BLIND MAN ON CRACK: Episode 6

Welcome to the 6th gripping, or griping, instalment of...

BLIND MAN ON CRACK

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6

 

In A Taxi With A Beautiful Woman

 

At work, my depleted brain I nursed with excessive coffee and as many easy tasks as I could find.  No doubt I paraded around trying to pass off my calamitous state as a wry disposition, morose words in a light-hearted tone, the clown who doesn’t get his own jokes.  And then, as the day ground on, and five o’clock came, I left to meet Emma, still believing the romance was redeemable.  Maybe the gods of love would override my reticence and parachute me into a scene that even I couldn’t fuck up in.  Didn’t they know who I was?

 

We met in a heaving hellhole on Portobello Road, known for its market, selling everything from watermelons to wind-chimes, shimmering things and shards of assorted granite, billed as healing minerals.  Struggling through Friday night crowds, I could already feel my double-life fraying at the seams.  A hangover from crack is like having your brain concreted over.  You dig around for some happiness, any little nougat of cheerfulness will do, but there’s none to be found.  But I can’t remember thoughts like, ‘I really should steer clear of crack,’ crossing my mind.  Instead, I felt resentful that it wasn’t possible to have one’s coke and smoke it.  Why shouldn’t I be able to smoke crack all night, then just live out a normal day as if nothing’s happened?  Already, I was making allowances for crack that I’d never made for any other substance.  If I’d been drinking all the previous night, I’d expect to feel rough the next day, and probably wouldn’t do it again, at least not for a while.  What’s more, I could never drink much anyway, I’d hit a threshold and that was it, sick-time or bed.  Crack, though, doesn’t knock you out, it keeps you up, and up, and up some more, until either the money’s gone, or you’ve keeled over from the consequences of having your blood thickened to the consistency of treacle.

 

I stood outside the pub, hoping as usual that this evening might mark a watershed in my forlorn and loveless existence.  Emma, plus entourage, college friends, and one or two from her new job, had already arrived.  I was spotted wandering around in search of them, Emma called out, and soon I was sitting next to her, cheered up, reassured, even comforted to be in good company, company that wanted me there, whether or not I’d maxed out at the cashpoint.  I’d looked in the mirror before leaving work, and seen a bloated ghost, from the eyes of which seemed to gloat a gargoyle, satisfied to have dragged the rest of me through the rubble, and spat me out, ill-equipped, at beauty’s altar.

 

There was no sign of the boyfriend, and Emma and I began to chat, connect, and kind of shut out the others.  It was all quite confidant and confidante, intimate and tactile, at least on her part.  I planned to reciprocate, but never seemed to get round to it.  But it was nice to know, at least, that she hadn’t changed much since my comedy debut.  I could catch up on the touches and imploring clasps of the hand later, I assured myself.

 

I don’t know how the conversation got round to it, but I ended up mentioning that I’d tried crack.  I didn’t go into the details of when and where, or with whom.  I thought that might be pushing the limits of the friendship a bit far.  ‘I spent last night with a prostitute,’ is not one of the strongest chat-up lines I’ve heard, and adding, ‘I wore one of her dresses, and put on lipstick,’ seems to open the can of worms even wider.  But Emma’s response to my crack news surprised me, saying that she wanted to try everything at least once.  I knew to warn her against it, and did so in a solemn way, reflecting the trouble I knew I was already in.  She asked me what it was like, and I think I told her it was like having a line of cocaine but instant, and much more intense, but reiterating the downside I seemed determined to overlook myself.  But the subject of crack wasn’t dwelt on, and we got back to quoting Reeves and Mortimer at one another, and making each other laugh, like we did.

 

We talked about relationships, and things got quite honest.  I confided in Emma why I felt I hadn’t been in a relationship for so long.  I was 28, and my relationship history was sketchy at very best – in fact, it was virtually a blank canvas.  I told her that because of my eye condition I was in near-constant pain, and so it would be wrong to offer myself to someone as a potential partner, because this pain would inevitably seep out into their life, and why would I want that if I loved them?  ‘I don’t feel like you bring pain into my life,’ said Emma, which pretty much put pay to my seeping pain theory.  It was nice to be endorsed, and the comment felt like one more step up the spiral staircase to her heart.  There was a lull in the conversation, but we filled the gap simultaneously by saying to one another, ‘It’s good to see you.’

 

When closing-time came, I was preparing myself for the long haul back across London when Emma asked me if I wanted to stay at hers.  I did, but I was wondering where the first flirtatious gesture was going to come from on my part, having been so physically reticent all evening.  She’d been quite touchy-feely, and I was behind on points, and that old familiar paralysis was beginning to kick in.  But out we went onto Portobello Road, hailed a taxi and made our way to Kilburn, where Emma shared a flat with her sister.

 

I sat in the back of the cab, inches from her, thinking, ‘Am I meant to do something now?’  I was beginning to think I was running out of time.  I hadn’t done a thing, and if I made a move at Emma’s place it would seem like a late lunge, ill-timed and clumsy.  We spent quite a lot of time in the taxi talking about politics.  Tony Blair had not long become Prime Minister.  I was still optimistic, whereas Emma was far from so, because she was, rather surprisingly, a Conservative, due to family conditioning.  Normally, I wouldn’t have allowed myself to be attracted to such a creature, but beggars can’t be choosers.

 

We got to Emma’s, and I felt vaguely normal standing there as she unlocked the door and the taxi pulled away.  Her sister was already in bed, so we crept through the hall into the living-room.  I think we had a glass of wine each and she made a fried-egg sandwich, and I can remember thinking how beautiful in a willowy way she was.  And she was.

 

There was a sofa there I could have slept on.  I was very prepared for that eventuality.  But Emma pulled open a double-futon thing, and my fear-gland started secreting.  What, if anything, she said, I don’t recall, but it was pretty apparent that we were both going to sleep on it.  No words like, ‘You can have the sofa,’ were uttered by Emma, and I too, perhaps unusually, kept my trap shut.

 

So Emma tucked herself up under the quilt, and I sat on the floor next to her, struggling to undo the laces on my Doctor Martens.  I think I said something like, ‘Just trying to get these heavy boots off,’ to which her response was, ‘That’s a relief.’  I processed all possible meanings of this as I lumbered about on the razor’s edge between running and romance.

 

So there we were, in one of those maybe-moments, although I don’t think there was really much maybe about it.  I lay down awkwardly next to her, said a few pointless things, that were presumably meant to be funny, but soon found myself riddled with self-pity and fury at self.  Perhaps she thought I didn’t fancy her anymore, or that I was being careful, knowing that to presume on her affections a second time would be an infringement.  So we chatted for a bit, then fell asleep, except I didn’t.  I just lay there, slipping in and out of half-dreams, waking occasionally to find I was grinding my teeth, no doubt cos I was anxious, until we both woke up to the sound of Emma’s sister coming in with a cry of, ‘Rise’n’shine, lazybones,’ to which Emma responded, half-yawning, ‘We didn’t get to sleep until three,’ to which her sister replied, ‘Well, I didn’t know you two had copped off, did I?’  This received no reply, at least not a verbal one.  Whether Emma made some kind of visual signal or not, I don’t know.  But, whatever happened in the visual world, the silence felt a bit awkward from where I was sitting.

 

A couple of hours later, I was saying goodbye to Emma on Kilburn High Road.  I was concerned that my lack of physicality might have spoiled my chances, but everything was perfectly friendly and affectionate.  I managed to kiss her on the cheek, and, hands loosely entwined, we said goodbye, with more than half a plan to meet up later in the week.

 

So back I went to the flat.  Josie and her boyfriend were away for the weekend, which just left me and the vampire who didn’t like me.  I spent the weekend avoiding him, doing my best to recuperate in my bedroom, to the soundtrack of him in the living-room, pliers clicking, as another loop was added to his ongoing chain-mail vest.
 

 

And here, as usual, is one of my songs for your edutainment: Paedophile In The Palace  Don't worry, it's just a safe youtube song link.

 

Thanks for letting me share.

 



BLIND MAN ON CRACK: Episode Zero

Episode Zero of...

BLIND MAN ON CRACK, AGAIN

 

First of all, here is the song...

 

Song For A Sedated Nation

 

Now, a picture, of a loving cappunccino...

 

 



 

If the last thing you do at night isn't brush your teeth, you have a problem.

 

A man said, 'My life is like looking in a mirror showing a reflection of a mirror showing my life.'
 

My girlfriend says I'm a bad judge of character.  I'll let her know when she gets back from the abattoir.

That'll do for today.

Next episode of Blind Man On Crack, 'The Charity Shop Files'...

See you then?


 



BLIND MAN ON CRACK: Episode 5

Here is the latest instalment of the blurred-world adventure, 'Blind Man On Crack', for your enjoyment and possible edification...

 

 

Chapter 5

 

Death Of A Lab-Rat

 

Thursday afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, a black flame of resentment burning inside, and it suddenly struck me I could visit Debbie and Sandra again.  It was about three o’clock, and the realisation hit like a sledgehammer in the brain, shattering any normal preoccupations that may otherwise have been forming.  In a flash, normality was bulldozed away like so much rubble, and the ground was clear for a new edifice to be erected, part cultish shrine to my new compulsion, part mausoleum, housing the shrivelled remains of the first twenty-eight years of my life, and all those hopes and dreams that I still thought I had a chance of fulfilling, if only I could just make that leap of confidence, hack my way into a new mindset, stay there, consolidate, and flourish.

 

I now had a double-bolthole.  As long as I had money, I had access to that new combination-high of crack-cocaine and the promise of sex – it was a heady mix.  What’s more, it was all so easy.  I was due to see Emma the next day, and crack seemed the perfect solution to the problem of anticipation, the crushing pressure of nerves, and the constant battle to keep my self-esteem afloat.  Crack offered itself up as a quick fix to the slow fracture of my life.

 

A countdown began in my head.  I’d leave work at five, be at Westbourne Park by half-past, at Debbie’s by quarter-to-six.  Assuming one of them was in, which was likely, we’d probably have scored by six.  So I barely had three hours to wait before that world-evading wave of euphoria would be swamping my brain with dopamine, and rocketing me into that veiled world where only appetite and self prevail.  This was no passing thought that could be questioned, tempered, revised, gone back on, even.  The deal was sealed.  As soon as the idea entered my head, there was nothing that was going to stop me. 

 

This all suited the way my life was going generally, at least when I looked at the negative bits, which I assiduously did.  The glass always seemed half-empty.  I knew, academically, intellectually, that it was always better to see it as half-full.  On a good day, I might.  But the glass never seemed to be getting any fuller.  And that’s the problem with crack.  It fills the glass like a torrent of soda in a Schweppes advert.  Over the rim it gushes, down the sides, fizzing and brimming, ever-rising, ever-giving, the nearest to a cum-shot a drinks ad may ever be allowed to get.  The only problem is the next time you look there’s only about an inch of stale poison left in the bottom, and suddenly it’s last orders, raining outside, and there’s a queue at the cab-rank.

 

So there I’d sit, day after day, nothing changing, mailing after mailing pouring from the printer.  Of course, I could have applied for a new job.  But apart from not having the confidence to move on, I resented the fact that, having done a day’s work, I’d then have to go home and spend time applying for another job I didn’t want.  Besides, I wanted to be getting paid for my comedy, my music, or some other creative venture.  But I had no real concept of doing the groundwork, taking the knocks, climbing the rickety ladder to fulfilment.  I wanted it now, or at least soon.  The fact that the Beatles had to work like dogs to get where they did meant nothing to me - couldn’t they see who I was?

 

I had no relief from work at the flat, with its in-house band of minstrels and barbarians, who, embedded in the past, had no future at all.  Their Friday night violence in fibreglass armour seemed an inadequate vent for the more high-pressure, nuclear rage that I was incubating.  The evenings would drag, the weekends torture, and I just couldn’t get on with them, and the ones I did get on with, I couldn’t get on with, because they got on with the ones I couldn’t get on with.  I have very high standards – don’t want to be tarnished by association.

 

Of course, I can see now that I was really down in the dumps, to use a clinical term.  I just couldn’t find the mental wherewithal to get my act together, even semi-together, except now I see it probably was semi-together all along.  I at least had a job, a place to live, good friends, I’d done comedy, and maybe had the possibility of Emma becoming an even more significant other.  But the spoiled child within wanted it all.  A half-life wasn’t good enough for him.  He had a particular and twisted take on the phrase ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’.  His motto was ‘if it ain’t perfect, break it’.  I was on a low dose of antidepressants, but whether or not they were really helping, I’d kind of forgotten.  I just took one each day and carried on.  I had noticed a slight mood-lift in the first few weeks, but they certainly hadn’t acted as a springboard to better times.  Maybe I was on too low a dose.  Maybe I was on the right dose, but too weak to capitalise.

 

So there I sat at my desk, seeming to work, but actually marking each minute as one less to endure.  I could go into a kind of dull trance, printing off lists, stuffing them in envelopes, answering the phone, helping a schizophrenic in Ipswich, and before I knew it, it would be time to bolt.

 

The landscape of addiction is a rugged and inhospitable place, like the quarry the TARDIS lands in when a barren moonscape is needed.  The path to that first distant pinnacle is treacherous and slow.  Minutes truncate, like when you’re going into a black hole, time slows…you spaghettify.  Miserably, you surf the crest of each resented minute, carrying you closer to the longed-for summit.  If ever you were determined to do anything, you’re determined now, even predetermined.  For a time, time doesn’t feel like time at all.  But, when you do finally arrive, the leeside of the mountaintop is steep, and hurls you down into murky, erratic waters.  But I just wanted the view from that summit – didn’t give a shit about erratic waters, murky or no.

 

Five-to-five, and there I was, chomping at the bit – then, computer off, coat on, and I was gone.  Even then, on what was only my third rush at crack, I shot from the office like a greyhound from a trap, or maybe into one.  Within minutes, I was knocking on Debbie’s door, just like on debut, ten days earlier.  This time, Debbie was in, but Sandra wasn’t about, and this suited us both.  Sandra’s strange ways in a Paddington guesthouse had been hard going.  I was glad not to have to contend with her bullying, blagging, and bucktoothed demands for kebab.

 

Debbie, seemingly the gentler of the two, was glad to have her flat, and me, to herself.  I hadn’t been there long before she told me how ‘gutted’ she’d been at my impromptu departure with Sandra the week before.  But this time she had me to herself, and my bank-account, that ever-giving fountain of facilitation, braced itself again for another nightlong ravishing.  In fact, I’d already stopped off at the cashpoint, no doubt withdrawn forty quid or so, naively believing I’d spend just that.  Then, after a few cursory niceties, I gave her the money, she rang the guy, and off she went to the designated meeting-point.  I sat there on her partially collapsed sofa watching some porn she’d put on, and waited.  Most of drugs is waiting, or regretting.

 

Then, twenty minutes later, footsteps on the walkway, the rattle of keys in the door, and in bustles Debbie.  ‘Mission accomplished,’ she says, quickly throwing her coat down and spitting the wraps into her palm.  No sooner in hand than unwrapped, no sooner unwrapped than on the foil, no sooner on the foil than being keenly drawn into our desperate, hungry lungs.  Then I think we got vaguely sexual.  But the problem with crack (one of a few) is that you have to keep going back to it, so, five minutes down the line, any intentions are supplanted by the need for another pipe.  And the whispering tyrant must be heeded.  This may all seem a little repetitive, but this is what crack’s like.  It gets you like a lab-rat.  As soon as that looming white-coated figure appears, make a dash for the waterspout, because you know that when temptation rattles your cage, your next drink’s gonna send you crazy, and you like that, don’t you?  Climbing over cagemates, living and dead, doesn’t really matter, likewise the electrified floor that gives you the occasional jolt as you dangle on that nozzle, desperately suckling on that metal mother of a spout, hoping against hope that, this time, it’ll carry you to where you need to be.  Guzzle away, knock it back my furry friend.  I propose a toast!  To absent friends, who lie about, mostly toasted.

 

My initial outlay of forty quid ran out fast, so we unanimously agreed that getting more would be a good idea.  This time, Debbie would take my card to the cashpoint, and meet the guy on her way back, and ‘we may as well get eighty or a hundred out, to save going back and forth’.  Green as broccoli, I thought this was a spiffing idea.  Yes, that’ll take us up to about eleven o’clock, time enough for me to catch the train home.  So there I sat, slumped yet tense, trying to fast-track Debbie’s return by means of willpower alone.  When this failed, I prayed, and listened.  Was that person coughing on the pavement her?  No, not gruff enough.  Were they her footsteps on the walkway?  Damn, they’ve gone by.  Is that her key in the door?  No, it’s just the breeze…every sound, a taunt.  Eventually, she returned, hurriedly unwrapped the stuff, slung a bit on a pipe, and there we sat, two lost souls in the half-light, smoking away, drinking from cans, porn flickering in the corner.  Every so often one of us would embark on some sexual expedition, only to abort it five minutes later, as the high gave way to desperation.

 

In a while, we were in the bedroom, and Debbie began rummaging in the wardrobe, removed a dress, and suggested I should wear it.  Minutes later, there I was, perched like a mannequin on the edge of the bed, in a nice floral number, wondering, amongst other things, how I got there at all.  Then she decided it was time to take the makeover up a notch.  Standing above me, unscrewing a lipstick, she then traced the uncertain curl of my lips with impeccable precision.  I probably had stubble showing, but no one has it all.  And we resumed our sporadic and slightly off-the-map liaison.  Minutes later, there was a sudden and insistent pounding on the front-door.  Debbie went into the hall, closing the door behind her.  ‘Who is it?’ she called.  ‘It’s Freddie,’ came the muffled reply.  She unbuckled the various locks and opened up.  In he clattered, they chatted in the hall, and she ushered him into the living-room, much to my intense relief.  A few moments later, she came back into the bedroom and told me it was her brother, but reassured me he was ‘safe’.  She then picked up the pipe and took it into the living-room.  When you’re a crack-smoker, most of your visitors will be crack-smokers too, and Freddie was no exception – birds of a feather, I guess, or moths to a flame.  As long as there’s plenty left, offering a visitor a pipe is just like putting the kettle on.

 

Can’t say I was looking forward to meeting Freddie, for a few reasons, the key one being I felt a little overdressed, sitting there like a half-iced Christmas cake.  But some people get fidgety on crack, and soon Freddie was up and about, and I could hear his voice getting closer.  ‘Who’ve you got in the bedroom?’ he bellowed at sis.  ‘Leave it, Freddie,’ yelled Debbie in the background, ‘come and smoke your top-up.’  But her enticement wasn’t good enough to keep him in check, and the bedroom-door swung open.  There was a moment of quiet.  All I could see was a blurred head against the darkness of the unlit hall, and all I could hear was a cross between a chuckle and a jeer.  I felt caged, a specimen in a world of specimens, but all I was wishing was that Debbie would come and sort things out, preferably with crack.  Freddie and I exchanged no words, and he returned for his top-up.  I felt ten years of awkwardness compressed into a handful of seconds.  It was time to remove my glad-rags, and I went into the bathroom to wipe away the lipstick, catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I did so, looking like a vampire who’d forgotten to use a napkin after a night of overindulgence.  Then, back in the bedroom, Debbie came in and apologised for having let Freddie off the leash, who was now settled back down in the other room, content to sit there mumbling and gazing at porn.

 

Debbie and Freddie were originally from Manchester.  I don’t know how long they’d been in London, but somehow that’s where they were.  It’s hard enough knowing what truth there is in people’s autobiographies at the best of times, let alone when you’ve got something like crack fuelling and distorting the narrative.  Sometimes she would tell me about her first experience as a working-girl, aged twelve, in the back of some bloke’s car in a Salford car-park.  She would also furnish me with stories of having seen Myra Hindley and Ian Brady on the hunt in the area she grew up.  Other little shards of her upbringing would come to the surface from time to time.  Things like incest, drunk and violent male relations, not to mention punters, would all feature occasionally in the dark pantomime of her early years.  Whether she came to London on the promise of streets paved with gold, I don’t know, but in Westbourne Park the only gold was the odd squashed Benson’n’Hedges packet.

 

Debbie spent the rest of the evening shuttling between me in the bedroom and Freddie in the living-room.  Every half an hour or so she’d take a loaded pipe in for him, then return to me.  I was surprised he didn’t keep coming in demanding more.  Half an hour, for most people, is far too long an interval between pipes.  But in future encounters with him I’d come to the conclusion he was heavily sedated.  Whatever he was on, it seemed to go some way to overriding the desire to keep returning to the pipe, for which I was suitably and selfishly grateful.

 

A couple of hours passed, another trip to the cash-point for Debbie, and it was blatantly apparent I wouldn’t be getting the train back to Essex that night.  But when you’re on a bender, you’re welcome to stay just as long as you’re able to pay your way.  Somehow, I still had money in the bank, so there were several nocturnal journeys for Debbie to make as the night progressed.  I wasn’t such a cad as to never offer to go with her, but she would always say it would be quicker if she went alone.  She knew better than I what dodgy characters she might encounter, and how to deal with them.  So I’d just sit there on the bed coming down and counting down until she reappeared.  The fact I had work in the morning meant nothing, nor did the fact I was due to meet Emma that evening.  The future, in all its forms, was like a separate world, and for as long as I could fend it off with crack, all was well.

 

The jackboots of another night marched on, Debbie and I in the bedroom, Freddie in the living-room, deep in the canyon of a chemically induced coma.  Then, as the two birds left in Westbourne Park began to chirp, the obligatory milk-float skimmed past, and buses stopped being night-buses, it became clear that dawn was icily announcing the onset of another working day.  Then, somehow, the day upon us, with immense reluctance, I faltered my way to the tube-station, and trundled unwillingly to another eight hours of mind-numbing drudgery.  But it wasn’t long before, once again, I was picking my way through rat-cadavers to get a grip on that life-giving nozzle that the white-coated lady kept sticking through the mesh of my cage.

 

 

And, at last, I've written a new 'song', which you are welcome to watch/listen to on this safe youtube link:  Thank You For Your Help In This Matter

 

See you soon.



BLIND MAN RADICALISED ON CRACK: Episode 4

Here is Episode 4 of the Earth-based adventure...

 

'Blind Man On Crack'

 



I only hope you enjoy it as much as I didn't. 

Chapter 4

 

Lambs To The Laughter

 

Veering down Great Portland Street, I got to work, still feeling like a spectre expelled.  I was first in and made a beeline for the kettle.  I guzzled my coffee like a desperate crow, reflecting at my desk upon this living dusk I’d stumbled on.  Then, I imagine, I must have set about doing whatever menial tasks were on the menu for the day.  Probably more mailings, more telephone-enquiries, the answers to which would be same inadequate rote rubbish, which was good enough to make the caller go away, but rarely enlightening.  How was I meant to describe the difference between psychoanalysis and humanistic psychotherapy in the space of five minutes.  Even the therapists squabbled about that kind of thing.  And that was the nature of my job, dishing out inadequacies to a needy public.  But I didn’t resent the callers.  They were just doing what they needed to do.  But this day, not that I remember too much about it, I was not at the height of my person-centred powers.  I felt more like Dracula working, due to a CRB mix-up, in a crèche, pale as sin, without a grain of goodwill left for anyone.

 

I was due to meet George and Emma the following Monday, having booked myself in to do a bit of stand-up comedy at a pub in Islington.  Monday night was open-mic night, as run by the world-weary Percy.  His jowls were hamster-like and the rings around his eyes panda-like, and these are just two of the symptoms of overexposure to the lower echelons of the comedy hierarchy he displayed.  Week after week, he’d introduce the acts with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, which was quite a lot considering most of them were painfully ordinary.  Lambs to the slaughter, you might think, but these lambs rang ahead.  To get a spot on open-mic night, you had to ring up a few weeks in advance, book yourself in and turn up at the appointed time.  Many of them were people who just thought they were funny, or hadn’t had a girlfriend in a long time.  Funnily enough, I fitted nicely into both categories.

 

So around came Monday.  Even though my life was on the brink of freefall, I’d somehow managed to write some new material, learn it, practice it, if only in my mind, and cling on to just enough self-belief to stay the course.  Bottling out was not an option.  I had my script at work, and read it through the day to avoid any possibility of a forgotten link or a fluffed line.  Then it was off for something to eat with George, and on to the comedy-club for eight.  I think I was the first of the acts to arrive, which meant I could book in with Percy and, more importantly, choose where to come in the line-up.  There were usually eight acts, split into two sets of four.  It was my view that the best place to come in the running-order was first up in the second half.  This way, you’re saved the fairly onerous task of starting things up, you’ve seen the standard of four of the other acts, and if things have got a bit rowdy, or the audience has lost interest, Percy, ever the professional, will quieten them down for the beginning of the second half.  Suddenly, you have the full attention of a slightly drunk audience who are probably as ready to laugh as they’ll ever be.

 

Then, gradually over the next hour, my entourage arrived.  Emma, with sister and boyfriend, my best mate Jon, who I think was staying with me at the time.  He was a friend from school, and my quality-control consultant.  I could run ideas past him, and if he found them funny, they were good enough for public consumption.

 

So, at nine o’clock, Percy welcomed the punters to open-mic night, did a bit of banter, then resorted to one of his Monday night staples, pulling back the curtain at the back of the stage to expose a fairly ordinary bus-shelter outside, waved to the unsuspecting travellers at the ‘comedy bus-stop’, and encouraged the audience to do the same.  Well what with the little stage actually backing onto the front-window of the pub, why not?  Any mirth extracted from this stunt was always of a visual nature, so lost on me, but it’s ok for the mainstream world to have a laugh on its own once in a while.  A bit more banter, and Paddy introduced the first act.  Onto the low, small stage they’d spring, usually a single bloke with some lame observations and a lone wank-joke, which he’d fumble.

 

I was still going through my routine in my head as the first four people plied their wares.  I could barely talk to my friends, fearing that any distraction might render me unfocussed.  Then Percy rounded off the first half and bad us get more drinks.  I, by now, was knocking back my cider with a keen anxiety.  Then, ten minutes later, he retook the stage to whip the audience into a frenzy suitable to welcome the second batch of would-bes.  One more look at the bus-stop, which was empty, and it was me.  I was coming out of the loo when he introduced me, which meant I had to make my way through a fairly dense crowd of punters to reach the stage.  For a moment, I felt like the Fonz, and I hadn’t even been cool yet.

 

Up I sprung, feigning assuredness, removed the microphone from its stand, and retreated into that part of my brain where my script was stored.  I did the same ‘character’ I’d done on previous occasions, a kind of naïve Londoner called Brian Brown, who worked at Catford Leisure Centre, for no particular reason.  It seemed to go down pretty well.  The audience remained fairly attentive, I spoke clearly, didn’t rush, left pauses for laughter, most of which were filled, and when I got back to my seat, Emma seemed quite animated.  She’d been at my first gig, another Brian Brown exposé, and called me a ‘dark horse’.  This time, I surpassed even this smouldering accolade.  Tonight, I was ‘the best’, and it seemed my bestness was beginning to spill out beyond the parameters of my act.  For a while, Emma and I were sitting not with the others, but at the next table, holding hands, chatting away to the exclusion of even her boyfriend.  Things felt different – we didn’t work together anymore, so our getting together was no longer ‘prohibited under the country code’.  I felt a bit awkward though, wondering what her boyfriend might be thinking…was he scowling, throwing disapproving glances in our direction?  I couldn’t tell, but I convinced myself they had a loose sort of relationship, or had maybe recently finished.  Either way, as for holding hands, I was the grabbee, not the grabber, so I at least I could plea passivity if it came to court.

 

I don’t know how long you’ve ever gone without touching another person in an affectionate, let alone an intimate way.  At this point, bar a string of soul-destroying encounters with prostitutes, I’d spent about eight years in a state of lamination, unable to touch, or be touched.  I was beginning to feel almost equal, to my peers, and to the challenges I was setting myself.  But I knew I had the capacity to ruin anything.  When shatterproof rulers came out, some time in the late 70s, I couldn’t help but bend them to the point where they did indeed shatter.

 

My conversation with Emma seemed to press quite a lot of pre-relationship buttons.  She said girls don’t like dumping someone if they’ve got no one new to go to.  I liked hearing this, and it reminded me of Spiderman.  Even he wouldn’t leap from one rooftop if there wasn’t another rooftop to land on, or at least a wall to cling to, so why should a mortal office-clerk such as Emma?  She asked me if I wanted to meet up on Friday - apparently her boyfriend was going away for a stag-weekend.  I leapt at the offer as Spiderman might from bridge to speeding train.  No doubt I hounded my friend Jon about it all as we travelled back to mine.  I had a bad habit of deconstructing all the ifs and maybes of my non-existent love-life before him, like a mechanic in a Happy Days style garage pulling a Cadillac to pieces and expecting his colleague to put it back together, or at least tell him that all the components look sound.  I was on a kind of natural high, a healthy high, one of those highs without a grotesque comedown, one of those highs that doesn’t cost £200, one of those highs you get through doing normal things like meeting people, facing a fear, excelling - one of those highs you earn.  I had good reason to feel good about myself.  But sometimes good reason isn’t good enough.

 

And, as ever, here is a song to spoil your day.

 

It's a disco-storm discordant 4-tracker, linking ye to my little youtube channel, Reader:

 

Paedophile In The Palace

 

Maybe tomorrow?

 

 

BLIND MAN ON CRACK: Episode 3

Well, here is episode 3 of the swashbuckling saga, Blind Man On Crack, in which our protagonist loiters around the concourse of a London railway-station, to little or no avail...

Chapter 3

 

Meet Me At St Pancras

 

Between that first encounter at Debbie’s and my planned meeting with Sandra, life plodded along as normal.  I continued going to work, unwillingly, resentfully, and then it was back to Josie and the medievalists, with all the disillusionment and jealousy that entailed.  Not a happy existence, but perhaps not untenable, with a tweak here, bit more therapy there, some good fortune elsewhere.  But my mind was filled with thoughts of Sandra, and a second attempt at crack’s giddying summit.

 

Then, on an icy January night, there I was at the appointed place, waiting for Sandra on the concourse of St Pancras station.  I wasn’t exactly sure where I was meant to stand, so I wandered around, trying to make myself obvious – she was far more likely to spot me than I her.  The rush-hour thinned out, and a man in a fluorescent jacket asked if I was ok - I told him I was waiting for a friend.  A woman with a Burger King bag wanted to know if I was looking for some company – I think she might have been in the same line of business as Sandra – I said I was fine, and she wandered off.  Various foggy figures came into view, and I was hopeful that one of them would be Sandra, but no gruff tones greeted me as they neared.  The fun you can have with partial sight is endless.  So much is known, yet unknown.  Most people make a judgment of someone from twenty, thirty yards away, a woman, youngish, with luggage, a man, silver-haired, with briefcase.  But when an approaching figure is little more than a blurred figment, it’s hard to know what to prepare for, a threat, a friendly greeting, or just a fleeting encounter with a passing stranger.  Things as well can seem what they’re not.  Every so often you can find yourself reaching down to stroke a cat that turns out to be a discarded jumper, or a bin-bag, an embarrassment that’s heightened if you take the trouble to say ‘hello’ as you earnestly stoop to greet it.  Yes, the fun you can have with partial sight is endless - so endless it’s without beginning.  But in such situations, I’d developed a knack of not worrying what people might be thinking.  If I couldn’t see them, it was as if I, too, couldn’t be seen, at least not in a suspicious way.  I must have lingered there an hour, with a handful of well-wishers enquiring as to my welfare, doing their bit for the marginalised.  A blind man’s cane seems to be seen as a declaration of no intent at all, the opposite of a threat.  I find even ruffians go soft when they’re dealing with me.  After all, what harm is a hapless-looking bloke with a white stick going to do - steal your glasses?

 

For a while, I wandered up and down outside the precincts of the station, but the world felt semi-populated, post-trauma, like a scene from Day Of The Triffids, except in this world the blind man was the exception rather than the norm.  Cold and resentful by now, I went back to the payphones and called Debbie.  ‘There’s obviously been some kind of mix-up,’ I gauchely surmised, as I thrust twenty pence into the slot.  But, unsurprisingly, when Debbie answered the phone, she informed me that Sandra was there, and had been for the past few days.  How green was I?  Fresh as a still-screaming lettuce as torn from a Birdseye topsoil.  Like she was likely to honour, even recall our flimsily made arrangement.  Her shrunken life didn’t reach St Pancras, or anywhere more than a couple of miles either side of Westbourne Park.  Why would it?  Everything she needed and wanted, thought she needed and wanted, was there, all within a stone’s throw of the dreaded Droop Street.  I could hear the gravelly tones of Sandra in the background, and Debbie handed her the phone.  After a vague apology for not showing, she told me to get in a cab and come over, which I did with a consoled alacrity, going outside and sticking my arm out until a vacant black taxi came chugging to my rescue.  I leaned into the window, trying to give the impression of a youngish executive on his way to clinch a deal in a wine-bar, but I can’t imagine it was very convincing, especially when I said my final destination was Droop Street, just off the Harrow Road.  But at least I was on my way now - that soaring pinnacle was again in my sights.  Twenty minutes later, I was scampering up the concrete rat-run that led to Debbie’s door, which Sandra opened like a soul in Hades, almost before my knuckles had touched the wood.  Then I was back in that yellowy twilight I’d found so appealing a few nights before.

 

Debbie called the dealer on her still-extant landline, one of them went to collect, came back in what seemed like ages, but was actually only twenty minutes, and we fell upon the crack like vultures.  Sandra and I ended up in the bedroom, leaving Debbie with a chunk of her own in the living-room.  I just wanted to make sure I was close to the crack, and that, I thought, meant sticking with Sandra.  We smoked some more, sitting on the bed, sporadically getting sexual, obediently returning to the pipe when the high subsided.  Then Sandra, her face a dark mask of romance, said, ‘Let’s go to a hotel, just you and me…’  ‘Can we take something with us?’ I asked.  ‘Of course we can, darling.’  We returned to the living-room and she rang a minicab.  Debbie didn’t want us to go, presumably because she only had a few crumbs of crack left.  But minutes later, Sandra and I were in the back of a cab, speeding in the general direction of Paddington.  I passed her a clutch of notes, as she talked openly about who she was going to score from, and what she and I might get up to once we’d found a room for the night.  It all felt dangerously indiscreet, which of course it was.  She told the driver to park on a side-street she seemed to know, saying, ‘Look after the gentleman, I won’t be long.’  He grunted as she hauled herself onto the pavement, pressed a buzzer at the bottom of a tower-block, and waited.  Then, bellowing into the intercom, she was granted access.

 

The radio wasn’t loud enough to ease the silence that had fallen in the car, and it felt excruciating.  I cleared my throat, in an endeavour to at least indicate I had human attributes.  I, the gentleman, felt sure the guy knew well the general gist of things.  But because I didn’t want to worry him, or get into trouble, I told him casually that my friend and I had just moved into a flat, and were staying in a B’n’B while work was being done on the place.  I can’t imagine he believed me, especially when Sandra reappeared and told him she and I had just come down from Hertfordshire for a party at a friend’s.  If this wasn’t enough, she went on to say that we were going to spend much of tomorrow sightseeing on one of those topless buses (in January), and then get the train back to Stevenage, where apparently we lived, adding that she had an appointment at the mother-and-baby clinic in the afternoon.  Something about this last detail didn’t sound as untrue as the rest.  ‘Are you pregnant?’ I asked.  ‘It’s my fourth, love,’ she said, a softer side of her coming momentarily to the fore.  ‘I’ve got a son and daughter up in Stevenage.’  ‘But this is your fourth?’ I asked.  ‘My eldest daughter committed suicide last year,’ she replied, accounting for the missing child.  ‘She was only sixteen.’  ‘I’m sorry,’ was all I could think of to say, and I hardly was.  I was much more concerned with getting some crack in my system, and I think she was too.  Her face was stony, as if a true emotion hadn’t been expressed on it for years, and if she tried now, it might crack like granite.  There was something in her tone that seemed maudlin, assumed.  It was as if she was notching up a tally of sorrows, keeping me onside, guilty at any wish I might have to leave her.  But of course I had no such wish - our lives were now, at least for the purposes of tonight, entangled.  Casualties were accounted for very casually from hereon in.

 

So there we were, fizzing through the glistening mizzle of W2, down this street, up that one, vacancy-hunting, Sandra and I, an ill-conceived nativity in a world not yet mythologised enough to be comforting.  A rookie in a raven’s world, I was now digging into those parts of me that had no interest in being responsible, reasonable, or compassionate.  Sheer appetite and abandon held sway now.  The social me was in thrall to the antisocial.  The beast was still in a suit, but seams were tearing.

 

Like a child before Christmas, I was paralysed with anticipation.  Colours seemed more vivid, even the traffic-lights had a peculiar liquidity to them, and the sense of relief when they turned green was palpable - another little door opened on the Advent calendar.  Shop-windows had a luminescence of their own, almost as if my brain was experiencing a kind of pre-high, an overture to the sensory symphony to come.  I even had my own personal Snow Queen in the guise of Sandra, the bringer of gifts, seductive by proxy, heart, broken and cold in equal measure.  And I, the crippled child, against all safety-regulations, flew through the ice-black night beside her, as if in a darkside Disney animation, all on a sleigh-ride to moral decay – rated PG.  Then Sandra tugged on the reins, and Blitzen came to a halt beside a row of cloned hotels.  He drove off, and we entered the first tawdry doorway that offered a vacancy.  A bell heralded our arrival, and out popped the proprietor from a side-room.  Sandra did the introductions, but he was wary.  Thirty quid seemed to soften him up, and he handed me some keys.  We climbed a musty staircase, and then, door locked behind us, Sandra had a pipe.  I had my go, and we got sexual in a vague and fleeting way.  One thing about crack is that, though it might make you feel mentally sexual, the rest of the body doesn’t really want to know.  Whilst the high is high, it’s like being at the top of a helter-skelter – the only viable way is down.  There I was, ready to let go, to hurtle down that twisting tunnel back to ground, completely unaware there were nails sticking up at intervals from the floor of the chute, then splashdown in a pool of acid, where, undercarriage in shreds, I’d stagger to my feet, thinking, ‘I paid for this?  Can I go again?’

 

Having used prostitutes as respite from the ravages of the world of normal relationships, I was now using prostitutes and crack.  If I’d had a bit of a double-life before, it was beginning to seem quite tenable compared with my current circumstances.  At least when I’d been with a prostitute, I wanted to get home as fast as possible, and knew with agonising clarity that I wanted something better.  But this wasn’t to be the case with crack, for crack has no ending, no climax, no ‘well thanks for that’.

 

After a while, Sandra excused herself and went into the bathroom on the landing, pipe in hand, crack in pocket.  Some people want to smoke in company, some on their own.  Others crawl around the floor looking for more, even when they’ve still got some on the table in front of them.  Some get horny, start talking fast, twitching the curtains, doing the housework.  Sandra was a leave-me-aloner, which didn’t suit me at all.  I could hear her coughing, spluttering and spitting, and was worried our antics might be discovered.  What if one of the other ‘legitimate’ guests (if there were any) complained to the man downstairs?  The police could be called, we could be arrested, thrown in a cell, maybe end up in jail.  But none of that mattered.  We had crack.  Nothing matters when you’ve got crack, apart from the prospect of not having crack.  I placed a piece on the foil, and lit it.  As I did so, I was worried about the clamour from Sandra, afraid that a knock on the door would mark an ugly end to things.  But once I’d sucked up that strangely tasteless smoke, who gave a shit?  Utter euphoria swamped me.  I stood there, acknowledging the blissful force of this all-too-easily ingested vapour, and thought two things almost simultaneously.  The first was ‘where has this been all my life?’  The second was ‘this is going to be trouble.’  For once, I was right.

 

‘We can meet tonight if you like,’ said Sandra, returning with a clatter from the bathroom.  She lay there on the bed, her top unbuttoned just enough to expose the bulge of her belly.  ‘Yeah, we can meet up at Debbie’s - you can fuck me, suck me, anything you want me - no shit, I’ll wear a nice dress.’  My standards were so low that I probably found that quite enticing, but had no interest in the future.  My nascent wisdom was telling me that promises made in this kind of setting were not likely to be kept.  Moreover, I didn’t want to think about afterwards, because that meant this current binge would end, a possibility I didn’t want to entertain.  Sandra gave me a pipe, and, as she burned the crack, began talking about how she wanted to quit, change her life – she didn’t want to lose another child, to suicide or social services.  Perhaps, like me, she was seeking to compensate for things lost, or maybe things she never had but felt she deserved.  Either way, crack is a great way to plug an emotional gap for a short time…ten minutes…ten years.  After that, well, you’re even more on your own than you were to begin with, and your bank-account, if you still have one, has fallen through the floorboards…if you still have a floor.

 

Then Sandra decided she was hungry, and felt that I was just the person to go out and find her some food, a kebab preferably.  I didn’t want to go, because I didn’t want to be parted from the drugs, so I made out my sight wasn’t good enough for night-trekking.  This wasn’t strictly true, but I thought it just might staunch her raucousness.  She made out she was ravenous and, of course, was now eating for two.  I knew she wanted the drugs to herself, but her bluster, and the fact she’d now dragged the foetus into it, had me begging a pipe for the road, creaking my way downstairs, past our host, now asleep in his hovel, and out onto the slightly frightening main road a takeaway to locate, madam’s appetite to sate.  After some time, passing garage, bus-stop, phone-box, the garage again, I came upon a place of light, with men inside, and the warming orange glow of hot-food cabinets defending the vendor.  I went in, all very gauche and decent of course.  ‘Er, good evening,’ I said, not being able to see what was on offer, let alone the menu high on the wall behind the counter, ‘do you do kebabs?’  They did, and the guy fixed me up a couple.  I forgot the way back to the hotel.  Wandering around Paddington at four in the morning, lost, clutching two kebabs, is not my idea of fun.  But eventually, almost by accident, I stumbled on the right street, crept back in, made my way upstairs, and dinner, or breakfast, was served.  She chomped on it like an urban fox that’s just found brunch in the rubble.  I couldn’t eat when I was smoking – food felt such a letdown compared with crack.

 

We quibbled and quarrelled as the night drew on.  I tried to get sexual, pleasure-centres blazing away like a compromised reactor-core, but she nudged me away with various vagaries and vows regarding what was to come.  Then, after more smoking, and less conversation, she devoured the second kebab, as a dusty yellow blur rose over the rooftops.  She belched up the chilli-gas as I sat there coming down, physically tense and wracked with regret, wishing I were either high or dead, but not sinking into quicksand somewhere in that grey hell in between.  Maybe she took too big a pipe at some point, but it wasn’t long before a mangled kebab-and-a-half was scattered over the divan like a lamb Jackson Pollock.  A little later, the bin was ablaze, thanks to a discarded cigarette igniting various tissues and kebab-wrappers.  Then, at roughly eight o’clock, there was a rustling in the hallway.  A sense of dread passed through me, fearing the cleaner might be about to come in.  We sat there, frozen on the bed, in fear that the normal world was about to invade our privacy.  A hoover howled in the hall, hitting our door as it crashed around.  Bin-bags were rustled, throats cleared, and morning salutations exchanged, but somehow, our room wasn’t on the rota.  The stress prompted Sandra to produce a wrap of crack from her top, hitherto held back, no doubt for personal use in the bathroom.  She smoked it, even gracing me with a toke, but then it was back to griping and groaning, and the smell of sick, now wrapped in a sheet by the bin.

 

Shortly after this, I looked at my watch and noticed it was half-past eight, and suddenly thought, ‘I’ve got to go to work.’  When I made this announcement, however, Sandra was having none of it.  I was in a state of mental exhaustion, and just wanted to get out, heart pounding in my chest, head in a whirl of anxiety and remorse.  Then Sandra began pining, saying that if I was going then she’d have to go back to Debbie’s, and would need twenty quid for a cab.  She threw in a reference to her being pregnant, and had me pinned a second time.

 

So I slid away into the chiding morning.  By now there were staff and guests around, and I felt ghoulish passing through them.  Outside, the traffic was heaving.  People were pounding in droves up and down the pavements, and there I was in their midst, feeling like a phantom, doomed to walk the streets of Paddington for the rest of time.  But I had to complete the mission.  I found a cashpoint and made my way back to Sandra, gave her the note, and we said an unceremonious goodbye.  Back through the rush-hour crowds, somehow I found my way to the station, and the platform that would take me to Regent’s Park.

 

This may all sound pretty cold.  It was glacial.  We were just each other’s gateway, or getaway, to oblivion.  Everyone was happy, all short-term goals were met.  And short-termism is what crack’s all about.  It doesn’t matter if you’re knowingly spending your last twenty-quid.  Who cares?  You certainly won’t once you’ve had that first pipe.  Well, not for ten minutes or so.  Who cares if you should be buying food with it?  There’s bread in the fridge, it’ll just have to be toast again.  You could spend it on going out with a friend.  Nah, they’ve probably got plans, and anyway, who wants to turn up somewhere with just twenty quid?  That’s crack money.  A score ain’t gonna save ya.

 

And the muffled witness to all this conjecture?  The baby curled in Sandra’s swollen belly, listening in on Primal FM, the slows, the rushes of the heart, the rhythm of an irascible sea that can’t decide what the tide is doing.  A couple of months later, Sandra, flat-stomached, during another distended encounter, told me that she’d given birth a few weeks before.  Not sure she even saw the child before it was taken away.  Said it was a girl.  Didn’t name it.  Jettisoned into the world, was she earmarked from day one to fail, the word ‘addict’ etched into one of her yet-to-be-activated genes?  Is she now a confused, lost, unmanageable tearaway, bouncing from care-home to care-home, as if rehearsing for the role of the dissolute adult, following in her mother’s footsteps without even knowing what her mother’s footsteps were?  Or does she lead a stable and untroubled life, mournful origins wiped out by the comfort of a loving environment, the adopted ward of a Guardian-reader alliance, who, for reasons of infertility, have decided to go the adoption route.  There she sits, diligently doing her homework, in an actual house, in a pleasant, leafy part of town.  Maybe she’ll grow up to be a counsellor, having been drawn by an unfathomable desire to help people with ‘issues’.  Presumably, by then, someone will have named her.

And, as ever, here is a song for you.  It is old, but there are new ones on the way, I promise ya - just click on the title and you are safely transported to my youtube channel: I'm Too Tired To Kill You

See you soon I hope.