* * *
Saturday was spent mostly doing nothing, just trying to put food back into my emaciated body without vomiting. Sunday lunchtime my parents got back. I was still feeling far from normal, though the super tidy house gave nothing away. For a change we had a Sunday roast together, most Sunday lunch times I’d either have already gone round Al’s or I’d still be in bed from the night before.
My parents enticed me with stories of places they’d eaten and holiday photos to come. Fortunately this was in the days of cameras and film so it would be a while before I had to look at pictures of my mum and dad drunk outside Spanish bars, or even worse on the beach, sunburnt and in skimpy swimwear. After lunch I helped clear the table, then my mum got the ironing board out and started ironing some tiny person’s school clothes.
“Whose are they?” I asked.
“They’re your brother’s, Lu.”
“Jack’s not at school.”
“He starts school this year, his first day is tomorrow.”
“Is it?” I hadn’t even realised. As a side effect of sharing my time between work, sleeping and being on another planet, I had no idea my own brother was going to school for the first time.
“Are you telling me you didn’t even realise Jack was starting school this year?”
“He hasn’t told me.”
“That’s because you never speak to him.”
“I’m never here,” I retorted.
“You aren’t ever here, and quite frankly I’m getting fed up of it. All you ever seem to do is stay out all night and sleep all day. Bill the neighbour told me he sees you coming home at seven in the morning some weekends. What are you doing until seven in the morning? I know you’re not still down the pub.”
“I crash round James’s don’t I?” I said.
“Oh yeah and get up to come home at that time of the morning? Don’t lie to me, you don’t even get up that early during the week.”
“It’s my weekend Mum,” I said, “I can spend it how I want.”
“That maybe so when you have your own house, not while you’re living under my roof though. And another thing, why haven’t you got a girlfriend? When I was your age I was with your dad.”
“Girls mature earlier,” I said.
My mum scoffed at me, “You haven’t matured at all!”
I stormed off upstairs, where I found Jack alone in his and Dean’s room.
“You’re starting school tomorrow yeah?” I said.
“Yeah Lu,” he replied. I watched him sat there on his bed and realised I couldn’t remember the last time I’d just had a conversation with him; you know, while I wasn’t doing something else.
“How are you feeling about it?”
“Alright.” I knew he wasn’t alright about it. He was nervous, the sort of nervous you get before you take any leap into the unknown.
“What school is it?”
“The Kirk-Leigh Academy.”
I recognised it as the school Al did his work experience in, meaning it was the same school Al had gone to at Jack’s age.
“What and little Lee from the end of the road is starting at the same time?”
“Yeah. He’s going to the same school with me.”
“That’s because he lives down our road,” I said. “You got all your stuff ready for tomorrow, like a bag and that?”
“Mum’s getting it all ready for me.”
I pictured him in a tie and a pair of grown up shoes, going into school to sit down at a desk. I still saw him as a toddler myself, just getting in the way and not being any use to anyone. It seemed incomprehensible that they would send someone off to begin eleven years of full-time education when, as I looked at him sitting on the edge of the bed, his feet didn’t even touch the floor. He still had stuffed toys in the room.
“How are you getting there?”
“Mum’s taking me.”
“Yeah probably a bit far to walk at your age.”
“I can walk,” he said. “I’m five now!”
I tried to think back to when I was five. I vaguely remembered walking to school. Those were the days when most families only had one car; most families on the council estate I’d lived on at Jack’s age had no cars in fact.
“I know you can walk, I mean it’s too far to walk to school.”
“I can walk that far,” he said. “I think it’s because Mum doesn’t want to walk to school.”
I laughed, “You’re probably right Jack.”
“You can come into the garage if you want,” I said.
“Really Lu?”
I thought about it for a moment. He’d wanted to see in there for years, knocking on the door every day and shouting at me to let him in.
Having Jack in the garage always seemed out of the question before; there would always be the remnants of some kind of white powder left somewhere I’d forgotten about. The chances of him eating it, or finding a misplaced ecstasy pill that had rolled under the bed and eating that were too high. Knowing my parents were coming back today meant I’d had a proper tidy. I don’t know why, it wasn’t like either of them ever wanted to go in there. Regardless I’d gone to town; even to the lengths of vacuuming.
“Come on then.” I led him downstairs and out into the garden, and as I opened the door to the garage his eyes lit up as he gazed at the wonder in there.
“What’s that?” he asked
“What?”
“That there.”
“It’s a poster.”
“What does it say?”
“Read it.”
“I can’t read.”
“Oh yeah, that’s why you’re going to school.” I looked at the picture of Ice Cube, Dr Dre, Eazy-E and MC Ren pulling their gangster faces. “N.W.A, Jack.”
“What does that mean?”
“Er....Naughty With Attitude.”
He spun around on the spot trying to take everything in; the skanky bed, the broken wardrobe in the corner, and the portable television and crap stereo perched precariously on two old chairs at the end of the room. He finally came to a stop facing into the corner.
“Why is there a door there?”
“That’s the old part of the garage,” I told him.
Having exhausted every exciting thing in the part I lived in, Jack ran through the door as fast as his little feet would carry him.
“You’ve got a motorbike?!”
“I’ve had that ages.”
“I didn’t know you had a motorbike.”
“You’ve not been on a motorbike before have you.”
“Never,” he replied, jumping up and down so excitedly he looked like he might actually pop.
“Do you want to sit on it?”
He couldn’t even answer, he just shook with anticipation. I lifted him up at his armpits, lowering him gently onto the seat. “Hold on to the handlebars.” He knew how to do that from riding his own bike. “Now put your feet on the pegs.”
I looked below him at his dangling feet, not even in the same postcode as the foot pegs. “Just put your feet there, on top of the engine.” I helped him by tucking his feet from either side onto the top of the cylinder head. Then with him sitting safely on the bike I stood back and took a proper look at him. He looked like a younger version of me; freckles on his face like I still had and my thin brown hair. It was even cut like mine, a kind of choppy French crop that had been left to turn unruly for a couple of months.
“What do you think then?”
“It’s the best thing ever Lu. Does it work?”
“It used to work Jack.”
“Can I have a go on the back of it?”
“Maybe,” I said. “You need to go upstairs and get ready for school tomorrow, it’s special your first day.”
“If I do that you’ll take me out on the motorbike at the weekend?”
“Maybe Jack,” I said, “as long as I’m not busy.”
He ran out of the garage like a shot and disappeared upstairs. I didn’t see him again once for the
rest of the night.
We All Know a Lot Can Change With the Arrival of Friday Night
September 2001.
It was an everyday Tuesday at work, not long into September. I had recovered enough to be able to look back on the weekend with some positivity. Mondays were filled with constant thoughts of never again repeating over and over in my delicate mind; the cassette tapes in my Walkman reflected this. By Tuesday I had moved on from the gentle house music I’d been listening to, and onto something a bit darker. When the commotion happened I was listening to Belgian bleeps and bass hardcore.
At first I thought the fire alarm had gone off, as the people around me stood up and began to mill about. I took my earphones out but couldn’t hear the sirens, only the sound of the radio turned up to full volume. Seeing as everyone was still inside it obviously wasn’t a fire; then the sound of the news reporter on the radio quelled my curiosity.
“Unconfirmed reports are coming through of a passenger plane hitting the World Trade Centre in New York.”
My first thought was how the hell does a plane hit a building? Listening to the conversations around me, that seemed to be the question most people had on their minds. The line managers, who sat at the back of the building, eventually managed to calm everyone down and return them to their seats, where they stayed for about ten minutes until reports came through of a second plane crash into the same building; at which point even I got out of my seat and joined in the conversation. Knowing the day was never going to return to being productive, the company let us all go early.
At the brief stop I made in Carlton Town every day while I waited for my second bus, I stood not at the bus stop as usual, but instead out the front of an electrical store on the opposite side of the road. A huddle of strangers stood with me and we watched, in disbelief, as the televisions repeated footage of hundreds of people dying in two big fireballs.
Al was usually home by four but I rang him from my house before walking round there just to make sure.
“Are you watching the news mate?” I asked him.
“Why the fuck would I watch the news?”
“What?! How can you not be watching it? Have you not heard? Terrorists have been flying planes into skyscrapers in America.”
“Bollocks.”
“Seriously mate, put the news on.”
“What channel?”
“Any channel.”
After a brief pause I heard the sound of his television in the background.
“What the fuck? That’s insane!” Al said. “They just showed a replay of a plane crashing into a building.”
“It’s happened twice mate, into two buildings next to each other. Mental ain’t it? Are you on your own at yours? I’ll come round.”
“Yeah....I’m just chilling out here.”
“I’ll come round mate and watch it at yours.”
“Up to you Lu, I can’t really be arsed to do much though.”
It didn’t matter; I had my shoes on and was halfway out the door. I got the usual funny look from the old lady in the post office for buying beer while it was still light out, then in no time was sat on Al’s spare sofa watching the dust and debris rain down.
“Mad ain’t it?” I said.
“Yeah pretty mental,” he replied, of all the people I’d seen that day he seemed the least shocked.
“What’s up with you mate? You alright?”
“Me and Louise split up.”
“Oh no mate. Why?”
“She couldn’t handle me getting mashed all the time.”
He looked really upset and I knew I was the only person he could confide in, seeing as I was the only person who knew; and even I shouldn’t have known, it had only been a slip of the tongue that had enlightened me. I had wondered whether that was an intentional slip of the tongue. If he was going to tell anyone it would have been me, his oldest friend. Either way I had another burden on me now, two friends to consol, both with broken hearts and both over the same girl.
“This is sick Al, showing people dying on TV. I bet some of their families don’t even know they’re dead yet.”
“I know mate. But then part of you can’t believe it’s even real. It’s like watching a film or something.”
I knew exactly what he meant. The only problem was I didn’t just have those feelings when watching the television; I was beginning to have them all the time. Spending so much time out of my head had left me constantly questioning the existence of what I saw with my own eyes.
I laughed a tentative, water testing laugh, “I feel like that every day mate.”
“You’re not the only one Lu.”
“You’re beginning to feel different?”
Al sniggered, “A bit. Like I’m not coming back down properly after I get high.”
“I’m glad it’s not just me, as bad as that sounds,” I said. “What do you think is causing it?”
“Don’t know Lu,” Al replied, “maybe we need to take a break for a bit.”
I nodded at him because I knew what he was suggesting was right. It wasn’t as though it was particularly good advice; I bet most people when told of the amount of drugs we were taking and how regularly, would have recommended the same thing. It was still only Tuesday though, and we all know a lot can change with the arrival of Friday night.
Drink and Drugs Brought Him to Life
December 2001.
I woke to a pounding silence, in a strange magnolia room. The alarm clock beside me said ten o’clock; light peering through a crack in the curtains said it must be morning. Another night on the drink. From the bedroom window I could see the White Hart pub where I’d spent last night. A nice quiet country pub in an idyllic little village. I could remember walking in, the rest was a haze. The list of things we could have done wrong was endless, and it all lay just yards away.
Downstairs I found Al and Monica cuddled up on the sofa talking. She was young and pretty, with long dark hair and long legs. I don’t know how Al managed it but he always seemed to attract good looking women. Memories of her inviting us home after the pub came flooding back. “My parents are away for Christmas,” she’d said.
I remembered starting to drink on Boxing Day. I didn’t know what day it was now; only that we hadn’t yet had New Year’s Eve.
“Sleeping Beauty’s up,” Al said sarcastically. He never was one for sleep. “Do you know what time it is?”
“Ten o’clock mate,” I replied.
“Wrong!” he retorted. “Beer o’clock you mean.”
He was right. Last night wasn’t the first night we’d spent drinking; it might have been the third. If we had any hope of getting through the day we needed alcohol, preferably before the remaining vapours of last night wore off and we were reduced to a pair of trembling paranoid wrecks.
“Morning Monica,” I said. She smiled at me and the state I must have looked. “You got any coffee?”
“I’ll put the kettle on for you both if you like?”
“Fuck that,” Al said rudely. “There’s some co-codamol on the side in the kitchen. That’s what you need.”
He was right again. I swallowed a handful. They weren’t mine, but I reasoned a doctor would probably prescribe them to me in the state I was in. Then Al presented me with my shoes, he was clearly in a rush. His shaking hands told me why.
“If you’re going to the shop would you mind walking the dog with you?” Monica called out to us. But it was too late, Al was already slamming the door.
It was a cold frosty morning. I’d only gone out dressed for the pub so I didn’t have a coat, or at least I think I’d gone out dressed for the pub. I still couldn’t remember what we’d done the day before; I wasn’t even sure when I was last home. The walk to the shop went the same as every morning walk to the shop to buy alcohol- a mixture of respectable elderly people waiting for buses; perfect families out for bracing walks together, with leads on their children and leads on their dogs; anyone who could look down on you for your choice of lifestyle.
We were in a nice area and we didn’t fit in. We didn’t do nice. I don’t know how people could tell on the way to the shop, but they always could. The two bottles of vodka we walked back with probably gave the game away.
We stopped on a bench at the side of the road for a fag.
“Did you shag her?” were the first words to leave my lips.
“Fuck knows mate, I couldn’t even remember her name when I woke up. Luckily she’d saved her number on my phone last night.”
“She seems alright Al, quite nice to look at.”
“Yeah she’s nice. I’ve been up since silly o’clock this morning chatting with her, we’re getting on really well.”
“That’s good mate, might help you to have someone around with a bit of sense. It’s the new year soon; 2002 might be a new start.” I was pleased for him, a little jealous as well but jealousy doesn’t come into it with true friends. When good things happened to Al it made me happy too.
A few sips of the vodka while we sat took the hangover away, and once back at the house we half filled pint glasses with the stuff, then topped them up with Coke. But it was never going to keep us going all day. Our energy levels were on empty, I was exhausted just from walking to the end of the road and back. We needed something to perk us up.
Al made a few phone calls in the garden, at a volume that ensured no one would miss what he was saying.
“Have you got any bennies mate? Nah. Go faster? No. What about sniff?”
No pills, speed or coke. This wasn’t looking good. I went upstairs for a piss while I contemplated whether to spend the rest of the day drinking where I was, or somehow make it home and sleep forever.
Al came in after a few minutes, sat down, and prepared to break the news to me. He didn’t need to, the people next door knew we couldn’t get any gear.
“There’s nothing about Lu,” he told me. I took my phone from my pocket to look for numbers he might not have tried. “Except some shrooms.”
“I’m not sure if today’s the right day for trying mushrooms mate,” I said. We’d somehow avoided magic mushrooms up until this point. They were on the big imaginary drug tick-list in my head, but today wasn’t a day for working through that list. Today was a day for just getting through.
“No worries. I’ll have your half. The bloke’s on his way.” So today was the day; there was no way I’d say no if they were put in front of me, seeing as I’d just finished my first half pint of breakfast vodka.
A little while later Al left to deal with the bloke, meeting him at the end of the road.
“Apparently what you do is eat a couple, wait an hour, then if you need to, eat some more,” he told me when he got back. Very similar to the instructions on the co-codamol I thought.
We split the bag down the middle. They were long mushrooms with pointy triangular caps and thin stalks. I tried not to look at the mould growing on them as I chewed my half up and swallowed it in one, washed down with more vodka and Coke. Taking them didn’t worry me, not like LSD did. I’d heard horror stories of people doing LSD once and spending the rest of their life in a mental institution. Mushrooms were a softer hallucinogen; things would look a little weird, colours would become more vivid, our hearing would be altered. I could handle that, it was the watching spiders crawling over your body while on acid that I didn’t want.
The three of us topped our drinks up and made ourselves comfortable in her parents’ large front room. I had a small black leather sofa to myself while in the middle of the room Monica and Al shared a larger one. Drawn curtains blocked out the midday shame.
Monica put a film on, Biodome, and the three of us laughed our way through the first half of it. It was ridiculous, like Dumb and Dumber without an actual plot, just two idiots taking it in turns to hurt each other and make jokes about masturbation. For the state of mind I was in though it was ideal; the rate the vodka was going down I’d have struggled to follow anything more challenging.
It wasn’t long before the first wave hit me. No visual dramatics, just a sense the world had shifted slightly on its axis. Another ten minutes and it was spinning the wrong way; and strange things started happening.
The room we were in had two types of wallpaper; a kind of textured beige around the top half of the room and a vertically striped pattern around the bottom. The stripes were of contrasting dark and light blues. Between the two was a border with a flowery pattern. I watched as the flowers grew into each other and the patterns changed. This was something I’d seen a few times in the flowery curtains at James’s flat; but always at the end of the night, never at the beginning.
“Definitely getting something now mate,” I said to Al as I shifted in my seat. He nodded. He needn’t have bothered. He was the same, I only had to look at his face to tell. We’d spent so much time together out of our heads that I knew him like I knew myself. Al lived a strange look, like someone in a constant state of suspense; just going through the motions of everyday life, like he was waiting for something to happen. While he had that look he was never happy. Drink and drugs brought him to life.
The wallpaper around the top and bottom of the walls began to rotate in different directions, the way it does when you’re watching the news and a computer monitor is flickering in the background. It took me by surprise, but was captivating to watch at the same time. The multi-coloured flowers on the border separating the two wallpapers grew out further over the walls until they nearly touched the ceiling and the floor. Then they receded back to where they’d started from. The first hint of doubt collected in the pit of my stomach. Maybe we shouldn’t have just eaten them all like that. How much more intense was this going to get? A big sip of vodka and Coke helped to block those thoughts out. It was too late to be changing our minds now, so it was a waste of time thinking about it. I could feel my eyes closing on their own as an overpowering tiredness came over me; my legs filling with lead as the actions of the last day or three caught up with me. I wanted to fall asleep. My brain had other ideas though.
I watched, mesmerised, as those same flowers kissed the ceiling; and wondered how long it would be before the whole room looked like a botanical garden. Soon there would be no escape from their meandering stalks. I was wrong. As the flowers stretched out onto the ceiling they changed into long thin strips of colour. Rich, vibrant, pure, every colour of the spectrum. Oscillating from the other end of the room, flowing like waves towards me; a scrolling rainbow playing before my eyes. It was getting a bit much now. This was by far the strongest hallucination I’d ever experienced, I was going to need a little chat with Al. A cigarette in the quiet of the garden on our own, just to bring things down a level. I looked over to the other sofa. Al’s body had folded under him, but his head remained perfectly upright as he stared at the television screen in front. He looked as though some invisible giant was stood behind him, reaching round and pulling him back into his chair by his face. A beam of twisting colour fired straight out of the television and into his eyes. Pauly Shore morphed from the screen like a liquid and poured into his mind, all twisting and dripping in on itself, with long stretched oval eyes. His pink flesh oozed from the screen and ran down the front of the dark TV unit, where it pooled on the floor.
Fuck. We were drowning in colour.
There was nothing I could do but let the helplessness of our situation take over. I began to panic, but then a primal instinct kicked in and shut down the fear part of my brain. To allow yourself to become scared at a time like this would be far too dangerous. A normal mind couldn’t handle being subjected to seeing this for any length of time, less so one as fragile as ours; you would risk suffering a total psychiatric collapse. It was better to switch to some kind of basic functioning- eyes, ears and vital organs, just enough to survive and to be aware of what you’d done to yourself. Lest the punishment fit the crime.
I knew there wasn’t much more of this left in me. I just wanted to go away for a week and come back when the world was right again. I was begging for an escape, anythin
g to relieve my overdosed senses.
Monica’s dog Max strode in and sat down in front of me; a big golden Labrador watching me with condescending eyes. Then, as I stared at it and the random colours smattering its fur, it slowly began to talk....I can’t remember what it said or how it said it, it doesn’t matter. It was the final straw. I gratefully passed out.
The world has never felt as real since that day. I learned firsthand that what they teach you in school is true- the universe, you, your consciousness; everything you’ve ever seen or ever will see, are just electrical interpretations in your brain. The world is only there because your mind creates it, without you it all goes away. We’re all taught that same thing, but seeing with my own eyes what happens when chemicals are added to our brains made me believe it. The way colours aren’t fixed, and shapes can morph and become whatever they want to. It’s a big thing to comprehend at eighteen. In fact it’s a big thing to comprehend at any age.
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