Journey XVI – The Last Resort

And now I must prepare myself. I know soon I must walk down to the sea and keep walking and then I will be gone and then I will be reborn in a new life. I don’t want to know any more about it.

This is a nice place here. My chamber is bright and airy. The staff (who are a special kind of guide) look after us quietly, tenderly, prepare us for what comes next. We are all dressed in a flimsy white material (the guides are in silvery grey) and my body feels smooth and flawless underneath. I can already feel myself becoming less solid, less flesh. My mind is flowing around things, becoming simplified. I perceive directly without the use of sense organs. I am moving into the sunlight and passing out into the air where a million crystalline slivers of song and colour pierce me deliciously. I am the heat and the perfume and the buzz of insects.

Time passes. Some take a very long time to ready themselves, and we are assured that we can stay here as long as we like. Our accommodation seems to have been made by the same extraordinary process as those exquisitely sculpted Japanese seashells – of white translucent aragonite with a pinkish glow within. We rest on finely sculpted balconies and doze, or view the infinite expanse of coral sea beyond, or else turn over and look to the lagoon on the landward side, fringed with mangroves on the far bank. Travellers play quietly or sleep on the sand or on boardwalks below. It is like the most brilliant hotel ever, designed by geniuses, staffed by angels, occupied by spectres. I am still enough myself to joke that this must be the last resort but humour is fast going the way of arousal and tiredness and embarrassment and frustration and mucus and sweat and pubic hair.

I am a little anxious I must admit. I think we all are. We are all putting it off a bit – looking at the sea, going for a walk, chatting, having something to drink, having a swim. But we won’t discuss it – what comes next. I don’t know why. I could see a counsellor but I don’t want to and they won’t push. I want to go but I’m somehow not ready yet. I watched two people go yesterday – I didn’t know them. It looked like dying. I go for another walk, this time into the trees behind the beach and find a chameleon to watch.

Some ask a guide to go with them down to the edge. Some have made friends and they have them around for support. Some go down in groups, hand in hand but I want to do this alone and so at dawn I find somewhere up the end of the beach and sit on a coconut palm trunk that slants out over the water and I look down at the waves, and I have never felt more heavy and corporeal. There are tiny fiddler crabs scurrying about on the sand below, each waving his one outsized claw at the rest.
‘Wanna fight?’ or ‘Wanna fuck?’
Life eh?

So here I am. I think of the life I will be launching myself back into and it all seems horribly immediate. My only positive thought is that I’m sure I can do better than last time. I can’t just give in. I crawl a little way out along the trunk and slip gracelessly into the unexpectedly cool knee-deep water. I can feel the sand and little bits of sea detritus between my toes. I stop and look about but I know it is time not to think – it is time to move on. I slip out of the gown and it drops into the water, immediately becoming invisible there. I look around. I can’t see anyone watching. I begin to move deeper.
When I am down to my shoulders I realise with a shudder that I can’t see my body under the water, can’t feel it any more and yet I can keep my head out a little longer and I look at the sky. There’s a vivid turquoise bird flying past...

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Thank you
Steve

Journey XV – Down to the seaside

As I kept on walking I felt the climate gradually turn hot and heavy and the vegetation became richer and more exotic. The birds, insects and flowers got bigger and brighter and the noise and odour of the place became more and more overwhelming. I’d never been to the tropics in life but I had no doubt that this was exactly what it would be like.
Increasingly, I came across other travellers along the route too – some in groups with their guides, others alone. I saw myself among the loners and they – we, all had that same weary exultant expression on our faces – we’d made it. We’d arrived.
The traffic was increasing too – mostly mules and other animals pulling various sorts of rough carts but also some vans and bicycles – and I got a lift some of the way. Settlements became more common too – clay and wood walls and terracotta or thatch roofed cabins usually set around a well or a fireplace in a clearing among the trees. At night the locals welcomed us in and brought cushions and rugs and spicy food and we sat around the fires or crowded into rooms if it was raining and ate and drank and sang or played games until dawn when we slept for a while, got breakfast and moved on.
After one particularly entertaining night, ten of us collapsed into the back of a truck with our belongings, a small pig and a fruit tree in a pot and took the dusty track through the fields to the edge of the forest. At that point the land fell away steeply and the road was nothing but bends.
A little later we came round a curve and the sea was there far below us – electric blue and shimmering in the heat. We walked or rode the remainder without resting, jubilantly singing and laughing along the dusty track among the whitewashed houses, under the flowering trees and palms.
And so the realisation of what was going to happen next gradually became unignorable. I’d hardly thought about it since Joe told me about it all those years before. I wondered briefly what had become of him.

In quieter moments I take the opportunity to try to think back to my so-called life: England, Sussex – that job I had, and those people... It all seems an incredibly long way away and yet I know it’s just around the corner now and I am going back there somehow and I haven’t even thought to find out how that is supposed to happen. I try to recall the things Joe and I talked about, and what Miranda said, and Jim, and I wonder if he is still there, tending his goats for all eternity. Then I take a seat on a log and look across the treetops and wonder impatiently what I’m supposed to have been getting from all this.
I gather myself up and try to really think about it seriously. What has it all been for? Joe said people tend to get what they really want here, whether they like it or not, or words to that effect.
I’ve met a woman who wanted to have sex with me. That’s certainly something. Ok, she was only ten inches tall, but still... And I wonder where Lucy ended up. She just seems sort of ridiculous now by comparison – immature, selfish. I don’t know.

What else? Well I could probably grow all my own veggies if I needed to, and raise chickens and goats. Jim was a really nice guy, resigned and enthusiastic at the same time. I miss him most. I wish my dad had been more like him... And I find myself lost in sadness again and almost in tears. I check to see if anyone’s about but the road is quiet at the moment. It’s about midday I suppose. Most people will be indoors having their lunch or crashed out in the heat. I hear a man laugh somewhere across the way among the trees – a friendly, warm laugh, but I can’t see anyone. I sniff a bit and wipe my nose and eyes on my sleeve. It’s covered in grime. Nothing I have on is even slightly clean. The front of my shirt is stiff with fruit juice and sweat stains and the creases in my shorts are drawn in with soil and crushed vegetation. I can imagine Justine’s smiling face looking down at me and giving me her own bright female version of that laugh because I’ve got myself in a mess again. I was always in such a mess.
Shit, what am I going to do? I cast my mind back as fleetingly as possible over the last year or two of my life and then quickly around at the thick vegetation on the slope below and the sea beyond. There’s a boat out there with a triangular sail the same burnt sienna as the soil around here. When I think back about all those other people in the sixth form, Camille and Carly and Gareth and Tom and the rest, getting on with it, sorting out their careers and their university places, it seems like everybody else knew what to do. I lean back propped up on my elbows with my head hanging back and feel the sun roasting my face, evaporating my tears away, and I listen in to the insects and the birds going about their business around me.
I don’t want to think any more.
Joe, I know, had big ideas for me and my career but I really can’t imagine what I will be able to do to make any difference whatsoever. All I know is that I’m not going for a walk after that party. After that, who knows? I haul myself into the standing position and pull my pack onto my back.

Right on cue, a cart pulled by a cow with enormous curved horns rounds the corner. It is driven by a very dark skinned man and he seems to have a few passengers already, sitting up on top of a lot of sacks and crates. I stick my thumb out and he grins at me, his teeth so brilliant white, in such contrast to the rest of his face that I can hardly make out the rest of his features.
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Voyage III – Nerds.

Next day I was on my way through to the bar and Harry was there with Solly. I thought I might as well join them, to take my mind off things. Harry said ‘You still got that bloody handbag?’ Solly laughed and shook his head.
They hadn’t mentioned it before. I’d taken to carrying my things around in this canvas shoulder bag – just some paper and pencils, my book, some chocolate, the plastic fish.
They stood there, leaning on the bar and watching me, grinning and chuckling. Then they went back to what they had been doing, chatting up one of the bar staff.
Why shouldn’t I carry my things around in a bag? I used to when I was alive. Everything just got lost otherwise.
I went and sat in the library.

One of the men there noticed I was looking at a book on marine ecology and it turned out that that had been his field of research. He said the book was quite up to date, but not one he was familiar with, which surprised him. ‘I’ve been supervising some students for their doctorates. You have to know the literature, so...’ He paused and flicked through again, pausing here and there. ‘Of course, this is what you might call “popular science” but still... it’s pretty good. I’ll have to put it on their reading list, next term er...’ He realized what he’d said and looked up toward the portholes but without really focusing. Finally he took his glasses off and, squinting down at them, polished the lenses with a tissue. ‘I’m sorry’ he said. ‘Fergus’ he added, and held out his hand to me. ‘Gabriel’ I said and shook his hand. I was happy to notice he refrained from crushing mine. Why do men do that? He pointed at the book with his glasses and put them back on. ‘It’s an interesting book’ he said. ‘Probably not available yet, in the, you know, ordinary world. I expect publishing’s a bit different here’. He seemed a bit confused and upset so I asked him about some of the amazing things I’d read in it and couldn’t be sure were real; mid ocean ridges, larvacean houses, turbidity flows, spiral shit animals. ‘Yeah, they’re all real’ he said, and sat down and explained a lot of other things to me, some of which I frankly didn’t get, but which sounded fabulous. My science has never been very strong although I enjoyed biology and should have passed... But I told him that the thing I drew and painted most was the sea, or things from the sea, and he seemed really interested and said he’d like to see some of my work some time. I didn’t know if he was just being polite, being a scientist and all. My stuff must seem pretty woolly by comparison with all his instruments and equations and so on...
Anyway, Fergus must have been an excellent teacher. I learned a lot. He said he really missed his students. I said I was glad to fill in for them. He smiled and shook my hand again and headed up to the deck. ‘See you around’ he said in the doorway.

After that I spend a bit of time thinking about things. I glance at the pages of the book but I can’t focus on it any more. I look around at the other people sitting there. Some of them are chatting quietly and there’s a woman over in the corner reading. I sort of feel that other people would go over and make conversation. I keep thinking I could but I don’t know what I’d say. She doesn’t look like she wants to be disturbed anyway and the others already seem to know each other. They don’t need me, coming and making a nuisance of myself. I don’t really know how other people manage to make friends and so on. I always feel I might be doing something weird, or say something wrong. It’s easier just to keep to myself I find but I sometimes wish I could do it, fit in I mean, if I wanted to.
On the other hand, sometimes I used to look at them, the other boys at school and just think ‘Oh my God, look at them. What a bunch of wankers.’ Either they were obsessed with sports and just ran around the place yelling and hitting people or they were the nerds, and just looked weird and talked a lot of rubbish all the time. I wasn’t into science fiction comics or building model aeroplanes. I just didn’t get it. The only alternative on offer as far as I can see, if you wanted to be ‘different’, was being gay, like Mark Almond or Tom Robinson.
I suppose most people would have put me in with the nerds. Everybody said I read too much and was always ‘off in my own little world’, but they were wrong. It wasn’t a little world at all. It was enormous. There were landscapes and characters they wouldn’t even have come across in their weirdest dreams. I spent a lot of time getting it all down on paper – writing about it or drawing and painting. I did some huge scenes – part map, part landscape, with gargantuan shaggy beasts and archaic birds, engaged in incomprehensible behaviours among misshapen trees and alien fungi. Offshore, vast dead-eyed fish and primitive whales turned among forests of coral and kelp. I don’t know where it all came from. Nobody ever asked me about it. Dad and mum just shook their heads and tutted and went away. In my world there were settlements too; some of exquisite architecture and peopled by gentle and tolerant souls. Others bristled with armaments and dripped with pollution. And always there was a woman, and she looked past all the crap and saw me as I really was, and we’d be happy together. I always imagined that happening but it never did.

Everybody thinks, if you’re not one of the sporty types that you don’t really think about sex, that it’s just how you are; sexless, celibate, virgin, because the girls are never interested in you, because you’re ridiculous. They think it doesn’t matter to you because you don’t really care about that sort of thing anyway, so you don’t miss it. You don’t mind. Some people seem to think being one of the nerds is maybe sort of cute or funny, like Charlie Brown or that obnoxious weed Adrian Mole.
So the worst part, the final indignity if you like, is not that we are sexless and ridiculous, but that they imagine we’re happy that way, laughable, harmless nonentities. We just smile apologetically and go back to our wargaming and our comics, with our innocent minds and our greasy hair and our no doubt tiny atrophied penises.

But we don’t, we fume and rage in private and we fantasise of terrible things, pumping relentlessly on our immense engorged cocks, craving it, probably more than they do. And we’re desperate and obsessed and maybe that’s what makes us look weird because we’re just so cramped up with it, and twisted, having to hold it in. Sports guys can only look that cool because they’re not that bothered about it. They’d prefer to play with a football.
I don’t know. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do, given the chance. To have a woman there, beside me in bed, sharing that small space, with her heat and her odour and her moisture and looking at her and touching her... I’d never do anything else if I could have that.
I can’t believe it. I died when I was nearly nineteen and I reckon I’d been looking at the girls since I was eight at least. I fantasised about Donna Redmond even in Miss Williams’ class and I didn’t even know what sex was back then, so that’s over a decade of total frustration. Sometimes I looked at a girl and I had to stop myself just... doing something violent, just forcing her to... to just look at me properly and say... I don’t know what. Sometimes, the way they looked at me, like I was just a smear of something on their perfectly polished shoes... Sometimes, I just wish I could have talked to one of them properly for long enough so she’d understand.
Then I’d catch sight of myself in the mirror and I’d think ‘Yeah, right.’
Why would she want that? Why would anyone want that?

I’ve got tears in my eyes again. I need to find a tissue from somewhere. I wonder where they keep them. Maybe I could find Angie or Joe and ask them. That woman’s looking at me. I can’t really see her expression in the dark. I expect I’ve pissed her off. I’d better leave her in peace.
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book 1 ~ Exposure

No horizon
Apparently, at sea level, back in the world, the horizon is always about twenty-two miles away.
Some apparently have used this as an argument for the earth being flat, with the horizon as the edge. But if that was the case, how come you could sail to France from England?
Did anyone really ever believe the world was flat?
Anyway, if it was it would look like it does here – with the view simply going on and on into the distance, the landscape just steadily getting more and more indistinct until it’s just a blue haze. At some indiscernible point the sea becomes the sky.

And the sun wouldn’t rise and set. Here it appears out of the east as a tiny light in the sky and gets bigger and bigger all morning. It sails overhead at noon and drifts away, smaller and smaller, into the west in the evening.
The difference is subtle and usually there’s a mountain range, or just some hills in the way, so you forget. Sometimes though I’ll be crossing a plain, as I am here, or standing by the sea, and there it is – no horizon, and I remember where I am.


Death # 1 – Half in Love...
In the after life you don’t need to worry about hypothermia. You feel the cold, and it feels miserable, but it can’t kill you. You’re already dead.

I’ve been walking through this forest, alone for what seems like months now, going up into the mountains. The path is hard to follow at the moment, but I can just make it out during brighter spells as a string of puddles reflecting the pale sky among the roots of these ugly, stunted trees with their ash grey flaking bark. This is not an attractive forest. The trees seem to be mostly made of dead stuff - a dense mat of little brown needles held onto the branches by old spider webs and grey mould. The trees are no great size but still tall enough to obscure any landmarks. I just follow the path. I haven’t seen more than fifty yards ahead for what seems like weeks and when I did it was an almost vertically sided valley off to the left. I couldn’t see the bottom but I could hear rocks and water falling. The sky is either a shade of grey (almost black when it’s raining) or with an odd khaki yellow glow where the sun should be. Mostly all I see is this trail of puddles ahead and behind. Then the mist comes down, or it gets dark and everything disappears. I feel like Frodo on my way to Mordor or wherever it was.

My name is Gabriel Fortune. People call me Gabe. I don’t really like it but what can you do? I died on the nineteenth of November 1983. I was eighteen. It all seems such a long time ago now.
It wasn’t exactly a suicide. You hear all the time about supposedly bright teenage boys (everything to live for) doing themselves in. There’s a national crisis apparently. But I never seriously thought of killing myself. I suppose I just allowed it to happen. I let myself go.

There was this party, somewhere up on the Mile Oak Road, and I went with some of the lads from work, from the DIY shop. It was dark and wet and I really don’t remember exactly where it was. I wasn’t really concentrating. I know I was full of excitement inside. The thing is, I’d not been to a real party before. You may not believe this, but you have to understand, I wasn’t a ‘normal happy teenager’, if there is such a thing. I didn’t fit in. I didn’t have a lot of friends, or, any, really, and most of the people I’d known in the sixth form had gone off to university. I... Well I don’t want to go on about it. The A level results arrived in July and that was it - I wasn’t going to go to university. That’s all there is to it. I got a job at the DIY shop, even though I knew sod all about DIY. And I stayed home with my parents. We didn’t really talk about it either.
So when the news of Elaine’s party reached me and they said apparently anybody could go I realised that that could be taken to include me and I knew somehow that this was it – make or break time. That previous, rather fanciful (and extremely fuzzy) image I’d had of what my future might be, going to university and everything, had been finally shown to be an illusion – a badly painted and carelessly tethered backdrop instead of an actual view. It had come loose one night at the end of the summer and flapped away to reveal this. This was my new life and these were the people I was going to be sharing it with. I knew I should at least try to fit in but I was not optimistic. Usually these people just ignored me.

Anyway, I’d been a few weeks in this job, so I said to Tim, ‘Can I come with you lot to Elaine’s party?’ which took a lot of nerve for me. Frankly, I didn’t want to be a nuisance, but then I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask, so I did, and he was really nice about it, which surprised me a bit. I sat with them at tea break, which I didn’t normally. Normally I just read my book or went for a walk. I didn’t really say anything, but I was very excited. It was a party, with Tim and Terry and Gillian too (who was gorgeous). I was on my way.
That’s what I thought that afternoon - ‘I’m on my way’, ‘My life has begun.’ It seems pathetic now. There’ll be women there, I said breathlessly to myself on the way home, and booze and maybe drugs (I wasn’t sure how I felt about that), and some good music. (I thought maybe I should take the new Bum Child Nukes album along). Who knew what might happen? I might even have a girlfriend by this time next week I thought. How stupid could I get?

I asked Tim and he said meet at the Cricketers at nine and we’d head up at closing time, so that’s what I did. Gillian, Adrian (Tim’s brother), Terry and Lee and a couple of girls were there, and Gillian smiled at me, but I didn’t want to push into the group so I didn’t really get the chance to join in the conversation. I felt alright though. I just sat at the bar and ‘observed’. I felt pretty cool. I knew I was not exactly one of that group so it was ok. I really didn’t mind.
Later I realized I didn’t have a bottle to take so I went to the off licence and picked up some cider. When I got back to the bar though there was no sign of them, and I admit I panicked a bit. Finally I found someone who knew where they’d gone and I had to run. When I caught up they said they hadn’t noticed I was missing. I’m sure I’d told them, but anyway I didn’t want to argue, so I followed them. I felt a bit pissed already. Maybe it was the running, but to tell the truth, I never drank that much usually. Anyway, I followed them, and at one point Gillian grabbed my arm and skipped along with me up the hill singing Love Cats.
When we got there I was literally just quivering with anticipation. It was just what I was expecting. It was in this big house set back from the street, and there was a load of people outside, and you could hear the music from the road – Rhythm Stick, Crispy Spiced Duck, Sex Dwarf.
I walked in grinning. The lighting was dim, and I swerved from room to room – people sitting on the floor in red light, people burning something under a broken bottle on the stove under strip light, people sitting on the stairs in the dark. I saw people I recognized from classes below me from school, people who left at sixteen or seventeen. Was I one of them now? A guy called Dave who I’d been scared of all through school said ‘Hey!’ and pulled me down to sit on the floor with him and asked how I was. He looked totally different now – very cool in fact, very Midge Ure. I was still wearing my old school shirt because, well, they weren’t worn out yet. I wished I wasn’t, but Dave was really friendly and the girls he was with – one was only fourteen, I’m pretty sure, were quite friendly and I sat with them. I didn’t know what to say, and I couldn’t really hear what they were saying anyway because of the music, so I just sat and smiled and bobbed my head to All the Waters Smell of Meat while they went somewhere else. Then I explored a bit more on my own. I couldn’t see anyone I knew and my mood was slipping a bit I have to say. I asked someone where Gillian was and they said upstairs. I went up but I couldn’t really see who was who, and I didn’t want to interrupt them so I went and stood in the line for the loo and said ‘Hi’ to a girl but she just looked away. Other girls behind me were giggling. I don’t think it was because of me but I didn’t feel too good anyway – quite angry actually and a bit sick. I went and sat down by the wall and watched them.
That was when it hit me. No one gave a toss if I was there or not. No one wanted me to be there especially. It was completely pointless. None of the girls fancied me, that was for sure. It was all wrong. I hated it. I was furious. I felt so stupid.
I stayed for a while after that. I’m not sure how long, and I don’t know what time it was when I left, but I tried to make the most of it. I danced to (I Feel Like a) Goddamn Sexual Tyrannosaurus and Lust for Life. No one else was dancing, but I thought hey, what the hell? Then I nearly collided with the speakers. That’s when I decided to go outside. I remember quite clearly thinking ‘Shit, I’m really pissed’. I squatted down against the wall out the back of the house feeling the cold air and looking closely at the stones in the wet path. I didn’t feel like I was actually going to throw up but the night seemed blacker than usual somehow. My face was burning hot and my shirt was stuck to my back with sweat. That was when Adrian and some girl I didn’t know lurched past, and gave me a half full bottle of Southern Comfort. He said something funny and I nodded and smiled. I remember thinking ‘This is a rueful smile.’ Debbie Harry sang Die Young, Stay Pretty and  I took a swig and pushed myself up against the wall into a standing position.
When things got too much at school I used to go up onto the downs, or down to the harbour, so I thought, ‘That’s what I’ll do’ and I walked, quite straight I thought, out the back gate and across a sports field. There was a gap in the fence beyond I remember and then just a field. It was really dark.
I don’t remember a lot after that. I must have walked for miles. I wasn’t happy. I know that. I was angry and tearful. Looking back on it I suppose I was just lonely and sexually frustrated like any number of other teenagers, but it seemed like everyone else was having fun. Everyone else was ok. I thought it was just me.
I do remember sitting down under an old hawthorn to get out of the wind and suddenly realising how cold I was. I’d been wandering about for quite a while and I thought I should head back. I just kept thinking sooner or later I’d see some lights or something, but when they found my body apparently I was half way to Devil’s Dyke. I just remember the ploughed fields going on and on, up and down, and occasionally coming up against a barbed wire fence or a thorn hedge, and having to make huge detours round the edges of fields, trying to find a way through. I completely lost my sense of direction. When I sat down I distinctly remember thinking that I’d had enough – not just of the Downs in the rain that night but of everything. Maybe it was the booze making me melodramatic, but I remember quite clearly thinking ‘This is it. I’ve done what I can. I’m sick of this. I’m going to stop.’ So I suppose that’s what I must have done. I just stopped.
I remember sitting down in the grass there, watching the rain drip off of my hood, and feeling the wet seep into my pants. Then after a while the cold went away and everything just seemed wonderfully peaceful. I remember observing the drips on the twigs near my face turning to ice and thinking how fascinating it all was.

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