as she was screaming at me my mind drifted
off. It was that line, “I just want somebody to love”, the Queen song “Somebody to
Love” came into my head - she’d turned her crappy music off - and I started imaging
Carly and Francis and all the other girls in the school with daggers chasing me and
Louis towards Francis’ four poster bed. Soon the girls weren’t even there, it was just the
daggers.
“...Are you even listening to me? It’s not sex. You were crap anyway even worse
than Riker and Stevens, and Carly never said you’ve got a big one. It’s not big at all if
you want to know, I couldn’t even feel it! Get a bigger knob Alex, and don’t speak to
me.”. I didn’t say anything. I’d gone off the idea of a girlfriend and I just left and started
to walk to my house.
I cared so little about what Francis had said. I just thought she was sad, the same girl
she’d always been only now with a voice and a pair of tits. My mind was preoccupied
with other things. I was thinking about why we always have to go to that stupid club
every weekend. Why, in that club, they can’t play some decent music. Always the same
songs: “Tragedy” by Steps, you know all the ones, and every now and then the
formula’s updated with newer songs - like R Kelly’s “Ignition”, that’s a staple now. I
was also thinking about the book we were doing in school, Of Mice and Men by John
Steinbeck. I was trying to place Steinbeck, was he like John Donne or Bob Dylan?
Presenting himself in the way he’d like us to see him? Or was he a secret uncle like
Shakespeare and Salinger? I couldn’t make up my mind. His characters are pretty clear
cut, either really mean and terrible like Curly or saints like Slim. But what was he trying
to say when he wrote that book? I mean it’s pretty ambiguous in parts, like when
George kills Lennie, what are we meant to think? But all John Donne’s poems are
ambiguous, and Dylan’s for that matter. It’s not all that realistic, I mean the gigantic
rabbit, the bit where Lennie breaks Curly’s hand, would that ever happen? And what
about Curly’s wife, is anyone really like that? But that doesn’t help, I mean
Shakespeare’s not all that realistic is he? I think that the book is about friendship, it’s
about caring about people. But I think Steinbeck’s too blatant about it, you can tell he
loves Slim and hates Curly and wants us to as well. You can’t tell who Salinger likes,
whether he sympathises with Holden Caulfield or is making an example of him. I think
Steinbeck’s not a secret uncle, he’s one of those guys who’d be the first one in to break
up a fight. Shakespeare would just stand there and observe it but Steinbeck would step
in. He’s not one like Donne and Dylan, those guys are like enigmas, you don’t know if
they believe in what they’re saying or whether they’re just saying it. Like in Dylan’s
“She Belongs to Me”, you don’t know if he likes the girl or if he’s just being really
sarcastic about her. So when he sings “Bow down to her on Sunday, salute her when her
birthday comes/ For Halloween give her a trumpet and for Christmas buy her a drum”
at the end you don’t know what to think. John Donne’s the same, he’s always speaking
from the perspective of being dead or something, never as himself, but then again
always as himself - like in “The Apparition”. Steinbeck though, in this book anyway,
doesn’t make you wonder where he’s coming from, he’s on George and Lennie’s side
and he and you both want them to “live off the fa’ of the land”, (good at accents aren’t
I). Anyway, by the time I’d figured all that out I was home.
My dad could tell I’d had a rough night and he made me this milkshake thing for
hangovers he’d learned from his college days. It was pretty horrific but it made me feel
better. I spent that day and night watching TV and reading this book that my dad had,
1984 by George Orwell. I must have read it all that day, from cover to cover - and I just
wanted to read it again. I just didn’t feel like seeing Louis or anyone that day, I told my
mum to tell them I wasn’t well if they rang. I just wanted to lose myself in thinking
about and reading books and pretending I was walking among all the ghosts of the dead
writers. Shakespeare in his pantaloons, Milton in his puritan hat (I hadn’t even read
Milton but I’d heard of him), Donne, Andrew Marvell looking a bit camp with his long
hair, and me - just there, at home, laughing with them. Admiring Donne’s ‘wit’, asking
Shakespeare whether Lady MacBeth was really evil or whether she was just trying to
survive like I’d said in class and nobody agreed. Shakespeare agreed with me of course,
but he was really hard to pin down. Then I went to the next room, there was Salinger as
I imagined him, just like that teacher at the end of his book, and Bob Dylan circa 1965
was there, and Arnold Wesker (who for me had a white beard) and Arthur Miller and
George Orwell. I was there with them, Miller kept banging the table with his fist
making this speech about being free and individual, Orwell and Wesker were nodding
but Dylan was looking out of the window and Salinger was scratching his chin. But
1984 started making me think differently about individualism. Maybe the way I was
thinking about normality, about everyone being the same was like Big Brother. I’d
already figured out that his Big Brother and the one we’ve got on TV play the same
function in a way. They both make people subordinate themselves, only now it’s in the
name of fame not power. But at the same time I kept thinking of Holden Caulfield and
of the Bob Dylan who sings “She Belongs to Me”. Obviously 1984 is a great warning
about how easily we succumb to totalitarianism - and it made me realise what I told you
earlier about school. But there were a million little Holden Caulfields who needed some
direction or Bob Dylans who nobody knew who they really were, and that was me!
That was my problem, that is my problem damn it. We’d all like to think that we’d try to
be strong like Winston in that situation but what about our situation? How do we escape
from the generic masses of today? From the pop idols, from everyone loving the same
Carly Thomson in school and everyone wanting to be like the same Louis Delaney?
From everyone having the same ambitions at university or everyone, just for security,
wearing the same stupid clothes. Can it be that I’m the only person who sees how god
damn facile it all is? How fucking shallow, how superficial everyone is! Why can’t I
live next door to a 16 year old Bob Dylan or a Holden Caulfield who sees how fake
everything is?
The next day I went out and bought David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs to go with 1984,
I knew that it was based on that from something I’d read about Bowie in Q that month.
It was really good, but one song, “We Are the Dead” really made me think about my
friends, my life. I knew it was meant to be about Winston and that girl he gets involved
with in the book but that first line, it just knocked me out. “Something kind of hit me
today,/ I looked at you and wondered if you saw things my way”. Did anyone see things
my way? I kept thinking about those daggers chasing me to Francis’ but only Louis
wasn’t with me anymore and Francis’ bed had become the edge of a cliff. And I’d run
but the cliff wouldn’t get any closer. It was pretty freaky! I had Diamond Dogs on and
just kept daydreaming about all this weird stuff. I wasn’t feeling too hot so I decided to
go to Stevens’ and spend some time alone with him. Luckily no one else was there and
we just talked for a bit.
“How are things Rick? The internal bruising gone?”
“Yeah just about”
“Where is everyone today?”
“Louis, DW, Faye and Riker have gone to the cinema, I didn’t want to go”
“What they gone to watch?”
“Oh some crap, 40 Days and 40 Nights or something, I don’t like those movies”
“I know, I mean I like American Pie but that’s about it, it’s so... American or
whatever”
“Fucking yank kids, I’m not racist but they do my head in, especially the girls’
voices. ‘That’s like so uncool’, I can’t even watch Friends anymore”
“I know what you mean. What about everyone else?”
“Skywalker’s got work on (what’s new?) and Birch and them are at Tim Drayton’s,
Jenny’s still not talking to him. It‘s pretty quiet isn‘t it, did you shag Francis in the
end?”
“Yeah”, I said, but really didn’t want to talk about it.
“She’s good isn’t she? Dirty little slag”
“She was filth, but I had to blow her out the next morning”
“Oh yeah? Tell you the truth I did too before, she was getting really clingy -
speaking of which do you know Riker pulled Carly?”
“Did he?”, I said trying to sound a little surprised.
“Yeah, all the way and all, you alright about it?”
“well of course, I mean I was the one who broke it off with her”.
“It’ll be pretty quiet with out those two around though, they wont come here any
more will they?”
“suppose not, you never know she might go back out with Riker”
“yeah”.
We paused for a bit. I got the impression that he was thinking what I was, that the
conversation we’d just had was totally meaningless and neither one of us wanted to talk
about it. I started to speak again,
“I’m glad in a way Rick... I’m glad that we’re alone today because I wanted to talk to
you about something”
“oh yeah?”
“well... did you ever get the feeling that Louis is not happy?”
“Um, never really thought about it why?”
“well he just seems a bit uptight about stuff doesn’t he. I mean remember that time
he freaked after Sandy Rivello blew you out?”
“Yeah, he gets like that, not sure about being unhappy though. We have a laugh
don’t we”
“Well do you think he gets sick of like, being the Emperor?”
“What?”
“Do you think he gets sick of running things?”
“What are you going on about? Joint?”
“Yeah ok”. He started to roll up, I didn’t think it was worth carrying on with the
Louis thing so I said something else,

“Ricky, do you actually care about all that stuff we were talking about?”
“About Louis?”
“no, about who pulled who and all the rest of it”
“well”, he said as he took the first drag, “everyone else cares about it so I guess so”,
“but do you”
“um, haven’t really thought about it, it doesn’t bother me much who goes with who -
see, I’ve seen how people can hurt each other, like my dad did to my mum and so none
of this stuff really matters, you know what I mean?”
“yeah, it’s just what I’d thought you’d say” and he gave a little laugh
“you’re a freak do you know that?”, he said and gave me the joint.
“So what’s this about Louis then?”, I didn’t really want to talk about that any more
but I suppose we had to now.
“Well I’m worried he might go off the rails, like start doing some proper drugs or
hanging round with Birch and Tucks all the time and getting them into fights or
something”
“that’s a strong possibility yeah, I mean he was always going to do something like
that, that’s just the type of kid Louis is”
“Well can’t we save him? I mean stop it before it happens? You know what I
mean?”. Stevens was deep in thought, I could tell he was thinking that he’d probably
get into drugs as well. I knew this but I thought if I could get Stevens’ to help me help
Louis then I’d me helping him too. Alright, these people could be nasty as hell to the
people they didn’t care about, well not Stevens but Louis, (and me come to think of it)
and at heart they were just people. How could I just bugger off to A-level college and
leave them to drown? I could see the irrelevance of their reputations just past the corner,
after the exams and Dinnish Patel and Phillip Watts get their straight As what then?
Who’s going to want to know the guys who got five Cs and actually thought they’d
done well? I could see results night now, Dinnish: “so how’d you get on Lou? I got
seven A stars and three As”, Louis, hurt as hell: “Um, five Cs, two Ds and an E”,
Dinnish: “Hey that’s pretty cool, see you round”. And just like that, all that stuff -
Tit-tac, talking back to Brady, the fight with Carter - doesn’t matter anymore. You’re
obsolete Louis, and nobody cares, your time is over my friend. But I could stop it, or I
could try. If I could just get them guys to work for a month I know they’d at least get
some Bs or something. If I could make Stevens achieve something I know he’d become
a great person. Ok fuck Birch and Tucks and all the rest of them, they’re no hopers
anyway. Skywalker and Riker were always going to knuckle down and do well. Faye,
well I don’t know. But Stevens and Louis, that’s who I was going to focus on.
“So what about it Rick?”

“Yeah, yeah we should stop him before it’s too late”, but he was really talking about
himself.
“Rick”
“yeah”
“are you going to work this year? I mean for your GCSEs?”
“Probably not, I never have so why bother now? Why do you ask?”
“Well I was just thinking, after this year, that’s it - you don’t have to go to school
anymore you’re out in the big wide world. And you and Louis what have you got? The
guys wont always be there you know. Birch and them, they’re trouble man and
Skywalker and Riker - you know they’ll be off to A-level college - and me too. What
are you going to do? You’ve got eight months to do something about it Stevens...Ricky.
I’m telling you this because I care - I care about you and I don’t want to watch you fuck
up your life in front of my eyes and maybe if you do it and I do it Louis will do it too
eventually and Faye!”, Stevens was quiet, I knew I’d hit a nerve. But somewhere in
there he knew I was talking sense. Stevens sometimes used to think that the world was
against him but of course that was just because of his parents. Some people do that
don’t they, something bad happens and then they think that the world owes them
something to play them back, but it doesn’t work like that. He had sense, he was really
quite astute in some of the things he’d say, but life had treated him shit and therefore he
thought he was shit - and who can blame him?
“But Al’ don’t you see? You’re clever man, I mean you’re really clever, some of the
words you use and me and Louis can hardly believe you said it. I can’t even spell for
god’s sake. Even if I did try hard it’d still get me nowhere. In German and Maths I can’t
even get an A! - B is the highest grade my paper can get. What are they going to do
when they see how shit my writing is? When they find out that I don’t know what the
value of x² is.”
“Mate you’ll be fine, honestly. Spelling doesn’t matter all that much and if you work
hard you will know what the answer is. I can help you on the way! It’s only a couple of
hours a night.”
“Well we’ll see Al’, I’ll give it a go”. We were getting pretty stoned and I started to
laugh.
“What’s up with you”, he said.
“Remember when we left the hospital that nurse we saw?”
“Yeah, that was pretty funny”, “she literally was DW! I mean she even walked like
him”, he started to laugh too and when I went home I thought I’d made some progress.
I practically went straight to bed, my head was spinning from the dope and I’d
started to get paranoid that my mum would find out. I was feeling good about myself
but also started thinking of how many times we shut McBride’s car door on poor
Dinnish Patel, he never complained, but then I started laughing to myself about it -
fucking minion. I had some fucked dreams that night - dope dreams always are but
when I woke up I could only remember two of them. In the first one my mum and dad
were, with folded arms, shaking their heads at me and I was naked and Francis was
sucking my cock. My mum was saying, “Alex I’m so disappointed in you” and my dad
said nothing. In the other one I was coming down the steps at the front gates of our
school and all of a sudden I felt a sharp, piercing pain in my back. It was Francis with a
knife, and then another one! That was Carly, and another! (DW), and another (Riker).
And so on until everyone I knew had put one in except Stevens and Louis and then ugh!
Louis too. I woke up in sweat, I had school the next day and my head was swirling like
a bastard. It wasn’t the best day of my life either. I got detention for talking to
Skywalker in English and we were doing Of Mice and Men as well and that just
depressed the fuck out of me. To get told off in my lesson. Carly and Francis just totally
blanked me when they saw me - obviously Carly knew that I’d slept with Francis a
week after we’d split up (yeah like I didn‘t know about Riker you wooden whore!).
What’s worse is that Louis was nowhere to be seen and neither was Stevens. I found out
that they’d just bunked off and spent the day watching porn and smoking weed. I could
see if I was going to make a difference that I had my work cut out and only eight months
to do it in. The time for drastic measures had come.
Week 5. Disentangled Doom
Eventually I’d worked on Stevens enough for him to discipline himself, every night
he’d work from when he got in from school until about six thirty. We still got stoned
most nights but nobody wanted to have a go at Stevens for trying to better himself. His
grades did start improving, in Biology for instance he’d recently got a B for a piece of
coursework, he didn’t tell anyone about it but he told me. “I got a B Alex, you know, a
B”, he was genuinely proud and because he didn’t have anyone there to tell him well
done it had to be me. He was a good kid he really was but he just needed someone to
reassure him. We all need that sometimes don’t we, I know I do. I’m not sure how the
authorities let him stay in that house without his folks there, they probably don’t know
but it can’t be good for a kid. Because Stevens was working hard Faye started too, she
went back everyday with him and they used to work together. It was pretty sweet but
also pretty funny to see them with their head in some text book or whatever. Even when
there wasn’t work they created some to do, they couldn’t have been any better. And
why? Because the thought of getting a B, of achieving something, was enough to
motivate them. But Louis was really hard to work on. After a month or something
Stevens and Faye had it sorted, and every once in a while I’d come with them after
school just to sort of check covertly if they were working. But Louis, no matter what I
said he wouldn’t do it.
“Look Hawk”, he used to say, “just tell me something, will you. Why the FUCK do
I want to know about what all the parts of my fucking ear is called? I mean what’s the
point? I don’t fucking care how many sweets Jane has after Peter shares them out or
what the formula is for acceleration is. Why the fuck do I care? I know that when a car
goes a hundred miles per hour that’s fucking fast and ten miles an hour, that slow. What
else do I need to know for life? It’s pointless! I’m sorry but it’s just so stupid, why
should I have to take my time to learn these things which the teacher knows anyway?
Are they fucking sick? Are they sick that they want to test me for stuff they already
know. Don’t they know I’m busy and I’ve got more important stuff to do that fuck
about learning about simultaneous equations and fucking some king that lived eight
hundred years ago or something. What’s it going to teach me about life? When I get out
there in a year who’s going to tell me off for running in the fucking corridor? They’re
sick I tell you, the sick fucking shit they care about. Why the fuck should I stand up
when a prick like Brady walks in the room? He’s a prick, he’s a fucking prick, why
should I respect a man like that - who cares about shit like whether you call him ‘sir’ or
whatever. Probably cos his real name is Derrick or something shit like that. I’m not a
stupid person Alex just tired of people trying to fuck me around, push me around. I get
it at home you know. My dad’s a fucking arsehole - ‘Louis where’s your homework’,
‘Louis can’t you just be good, for once?’, ‘Louis why can’t you be more like Sarah?’,
‘Louis who are those boys your hanging round with?’, ‘Don’t do this Louis’, ‘Don’t do
that Louis’ - don’t fucking breathe or live or anything because if you do I’m going to
have a go to you about it. Arsehole! Fucking cunting arsehole! Bastard! Do you think I
want to work hard for him? Honestly why can’t he and all the fucking teachers just get a
life. I mean who cares about this shit they teach us? They tell us about science and
history and geography, they stuff us full of this crap for two years then they expect us to
remember all the shit they’ve told us and then shit it back out for them. Arseholes!
Fucking sadistic bastards. What does it prove? What, that makes you better than me
because you can remember useless fucking information? All they do is watch people
like Dinnish Patel and Phillip Watts, fucking Cynthia ‘my mother got fucked by the
third earl of godknowswhere’ Fairfax, lick their boots - suck their fucking cock and lick
their dry, crusty twats. And when they’ve done it you know what they do? You know?
They say there you go little Cynthia, good girl, there’s your gold star and your A grade.
Well fucking done! Well fuck you Cynthia! I’m Louis Delaney - I lick nobody’s boot,
especially if they’re some arsehole not fit to lick my boot like Brady or my fucking,
arsehole father. They lick Cynthia’s posh little boots the teachers do, and fucking
nobodies, like Phillip Watts, like Jake fucking Weatherby for god’s sake - they lick
their boots and the stupid kids lick them right back. I’m not playing their SICK games
Hawk.”, and that was it. What could I say to that? I mean looking at it from his way, it
did make sense.
The thing was Louis was a clever son of a bitch anyway. He’d get like seventy
percent without even picking up a book. Just one of those people. If he’d have just tried
he would have been right up there - ten A stars - and no joking. But he didn’t, he was
cocky, he like to banter with the teachers like I said, and he point blank refused to
compromise. In English and History and all the other essay subjects he pretty much got
Bs, or sometimes even As, and in Maths too. But in the subjects where you had to
actually learn things off by heart - Es and Fs. In Science he was so bad that he was in
DW’s class I remember. He’d also picked his subjects carefully to ensure minimum
work - or that’s what he thought. Media Studies, Design and Technology, Cookery for
god’s sake! Louis did cooking! He was pretty awesome at it too, when ever there was a
party at Stevens’ he’d rustle up the party food and not just your sausage on a stick
either! But the thing was that anything requiring effort was totally out of bounds. He
didn’t even used to go to the tests we’d have to do in Physics and Biology. “Why should
I?”, he used to say, “they can’t make me and they fucking won’t”. As a result his
average grade for Biology that year - which doesn’t count for anything but it’s
indicative of his attitude towards it - was six percent! Six percent! Nobody gets that
grade through lack of intelligence. Louis was a political rebel and he wasn’t stepping
down. I thought to myself that at least I’d got Stevens and Faye working hard - they
really needed to as well. Louis basically was a lost cause already in school, and we all
knew he’d do alright anyway - except in science of course. It was his life I was worried
about not his grades.
The thing was though I couldn’t do anything because nothing actually happened.
There were never any drugs offered or spoken of, and Birch and Tucks were already
talking about taking an apprenticeship down the local garage. Then it’d hit me about
what a middle-class prick I’d been. You see, just because, I’d never think of getting an
apprenticeship in a garage doesn’t mean it’s not a route that they would take. Louis was
right about one thing - we are no better than them because of the grades we get. What
I’d done thought the exact things my mum would have. Only my mum wouldn’t have
tried to do anything about it, just be appalled at the thought of them. Who am I to
condemn anyone else? I was worrying about drugs and violence like an old woman, I
was beginning to hate myself - so fucking middle-class. But I suppose that’s just what I
am. The middle-class always seemed to be apologising for themselves or being
ashamed to be middle-class. But why? I mean what is it to be middle-class? Your
parents earn good money, you try to do well at school, you go off to university, you get
a job just as good if not better than the one your dad had. You dream of being a singer or
a writer or a lawyer or a doctor or a journalist - three out of fives’s not bad is it for a
return of investment. I mean you should know that better than anyone right? And just
sometimes, just - someone will go and be a writer or a singer. If being middle-class is
living in a suburban area, trying to uphold the values you believe in and maintain a
family - as epitomised by Carly Thomson’s parents - then is that something I want to be
proud of or ashamed of? I don’t know. Am mean who am I? I detest the idea of that
‘doing things as a family’ nonsense, I hate the fucking sheltered world I’ve been
brought into, I hate the fact my dad is so polite and mild-mannered and the fact that my
mother gets obsessed with interior decoration - but why? What is it about being
middle-class that makes us hate ourselves so much? The working class - they celebrate
themselves with their crappy cultures and customs, they’re football stadiums and
Eastenders. The upper-class have foxhunting, rugby, the Royal fucking family. But
who do we have? Who celebrates us? In America the middle-classes get their dues.
Dawson’s Creek for example, isn’t it just a lovely picture of some pretty normal
suburban, middle-class kids with middle-class aspirations? Where’s that here? We get
Byker Grove and Grange Hill, we celebrate the Louis Delaney not the Dawson or the
Pacey - the people who’d roughly be me if they were here. Why is that? America’s got
such a different way of looking at the world hasn’t it. I mean here - yes, the prime
minister and the cabinet are undoubtedly middle-class but what sells more The
Guardian or The Sun. Why is that? Surely there’s just as many middle-class people as
there are working class ones. Why can’t I feel proud of who I am? Why is it Louis and
Stevens who are at the top of the social ladder at school and not Dinnish Patel and Jon
Mason - the future doctors and lawyers of this world? Something’s really fucked up and
I don’t know what it is.
And who actually makes the programs like Eastenders and Coronation Street and
Byker Grove? It’s us, it’s the middle-class - for the middle-class! Granted there are
droves of working class people who watch those programs, but they are watching
themselves, maybe even empathising with them. But us - we watch it all too, but we’re
thinking, however subliminally - ‘I’m glad that’s not me’. We, from the comfort of our
armchairs, can laugh at the plight of the unfortunate ones and define ourselves against
them. I mean what have I done? In my school-life I’ve rejected the middle-class. I’ve
chosen to align myself with the lower middle-class or the working class or whatever.
You know what I mean, kids who aren’t your typical two point four children kind of
kids. Kids who aren’t like me (Skywalker is I suppose, but who cares). I don’t know
where I’m going with all this. Maybe everyone I know is middle-class. I mean Stevens’
folks have a lot of money they just don’t get on, and Louis doesn’t come from a bad
background he’s just rebellious. I don’t know, maybe I’ve been talking shit. Maybe the
only working class people I know are Birch, Digger and Tucks. I don’t know, this is a
pretty middle-class town after all. I actually hate the working-class come to think of it,
they’re so disrespectful of things. So undereducated, so easily distracted, so resentful of
success if they see it. Alright I hate the way my dad’s such a soft touch but it’s better
than not knowing how to talk or behave properly. There’s this Bob Dylan album,
Bringing It All Back Home, the one “She Belongs to Me” is on. In the second half its
just him and an acoustic guitar and his words, as good as any poetry I’ve read. One song
“It’s Alright Ma”, just sums a lot of this stuff up. He must have been asking himself the
same questions in 1965 as I am today. That whole song is just awesome, but there’s this
one verse that I got written down here. I take this little book with me everywhere, if I
see or hear something I like I try to write it down. That speech from Roots I did for you
is in there but I got this verse from that song, “It’s Alright Ma” which is just spot on - I
mean just amazing at saying what I’m struggling to tell you. Hang on, let me just get it
out, I’ll read it out to you like a poem or something: “For them that obey authority/ That
they do not respect in any degree/ Who despise their jobs, their destiny/ Speak jealously
of them that are free/ Do what they be/ Nothing more than something they invest in”.
Every time I hear that it just blows me away, and why? Not only because it sounds
like genius but because it’s so true of so many people. The working class for one, it just
sums them up to me. But not just them, my dad to a certain extent - ok, he doesn’t
despise his job but he has become nothing more an investment, and he’s made one out
of Adam and will of me too. But that’s just how our society is - what’s missing?
Happiness, love, artistic expression, freedom - that’s what. I hadn’t read any Shelly
(Percy not Mary) back then, but I’ve just read Prometheus Unbound, that’s what he’s
saying there. I don’t want to bore you. If you don’t want to see the quote I have written
here just say, I’ll get back to telling you about school if you want. No? Are you sure?
Honestly it’s ok, there’s something good just about to happen in the story but... it’s just
that I feel strongly about these things and I think it’s part of who I am. I mean if you
want to diagnose me properly and all, so that I can at least function in life once I get to
uni, you should know about these things, you don’t mind? You want me to bring in
some of my own poetry next time?... From now or back then? Ok, I’ll bring a bit of
both. I’ve got that thing I wanted to show you here:
Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom and Endurance, -

These are the seals of that firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length, -
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled Doom.
He wrote that about two hundred years ago and we’re still living in “the disentangled
Doom”. That Doom, just money and superficial wants - that’s what we live in - nothing
means anything any more. If someone wrote that now they probably would struggle to
even get published, that’s the sign of our times - that’s how far we’ve come, why
though? Is Shelly wrong? Should we leave the pit of “Destruction’s strength”
unbarred? I tell you something, every time my dad goes to work, secretly feeling that
the bastard he’s trying to keep free is guilty, he’s just keeping that pit open. Every time
I was horrible to some minion, or whenever Louis mocked Tit-tac, we were just holding
it open a little longer. And whoever decided to fly a fucking plane into the World Trade
Centre just kept it open for maybe half a century more. How far away do Shelly’s
idyllic vision of the world lay now? Will we ever get a world without war? If America
wasn’t trying to do something, trying to look out for its own and our safety do you think
that Europe would just sit back and not develop the best weapons it could? Hell no, if
we didn’t have the security of America took watch our backs for us we’d soon be
thinking about imperialism again, and America know that. We’ve got a continent full of
dictators in Africa but its in nobody’s interest to sort that out. When I say interest I
mean economic interest. Fact is, just like when the middle-classes watch Eastenders
and think - ‘well I’m glad that’s not me’ and define themselves by it and feel a little
more comfortable with themselves, I hate to say it but rich countries think the exact
same thing about poor ones. So when these countries are ravaged by civil war or have
got some tin-pot dickhead starving everyone, it’s in out interests. It keeps them down, it
keeps us up and we define ourselves by it. If there were no poor countries there’d be no
rich ones, simple. If everyone was fat and there were no thin people at all then we’d
cease to call that size fat wouldn’t we? The world can’t run like that. In a factory if we
only had managers and no workers nothing would get done. Well somebody has to
make our clothes and chop our trees down for us - and asking working class man to do
it here costs ten times as much as it does to ask impoverished working class man there
to do it. And because it all comes down to assets, to interests who cares about
“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom and Endurance”? Or “Love”? Which he goes on to talk
about in the next bit. Walk into The White House or into 10 Downing Street and quote
them that Shelly passage, what would Bush and Blair say? Or any world leader for that
matter? The UN has all the right ideals but their agenda isn’t orientated in the right way
- because nobody cares about humanity at the end of the day. If we were to walk into
somebody’s house, take away their TV and tell them they had to wear the clothes you
want them to all the time, you’d soon see where people’s priorities lie. Next time you
see a peace activist go and ask them what they’re willing to give of themselves for the
cause and see what they’ll say. Ask for the shirt off they’re back, their TV, their home.
They’ll tell you to fuck off I guarantee it, because it’s all well and good and safe
protesting in London - but fucking go to Zimbabwe and do it. Don’t pester Blair, pester
Mugabe - if you feel so strongly do that! Or will you? Will you risk it all for our dying
fellow humans? Will you go to North Korea and stand up to Kim Jong-Il? Tell the
people, ‘come on let’s get rid of this bastard’. The fuck you will. So when I see some
spotty, swampy activist I think these things. I ask them, I tell them - and they always try
to have a go at me! Claiming I’m uncompassionate, that it’s people like me that cause
the problem. Is it? I mean really. If it came between your shitty survival or mine peace
protester I’d know which I’d work for, but that doesn’t mean that it’s my fault that the
world is such a shit place, or does it? I leave you to think about that...
Anyway - how far had we got? I’ve forgotten now because things like that really get
to me. Had I gone out with Jessica Reynolds or not yet? No? Do you ever speak for
god’s sake? Do you get paid just to nod at me? What’s that you’re writing down? Do
you want me to continue with this or not? Well? Right then, um... so Faye and Stevens
were working hard in school... and Louis had freaked and... yeah, I resented the fact that
I’d been so middle-class. So after that I didn’t try to help Louis any more. What I did do
is to try and start legitimating our power. You know how they have those sororities in
American colleges? Well I figured that if I could set up something similar we could get
those minions to do anything we wanted - we could even sabotage their chances of
doing well in their exams if we drummed up enough excitement. And why, why did I
want to do it? Because I hated them, Dinnish Patel, Jon Mason, Tina Ford-Davies - I
hated them all, and I wanted to see them suffer. Why did I hate them? What did they
ever do to me? I hated them because they were so devoid of... of anything. I fucking
hated their, middle-class, unoriginal, uncultured, goody-two-shoes, Blue Peter fucking
lack of individuality. I mean LOOK for god’s sake - you’ve been born in a country in
which you have freedom of speech, you have the right “to be who you want to be” to
quote Scarface. Have you seen that film? There’s this bit at the end where Tony
Montana’s in this restaurant full of middle-class American nobodies. I love that speech
he gives. Like a dick I learnt it as a party piece, with full Cuban accent and all. “What a
bunch of focking assholes, you know why? You don’t have the guts to be who you
wanna to be. You need people like me, you need people like me so you can point your
fuckin’ fingers and say ‘that’s the bad guy’. So say good night to the bad guy, go on, it’s
the last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again”. That’s why I hate those kids and
my sixteen year old self just wanted to crush them, like fucking ants.
I told Louis that I wanted to set up a proper gang, a militia to watch our backs in case
anything like the Carter thing happened again. I put it to him that if we got it about that
we were in a secret group, people would just fall over themselves to get involved and
then we’d never had to worry again. He thought I was pretty weird but he was paranoid
as hell Louis was, and if I could offer him security he’d take it. I thought I’d target a few
core minions to tell and who I knew would spread the word: Kris Kane - already had a
group of sorts and those guys, so immature, so lacking in anything, would be perfect.
They weren’t anything, not even good in school - mediocre people from mediocre
families with mediocre lives - FUCK YOU Kris Kane, I want you to suffer. Jessica
Reynolds - in daily contact with a whole host of boffins, big mouthed and geeky as fuck
- well Jessica things were about to change you frigid piece of Blue Peter shit - I’d give
you a badge alright. Ritchies - the King of the school, he’d be perfect as a founding
member with his men - he’d attract interest and he was pretty much a sorority type any
way, McBride would love the torture I was planning. I’d have total control - fucking
purge the bastards of their dignity, of any shard of individuality they had left in their
pathetic little minds. I got to work immediately. I needed to devise a venue - a meeting
point. I got onto Stevens about it - done! I needed to speak to Ritchies and McBride
about it, I put it to them that they could be part of this elite group, we’d always look out
for each other until we were old men and all that. At first they told me to fuck off, but
after a week of putting it to them in several ‘sexed up’, attractive ways, done! They
were in. Now we had to recruit. Louis was really apprehensive about the whole thing, at
first he didn’t ever want to do anything or talk about it, but, as I had predicted Chuey
and McBride loved it, and Ritchies was pure bait for the girls. Danson was pretty low
key though, he never really supported it but went along with it anyway. First recruits:
Zoë McKellen - a perfect mouthpiece, couldn’t keep a secret to save her life, Sandy
Rivello and Sadie Smith - it really appealed to Sandy’s sense of self-importance and
Sadie would have rolled over and died if Sandy told her to. That that was it the secure
foundations of an inner circle to our pseudo-sorority, I’d called it the ‘IPS’ - for
everyone else it stood for the Individual’s Profit Sorority, for the preservation of our
individual needs. But secretly, for me, it stood for ‘imbeciles perish slowly’ - and at my
hand!
The were a number of problems I faced now. We’d said that the first meeting was
going to be on a week Wednesday at eight and every Wednesday, at the same time,
thereafter. Problem was, what were we actually going to do and talk about at the
meeting. I figured that we should just make it a social thing. At the first meeting we’d
each take an oath that I’d write and then just watch a video or something. Sounds pretty
lame doesn’t it. We could also invent a discrete code to speak to each other privately in
public, if you know what I mean. Before all that I had to think about how hard I’d make
it for anyone else to join, the core ten or so founding members we had were exempt
because we’d taken have taken the oath but this society had to be elite. I had to research
it a bit - rituals, tasks that had to be done, all this sort of thing. I watched Stanley
Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and this crappy film The Skulls with Joshua Jackson in it, to
find out more about it all. The sorority in The Skulls were pretty extreme but it gave me
a general idea. None of the original could bring any friends along and I had to ruthless
about excluding old members of Louis’ gang. Birch and them - absolutely weren’t
invited, neither were Skywalker, Riker or DW. It must have killed Riker and DW but I
was going to make it especially tough for them to get in. I wanted to see them grovel. If
it was hard enough to get into and ‘secret’ enough then it makes sense that everyone
would want to join. Stevens was pretty relaxed about it all but he let us use his house.
Basically it was me, him, Louis, Faye, Rithcies, McBride, Chuey and Danson and then
‘the coven’ Zoë McKellen, Sandy Rivello and Sadie Smith. Perfect! Now all I had to do
was implement phase two of my plan: the first meeting, the taking of oaths and
educating everyone about how difficult it’d be for anyone else to join us.
The meeting was all set up. Everyone had agreed not to bring any extras along.
Nobody told DW, Riker or Skywalker about it and when eight o’ clock everyone came
as planned. McBride, rolled in first, in his car, with Ritchies, Chuey and Danson of
course. Me, Louis, Faye and Stevens were there already. After they came we just sat
there and talked for a bit - we had to wait for the girls to come before we could so
anything - it sounds pretty sad doesn’t it. Jessica Reynolds came quite soon and she was
ridiculously out of place in such company. This was becoming quite embarrassing
when the rest of them - Zoë, Sandy and Sadie eventually arrived. It was eight twenty or
so. It was time for the fun to start.
“You wont be late again ladies”, I said dark as fuck, “The IPS will not tolerate it”
“Get the fuck out of here”, Sandy said.
“Do you want to leave? The door is just there and the oath has not been taken, I warn
you that failure to stay now will directly affect your future to stay now will directly
affect your future chances of joining. You will place your future in great jeopardy, Miss
Rivello, with the alliance that is. Don’t come knocking on this door in a month if you
end your relationship now, you end it permanently - what’s it to be?”
“Whatever”
“I’m serious do you wish to stay or don’t you?”
“Alright, alright, I’ll stay”
“So no later than eight on the dot next week alright - we haven’t got time for
fashionable entrances”. McBride butted in,
“Hawkins, what the fuck is going on here anyway?”
“Gentlemen welcome to the IPS - the Individual’s Preservation Sorority - from now
whilst in education, wherever you study from, this is your surrogate family. Our
numbers will swell - by the time we’re all married, and we’re doctors, lawyers,
journalists whatever we’ll still be there for each other - no stupid shit just there. If ever
there’s trouble we’ll be there for each other, if ever we need favours form each other
there’s barely even any need to ask. Ok?”
“So what? We’ll be like the masons?”
“Well if you want to put it like that Mr. McBride but there’ll be no stupid rituals here
- at least not for us founders”
“What do you mean?”
“We just take the oath today and that’s it - life time members. No dark cloaks or
stupid shit. For the people who want to join there’ll be initiation tests devised by me and
my fellow Magi. I’m the head Mage - ‘The Solomon’, Louis and Stevens are my
deputies - ‘The Dalaran’. All you other people present today have the privilege of
sitting on the Magi council. This doesn’t mean that I’m or we are in charge of everyone.
Just that we discuss things for the good of the majority. Like, for instance, we have to
devise the rules - there must be strict secrecy codes for instance - and then there’s
admission to consider. People may only come via invitation by an already existing
member. Before they can come it must be discussed by the council”.
“What is this, fucking Star Wars?”, Chuey interjected.
“Please listen, you have been put in a position of privilege - just roll with it, or leave.
Now before the person comes along we have to decide if ewe actually want them in the
first place - if affirmative then they must start their traits, a series of three tasks devised
on a case by the case basis by us. The less useful the candidate to us the harder the
harder the trial. Sound fair enough? Any questions?”. They all looked a bit edgy but I
could tell it was appealing to their pathetically self-absorbed egos. It was Danson that
spoke first,
“So what’s the significance of you, Louis and Stevens?”
“well that’s simple, if there’s a dispute we shall act as judges. When we’re voting in
the case of a tie we’ll convene and make a decision”
“Ok. And what do we do at these meetings?”
“Discuss whatever on our minds, issues like new people and their trials, and if
there’s nothing else to do just chill. But homework is not an excuse, attendance is
paramount unless you’re absolutely dying and if you’re in school the next day,
expulsion from the alliance will ensue. In school your friends are no longer your friends
until they’re accepted by the IPS”.
“hang on!” , Jessica, indignant as a bitch, objected.
“Got a problem with that? You can always leave - come back as a minion - see if I
care, your position on the council is by no means vital, you are totally expendable, and
the position shall be erased.”
“Alright, but they can join eventually right?”
“If they can pass their trial, which I’m sure they will yeah”.
“Ok”, Ritchies said, “but what if the council reject them? You’re giving me grief
here”
“Then it’s touch shit, the IPS does ask for sacrifices to be made for the common
good. Now shall we take the oath? Anyone want to pot out now? It’s your last chance -
leaving after that will result in severe consequences”
“Like how?”, McBride said like a dick.
“Severe social isolation, dropping a few grades in school, everyone knowing you’ve
got a smaller penis than tit-tac - it can all be arranged”. They were beginning to fall into
line. I was such a prick but I was having a field day.
“Repeat after me: ‘I Richard Stevens’”

“I Richard Stevens”
“‘Shall pledge my allegiance to the common good of the IPS”, he repeated it.
“‘I will live in safety and protect my brethren” but they all did it. Even Jessica
Reynolds said it, and Louis said it for me when it was my turn, only he forgot what it
was and said ‘brothers’ instead of ‘brethren’ but nobody cared by that stage. Then we
ordered some pizza and everyone went home.
Thursday morning at school was strange. The twelve of us hung round together and
spoke to nobody else. I mean we were just blanking them, plain and rude. Skywalker
came up to me and said,
“David, what’s wrong, why isn’t anybody talk in to me, is it something I’ve done”.
Cold as a compass blade I just looked straight past him. I got everyone to keep his up
for a week until Wednesday’s meeting swung round. In the meantime I was
meticulously planning my every move. I worked out that there were three main types of
people who would want to join: Minions - most people really, Skidders, Jon Mason,
Dinnish et al.; assets - people who’s further the cause of which I couldn’t think of any,
apart from Carly and Jenny who weren’t talking to me still (I was to freeze them out
therefore); and lastly, the remnants of Louis’ old gang, who, save for Riker and DW,
we’d make it pretty easy for them to join.
So at the meeting we debated new members and rules, to save time I’ll just list them
for you.
The Rules
1. Nobody is to know about the sorority who is not a member or a potential

candidate to become one.
2. There would be three tests for these candidates, an initial easy one: “Foundation
assessment” (typically something like doing Louis’ homework for him or making a
stupid noise in claim or something). Then there was the second one: “The Loyalty
Test” (typically this would ask of a bit more, like not speaking a word to anyone
for three days or not showering or styling your hair for a week: and finally there
was “the initiation” (and it is through this that I wanted to punish the minion
masses).
3. If ever a fellow IPS member needs something of you, you do your best to fulfil
that need.
And that was it. Around school everyone was talking of our anti-social behaviour
and a week is just long enough to foster curiosity and not bitterness. By the third
meeting we’d doubled our numbers. Skywalker, Birch, Tucks , Digger, Tim, some
insignificant Sandy Rivello affiliates (like Tina Ford-Davies who was trying to distance
herself from Isaac Cohen and Dylan Flischer) and generic boffins (Jake Weatherby,
Phillip Watts). We’d been very easy on all of them, the hardest initiation was probably
Phillip Watts’. He had to be our slaves for the day - we gave him to the king’s men to
deal with. They had him carrying their bags, buying their lunch - all sorts. McBride had
him walk all the way down town with four bags and took the car for himself and
Ritchies, Chuey and Danson. Phillip had to be down town already waiting with their
lunch! Pretty horrific, and McBride delighted in it, but nothing compared to what I’m
about to tell you. I now had the feeling of real power, the power to freeze people out
socially (Carly, Jenny, Francis) and reducing people to grovelling idiots through the
initiation. That was after all the sole motivation for me - to punish them, physically and
mentally.
I watched Fight Club for inspiration. Finally I started to get the people I wanted to
hurt invited. First up, DW. This guy who was so weak that in he couple of weeks that
we’d frozen him out he’d played truant as not to face school. When his time came I
thought I’d have him annihilated, humiliated, reduced. Here was a guy who’d revelled
so much at the misfortune of others. Well not it was turn DW. He had to get down on all
fours and act like a dog for the night. He wasn’t allowed to laugh or speak only bark and
we were only to call him ‘Rover’. After about three hours of him crawling around I got
out some dog food, put it in a bowl in the middle of the floor - in front of everyone!
“Come on Rover, din dins - you want to be a good boy don’t you?”, I was such a
bastard. Ritchies and his men couldn’t help pissing themselves with laughter. Some of
the girls were more compassionate but Louis obviously loved it:
“It the fucking food... chum”, he said, “get it? Pedigree chum” - and everyone
erupted in mocking laughter. Poor DW ate the food, we made sure every last drop was
gone - we made him lick it clean and he was sick, I mean really sick. You know when
someone vomits so much that they wretch? They they have no fluid left in their
stomach because so much bile has come up. DW was worse than that bless him, and
that’s how he got in. It made me feel good at the time but I got so guilty you wouldn’t
believe. I hated myself, I really did.
Why do I have to be such a sadist? Am I weird? Am I sick? Next up was Dinnish

Patel. This was the one I’d been waiting for, the person who represented everything I
hated on Earth. A boy so spineless, so lacking in any character of his own, that he’d
spent his entire life trying to please the people who did have a life. He was like Owen
Dixon all over again only, unlike Owen, Dinnish wasn’t even deemed important
enough to mock, nobody could even be bothered to make the effort. Anyway, I had him
sneak into the gym complex of school it was pretty easy - we just went played football
for an hour or so, and had Dinnish go to the bathroom.
“Wait here until we come back”, I told him, “if you leave this toilet you will not only
fail the trail but have no friends on top of it, ok? You do as I say till you’ve passed ok?
I want you to get a Christmas Tree and shove it up your arse you do it, if I want you
drink from the toilet seat, you do it! Ok?”. We left him there, all night and before school
went there to see if the poor bastard had passed. Sure enough he was there, and he
looked rough as hell. I felt so sorry for him, he’d slept on the stinking floor - where was
the pleasure, the satisfaction I’d wanted in seeing him suffer? There was nothing, just
emptiness. By the time I’d made Kris Kane snort eight lines of chilly powder (he had to
go to hospital) and Jon Mason tell our Maths teacher, Miss Saunders, to “go fuck
herself all the way to her mother’s dead, crusty cunt” (he got suspended) I felt that it’d
gone far enough. I wished I’d never even started. I decided to try to call it a day after
only five weeks.
In the Wednesday meeting of that week I addressed the council,

“Well folks, I think its time that we stop recruiting - we’ve got enough to consolidate
our future. Therefore these meetings will not be necessary anymore, we need only
convene on special occasions - back to normal, until one of us needs to call in a favour
- good luck”. I sensed everyone was relieved and I certainly was. In about a month’s
time all the stupid hype had died down and everything was back to normal but I’m
pretty bored talking about this now. I’ll leave it there if I may.
Week 6. Revelations
How much longer do I have to come here? I mean what the fuck is wrong with my
paranoid fucking mother? A session a week for a period of twelve weeks!? What the
fuck? Am I not a great son, a brilliant A grade student, a dab hand at essay writing? It’s
her who should come to you not me! Alright I smashed the window in my bedroom but
don’t you understand I was pissed off. It was just too much for me, all the stupid shit -
the minions, my fucking spineless dad, the normality of my life. And when she came
upstairs I told her, and shouted! But twenty sessions with a private psychologist! A bit
excessive. So let me tell you something doctor: that story I just told you, the IPS and all
that. Pretty shit wasn’t it? I mean you know it and I do. In fact let me tell you,
everything about that story I made up! There was no IPS, there were no secret
meetings! It was what I wanted at the time but it didn’t. Alright? I admit it. The pangs of
guilt, the moral battle? It was just how I’d like to think of myself, a deep fucking
thinker. There I’ve said it. DW never ate dog food - I never had a council. The first time
I mentioned my plan to Stevens and Louis was the last. It was too weird for them, it was
all in my head ok? I made it up, I’m a fraud. No, I’m not a fraud because I’m coming
clean - I only ever told you about it anyway.
But let me ask you doctor, how do you know it’s just that story that I made up? I
mean now I’ve lied, I’ve openly lied to your face. You don’t know what I’ve told you is
true and what I’ve told you was just fantasy. How the fuck do you know? I bet Sigmund
Freud would have known but do you? Are you sweating now doctor? Is Karl Jung
shaking his furry brow at you in that understanding head of yours? You never said “tell
me the truth”, you just said, “talk, tell me what’s on your mind Alex, it’s alright I wont
judge you”. But you are fucking judging me aren’t you? I bet you go home to Mrs.
Hardy and you tell her all about me don’t you. Anyway, how do you know that there
ever was a Louis Delaney? Doesn’t he sound a little too much like a conglomeration of
gangster stereotypes to you? How do you know, how can you know? You can’t can
you? You just have to trust what I’m telling you is true. I’m the one with the power here
not you. How do you know that each of the people I’m telling you about are just parts of
my own psyche, just aspects of my own character? DW - the kid who needs to hide in
groups, Stevens - the kid who needs just a little reassurance, Louis - the paranoid kid
who needs to feel in control. And what about the others? Danson - the guy I’d want to
be, Rictchies - the guy I’d want to look like, McBride, Chuey - the guy’s I’d want to be
seen with. Birch, Tanks, Digger - people I’d want to control. Carly, Jenny, Francis -
girls I’d like to fuck. I mean I could have just made it all up couldn’t I? I might have
been one of those people who study at home and don’t go to school with an active
imagination. You just don’t know do you.
As it happens it is just that story I made up, or at least that’s what I’m telling you to
believe, and you just have to trust me. The fact of the matter is around that time things
were fucking boring. Stevens and Faye were working more and more, as their crap
grades were improving. Louis was regressing, hanging round with Riker, Skywalker
and DW because Stevens was “being sad”. And me? I was still in league with Stevens
and Faye but spent more and more time alone, in my room. I was getting too old for
school and I knew it. In this time I was writing more than ever (I’ve got some stuff from
that time with me, I‘ll show them in to you in a minute) and getting engrossed with
certain films: Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather Part II, Reservoir
Dogs, Goodfellas... in that order of importance, they were all films I’d seen before but
not like I was seeing them now. Alone, in my room, engrossed - that’s the only way to
really connect with a film. I was becoming obsessed with the ideas of these films.
Alright, they are not all about the same thing but they all had something in common - a
gang culture, the culture of a hierarchical system of respect and honour, the presence of
a common cause. In Reservoir Dogs I hated it when they all kill each other at the end
and the heist goes wrong. In Fight Club I wanted them to succeed, I wanted to enlist
good damn it. With The Godfather Part II it was the same and when they go off to do
their own scam, in direct disobedience of Pauli, in Goodfellas I hated it. In A Clockwork
Orange I wanted Alex and his gang to stay together and kick old men in. I read the book
as well. Another writer to add to my canon - Anthony Burgess, a secret uncle on the
face of it but a John Steinbeck type moralist secretly, he wants to tell us something and
he does. Kubrick knew that and when he made the film he deletes the last moralising
chapter of the book and as a result, if you ask me, the film is better for it, so much more
ambiguous in its study of human evil and moral choice. I also read 1984 again, and this
time I wanted Winston to rise up the ranks of the party, not rebel against it. When he is
sent to Room 101 at the end I was glad, he deserved the torture I mean what makes him
so important that he has to make himself stand out? So you could see what was feeding
my yearning for this sorority I wanted to set up.
I wasn’t becoming a fascist before you think that. I mean I wasn’t racist, there was
no lusting for power or sending everyone to death camps - just a want for everyone to
have direction. If everyone was part of the same thing then all the fucking minions
would have something to do, to want, they’d have an identity and they wouldn’t have to
stand out. Nobody would feel the need to standout, there’d be no need for someone like
Jeremy Carter to become a ‘skategoth’ because he’d already have an identity - he’d
already feel that he was wanted and special. The trouble was - the grip that I already had
on the year was slipping. My puppet Emperor’s gang had dispersed into three factions-
Birch, Tanks, Digger and Tim Drayton; Louis, Skywalker, Riker and DW; and Stevens,
Faye and I. Louis was becoming an irrelevance as was Birch. You see they had a perfect
relationship - Louis lent Birch his infinite coolness, Birch lent Louis his infinite
hardness - together they were an indestructible force. People wanted to be as hard as
Birch, they loved to see Louis stand up to a teacher or verbally cut someone down in the
schoolyard. But now, they were separated. Birch didn’t even come to school half the
time and when he did his people kept themselves to themselves, and without Birch,
Louis didn’t have the backup he needed to be a big shot around the place. Yes, he’d still
cut people up behind their back but he was nothing like he was a few months ago. He
still had people following him about but they were a dying breed. Power was shifting
into the hands of Ritchies and McBride. I had severed ties with Jenny and Carly and of
course eventually, Jenny went back out with Ritchies and Carly went out with Chuey!
Francis went out with McBride and his boasting of their sexual prowess was legendary.
The king’s men had unstoppable momentum. They were all so cool and nonchalant, not
fiery like Louis, and for all the boy’s was something to aspire to. I found myself out on
a limb - if Louis was becoming an obsolete Emperor - then Faye and Stevens were a
total irrelevance. As the rest of the year were moving on I was stuck in the Old Empire.
And fuck me if I was going to stay there.
Anyway shall I show you some stuff? Writing I mean. At the time I’d also picked up the
bible - not for any religious reason just to get ideas about how to control people. I liked
Revelation the best and I have some verses written in my book here:
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death.
(Revelation chapter 6, verse 8)
I like that image.
A great multitude, which no man could number, of all nations, and kindreds, and
people, and tongues, stood before the throne, and before the Lamb. (Revelation
chapter 7, verse 9)
Incredible, apart from “the Lamb” at the end, that’s pretty gay. If I was to quote it I’d
omit that last bit, the throne is so much more powerful.
And when he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space
of half an hour. (Revelation chapter 8, verse 1)
Fucking cool that, have you seen the 1957 Bergman film, The Seventh Seal? Fucking
awesome - just watch it, this knight plays chess with Death for his life. Best black and
white film I’ve ever seen. It’s in Swedish though but that only adds to the darkness.
And I saw a great white throne... And the sea gave up the dead which were in it;
and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged
every man according to their works. (Revelation chapter 20, verses 11-13)
Cool! The white throne is such an iconic image. And the idea that we’re all judged
according to our “works” is fantastic. It should be the way, people should look at us,
know what we’ve done and hold us in a high or low esteem as a result. We do it with
writers so why not everyone?
So those are my selections fro Revelation. I love all that apocalypse shit, although
there are writers who do it better than the Bible in my acrimonious, blaspheming
opinion. Like Shelly’s The Mask of Anarchy (sorry but I have to study him ready for
uni, and I happen to think he’s one of the best poets of all time):
Last came Anarchy: he rode

On a white horse, splashed with blood;
He was pale even to the lips,
Like Death in the Apocalypse
Shelly was an atheist but you bet he’d read his bible. I’d place him in the same group as
Steinbeck, Burgess and Wesker you know, he’s pretty blatant about what he wants you
to think, even though he claimed to “abhor” didacticism. Where was I? The apocalypse,
oh yeah, other people do it better. I’m told that William Blake, a seminal influence on
Shelly, is pretty hot on it; and, according to this guide ot English literature I have, the
fourteenth century poet, William Langland, wrote a whole book on it. And of course
Dylan can get pretty apocalyptic.
Anyway, do you want to see these poems I brought you? I mean the ones that I
wrote? Ok, here’s the first one - it’s called “The Throne”:
I dreamt of a babe smiling on a cliff

Where no heart beats and destitution creeps,
Where the sun shines black, where the bleak winds shift.
I dreamt of a friend drowning ‘neath the deep

Where gold is the language and silver pays,
Where hope is no answer, where lovers weep.
I dreamt of a hangman counting his days

Where the noose hung high amidst life and death,
Where the fear’s spread, where willpower frays.
I dreamt of a tailor holding his breath

Where he mends my time, where melancholy’s made,
Where only morals of caution are left.
I dreamt of a duke dying in the shade

Where all his cries were lost, where I did moan,
Where the trees loomed forward and paupers prayed.
I dreamt of myself stranded on a throne

Where nothing moves, where the gloom never lifts,
Where I can’t see all the grief that I’ve sown.
I’m pretty proud of this one, it’s written in terza rima, the form old Dante wrote his
Inferno in. See how the middle line of each stanza goes on to form the rhyme sound of
the first and third of the next one. It’s like a never ending chain, it just goes on until you
rhyme the first and third lines of the first stanza with the last one, in my poem its “cliff”,
“shifts” and “lifts” - it’s not a very long one but like a said people have written whole
books like this, albeit in Italian. The only one I’m not sure of is the penultimate stanza,
that “duke” doesn’t seem to fit for some reason, but by the time I’d finished it was
pretty difficult to change things. Pretty guilty stuff I suppose, I don’t know... but I like it
anyhow.
Here’s the next one, it’s called “Bolt from the Blue” and I just sort of wrote it one
night, stream of consciousness. There’s not much of a strict form but there is a little bit.
I’m not sure if I want to show you this one because I’m not sure about it, about whether
it’s any good. Anyway here goes:
A bolt from the blue, the vault it just blew

And all the secrets that were stored within
Escaped like ghosts.
A poet in the rain.

A baby in a pram.
A body naked and white.
A tiger drawing its breath.
A crow scratching for food.

A dog waiting to die.
A snake shedding its skin.
Sin before the feast, tears of a priest

And all the confessions he had to hear
Were lost in the flood.
A man wracked with hatred.

A murderer who lost his knife.
A woman condemned by her actions.
A martyr looking for his brother.
A maid weeping for woe.
A widow who dreamt of salvation.
A saint bleeding alone.
The rain waits to yield, grain sown on a field

And all the latent flourish waits to feed
A thousand mouths.
Blind men with broken tears.

Sick men with broken dreams.
Poor men with barren hope.
Rich men with barren hearts.
Good men with hollow cries.
Bad men with hollow minds.
All men in stagnant fear.
Wait for me while the darkness comes.
The little three line stanzas have a syllabic structure, see? There’s ten lines in the first
two lines and then four in the third. The first line is split with a clear caesura (that’s
what they call a little pause in literary circles) and an internal rhyme. Make of it what
you will.
The last one I brought is called “The Frozen Throne”, I loved the idea of a throne at
the time, because of the book of Revelation and because of stupid things, like Al Pacino
on the front cover of The Godfather Part II sitting on that massive chair. Such a
powerful image the throne don’t you think? Hang on, just looking for it... oh shit, I must
have left it on the side. Shit! Sorry, but my stupid mother was rushing me and I left it in
a rush. Oh well, there goes that hey. I’ll bring my prose efforts in next time ok? I started
writing a novel but I only got a few pages done before I gave up. You ever done that?
It’s so difficult to start writing a book, poems come a lot easier for me. So then I gave up
and a few weeks later started writing another one! But I got even less done (about two
pages I think), anyway I figured they might be interesting to you. Help you flesh out
that sketch of my psyche I know you’ve been drawing since the first minute I saw you.
I might as well help you right? Because helping you supposedly helps me, not that I
need helping mind you - I only fucking smashed a window! And anyway, of course,
you can’t be sure if I’m lying or not when we talk here but if I’ve written something
that’s different yeah?
Speaking of which you want to know how I tried to become a king’s man? See the
thing was, as I said, Louis had pretty much lost his grip on power. Through no fault of
his own... come to think of it, pretty much because of me... he was no longer the
almighty emperor. The time for Ritchies had come, this was the age of kings. I was in
the social wilderness, without a girlfriend to prop up my flagging rep. And my options
were few. Fucking wooden Carly Thomson had started to go out with Chuey ,
unbeknown to me, the night I had gone off with Francis and she had shagged Riker
again, Danson had also made the initial moves for Chuey. How lame is that? Getting
your mate to go up to a girl for you! What a hot shot Tommy Chu was. Within a few
weeks they were a couple, and boy did they look gorgeous. As I’ve said, because of the
whole Francis thing she still wouldn’t speak to me. Jenny Drayton still was pissed with
everyone involved in the whole Carter fiasco, and she’d got back together with Ritchies
himself, so she was definitely off limits. Sandy Rivello had finally climbed down off
her high horse for just long enough to date Danson. He must have been the luckiest guy
in the world but it was his humbleness, his humility that did it. Anyway she had him
running round after her arse like a lapdog, Louis must have loved that given that it was
always Sandy Rivello that got him wound up about women in the first place. Francis
was going out with McBride - what a token hot shot couple! She got to go in his car, he
got to boast about how she’d sucked him off when he was on the phone, or on the
motorway. Big fucking deal. Karen Jones was still with my old mate Tom Wheeler and
together they sort of were the least glamorous] of all the couples that hung out together.
It was like they were in Grease or something, you should have seen them. Lydia Foster
had some mythical twenty year old who was in the army, so she was a no go as well. So
there we have it, all the girls that could have bolstered my image were unavailable. Also
I was left to hang round with yesterday’s men: Stevens and Faye. I mean nobody even
went to Stevens’ anymore and he was glad of it. I was becoming a yesterday’s man!
No! Not after all my hard work becoming the coolest kid about, no! It’s just so unfair.
But it was happening and there was nothing I could do, well actually there was, and I
was formulating plans already.
I needed to make a firm break from Louis’ old lot and make a marked effort to hang
with Ritchies and company. I needed a girlfriend and fast, I thought that I’d ‘make’ a
girl. Take any random bitch from the lower social echelons - a boffin or some minion -
and make her into a desirable type. Kind of like what happened with Francis but I’d
perpetuate it. After thinking about it I asked Jessica Reynolds out! She’d had her brace
removed, her spots were starting to go and she... well, she wasn’t fat but not exactly a
playboy model either if you catch my drift. She was so flattered that somebody had
asked her out that she had to accept, after all the usual “I don’t know” nonsense and all
that. I was pretty much banking on that to happen. I tried to keep it low key at first but
she’d already blabbed and told all her mates who’d told Carly and everyone else. Shit!
It was as if I’d committed social suicide, McBride: “Do you get lost in her bush?”,
Louis: “Let yourself down there Hawk, should have stuck with Carly”, Ritchies: “Shit
man, just get that thing away from me, you’re giving me grief here”, DW: “Do you put
a bag over her head Davey boy?”, Chuey: “So, uh, why don’t you and Jessica come out
with me and Carly tonight? You could clear the dance floor for us so we’d get some
space to dance, you know what I mean?”. Fucking horrible bastards. The thing was in
the two and a half weeks that I’d been with her I found her a really interesting person. I
hate to admit it but she was a hell of a lot more of a conversationalist than Carly had
been. She was pretty clueless in bed, but in the three times I slept with her she came at
least twice. But the strain on my already faltering reputation was too much. If I didn’t
end it soon it’d be in absolute tatters. I finished her pretty abruptly, and she just
accepted it, a tear or two but nothing like the simp Carly had been. She kept her dignity,
I mine. To Ritchies and to Louis and company, I claimed that I just wanted to see what
it was like to hump a moose. They bought it but I still get abuse to this day for it. Badly
miscalculated there Einstein. Obviously my powers had waned, I no longer had the
power to make a minion cool. Going out with David Hawkins was probably the same as
going out with someone like Danson. Most of the girls thought I was a prick because I’d
slept with Francis only a week after breaking with Carly and for breaking with Carly in
the first place. Why didn’t the fucking Francis get any grief? The nymphomaniac whore
practically shagged my dick off! Oh well, I get Louis is right about some things, we
males suffer so many injustices at the hands of girls, evil fucking females.
So the new me wasn’t to have a girlfriend until an opportunity arose. I’d have to start
making moves to hang with Ritchies without lowering myself. I thought the best route
in was Tom Wheeler. I wrote a letter to Carly telling her how much I was sorry to have
messed everything up and that I just want to be friends. I slipped it to her in RE where
she had first asked me out. I wrote one to Jenny too, telling her that the whole Carter
thing wasn’t my fault and that I was just trying to stand up for her brother. They both
pretty much bought it and so the coast was clear to move in on Tom to get to Ritchies
and his hot-shot crew. The trouble was that Tom was so under Karen Jones’ fat fucking
thumb that he was difficult to actually hang out with one on one like the old days. I
could only really see him in school because I could tell she had blocked my endeavours
to reunite after school. This was tragic! They were such a tight group, full of their stupid
in-words and in-jokes, something needed to be “done” for god’s sake. Kris Kane and
his group had started copying their hairstyles, clothes and way of talking - they all
longed so much to have Ritchies’ ultimate charisma and looks, McBride’s car, Chuey’s
girlfriend and Danson’s ability at sport. Sad as hell, why didn’t they want anything of
mine?
What I did was start to hang around with Ritchies. He didn’t particularly want me
there but I figured that if I traded on old school respect and stuck round long enough I
could start hanging outside of school. He was such a prick. All the fucking time,
“hey Dave, chill will you? You’re giving me grief here”. Or turning to McBride,
“Check out Dave’s new haircut, who’s the man” and they’d burst out laughing. I
guess you could say I was their fall guy for a while but I’d muscled my way into his
inner circle. I mean he’d phone me for homework and on the weekends and I’d get to
ride in McBride’s car with them and go out on the weekend with them and hang at
Danson’s. I was finding it rough though. I remember once we were all at Danson’s.
McBride was telling us about him at the gym.
“I was at the down the gym right. (Took my dad’s four point two) and was pulling
about three hundred on the bench. Fucking this blonde piece walks in, arse like that”, he
gestured with his oaf hands, “fucking tits like that. Thing was I was wearing my lycra,
you know how it is and up it shot. Fucking solid as anything. I was laying down and my
dick was standing up! What the fuck was I meant to do?”. Everyone was laughing at
this hot-shot piece of shit propaganda. You could never be sure if McBride was just
making half of this crap up. Chuey came in,
“So you pull three hundred now, that’s a lot man”
“You get me a bench press. Three hundred? Done. Fucking done! Davey boy, know
what you can do?”

“Don’t go to the gym to be honest”
“What the fuck? What do you mean, you need the pump the fucking iron boy. No
wonder he hasn’t got a bird look at him.” And he came over and started grabbing my
arm as if to say ‘look how skinny it is compared to my hulky efforts’.
“C’mon Dave, you need a bit of muscle. Why don’t you come down the gym with
me and Danson tomorrow night?”
“Alright”, I said nodding, trying to look as unphased as I could, “done”.
“That’s the way”, Danson said.
The next night came and I was pretty nervous. I’d never been to the gym and I
imagined looking like a fool when I didn’t know how to use anything. I’d never been
that sporty so I just went in some tight old shorts and a t-shirt. When McBride and
Danson came to pick me up, you should have seen them. McBride, especially was
dressed like he was going to model on the catwalk rather than work out. He was
wearing these lycra bicycle short, that brought out the definition in his massive legs,
and this “Young weight-lifters 1999” top which he had obviously gone too small but
he’d squeezed into it anyway. He had sweat bands and this hot-shot water flask. When
he saw me, he just burst out laughing,
“Nice shorts Dave! Watch they don’t split”. When we got there it was just as I’d
imagined, a bunch of hot-shots showing off their muscles and posing in front of the
mirror. There were some little gimps from the year below (equivalents of Kris Kane)
who made me feel better but they just kept their heads down. Literally McBride mocked
everything I did. He mocked the amount of weights I’d put on, the way I ran on the
running machine, the lack of fucking thigh and calf muscles I had. I mean please! Do
you really care McBride? We can’t all be muscle men, and some girls, Carly Thomson
told me, don’t like a lot of muscles. But then again, why is she with Chuey and not me.
Chuey isn’t muscley but he’s toned - I’m not - I’m shaped like rake. That night, just to
rub it in, Chuey was wearing this Basketball top with no sleeves so I could see his
definition and Chinese tattoos. McBride just went on, and on, and on, about how bad
I’d been at the gym. I was pretty demoralized, it was horrific. How was I ever going to
recover? How was I going to get these guys to take me seriously? Those months:
February, March, April - must have been the worst of my life. Ok, I’ll leave it there -
had enough of talking about this shit.
Week 7. Socio-political, Perennially Fey
Ok doc, let me tell you how I’m going to do it this week. First of all I’m going to tell
you everything from where I left off - about mid-February two years ago to after we
finished our exams and got our results over with and all that. I got a pile of stuff that you
wanted to see, a couple of poems from back then and those novels I started. If it’s
alright I’ll just give them to you to read whenever you want. Is that ok? Ok want them
now or at the end? Ok then.
Right, like I said it was just at the end of Winter, I was getting pretty sick of Ritchies
and his crowd. In a month I’d made very little in the way of progress. They were so full
of themselves that it was nearly impossible to break into their inner-circle as an equal.
Tom Wheeler had been trying since Belgium and he was still “licking their boots” as
Louis would have said. I thought that I was beginning to appear a bit like a lost soul,
drifting about on my own after Ritchies’ arse. I couldn’t take the mockery any more, the
fucking macho shit they went on about but what could I do? I mean this was the new
regime, characterised by good-looks, big muscles, athletic ability, sexy girlfriends,
effortless academic excellence and sublime nonchalance. There was no way that I could
break into a ruling elite like that on the basis of my own looks or abilities. I was, if you
want to put it one way, fucked. But, as ever, I had a back up plan: to reverse the old
cliché: “if you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em” and that was my plan. To overthrow the new
regime by any means, and what better means than to restore the old empire?
What needed to be done was simple. I started to hang out with Louis again, and
naturally he was thrilled.
“Well look at the Hawk, good to see you chum”. We started hanging out Riker’s
place, Stevens and Faye were unshakable from their work, unsaveable socially, no
longer my concern. Riker’s house was very nice, his parents always used to bugger off
to Amsterdam or somewhere, they were young and blatantly snorted cocaine or
something. I could tell that his dad was still fucking his mum rotten and I wouldn’t have
put it past them to be swingers, but you can’t be sure. Riker was a prick about things
though. Unlike Stevens he kept an eagle eye over everything you touched or did. We
could never go and get chips or a takeaway or something and eat them in the house. He
hated people touching his things, his shitty CDs, his feather light weights. It was ok in
the main though, because it was in regular use by a couple of ‘hip’ young adults it never
got as messy as Stevens’ used to. The crew had been reduced in numbers - Louis, Riker,
DW, Skywalker and me. Just the five of us but Skywalker was rarely there in the nights.
In school we weren’t at the centre of things and all the old minions used to act like
they’d moved on but still acknowledge ancient respect for Louis. I shall document the
average night at Riker’s.
Riker: “So what shall we do then?”
Louis: “Got that new Lynx shit? I need some spray or something”
“So what shall we do then?”
DW: “Seen Jenny Drayton recently, oh my! Tits, bazookas!”
“Fuck I smell, where’s that bloody spray?”
Me: “I noticed something about Ritchies the other day...”
“Where’s that fucking spray Riker?”
“Bazookas!”
“...Got this pimple on his chin...”

“So what shall we do then? Takeaway? Football? Video?”
“Riker, get me you’re fucking spray you cunt”
“Big tits! Bazookas...”
“...I reckon Jenny might be going off him...”
“So what...”
“RIGHT! Riker, if you don’t get me your fucking Lynx I’m going to pin your mum
down and nail her in the fucking ass!”, and then they’d have a mess around scrap until
they’d both need the spray. DW would laugh like a dickhead and Riker would have to
stop the fight because Louis had ripped his new O’ Neil t-shirt or something. It was
hopeless, they were so juvenile.
If this was the group that would have to topple Ritchies they’d either need dramatic
transformation or just double in number - strength in numbers. I thought that the best
option would be to reunite Louis with Birch and his cronies. As tiresomely numbskull
as they were, Birch, Tucks, Digger and Tim Drayton could supply some much needed
credibility to Louis’ flagging ruling credentials. The trouble was that they were
obviously still on regular speaking terms but not close enough to actually hang out
anymore. If I could devise a way to get them united without explicitly saying so it’d be
the ideal situation. In the nights, after I got in, I was plotting. I went to the library to
search for inspiration. I couldn’t really go down the Macbeth route could I? I wasn’t
really coming, the texts I’d picked up weren’t really appropriate: Shakespeare’s Julius
Caesar, Alan Bullock’s Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives, a philosophy guide to the
work of Nicola Machiavelli by somebody Williams. I was looking in far too blatant
places, maybe the ideas wouldn’t come from sources like that. I was listening to the
Kinks - and songs like their “David Watts” (“And when I lie on my pillow at night/ I
dream I could fight like David Watts/ And lead the school team to victory/ Take my
exams and pass the lot/ Wish I could be like David Watts... He is the head boy at the
school/ He is the captain of the team/ He is so gay and fancy free... And all the girls in
the neighbourhood try to go out with David Watts/ They try their best but can’t
succeed/ Because he is of pure and noble breed/ I wish I could be like David Watts”)
just made me hate Ritchies even more. I was listening to The Smiths as well, and for
about tow months or so I became obsessed with Morrissey. I tried to do my hair like his,
I tried to be sardonic, wistful, the true post-Romantic. Of course I didn’t mention this to
anyone but it’s something to consider when you think of me around this spring time I’m
telling you about. It’s not so much Morrissey’s lyrics, it’s the general despondent,
dissonant, deliberately detached, somehow aloof mood of albums like The Queen is
Dead and the less celebrated “Strangeways, Here We Come” that I was drawn to. Much
in the same way as Bowie’s better stuff captures the spirit of the outsider, The Smiths
take that spirit and push it to the nth degree.
So there I was: a heady mix of the socio-political, perennially fey, early 70s Ray
Davies and Morrissey in all his mid-80s ironic glory. Thus, the pathetic social
aspirations of reuniting Louis and Birch to ‘rule’ over the school for the few remaining
months we had left of school sat rather incongruently on my shoulders. The boy known
as “Al’” or “The Hawk” to his friends, “Dave” to his associates, and “Alex” to his dear
mummy; the boy who had a passion for things like imagining himself as Spider in
Goodfellas turning round to Joe Pesci, lamping him in the face and becoming the
newest hot-shot gangster in De Niro’s crew or as Tony Montana shooting his machine
gun in Scarface (“Say ’ello to my lil’ frein’!”) believing I was invincible, believing I
was born to rule to the world - this boy, this poor excuse for a living being - was about
to grow up. Well, actually, he was just about to change his outlook, his priorities. I was
asking myself all sorts of questions. I was writing, I was soul searching, all that Kurt
Cobain/ John Keats (depending on who you are) shit. What’s more important to you
David: seeing how many people notice your new haircut or how many people follow
you (or more likely your mate) down town? Or is it the things you love? The books, the
films, the music. And if it is the latter? The things you deem great art then what
becomes of your life? Is your life just to become a series of meaningless aesthetic
experiences about life? Just reading one book after another, just buying more and more
CDs, more and more DVD Special editions? What’s the alternative? A series of
meaningless life experiences? Why would they be meaningless? They might not be
necessarily meaningless, what meant something to me in my life thus far? (Apart form
books that is). When I’d got Stevens to try to make something of himself, that meant
something. But then again when I first figured out that Shakespeare and Salinger are
one type of writer, Dyaln and Donne are another sort, and Steinbeck, Shelley, Wesker
and mostly anyone else I’ve read are a third sort - that meant a lot to me also, possibly
more so. When I think back over the time I’ve told you about it’s not the times when big
things have happened - the tit-tac thing, the fight with Cart and Tanks, going out with
and dumping Carly Thompson - that have really mattered to me. It’s reading Of Mice
and Men and thinking about Steinbeck, listening to Dylan and hearing the truth, seeing
Macbeth and understanding his pain, his struggle to survive and his lamentable guilt.
That’s the things I take from school, from my life. You ask one person who I’ve told
you about to describe me and I bet you not one of them will tell you about the real me.
This is what I mean by a change: before I was me inside and ‘Dave, Alex, Hawk’ to
everyone else. Well now I was going to have the guts to be who I wanted to be. But, as
with everything, it needed planning. And, first of all, I had to get Louis back into power
just so we could all leave school on a high. I know, you’re thinking ‘you contradictory
bastard - you just said you’d left all that behind’, but the truth is that we can’t just
change overnight. It wasn’t just a revelation I had one night, it took time to figure out all
what I just told you - months, and in the meantime I had my life to live y’know? To cut
a long story short: I graffitied “BIRCH AND LOUIS SUCK DICK” in massive letters
on a wall that everyone would see in school. Naturally the teachers went ballistic and
there was a full enquiry into who had done it. By the by, Louis and Birch were the first
people they investigated, as if they’d done it - the logic of teachers never ceases to
amaze me. The purpose of this was to reunite Birch and Louis against a common
unknown enemy. It worked! Over the next few days I planted the idea into Louis’ head
that it was Ritchies! There was absolutely no proof but eventually - with all his old
group reunited (even Stevens and Faye were back in toe) they confronted Ritchies.
Birch pushed him on the floor, the entire school gathered round to see the fallen king,
Ritchies protested his innocence and that was the end of it. What it’d served to do is to
restore Louis’ gang’s presence as a very real force and the power group of the school.
We never recovered fully, the girls for instance just thought we were a bunch of losers
and remained loyal to Ritchies but all the usual minions came crawling back. The
victory was mine! And how hollow it was.
School was so boring to me by this stage that I was just watching my scams play out
in front of my eyes just to pass the time away. I’ll wrap up with telling you about
school now, I mean you must be bored to tears. Basically things went on much in the
state of how my last game had left them and suddenly the exams came into play. Those
who studied, studied, those who fucked about, well, they fucked about. Results day
came, I “passed the lot” with straight As. Stevens got five Bs and five Cs, an
achievement for him. Faye had something similar. Louis had three As, three Bs and
flunked the rest of them. Do you care about anyone else? Obviously the king’s men did
well, Carly and Francis did well. Oh who am I kidding? It’s so pointless telling you all
this. I mean do you really get paid to listen to this crap? That’s it - finito - no more. I’ll
tell my mum that there wont be coming again. Oh and here’s the shit I was writing
about this time. See you...
Ok, so my mum’s not coming for another half and hour but I don’t have to speak right?
So I wont...
Hey, that’s Dane you have there. Just to let you know that was my first novel attempt.
Didn’t get very far as you can see, it just became a fantasy about the schoolteacher - she
took him away ripped his clothes off and shagged him in the driver’s seat of her car,
obviously I didn’t keep that bit but I just went on to something else and this is how I
found it on my computer:
***
Dane Taylor, Birkenhead Comprehensive School.
He stumbled through the concrete hell he called home. His name was Dane. His father
was a window cleaner, drunk on nothing but the bitter solace of beer, happy about
nothing. His mother never worked, and never would. The burden of raising four
children (and losing one), the burden of a strained marriage, the burden of her life was
evident in every tired movement of her eyes.
His name was Dane. He crept passed the stinking back alleys that lead to oblivion and
beyond. An old newspaper rustled in the clammy gusts of air that swirled through the
narrow, claustrophobic streets. Dane didn’t care to notice, he didn’t care for much.
He clutched his rucksack heavily on one shoulder. Wiped his eyes and muttered a sigh
of discontent. Another day, another journey to the school he’d attended for the past 16
years. A twenty minute walk where there was nothing but tar and grey breezeblock to
keep his mind off the reality he had come to know and loathe.
He approached the school. He saw all the kids he had also come to know and loathe, all
running, all chirping their way to the gates. Dane had no friends. He was a loner.
(Through choice, rather than via the usual routes of bullying, obesity or introversion).
Dane hated his peers. He hated his teachers and their tedious lessons. He hated school.
He hated his home, his parents, he resented his siblings for occupying the same space as
he did.
It was a grey day, a cold day. After registration Dane’s first lesson was maths. He’d
always had a flair for numbers and thus harboured a secret admiration for the subject.
However, in class, Dane would sit silent, if possible, alone - the other pupils had learnt
not to sit next to him. The teachers had given up hope of garnering any response from
the questions they asked him. Dane did his work, as told - quite often flawlessly - but all
anyone ever saw was the empty void they had learnt to stay clear of.
He drifted into his next lesson. They never read the sort of books Dane liked in English.
He hated the class discussions that were forced upon them. He would only speak when
absolutely necessary and then he made the world resent it. This day however the teacher
- Mr. Branson - was absent. A supply teacher arrived, fresh-faced, female, seemingly a
lamb to the slaughter. The class idiots licked their chops with delight at the prospect of
devouring her whole.
“Alright! You can all shut up now!”, she yelled, “I’m Miss Turner, you can all call me
Miss. Turner. For the next month I will be taking your English Literature class. Mr.
Branson is… well… unavailable until further notice. No questions will be asked. No
stupidity will be tolerated. You will not talk unless asked to”. The class was
dumbfounded, she seemed like the supply teacher from a hell crafted by Roald Dahl.
Dane was quietly impressed: anything to subdue the small-minded masses, anything to
shut them up. Needless-to-say, he still maintained his constant frown, the screwed up
scowl with which he chose to address the world.
Miss Turner continued,

“You will now each in turn stand up. You will state your name. You will state your
father’s occupation. You will state at least two things of interest about yourself. You
will state your favourite literary work. You will not be silly. You are all old enough to
do this”. There was a hushed snigger but with a glare from the teacher it quickly
subsided.
One by one the class carried out her whim:

“My name is Lucy Porter, my father is a doctor and… um… I own a dog called Benny
and my best friend is Jessica… um… and my favourite book is… my favourite book is:
The Folk and the Faraway Tree by Enid Blyton” - this sent shivers down Dane’s spine.
What about J.D. Salinger? What about all the great books in the world? Dane shrugged
it off and made a mental note.
“Thank you Lucy, though if those are the two most interesting things about you the
you’re not a very interesting person are you?” The whole class burst out into laughter.
Miss Turner grinned viciously. Dane couldn’t believe a person like this actually
existed, he remained outwardly hostile however.
The remainder of the lesson rolled on in a similar fashion and finally the buzzer
sounded to dismiss the class. Dane was bemused by Miss Turner, shocked, fascinated.
Nevertheless he decided that he was in no mood for school today, Miss Turner or not. It
was morning break-time and Dane just left, via the front gates, and returned home.
When he arrived he made no words. His mother neither acknowledged him or spoke.
He went to his room and looked out of the window, longing for something to happen,
maybe for a bolt of lightning to come and erase his existence.
***
Pretty crappy don’t you think? Try the other one, it’s sort of like a companion piece,
it’s called Jen. What I wanted to do was, after I’d first written Dane was have about
eight of these kids, all from different schools. Each of them would be an outsider of
some kind, or feel like a bit distant to his or her surroundings. It would start with Dane
but then shift to the next character with the next chapter and so on. Each character’s
initial chapter (which would be pretty long, about twenty pages or something) would
end with them receiving an invitation, by mail or email or phone or something, to a

secret meeting. The guy who would set it all up would be an enigma - he’d wear a cloak
and carry a staff - and he’d got them all together to be a secret organisation (kind of like
the one I’d imagined before) - although we never know what exactly his aims are or
why they’ve been brought together. The interesting part of the book would be when all
the characters meet for the first time, the differences in their backgrounds, how they’d
interact with each other and react to the increasingly bizarre situations the old dude
would get them into. I never thought of a title - The Mage, The Secret Children - just
two of the shit ones I considered. That’s just indicative of my writing, I can never
concentrate on anything for long. I have the grand vision, the great concept - but
fleshing out the prerequisite parts, implementing the details of my plan - that’s what
evades me. That’s what I dislike about these modern artists, they have an idea, a
concept or something that they can work to or from but quite often they’ll just punch a
hole in a piece of cardboard or just put a lump of metal on a stick and leave it there. And
then when you read what the ‘art’ is about, it’s about how a ‘sense of infinite and space,
of light and time informs all we do’ and that life, however complicated it can get, ‘is
like the mask, a series of moments never connecting’. I mean what does all that shit
mean? I could fucking do that, hang on, I just did! Why should I have to work hard and
toil as a writer to work out my vision when those poncey fucks can basically do what
they want if they can explain it. I just don’t understand that sort of art, maybe that’s why
my art is writing.
***
Jennifer Hunter, St. Beatrice Grammar School.
Jen sat in the pub, alone, dejected, unloved, a victim of her own unrealistically high
standards, of her own over inflated ego. She watched a group of thirty-something’s
perform their weekly ritual. One of them seemed to be taking the lead. He stood up on a
table, made the most of his chest, and: half-confident, half-vulnerable, bellowed in a
loud, pseudo-military, self-consciously-cockney rant:
“Work hard, play hard!”. Which was immediately repeated by a collective alpha-male
chant reassured by the relatively high numbers involved in the sum of its parts.
“Work hard, play hard!”
“Work hard play hard! That’s what we say son.”
“Work hard play hard! That’s what we say son.”
“Work hard play hard! When the day’s done”
“Work hard play hard! When the day’s done”
“Work hard!”
“Play hard!”
“Work hard!”
“Play hard!”, the commander-in-chief was gaining in confidence every time his peers
answered him. His lead grew louder, coarser, more disturbing:
“A pint when the night comes!”
“A pint when the night comes!”
“A pint when she cums!”
“A pint when she cums!”
“A pint when I cum!”
“A pint when you cum!”
“She cums!”
“She cums!”
“I cum!”
“You cum.”
“Who cums?”
“You cum!”
“Work hard, play hard ha ha…” The demonstration descended into laughter. Jen was
disgusted, embarrassed by the inanity of the display she had just witnessed. She sipped
her generic vodka and coke, angled her body away from the rabble and attempted to
focus her attention on something, anything else.
The men hogged the centre-stage at The Lost Sailor Inn, to Jen’s left lay the bar and its
needlessly toothless keeper, to her right - beyond the mob was the exit. Why didn’t she
just get up and leave? After all Jen faced school in the morning and it wasn’t as if she
was having much fun. The thought of going home, on this night anyway, was just too
much for her. She sighed and looked sulkily at her drink when a large group of boys
from her school emerged at the far exit. Despite her apparent dismay at the sight of this
she still, almost instinctively, checked her hair, readjusted herself in her seat and
endeavoured to make herself look as aloof as humanly possible.
It’s Luke Gossard and his minions. Drat! They’re only the most popular guys in the
school. Whatever. It’s not all easy being the prettiest girl in school you know. It
makes it difficult to talk to anyone. You know the girls are all jealous and
unfortunately you know that every second you spend talking to a boy is used for
additional wank material for when he gets home. Unless of course its Luke
Gossard, who has similar problems himself. I’d even like a bit of him myself.
Trouble is, we went out back in third, and well it didn’t really work out and we sort of
don’t mention it anymore. It’s a sort of unspoken deal, you know. Julia (she’s my
best friend) she was all like, “Jen how could you?” but you know, it’s not all about
looks is it? But then it is… Whatever. Listen to me I’m raving on and we’ve barely
even met. I’m Jen and you are?
The boys drew closer. None of them had spotted Jen just yet, they were all too busy
admiring the shouting men, the men that they would hope to ‘grow up’ to emulate (it
was their final year of school, the average age was seventeen or eighteen). However
Luke had a strange quality about him that set him apart from the rest. His good looks
were obvious but it was something else: a sort of glow. It was an aura that his presence
afforded him, an exuberant confidence muddled with an endearing, natural shyness, a
hint of mischief spliced with an incontrovertible sincerity. Jen lapsed into admiration
despite herself. His friends, or to put it more accurately, followers waited on his every
word. They laughed at his jokes, they tried to evoke his spirit in the event of his
absence, they put themselves in a position to be dominated and exploited. As a result
the girls only ever fell for Luke, his friends were just there to be played off, both for
Luke and for whoever the lucky girl was that night.
As Jen drifted further into the realms of pure veneration her eyes happened to slip onto
one of these said friends: Chris Madlock.
Chris isn’t a bad looking boy, he’s alright to talk to too. But that’s the trouble, he’s
just alright. Any hint of charisma he has can be traced at some point back to Luke.
That’s the trouble the boys in our year, they’re just… Well, none of them have any
personality of their own, none of the one’s worth speaking to at all that is. Apart
from Luke of course. But I couldn’t be seen talking to Luke, they’d just call me a
slag or a bitch or whatever. I could have any boy in my year you know. Trouble is,
everyone else knows that. Literally, I’ve only got Julia to talk to and she’s with her
‘boyfriend’ tonight. She’s not the same as she used to be since she met him. She
actually thinks she has a life of her own now. Ha! I wonder how much her boyfriend
really loves her. Kevin (that’s is name), the little geek, he’d come running if I
showed him the right bit of leg and leave poor Julia on her big fat arse! But I’d never
do that, I’m her best friend. I’ve told her that she’s wasting her time with Kevin
anyway. He hasn’t even got a car or anything, his face is spotty, the boys used to
call him “Sally” because he laughed like a girl, I mean come on! Can’t she get
anyone better? I have told her but then you know, I’ve got a feeling deep down she
know it’s the best she can get. Ah bless. Well Julia’s always been there for me in
the past, now its my turn to be there for her. Oh hang on, Chris is coming over…
***
You can see how I was trying to be a bit experimental there. I think, all in all, it
works better, as a work in its own right, than Dane does. But you see my problem about
the wider work? How could I have a book which started as dark in tone and with as
much descriptive flair and then follow it with the voice of a high school Queen? Clearly
you can see here that Jen is the Queen, Julia her minion. Or in other words, Jen is Carly
and Julia is Francis (pre-year eleven), well actually she‘s based on a cross between
Sadie Smith and Alex Jones but who cares right? You see, I can’t even escape from my
fucking generic life in my art. If you hadn’t worked it out yet: Luke is Ritchies, Chris is
Tom Wheeler and Kevin is, believe it or not, Phillip Watts. I felt I couldn’t write any
more though. It was all a bit Sweet Valley High or The Baby Sitter’s Club, granted, I’d
subverted notions of that with the opening gambit of “Work hard, play hard” but it sits a
little bit uneasily with “she’s with her ‘boyfriend’ tonight”. And the way Jen speaks,
come to think of it, it could be Jenny Drayton couldn’t it - given that she’s traditionally
gone out with Ritchies (aka Luke). What was I saying?... Oh yeah: and the way Jen
veers between saying things like “the little geek” and “drat” to things like “wank
material” and “big fat arse” doesn’t seem believable either. That’s not what anyone
would talk like, that’s just how I’d imagine them to talk. What I should have done is
actually imagined Jenny or Carly talking but they stupid bitches never said enough,
never had enough original pea-brain thoughts to converse long enough to write a page
with - let alone a whole book! But then do any of us? Someone could be saying that
about me now, and it’s true - you could never get a book’s worth out of what I’ve
actually said to people. It’d make for a pretty discordant read I can tell you. What have
you got there now? Is that “The Stag”? Pretty clear what that’s about no doubt.
***
The Stag
Everybody wants to be like him

He’s got what the girls want
He’s got the perfect smile
He’s got what the world wants
Bet you’d like to step into his shoes

He’s in your mind
He folds into you
You’ll deny it but its in everything you do
“Tell me how to be like the stag”
Born with a face Hollywood would kill for

He’ll look at your girl
And she’ll throw away her love
The instant that he hits all the right spots
And you lay in bed
And she lays in his
And when it’s all over you’ll take her back
You’ll kiss her foot and she’ll frown at you
You go for a drink

You laugh with him
He’ll keep up the pretence that you’re equal
She’ll call for you
You’ll laugh with her
She’ll keep up the pretence that you’re equal
You’ll sleep with her
She’ll think of him
He’d beat you at an arm wrestle

Kill you in a fight
Outwit you at chess
He’d win alright
He’ll get a better job than you
He’ll have more money
He’ll lead a better life
He’ll shag your wife
His friends hang on his words

On his anal hairs
For just one inch of his charisma
He’s got the monopoly
He’s a capitalist
And he’s better than you
You better deal with it
Or die a loser
***
That’s pretty embarrassing thinking about it but y’know, it’s true in a way. I suppose
it’s like a call to arms of all the minions who let themselves get walked over - I mean at
least try to survive, even if he is better than you... That one’s about Jessica Reynolds
when she went through an ill-fated Goth phase a while back. That first line refers to me
and her splitting up.
***
Goth Queen
It’s not like it had to be

The sky’s so big
You never look at it
Your eyes burn to holes
In the soles of your feet
Your makeup’s thick enough
To mark you out as a freak
Don’t try so hard girl
No one cares
You can take that black mascara
And mix it in your blood
It doesn’t matter - you’re not in their world
And your friends have started to dress like you

Or aren’t they your friends?
Or aren’t you just a bunch of outcasts
That can’t fit in
Because you’re too ugly
Or too weird
Or too clever
Or too selfish
To function with the rest of us
Tell me your agenda
It doesn’t matter - you’re not in my world
***
Can you see how I’m getting a bit more modernist? Like T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound and
all that. I’ve only just read about those two and read some of their poems but looking
back on it, it’s true. I’d stopped using strict forms and rhyme, writing about things that
mattered to me. Eliot’s got this idea about a canon or something. This essay I read of his
about a month ago, and it’s not easy to read, reckons that every writer writes against the
ghosts of all the old great writers but only the great ones matter. I noticed he seems to
think that he matters conveniently but he never says how one gets an invite. Do I matter
T.S. Eliot? Shelly doesn’t does he? Not to you anyway, does he? I don’t know about
whether those poems I wrote are modernist, or whether I agree about the whole canon
thing. I mean why does Andrew Marvell matter and not Shelly? Seems like Eliot had
his own secret uncles.
Week 8. The Capital of Portugal is Lisbon
That summer I was still hanging out with Louis and Stevens, although by this time
the novelty had worn out and I really wasn’t interested in them to tell you the truth. I
spent more and more time at home and tried to exert an increasing distance between
myself and my cohorts. Of course, Adam was home after his first year at Bristol and he
already picked up that very annoying way of speaking(?) When students(?) First move
away(?) Oh, that’s so great(?) Everything I say is like a question(?) I go up(?) At the
end(?) Of every sentence (?). Everything is “cool” or “fantastic” or “brilliant” as if he’s
spent so long trying to make friends that he forgot to come out of the ultra-nice dick that
he becomes just to make friends and stayed there. Anyway, such was things, that this
summer I couldn’t handle being around Adam for long. I couldn’t help feeling that he’d
changed, not only in the way he spoke, but in his manner. Surely: if you are comfortable
with who you were in school then it would be logical to assume that one would return
from a year away from home in an academic institution unchanged, unaltered, yourself
- not so with Adam it seemed to me. I resented his newly acquired character traits.
Little saying that he’d never having fucking said before: “oh that’s grand”. I mean what
the fuck? “Grand”!? And there’s another one: “brutal”. If ever he thinks that
something’s a bit harsh or hard - “oh brutal man”. Well let me tell you what I think is
‘brutal’ first-year Adam, I think it’s brutal that in school you were never quite
comfortable with who you were, that you’ve carved out a little niche for yourself now -
finally at university when nobody has to lick boot or climb social ladders. I felt sold out
by Adam. The fact is, in university, I imagine there are no social hierarchies or
dominant groups - well in America maybe - but not here. He goes to school since the
age of three till he’s eighteen and all the things that he has become, that his social
standing has moulded him into, is eradicated, transformed, fucking metamorphosised
into the pseudo-Australian, positive thinking, “oh that’s grand”-saying twat who
arrived home in June that year.
And then there was always my parents to turn to: them, and everyone else in the
town who’d nothing better to do had all turned their attentions to a valuable cause,
namely badgering a local construction company to stop them from demolishing an old
bakery site. I mean this scabby old building had been there decades, it was totally
derelict, must have acted as home to about a million rats and while it wasn’t doing that
became a convenient rubbish tip in its spare time. Up until Jerry Hurtado Construction
bought the site and contracted some cowboy demolition company to knock the damn
thing down, everyone was perfectly content to drop their rubbish outside it, piss on its
decaying walls, or more probably just neglect it altogether. But now, now when
somebody is trying to do something useful and probably build a nice block of flats there
or something it’s the most important thing that ever graced the local council’s agenda,
the local church’s agenda, the local primary school’s agenda, my fucking parent’s
agenda. They had formed a rather pathetic reaction group with around thirty or so other
similarly aged, similarly classed people, in league with the old biddies from the church
group and all those other ‘local community’ type people. Fuck them, fuck them all!
And why? Because they stand for something I hate: small mindedness, security in
routine, ‘all for one and one for all, hooray!’. Let’s all stick together and stop this old
bakery from getting knocked down, and then when we’ve succeeded, when we’ve got it
restored, when we’ve installed our burglar alarm system, joined a neighbourhood watch
scheme, complained about people who sponge off the state but loyally pay our taxes
and ‘do our bit’ for society, when we’ve seen our perfect smiling children through
school, given them a cake and jelly for their 5th birthday, won the egg and spoon race at
their sports day, congratulated them on their wonderful exam results, when we’ve
worked nine-to-five, and that bit of overtime just for a rainy day, a structured pension
plan, life-insurance, car-insurance, house-insurance: then! Then we can look at
ourselves and say ‘well, you’ve done yourself proud there. I’ve been a success, I’ve
lived my life and achieved the ultimate dream: those middle-class bastions of security,
family and good living’. Well fucking done mum and dad - you got your bakery
restored - well done, give yourselves a pat on the back. Go on dad, come home watch
the cuddly news at six, eat your middle-class food, kiss your middle-class wife and wait
while I go off to my middle-class room and shoot myself in the head!
It’s not that I think the working class are any better don’t get me wrong. Like I said
the working class are worse if anything. They take actually take pride in being thick.
I’ve spoken to working class old women who have that odd penchant of proud
ignorance, it’s a fantastically working-class phenomena that. They have their minds
totally shut off from anything that they don’t know. I know this old woman Mrs. Jones,
she is our next-door neighbour and often, in the summer, she makes cakes for Adam
and I and comes round and talks to my mother for a while. That’s the type of person my
mother is, the type of middle-aged woman who likes talking to old people, old people
who aren’t her parents for fuck’s sake. I mean why? Why talk to old people? What have
they to possibly offer apart than from to tell you that things were better in their day, that
kids were brighter, politer, better behaved, that you could leave your door open and
nobody would come and steal anything. Well let me tell you something old person:
there’s a reason for it all. The reason that nobody would come and rob you is because
you had nothing worth stealing. Did you have state-of-the-art television entertainment
systems, multi-thousand pound Personal Computers, a DVD player and couple of
thousand pounds worth of home appliances to steal? Did you? And why did kids seem
politer, better behaved? Because if they weren’t their animal of a father would kick the
shit out of them and they’d have no child-line to call, no nanny-state to pick them up.
And did everyone go round saying how wonderful children were back then? Of course
not! Every generation defines itself against the past one: so it’s bollocks, it’s nostalgic
bullshit that life was better before and all the kids were angels. The 50s kids, the Elvis
generation: a nightmare for the straight-upper lip and all that fuddy-duddies of the 40s.
And the teddy boys of Elvis’ today were the squares of the Beatles’ tomorrow. And
where were the hippies in the peak of T-rex and Bowie induced Glam? And where were
those glitter queens and Bowie boys when Johnny Rotten brought us kicking and
screaming into the punk era? Every generation of youth shocking and horrifying the
staid older generation, every older generation saying ‘things were better in my day,
there was none of this... blah de blah!’. So fuck you old people! Condemn your own
generation if you are to condemn anyone, condemn the bastards who beat up their
wives, the teachers who used canes, the grandfather who told you to keep your stupid
head down - but you can’t can you? You’re a product of all that outdated shit and god,
doesn’t it show!
Anyway, I wanted to tell you about the working-class not the old, or to put it another
way, I wanted specifically to tell you about the old working-class who take pride in
their ignorance, as embodied by Mrs. Jones. I was in the garden revising for a
Geography test. She peered over the wall like the cretinous seventy year old dinosaur
that she was,
“Oh hello David, studying hard? There’s a good boy”. Here she was, seventy years
old, not one qualification to her name, not one achievement she could call her own (if
you discount garnering praise for baking never-as-nice-as-they-are-meant-out-to-be
cakes that is) and she was talking down to me. Me: top of his class in four subjects and
certainly ‘up there’ in the others, “Essay of the Year” winner for my fantastic dissection
of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and all round sovereign-ruler of the social elite in our
school. What gave her the right to call me a good boy? Her age? Basically that was it,
because she had the privilege of being born a few years before me she can speak down.
I was feeling petulant so I thought I’d deviate from the usual “yes Mrs. Jones”
pleasantries.
“Mrs. Jones...”
“Yes dear”
“You couldn’t tell me what the capital of Portugal is could you?”
“Oh I don’t know anything like that”
“Ok, well, it’s Lisbon”
“Oh, is it?”
“Yes, LIS-BON. So do you know now?”
“I don’t know anything like that dear, oh no”
“It’s Lisbon, the capital of Portugal is Lisbon”
“I told you I don’t know”
“I’m telling you that it’s Lisbon”
She was stubborn in her ignorance,
“No”, she said with that horrible working-class old woman way, “I’m sorry dear but
I have to get the washing on, keep working hard.” Fucking moron of a woman. No, why
should I respect old people if they are thick and refuse to learn. I told her what? Four
times that the capital of Portugal is Lisbon and she just couldn’t register it, she could
not process that simple nugget of information. Why? You tell me because I for the life
of me can’t figure this social phenomenon out. Another time I remember telling this girl
who I was working with at the bakery restoration (yes, I got roped into doing it) that I
was reading Andrew Marvell.
“Andrew who? Never ‘eard of him”, she had that classic blend of Michael Caine
cockney and soon-to-be-just-another -single-mother gracelessness.
“He’s a poet from the seventeenth century”
“Never heard of him”
“Well now you have”
“I ain’t never ‘eard of him awight. Captain Marvel’s son innit.”
That’s something else I hate about the working class, the accents. Everywhere you go,
whether it’s Liverpool, Wales, Newcastle, London, fucking Georgia, Alabama - the
poor speak in the most atrocious and ridiculous ways. Why speak like that? People who
went to school with me speak in this needlessly affected, needlessly common
Eastenders lilt - why? They had the same upbringing as me, so why, why speak like you
come from the deepest darkest slums of East London? I hate everything about the
working class, their football chants, their accents, their fucking gaudy, I’m
going-to-wear-the-chunkiest-jewelry-you’ve-EVER-seen-in-your-life fashion they
adopt (complete with brand names in BIG letters across the chest), their active pursuit
of the low-brow (RE: Wesker’s Roots) and their active denial of knowledge or related
to anything that they would ask on University Challenge. In a word, they are thick,
tasteless, small-minded people.
But do you think that the people who actually go to university are any different? -
The generic gelled hair/ tight top masses - Adam’s friends - are no different. They have
their own little identity, their own trends, but many of them take pride in not knowing
things. In fact, to plead ignorance is just about one of the coolest things you can do, and
these are people occupying the seat of learning, driving us into the future. I hate most
students I’ve met. They live to get drunk and smoke weed, they turn the tiniest amounts
of work into the biggest load of stress you’ll ever experience and they have the biggest
superiority complex. The way that a student speaks to an eighteen year-old like me
makes Mrs. Jones’ ‘be a good boy’ seem ultimately preferable. Students are all such a
cliché, they are all trying to stand out more than ever, especially the ones who failed to
do so in school. And those fucking back-packing trips they all go on, or the ‘year out’
they all take. Do you think they actually go round the world to experience some
culture? Like hell they do. Just another notch on the belt. Thailand? tick. America? tick.
India? tick, and so on. Are they going to see the pyramids to learn about an ancient
civilisation or are they going just to say ‘been there, done that’? If I ever travel I will do
so for the right reasons, I’m not pretentious I just hate the fucking generic,
post-modern, ‘I-listen-to Gareth Gates-and-am-proud-of-it’ student girl and the spotty,
Beckham hairstyled, pot-bellied student boy, I hate them, I hate them like no other
group I’ve mentioned. Why? Because of the potential, the potential that they have and
waste, they waste it. They are put in a position of unlimited learning possibilities and
they squander it living the student dream. And what a dream it is, wasting time and
money to piss about with a bunch of people you’ve only just met but are your best
friends all of a sudden. Crap! It’s shit and I will not be like that when I’m a student.
So I don’t like students, I don’t like old people, I don’t like middle-aged people like
my parents, I don’t like people my own age, I don’t like the middle-class, I don’t like
the working-class, in short: I don’t like humanity. If I could go and live on a rock with
only the great books and a suitcase full of brilliant CDs, a place where nobody else
could ever come and intrude, I’d be happy - in fact it’d be paradise if I didn’t have to
endure the inanity of my fellow human beings. I find it so difficult to like people,
actually let me put it a different way: I find it easy to like people, but difficult not to see
their flaws very quickly, see their pathetic, inane existences for what they are and I
resent them for it. Oh just for the cold silence of being alone, the emptiness: a society of
one, crafted of perfection. But for the chill of loneliness, the stuff from which
nightmares are made, it would feed my soul – with every passing second of solitude I’d
grow, I’d… be contented.
September neared. I was faced with a whole series of new opportunities. We had all
already selected our choice of A-level subjects and, because our school did not do
A-levels, I applied to one of three places to study for and sit them in. These institutions
were: Loughborough Secondary School, the biggest state school in the district, a lot
rougher than my old school and a fair old walk away; St. Andrew’s College, a boarding
school about fifty miles away, my dad said that the fees weren’t a problem and that they
had an excellent English tutor called Dr. Franks; the third choice was St. Hilda’s
Grammar School - formerly an all-girls school but now mixed, they had very affordable
fees and prided themselves on strict discipline. So there I was - I had to decide my life
for the next two years. Each had their pros and cons. Loughborough was obviously
where a majority of my former friends would go, Louis, Stevens, Tom Wheeler - they
were all destined to go to Loughborough. That, I suppose, was a plus. On the negative
side, I’d be going into an environment where the lines of social division had already
long since been cast. We’d be the new kids and perhaps even marginalized because of
it. It’s easy enough to integrate into a society if you are one, but if there are five or six of
you and from day one you start hanging round with each other, you risk self-imposed
exile. Granted Lydia and Jenny would lend us an extra barrel load of credibility, but
there would be nice girls already there and working-class ones at that. So could I handle
that possibility? Mixing with the working class, having to start on the bottom rung of
the social ladder with Louis and co tied, like a weight to my foot, preventing me from
climbing up it. No fucking way! In any case, I wanted something new. I needed to get
away from them all, and from my family. This of course made the expensive option, St.
Andrews, the natural choice. And I took it. I was to study English, History, Philosophy
and Geography at St. Andrews, and to my knowledge there’d be no baggage, none of
the old reputation, the old “Alex ‘The Hawk’ Hawkins” or plain “Dave” to hold me
back. Fantastic! Hilda’s was not even an option. As it happens I plumped for St.
Andrew’s but I’ve got other things on my mind doc. Things like the emptiness of
modern man, stuff like that. Does that sound stupid to you?
Let me elucidate: people are so empty, their lives are empty. Take away a person’s
job, his television and his ability to consume vast quantities of alcoholic drink and what
are you left with? Soulless man: fake love for a wife he doesn’t want to be with, false
allegiance to a job he really hates, false security in the space that he calls home. So
empty, so utterly desolate. And his children who he feels obliged to love are no better:
take away their so called friendship group, their ability to drink copious amounts of
alcoholic drinks and what are you left with?
And that’s another thing I hate - drink. Or more specifically, the Ibiza generation.
Hordes of these vile, totally contemptible, totally generic, totally bland, characterless
urchins, these multitudes of pure vermin, behaving as if they were brought up without
morals or any form of discipline (and most of them probably were), society is becoming
totally reckless in that way. And for the record, the ‘Ibiza generation’ is also the
‘whatever’ generation, Generation X, the ‘me-generation’: “me”, “me”, “I”, “I want”,
“I must have”. It’s the generation of self expression at any cost, of individualism at any
cost - the generation of selfish, self-seeking little dicks like McBride and Chuey, like
Tom Wheeler... like me. And this is deeply rooted in the unconscious collective moral
as something to be championed, something to strive for, the be all and end all of modern
life. It was born in the 80s this attitude of rabid materialism, gross superficiality and
struggle for personal ‘betterment’ at any cost. Only then it was blatant now you just
have to read between the lines. So frequently is “I don’t need this” used as a means of
justification that it seems like the automatic, ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card to any
emotional dilemma. Why do divorce rates continue to soar? It doesn’t take a genius...
And these people, these horrible Ibiza clubbing minions - all in their fucking, generic
black mini skirts or Ben Sherman shirts or whatever, all with the same haircuts, the
same bit of flab pathetically peeking out from their unnecessarily figure hugging
hipster/boob-tube combo, the same desire to get copiously drunk, to pull some
drowning soul in the same boat, to act disorderly flash their tits or arse and have “the
best laugh in their life” with their friends. Their empty fucking lives.
And these people, who I hate so much, are they educated? Are they cultured? Could
they tell you what the capital of Portugal is without thinking? Could they distinguish a
Jimi Hendrix record from an Eric Clapton one? Could they name a single member of
the cabinet who’s not the prime minister? Could they sit down and appreciate a
superbly crafted film? Or a piece of verse, or a theatre production? Could they ever rise
above the quagmire of mediocrity? Do they ever care? NO! Of course they fucking
don’t, of course they can’t, they don’t even want to. And all in the name of
individualism, the irony kills me. But can they sit ten GCSEs, four A-levels and pass
the lot? Yes! Can they go to a reputable university and, in spite of the wonderful
opportunities afforded to them, ignore them all and just stick to what they know best?
Yes! Can they graduate, get a moderate five figure salary and bring more gormless
’individuals’ into the world? YES! Can I tolerate it? No! No doctor, I can’t! I can’t take
it anymore: I hate my fellow man! I want to crawl inside my mind and seek refuge
there, stay there and never come out. The only person I can truly say I enjoy the
company of, is me! Doctor... please, I don’t feel like I belong here. I mean here - on this
earth. Everywhere I turn people DISGUST me, I absolutely abhor them. My mother,
my brother, my father, my ‘friends’, my teachers, my seventy year-old next door
neighbour, the fat people I see walking down the street, the fucking common girls I see
when I go out, the people who “do things as a family”, the people who don’t or can’t do
things as a family, the people who try to stand out, the people who are so fucking boring
that they can only try to blend in - I hate them all. ALL OF THEM! Arghhhhhh!
Honestly, give me a gun... bang! Dead. Bang! Dead! Bang! Dead! Bang! Dead! Dead!
Fucking dead. Sorry that’s exactly how I feel.
I mean obviously I’d never kill anyone, I mean actually kill someone. I mean the
guilt would kill me, I just not a killer y’know. But god how I’d love to. I’d love it, to
look at one of the thick, generic, plain masses look them in the eye and bang! The blood
on my face trickling down, turning from warm to cold, from life to death, the release!
Oh the satisfaction it would give me! And then I’d get a Goth bitch - bang! And then
one of those fucking goody-two-shoes,
“I-play-the-cello-am-head-girl-and-am-going-to-suceed-at-whatever-I-do” type girls -
bang! Actually all female, all moaning fucking women - bang! bang! bang! See how
you like Women’s lib now! Then a Birch-style hard man - bang! Be good at something
apart from fighting you dick. Then someone who can’t be bothered - bang! Try harder.
Then someone who works hard - bang! Stop trying so hard you cretin. I’d kill them all,
and for no reason or motive other than my pure hatred of them...
I don’t want to scare you, I’m obviously not going to do any of that, obviously not -
I’m not mad you know. You don’t have to worry, it’s just that... It’s just that it angers
me so much, my rage is absolute, it makes me want to vomit how much I hate them all.
All of them, and why? Well you tell me. It’s the product of our times my friend. They
tell us everybody’s equal and then they put us into sets for Maths according to academic
ability. They tell us that we’re all the same and to respect your neighbour, then they
encourage us all to be different. They give us sports games to show that we’re not equal,
and fashion codes to discriminate others with. It’s fucking sick I tell you. How am I
meant to function in a society like that? I’m eighteen years-old and I’m already
contemplating ending my life out of sheer frustration with the world. It owes me
nothing, I know, but does that mean that it must torture me with its millions, no -
billions, of talentless, inane people? Or with its equal numbers of boot-licking
‘winners’ (or else backstabbing survivors)? If it’s one thing the world owes me its
solitude, one thing I’ll never get. “To be or not to be, that is the question”, right Hamlet?
But tell me son of Denmark if I choose death will I finally get to be alone or will I be
lumbered with the ‘ones I love’? If there is a God, he’s a sick bastard, he’s thrust me
into a world of morons and then teased me with the likes of J.D. Salinger and William
Shakespeare, with Bob Dylan and Ray Davies, that in fact I might not be alone. That
maybe, just maybe, there’s one like minded soul out there. Well where is he God?
Where is my saviour? And if you tell me he came 2000 years ago on a cross then to be
frank I don’t believe you Lord. He died to save all our souls right? So why do I feel like
mine has been dragged through eighteen years of sheer emptiness? Eighteen years of
hell, raked through all the shit that comes with modern life. I’m so alone and yet my
only wish is to be alone. Do you understand what that feels like? What sort of fucked up
position is that to be in? Of course you don’t, you’re happily married with a great job
and two chirpy little kids. I’m wasting my time here, you’ll just tell my ridiculous
‘normal’ mother how damn unhinged I am anyway, diagnose me with Tourette’s
Syndrome why fucking don’t you. Whatever…
I envisage a world of hierarchies, a world of total fucking elitism. You know where
I’m coming from? If you’re too lazy, too thick, too uncultured to do well then fuck you
buddy, you don’t even deserve the chance to do well. In my system the mediocre would
perish. I’m sorry, if you’re willing to accept Slade instead of David Bowie, Rocky
instead of Raging Bull; if you’re willing to accept generic nights getting pissed, fucking
just doing enough to get by rather than excelling, then I’m sorry you deserve not to do
well, you fucking deserve a mediocre life. But that’s not what I see, a person who is
willing to accept the mediocre when they know what it takes to be the best or they know
what defines a great film from a merely enjoyable one gets the same chances as one
who refuses to accept the mediocre and will only accept the pinnacle of achievement,
who will stop at nothing less than success. Don’t give me the Marxist shit about
everyone being equal because that is shit, explain to me, please I’m begging you, why
some sad fuck who as spent his whole life listening to crap music, watching crap films,
excelling at nothing, wanting everything should have the same opportunity as me.
Why? Why should somebody who can’t distinguish his Plato from his Immanuel Kant
or somebody who judges a film by how many times it made him laugh have the same
rights as me? Tell me that! Fucking tell me why the people without enough spine to be
themselves so they have to strive for social inclusion, at any cost, should have the same
rights as the people they are stupid enough to follow. Why should some prick who spent
his school life working so hard that he never truly thought abut what he was studying or
some prick who spent his entire school life dossing the fuck around have the same
rights as someone who truly understood what they were doing? WHY? Fucking tell me.
I envisage a society ruled by intellectualism, by aestheticism, by ability, by the will

to be better, to want better. The people who know there’s more to life then getting
pissed on the weekend, the people who aren’t self-pitying enough to become depressed,
those people, those glorious, talented people, those people are the ones who should be
privileged. Capitalism of course is great but it falls down in a key area: materialism and
inheritance. You see, in Capitalism as we know it, inequality is inescapable because a
talented man who becomes rich passes his money down to his perhaps half-wit child.
Automatically inequality is thus born: the rich man’s son has access to a better life than
the poor man’s son. BUT! It doesn’t have to be that way! If the governments of the
world centralised schooling so all children attended the same sort of school then the
weak could be weeded from the strong, the intelligent could be the separated from the
thick, and so on. Inheritance would be totally abolished, and perhaps the money given
to the state at death could fund the schools. From the age of thirteen one could already
segregate the schools into different stratas. The top one for the talented and
exceptionally bright or hard working, another for the average and another for the dregs.
From there the rest works itself out perfectly: doctors, lawyers, artists, journalists; then
teachers, artisans, fucking middle management; and lastly dustmen, supermarket
employees and all other non-skilled jobs. In a way it happens already but it is corrupted
by the aforementioned material inequalities and by finer points. For instance, a person
can work very hard in school and get a good degree and job and still be the most
ignorant, uncultured person living, to me that is wrong. People may be intelligent but
lack knowledge, general knowledge and ‘culture’ lessons should be made compulsorily
in my opinion. You could be the best doctor on earth and still not know what the capital
of Portugal is or appreciate the finer points of Hamlet, to me that is wrong. Nobody
should be in a position of power unless they are complete, well-rounded individuals,
nobody should even be given the opportunity to climb society’s ladder if a certain set of
criteria aren’t filled. The mediocre, the average, the also-rans, the steady - they all
deserve nothing better than average. Society has become too lenient on the
middle-man, the middle, fucking no hoper, average Joe, work-hard but get nowhere,
fuck - in my opinion! The mediocre must be crushed with as much resonance as the
weak. No state benefit, no nothing: and don’t worry about the children they’re in state
funded boarding school! My society is an awesome one and it can’t fail! It can’t
because it is the aesthetic, intellectual vision of perfection where ability is rewarded
over hard work, where knowledge is empowered and ignorance is cursed, where
material wealth holds no sway and herdism is punished. This is not fascism my friend
it’s Nature! It’s the way nature works. Read Ted Hughes’ poetry, it’s full of it. Hawks
honing their superior predatory skills, otters and field mice dashing about avoiding
them. And only the best Hawks, the fastest otters, the cleverest mice survive: why? Of
course because that is the way it was meant to be. We’re all born the same it’s just
experiences that make us different.
A. ‘David re-entered’.
David sat in his room, at his desk, alone. The room was spacious, the desk:
mahogany. On the wall facing David there was a large poster of John Travolta and
Samuel L. Jackson as seen in Pulp Fiction. Just below this there was a shelf on which a
multitude of DVDs were stored, meticulously catalogued in alphabetical order: Alien,
Aliens, Alien 3, Amelie, American Beauty, American History X, American Psycho,
Annie Hall, Apocalypse Now, The Baseball Diaries, Batman, Batman Forever, The
Battleship Potemkin, Blue Velvet, Bridge On the River Kwai, Cape Fear, Carlito’s
Way, Casablanca, Casino, The Colour of Money, The Crow, The Deer Hunter, Dog
Day Afternoon, Donnie Brasco, Donnie Darko, Dr. Strangelove. The shelf had a plaque
on its width, it read “A-D”. To the left, stuck to the wall beside the shelf, was a
laminated A4 sheet of paper. It documented the statistics of each film. The information
was stored in a table. The table had the following fields: “Title”, “Year of Release”,
“Director”, “Principal Cast”, “D.A.H’s rating”. To the right of the poster the wall was
bare except for a hook from which a jacket hung.
The wall behind David was adjacent to his bed: single, with purple duvet covers. The
bed stood perpendicular to the wall. A shelving unit flanked this bed. On it a large
number of books were stored. They were filed according to the following labels:
“fiction”, “non-fiction”, “other”. Above the bed, on the wall, approximately parallel to
the shelf opposite, ran a much longer shelf. This signified the “E-Z” section of David’s
DVD collection (from Edward Scissor Hands to Zulu). Below this shelf, above the
headboard of the bed, were four laminated sheets of A4 paper. Each sheet of paper had
printed on it tables detailing each film’s statistics (font: Times New Roman, size 10).
To David’s right was the door (rosewood, white, panelled). To the left of the door
there were about two metres of space between wall and door-frame; to the right, there
were about eight metres. In this latter space a large wardrobe housed David’s clothes.
From this wardrobe there were about three metres from its doors to the right-hand edge
of the bookcase. The bookcase almost touched the bed. From the left-edge of the bed to
the fourth wall there was a distance of about nine metres. On the floor was a rug (blue,
synthetic). From the ceiling there hung a light bulb, shaded by a glass encasement. The
colour of the room was predominantly blue, the walls were a pale shade of blue, the
floor a deeper shade of blue, the ceiling an aqua green. The heavy mahogany desk, the
dark varnish of the bookcase, the imposing oak of the wardrobe were somehow made
more resonant in contrast to this blue interior.
Presently, David was writing. He used a fountain pen (Parker, blue) and lined paper
(Cox & Wyman, non-recycled). He seldom moved his eyes from the page. There was
silence in the room. Nothing but the scrape of his pen could be heard. David paused to
wipe his brow. Then, with a sudden sigh, he tore the page he had been writing in two
and then into four and so on until sixty-four tiny shreds of paper cluttered his desk. He
took a new leaf of paper. He picked up his pen. He wrote the following words, in
roughly the same form:
Day of Defeat
I’ll rap on your door, you’ll look in my eye, in my hand I’ll create a parting gift.
I sing songs of malice and sing songs of hate, you better pray for you death to be
swift.
I’ll dance on your grave when the cold night comes, can you hear the boatman’s
call?
I’ll sit in the garden of your inner despair just waiting for the fall.
Your world crashes all round you, like hail, taste the smell of deceit.
They’ll stomp on that mind you’re trying to find; this will be your day of defeat.
There’s nothing to hide you as the bubble implodes, nothing to save you now.
New age rising, hope dead and dirtied, flies on the head of the sow.
Beg for your solace, crawl on your hands and knees, the stranger’s coming in the
dawn.
He’ll rap at your door; you’ll look in his eye, his face so gaunt and forlorn.
He took the completed page and tore it in two pieces, then into four, then into eight, and
so on until he had created sixty-four shards of paper from the annihilated page. This
meant that the there was now a total of one hundred and twenty-eight tiny pieces of
paper on his desk. He rose, walked towards the door and left the room. All was silent. In
seven minutes and fifteen seconds, he re-entered. He carried a vacuum cleaner. He
inserted its plug into a vacant socket (to the lower right of his desk). He took the nozzle
and used it to suck up the bits of paper. When he finally turned off the vacuum cleaner,
the silence returned, seemingly perturbed at its brief annihilation. David exited once
again. He returned the appliance from whence it came. All was silent.
In the corner, between the desk’s wall and the fourth wall, there was a television set
complete with DVD player and satellite installation. In the opposite corner was nothing
of note. Between those two points, maybe four metres from the un-noteworthy corner,
was a window. It was square rather than rectangular. On the window sill David stored
nothing.
Presently, floating at the window, there was a skull. It was a disembodied skull, with
two eyeballs in its hollow sockets, round and intense. Though it showed no expression
it seemed to grin, a rather callous grin. The eyes seemed to belie a sadistic knowledge, a
sense of exclusive knowing that held advantage in their gaze. The eyes were like fire,
like melting glass, like pain. They ensnared all within their scope and when David
re-entered the room he was immediately transfixed. His eyes stared into the devilish
void at the centre of the skull’s sight. The eyes seemed to burrow holes deep into
David’s pupils. The skull seemed to be dismantling itself. It started flaking away. First
a part of the crown, then the jaw line, then the rest of the crown and so on, until all was
diminished, annihilated. Except the eyes, they remained, floating in space, haunting
David from the outside the window.
Week 9. Smelly Old Men and Pseudo-Intellectuals
Before I went to St. Andrew’s I had the whole summer to get through. I saw my
friends less and less and spoke to my parents less and less; I stayed in my room more
and more. I watched more films, read more books, listened to more albums, wrote more
poetry. At the same time I also started a part-time job at the local bookmakers so I
would always have some spare money in addition to the monthly allowance my parents
were sending my to boarding school with. In strong contrast to the two previous
summers I spent most of this summer sitting on my arse taking horse-racing bets from
smelly old men.
My first day at “John Black Bookmakers” was probably one of the most
memorable… and the most boring days of my life. I was told the regular manager Dan
was away on holiday, as if I cared, but from all accounts he was quite a character. My
manager that day was a sullen twenty-something called Harriet who had the annoying
habit of reacting to whatever you said with the same inane little laugh and a drawn out
half yawn-half sigh of a “yeah”. She’d do it even when the situation didn’t require it at
all.
“So where are you from, round here?”
“Yeah all my life”
“hee hee, Yeaah”
“I’m off to St. Andrew’s in September”
“Yeeeaah”
And then she’d disappear staring blankly into the distance as if we weren’t in the
middle of conversation, as if this wasn’t my first day in the job, as if she only came to
work to escape whatever reality meant for her. She had an odd sort of hooked up nose
too which prevented her from being attractive in the slightest. My job basically entailed
taking some old geezer’s bet, putting it into this archaic quasi-Soviet till, tapping in the
price of the stake and then putting it through this ancient photo-machine thing. I’d then
rip the carbon copy of the bet and give it back to the customer and give the original
white copy back to my manager – who’s job it was to file those copies until the race was
run, after which they’d work out any winnings that had to be paid out.
All pay-outs were conducted by Gloria, a fifty-something divorcee with a stern,

joyless face and a voice like a muppet gone wrong. She had the most peculiar voice, and
it took at least a week to accumulate to its odd shrillness. She was miserable and
happiest when moaning. She’d live her life in a bizarre paradox – constantly unhappy
with her job and the long hours she had to work but always willing to work an extra
shift and curiously a little sheepish and coy in-front of the area manager, Roger. She
always moaned and yet never did anything about her predicament, always quick to
criticise others but slow to accept responsibility for her own mistakes.
An almost permanent fixture in front of the counter, either placing a bet or playing
the high stakes casino arcade machine in-front of us was Bobby – Gloria’s long-term
boyfriend – the shop’s resident “part of the furniture”. Much about Bobby was fairly
unremarkable; he looked like a typical retired-too early-bank manager, he wore glasses
and had a pot belly. I was told when Gloria wasn’t working that he had been divorced
twice and now lived with his mother who “still didn’t know that he was going out with
Gloria”. Gloria wasn’t allowed back to Bobby’s house. This was all very unusual. She
would watch him as he went about his day of gambling and talking with the other
regulars – all day, every day. On Gloria’s days off they would go to the nearest
horse-race, the routine and dead hope was numbing to the point of despair.
Another regular was Noah; he had the vague aura of Empire about him. He spoke
with a crisp British imperial accent and laughed at almost anything he said. He’d make
a perfectly normal comment and then erupt into laughter. He had a white moustache
and white hair and one of his eyes was mysteriously clouded over. There was the merest
whiff of racism about his character and he was forever leaving the shop only to come in
about five minutes later – each time a little more drunk and laughing a little more at his
own puerile jokes.
Hayden was another one; he was perhaps the saddest of the lot. He’d oscillate, all
day, every day, between the betting office and the local RAFA club. Back and fore,
back and fore, allegedly drinking sixteen pints a day. He was usually drunk by noon and
made odd quacking noises reminiscent of Burgess Meredith’s Penguin from the old
1960s Batman series. Hayden remains the strangest man I have ever met. I once
counted that he wore the same shirt every day for two weeks; he stank of liquor even
though he drank beer. He was grouchy and disputed every bet that was to be repaid to
him. One often wondered about what the old man was doing with his life, he
purportedly sat alone in the RAFA club and none knew whether he was married, or had
been married. An empty shell of a man drifting through his with aimless alcoholism and
gambling addiction, what else can be said?
Yet another regular was Kevin, he was tall and wore a brush-like moustache. He was
a shade younger than the others, being in his thirties rather than in his sixties, but was
maybe the most annoying of all the customers. When we’d want to close up and go
home he’d linger till the very last race – and not just horse-racing: dog racing, virtual
racing, you name it he’d bet on it. Twenty and thirty pounds every bet too. He would try
to flirt outrageously with Harriet and the sad thing is that she’d flirt back. It was cringe
worthy to watch.
The biggest better in the shop was Alfred, he’d bet at least a hundred pounds
every-time and owned his own race horses. He was better educated and less talkative
than the others. Another one who was reputedly a millionaire was Colin. Colin never
made big bets and was disconcertingly anal about meagre amounts of money (we’re
talking pence). What always struck me was the filthy dirt under his nails and the
tell-tale stains of egg-yolk on his sweater. There were others too, nicer people – Harold,
a pleasant old gentleman who was very neat and particular with his bets; William,
another pleasant old chap who would make sure he asked how I was; and Georgie, who
was a very nice man who’d sometimes bring in biscuits for us.
Dan, the regular manager, was a character. He was fifty-four but seemed older and
was a ‘lad’ of the old Welsh working-class school. He was loud, funny and called me
“son” all the time. At the end of shifts he’d just say “well, fuck off then”. He was
tremendous fun and just watching the banter between he and the customers was worth
the five pounds an hour I was getting paid. However, as time wore on his lack of any
real education at all started to bother me more and more, he’d ask me how to spell
simple words and seemed to know absolutely nothing about anything other than horse
racing and old coins. Still, we got on alright, despite the fact he was convinced that I am
“useless”.
So there I was sitting in this dingy room with all these old men, day after day. On a
number of occasions I felt myself drifting to insanity. I read books whilst at work to
keep me sane. It seemed as if my life was becoming nothing, seeing these people
wasting their lives all intolerably lonely, all shattered and destitute, all secretly
yearning for something more, all looking at me with a mixture of envy and hatred. So I
quit. I now had a month to kill before going to college.
Doctor, I’m bored. Quite frankly, this is killing me. Can I stop there or shall I go on?
If I must keep going with this bloody thing then I am… ahem… to change my style of
delivery. And low and behold: my idiom is thus changed! I shall now speak in the style
of pre-1950s playwrights or rather, in the style of their stage-directions! I would like to
blend Noel Coward and George Bernard Shaw… Doctor, if you find my style at
variance with the manner that I have chosen to adopt please consider this an affectation
of my own idiosyncratic nature and not a blemish on the… verisimilitude of my
performance. If this performance is said to be in anyway inadequate then please
withhold your criticisms until the conclusion of its finale. Are you ready? Then I shall
begin:
David had recoiled almost completely from any sense of a social life, bored by twin
impetuses: first, the unsightly concatenation of trivialities that is collectively called
‘Western Civilisation’ and second, the ceaseless caterwauling of liberal humanists that
would declare that concatenation as the voice of ‘freedom’. He took to visiting cafés
with an almost impregnable and obstinate urgency of withdrawal. His average day
would consist of going to the local café, ‘Gigis’… he doesn’t go there anymore…. He’d
go there with a book and buy the fashionable iced coffee drink of the day, an extra large
one, which he would drink over a number of hours. I suppose you could say that he
became a regular of this café but this was an understated, never even hinted at, status.
Due to his general attitude of withdrawal his communications were limited to knowing
looks, subtle nods and the full gamut of “polite meaningless words” that consumer
relations can allow for.
On his left there always sat two girls or, as they would have it, ‘women’. David spent
many an hour eavesdropping on their conversations. They were English students from
Oxford who were home for their holidays and obviously a few years older than David.
One of them was an American, a pseudo-intellectual of the lowest order. She wore one
of those fashionable hats that pseudo-intellectuals wear and, it would appear, she had an
entire wardrobe of woolly mittens. I couldn’t help but notice that she often wore
corduroy skirts that she’d tuck the full volume of her stomach into. She also had badges
on her bag which had various messages of environmentalism and world peace on them
– “oh very nice, very nice, very nice, but maybe in the next world”. From what David
could gather she was staying at the other girl’s house. The other girl smacked of cuddly
Home Counties smugness, she was, it is fair to say, nothing but a curmudgeon who had
little to no character of her own and who, unfortunately, had a propensity for… tucking
the full volume of her stomach into the corduroy skirt that she’d invariably be wearing.
She had noticeably less panache than her transatlantic counterpart and, in the pecking
order for who I would shag first she was definitely second. She was overweight in that
deadly unattractive and can’t-be-bothered way – neither her demeanour, her face nor
the various moles on it could redeem her from an innate ugliness that pervaded all she
said and did. I had often contemplated putting her head in the milk steaming machine
whilst kicking the stomach out of her corduroy skirt but, of course, this never came to
fruition. Anyway, these girls spoke of Yeats and of Wilde. I felt that they didn’t really
understand either. I shall not bore you with specifics but they had a habit of reading all
things in light of biography. Any reading of Yeats that is inextricably bound to Maude
Gonne and his relationship to her constitutes, to some a greater or lesser degree, a
misreading – don’t you agree doctor? But it wasn’t even that which upset me, it was the
grating blandness of the approach, the glib recovery of context with nothing else to
redeem it. They were interested, it seemed to me, first and foremost in history and only
secondly in Yeats. Well if you’re interested in history why not study history, why study
English Literature? Part of the reason I didn’t apply to Oxford is because this
mind-numbing approach seems to be prevalent there. Anyway I always thought that the
insides of those corduroy skirts must have smelt immensely, disgusting girls that they
were…
I’m sorry doctor – a little break in the style there! I thought I was doing quite well
until then too. Accept my apologies, it shall not happen again.
The rest of the ‘regulars’ generally consisted of two… actually make that three
general types. The first type is epitomised by the gentleman who used to sit directly in
front of me. This man’s elderliness was such that he’d actually make a noise when he
ate – not through eating noisily – but rather a grunt, a sort of moan that came naturally
with the exertion of any physical effort. He read the newspaper most days – David had
noted that this paper was usually ‘The Daily Telegraph’ but sometimes ‘The Times’
and sometimes even… Shock! Horror!… ‘The Daily Mail’.
The second type is the sort of woman David’s mother would make her general
acquaintance with. She was a member of the 21st Century middle-classes, her
overwhelming air of superiority and busy virtue would make her a paragon to
humanity. But any sustained analysis of this creature would reveal that she is all bluster
and bustle and no substance. She would like to be seen to maintain and have maintained
the highest possible standards but beyond this general façade there is little else to
recommend her. She is most likely spotted complaining about the state of the tables, the
strength of her tea or the heat of her coffee. David often contemplated standing up and
making a speech in the face of these women but this mental threat was never translated
into a material reality.
The third type consisted of couples in their late-twenties and early thirties who were
fulfilling the ideological ideals of the day as espoused by television broadcasts such as
“Sex in the City” and “The Good Life”. The overriding conversation that permeated
couples of this class were of interior decorations, having a baby or what had happened
to a friend at work that day. David had often noted that when the couples consisted of
young spouses that relations were strained and interpolated with long periods of
silence. Conversation would often fallback upon the physical securities of whether the
other partner was enjoying his or her drink and whether or not he or she would enjoy the
purchase of a cake or biscuit for the accompaniment of the drink which they were, until
so recently, so readily enjoying. When couples consisted of two friends of the same sex,
almost always two women, but, at times, two men also, conversation was less strained
and more openly vulgar. Conversations in this second instance almost always revolved
around members of the other sex in various stages of relational development from the
early throngs of bedroom excitement (or disappointment) to final stages of break-up
and the blanket hatred of the opposite gender. Homosexual couples did not tend to
break this dichotomy but rather integrated into it quite nicely. A homosexual man could
easily substitute for a straight woman in female café relations but not so readily in
straight male café relations – whatever the case, the second instance seldom arose to
credit or discredit David’s analysis.
Presently, David sat reading a novel: A.S. Byatt’s The Biographers Tale, a supposed
masterpiece of the day. He was at once entertained, intrigued and bored by this and
finally, due to the sheer magnitude of time with which he had used to purchase this
present reading and a general disposition to be easily distracted, David found his mind
wandering so that whilst his eyes scanned the page, his mind took no notice and failed
to connect his prejudices and background with A.S. Byatt’s words and hence singularly
failed in the act of reading. Add to this the couple of English students (still talking about
Yeats) and various other members of the café’s usual clientele and the scene is hence
described. On the speakers overhead Bob Dylan’s 1965 recording “Like a Rolling
Stone” begins to pour its derision upon the unsuspecting and dissonant multitude below
and this secretly filled David with a double sense of swelling pride and irrational
embarrassment. As the song digs deeper into its six and a half minutes David’s
concentration upon his book and its subject matter dwindles to almost trace levels of
commitment but the occasional word still accidentally bores itself into his
consciousness and forces itself to become an idea of some vague, nondescript worth.
The novel, David in a trance-like state of caffeine-induced nausea notes, is about how
the essence of a person is in no one place but in the infinitely overlapping texts and
ideologies with which he or she chooses to construct their life. At the centre of such a
construction, it occurs to him, there is “no heart, no kernel, no secret, no irreducible
principal, nothing except the infinity of its own envelopes – which envelop nothing
other than units of its own surfaces.” That Roland Barthes had already noted this in
some shape or form was of no consequence or interest to David at this time, the idea –
like a void of impenetrable and unremitting darkness – enveloped David almost wholly,
and, like a helpless lamb before the butcher, he gave himself up unto its power. The
shards of ideas that were forming as he was reading this book mangled themselves
honey and glue like, almost inextricably with the harsh tones of Dylan’s “How does it
feeeeeel! / To be on your own/ A complete unknown…” and the intellectual babble of
the girls to his left. And there David sits, starring into the abyss, drowning in the chasm
of his own existential despair: a never-ending whirlpool of Yeats and Dylan and Byatt
and coffee and milk and sugar.
Next week: Samuel Beckett, or “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb”.
Thank you and goodnight.
B. ‘David. Lies’
Deaf man standing on cliff cursed by devils. Blind man stranded in alley obstructed by
fools. Sun, light bulbs, candles: shine, emit, flicker. Trumpets sound, horns blown.
Mother gives milk to child. Priest scatters earth on coffin. Lovers meet: secret, hidden,
safe. Lovers kiss: passion, friendship, hope. Marriage breaks down: corrupted, empty,
hollow. Wife shouts, husband shuts down: anger, loss, despair. Father watches son. Son
walks to school. Son watches father. Father goes to sleep. Son cries at funeral, old man
dead, marriage dead, nowhere else to go. Son goes to work, earns money, spends
money, needs money. Man at bar drinks whiskey. Bartender calls time. Man at bar
breaks down, nowhere else to go.
Mother cries at wedding, daughter gets married. Bride wears white, kisses groom.
Couple on honeymoon: bride wears red, spreads legs over groom. Groom grunts,
moans; bride pretends to grunt, moan. Couple on honeymoon: bride wants to sail on
boat, groom wants to drink in bar. Couple drink in bar. Married couple buy a house.
Woman wants big house, swimming pool; man wants average house, big garden.
Married couple live in average house. Man in garden, woman indoors. Woman wants to
have a baby, man wants a son. Woman gives birth to son. Man goes to work, earns
money. Woman wants dishwasher, 44 inch wide-screen television, DVD player, 30-CD
hi-fi system, Ikea kitchen, mahogany grandfather clock, red leather three-piece suite,
Mercedes car, 10 pairs of shoes, 5 dresses, lipstick, eye-liner, underwear. Man buys 30
inch rear-projection television, DVD player, 5-CD hi-fi system, Ikea kitchen,
mahogany mantle-piece clock, red suede three-piece suite, BMW car, 4 pairs of shoes,
3 dresses, lipstick, eye-liner, underwear. Man wants sexual intercourse twice. Couple
have sexual intercourse once, woman tired. Woman wants bracelet. Man buys bracelet.
Couple have sexual intercourse twice. Man has new boss at work: ‘Susan’. Man tells
woman of ‘Susan’. Woman tired. Couple do not have sexual intercourse. Woman wants
necklace. Man buys cornflakes. Woman wants branded cornflakes. Man buys
supermarket own-brand cornflakes. Couple sleep in separate beds. Woman wants
sexual intercourse. Man wants sexual intercourse. Couple sleep in separate beds.
Woman has anal intercourse with ‘Geoff’. Man buys pornographic material. ‘Geoff’
grunts, moans; woman squeals, screams, does not pretend. Man sits in work, earns
money, spends money, needs money. ‘Geoff’ tells woman to leave, woman cries.
Woman wants earrings, hair-dye, holidays, trousers. Man buys earrings, hair-dye,
holidays, trousers. Woman wears earring, hair-dye, trousers, meets ‘Rodriguez’ on
holidays. Man sits in deckchair, reads book. Woman wants divorce. Man corrupted,
empty, hollow, anger, despair, loss. Man at bar drinks whiskey. Bartender calls time.
Man at bar breaks down, nowhere else to go.
Man stands at door: ‘David’s room’. Man considers calling David. Man goes to clutch
door handle. Man hesitates, sighs, takes off glasses. Man wipes brow, puts hands over
face. Cheeks wet, body shaking, man leaves, doesn’t call David. Lies on bed, looks at
photo of woman. Photo from honeymoon, woman in red dress. Man considers suicide,
man considers sons, man contemplates life. Sits in kitchen, looks at box of cornflakes,
shakes head, breaks down, breaks down. Looks at phone, looks at floor, goes to
bedroom, goes for walk, listens to Paul McCartney, eats toast, steadies himself. Shakes
head, breaks down.
Skull floats at window. David stands drawn by eyes, haunted. Eyes disperse become
swan. David climbs out window, mounts swan. Swan flies away. David looks down
sees civilisation. Empty streets, empty people, houses full, car-tank full. David looks
down sees tree. Leaves flown away, branches in wind, moon looking on, stars looking
on. Church steeple, graveyard, tombs, gravestones, silence, darkness, relentless peace.
Age of romance, poetry, wit. David meets Lord Byron, shakes hands with Percy
Shelley. David wears frilly shirt, drinks wine. David partakes in orgy, five women,
three men: five novelists, three poets. David wants Byron. David sleeps, wakes, walks,
meets Mary Shelley, makes love to Mary Shelley. Percy Shelley catches David, David
punches Percy Shelley, Byron laughs. David climbs on swan. Lord Byron climbs on
swan. Swan flies away.
Age of conquest, heroes, martyrs. David meets Cecil Rhodes, shakes hands with Queen
Victoria, Prince Albert. David wears safari hat, eats melon. David looks down at slaves.
Slaves work hard. David commends their work, gives slaves books, gives slaves shoes,
gives slaves hope. David climbs on swan. Cecil Rhodes climbs on swan. Swan flies
away.
Age of darkness, death, despair. David meets Adolf Hitler, shakes hands with Heinrich
Himmler, Joseph Goebbels. David wears black uniform, sings songs. David looks
down at masses. Masses cheer hard. David salutes their cheers, gives masses speech,
gives masses flowers, gives masses hope. David climbs on swan. Adolf Hitler climbs
on swan. Swan flies away.
Age of make-up, drugs, sex. David meets David Bowie, shakes hands with Iggy Pop,
Lou Reed. David wears spandex, snorts cocaine. David partakes in orgy, one woman,
four men: one lesbian, three bi-sexual, one straight. David wants David Bowie. David
sleeps, wakes, walks, meets Angie Bowie, makes love to David Bowie. Angie Bowie
catches David, David punches Lou Reed, Iggy Pop laughs. David climbs on swan.
David Bowie climbs on swan. Swan flies away.
Swan flies to market-square. David gets off swan. Butcher selling meat. David buys
meat. David sees greengrocer, enters. David buys potatoes, buys carrots, parsnips,
cauliflower. David leaves butcher. Charity stall offering money for clothes. David sells
black uniform, sells safari hat, sells frilly shirt, sells spandex. David leaves charity stall.
David sees pawnbrokers, enters. David sells swastika, diamonds, poems, cocaine.
David puts money in pocket. David climbs on swan. Swan flies away.
Swan flies to dining room. David, Adolf Hitler, Cecil Rhodes, Lord Byron, David
Bowie: dismount. Table set with candles. David, Adolf Hitler, Cecil Rhodes, Lord
Byron, David Bowie: sit at table, eat.
Week 10. The Elitist Triangle
It was St. Hilda’s I went to. I couldn’t possibly have gone to Loughborough and seen
the splinters of my old life, my old school, rotten and decaying, falling apart in front of
my very eyes. Couldn’t have dealt with it. I wouldn’t be able to see Louis become just
another faceless nobody thinking they were somebody. I couldn’t have possibly bore
the agony of seeing he and Stevens desperately cling on to what little glory they had left
– or even worse – reminisce of what was. To see Faye still hanging round with them
even though she had already left what little education she had, to see the decay of
people’s lives before me. No, I had to move on, I had to leave it all behind me for my
own good.
Hilda’s was a nice school. It was run by these Irish nuns: all over eighty, pious but
cheerful, plump but still fit and active, each a twinkle in their eye but all somehow sad,
solemn, unfulfilled. I liked the nuns. They were so easy to place, so explicit in their
separation from the rest of society, so clear about their ideological positions, so easy to
categorise. I liked the nuns.
The people I met there were another matter however. All of the girls were the same
girl. They were so tiresome. Let me describe one of them – Rosanna Fielding (or at least
that’s what I think her name was, whatever) – everyone called her “Rose”, she liked to
be called “Rose”. I’m not really one to talk for different nick-names but it’s so
irreducibly dull to me when someone introduces themselves gives their proper name
and feels the need to add “but everyone calls me Rose” or, if they’re a bit more honest
about it, “but I prefer Rose”.
“I’ll make the decision, alright Rosanna? We’ve only just met; please don’t assume a
chumminess we don’t have. Please don’t assume a familiarity we might not develop.
Please don’t give me all these bullshit pleasantries. I might dislike you, in fact, judging
by the suggestion of middle-class podge protruding from under that horrible M & S,
bought-in-a-2-for-1-sale, generic-as-fuck-but-for-fuck’s-sake-don’t-take-it-off, top
that you’re wearing, I’d say that it’s very likely that I’m going to dislike you. In fact: I
already hate you. I hate you and everything you stand for, everything your mother
stands for. I hate the fact that you speak in that abhorrent undergraduate way – we’re
not even in bloody university yet. I hate your vacancy, your lack of vision, your lack of
imagination, the poverty of your mind, the decay of your soul”.
So let me describe “Rose”. Rose is a girl. Rose likes listening to pop music made by
whoever is at number one at the moment. Rose likes eating yoghurt to pretend she’s on
a diet. Rose is slightly over-weight. Rose likes eating chocolate. Rose likes texting on
her mobile phone. Rose is always on her mobile phone. Rose would rather text on her
mobile phone than engage with anyone in the room. Rose spends most of her life
texting on her mobile phone. Who does Rose text? Oftentimes I think she is texting the
phantasm of her own desire. Rose likes to get drunk on the weekend. Rose likes to go to
the nightclub. Rose likes to talk about boys. Rose likes to wear all the clothes her
friends wear. Rose likes to pretend that boys come on to her and she is ‘dealing’ with
the hassle. Rose likes to pull boys. Rose likes to pretend that she was “SO drunk” that
she can’t remember the boy whose tongue she was sucking all night. Rose likes to think
that when she’s older she’ll be something special. David likes to hope and pray that she
fails in her endeavours. David would like to kill Rose.
Rose was the epitome of the St. Hilda’s girl. I had no interest in St. Hilda’s girls. The
boys were another matter. There was far more of an intellectual culture than at my old
school. There were many Dinnish Patel types too however, and, to be fair, many of the
boys could be plotted on a scale for genericism of which the gradient runs from Tom
Wheeler to Alex Riker. But the people I chose as my friends were different. Surely they
were different.
Graham Smith was from the North originally, thankfully he had only the merest
scratchings of an accent. At first I liked Graham, he has an easy ambling manner. He is
tall, gangly, sort of learchy and leachy in equal measure. Easy company, but not
stimulating at all. He provided the sort of company a dog does – although he required
the occasional lager and a film to placate him rather than a walk and a stick.
Robert Turner is also quite tall, good-looking and charming. He has dark hair and is
naturally very polite and well groomed. However, he had an odd superficiality I found
attractive. He consciously listened to Britney Spears, for example, fully understanding
the commercial and aesthetic implications that involved. He was a fully paid-up
capitalist who somehow revelled in all things faceless, corporate, manufactured and
shallow. He did this gleefully and without any self-reproach. Many times I argued the
case for why he should watch critically acclaimed films and listen to the crème de la
crème of what rock music had to offer. He’d have none of it. He’d argue that Dylan
could do nothing for him, that only Spears could speak to him, that, in fact, Spears
doesn’t speak to him she just looks nice and sounds polished. Everything was in place
for me to reject him, but I didn’t. I was drawn by his falseness and his obvious vanity. I
was drawn by his love of all things generic. But all the time I was secretly repulsed by
it, all the time I secretly wished to kill him.
The fourth, and final member, of our little group was James Nichols. James is a nice
guy at heart but he had a flair for pretension. He liked many of the things that I do: good
films, good literature, cliques and intellectual elitism. More importantly, he shared
almost all of my dislikes: genericism, the girls of St. Hilda’s, people who crudely try to
mark themselves out as different, crassness, inadequacy, ignorance, decay.
The four of us were awesome at first. United under the banner of my own
pretensions, my own elitism and my own hatred for humanity. At the start of the first
term at St. Hilda’s we were quite popular, well-known sorts, each in his own right. But
slowly we became more and more detached, more insular, and more critical of all
things. It was surprisingly Robert or “Turner” as we called him (we always preferred
the surnames, more formal, more distant, more ‘elite’) who was the worst. He very
quickly dropped his naturally polite routine to one that was far more elaborately
affected and false. He made it clear who he disliked, he made it obvious in that
disconcertingly fierce way that cold politeness can. In his dealing with people he often
built people up, who clearly didn’t warrant any praise, to a level that reached absurdity
until it became obvious that, in a very veiled and nasty way, he was mocking them.
When people came in he would always feign genuine excitement with an “Ah! It’s
you!” or a “What a very pleasant surprise!”. There was a guy called Matt (not Danson)
who he frequently did this to, who he very obviously hated, who we very obviously
hated. Whenever he’d talk to him he’d always go on about “what a legend” Matt is, how
it was such “a privilege” or “honour” to be speaking to him – and all to send him up, to
undercut it all with a sharp piercing irony – which eventually became obvious to Matt,
and to everyone else. In the end the game was up. He wasn’t impressing us anymore, he
wasn’t impressing anyone.
But it was my fault. I had lead him down that dark path. And I’m glad I did. He is too
much of a bland son-of-a-bitch anyway is Turner. I quickly realised that he genuinely
did like Britney Spears – not because of any love of commercialism – but because the
only friends he had back in his old school were girls like Rose Fielding. It was because
he didn’t have any character of his own. Turner was like a mirror, he was like this great
black cipher just waiting to suck out your soul and show it to you in all its dastardly
blackness, in all its flawed and desperate sadness. Turner, himself, was fully aware of
this and had become adept at hiding it by carefully calculated, ironically delivered
arguments. All his arguments involved a double bluff somewhere down the line though.
He posited opinions, which were so ordinary and bland that he couldn’t possibly say
them as himself, well not in front of me anyway. So anything he said was refracted and
distorted twice, first through the ironic idiom he was stating it in and secondly through
the sort of character he’d fashioned for himself. In fact, this was part of the trouble – he
had two selves, we all do really. The first self was “Turner”, the guy we know, the one
that operates and functions in the real world. The second self was Turner, the real
person who nobody knew, the bland, tasteless cretin I grew to know. So “Turner” spent
most of his time masking the inadequacies and charmlessness of Turner. I didn’t care
much for “Turner”, I hated Turner. And Turner hated me, in the end “Turner” hated me
too.
But the real crux of the group, what it was all predicated on was the meshing of two
minds: Nichols’s and mine. From day one we hit it off – The Godfather, Ted Hughes
and Bob Dylan – what more could a boy like me ask for in a boy like him? It wasn’t
long before we started “The Elitist Triangle” – with Turner of course. It started out as
some fun, we ‘postured’ at being genuine elitists. We made it a ‘privilege’ for anyone to
even speak to us, we made a rule that no underling could spend more than thirty
seconds in our company. At first people played along with our fun, some of the boys
(like Graham) played up the whole “it’s an honour that you’re gracing us you’re your
presence, that your giving us your time” thing. Some impressionable girls (mostly ones
who fancied us of course) were pushed into being ‘slaves’ for us, submitting
themselves to our every whim. At the peak of our powers, us three Alpha males sat at
the back of a trip to London being fed grapes by silly girls and generally being bigoted.
But, like all things, it went too far. The breaking point for most people was when, at
some party, a girl came to sit with us at our table and we just looked at each other in
dismay – as this was common behaviour at this point she attempted to laugh. But I just
said, “sorry, too fat – you might want to try a diet”. And that was it. We became the
absolute bastards we’d always threatened to be. My comment wasn’t greeted with
silence by my fellow elitists either, but by loud hearty laughter. But I noticed how hurt
she was, how I’d crushed her sense of self, how she’d been humiliated – and for what,
for a cheap laugh. I mused on it, but the darker side of me liked what I had done. I liked
humiliating her, I mean what sense of self does she deserve anyway? Why should she
feel like she should be somebody? Why should she, of all people have any ego to crush?
She clearly doesn’t care enough about herself to stop EATING so much, she clearly has
a low enough self-esteem to wear the god-awful clothes she does. All I did in fact was
to bring her down to her natural level, her natural state of being – no more than that.
But the elitist triangle should have ended that night but it didn’t – it went on and on and
on for a whole year. We never stopped, until in the end nobody liked us at all, not even
Graham, and we didn’t really like each other either. Part of the problem was that our
friendship was purely predicated on polarising the world between ‘us’ and ‘them’ but
mostly the problem was that, on some level, each of us distrusted the other. Each of us
secretly thought ourselves of being somehow better than the others. Each of us secretly
prided ourselves on not actually being that elitist when we dealt with people on a
one-to-one basis. Each of us secretly prided ourselves of still having some sense of
footing with ‘common’ society, with everyone else, even with Graham.
So my stay at St. Hilda’s was really rather fun in the short term, but a good lesson to
be learnt in the long run – if you’re going to be part of a thoroughly detestable, arrogant,
egotistical, self-centred, fundamentally elitist clique: make sure you pick the right
people to do it with!
Doctor, I have meant to tell you this for a while… about my being here I mean. It
would appear to me that I am not really insane or have no need of counselling; in fact
I’m perfectly normal and healthy and have no real need to be here at all. Has it not
occurred to you that I might just be making this up as I go along? Are you that good a
psychologist or psychiatrist or whatever you are that you can tell what I’ve made up and
what I haven’t? And don’t go telling me that making things up in and of itself is a
mental condition because you know perfectly well that that is all we ever do anyway –
we make ourselves up. We construct ourselves as we’d like ourselves to be or to be seen
and we give that package to the world and say ‘that’s me’, ‘that’s me there, I’m the one
who likes to party and look at the arses of fat girls’ or ‘that’s me there, I’m the
respectable counsellor who listened to the warblings of an over-educated, obnoxious
little adolescent who I wouldn’t speak to in a million years if I weren’t getting paid…
what? £10,000 an hour to listen to’. I shan’t be seeing you again doctor – you can tell
my mother that there is nothing wrong with me and that it is in fact she who should be
sitting here. I’m not the hypocrite, I’m perfectly sane and coherent in both my outlooks
and my actions – my ethics are perfectly Sartrian – ‘I am what I think I am, I act how I
say I will’. SHE’S the one who has an inverted sense of morality, she’s the one who
would be oh so horrified if one of her friends found out that I’d smashed that window or
to find out that I’m sitting here talking to you! In fact that’s what I might do – I might
make posters saying: “Mrs. Hawkins sent her son to therapy for smashing a window!”
and I’m going to put it on all the street lamps and all the bus stations in the town with a
big picture of my mother’s stupid grey, stuck-up, middle-middle-middle-middle,
meddling face. I’ll put your number on it doctor, you’ll be glad of the custom, you who
make money out of our inflated sense of importance, you who make money out of my
mother’s need to seen to be respectable, my mother’s inscrutable over-reactionary
Daily Mail values, my mother’s middle-class hypochondriac dementia. That makes you
as bad as she is, in fact – if you get my logic here – that makes you her. You’re all her
and I hope to god that you all die.
C. ‘David, Tonight’
DAVID: I hope you are all enjoying your dinner gentlemen. More wine Adolf?
HITLER: Yes, if you’d be so kind.
(David pours Hitler some more wine)
BYRON: You can never have too much wine.
BOWIE: Well you know what they say…
BYRON: “Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, / Sermons and soda water
the day after”.
BOWIE: Well, not quite what I had in mind, but very good, very good indeed.
BYRON: It’s from my new poem.

BOWIE: Really? What’s it called?
BYRON: Don Juan
BOWIE: Oh, great… I’m a bit of a poet myself.
BYRON: I by no means rank poetry high in the scale of intelligence but I should like to
hear some of yours someday.
BOWIE: I have one called that you might like it’s called ‘Blue Jean’.
BYRON: Ah quite, poetry is the lava of the imagination whose eruption prevents an
earthquake.
BOWIE: “Blue Jean, I just met a girl named Blue Jean/ Blue Jean, she got a
camouflaged face and no money…”
DAVID: Really David, Tonight isn’t one of your best albums – I’m sure Lord Byron
would much rather hear something from your more canonical works. Sure, Tonight
reached number one in the charts and you did dress up as Byron in the video for it but
really “jazzing for Blue Jean”! What were you thinking in 1984?
BOWIE: (offended) I quite rate Tonight actually.
DAVID: Sure, “Loving the Alien” is quite a good song but did you have to ruin quite so
many Iggy Pop tracks? Did “Tonight” really need covering? And the sound… God!
You were making albums like Low and “Heroes” only a few years earlier what the hell
happened?!
BOWIE: Look kid, we all need money ok.
BYRON: Quite right I say. Leave off the poor fellow.
(silence)
RHODES: (to Hitler) So dear boy, what line of work might you be in? I can see you’re
a man of military rank.
HITLER: I am the fuehrer of the Third Reich!
RHODES: A friend of Bismarck’s?
HITLER: I am the leader of the German people. I have made the German people great,
brought them back to purity.
BYRON: An arbiter of others’ fate, a suppliant for his own!
RHODES: It’s always good for the Empire to have a bit of competition.
HITLER: I would not be so confident commander, soon the eagle will rise to crush your
Empire. Its eye consumes all.
RHODES: I’m afraid you are mistaken…
HITLER: You cannot stop the eagle, the eagle consumes all. It will take you in its
mighty claw and say: “It took the whole of creation to produce my foot, my each
feather: now I hold creation in my foot”.
RHODES: You are doomed to failure sir.
HITLER: The German people will not fail.
RHODES: But you will.
HITLER: What evidence do you have for this commander, my patience is now at an
end!
RHODES: Ask any man what nationality he would prefer to be, and ninety-nine out of
a hundred will tell you that they would prefer to be Englishmen.
HITLER: Humpf!
(silence)
BOWIE: It’s the Americans I’d be worried about if I were you – I’m afraid of
Americans.
RHODES: With African diamonds and Indian gems Britannia rules, the Americans can
do no harm with their tobacco fields and cotton plantations.
BOWIE: I’d differ with you there Cecil.

DAVID: I’m with David here Cecil, don’t underestimate the Americans!
HITLER: The Kaiser made such a mistake, the fuehrer will not. The Reich is stronger
than you can imagine.
BYRON: He is always frigging his imagination!
RHODES: Really George! You’ll not use such language here! You’re not in Oxford
now!
BYRON: Sorry but I cannot abide the petrifactions of a plodding brain.
BOWIE: I’ve not been to Oxford town.
DAVID: Nothing special trust me.
HITLER: Ah! I see that dessert has arrived.
(they go about eating dessert and drinking port)

BOWIE: I read your poems by the way David, very good, very good indeed, you’ve
really made the grade.
DAVID: (abashed) Why thank you, thank you so much.
BYRON: You really thought they were good? Fiddlesticks!
DAVID: I beg your pardon!
RHODES: Really George! I think you were quite out of order there. Master Hawkins’
verse is at least as good as anything I have read by Kipling, or Keats for that matter.
BYRON: Speak not to me about the mental masturbator! These poets run about their
ponds though they cannot fish.
DAVID: (agitated) Well what didn’t you like about them?
BYRON: Everything, they were all wrong, everything was bad. I hate all things
fiction… there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric and
pure invention is but the talent of a liar.
HITLER: I wouldn’t underestimate the power of pure invention Lord Byron!
BYRON: And what would you know about it, do you write verse Herr Hitler?
HITLER: As a matter of fact I do – the finest art in all of the German frontiers!
BYRON: And how do you go about your acts of pure invention? You’re so-called
‘creation’.
HITLER: I go the way that Providence dictates with the assuredness of a sleepwalker.
BOWIE: I’d leave it if I were you George, you’ll get nowhere with him.
HITLER: Listen to me Lord Byron: the broad mass of nation will fall more easily to a
big lie than to a small one.
BYRON: ‘Tis strange – but true; for truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
HITLER: Soon the masses will believe my lies and my armies will march into the
Sudetenland.
RHODES: Thinking of invading soon Adolf?
HITLER: It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is the
claim from which I will not recede, and which, God-willing, I will make good.
BYRON: “Let there be light!’ said God, and there was light!. “Let there be blood!” said
man and there was sea!
RHODES: Come now George, wish the man good luck.
RHODES: (rising his glass) I propose a toast to Adolf’s plan!
ALL: Hear, hear! To Adolf!
HITLER: I thank you gentlemen. I will hope to repay your good faith.
BOWIE: (clinks his glass to make a speech) When all the world was very young and the
mountain magic heavy hung, the supermen could walk in file, guardians of the loveless
isle and the gloomy browed with super fear their tragic endless lives. They could heave
nor sigh. In solemn perverse serenity, the guardians were wondrous beings chained to
life. Strange games they would play for there’s no death for the perfect men. “Life rolls
into one for them”, so softly a super god cries. Where all were minds in uni-thought had
powers weird, by mystics taught, no pain or joy or power too great – they had colossal
strength to grasp at fate. Where sad-eyed mermen tossed in slumbers with nightmare
dreams no mortal mind could hold, man would tear his brother’s flesh, a chance to die.
Far out in the red sky, far out from the red eyes, in strange, mad celebration, so softly a
super god dies. So now, now we need more than ever, someone to flame us, someone to
follow, someone to shame us, some grave Apollo… we need someone to rule us,
someone like you! We want you big brother, big brother… big brother (grasping up at
the air) big bro…
HITLER: Give me your hands, because you’re wonderful.
(Byron, Bowie and David all reach for his hands)
(silence)
DAVID: Well… I… err… I hope that it all goes well for you Adolf, I know it will.
(Hitler does not answer)
BOWIE: (quietly singing to himself) “I… I wish I could swim…”
RHODES: (half-snoozing) Hoof… um. Arghh… Sing up would you dear boy.
BOWIE: (louder) “Like the dolphins… like dolphins could swim”
HITLER: (fully sleeping) zzzz… Hail! Hail Hitler… zzzz… butter and guns… um…
ooof… (suddenly walking up) Herr Bowie! Sing a bit louder, your fuehrer needs you.
BOWIE: (full volume) “Though nothing… nothing will keep us together. We can beat
them forever and ever…”
DAVID: This is more like it David! Forget about the 1980s this is the Bowie we know
and love!
BOWIE: “…We can be heroes just for one day”

(the singing subsides as Bowie too is tired)
(enter giant swan)
(silence)
RHODES: Dear me! I’m feeling quite giddy. Rather too much port I think.
DAVID: I’m afraid the swan has come for us, it is getting impatient.
BYRON: Like other parties of this kind, it was first silent, then talky, then
argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then
inarticulate, and then drunk! I quite enjoyed it.
(they all get on the swan and the swan flies away)
Week 11. Cornflakes
Before I went to St. Andrews there was little to do. My parents were going through a
mid-life crisis. It turned out that my mother wasn’t the boring middle-aged,
middle-class sod I thought she was after all… she had been shagging one of my dad’s
best friends, Geoff Winter, for about four years. They had a real argument this time. My
mum’s defence was laughably self-centred, something about ‘needs’ and emotional
support. Oh fuck off mum! My dad had had his world shattered. The once calm and
composed John Hawkins, listener of radio four and gardener extraordinaire had become
a disturbingly insecure, shell of a man. To make matters worse my grandfather, his
father also died around this time. What disturbed me more was his willingness to
forgive her for her crimes. I resolved to meet the situation with cool detachment.
It was about this time that I fell in love. Her name was Jennifer Hunter. Nothing
could have prepared me for the moment her glance caught mine. I was on a camping
trip in Cornwall with Tom Wheeler and his family. The journey there was agonising.
Wheeler’s dad had the same excruciating traits has his son – he was like a walking
encyclopaedia of poor Michael Caine impressions and bad Jasper Carrott jokes. He was
just the sort of man who’d like Jasper Carrott actually, not that there’s anything
particularly wrong with Jasper Carrott. Well, actually, let’s be honest there is isn’t
there? Something wrong with Jasper Carrott I mean. He’s so, I don’t know, he’s so
bound up with a certain perspective, a perspective somewhere between Jeremy
Clarkson and your favourite uncle you can’t get rid of at Christmas. The sort of
perspective that points out that one gets fed up in a traffic jam, the sort of perspective
that takes a glorious pride in being gloriously out of touch with the young. In fact,
Carrott is as guilty as anyone of perpetuating a certain view of ‘the young’. It is because
of the likes of Carrott that old women look at me with a mixture of caution and
disapproval when I get on a bus – I mean, WHAT THE FUCK HAVE I DONE, you
stupid cunting bitch! Sorry… where was I? Carrott, yes, um… For Carrott all young
people are culturally disenfranchised, retarded and rude. Carrott delights in not
knowing exactly what a Playstation 2 is or knowing exactly how to press play on a
DVD player, why this delight? Honestly, just be honest Jasper, please! I wont think any
less of you if admit that you do in fact know what an e-mail address looks like. But it’s
not Carrott to blame is it? It’s Mr. Wheeler, the dozens and thousands and millions of
Mr. Wheelers out there. The people who laugh when they see their own prejudices
manifest in front of their eyes. I hate Mr. Wheeler and I feel Jasper Carrott needs no
apology either, I hate him too.
Which reminds me how much I hate his lovely son, my best friend in all the world,
Tom. It just so happened that Tom brought his erstwhile girlfriend, the ‘lovely’ Karen
Jones. It might not surprise you that I wasn’t thrilled about Karen’s involvement on this
camping trip and she wasn’t too keen on my involvement either. Tom and Karen had
done the mature thing when they split up and ‘stayed friends’. If Karen was honest with
herself they were only together so she could lose her virginity before school, if Tom
was honest they’d only been together so he could lose his virginity – in his lifetime. To
my eye Karen was fat, loathsome, loud but thoroughly dull, domineering but totally
characterless. This was the girl who’d based her entire school reputation on undoing the
flies of Owen Dixon.
Karen spent the whole time talking about people in school. About her friends, about
Carly and Rithcies, about Sandy Rivello, about how cool it was the other week when
she burped in assembly and blamed it on Dinnish Patel. She told this last story a total of
SIX times, I counted, on the trip – six times in two days is not bad going!
Anyway, there I was on a three-hour drive to the country with Mr. Wheeler’s
personal repertoire of canned Carrott classics, Tom Wheeler and his full repertoire of…
conversational material. You know, we had the Reservoir Dogs talk AGAIN. I mean,
Karen went out with Tom – they were a couple, they had sexual relations, she’s seen his
willy and he’s seen her cellulite, know what I mean – surely in all that time Tom had
already done his Mr. Blonde impression, let’s say oooh… 3,000 times. So why not give
it one more just for old times sake. IT’S MICHAEL MADSEN, you twat! It was
Michael Madsen then, it was four years ago the eight millionth time you asked me, it
was last week and it is now. It’s one of life’s strange certainties – it’s an absolute in a
world of relatives, it is. Michael Madsen played Mr. Blonde in Quentin Tarantino’s
Reservoir Dogs Tom – but you don’t want to process it do you Tom? Just like that old
hag next door won’t learn that the capital of Portugal is Lisbon, you wont learn that the
actor’s name is Michael Madsen. But she’s got an excuse Tom, she’s old, miserable and
probably hasn’t been fucked in forty years. She’s almost dead Tom, she’s decaying, she
might as well be dead. What good will knowing one more thing do now to her pointless
and meaningless existence? Will it do her good when she’s making chit-chat with
Gabriel and the Blessed Virgin? Probably not. This brings me to a deeper point actually
my friend – the fact is you don’t want to learn the fact that Michael Madsen is Mr.
Blonde do you? Why? Why because it’s a set conversation piece of yours isn’t it Tom.
Your life is so devoid of inspiration that you have to bank conversations and have them
again and again and again, so you conveniently forget that I’ve already told you the
actor’s name a hundred, no two hundred, times already. And that’s why I hate you Tom
– because you’re boring, you have no creative impetus, you are dull as dishwater, your
dad’s dull as dishwater and, on top of all that, you’re a class A twat to boot. But I’d still
rather spend a lifetime in Hell with you constantly asking me who plays Mr. Blonde in
Reservoir Dogs, with Jasper Carrott constantly on television, with your dad sticking
knives up my arse and asking me to call him “mummy” than spend another day with
Karen Jones in a car.
I spent almost the entire journey thinking of new and inspired ways to kill Karen
Jones. My favourite remains tying her down (of course a lot of rope would be needed)
and putting an apple in her fat mouth, no, a packet of pork scratchings, no, the shoe of a
tramp. Any sudden movement would send her to her death on the pit of spikes below –
she would be aware of this. And, cold as a bastard I’d approach, my eyes dead, my soul
dead, at once I’d be Bowie and Morrissey, Wilde and Pater, Iago and Machiavelli. Cold
as a bastard, I’d approach – a gun in my hand. I’d put the gun in her right hand and force
her to point it to her head, all the time calling her names such as “hog”, “whore-beast”
and “elephant girl”. I’d look in her eyes and she’d see my pain. And I’d say,
“Karen, whore-beast! Listen to me. I know you shag like a whale stranded on the beach.
I know you’re lucky to still be with us – I have thought many times that you’d die via
asphyxiation as the result of having your nose permanently inserted up Jenny’s
well-fucked sphincter. But hear this, hog! Size 16 wearing monstrosity that thou art!
‘But Marilyn Monroe wore a size 16!’, ‘oh fuck off’, ‘some guys like something to hold
on to’ ‘just fuck off’. It occurs to me that you have no right to any self-esteem. That
society has brought you into being and given you false hope, it has actually made you
think that you matter, that you are actually something to care about. It’s made you think
that it’s ok to wear a size 16. It’s made you think that you have the right to an ego. I
don’t believe you have the right to an ego. You are immature, you are vain, you are
mediocre, the very epitome of ‘average’ – what right do you have to an ego? I want to
strip you of that ego Karen. I want to strip it from you so that you are left with nothing
– only the despair of your own existence, the nothingness of your own reality, the
pitiful nature of your what you are. And what are you Karen? A heap of borrowed ideas
from other people? I wouldn’t give you the credit. What are you Karen? Some shit
laying on the floor dying, just dying for me to step in you? I wouldn’t dirty my shoe.
What are you Karen? Why for so long did you follow Jenny about like you did? Didn’t
you have a life of your own? Weren’t you worth that Karen? You’re not that fat or ugly
are you? Let’s be honest here for a second, why, WHY did you follow her about, why
were you her lieutenant? Why did you try to impress Louis and the boys on the coach?
Why did you undo Owen Dixon’s trousers? Why do you wear the clothes you do? Why
do you say the things you do? Why don’t you ever shut up? Why are you so fat? Ok,
you’re not obese – people wouldn’t look at you and say ‘there goes a fat girl’ but you
clearly have no regard for your own body, why don’t you take care of it more? Why do
you subjugate yourself to social pressures? Why do you make sure that you’re never as
pretty as Jenny and then wallow in the fact that you have less self esteem than Jenny
and then try to compensate for that by being over-bearing and loud? What are you
Karen? Why is it that you sleep around now-a-days Karen? Is it because you like the
hard stiff shaft of cock up you or is it something else? Does it make you feel needed?
Does it make you feel cheap? Does it in some way show you what you are? You’re so
boring Karen. You’re boring, you’re lazy, you’re fat and you have a tramp’s shoe in
your mouth. So here’s what we’re going to do, hippo features, you’re going to point that
gun to your head. And while you’re pointing that gun to your head I’m going to
systematically peel off your fingernails – now, remember, if the pain is too much – you
can always pull the trigger! After I’ve finished peeling the nails off I move to phase two
– getting at the raw wicks of your fingers with a paint stripper. If you survive both
phases I’m afraid I’ll have to start on the toes. Of course, I’ll have to get my slaves to do
such things. If you survive both feet you will have the privilege of being my slave. Your
duties will include wiping my arse, showering me and generally bowing. Thanks”.
But enough of this, it’s indulgent. We were staying in Cornwall anyway, they had
quite a big tent and we had our own little sub-compartments within it. Tom’s dad
obviously snored, fat annoying prick that he is. Anyway, I met her, Jennifer, in the bar
at the camp resort. She was attractive in a way that Carly could never be. She had huge
Bambi eyes and an arse to die for, a mixture of cute and sexy that I could only have
dreamed of. Anyway, we got talking – I can’t even remember about what – and it was
the start of something that was very special for me at the time, still is I suppose…
She was from Wales and so we had to commute afterwards. I was determined not to
let it become a ‘just’ a holiday romance. I went to stay with her for a week in whatever
the town near Cardiff she lived in was called. She stayed with me for a week despite the
tense situation with my parents. I can only describe what we had as love. Time sped up
and at the same time slowed down. It seemed like I wanted to spend forever with her
and it seemed like forever but at the same time the time went so quickly. When she later
told me that she’d had a boyfriend in Wales the whole time we’d been seeing each
other, I was devastated – it killed me… To tell you the truth Dr. Hardy, I sort of wanted
to talk to you about this today, I’ve told you so much and you’ve listened, you’ve read
my poetry. I don’t think I’ve recovered. I wrote something about it… here… excuse
me, I’m going to go to the toilet while you read it.
***
I could feel the humidity of the summer morning sticking to my back, my sheets damp
with the clamminess of my body. I woke up. The sun was streaming through the
skylight. My forehead was cold and wet; beads of sweat had formed around my
eyebrows. I turned to see the empty space beside me. Where were they? Those wide
round eyes staring at me, as if they were suspended in space, so gentle but yet so wild,
so full of excitement, so child-like but yet so mischievous, so big, so full of longing.
Sometimes I’d lose myself in those eyes. They would tremble at me and say, “I need
you”. It feels nice to be needed.
It’s the little things you miss most: her hair hanging in my face when we were fucking;
the little gap that would always be between her lips – always just enough to get a
glimpse of her teeth; when she’d come and rub her cheek on mine; pulling the string on
the back of her thong; the little kiss she’d give me after a good shag – and the little sigh
she’d give after a crap one. There are too many things.
We used to go to restaurants a lot. If ever there was wine she’d be tipsy after a glass.
She’d start to lose herself in my eyes. She’d start rambling too as her thoughts drifted
further into my eyes. I was talking too but it’s always what’s going on beyond the talk,
on a level that only we can understand, that matters. She’d be thinking of her own
feelings for me and I’d be thinking of her thinking of her feelings for me and thereby be
thinking of my own feelings for her. This is the language of love.
I got out of bed and went to get some cornflakes, it was 11am. As I sat and crunched my
breakfast I began to formulate some strategies to get my mind off you know who. If I
was ever going to get over this I’d have to stop thinking about what was and focus on
what is. Rather, I’d have to focus on whatever I was doing at that particular moment in
time. Right now I was eating cornflakes, so I’d have to concentrate on the cornflakes.
Golden crusted flakes of corn, hmmm… Crunch. Crunch. Crunch. Nice milk, turning
that honey colour milk does when there’s cereal in it, golden flakes of corn, hmmm…
Crunch, crunch, crunch. Milk turning to honey, golden flakes of corn, crunch. Flakes,
crunch. Milk, crunch. Flakes, crunch. Milk crunch. Flakes, milk, flakes, milk, flakes,
milk, crunch. Tits! Two balloons of pure joy, how I used to caress them, play with the
nipples, lick them – watch them bounce up and down as her hair gave my face the
faintest strokes, as her lips gave mine the faintest of touches. We were the best lovers –
the world’s best.
I spent the rest of the day watching old films; I didn’t even get changed out of my
dressing gown.
---
It’s 1am, I go for a walk. I see a pair of lovers silhouetted by the moonlight. The moon,
what is that? The pale blue stranger who looks longingly from so far away? A
meaningless rock floating in space? A piece of cheese? We used to joke about floating
away together into space. Me and her, together, alone, floating towards infinity. It’s all
I ever wanted to do. We had a secret mansion in the stars made out of dreams, out of
love. Out of love… how did we ever fall out of love? My memory of her is fragmentary.
I can only remember each aspect of her: her captivating eyes, the curve of her back, the
smell of my bed after she’d been sleeping there. It’s as if these things float
dismembered, dislocated, jilted. It’s like I can’t put the broken pieces together again,
I’m haunted by the individual impulses. My love was never about anything other than
all these little impulses put together. The only way to keep these things together is her,
and she’s gone. So these little shards just stab at my skull all day, every day. There’s
nothing to be done but wait. ..
It’s 6am, I’m still awake. She did the worst thing, it was stupid: all we did was argue
about something stupid – and now she’s gone, maybe forever. All I wanted was a little
time. Time, I’ve got it now,….time, time I’ve got time coming out of my ears now. I’m
having to think of ways to fill up my day, but nothing seems worth doing at all. I’ll
sleep, I’ll sleep now and maybe I won’t even get up till 2. What’s the point? The moon
is not a rock it’s lonely, the sun doesn’t give life it sheds heat, the clouds don’t rain but
weep and the sky is a selfish landlord keeping us all locked in.
---
It’s 9.30am, I lay awake barely having slept a wink. I’m listening to the tweeting birds
outside, waiting for something – what am I waiting for? I get up and leave my bed. I
look at myself in the mirror – I look like shit – maybe if I looked better things would
work out better, maybe I’d feel better. I shit, shower and shave, and I brush my teeth,
the smell of whiskey can linger on one’s breath. I put on some cologne, the blue one,
her favourite. I don’t know what I’m thinking. Will the smell of this cologne bring her
running back? As if there’s something magic about this smell, this smell that was
concocted by scientists and probably thrust into the burning eyes of some poor lab
animal! I’m embarrassing myself. The reflection in the mirror is tutting and sighing,
laughing and scoffing at my pathetic attempts to make myself feel better. He’s a
bastard. I put on some of my best clothes, the shirt she bought me, the trousers she
bought me. I ready myself to go out, but where? Where am I going? There’s nowhere to
go and nothing to see, I’m not looking for anything from anyone, but her.
It’s 9.45am, I’m sitting in the kitchen all dressed up, eating cornflakes. Milk, crunch,
flakes, crunch – I’m not in the mood today. I realise that this is the first thing I’ve eaten
since yesterday’s cornflakes. My head is numb. The walls seem like they’re closing in,
everything seems like it’s moving. I jump up, cornflakes fly in the air, milk splatters on
the wall. I shout: “I love you. I LOVE YOUUU!”. Then I cry. Pathetically I pick up
some kitchen roll and begin to mop up the spilt milk, but I can’t be bothered. Who am I
cleaning it up for? Maybe I should just leave it there to rot like everything else. My eyes
feel like an invisible sadist has been drilling them with corkscrews all night. I sigh and
go back to the bathroom. I look at myself in the mirror: I look like shit – there are specs
of milk in my hair, bags under my eyes forged by tears. I sigh and go back to the
kitchen. I’m picking up cornflakes, my stomach is crying out for food, aching for
nourishment. I’m on my hands and knees scrubbing milk off the floor. The doorbell
rings, I can’t answer it. I sigh and go upstairs. I’m laying on my bed in my best clothes
trying to ignore the strange mix of cologne and milk that must be emanating from my
shirt. I can’t stay still, I decide to change my shirt. She always liked the blue one. I can
feel the hand of Emptiness on my shoulder. I reapply the cologne and put water in my
hair. I slap myself across the face.
It’s 10.05am, the doorbell rings again. I almost fall down the stairs in my rush to answer
it. It’s her! She says nothing. I say nothing. The eyes shimmer, the lips are that little bit
apart. She advances. I take a moment to think – too late. We kiss. All the little pieces are
melting back together, they’re melting in-front of my eyes to form the figure before me,
the figure I know best. Her cheeks are wet, mine too. I rub my cheek on hers and she
gives a little laugh. I don’t laugh but I smile. The moon is just a rock, the sun gives us
light, the clouds never rain, and up there somewhere, waiting, is our secret mansion in
the stars.
---
It will be 1am and the town will be full of people drinking and being sick in the gutter.
The city will sleep or dance to the beat of a thousand nightclubs. The sirens will whirl
and life will go on. Somewhere, the moon will watch a pair of lovers kissing and it will
wonder about love, but it will never know what I do.
***
I’m a bit embarrassed to tell you the truth. It’s hopelessly sentimental isn’t it? Who
am I even kidding? This is what I feel. She never came back though, that was just
fantasy. I’m sick of fantasy doctor – I want something that’s real, something I can hold
onto know its mine and know that I belong to it to…
It’s why I feel so empty. People are just ideas to me so seldom do they become
tangible, something I can touch, feel, own. People seem so empty to me. I’m talking to
you now but how do I even know you’re there? You could be just an empty vessel; you
could be the machination of an evil genius created to torment me, to break me down.
Why don’t you say something you bastard? Can’t you see this silence is killing me?
You’re killing me! It’s why I feel so empty: everyone else is empty. I watch a film and
the characters in the film are more real than the people I meet. The characters in films
are real people to me, real people are just characters. Why are they all so hollow? If
only I could touch something… It’s other people I need. I can’t make it on my own. It’s
all that any of us need. The only thing that matters is other people…. I see that now… I
wont be coming here again doctor, but thank you, thank you so much.
D. ‘mirror. David’
An empty hall is full of empty chairs. It has round walls like a lighthouse. In the middle
of it stands a mirror. David stands in front of a mirror. He touches his face. He strips off
his clothes. He looks at his naked body. It is under-developed. His shoulders are not yet
man size. He looks at his penis and shakes his head. He puts his cloths back on.
David stands in front of a mirror. He gives a sigh. He looks round at the empty chairs.
He goes to a chair and sits in it. The chair is not to his liking. He tries another chair. It is
not to his liking. He tries another. And another. And another. None of them are
comfortable. None of them are to his liking.
David sits in a chair. The chair becomes a throne. It is not to his liking. The chair
becomes a stool. It is not to his liking. The chair becomes a chaise longue. It is not to his
liking. It becomes a large, muscular man. David places a hand on his bicep. It is not to
his liking. It becomes a buxom, naked woman. David puts his mouth to her nipple. It is
not to his liking.
David stands in an empty room. He becomes frustrated. He kicks a chair over. He

begins to throw chairs about the room. He endeavours to destroy various chairs. He
does not succeed. David strips off his clothes. He runs about the room. He crawls on all
fours. He gives wild yelps of despair. He runs at the circular walls. He cracks his head
and it begins to bleed.
David stands bleeding, blood in his eyes. He curses heaven like an ape. He begins to
laugh wildly. He sits in a chair. He masturbates. He sits in another chair. He defecates.

He smears shit on the chaise longue. He grunts like an animal. He sticks his tongue out.
He says a ‘Hail Mary’. He takes a chair and smashes the mirror. It splinters like wood.
Shattered mirrors lie. Shattered hearts cry tears of acid blood. David stands condemned
like the judged. David stands alone. Seven years bad luck.

The Problem With David Hawkins

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1 “The Problem with David Hawkins”

Week 1. Cilla Black, The Velvet Underground and Tictacs., p. 9

Week 2. The Emperor’s New Clothes, p. 19

Week 3. My Secret Uncles, p. 27

Week 4. “Something Kind of Hit Me Today”, Et Tu Louis?, p. 37

Week 5. Disentangled Doom, p. 37

Week 7. Socio-political, Perennially Fey, p. 64

Week 8. The Capital of Portugal is Lisbon, p. 74

Week 9. Smelly Old Men and Pseudo-intellectuals, p. 84

Week 10. The Elitist Triangle, p. 91

Week 11. Cornflakes, p. 100

D. ‘mirror. David’, p. 107

Dear Sir/ Madam,

David Alexander Hawkins

Week 1. Cilla Black, The Velvet Underground and Tictacs.

My mum is no better. She works in an office, in ‘middle-management’, that’s about

always put out when the attention wasn’t on him.

Week 2. The Emperor’s New Clothes

Week 3. My Secret Uncles

You make me feel like I’m

You know, I’m feeling fine,

You’re the bolt from the blue,

A crown I made for you:

verge of tears but fighting them back like a warrior objected

Week 4. “Something kind of hit me today”, Et tu, Louis?

Louis thing so I said something else,

“So what about it Rick?”

Week 5. Disentangled Doom

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom and Endurance, -

“Repeat after me: ‘I Richard Stevens’”

1. Nobody is to know about the sorority who is not a member or a potential

Why do I have to be such a sadist? Am I weird? Am I sick? Next up was Dinnish

In the Wednesday meeting of that week I addressed the council,

I like that image.

Last came Anarchy: he rode

I dreamt of a babe smiling on a cliff

I dreamt of a friend drowning ‘neath the deep

I dreamt of a hangman counting his days

I dreamt of a tailor holding his breath

I dreamt of a duke dying in the shade

I dreamt of myself stranded on a throne

A bolt from the blue, the vault it just blew

A poet in the rain.

A crow scratching for food.

Sin before the feast, tears of a priest

A man wracked with hatred.

The rain waits to yield, grain sown on a field

Blind men with broken tears.

Wait for me while the darkness comes.

what you can do?”

Week 7. Socio-political, Perennially Fey

“...Got this pimple on his chin...”

Dane Taylor, Birkenhead Comprehensive School.

Miss Turner continued,

One by one the class carried out her whim:

end with them receiving an invitation, by mail or email or phone or something, to a

Everybody wants to be like him

Bet you’d like to step into his shoes

Born with a face Hollywood would kill for

You go for a drink

He’d beat you at an arm wrestle

His friends hang on his words

It’s not like it had to be