Voyage IV – Black Bryony

I saw Cathy and Trevor and the others from time to time. (Paul, it turned out, was not particularly a friend of theirs and was usually to be seen in less articulate company). I’d smile and nod when I saw them but it took Fiona to actually come and ask me to join them before I felt ok to go over. I’d always felt awkward in a new situation – everyone already seemed to have made friends and I didn’t want to have to intrude. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I always have this feeling that you can’t just expect to join in with a conversation, at a party for instance, unless you have something very interesting to offer and everyone is going to like you (which is obviously not the case here). Otherwise it’s a bit presumptuous I think. You’ve got no friends but for some reason you expect them to take you in anyway. I just don’t want to make a nuisance of myself.
So anyway, it was nice when Fiona came and asked me to come and join them, although I still thought at the time it was partly out of charity. She sat down and asked me what I was reading, tipping the book up to look at the title, then pushing it over so I couldn’t read at all. ‘Come and join us’ she said. ‘It’s happy hour.’ The drinks were always free so I guessed she was making another point.
I went over and she introduced me to everyone. We dourly nodded our greetings and I sat down and Fiona went and got the drinks. No one said anything much. I felt like I’d butted in on the middle of something, and the panic began to rise. I could feel it swelling up under my diaphragm. I knew they wouldn’t want me here, but I didn’t feel I could just get up and go. Maybe I could go and help Fiona I thought, but I could see she was already on her way back now with the drinks on a tray. Once everyone had got their drinks she went and found another chair (I realised too late I had taken her seat) and we all sat in silence and sipped. Everyone looked very serious. I felt terribly self-conscious. I thought I’d died and left all this pressure behind. This was why I went and hid down the bottom of the garden for twenty years – to avoid just this sort of situation.
‘Do you know anything about human biology?’ said Trevor eventually to me. I wasn’t sure what he was implying. He looked almost menacing – pent up, frustrated.
‘Not really’ I said ‘Why?’
‘Aorta!’ said Cathy suddenly, hitting the table, and suddenly everybody relaxed and congratulated her.
‘That’s the one’ said Trevor. ‘And the other one’s the vena-cava.’
‘That’s it. I knew I’d get it eventually’ said Cathy, taking a long drink from her pint.
‘So tell us about yourself er... Gabriel?' said Trevor. ‘We saw you sitting on your tod over there - weren’t sure if you wanted interrupting or not? Is it a good book?’
‘It’s alright, but yes’ I said, much relieved. ‘I needed a break.’
‘You’ve come to the right place’ said Fiona raising her glass and winking at me, a fag end between her fingers.

I went and sat with them quite a lot after that. Mostly we just sat together and read or ate and drank or looked at the sea. Sometimes we discussed what was going on here, what this was all for. None of us was very sure, and our guides were so far being a bit cagey.
What we did know was that we were going to live our lives again at the end of it, enriched, it was hoped, by what we learned here.
‘I’m not learning anything I don’t think’ says Trevor one morning, dunking his croissant in his chocolate. ‘It all seems like a bit of a waste of time if you ask me.’
‘You’re dead you berk’ says Fiona jovially. ‘Do you have something better to do?’
‘I have a theory’ says Bryony, a pale girl with very straight black hair and wearing what appear to be widow’s weeds. We turn to listen. She doesn't normally say much at all.
‘There isn’t a point’ she announces dismissively. ‘It’s like life – it’s just something you go through until...’
‘Until what?’ asks Cathy despondently.
‘Until you stop, I suppose.’
‘That’s a bit bleak’ says Harvey, the third man around the table.
‘I don’t know what any of this means’ says Cathy, rather hopelessly. ‘I just want to go home.’
And there’s nothing any of us can say to that. Trevor looks around, absentmindedly mushing his croissant. Harvey looks at his book but doesn’t focus. Fiona grips Cathy’s hand. I try to appear downcast too, but I’m actually quite enjoying myself.

‘I was a ghost for a while’ says Bryony cheerfully another morning at breakfast.
None of us can hide our amazement. We sit there looking at her, speechless, except for Fiona, who says ‘Shit. What was that like?’
‘Fairly boring actually. Less fun than you’d think anyway.’
‘How’d it happen?’ I say. ‘Did you put in a request or something?’
Bryony is dissecting a Danish with her fingertips and feeding the tiny pieces between her ruby-rouged lips. She’s amazingly erotic at times.
She shrugs, not looking at us. ‘I spoke to Ian, my guide. He said it’s like they say. Your spirit just sort of hangs around if it has unfinished business in the world.’
‘What was yours?’
‘What?’
‘Your unfinished business?’
‘Oh. Doesn’t matter. Anyway. Basically it’s a bust. You can’t do anything useful at all. It’s like one of those nightmares where you know you have to do something but you can’t quite get it together. You can’t even remember what it was you were supposed to be doing most of the time.’ She feeds the last morsel in without touching the sides and looks around at us rather too directly. It’s a bit unnerving actually. The black eye liner doesn’t help.
‘But what’s the point of that?’ says Fiona.
‘Of what?’
‘Of being back in the world as a ghost and not being able to do anything while you’re there. It’s stupid.’
‘Well duh, I don’t think there is a point. That’s what I’ve been saying. It’s just something that happens. You die, you’re not really paying attention for whatever reason and you fail to go toward the light or something. I don’t know.’
‘But did you end up just, well, haunting somewhere?’ asks Cathy. Bryony nods and turns to her blackcurrant smoothie, pumping the straw up and down.
‘I was just stuck in the house where... well anyway’ she flicks her fingers, as if shooing away a troublesome bat, or perhaps drying her purple nail varnish. ‘I just kept coming down this hallway, over and over again. And I knew something was supposed to happen but I couldn’t figure out what. Then I found myself back at the beginning, starting all over again.’
‘How long did that go on for?’ and ‘Did anyone see you?’ say Fiona and I at the same time.
‘Seemed like forever. I guess time is even more irrelevant when you’re a ghost, and yes, once.’
‘Anyone you knew?’
She goes quiet and looks away. I suppose this is what she doesn’t want to talk about.
‘Did you achieve what you wanted to?’ asks Cathy, clearly concerned.
Bryony doesn’t respond.
‘How did you get here?’ I say.
‘Look I just gave up ok? Sheesh I wish I’d never told you guys. I just found myself giving up on it and... ended up here. Look I’m sorry. I wish I’d never started this. Can we change the subject?’
We all agree, reluctantly, to change the subject.
We can talk about it later, after she’s gone...

Journey IV – Fuddy-Duddy

As time went on I was further disappointed to discover that the conversations I’d been so intrigued by simply revolved around what the people they knew had been getting up to. As I got to know more of them, so I was included in the conversations more. Maureen and Jo had apparently been sleeping together at first but then Jo got off with a guy called Graham at one of the parties and brought him back. Maureen seemed to be interested in Ian for a while after that (the guy with the shaved head) but he wasn’t all that keen and she disappeared soon afterwards.
To be fair, Darren’s contribution could be very entertaining but it was all incredibly trivial. Occasionally there’d be a long discussion about the music we were listening to or, among the girls, something daring or unflattering that had been worn at the last party. Very occasionally someone would start talking about something philosophical or spiritual but it was all very woolly and pretentious. There was vague talk of missed lectures and overdue assignments, and a suggestion that I enrol in something but I never came across anything even remotely resembling a college or university. Other times there’d be a brief but pointless argument over some trivial matter, usually started by Chloe – the short haired girl whose bottom I’d seen that first morning. Nobody really paid her much attention and she usually stomped back to her room and slammed the door, which was at least a refreshing display of genuine feeling.
Early on I had tried to talk a bit about the meaning of all this and why we were here, as we had on the boat, but it was impossible. They didn’t exactly avoid the subject, and sometimes some anecdotes and vague hypotheses were put forward but nobody seemed to want to pursue the subject. Sometimes I persisted but I got the impression that they thought I was being a bit too “intense” or “paranoid”. They thought I analysed things too much, as if thinking was the cause of the problem rather than vice-versa. I came across a similar argument when I was alive, as if my trying to work out what was wrong with my life was the cause of my problems.

And, as time went on I got used to the inconsequential exchanges, the shifting, superficial relationships, the unmemorable conversations. Most of the people were friendly, many were indifferent, few were hostile but there was no sense of any developing connection with anyone in particular. This made life casual and relaxed on one level but made me feel horribly vulnerable on another. If anything happened would anyone come to help me? Would I even be missed? Would any of us?
And there was a feeling of menace about the place, although I couldn’t begin to say what or who the menace was exactly. To me it was palpable in every empty doorway, in every darkened window, in the night time itself – not hostile or predatory exactly. I couldn’t imagine their motives, whoever, or whatever they were, living in the shadows. Sport perhaps? Fun?

Eventually though I found myself going with the flow. I shut up about my worries and my thoughts and found myself surprisingly content. It was a weird situation in that I looked and felt about thirty but still had all the memories of an old man. I was amazed every morning to see my flat, hard belly back again. I wandered about in just a pair of worn army surplus shorts, vest and para boots and looked, I thought, pretty good. It was exactly like life in fact, except without the worry of where the next meal was coming from and whether I was going to die of cold next winter. And thirty had been a good age for me, relatively speaking. I’d been to raves and festies and gigs and parties, I’d danced all night and hugged scores of strangers. This place was a bit like that, and it made me wonder just how old all these others (average age about twenty-two on the face of it) really were. Or maybe they’d all died young, having too much fun and this was their idea of heaven. In which case, what was I doing there?

And for a while it even came to seem quite interesting – or at least – it came to seem that it might get interesting. I enjoyed the music and no longer felt too old to get up and bop about. Also I no longer felt I was old enough to do without sex. I gave up on meeting anyone at a party and I stopped going to a lot of them (it was just too frustrating) but some of the girls at the house were pretty and seemed approachable and available, so I remained quietly optimistic on that front.
The menacing atmosphere of the town at night too, secluded as we were in our little island of music and warmth, provided an interesting backdrop. Sometimes, when the conversation drifted off and I was bored I would think about our isolation and vulnerability there in that little kitchen and when the evening became too sleepy and giggly I’d go and stand behind the sofa at the window, drawing the curtains behind me and look out at the street and the darkness, feeling the draught on my body, and I’d be sure I saw strange beings moving about out there. I accepted that I was probably just being paranoid but I couldn’t be sure. I felt fairly safe moving about during the day, and to some extent in a noisy group at night, but nothing would have made me go out there alone after dark. Nobody did. Even my route past the entrance to take the steps up to my room was something I preferred not to do alone and I always made sure the lights were on. My room I kept locked, and once I was up there I didn’t go out again until it was light.
I’m not sure how much the others felt the same way. I noticed they didn’t tell me there was nothing happening, only that they didn’t seem to think it was worth talking about.

Eventually though I had to accept the fact that I was trapped and furthermore that I probably wasn’t going to find a girl who was interested in me at any time in the near future. This was particularly frustrating since many of the girls went around the house only slightly dressed, casually falling out of their tops on a regular basis. Quite often we would be sitting around in the kitchen, in the afternoon or late into the night and the conversation would get a little more charged and there’d be maybe a game with forfeits leading to some playful exhibitionism or the girls would dance erotically together and pretend it wasn’t for our titillation. Sometimes a rather intense flirtation would develop between people who were otherwise ‘just good friends’ and we’d be sitting right next to them on the sofa as they embarked on some fairly advanced foreplay. Next day they’d be slightly flushed, but still ‘just friends’, as before. Sometimes the heavy fumes of sex were all but unbreathable. I never got used to it. In some ways I didn’t want to – I wanted more than casual sex, certainly, but I wouldn’t have turned it down. I thought about Andrea’s advice but it didn’t seem to apply. They were just girls after all, and as she had warned me, they just wanted to have fun. In retrospect I realise my age – even looking just thirty, didn’t help but I wasn’t like them. There were the guys who looked even older than I did but I wasn’t like them either. It wasn’t that I was rejected so much as that no one saw me that way. The girls seemed to like to think of me as friendly and nice but perhaps a bit too serious. Some of them took to calling me Mr Giles who I understood to be some sort of fuddy-duddy librarian character on the telly. Once or twice I tried a flirtatious comment but was made to understand that I was embarrassing them so instead I went for displacement activity – dancing until I fell over.

So as autumn became winter I spent more and more time in my room or wandering the streets, looking for a way to move on. I found a storeroom with a lot of old magazines and books in it and that kept me occupied for a while. I can’t say my room was a particularly attractive place to spend time in, what with the mushy pea paint job, but I kept it warm, and I cleaned the window and washed the bedding so it wasn’t too bad. A girl called Kim came and joined me sometimes saying she just wanted to relax away from the others and liked me because I didn’t see her as a sex object. I didn’t have the heart to correct her on that. She was a pretty girl who liked to wear low cut tops and short skirts and I found her company rather unrelaxing, but it was good to have company. Alone, I fantasised about her mercilessly.
I did also notice that there were other quiet, sexless souls about the place that rarely or never came down to the kitchen, keeping themselves to themselves. Something about them though discouraged conversation.

Andrea III – Black Sheep and Scapegoats

‘Andy wants us to carry on – says it’ll be good for us’ says Andrea, scowling slightly.
Can’t run off that easily then, I think. Good. Serves you right. Supercilious cow!
‘Shall we move on then?’ she says stiffly. I nod, smiling smugly.
‘Ok. So why do you think you were such a total failure?’ she says, coolly.
And I’m stunned, I want to hit her. Then I want to run away so she doesn’t see me cry... But I don’t do anything because the goblin in my brain is telling me she’s right and I deserve this. I sit silently. I look at the chair, the window, my drink, my legs, try to look calm. I fidget but silence descends anyway. Dust motes drift in a beam of light. The sky is blue.
‘I wasn’t a “total failure” as you put it’ I say quietly, eventually – not looking at her, trying to look like I mean it. ‘I think I did pretty well – making a life in your cut-throat pitiless game of a world.’ I look straight at her. My jaw feels locked. ‘I think I did ok considering. Ok, it doesn’t look like much but I didn’t fill the world with crap. I didn’t feel the need to own all the junk most people seem to think they need to make them happy. I didn’t have to have everything matching. I didn’t need to be fashionable. I didn’t need to get everywhere yesterday. That’s not nothing, and I know you think I was like that because I didn’t have a choice and I envied them or something, and I guess I did a bit, at first, but then I realized it was ok to be the way I was, and the envy was just about seeing myself the way everyone else saw me – as a failure. But I wasn’t. In the end – that was how I wanted to live, more-or-less.’ I think about the loneliness for a moment. ‘And actually I think some people would have done well to look at that, and look at all the stuff they own and the damage it does to the world, and how jolly it makes them feel, and think... not that I’m the great, you know, example of environmentalism or whatever, but I did my bit.’ I pause again. ‘And people liked my pictures.’ (I knew I’d made a couple of friends really happy by giving them pictures I’d done.) ‘I know I wasn’t exactly Mr. Sociability... I found people... difficult, you know? But I was ok. I wasn’t evil. I tried. It just didn’t work out, but that doesn’t make me a monster. Just small doses, you know? Better off in my own space, but it was ok. I tried, and I did ok. I wasn’t a total failure...’ and I feel the tears come, again. Why do I always have to cry?
‘Actually I didn’t say you were’ she says quietly. ‘I asked why you thought you were a total failure...’
And I breath deep again and slump backwards. ‘Cow’ I think. Got me again.


‘Better now?’ she says, at length, and I am. I feel much better. I take a few sips from my glass of water and sit quietly. I can hear music coming from somewhere.
‘I’m not here to judge you’ she says after a time. ‘There is no final judgement here, contrary to popular belief, except the one you impose on yourself, and you, darling, are harder on yourself than anyone else is ever likely to be. You do know that don’t you?’
‘It’s been mentioned, once or twice...’
‘I imagine you found it very difficult being alone so much of the time.’
I don’t know what to say. I’m not used to people being understanding, and I don’t trust it.
‘It wasn’t so bad’ I say. ‘You get used to it.’
‘Yeah, righty’ she says smirking. ‘You are a crap liar. You know that?’
I shrug. Got me again.
‘I just wanted to disappear. Slip off the radar. Submerge without trace.’
‘But it must have been weird, I mean, at the end, the neighbours must have known you were there, living in the garden. Didn’t they say anything?’
‘Not really. They didn’t know that I didn’t use the house...’
She looks at me doubtfully. ‘But still, looney old geezer mooching around?’
‘I got used to it. It was much worse when I lived on the street.’
She’s not convinced, and rightly. I’m not sure I want to go into this. She can see I’m hiding something. I can’t tell her. I didn’t do anything wrong but as soon as the word “paedophile” comes into the conversation you’re a suspect.
‘They tried to get me arrested once’ I say, and that’s it – I suppose I am going to tell her after all. ‘They tried to get me put away for child molesting.’
She looks at me. I look down. I know what she’s thinking. We sit in silence. It’s Holst’s Planets, I recognise it now. Saturn. My dad used to have this record.
‘Did you do it?’
‘What? No’ I say, too loudly, too quickly, and I bite my lip, looking at her face. ‘I don’t even like children’ I say, knowing it doesn’t help. She looks disturbed, but I don’t know who for – me, the children, or herself.
‘I didn’t do anything’ I say, more calmly.
‘So how did it happen?’
‘What? Nothing happened.’
‘I mean, how come you were even accused?’
I shrug again and shake my head, look away, hiding the tears. This really was the worst thing that ever happened to me, beatings and hypothermia and gastro-enteritis included.
‘They just didn’t like me. I never went near any kids. They just wanted rid of me.’
She sits and looks at me, appraising. ‘That must have been very hard for you’ she says at last, too blandly.
‘You don’t believe me do you?’ I say quietly. She doesn’t respond. ‘Look, I never went after their kids – they didn’t like me and I didn’t like them. That’s not how paedophiles are – read up on it. Paedophiles try to be charming, approachable – get to know the kids, buy them sweeties, invite them round to look at puppies, chat the mums up. I just wanted to keep myself to myself.’
She’s still watching me closely. ‘Please don’t take this wrongly...’ she begins, trying to be tactful or something, ‘but you do seem to have thought an awful lot about it.’
I know this one – the more I deny it the more suspect I look. I’ve been through all this “No smoke without fire” crap. What a stupid metaphor. I force myself to keep calm.
‘I had to think about it. What would you expect? For six months I couldn’t think about anything else. They were going to lock me up with criminals. I read everything there was about it. They had me down the nick three times.’
‘And they never found anything?’
‘There was never anything to find. They raided my place twice. I showed them my porn collection – actually got it out for them. I said “How do you account for the fact that every image is of a large-breasted woman? Hm?” I mean, did they think I’d put it together deliberately as some sort of elaborate decoy?’
She continues to observe my increasing agitation. I can’t tell what she’s thinking.
‘I wasn’t into children’ I say and I can hear that old note of pain and panic in my throat, at the top of my chest. What can I possibly say to convince her?
‘Did your sisters believe you?’
‘I never told them’ I say and she nods.
‘So... were you ever molested yourself, as a child?’
I have wondered about this. It would be a nice easy explanation for everything – maybe too easy. Uncle Len would have been the obvious suspect – there was always something about him, and granddad too – my mum’s dad. He was a dodgy old geezer if ever there was one. I barely remember him. He died when I was only about five. It’s an appealing thought – to be able to just pin the blame on him, on somebody nobody liked anyway – the family bogeyman. But I don’t really believe in it.
‘I don’t think so’ I say eventually. ‘I don’t remember anything.’ More nodding. ‘So, do you believe me?’
‘Yes’ she says simply. ‘I believe you. It’s very difficult to lie here anyway. This place seems to bring out the truth in people.’
I take a deep breath and look about the room. So she believes me. And why shouldn’t she? I did nothing wrong. It still feels wrong though. It might be impossible to lie here but it is possible, apparently, to be economical with the truth.

The girl just turned up one day and said could she see the chickens. How could I say no?
She must have been about twelve. Siobhan her name was – one of those clumsy embarrassed children the other kids will only play with if they’re forced to, and I could see why. She always seemed slightly ‘off’ – not quite ‘normal’ and children can be very judgemental can’t they. But she was very sweet natured and I could tell she was going to be a real beauty one day but those little squirts couldn’t see it, or if they did they’d never admit to it.
And it was good to have her around even though she prattled and got in the way. But I knew even then, before all the fuss, how it would look and I made her promise not to tell anyone where she’d been and it was our secret but I knew that you can’t do that and she knew it too. That’s my guilty secret. You can’t ask children not to tell their parents where they’ve been, even when it’s all perfectly innocent, and I knew, if she told them, what it would look like, but I didn’t have the heart to stop her. I suppose she was lonely.
Who am I kidding? I was lonely.
So I let her come and play with the dog and pick my runner beans and when it rained we sat inside and I listened to her read one of her stories. She was quite a good writer. I wonder what became of her.
Anyway she must have kept our secret because the police never asked about her – every other brat in the street but not her.
I never really wanted children of my own but if I could have been guaranteed of getting one like her I’d have been very tempted.

I know we’ve gone on longer than usual and it’s getting dark but Andrea and I sit for a while anyway.
‘It must have been terrible to live with that, all those years, all those people – your neighbours, talking about you.’
‘Well, it passed. There were never any actual abuses reported for them to pin on me. If there had been... well... But it was just the suspicion, the whispers, the curtain twitchers. There’s always a few aren’t there – don’t like anyone to be different.’
‘So you got used to it, being the outcaste, the loner, the scapegoat?’
‘They always say that don’t they – in the news reports – “He was a loner” they say, as if that proves it. But no, you never get used to it. But life goes on, hey-ho.’
We get up to leave and she says ‘I can’t believe you used a collection of dirty pictures as evidence of your innocence.’ She seems to think it’s very funny, and I suppose it is ironic but it didn’t seem funny at the time.

Journey III – Teenage Kicks

It must have been about midday when I awoke again. I went back down to the kitchen and slumped on the sofa in my shorts. I had toast and peanut butter with a cup of instant coffee for breakfast, then thought I might do some washing up but on closer inspection thought better of it. As the morning progressed I saw most of the people from the night before come in and get something to eat. Some took their food back where they’d come from, others sat blearily in the kitchen to eat and flick through a magazine. As the afternoon wore on, the booze and the dope came out (it never seemed to quite run out) and I was content to sit about in a warm aromatic haze.
That was my first day, and pretty much indistinguishable from every other day for the next few weeks. I stopped keeping track. There always seemed to be something to eat in the fridge – not necessarily something appetising, but something nevertheless. As for the washing up – like everyone else, I just rinsed off the utensils I needed and left the rest. There was conversation but generally I couldn’t hear what they were talking about because they tended to mumble among themselves and the music was always on quite loud in the background. They didn’t so much ignore me as not notice me. It was intriguing but there didn’t seem to be any malice to it so I had to accept it.


Eventually the monotony was broken with news of a party that weekend. (I had no idea what day of the week it was.) I asked the buxom girl, whose name was Maureen and who had been the most approachable of them, where it was and how we were going to get there. She shrugged and laughed and said something I couldn’t make out. ‘I’ll follow you then’ I said loudly in her ear and she gave me a look that suggested I’d finally realised something important but I couldn’t imagine what that might be. She wasn’t terribly pretty and looked a bit too young for me but I certainly wouldn’t have said ‘no’ at that stage. Maureen’s hardly a young girl’s name after all. She might have been even older than I was when she died for all I knew.
Anyway, Saturday night came and they put on some loud music and smoked and drank quite a bit before leaving and we were quite raucous by the time we set out. I hung back a little to watch and see what would happen - fully expecting to see the group whittled down as we wandered the streets aimlessly all night. I was apprehensive to say the least.

The streets were empty as before as we noisily made our way. Somewhere a dog barked. Somewhere I could hear the unmistakeable sound of partying, but all the houses we passed were silent and dark as before. We lost a couple of our group at some point but had gained three others by the time we arrived. Nobody seemed much concerned about it.
When we got there I was surprised to find there really was a party going on. It was in a tall Victorian house with high ceilings and huge windows and a basement lit with red bulbs. That seemed to be where most of the action was. The whole place had much the same neglected charm as our place, but much more spacious and with no furniture to speak of. We came in the front door and looked in on the lounge. It was dark and nobody was in there, despite the fact that the windows were wide open and dance music was spilling out into the front garden and across the street. We went down a narrow staircase to the basement to find something more melodic playing and everyone sitting around on cushions on the floor or leaning against the walls. We settled in amongst them, squeezing into the gaps and taking our turns on the ever-circulating joints and wine bottles. I felt warm and oddly at peace despite the fact that I still couldn’t hear a word of what was being said, even when the bloke with dreads next to me talked directly into my ear. I just smiled and nodded, which seemed to be the right thing to do. Later on I went for a wander and found a bunch of lads had congregated in the back room to look at torture porn on the TV. A naked girl was strapped to a chair and apparently having her face cut away. I quickly went through to the lounge and had a look at the record collection, then stood in the bay window looking out at the night and took some deep breaths. It was all so familiar – this noise, this light, this smell. What was that smell? There was a couple just along the wall near the stereo. They were mostly in shadow but I could see enough to know she was down to her underwear and he was working hard on her breasts with his mouth and on her crotch with his fingers. I decided to go downstairs again and give them some privacy but found that now a few more people were up dancing and that at least one of them – a small dark girl, had taken all her clothes off and was moving about among the others, apparently oblivious of the fact that she couldn’t dance. I couldn’t help but watch her nonetheless. I found myself an unopened can and settled down on a beanbag by the stereo to observe the fun.
It occurred to me that I’d never really understood what this ‘having fun’ business was all about. I understood pleasure and excitement, beauty and awe, humour and fascination, but not ‘fun’. Everyone here was laughing but nobody was doing anything particularly funny. People moved on the dance floor but none of them danced well. A few people seemed to be getting off with each other but there was nothing very erotic about it or even particularly illicit. Every record sounded the same. I longed for punk and techno and psychedelia. Even a bit of rock ’n’ roll or jazz wouldn’t have gone amiss. I felt somewhat superior and hugely inadequate at the same time. They knew no better and they were happy. Envy and contempt – how typical!
I leaned back and watched the girl stumble about.

I’m not sure when we got back to our place. It was getting light but I was still half expecting never to find it again. We sat in the kitchen having toast and coffee (I found some real coffee and a coffee pot, which I was fairly sure hadn’t been there before) and then we retreated to our rooms to sleep for a few hours. Later it stopped raining and I went out for a walk through the willows, down to the stream, and along the path to where the road crossed it at the far end. I still didn’t entirely trust that I could find my way back or that I wouldn’t be snatched by something as I passed but I got back ok, and just in time for the start of the evening session.

And that was more-or-less how things were. The weather got somewhat colder and damper and the days shorter, and an increasingly stale humid brown fug hung over the kitchen. People came and went and nobody seemed to wonder where or why. There was music on most of the time and either a spliff or a pipe doing the rounds to accompany it. There was a TV lounge further up the hall but it was not really comfortable and I didn’t go in there often. Mostly it was the boy’s room where they played computer games or watched horror movies on video. I found the violence in both seriously disturbing. The only relief was the parties. I liked to pretend I was above it all but I always went along hoping things would get interesting, and sometimes they did. Sometimes one or two of the girls would begin dancing close together, ‘inadvertently’ showing their knickers to us ‘boys’ sitting on the floor. Or there would be a game of dares – an obvious excuse for people to take their clothes off – usually the girls. (Why was it usually the girls? Not that I was complaining.) Later on there might be someone streaking through the house and out onto the street. That was more of a mixed event.

I wish I could say I knew how to handle the situation, with all my maturity and wisdom. I was at once disappointed in myself for not being able to just let go and join in, and disgusted with myself for not being able to tear myself away. It was not even especially sexy for much of the time. The girls were silly and giggly and ungainly on the dance floor. Very few of them would have turned my head under any other circumstances and the real exhibitionists were often the least attractive. I’m sure that wasn’t a coincidence.
The boy’s reactions (our reactions) were invariably crass and laddish or mumblingly self-conscious and we very seldom joined in with what the girls began. The most we’d do was take off our shirts and jig about ineffectually in the girl’s general vicinity, trying not to look too keen and in fact looking totally inept. As a result, much of the sexual activity, faked or otherwise, was among the girls. The only regular exceptions to this were when a few mean looking dudes with crew-cuts, tattoos and scars turned up. They’d be all but stripped and on the dance floor the moment any of the girls looked like they might try some of their routines. The men’s grimy or tanned arms seized the girl’s soft white bodies like a gang of snakes setting about a pet shop. We could do nothing but watch as they moved in on them, puppies and kittens, bunnies and chicks – powerless to save themselves.

Those occasions were unusual though. Generally the action was altogether less hard-core and I told myself that I was a voyeur – Lautrec at the Folies Bergere or some such. I even took to carrying a small sketch pad with me. (Quelle poseur!) But in truth, no matter how arrhythmic their routines, no matter how artless and staged the amateur lesbo porn – breasts nonetheless wobbled in low-cut tops and bottoms jiggled under short skirts. Tongues still writhed together and fingers explored and I throbbed fit to burst. You couldn’t fake that. I was at once sardonic and detached and hugely turned on. Disgusted as I would have been with myself, the fact is that I would have stripped off too and made any of those girls submit to me, if I could have, using nothing but raw self-confidence. And I’d have done it right there, shameless, in front of everyone (but perhaps with a little more dexterity.) Superficially I looked a lot like the mean dudes – mature and somewhat swarthy and grizzled from the streets. I was not an awkward youth any more, not like these numpties I hung around with most of the time. Was I a snake or was I a puppy? The truth is I was neither. I was a tortoise or an axolotl perhaps – peering out at them from my tank at the back of the menagerie.

One night two girls, one topless and hugely over-endowed, the other more slender in her bra and knickers, fell on top of me on the sofa. They’d been slow dancing and snogging in front of me for a while and now they were lying all over me, kissing and writhing, using my face as a pillow and my legs to rub themselves against. I suppose they were aware that someone was underneath them and perhaps found using a human being as a couch more interesting than just lying on an inanimate piece of furniture. It should have been a fantasy come true but I couldn’t see anything or hear what they whispered to each other. My hands could only reach their backs and they didn’t seem to want my lips to join theirs so there I was, squashed. Not wanting to poop on their party, I waited for them to finish. When they finally got off me one of them gave me a very lascivious smile. I suppose she thought they’d given me a very big treat but in fact by then I was as limp as a used condom. I found a book and went and sat on the stairs and waited for morning.

Voyage III – Booze and fags

I actually managed to get into an argument today. Hoorah! It was about drugs.
A small group of people were seated in a booth under one of the windows. I, as usual, was ear-wigging from the next bench along. A woman called Cathy was saying how so many people she knew had died one way or another – overdoses, aids, shootings, just stupid accidents. I couldn’t tell if she’d been a druggie herself – she didn’t look the part – rather conventional actually, but she’d evidently known a lot of people who were. A man who’s face I couldn’t see because he had his back to me opined that it should all be legalised – let the junkies do themselves in and save the rest of us from having to put up with all the thieving and so on. I was surprised Cathy didn’t challenge him on this. Somebody else said ‘What about the children?’ and the guy just said it would just be like fags and booze. ‘Authorities could just concentrate on the under-age.’
The conversation ambled about a bit, no one but the one with his back to me wanting to make much of a noise. He started talking about how people had to take responsibility for themselves, and how these bloody crusties and drop-outs deserved everything they got. He didn’t actually say that they (or we, rather) should be rounded up and gassed but that’s where he was heading. I couldn’t resist it. I had to say something...
‘So, you don’t think people should be helped if they get into trouble with drugs.’
‘Not out of my pay packet mate’ he said. I was standing up. I looked down at him. He was a young looking bloke, lean faced, sharp eyed, name of Paul apparently. I pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning forwards on the back of it.
‘What if someone is injured snow boarding?’
‘What?’
‘Recreational injury.’
‘That’s totally different’ says Paul, outraged.
‘It’s exactly the same – people injure themselves doing stupid things for fun all the time.’

‘It’s true’ says a very well-dressed chap, Harvey, sitting next to Cathy. ‘The endorphin rush from almost killing yourself is physiologically indistinguishable from taking opiates, and just as addictive.’
‘Maybe they should just take out insurance’ says another man, Trevor, at the other end of the table, ‘the sportsmen and the druggies I mean.’ He grins conspiratorially at me.
‘What? I do snow boarding...’ says Paul, a little agitated now.
‘I know’ I say. ‘That’s why I brought it up.’
‘How do you know?’
I mime big ears with my cupped hands on either side of my face.
‘Anyway’ says Paul, ‘I am entitled to my health care, free at the point of delivery...’
‘You’ll be lucky...’ comments Cathy. She was a nurse she tells us, so she should know.
‘I have paid my stamp’ says Paul. ‘I am owed – not like these greasy lay-abouts I was on about.’
‘What about professional people with a coke habit?’ asks one of the other women – her name’s Fiona.
‘What about punks on skateboards?’ I add, laughing. We’re all enjoying ourselves now, all except Paul.

‘Alright, alright’ he says, making pacifying gestures with his hands. ‘But I still say drugs are different.’
‘Have you never taken drugs?’ asks Fiona.
‘Might have.’
‘Well then.’
‘But I never let myself get hooked.’
‘But if you had been into it... then what?’
‘But I wouldn’t.’
‘What did you die of then?’ I ask.
‘None of your bloody business’ he says, trying to smile.
‘Booze or fags?’ asks Fiona. ‘It was the booze wasn’t it.’
‘Fuck off’ he says.
‘I wonder how much you cost the NHS?’ I say, getting up to go, my work here done.
‘Fuck right off’ he says in my face. We stare each other out for a second and then I leave.
See? I shouldn’t even try. I never know when to stop.

Andrea II – Dismissed

‘No, you haven’t offended me’ she says blandly. ‘People come here and they’re angry, sad, irrational, whatever. I don’t take it personally.’
And I came in here worrying that I’d upset her. Now I’m pissed off that she’s not.
It was bloody personal. She’s a rich bitch and she knows nothing. And I’m not being irrational, or not especially. This isn't working out.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t do this any more’ I say as resolutely as I can.
I don’t really want to stop coming. I just want her to take me seriously.
‘Ok’ she says. ‘I’ll get Andy to take over. He’s got some time.’
She must’ve been expecting this.
Damn. I can’t play this game.
‘No, look. I don’t want to stop.’
‘You don’t?’
‘No.’
‘Well can you tell me what you do want?’
So patronizing. I want her to give me some respect but she either will or she won’t. I can’t demand it. She probably wouldn’t even understand what I mean. Probably say I’m being paranoid or ‘over sensitive’. How often have I heard that? I feel like a thirteen year old again. I hate this.
‘Doesn’t matter’ I mutter finally, somewhat irritably, looking away. I want her to suffer a bit at least.
‘No, I think we should bring this to a close’ she says, standing up. ‘I’ll speak to Andy. Ok?’
Now I really feel crap. I’m being given up on, on top of everything else. I hate this so much.
I go up on deck without saying anything more.

Voyage II – Rastus & Bessie

My fellow voyagers seem friendly enough. I haven’t made any particular efforts to strike up a conversation but they come along and ask what I’m reading and I’m not unwelcoming. It’s not that I don’t want to socialise. It’s just that I’ve never really known how to do it. I can spout politics or art or religion until the cows get sick of it and go out again, but I can’t chat. Never could. Don’t know why. When you see a group of people – any age, any sex, out together, relaxed in each other’s company, getting pissed, flirting, “having a laugh” as they say, that’s the thing I envy. God, I want that. The only time I ever really felt any real closeness was in bed with a woman. I could have done that forever.
I like that no one can tell what age you really are here. I look about thirty I suppose. I don’t know why particularly. I asked Andy about it and he said ‘What age would you have chosen to be?’ and I said ‘About thirty.’ and he said ‘There you go then.’
That’s enough about me. The sky is pale, the sleet has let up and I’m togged up in my favourite lounger. I have a book on cinema from the library in my lap but it’s too cold to let my hands out so I sit and watch the waves go by. I could do with a coffee but I’m just too damned comfortable here. I think it’s best if I keep myself to myself as much as possible. It’s better that way. Maybe it’s too soon. Maybe we all need time to adjust.

I was sitting near a group of people at a table in the bar yesterday and I happened to overhear one of the women ask one of the men if he thought her dog, Bessie, would be alright. Her face looked empty and loose, like a collapsed balloon. She looked to be in her early twenties and yet at the same time she seemed like an old lady. I thought of my old dog Rastus. He was a handsome collie cross – like a black and white Alsatian. Wonderful dog – not wildly adventurous but fiercely independent, undemanding but never averse to a bit of fuss when it was on offer (much like myself, I like to imagine. Ha ha). I’m not one for intruding on other people’s misery, but this woman looked so sad, and I suppose I wanted to show some solidarity so I turned around and told her about Rastus. None of them seemed to know how to take this. They just looked awkward and somewhat suspicious. I thought the woman might want to talk about Bessie but she just looked even more upset. Why do I always have to say something? I should just keep quiet.
I go along to the forward lounge, where it’s quieter, but close and humid. The cold outside fogs the windows up and consequently there’s a dense, muffled atmosphere in there. I quite like it. I take a book and sit with my coffee and my mind drifts. I feel oddly at ease – disconnected, free.

Another time I was at the bar and a chap came up and ordered some wine. I made a comment about the good stuff on offer here, just to be sociable, and he looked me up and down and sneered slightly. ‘Someone like you would think so I suppose’ he said and headed off.
‘Not as good as his cellar at home I don’t expect’ said the barman.
I suppose I still just look like some old crusty to them. You’d think being dead would make people a bit more insightful, wouldn’t you. Some people just seem to be pissed off that they haven’t got their money with them. I wonder if the ancient Egyptians turned up here with all the stuff they’d been buried with, as they expected to or, if not, how outraged they were.

So I stay out of the way for the most part. I look forward to seeing Andrea every few days and that, dear friend, will have to do me. I spend a lot of time in the library – partly because nobody expects conversation there, partly because it feels quite homely. I spent an inordinate amount of time in the public library at home, when I was a kid and then later on too, and not just to get warm. I read art, philosophy, history, psychology, ecology, some novels too although I preferred non-fiction. I used to go to the university library too, until they stepped up security in the nineties. I always tried to look more like a penniless student than a hobo anyhow so they never challenged me until I didn't have an ID card.
I always wanted to go to university – not for the qualification so much – I just wanted to be a student. I wanted to go to student parties and hang out in student bars and go see local bands and, most importantly, I wanted to sleep with student women. It all seemed very glamorous at the time. They used to take the piss, my sisters – said I was The Rebel Without a Course.

The titles at this place are unfamiliar and by authors I’ve never heard of. I study the illustrations – exquisitely detailed or savagely expressionistic pen and ink drawings, woodcuts and watercolours (never any photos) – plants and invertebrates, and buildings and maps and landscapes that I’m sure have no equivalent in life. I find myself concentrated, lost in the evasive reasoning and subtle design. In retrospect I can remember nothing specific of what they’ve told me and couldn’t begin to explain it. Nevertheless I am left with powerful new perspectives that sit deep in my consciousness – like a strange new filter on my vision in a hitherto unknown primary colour, or drawings made using a completely new spatial dimension alongside the usual three. By comparison, the insights I gained from books in life seem of thin and insubstantial stuff.

I saw some sort of giant squid today – at least I think that’s what it was. I remember a passage in ‘The Voyage of the Kontiki’ where a huge eyeball passes under them during the night, peering up at them through the dark water. It was the fifties of course, so inevitably they chucked a spear at it, as one did in those boy’s own days, and it disappeared – they never did find out what it was. That’s what I saw here – a bloody great luminous eyeball, big as an umbrella, peering up at me. I could see the green phosphorescent cells racing about its perimeter, turning electric blue and shocking pink. I didn’t tell anyone. Nobody I know here would be interested. Justine might have been.