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.

The L-shaped garden

I did a few ‘festies’ back in my thirties - Glastonbury of course, The Elephant fair, Womad. They were good years in retrospect, although tough in some ways. During my twenties I’d given up on ever being anything whatsoever. I’d spent a bit of time on the street, sleeping rough, but I couldn’t hack it long term. Mostly I stayed out of trouble using the same techniques I’d used at school – basically by becoming invisible (not literally you understand, though anything seems possible here). But I wasn’t pushy enough – wouldn’t beg and I didn’t look hungry enough so I tended to miss out on the handouts a lot of the time. Too proud I suppose, but I also knew that if worst came to worst I could go home to mum and dad, which tends to take the edge off your survival skills.
Mind you, home wasn’t exactly the soft option. Guilt, disappointment – palpable. I couldn’t stick it for long, and what with Justine and the kids and Amelia, after the accident, well, I couldn’t burden them, so back to the street it was. And you can’t avoid trouble forever. You have to remember, although I didn’t have any readily identifiable mental illness, I wasn’t right. I was hopeless at looking after myself, got sick and ended up in the hospital with pneumonia more than once, and another time with internal bleeding from some arseholes down on West Street kicking me about. Difficult to be invisible when you’re lying face down outside a pub on a Saturday night.
I ended up on the psych ward for a while, but more because they didn’t know what else to do with me than because I was sick. “Personality disorder” was as close they got to a diagnosis. I understand this to mean “Person who gets excessively upset about things that I (doctor, police constable, social worker – delete as applicable) happen not to consider all that important.” The psychiatrist admitted as much at one point. One of them said I had an adult form of attention deficit disorder – too impulsive, too easily bored they said. Mum would have said that only boring people get bored. I suppose that’s one of those obviously stupid things people say that nobody ever questions. The other theory was that I was mildly autistic, or ‘Aspi’ to use the vernacular. That seems like another way of just saying you don’t fit in. Anyway, I certainly wasn’t short on imagination and empathy, which is supposedly a feature of that condition. If anything I had a bit too much. I picked up on every nuance, every look, every movement. People were too difficult, too complicated. It was all too much. I couldn’t cope.
So then I got put out into ‘the community’, so called, which was worse – out of the microwave into the waste disposal unit. At least there had been plenty of hot water in hospital and the people who attack you tend to be sedated, which makes them easier to dodge. There was supposed to be therapy but it never amounted to much. I wasn’t dangerous, addicted to anything or suicidal so that was it – I believe the clinical term is ‘Falling between two stools’ which is an interesting image come to think about it. I found something similar later talking to the various middle-class hippies at the festies. Seemed like they were all involved in some variety of counselling or other, usually fairly pricey. It seemed you could get help with pretty much anything – commitment phobia, executive stress, your bed facing the wrong way, whatever, as long as you could pay. If your problem was not being able to hold down a job you could go hang yourself.

Eventually mum and dad came and took me home again. I was malnourished and dehydrated from a stomach bug. I explain all this not out of self-pity but to remind myself what it was like and to rekindle my wonder at how I managed to get like that.
And it wasn’t all bad. Those were just the highlights. Mostly it was just routine – boring, hungry and cold, but actually I had some very good summers later on. I went down to the West Country and became a real hobo, sleeping in woods, living off the land, communing with nature as it were. I found a book in the public library called ‘Wild Food’ and became a proper hunter/gatherer.
Now you might assume that being homeless would be more tolerated in the city than in the countryside but you’d be wrong. As long as you look the part, don’t do anything obviously dangerous or weird, and stay out of the way when necessary (with the aforementioned talent for invisibility), you can manage surprisingly well. The real key is to keep yourself clean – get a shower when you can, wash your clothes. Campsites are useful. Stash your gear in a tree and wander in in your flip-flops and a towel with a toothbrush in your mouth. Nobody stops you. Plus I was always well spoken and polite. The wealthy always like that sort of thing. Keep your past conveniently vague and they’ll even assume you’re one of them, fallen on hard times. They’ll let you cut their grass and muck out the horses for a small fee. And they’ll tell you all sorts of things they wouldn’t tell the ordinary tradesman... Interesting.
So anyway I got a hike tent for my birthday that year and a little stove. I learned to fish and collect seafood at low tide. I did alright. Proper aquatic ape I was. Not so good in the winter though.
Later on things got even better because I fell in with a lot of hippies on the beach at Gorran Haven and I even managed to get off with a girl, which was a first. I suppose I looked the part – I was pretty fit by this time, clean, bronzed and muscular from all the swimming, long bleached ponytail, army surplus shorts, slightly dangerous look in the eye. Mind you I was a good deal less dodgy looking than many of them, and a lot handier about the place too. This came from my not being permanently wrecked. Quite often I was the most together person there (I was as surprised as anyone). So they took me with them to the Green Gathering and the Elephant Fair and I made myself useful, first on the site crew, then, when it was realized I wasn’t really that into drinking and smoking I worked in a café making curries and chai. I sold a lot of drawings too. And I had sex! Only times in my life that happened. Of course, having been involuntarily celibate for 30 years I took the whole thing far too seriously and got summarily, unceremoniously and comprehensively dumped, but it was nice while it lasted. I suspect I was actually too nice. I appeared a lot more dangerous than I actually was and it quickly became obvious once I’d been slept with that I was a bit silly about women.
A hippy chick at a festival once told me ‘You’re too good for this world’. It was late, she was stoned, but she didn’t want to have sex with me. She wanted to have sex with the other guy who definitely wasn’t too good for this world as I recall.
Of course I had to endure a lot of weird shit from new age types: reincarnation, auras, crystals, crop circles, you know the kind of thing, but then there’s this - where we are now. I wonder what they make of all this? I comfort myself by telling myself that at least I didn’t claim to understand the universe. They thought they did and they were just so fucking wrong! Ha ha!
That all went on for nearly ten years and then dad died and mum needed help. I moved back home feeling a lot more confident about myself, and, for the first time in my life, with plans, but really it was too late. Amelia was in hospital again and Justine had her hands full. Luckily mum had invested well and we were ok financially. I tried to work but, really, I just couldn’t. I can’t talk about the rest. Maybe another time. Suffice it to say, after mum died I continued to live in the old house. The mortgage was all paid up and the girls didn’t mind so I stayed on.
It was an enormous spooky old Victorian semi with about two thirds of an acre at the back including the ends of two gardens bought from the neighbours. It was heavily overgrown with brambles and nettles and had some huge old sycamores at the end. I got a dog, learned how to grow veggies and raise ducks and rabbits and I built a cabin down at the end out of salvaged timbers. It was a fantastic construction. It started out just being a big garden shed, but I had mains water installed and got hold of some Tilley lamps and a stove, and a big old steel bed and I ended up spending most of that summer down there. It had a somewhat musty, smoky, doggy ambiance, and there were spiders and mice galore but I just couldn’t bear being in the house any more, not on my own. On the other hand I couldn’t bring myself to sell up and leave. It’d been my home since I could remember. What could I do?
So I put more windows in the cabin so that I could look out across the garden from my table, and a sink and proper floorboards and insulation. I only went to the house to pick up the post and have a crap. I rented it out for a while but it was too much hassle, and then Justine lived in it for a time too, but in the end I just wanted to do my garden, sit in the doorway and watch the birds.
My plot was a paragon of organic husbandry, overflowing with colour, flavour and biodiversity. I was reusable, repairable and recyclable. I was ninety percent self-sufficient right up to the end. What little I couldn’t grow I ordered from the supermarket and they delivered to the house. I listened to radio 4. That was my main link with the outside world the last ten years or so – that and the public library. Justine visited sometimes to check I was ok, but she had to admit I was probably healthier and happier than most of the people she knew. We used to sit on the step, watching the sun go down over the railway embankment drinking sloe gin.

I miss her so much, both of them. Poor Amelia. I’d love to see her again.
Well, we’ll have to see won’t we.