Untitled chapter
1.
As the 21st Century slowly picks up pace in a blur of meaningless dullness around me I truly feel cut adrift. This modern world where I find myself is way too fake for someone like me as it’s driven along with this sickness of social media and self-importance. I find it troubling that everyone tries way too hard to fit in to what are, after all, their own little self-obsessed, media friendly pigeon-holes. It is sad really why so many feel they must live their pitiful lives craving to be accepted or liked over actually being themselves.
I won’t do that, I refuse. You can take your faceless celebrity-filled world and stick it up your arse. Myself, I have never felt the need to be popular or even liked and could never get my head around why a person would crave acceptance. Why is it so important to fish for compliments? I actually think the nicest thing ever said to me was “you are such an oddball” and maybe that moment was the first time I was genuinely happy. Well I say that but there was that time when as a sexually confused minor I found a copy of my mother’s Cosmopolitan magazine, now that did open a door and why wouldn’t it?
So, who am I? I don’t fucking know and even if I could explain you wouldn’t believe me. One thing for sure is I refuse to accept my role in this reality. I just can’t, life has to have more meaning! Saying that there is an egotistical part of me which feels like I have some sort of “calling.” Now when I say calling I don’t mean a “God asked me to murder all the black folk” type calling but definitely something; I just haven’t worked out what yet. As my life approaches its 26th year I guess I am feeling slightly lost and maybe in need of answers. A more weak-minded soul may have found solace in the good book or religion but I will never believe in any sort of God as he, she or it has never given me any reason to. Yes the drugs help and always have, same with the alcohol but still that void, there is always that void.
“You need a good woman!!” I hear you cry. I have heard it all before and way too many times so “fuck off!” Anyway, what the fuck is a good woman? Sex is sex; I don’t need all the bullshit baggage that comes with it. Trust me, you don’t want to be telling me about “how your mother didn’t hold you,” or asking me to be your date for your brother’s wedding, fuck off. The last thing I need is some middle-of-the-road token girlfriend changing her status on Facebook to “Attached” accompanied by a selfie of the two of us in a loving embrace. It just isn’t going to happen. The long and short of it is that I am more likely to take that selfie stick and use it as a sex toy than play happy families which on the upside, would at least lead to more entertaining status updates.
Don’t get me wrong, recently I have been questioning both myself and my life choices a lot. I have even tried to ride the road to happiness or normality but have always ended up feeling the same which is: “Where’s the fucking detour?” I can assure you I really have made an effort to change my ways because after all maybe it was me that was wrong and therefore missing out on something special. I mean let’s face it you shouldn’t knock anything unless you’ve tried it and I may be a lot of things but a hypocrite I’m not.
So first up there was Kelly, an Aussie temp from work, now she was a fun girl. Although she was very hairy I have to say the sex was great but that was all we had, sex. She loved an afternoon fuckfest, that one, after a few lunchtime pints which was all good apart from her Aussie flat mates. Now like most of these cunts from that part of the world they all seemed to be caveman types with ten of them living under one roof. All they would do was sit in the room next door while we fucked, drinking their beer and watching their sports. I am still convinced to this day they were jacking off as Kelly screamed the roof down as her orgasms were often accompanied with chants of “Aussie Aussie Aussie!” It wasn’t long until things came to an inevitable end which wasn’t the greatest of surprises to be honest. Of course, it is always sad to say goodbye to great sex but that’s life and she was never going to be good enough to invite back to mine. My parting gift was a simple one as running my knife into their inflatable kangaroo that sat so annoyingly on their front porch gave me both peace and closure.
Then there was Irish Sara who I met on a bus, now she was a nice girl with beautiful brown eyes and the bonus of her own flat. However, all early potential soon disappeared on our first visit to her bedroom which was like a toy shop bedroom hybrid filled exclusively with cuddly toys. It all started to fall apart when one night she got upset after I shot my load on Paddington Bear. But come on, throw me a fucking bone, this good little Catholic girl didn’t want to use a condom and refused to swallow. At times during sex there seemed to be so many limbs it actually felt like I was in the midst of some deranged Roman orgy. Orgies are great just not with a bunch of Ewoks or half the cast of Toy Story. After a few weeks the excitement of sex with a different body was wearing off for me but it was her who finished it after she tried to surprise me with tickets to see IL Divo. I guess she never did see the humour in my “I would prefer to eat my own shit than watch those cunts” comment.
So there you have it, I have tried but normality is just not for me. However you do get what you deserve in this life and now I have become my worst fear, a phony. It has been well over two years now since I sold my soul and started working in the huge corporate world. Just like the other suited lemmings I slotted straight in to become part of the human work cycle. Of course I may have wanted to believe I was different but was I really any different to the masses of people I followed into work every day? OK, so my degree opened the door but it was still me who decided to step through it, which meant I had a choice. So for all those who I criticise or secretly mock I am here working amongst their masses at their sides. My life fucking sucks.
2.
Another Monday morning and life was once again bullying me seemingly crushing me under the heel of some sort of imaginary shit-covered boot. The darkness of my mood hasn’t been helped by my lack of sleep whose fault once again lay directly at my door. My weekends now tended to be spent engulfed in solitude losing myself in a world of drink and drugs behind the safety of a locked front door. My only companion was my music which completed my escape from reality but it was turning into a problem. At first it seemed all under control but now these lost weekends had started becoming the norm and a road I felt dangerously at ease upon. Without fail a sort of peace would fall across me in the moments of debauchery. The lyrics and music of the many songs I played would flow through me filling my mind with a roller-coaster of emotions.
I was lost but alive at the same time yet no matter how hard I tried I could feel the corner I had pushed myself into now closing in upon me. As Sunday would draw to a close I would watch the tranquillity slip through my fingers as the week ahead raised its ugly head once again. I had tried to convince myself that I felt happy being isolated, that it suited me, but deep down I knew that wasn’t true. In reality I was becoming more estranged from the world around me and this just wasn’t healthy.
You often hear a change of scenery is a good thing but the blunt truth was I had found the whole moving to the big city a difficult one. Once I had become settled I had truly become the recluse I had always threatened to be during my student days.
In many ways the University life had prepared me for the move as I would hardly have been described by my fellow students as a social butterfly. The lure of the student bar or social life never appealed to me as I just preferred the company of a good book but for the most part, my free time was taken up by listening to music.
For large chunks of my free time I would find myself spending hours with my new friends: Bowie, Iggy, Bolan and
Reed. It wasn’t like there weren’t interesting people at the University it was just that I was scared they wouldn’t match up to my new-found friends that span around in my room at 33 1/3 RPM. Let’s face it, there was no way the faceless fucks from my economics class with their “Meat is murder” or “Amnesty International” badges were ever going to match up with the joy I felt when I was consumed by “Life on Mars” or “Rock’n’Roll Suicide”.
On fleeing the family nest my father hadn’t so much given me but more like presented me with his record player and a case of old LPs. I am sure he looked upon this moment as some sort of musical rite of passage. I can still remember how he handed them over stating that they would change the way I would look at the world forever. Of course hindsight can be a wonderful thing but now all these years later I know how right he was.
I could never claim or even say I really knew my father but for the most part I think he had been a good man. During my first year at University he had died at the hands of a sudden heart attack. At the time I hadn’t been filled so much with grief, rather it had more of a strange numbing effect on me. I would never have described our relationship as close but in the little time we had spent together it did seem like he had understood me albeit without ever expressing it. This now seemed even more apparent by the way the music he had given me was shaping my way of thinking, often leaving me cursing myself that I hadn’t played those records earlier. It saddened me knowing that I would never have the chance to sit down with him to discuss the greatness of the music but there was something else.
The first of many I found was tucked inside a copy of Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” and like the others was just a simple hand-written note:
Bowie was Bowie and was never afraid to be himself, always be yourself
My father always had problems in expressing himself when
he was alive so finding his note came as quite a shock. I guess this was his attempt at communication as it suddenly became apparent that he had been trying to speak to me or even guide me in his own way. It left me with a curious feeling to think of him writing these notes with an expectancy that I might find them. I was left to wonder what he had been hoping to achieve knowing he would never be able to answer that question. As I delved deep into the records more and more notes started to appear and the plot thickened as it wasn’t just messages but also random lyrics; Inside The Smiths´ “The Queen is Dead”:
It’s easy to laugh, it’s easy to hate, it takes guts to be gentle and kind
Inside Pink Floyd´s ¨“Dark Side of the Moon”:
The lunatic is in my head, you raise the blade, you make the change
Then back to messages inside The Stooges´ “Funhouse”:
For some what is perceived as strange is normal to the more open minded, express yourself
It just went on and on, with every record revealing its own secret. However, the unearthing of every new note just seemed to cut away at me that little bit more each time. Of course this would never have been my father’s intention not that I would ever know that for sure. But the one thing it did achieve was that I felt closer to him now than I had at any time when he’d been alive and for that I was grateful.
Shortly after my father’s funeral my mother made the decision to take her own life in a hot bath with a razor blade. The usual “she just couldn’t cope being alone” reasoning followed which maybe brought her the dignity she never found when she’d been alive. I knew differently; she had been a weak person and the death of her husband had now given her the excuse to do something which in all honesty had always only been a matter of time in coming.
I knew very little about my parents and how they had met but recognized the fact that they shouldn’t ever have been together. Guessing by the close proximity of their wedding anniversary to the date of my birth it would be safe to say that I was unplanned for. My mother spent much of my early childhood in and out of what I now know were mental hospitals or rehab centres. She had an all too familiar tendency for self-destruction with both legal and illegal drugs complimented by a heavy consumption of alcohol. Her mood swings or state of mind would depend a lot on how sober she was but as the years passed being sober occurred less and less which told me one thing and that was that it was never going to end well.
My father’s well-timed entry into the computer industry meant we were not a poor family and he had bought a huge ten-bedroom mansion in the countryside. The garden and house were huge but in truth it was a soulless place that for 90% of the time was empty due to my father being away for work and my mother’s often unscheduled holidays. As for me I was shipped off to an expensive boarding school where I was left to fend for myself and then raised by an ever-changing number of nannies during the school holidays.
Before I had reached my teens, I had been exposed to more fucked-up shit than the average adult experiences in a whole lifetime. The house where we lived would often be used for crazy sex and swinger parties, not that I knew what that was at the time. As the first guests arrived I would be shuffled into my room with a family bag of crisps and a bottle of Coke and then told not to leave until morning. I would peer out of my bedroom window watching as hordes of people would come and go, once even counting as many as thirty cars parked outside. On occasion boredom would take hold so I would slip out of my room to gawk through the cracks of unclosed doors. The sights of all number of naked bodies tangled in knots raised a curiosity in me although that didn’t mean much at the time. Their laughter and joyous moans could only mean one thing and that was that they were having a good time so I didn’t really care and left them to it.
My nights at the family home during these occasions came to an abrupt halt after a random act of violence by my father.
I think I must have been 11 or 12 when one of his many guests found his way into my room sitting himself on the end of my bed. I still remember it as if it was yesterday, he had pulled back the sheets where I laid naked then had started to stroke my leg all with a charming and calming smile.
Who knows how far that would have gone but for my naked father to come bursting through the bedroom door knocking the man off my bed with a huge right hook. The power of the punch shocked me as the blood sprayed halfway across the room leaving fresh red droplets running down my bedroom mirror. As I sat there from my ringside seat he then proceeded to beat this man while pinning him to the floor. I just watched as if in slow motion as his body quickly went limp leaving both my carpet and his face a bloody mess.
It all happened so fast and I soon found myself being dragged out of bed then from the room. I still had time to catch sight of my father standing up coated in blood and remember how he looked at me as I disappeared around the door giving me a reassuring nod. The events of that evening were never raised or discussed and I still don’t know if that man even survived, not that I cared to be honest. My dad was my hero that day, he was great and although the sight of his erection as he had beaten that man may have puzzled me, the look of pure joy in his eye never left me.
3.
I remember as a child being fascinated by the word “soul”. What was this mystical thing that people talked of and how did it work, what did it even look like? My understanding of the subject grew even more puzzling when I once overheard a visitor to our house talking of how “the eyes were the window to the soul.” As a young boy of no more than maybe ten years this just added to the confusion as I would sit sometimes for hours just staring at my eyes in the mirror.
Of course my parents laughed at me thinking no doubt I was being vain or just going through some silly childhood phase but this was different. Apart from the peace I found in my own eyes it was an early life lesson. Hope is a word thrown around a lot these days but that’s what I had sitting there for hours, however I soon learnt that hope was a dangerous thing.
I never did see my soul but it did teach me the eyes are powerful things and not to be underestimated. The thing is you can learn a lot about someone just through their eyes, those little moments of indecision, treachery, confidence or my personal favourite, longing.
There is nothing better than longing eyes in my book with all the stories they tell or secrets they hide. Most of the time they are expressing unspoken doubts, maybe something simple like: “what is worse: the heartache or the heartbreak?” That one is easy, a bit of both maybe. But saying that, what’s the point of the ache if you are scared of the break? “Throw those dice baby,” because there is one thing worse than that ache and that’s regret. It’s best to know “he or she just didn’t want to” rather than think “maybe they would have”. Most people don’t see this as they don’t see at all but I do, I see everything. The saddest thing of it all has to be that 90% of people avoid direct eye contact. It is almost as if they are eyeing some sort of diseased leper and feel it is almost rude to look, but they couldn’t be more wrong.
OK this is where I come in as I love the power of the eyes, to
make someone squirm, smile, to place some warranted or unwarranted hope or even suggest a possible moment of intimacy. The eyes may not be the windows to our souls but they are weapons and damn good ones at that. I would actually go as far as saying I judge 95% of people I meet on how they look at me during that first contact, fuck all that body language shit, it’s all in the eyes.
Now as I sit here I can see why this guy in front of me is struggling and, notwithstanding his numerous other faults, there is just no eye contact. When I refer to “this guy” I mean this big, fat piece of shit standing in front of me trying to lecture a bunch of people who unlike him deserve to be there rather than just are. I would quite happily state for the record with great confidence that the wholesome, bran friendly shit I took this morning had a higher IQ than this fuck. Yes, this fuck, my boss, the one and only William Dilly.
Cock-sucking, Phil-Collins-listening, Daily-Mail-reading, Clarkson-loving, right-wing voting, overweight, sweating, patronising baboon of a man. I guess you may have got the impression I don’t like my boss and you would be right. This is the kind of man that enjoys looking at soft porn sites on his office computer yet doesn’t have the balls to beat one off and definitely doesn’t know how to wipe the history. Maybe I should go scan my cock and balls and then install them as his screen saver, but that wouldn’t offend a man like this. He has too many unanswered questions in his private thoughts so surely such an image would only lead to his first in-house orgasm, no sir I will not give you that pleasure.
“OK Lee, would you do us all the pleasure of summarising what we have discussed so far.”
Now this is the moment that Mr Dilly thinks he’s got me, you see he doesn’t like me very much and he presumes that I am not listening as:
1. I haven’t been giving him my full attention and
2. He just caught me trying to look up Maria from accounts skirt as she crossed her legs.
Just for the record Maria from accounts is not wearing knickers and her garden needs some tending.
“Yes captain of course.”
He won’t like the captain reference as it will bring back some painful memories of last month’s team bonding paintballing weekend. He smiles politely before continuing.
“OK Lee, we are not on the battlefield now so no need to refer to me as the captain.”
Jesus, people actually laughed at that, bunch of sheep. I bet they would laugh even more if Captain Bully Boy and I were to share our secret of my sharp shooting. He won’t have forgotten, wait for it, there he goes a little shuffle in his seat and an awkward smile in my direction, I bet those plums are still purple. I knew the Captain reference would lead to a painful flashback but now time to get the crowd back on my side.
“Sorry sir, but may I please take this opportunity to thank you on behalf of all the team here today for a great day out paintballing.”
A bunch of faceless cunts applauding, there you go right on cue. Of course, I should have been enjoying that particular weekend in a rather more, shall we say, X-rated manner, but instead found myself stuck with my co-workers in a small field in the middle of nowhere. I guess getting to double barrel “Captain Billy” in his bits and pieces was a plus point though, so it could have been worse.
“Thank you Lee, very kind words and thank you everyone else, but back to the task at hand. Lee, I believe you were about to talk us through the financial forecast.”
Of course he still thinks I wasn’t listening, but face it, my economics classes at school were more advanced than this shit, except they didn’t contain as many mistakes, but still time to turn on the charm.
“Yes of course, first off excellent presentation sir and I believe you are right when you refer to the growth already seen in the first 2 quarters of this year. Indeed, as you say, the future does look bright.”
People in power always love having their ego stroked, a little bit of cock-sucking never fails but sometimes a little teeth action, spices things up; I will continue but not so much in the same vein.
“However, as much as I applaud you for your optimism for the remaining part of the year I feel that your figures are way off.”
He doesn’t like that and he thinks he’s going to speak, but this is a roller-coaster he can’t get off and this unprepared, non-university graduating, only-got-the-job-as daddy-owns-the firm mother-fucker is about to feel like he brought a knife to a gun fight. Of course, he won’t know of today’s financial news, how is the hangover boss, I guess the 5 bottles of Chardonnay you drank last night with that large-handed and big-breasted woman from recruitment aren’t helping you now. Yes, no doubt you got a grope in the back of the taxi but should have gone with champagne and should have gone with Maria from accounts, she wears no knickers. It was time to go for the knockout.
“Sorry sir, let me stop you, don’t get me wrong with the proposed merger with the Anderson Group the future is very bright. However, I do feel today’s news that they have won a major contract with the American Government to supply software for the next four years means that this firm are likely to see a huge boost meaning your figures for the next two quarters are way off.”
“Of course, you have seen today’s news?”
Bang bang you’re dead.
