Hepatitis Court
So began eighteen months of grinding
emptiness, without the help of crack. It
was September, 1999. I had a notion I
would write a collection of breathtaking songs before Christmas, send them out
to a record label or two, be signed, and get famous, or at least make a living
making music. I did write some songs,
partly spurred on by a few new bits of equipment. There I’d sit, cross-legged on the floor,
playing my keyboard, also on the floor, with a microphone jutting from the edge
of the bed. Christmas approached, and
I’d written quite a little collection, all whilst stoned, naturally, but I was
quite pleased with some of them. I even
got round to sending a few out to record labels, but gave up pretty quickly
once it was clear a contract was not about to drop on my doormat. Didn’t they know who I was? Or maybe they knew I didn’t have a doormat.
So, not yet a pop-star, I spent
Christmas at my parents, and this was probably 'ok'. But, because I couldn't stand being there for
too long, I contrived to leave as soon after Boxing Day as trains allowed,
saying a friend had invited me to bring in the new millennium with them. If they had, I didn’t go, but at least it
meant my parents wouldn’t be concerned I had nothing to do on such an allegedly
momentous day.
Then, on New Year’s Eve night, as the
dread hour loomed, it seemed the best thing to do was seek solace under the
duvet, which I did around half-past ten.
There was nothing good on the telly – even Newsnight had gone mad. I was hoping to be sleeping deeply by midnight,
and to wake up on a fresh, clear, New Year's Day, transfigured of course – but
a steady intensification of fireworks crackling in a festive sky put pay to
that. I couldn’t help recoiling in
cultural disgust at the hype attached to all this enforced jollity. Desperately tuning the radio from station to
station, it was hard to avoid tracks like Millennium by Robbie Williams
(torture on any day of the year) and phrases like ‘tonight I’m gonna party like
it’s 1999’. I wondered why no one had
ever written a song called ‘Tonight I’m Gonna Bed Early, So Please Keep The
Fireworks To A Minimum’. Outside, it was
all bang bang, cheer cheer, pretend pretend.
In a state of living rigger mortis, I gawped at the ceiling…another
flurry of aerial explosions, more whoops and cheers…and the year 2000 was born
– one more blank canvas to scrawl on.
No doubt I was one of many to troop
off to their GP in early January asking for antidepressants. There I sat in the surgery, for the third
time in so many years, requesting something to lift the spirits. My lovely doctor said he’d try me on a new
medication psychiatrists were using.
‘Well, if psychiatrists use it, it must be good,’ I vaguely thought,
picturing Frasier, and a few of the Hampstead set I’d met at the psychotherapy
council. So home I went, clutching my
prescription like a child with a bag of Randoms.
I took my first capsule at
lunchtime. By about four, I can remember
feeling slightly edgy, then, by about eight, having to tell myself, ‘Don’t
worry, don’t panic, you’ll be ok,’ although I wasn’t sure why I was having to
do this. Come midnight, I thought I’d go
to bed. I listened to the radio, as
usual, then slowly drifted off, yet somehow I wasn’t feeling right. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I suddenly
sat up, in a state of utter panic. My
heart was racing, and I could barely catch my breath. All I could think of to do was make myself
sick. I tried to get to the loo, but my
knees buckled in the hallway. I thought
I was going to die. My vision was
glassy, and my limbs felt feeble, like a rained-on rag-doll. I decided it might be a good time to pray,
seeing I was already on my knees anyway.
I did one of those prayers when you say, ‘Dear God, please, keep me
alive just this once, and we’ll settle up later?’ I struggled to the loo and shoved my fingers
down my throat, kept retching, but nothing would come. I crawled back into the living-room and
phoned an ambulance. I explained what
was happening as best I could and awaited the arrival of my saviours.
Minutes later, my buzzer went, and I
made my way outside, hoping the house-manager wasn’t peering out of her window,
which overlooked the main entrance. The
friendly paramedics took me into the ambulance, checked my pulse, noted it was
speeding, but also that it was beginning to slow. It didn’t feel like that to me, but I trusted
their judgment. Then I was given some
oxygen to help me get my breath back.
They thought I was having quite a bad panic-attack, as opposed to
actually dying, but they said they'd take me to the hospital if I really
wanted. I really wanted. So off we went to A&E.
A little later, I was being asked to
take a seat in the dazzlingly depressing waiting area. There were a few other customers in
place. One sitting in crumpled silence,
another twitching in the corner, occasionally grunting, and a third that just
plain stank. I found myself a few seats
along from him, but didn’t move away in case I hurt his feelings. I was asked through to see the nurse. She asked me what was up, and I told her
about my run-in with an antidepressant.
In the name of honesty, I let her know I'd also smoked a couple of
joints. I think this information
prompted her to tick a box marked 'stoned, put to back of queue'. I spent the next three hours back in the
waiting room, being ignored, just me and my fragrant friend, who I think was
just there to get out of the cold. So,
come about four, after several enquiries as to the likelihood of getting seen,
all to no avail, I asked the woman at the desk to order me a taxi, and half an
hour later I was being driven home by a pleasant man who seemed much more
interested in my welfare than anyone in the hospital had. I felt a little better by now, and when I got
home I went to bed and drifted into an unquiet sleep.
I woke up at lunchtime, still feeling
edgy. There was no way I was going to
take another of those satanic capsules, so I went back to the doctor and told
him what had happened. He listened
sympathetically, probably hoping I wasn’t going to sue him, then wrote me out a
prescription for something new. A few
days later, I experienced a panic attack that came close to the intensity of
the first. I imagine this was because
the original medicine was still festering in my system. Luckily, this one passed. By now, I’d been constipated for several
days, and remained so for over a week.
‘Oh, you poor man,’ said the chemist, with what sounded like sympathy
born of experience, and gave me some little caplets. Within about eight hours, the floodgates opened,
and all was well. The moral of this
tawdry parable? Beware drugs, licensed
or otherwise.
My life still resembled how things had
been on the coast, except now I had the churning of traffic to accompany my
thoughts…rise at noon, roll a joint, watch House Invaders, think about that
day’s creative venture, not do it, see if there was anyone on a shopping
channel with nice tits, roll a joint, stare at Countdown, then at six, watch
the Simpsons, ruined again. The evening
would inevitably involve raiding the fridge, getting more stoned, maybe writing
some music, porn, Newsnight, and bed.
Did I mention I was stoned?
I saw no one for most of the next
year. Empty day followed empty day,
stoned week followed stoned week, drunk month followed drunk month. I’d see the odd friend from time to time, but
other than that it was solitary confinement, in which I was both prisoner and
warder. Outside, the seasons did their
thing, but my poetic link with them had died years ago – now they were just a
taunt.
I, concealed behind greying
net-curtains, fixated on porn, acquired from various outlets in the King’s
Cross area. Not having access to crack,
I resorted to my original addiction, sex.
This I'd accompany with whatever drugs I had to hand - red wine, dope,
poppers, over-the-counter painkillers, whatever numbed the soul. I even found myself taking Nytol
recreationally. One night, having just
acquired some porn from a bloke in a toupee in a King’s Cross alcove, I bought
what I thought was a gram of coke from a guy that shuffled up to me as I
left. Naturally, when I got home, it
wasn't coke, but a scrunched-up Iceland receipt wrapped in cling-film. So many nights I'd sit there in my room,
squinting at porn on my scrawny little portable. I'm surprised I didn't kill myself on
poppers. There I was, inhaling the
chemical fumes from a little bottle with a name like 'Crazy Horse' or 'Jungle
Jive’, as some erotic vignette would come to its denouement before me. Poppers make the heart pound and push the
blood to the extremities of the body, so you can see why people use them
sexually, and why they give you a pounding headache. Unlike crack, they make it happen, as opposed
to stop it happening, but it's a pretty desperate game whichever way you look
at it. Then, emission accomplished, a
bottle of red wine emptied, four or five joint-butts in the ashtray, and lid
back on the poppers, I'd eject the video, shove it in a drawer where the
cleaner wasn't likely to look…joint, Newsnight, yada yada yada.
Another spring sprung, and little
crocus-heads poked from friable, frost-clad soil, which I'd heartlessly trample
as I made my way to see a prostitute, picked out from the classified pages of
the Hammersmith Gazette. Many an
afternoon was punctuated this way…pop to the post-office for milk and local
paper, then dash home to see what ‘personal services’ were on offer that
week. There they'd be, tucked away
between 'paving' and 'pet supplies'. The
anatomy of addiction seems to be the same whatever the drug, or activity. First, that midbrain spark, igniting the
notion that it's time for action, to set off on a pilgrimage to that healing
well whose waters are always too deep to reach.
But these diversions were no substitute for a life. The more I stayed in my flat, the more it
felt like a dungeon, and the more I felt like a prisoner within it. But the prospect of doing anything new, like
starting a course, getting a job, performing comedy, forming that band, or
finding a relationship, seemed out of reach.
Aspirations, never turning into anything real, end up turning on you,
wagging their fingers and chiding you.
'Why haven't you honoured us, made us real?' They're like children, conceived, but held in
the womb so long they actually grow up in there. After a while, you're so pregnant, you can
barely move.
I went back to my GP and asked if I
could see a counsellor. He put me in
touch with a local centre, and I was asked in for an assessment. A few weeks later, I was sitting before
another well-meaning trainee in a windowless room with a box of tissues on a
table between us. But we developed a
good rapport and, after a few sessions, I managed to decide to perform some
comedy again, even though it would inevitably be at the bottom of the
light-entertainment ladder, again.
I rang the place in Islington I’d
performed in a year or two before, and booked myself in for a spot on open-mic
night. I felt it was important for me to
go on my own, deliver the wares, and try to be something resembling
professional about it all. If I felt
that comedy was something I could do well, I should get used to turning up
alone, performing, and going home alone, without always seeing it as some kind
of dare to which friends should be invited.
Butchers sell meat. They get up
in the morning, pop to the abattoir, take a few carcasses back to the shop, don
an apron, hang a few choice cadavers in the window, and the working day's
begun. They don't get their mates round
to sprinkle the floor with sawdust, squirt bone-meal in sausage-casings, or
stick rosettes on shoulders of beef. I
needed to take a leaf out of the manual of good butchery, to be self-contained,
self-confident, and begin to develop a professional self.
I worked on some new material until,
script internalised, I was in the bath on the day of the performance, a
joss-stick in the basin wafting sandalwood, and the radio on in the
kitchen. There I was, simmering in
too-hot water, both apprehensive and underwhelmed at the prospect of performing
again, when the woman on the radio said, 'We've just received a report that a
plane has crashed into one of the Twin Towers in New York,' to which I thought,
'Oh shit.' I can remember hoping some
disaffected redneck was to blame, like Timothy McVee, who blew up that building
in Oklahoma. The idea of it being an
angry Arab, or similar George Bush bogeyman, was a frightening prospect,
because that would lead, as it did, to him and his friends unleashing their
unique brand of muscular Christianity on places they probably couldn’t even
point to on a map. Moments later,
another plane’s hurtling into the second tower.
It all seemed like too much of a coincidence. Wrapped in a towel, I dripped into the
living-room and put the telly on. It
certainly made for compelling viewing, like Thunderbirds, but without the
puppets. I can remember thinking,
'Blimey, this is Biblical,' or something profound like that. Then I thought, 'I wonder if they'll cancel
the comedy.’ A little later, I rang to
find out. 'Yes, tonight is comedy,’ said
the girl who answered, although I’m not sure she’d heard the news.
I arrived about eight, and the place
was, unsurprisingly, pretty quiet. There
was Percy, the compere, eyes circled with a weariness born of overexposure to
bad comedy. He recognised me and asked
how I was. I felt ashamed for not having
moved up the comedy ladder since our previous encounters, and gave him some
blather about having been working out of London, then turned the questions on
him. I was the first to arrive, as was
my practice, which meant I could choose where I'd come in the running
order. As ever, I picked first up in the
second half, then went and propped myself up on a stool by the bar and waited
for the revels to begin. After about
half an hour, the place began to fill up a bit, peaking at about twenty people,
half of whom were acts.
Once the entertainment got underway,
it was clear the Twin Towers were fair game for the amateurish stylings of most
of the acts. But no one had anything
incisive or clever to say, and the whole place had the ambience of a
mortuary. But when Paddy tried to
resuscitate the audience after the interval, I went up and did my bit, making
no reference at all to the main event of the day, although avoiding felt more
contrived than mentioning it. And
however pleased I'd been with my new material that morning, the backdrop of
three thousand people lying dead under rubble seemed to put a dampener on
things. So, job done, I returned to my
pint of unpalatable cider, as the rest of the evening withered away into
nothingness. I had a bit of nice
interaction with the Polish girl who worked behind the bar, chatted to one or
two of the other acts, then went home. I
had at least done what I said I would do.
Things were threatening to get
marginally better. I probably wouldn’t have
got back to comedy without the encouragement of my counsellor. I'd also bought a new little drum'n'bass box,
into which I could program rhythm-tracks and bass-lines for new songs, of which
I wrote quite a number at this time. I
also discovered that I could play the guitar a bit, having for years thought,
because I wasn't a virtuoso, that I should leave it languishing in the corner,
daily reminding me that I was an underachieving misfit – but it's amazing what
you can get away with when you've got a bit of imagination and a guitar-effects
box.
I began turning up at other comedy
venues, and sitting at the back like a Time Out critic or a talent-scout. I wanted to check out the acts, but was
mainly there to see if I could do a quick five minutes some time. One such place was in the basement-bar of a
local hotel. I sat there in the shadows
and saw a few acts come and go, and then, during the interval, collared the
compere and cajoled him into giving me a slot the following week. Perhaps he admired my get-up-and-go attitude,
and seemed fairly happy to give me a chance, which did my confidence no harm at
all.
Come the night, I met up with a friend
of a friend, who lived just round the corner from the hotel. I
wasn't at all nervous before going on, which I think meant that I was in
a strangely de-energised state when I got up on the stage. I was feeling pretty out of sorts, with quite
a lot of eye-pain going on, which was something of a distraction, only adding
to my feelings of self-consciousness. It
was obvious to the audience that I was not comfortable, and so neither were
they. I opened badly, and couldn't
redeem things. I got increasingly
panicky, and started talking too fast.
This meant the audience had no spaces in which to laugh. And so, with no laughter, I panicked even
more. Then I stopped even looking at
them, choosing instead to gaze off to the left and right. When I realised I'd blown it, I wrapped up,
got off, and went and sat back with my friend, which gave me no pleasure at
all. Within moments, one of the other
acts came over and said, 'Don't worry mate, you've got some good material
there, but you didn't really get it across.'
I felt that was fair, and appreciated his kindness. But I still felt humiliated. Then the compere came over, saying that he
liked one particular line very much. It
was like waking up in the gutter with paramedics above me. You're only as funny as your last gig, or
gag. I couldn't sit there assuring
everyone that I had been funny the previous week. So I just put it behind me. It didn't really haunt me that badly, because
everyone dies at least once in their life.
Jack Dee said that one rule of comedy is 'never embarrass the audience'. Embarrassment spread through the bar that
night like Legionnaire's Disease through air-conditioning, and I was patient
zero. Come the end of the evening, I
said goodbye to my friend, still wanting to assure her that I was capable of
being funny, and we went our separate ways.
Then, on Goldhawk Road, about ten
minutes from home, some bloke accosted me from the entrance to a block of
flats. 'Are you looking for anything,
bruvva?' he asked. I sensed illicitness,
and my shadow-self kicked in. 'What have
you got?' I enquired, not wishing to jump to any conclusions. He didn't beat around the bush. 'White,' he replied. Well, having only been abstinent by default,
I was in there like a shot. He must have
thought he'd hit the jackpot. Maybe he
could spot a user, even if they'd not actually used for two years, as I
hadn’t. He gestured I should follow him,
which I did like a dog on the promise of a bone. As he led me round the back of the block, it
struck me I might have misjudged things.
'I'm not looking for any trouble,' I said. He sensed my nervousness and sought to reassure
me. 'It's ok mate, my girl's
upstairs.' That was good enough for
me. We reached the bottom of the steps
and began to climb, firm friends by the time we reached our first
stairwell. In better light, I got a
clearer view of him - gaunt as a broom, with spiv-like moustache, tired,
malnourished skin, mauve lips, and dagger-like teeth, all topped off with a
baseball-cap at a controversial angle.
Next, we're sitting on the stairs a
couple of storeys up, smoking crack with 'his girl'. I think he was a bit of an amateur pimp. There was something reptilian about him,
nasty and sinuous like a tentacle. She
was quiet, although her eyes had a look of slow exasperation about them, and
she acquiesced skilfully to whatever he said.
He nudged me as she was on the pipe, saying something vague about me
having her for the night. 'She's mine,
bruv, she knows what's good for her, do you know what I mean?' I pictured him beating her in a basement,
cajoling her into doing his mate a favour in the bathroom. It would be great to say that I found his
offer repugnant and rose above the moral swamp in which he clearly
writhed. But to me, love's guttersnipe,
it all seemed like an excellent adventure, with a bit of crack in my system,
doubly so. Pre-crack, my demeanour around
'ladies of a certain profession' had always been passive and polite. Post-crack, the thoughts and fantasies I
found myself entertaining were, to be honest, not nice. Crack's a pretty satanic catalyst. It digs into your deepest insecurities and turns
them inside-out. Suddenly the shy are
strident, the inept, consummate, celibate, sexual. Fleetingly, the victim becomes the
vanquisher, the virgin, the vampire.
I accepted his seedy proposition, at
which point he said something to the girl, like, 'Yeah, you and him?' She blew out the smoke, and vaguely
nodded. Well you would. Until you know who's going to be funding the
next few hours, it’s wise to keep your options open. Only when you know where the power lies can
you decide where any favours should be directed.
It was decided we should make a
move. After all, there's only so long
you can sit in a stairwell before you start feeling self-conscious. We took the lift back to the ground, made our
way to the nearest cab-office, via the cashpoint, and before long we were
climbing another stone staircase in another anonymous-looking tower-block, down
by the river in Hammersmith.
I don't know who his friends were, but
their flat was the usual barren shell, the only vestige of orthodoxy being a
portable telly on a chair in the corner, probably cos it was too heavy to drag
to Cash Converters. I slumped down into
what I realised on closer inspection was a car-seat, amid crumpled TV guides
and shards of porn. The coffee-table
before me was a mess of ashtrays, foil, and ripped-up cans – but it’s not the
place you’re in, it’s the people in it, innit?
We stayed a couple of hours, until it
was time to replenish. We got a cab back
to the cashpoint, drove around the corner and parked up near a bus-stop. Tentacles asked me for the money, then told
me to get out of the cab, saying the guy he was going to see was a bit
paranoid, and didn't like him turning up with strangers. Obviously, this was so much bullshit, and so
full of holes to be even half-convincing, but there was me, chump of the
moment, waiting on the pavement. 'You
will be back, yeah?' I almost pleaded.
'Five minutes bruv,' he assured me, 'I'm just going round the corner.’ The cab pulled away. Needless to say, that was the last I saw of
them.
Problem was, though, I didn't really
know where I’d been dumped. I was at a
bus-stop, in the rain, at four in the morning, which is where crack always
leaves you, if not literally, metaphorically.
But luckily the glow of an all-night shop caught my eye. I went in to see if I could get my bearings,
without seeming like an escapee from a local psychiatric unit. Turned out I was on the salubrious Shepherd's
Bush stretch of the Uxbridge Road, closer to home than I thought, which made my
walk through the rain a little more bearable.
Back in the flat, the only light being
thrown on the subject was dawn's infringement.
'What the hell was that about?' I wondered, languishing in the arms of
my long-lost friend, that nagging outstayer of welcomes, the comedown. Were the fates conspiring against me? More likely I was conspiring against
them. Only I could carry the can for
stopping off when assailed by a stranger at midnight. Nothing had changed. The aftermath was still the same tense,
angst-ridden nightmare I'd come to know.
But I consoled myself with the fact that his dumping me at the bus-stop
had at least brought things to an early close, stopped them getting really out
of hand. But I was still pining for a
pipe to lift me, however briefly, out of this pit of spitting vipers. I kept reminding myself that I'd get through
it, and eventually, after much clenching and gnashing of teeth, I managed to
sleep.
I woke at lunchtime, depressed to
reflect on the night’s dark antics. Yes,
the hangover was just the same. I
searched my head for a grain of cheer, but found none. All dopamine, and other agents of happiness,
had vanished. My head felt like a cold
and burnt-out fireplace, with no obvious sign of getting a fresh blaze
going. Then the plaintive strains of an
antique acquaintance piped up from the blackness of the chimneystack. 'Please, no more, no more,' came a sorrowful,
soot-muffled cry. Momentarily, a wave of
pity passed through me. Obviously, some
waif was wedged up there. 'Don't forget
me, sir, please, don't forget me.' But I
had other things on my mind. Top-hatted
and cloaked, I was out the door like Jack the Ripper on arsenic. The waif would have to wait. He'd come unstuck eventually, when he’d got
skinny enough to come loose and drop into the hearth.
And there I was, suddenly on the hunt
again. I made my way down Goldhawk Road,
back to the foot of the block where the reptile had caught me on his prickly
tongue. But there was a madness in my
method. I half-thought he might be back
there, ensnaring passers-by with whispers of white, or, if he wasn't, maybe
someone new could be found. My goal was
to hook up with someone, anyone that could facilitate a repeat of last night,
but there was no sign of him or the girl.
I walked up a few floors, just in case it was a regular haunt. But there was no one around.
The building felt designed to
cultivate suicidal thoughts, a way of sifting out the socially weak without
anyone really noticing. Built with only
cost in mind, this was a block that chose you, not the other way round. Named after someone laudable on the national
curriculum, it was known by those in the know as Hepatitis Court. There was usually a puddle in the lift. All the doors were fire-doors, and thick as a
fist. This is where the destroyed
middle-classes mingle with the feral. If
you can't hack it in your own clan, hack your way into another, move down a
rung or two, and hang out with a crowd who don't care what job you do, or did,
how big your house is, or was. There's
no pressure to impress here - see it as a kind of high-rise haven, concrete
retreat.
But there was nothing there for this
hapless afternoon-hunter, no new friendships to forge, nor old ones to
fake. What could he do now? All the old feelings were back. One go at the old game and I wanted to gamble
everything. Dice felt like the cure for
debt. I returned to my flat,
crestfallen, disconsolate.
From the barely settled ashes of
abstinence, so chancily put down, an ugly phoenix was threatening to
lumber. Too long he’d languished in
grey. Now his hunger for hunger was
heightened. He rose, yawned, and
stretched, like a darkside Yaffle, shook dust from stiffened wings, glass eye
gleaming, piercing, inscrutable, voracious.
Well, there it is. I hope you'll tune into the next instalment. Meanwhile, here is a song you might like to hear: Jimmy, Where Did You Go?
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