One of the good things that happened in the 60’s was that at least some music of an unusual and experimental nature got recorded and released. So who were these wise, incredibly creative executives that made this golden era possible? Hip young guys with Perrier breath? No – they were old cigar chomping guys who listened to the tapes and said ‘I dunno, who knows what the fuck it is? G’head put it out there, who knows, I
Frank Zappa
And how come we don’t even talk no more -You don’t even call no more – We don’t really keep in touch at all –And I don’t feel the same love when we hug no more – And I heard it through the grapevine we even beefin’ now – After all the years we been down and there aint no how – It can’t be true – But we family – There aint a damn thing changed unless its you.
D12
Day 3
Son of a bitch! I searched everywhere this morning, all my little hidey holes, every draw, pocket, cupboard, shelf. I looked under the bed, on the bed, in the sodding bed, I even looked in my God damned trouser turn ups. Not a fucking thing. Not one little sniff of a bag. Last week when I had an eighth of an ounce in the house I came across a whole bag just knocking around in an old pouch I hadn’t opened for yonks. Today sweet fuck all. Typical. Bloody typical. Oh well I didn’t want any bloody gear anyway.
I went to see my buddy Steve. Steve is like me he’s not an addict he self medicates. Mind you unlike me he needs the damn stuff, without any form of depressant in his system he’s a chimpanzee on crystal, a total whack job, but he’s got a lovely heart.
‘yeah I’m clean I haven’t got a habit’
‘good for you when did you last do any gear?’
‘oh five days ago’
‘cool and you’re not doing meth either?’
‘no I stopped’
‘when’
‘3 days ago, and I feel fine today’
‘how much did you do?’
‘400mls’
Fucking Aida. Give me a fucking break. If you’re on a script for 50mls a day and you do a weeks supply in one bang, enough to knock down a heard of fucking elephants, it doesn’t mean you’re fucking clean you bean head. The stuff has a long half life, that much ’ll keep you straight for days.
Gear is like that we’re all always quitting, trying to quit or have just quit, yet we all go to kop the same time every day. I’m just as guilty, the next half of that conversation was me telling him how to do it when half an hour earlier I’d been scrabbling around on my hands and knees under the bed looking for scraps.
‘By the way Steve you couldn’t spare me a line could you?’
As soon as he went to the kitchen to make coffee I was poking around in his little stash pot – dag nabbit, empty.
‘That’s a lot of methadone dude your eyes are still pinned,
‘Are they?’
It was a non-committal answer and he looked really shifty, I can smell gear at 50 paces.
We rationalize our addiction, I get home and I’m scheming of ways to kop, who can I borrow money from, there must be somebody. I surrendered to smack a long time ago, she’s in my bones, my heart, my soul. With her I’m braver, sadder, harder. But I’m not a junky like these people on the street, I don’t lie and steal and cheat. I go to work and earn my money. I pay for my medicine like a million little housewives on their mothers little helpers. I read somewhere I don’t know if it’s bullshit that 65 million Americans are addicted to prescription medication. I’ve become insular because I’m scared and I’m hiding, hiding from being caught, hiding from myself, hiding from my loved ones, hiding from the fear that threatens to overwhelm me. God let me get a hit today I’ll quit after the next hit I know I will. One more and I’ll quit. One more, one fucking more.
I know in my soul what bullshit that is, I’m a cheat, a liar, I can’t be trusted. God I ache all over, I’ve got bad stomach cramps, son of a bitch.
I’m healthy, I eat everyday, I’m not a cadaver like the sunken eyed corpses I see on The green. I don’t use needles. I’m not a junky, I self medicate. I’m insane.
Its a good thing I didn’t get any, I got through the rest of the day somehow with anxiety and craving gnawing at me, I just need to get stabilized on the methadone that’s the first goal, get out of the habit of using everyday.
I’m reading that book by James Frey ‘a million little pieces’ so what if he embellished it a bit, the point is he went through it. He has the same vibes I do about AA but I’ll get to that later. It bugs me though that when you quit you have the subject of gear around 24/7. In AA you spend your days and nights in meetings talking about drugs, the same in re-habs, even me trying to do it at home I’m writing about it, reading about it. When you don’t want anything to do with a girl anymore you stop seeing her, you don’t phone her, you don’t talk to her or about her, you forget her. That’s how you deal with pain, why is it that we have to immerse ourselves in our pain, wrap it around ourselves like a course blanket impregnated with poison ivy, so it itches and scratches all day long.
H.S.T
1969
I was terrified lying in bed, I had the covers drawn up high over my head trying desperately to block it out. Tears coursed down my cheeks in a river of fearful anguish. Then another almighty crash and the sound of breaking glass reverberated up the stairs, into my bedroom, under the covers making me shiver. The sound of voices screaming at each other, hurtful, hateful words that I didn’t understand. Furniture being turned over and smashed, plates crashing to the floor, and worse of all the dull thud of what I was sure was physical confrontation. All little boys love their mothers but mine could turn from a smiling, pleasant, slightly tipsy sweetheart into a snarling vicious harridan in the snap of your fingers. I think the one lasting scar I have from these fights between my parents is that I can’t bear to be upstairs in a house with people fighting downstairs. My father is a big strong ex-rugby player and my mother was a 4’11’ super tornado, a whirling dervish that made the Tazmanian devil seem like a pussycat. Dad’s a gentle man, he never fought back, never raised his hands. I hope that side of him has passed to me through the genes, I’m not violent as a rule, though as a kid I was never averse to a good bundle. The idea of striking a woman though is right up there with the most heinous of crimes. I’m secure in my sexuality, I’m not threatened by women but my Dad tought me to be a gentleman, I don’t think that’s wrong, women are the fairer sex, they are soft and pretty and physically they are not as big or strong as men, its just a fact of our anatomy. A man does not need to strike a woman. Ever.
I could hear the sound of birds chirping outside. But it was a different pitch, an unknown song. I can always hear the trains in the morning taking the suburbanites into their
Over a bowl of cornflakes in the kitchen Dad tells my sister and I we will stay here with his friends for a few days, ‘mummy’s sick, she’s had to go away for a little while.’ My sister and I knew instinctively that ‘a while’ meant for ever. Kids aren’t stupid as much as parents and adults sometimes wished and acted as if we were. We both knew something was seriously out of whack. Mummy was gone and I wouldn’t see her for 9 years. It’s only now 30 years later that my sister and I have begun to discuss the weeks, months and years after that day.
We all make our own choices, over the years my Pop has bailed me out of so many situations its not funny, he’s been brilliant with me, when many families would have given up and disowned me he has stuck by me like a rock, never wavered. And how could I possibly blame my mother for what I have become – she was never there. Things are difficult in a one parent household I don’t think anyone disagrees with this and the statistics all point to children having various problems growing up, emotional, psychological, legal. And lets face it there are bad parents out there, parents that beat and neglect their children, alcoholics and drug addicts who fix coke or smack in front of pre-schoolers, get drunk and smash their kids toys. They turn their children into fuck ups, troubled, sometimes unemployable, sometimes inadvertently repeating the cycle because that’s all they know. Others stumble through life like birds with a broken wing or sink into a morass of self defeating negativism and some of course fall into that boiling cauldron of decay we call addiction.
If we believe what the doctors and psychologists tell us there’s no such thing as a bad kid – um sorry I beg to differ – try telling that to the children of Columbine or Virginia.U. If as kids are brought up they come to understand that their excesses and cruelties will be tolerated, it is tantamount to giving them carte blanche to indulge their basest instincts and emotions and if you take that to the N’th degree you arrive at these kids running amok with assault weapons or young adults like Qusay and Uday in Iraq. These so called experts have given names to the over active minds of children, ADD, ADHD and other acronyms are so grossly over diagnosed it’s a joke. Now they have kiddie portions of Prozac, Xanex and other wonder drugs. These drugs dull creative instinct, they act on the pre-frontal cortex which controls emotions, they seek to dampen the emotions coming from this part of the brain. Now a few years down the line they think there is a link between these drugs and teenage suicide. I would have thought though that far from being dampened your emotional state would have to be overloading to some degree at the point where you jump off a 14 story building or jam 2 fingers into the circuit breaker. Behavioural abnormalities may be hereditary, genetic, demographically influenced, more likely a combination of all three. It couldn’t be that Johnny is an evil little fucker. It’s the parents and genetic make up that make them dysfunctional because there’s no such thing as a bad child,– yeah right try telling that to the millions of dweebs and dorks the world over who get the shit kicked out of them and have their milk money and sandwiches stolen everyday in the playground.
It is very much en vogue at present to use childhood abuses and neglect as excuses for later behaviour in your own life. This is unacceptable we make our own choices. Lets face it excuses are like arseholes every ones got one and they all stink. You would think people would want to break the cycle not perpetuate it, its such a common story women abused by their fathers find themselves with abusive and violent partners. Abused boys become wife and children beaters, the cycle of victim and abuse is hoisted on another generation. In the
