Pressure.
That’s the main memory on my first day of middle school. Not mental pressure. That was to come later. It was the pressure from the bodies of other boys pushing hard in a scrum towards the door. The entrance to buy a year leading to a cloakroom and it was dark inside and the glass had a criss cross wire mesh so if he smashed he would stay more deep and it was a real chance to have that happening as you pushed in the same direction I don’t know why we were doing that because none of us wanted to be there I guess it was curiosity.
I got pushed from the side I turned and there was an angry boy smiling at me menacingly and he accused me of pushing him which was absurd because we were in a scrum where everybody was being pushed to move directions. I denied it and he insisted and immediately a circle formed around us as people gave us space to see if this would escalate into a fight. I didn’t know this at the time because I just come from the love at school but in the middle school as soon as there’s a real fight there’s a crowd of children all around trying scrap scr scr ap scrap scrap scrap I might be everybody knew this but not me. The problem was that practice probably as it wouldn’t have happened otherwise because it wasn’t possible to back down which is what I was trying to do. Surrounded by the sea of boys in oversized uniforms and perfect shiny shoes shining at me I hide my assailant it was a white boy I’d like to find out was called Keith. He told me that he does martial arts he had some bills he wasn’t a black belt I don’t remember the color but it must have been quite impressive but he wouldn’t have mentioned it well he took a step towards me and I couldn’t really back away that wasn’t going well for me.
Sydney there was a huge dark figure to my right it kind of stood in front of me between me and my sailing and the next thing I know he’s saying goes down to the floor there’s a big black kid at least a foot taller than everybody else standing next to him shouting racing insults I didn’t the doors managed to get pushed open pushing aside pupils like a boat going through the ocean cutting the surf and a angry looking old woman with the appearance of a librarian came out and started shouting. Everybody backed away except the black kids and nobody would actually explain what had happened because none of us wanted to go grass. Keith stayed on the floor moaning and the black boy was already inside I can hear everybody whispering behind me speculating what had happened and the consensus seem to be that I got pushed and I’d hit him and he’d gone down I saw the impressed stairs and I didn’t bother arguing I just went inside.
The whole day was actually a stroke of luck my new favor was y o m i an African kid the toughest kid in school with one hell of a chip on his shoulder anything directed towards him that wasn’t 100% positive was immediately they would racism and he was not scared in the slightest and taking people on including getting into shouting matches with children being so much taller and broader than everybody else and he hang around town at the weekends with these other cool black adults it carry stereos around blasting music and smelling like drugs because I’m Eurasian anytime anybody did anything to me he was immediately assumed to be race related and yummy was there for me although we didn’t hang out directly he kept an eye on me I could feel him and protect me for those first two years looking back it was one of the very few positive things in fact the whole period is just a negative maybe I should see these positive things out of the way first and then at least the rest of the chapters going to be consistent.
I got two happy memories from the middle School one is army I mean playing army games and it’s all down to one boy Jason Marston m a r s t o n little bit just milling around in the field really locked up play time and it’s not tracing around the playground shouting who wants to pay on me no girls allowed who wants to play army no girls alone he wants to pay on me no girls around and eventually a boy would come up and put his arm around and meant to be walking around chanting it together on me now and then another and another until there was a line of boy’s arm in arms so strong just sucking the whole field stepping over the girls we often stepping on top of girls on purpose did eventually Jason said that’s it and he was the organizer I wonder what he’s doing today it’s been two people get two people out to be the leaders and they pick two teams then there was a big argument cuz if it’s always English and Germans and no one wants to be the Germans but it was basically at the Jason then he put us in positions and explain the complex rules about getting shot and getting tagged any rules about putting jumpers and you could pull them but you’re not allowed to pull them so that out of shape when we get in trouble and let me stop playing the game and I would forget my surroundings and we would be on the battlefield in 1940 far away from the hell it became that school and you had friends and comrades in the bunkers and the trenches you get shot and murdered but someone could just run over and take you up and you’re good to keep going and every time the school whistle running it was time to go back in it was like a death Note for the other happy memory I’ve got is when they were on strike they’re often teachers drive say over lunch time and because there were no star for premises his students the insurance purposes so you got kicked out so I got extra dinner money and everybody went up to the same bootville chip shop and it was up maybe 200 meters north of the school and there’s a little feeling by there was just three or four shots it’s in a suburban place but Google chip shop it’s actually run by the Vietnamese couple but they must have done that excuse me my local because my mouth’s watering just thinking of those days laying on the grass outside eating those perfect fish and chips and then there was the big debate of he’s going to go back to school and he’s going to go in a big group on the bus together and Bangkok because we’re going to hate it so much that was one thing to find it as we all hate today none of us wanted to be there but I look back and I saw her Facebook group recently kind of a reunion where people reminiscing people from that time and I recognize some names and I realized I thought I was one of us hated it there was something about me that made it even darker and I think doing that time just to see the seeds related for darkness that was already there that I never really called back from now I’m sitting here by myself in the deserted red light district in the third part of town in colon pain Cambodia another is not the best night of ever lived there is nothing in the world that would drag me back to the awful time with my life.
I entered that school babe I kind of innocent still attached to me I’m in the very first day I avoided the beating but the day I left 4 years later I was completely beaten in always and anyway that I’d spend much of my life around the globe with magic in the account and a life and spirituality trying to recover from.
No did The following part I voice typed sitting looking at the river in camport and it’s been pretty coupled by the cheap microphone I’m going to pay through the rule as the microphone captured it and I’ll see if an AI can clean this up to understand what I was actually saying
In your youth the passage of life is neatly divided into years of school or grades as they say in America a neatly packaged one year period better events and your happiness or the lack thereof laundry revolves around the personality of the one who’s supposed to be educating you – although that was never the case in my youth.
In terms of school that first year was nondescript. I was in Mrs Beales class and the fact she was nondescript it’s really the best thing it really makes her the best of all of them in that are effect on me with zero which is better than any of the others. It’s funny to be sitting now in my fifties looking at the river in Camborne I can remember every single name. Titchener. Barker frost (2 years) beale dearlove piggot Jenkins and pigney (technically 3 years but I stopped going to school at 14).
In Beales . Nothing significant happened at school except the intense boredom. In a way I’d fell on my feet. I was staying with my aunt and uncle and they were better than my mother, calmer, Richard muserba no violin less racist they had three cats and they lived in a sweet shop.
It’s not just the teacher that defines each period of childhood but the boy that you sit next to although I didn’t apply to me for that first year because he was Gary wearing a gay 9-year-old that I didn’t particularly get on with. Each year of middle School first year second year third year fourth year had his own little win in a square building and each wing had two classrooms so you get some variety occasionally you’d swap to the other teacher for example in that first year it’s the Holdsworth would take the English class in the English class as it ended up nobody sat with me I was the only single desk and instead straight out the window onto a little courtyard where the school greenhouse was there that meant in my back was to the rest of the pupils and the teacher and that suited me fine because I could read horror novels for the whole lesson.
It makes me angry now because I remember the book I was supposed to be reading which was basically for retards I can’t remember if I’ve been put into a special class but I wouldn’t be reading horror novels that James urban and Gary Brangler. A reading proficiency was so high when we went to the boat on holidays I’d be allowed to book and I need to ration reading it so he wouldn’t go too quickly it wasn’t uncommon for me to read the really good books like rats or the howling in one day start at 10:00 a.m. when we go back from the newsagents where we bought it from 10 that I was page before the senate going down. But the ladies at school just decided that boys aren’t going to reading even when they are and they need to be put in a special class looking back I’m really angry about that now honest with nothing and never a good grade I never any encouragement but as an adult I got two university degrees I’ve got these graphic memories for example when I did my swimming certificate one length of the pool was 25 m and five lengths was 100 the next certificate up and I basically taught myself to swim the women teachers wouldn’t teach boys he would just left to play because boys are seen as roundy but I managed to just teach myself a doggy paddle so I decided to get the certificate and I got the specific memory of swimming the length of the pool easily and when I turned around to do the second nap of being held back on purpose it’s not going to be popular for me to say this but the women were there to keep our wings and make sure the girls could soar.
Staring at that greenhouse was actually the high point at the middle school because of the books no because of the greenhouse but I had the same problem as on the boat I’d read the books too quickly another one I was supposed to read the one with people being murdered or psychopaths stalking with demons rising up from hell.
When the book was finished then the boredom would set in I remember my digital watch at the time the very first one I had in 1975 you have to press the button and a little red wire would show you the time but then the LCD always on time and my wife had a stopwatch and I pretended it was a game and I had to try and stop the time on a certain number and I was exciting as digital games got when I was a kid but he was selling to do and another thing was I could look at the screen in a certain way and the sky would reflect on it and I would pretend there was a TV watch and I think in the future when I’m a man then I’ll be TVs on watches and I’ll be able to buy them and watch it and go whatever I want they’re not up to sit look at the quiet greenhouse wasn’t even a good greenhouse was emptying with the plants were dead because their kid wanted to plant things wasn’t fun.
I’m 55 instead I’m going to my TV watch I guess I could have TV in my phone as I’m sitting here looking at the river in Cambodia but I’m talking into my phone tell me the story of my I’m what I want to say is that that memory is no near memory it’s a lifetime of study spirituality and awakening I know my mind is a place and sometimes I’m mostly in this world and sometimes I mostly there but that boy see me at the greenhouse looking at his watch and pretending that he’s where I am now he’s still there he still existing in another realm in another reality and I can look back at him and I wish I could talk to him and tell him what’s coming I wish I could send somebody back but I can cuz it says the dreaming and imagining people that aren’t there imagining the way things are going to be I could send back Phoung.
He said staring at the greenhouse and there’s some scrawny scruffy little Vietnamese lady matted hair beautiful folded eyes a cheap dress once would have been sexy but now I was dirty and ripped feet black and from walking without shoes all day talking to herself babbling completely crazy completely alone in the world and she doesn’t know anybody but she knows my name mine’s The only name that she knows although she doesn’t care about me she’s everything to me in a way he can look at it now and he thinks it is just daydreaming and fantasizing just some crazy Asian lady that entered his mind for no reason any projected her out and superimposed are over the gray monotonous dristing rain scene of the greenhouse but I actually sent back this gem of my life this gem of connection as a sign for what’s coming listen Jay don’t let these bastards all grind you down you’re reading that book because you are so smart and you love you darkness and the stories and the psychopaths and the ghouls and the monsters cos you’re drawn to a deeper secret reality because you know there’s a truth of awakening there and there’s a life that’s calling you and it’s just as strong as any calling that the priest or the monk or the nun feels just gets through those stupid glasses and that wretched time and that awful part of life because there’s a much greater reality calling to you and I’m here now in the future and another realm and I hope you see it soon that all the dreams in your mind are real like you’re real there and you don’t know that your existing in my mind and you don’t know that you’re my past in the same way back then I didn’t know that I’d be my future and the way all these realities are going to open over the coming 40 years.
The first day of the second year couldn’t have been any more different. First thing there was no scrub outside the year door none of us are curious we knew it was inside and none of us wanted to be there. When the tools did open there was a certain scramble to get into the new classroom and pick to see you on it and I’m not sure why because what difference did it make. Looking back I think there was three classes in that year and Gary wasn’t in my class and I looked around and I didn’t know anybody in the new cars but there was a desk in the middle not too close to the teacher so I just sat there I was happy that at least I wouldn’t have to join somebody I can see who come to me.
Who came to me was Colin Toal. I don’t know why you came to me because I was kind of The quiet nerdy kid and he was kind of the really hard sporty tough kid. I was taking it back I specifically said to him I’m sitting here and he said yeah I know so am I now and sat down and I thought well okay. Even now I’ve got no idea why did that. I think for the first few weeks we spoke okay like friends but maybe you realize then it never noticed me before and I kind of wasn’t any of the cool kids I was nerdy kid and he turned on me for no reason it sit there recently abusing me and complain that he’s got to sit with me I mean if we have to play outside in sports he’s dive in front of me and say that I found him I just tried to turn people against me it was all racially it was he doesn’t want to sit next to this fucking packy how much is packing got to sit there and I wasn’t a very eloquent boy I was quiet I didn’t know how to fight back and say something like you chose to sit with me.
But I did make a little friend group away from him. It actually nasty 2 years and in different ways didn’t really negative it was life-changing.
I don’t think I had a close friend that year largely because of calling to give you an idea how bad it was for the summer holiday we went off to the boat in Ely and I spent the time fishing and messing about only thing he with my dog and enjoying the cathedral but more than anything just reading horrible books everyday horrible book on the back of the boat with the fishing rod but sometimes I get fish and I’d be selling grossed in the chapter I just keep reading then ignore the fish. The boat was more next to this little apple order crab apple trees and a dog turned up that was it we were living in my own sweet shop and my mother would turn up late to pick me up to take me back to the shop and then she’d go back to the pub where she was working and Monday she said oh that’s a surprise and you get back and I was like what is it she’s no you get away then you’ll see I said no tell me she wouldn’t she reaches sat there in silence and then she said without thinking well you’ll have to feed it of course and walk it I said oh my God is it a dog and I got home and there was this little collie dog it was going to be put down somebody brought into the shop and my aunt took it on and that was my dog for about a couple of hours until my own stay taking everything over and she said I wasn’t allowed to walking in case it ran away and I wasn’t enough to give it a name cuz you already decided if it’s going to be but he was going to be cold and I did get to play ball with it sometimes but it’s like everything she was such an overbearing woman that was immediately her dog but when we were off on the boat you nearly then it was my dog too and we went into the top of the lordship not imagine being in some magical forest and even up and down the River on the boat and every now and again kids will be screaming about the fucking packing on the boat this is back in the early 80s when they went really a lot of Asian people around these non city areas but apart from that it was ideally it’s my only happy memories of Britain just drifting around on that boat and meals and little Riverside pubs increasing up and down the River and fishing the more than anything the books the werewolves and the ghouls and the murderers and the rat invasions and the possessed people often this dark of the worlds.
But after the 6 weeks was up I’ve got two memories One is laying in the apple orchard and I found a rock and I’d seen something on TV similar in the film so I balance my shit in across two pieces of wood and remember smashing my center the center of my shin is hard as possible to see if I could break the bone and get a week off school another one is laying on the carpet in my aunt’s shop just me and the dog and I’m holding on to dog crying cuz I don’t want to go back to school and now I’m sitting in carport 40 years later looking at the river and I want to cry again in the memory and I’ll send someone back he lays there and he thinks that he’s just daydreaming looking through the tears imagining somebody there who can I send what great memory for my life can I send back to that sad broken boy in the past lying on the carpet holding on to a dog and weeping into his fur listen back Harry beautiful Harry with the Chinese Khmer face light skin the friendliest face I ever saw completely crazy talking and muttering and hallucinating and smiling and affectionate and holding me that smell none of it yours and I swear she had some phobia about salary literally I saw going to the shower with all of the clothes on and come out dripping wet before she joined me always affectionate always smiling and then she lost the temper almost every hotel in put on paint new and bought it was hard taking it somewhere because nobody wants to check her in their reputation but if you knew it the way that I knew it I’m being so comfortable within sanity by that point I might one of the few people that did know her then there was such a warmth and kindness inside that madness and there she is laying down on the floor with the smell of a sweat and a blood and she holds on to that boy the three of them the three of those bodies on the carpet raining against their life at that point and feel so it feels some of that spark inside of it it feels so much I feel bad things feel something he just carries on wants to be dead but he needs to stay alive.
It’s funny thinking about that teacher now I’m sitting in their cars and there was me control over Jason buster through that ways that we could get it I’m not with any Jason’s idea to get our mind of the other idea which was kidding ourselves and it was so bad and there was such hatred and I can’t remember what he actually did that we didn’t mind like.
I can’t remember which year it was that I started reading prediction magazine cause my aunt’s got a sweet shop but it’s not a sweet shop it’s a sweet shop in the eyes for 9-year-old in the eyes of an adult it’s a newsagent and a gift shop I’m one of those new convenience shops it looks chaotic but it sounds pretty much anything that you could run out of and it also books and magazines and the only magazine I was interested in which prediction which would say on the front proudly something like published since 1924 and it was a mix of astrology and tyrant and magic with a k and New age subjects but it was mostly quite hard and cold and it was a great introduction every month I look forward to try and asking you thing like using a crystal ball with tarot cards or trying to read my aunt’s Palm she didn’t really like me doing that kind of thing she wasn’t super religious but she didn’t like it she felt it with the dark cops but I was so so drawn to it I still am the deep deep part of who I am I mentioned it now because he comes so Central and that magazine of course I spent my life everywhere and I came back to England in my thirties and that magazine had become just some stupid woman’s magazine about astrology magical cooking but back then you could sell the magazine in this largely about hard serious or cold practice in the same way in the town center there was in a culture the skulls and powders and ones in town center not in the exact town center but not in side street there was enough business for that to survive because I wasn’t allowed in it but if I had been allowed in town I would have been there and I look forward to entering those mysterious doors and when I did it was another life changing event
I think she was the third year so I would have been 11 and there’s nothing serious memory except it prompts wasn’t as bad because Colin didn’t sit with me I said with Kevin Richards he was just not great and not bad just not nasty and that was good enough and Mr pigney was the main sports teacher and he wasn’t particularly cruel and he wasn’t particularly aggressive and the single memory of God that year of my life is about Ms Lovett’s class she used to she’s the woman that came out shouting that very first day when you hear me hit key but she was actually one of the year teachers in the third year and she’s been a large part of their classes when she came in to teach us just reading from a novel and she read very well and Kevin enjoyed it too and my memory is him looking at me saying I love it with miss love it and I don’t remember any other crazy thing you said except you like this word please he’s like to go up the children’s desks and hold up their pen and say I love your pen is.
So the scorecard is two variable years and one bad year and it sounds like I’m going to survive this and get through and it’s not too bad but that last year’s the year when things all completely fell apart I would have been 12 which makes it 1982 or 1983 I would love to go back and look at my chart to see where Pluto was because I don’t know where it is maybe I’ll look it up and then you know but I can tell you now that that time you would not have been in a good place right now cuz he was basically the year that broke me that the cracks in life appeared that never fully got better.
And I do remember the first day it’s funny how you can be in one year and you really close to some kid and then when you were rush into the new year you end up just by chance sitting next to somebody else and not friendship pretty much ends and you’re pretty much start a new one and I was sitting next to Paul Paul married yet and we both got on really well about Thursday we didn’t really know each other so he kind of sat there inside and the teacher came in Mrs Jenkins and maybe this was a foreshadow of what was going to happen but the kids were sitting around and talking and it was a very good mood and she sat down and she looked like she was about to talk and sent me stopped and glad straight at me but she said are you doing something like no because I wasn’t I thought it was she said no well I think he was a piece of paper like I just turned off a little piece of paper and kind of shoot on it that you do sometimes I still do that now again but I wasn’t making a video send me your barely see you know you could have thought it was a bit of chewie come on something and it was a break time so it was okay to be chewing but she just suddenly standard desk and screamed at the top of the voice are you chewing something now to realize that I was doing something I actually moved my mouth to chew it to realize there was something in my mouth yeah I am and she just green wine why why do you think you can do that why’d you think you can be here chewing something she was screaming and hysterical and the whole concert just gone dead so she scream get up get out of the car so I stood up and shock and went to leave but then she was screaming you can’t leave the class spit it out spit it out spit it out and I’m looking around in panic and I don’t know what to spin and some girl I don’t even know just looked at me with Brian sad eyes and in kindness just pointed to some waste paper bin every without thinking a spot straight into it and This woman’s treat days spit like that that race baby been out there so I took place and put it outside the door but she just sat in absolute silence with a red face glaring and I didn’t know if I should say I didn’t know if I should stand I sent you like her to my city I could barely speak I was traveling so much and she just said nothing she left me to feel about awkward and eventually I sat down but she said it’s desperate moment took a deep breath and carried on.
No I’m an adult now and I’m mid-50s I’m one of the degrees I’ve got a psychology and I know full well it doesn’t matter if I was chewing on the break time a tiny piece of paper the whole point of that was to establish dominance over the car thinking the class it tasted what it’s like if you stand up against me and therefore that’s going to be much easier she just picks on a
No I’m an adult now and I’m mid-50s I’m one of the degrees I’ve got a psychology and I know full well it doesn’t matter if I was chewing on the break time a tiny piece of paper the whole point of that was to establish dominance over the car thinking the class it tasted what it’s like if you stand up against me and therefore that’s going to be much easier she just picks on any kid but the thing is she doesn’t pick on any kid it wasn’t random she picked on the mail kid and she picked on the dark skin kid she picked on the Arab looking kid she doesn’t mind just to the dance never met me before she came in with the plan to do that she’ll cower and put the fear of God to the whole class by picking on some random person that doesn’t actually matter and that random person it doesn’t actually matter with me and I was worried that I would be a fore shadow of the year and I was quite right because he wasn’t just her and that teacher and that class it was the context and the four boys that I fell in with but really were life changing in a way.
It was the hotness hostess of harshness of Mrs Jenkins that brought the four friends together and for a while sitting next to Paul there was an intensity close friendship he seemed a person to be a person that really really liked me although I’m really going on with Matthew as well he was very intense with Paul and it was some consultation consolation against the cruelty of the teachers or it wasn’t until I realized that he was grooming me
It started as a bit of a joke we were hanging around quite a bit together and do you plan to meet up on bikes a while later and I asked where should we go then and the other two me and Matthew were there and he said well let’s go to the woods and have sex and everybody was laughing so I laughed long too and be doing that I made a plan of where it was quite quiet and nobody would see us and x marks the sport baby with no mo is a slang word in time for sex
Will in the evening we met up with me to come ride to this place which is just some secluded nearby wood with a kind of wooded area you get in suburban places he wasn’t joking any exposed himself to me and wanted me to do the same but I couldn’t bring myself to do that what do you push it any further so it was like no big deal if it’s just kind of kids messing about and there was nothing else going on then so the friendship continued
Sometimes in the holidays we go every short breaks East or long summer breaks and it was on one of the short breaks that I took Paul to the boat with me my own encouraged me to take students to take friends with me although I was always my happier by myself I took one poor boy I think his name is Simon and I ignored him the whole time because he was a normal boy I didn’t want to sit around and read horror books all day and I resented I’ve been to give you my attention resented having to give him my attention.
Well I took all this one time and it was kind of a and I did it summer and I didn’t resent him as much because we did kind of get on also but I remember a few things from that trip I remember my brother being there I don’t mess in my brother much because he was offered a private school so he was boarding and I never saw him but he did turn up then and he was constantly criticizing me that I was fat because of my weight it was not good I know so dark skin that was get on telling me to stay out of the sunlight and it made me feel really uncomfortable and another thing was my uncle that he was always coughing I remember some guy came from the next boat to sit and talk to us the boating scene in England is very friendly people are constantly coming and waving and saying hello and this guy stopped by to say 11 talk and my my ankle was trying to hold the conversation but he kept stopping and coughing and splattering but on for a long time the guy was talking to seemed really quite uncomfortable and the other thing was at night time usually my arm but sleep with me at the two beds in the back but Paul was sleeping there but again my name is laying there he exposed himself to me and asked me if you could perform a sex act on me and I couldn’t bring myself to say yeah and he didn’t touch me or force me or anything but it did make me feel really uncomfortable see I’ve got this perfect memory of the boat and those two beds and laying reading every night time with the fairy lights and the quiet pub over the river spot thing on that the roof what I was falling asleep and talking to my own but I’ve also got the memory of this they weren’t as far as they pressured me to touch him but there was nothing beyond that I think because it was a very short break only two days if it had been the summer holiday it could have been much worse but he kept saying well it will be all right and I said to him well if it’s really going to be all right and this is how you want to be then we should just tell everybody because I need deep down he didn’t want this to be public he did want this to carry on and he wanted it to be a secret thing and he saw it as an ongoing thing and looking back how are you always wanted to be with me I think that he was simply a gay boy it fell in love with me and he didn’t have the either he did not be experience to know it wasn’t reciprocal or he was a predator but when we go back to school I didn’t know what to do and I decided the best thing to do was to tell the other two I just said look cuz we were always joking anyway saying we were going to go off and have sex now I said unless you say you know this is what happened to the boat and he wanted me to touch him and we’re getting together as a couple it’s not that that he’s going to carry on this is going to escalate and we will end up doing that and the simple fact is I’m not gay I feel abused and I feel violated so one day in the afternoon be were there without two friends and he knew what had been planning to do and he thought that I was bluffing and I said well we were talking about what happened to the boat and I said well semic happened between us didn’t it Paul he said yeah we went fishing and I said yeah I would never confess to something like that as a 12-year-old because as soon as you say that the whole of your life is going to become hell that’s what we would have guessed and we would have guessed right because that is what I did I said to them what happened between us they were escalating this and beginning together now and be fooled around like that and they bust out laughing the machining us important bright red and played the longer made the joke of it for a day and I thought that well now it’s out in the open he started saying well look he’s not gay he actually he hates gay people and he would never do something like that and that I’m lying I bet they were saying no you just admitted it you just talked about it you too gay and this went on for the rest of the day and after that I realized he’s gone stone cold he isn’t talking to me whatsoever it’s just shutting me on pretending that I don’t exist which in a way was quite uncomfortable because we had to sit next to each other in class in our form class once the the settings arranged at the start of the year you can’t move so that was awkward but on the other hand I have actually solved the problem this would have been escalating towards non-consensual sex and managed to prevent it that was a good tactic but the thing is looking back he was so obviously gay and he started bullying me in a way that women and gay people do which is not just the silent treatment but the gossip he managed to turn people against me somehow and I’ll never understand how he did this but he turned the entire class against me nobody would talk to me even people that I bet in you treated me as a social leper I’d go and sit down in the dining hall said with my train if I sat down to the table everybody would leave now there was only a few months until the end of that year and that was the last year of school but for that four months I was completely hated by the entire class but not Paul I don’t know what he said or how he did it but he turned my life into a living hell and only had two people that stood by me. One of them was yummy although I still didn’t hang out with him but it was a drunk and she was working in a pub out of town and she was supposed to pick me up at 4:30 so we get kicked out at school I can sit out in the road outside by the school gates and people would start picking up their children and it got more and more sparse until eventually I was the only child there and then eventually the sun would come down and the thing is that yummy lived just opposite the school and he would see me there and he would come out and sit with me and say what happens why why are you here so late and I’d say well you know my mother’s always late and he would just sit with me and wait until she got there because I was sitting alone in the street and I was on my own for at least that last hour and a half and it was such a kind thing from such a kind sensitive man on the outside aggressive racist man ready for a fight with that chip on his shoulder but deep down such a kind man because he wasn’t toast maybe we didn’t hang out the face space is that we just with two brown people in a racist environment that was enough for him and I was a brother and my other friend then was Matthew top we didn’t have so much in common except we both live computers he was just a really nice guy and he didn’t pull turn him against me he said to me he doesn’t want to be Poor’s enemy but he doesn’t want to be my enemy only and the thing is that in that year when not one person in the school would sit with me or talk with me or look at me it was the complete silent treatment just him and yummy but stick with me but with Matthew I can actually go and hang out with him had dinner table if nobody would sit with me I could sit with him and it would be just the two of us that would make him a leopard too but he would accept it sometimes it would get to me I used to have my school dinners at school and he went home and sometimes it’s not just that the kids were ignoring me pool would talk about me in the third person about some insulting thing I can’t even remember but I remember being really upset sometimes it was so much I would walk out the school and go down by the gates and just wait for my Matthew to turn up just so I can tell him that they’re doing this and I remember as soon as you’d see me be approached to say oh god what have they done now and I think that I wouldn’t have coat without him and he came back to play another part in my life it was really life at life-changing friend and I didn’t realize it until I didn’t actually know him anymore he’d already gone out of my life and I’ve known very few people that didn’t hurt me in some way in fact he might be one of the two or three people that I’ve met in my half century of living that haven’t hurt me and it just disappeared and I don’t know where he is and I hope that it’s okay cuz he’s just a good memory.
Well at this point there’s another natural division yeah Mrs Jenkins class finished but also I think my uncle and aunt retired from the shop they received their shop as a wedding present they meant during the war and my aunt was penny this but my uncle parents under honest company so they gave them not just the shop but also this house opposite we had three bedrooms in the front and back guard room garden garage it was nice but we moved in there my sister at the house with her husband just around the corner and she died at her first child I’m in the second one with you they moved out to the edge of town. The new school was the upper school and I was 12 years old by then so I was supposed to be the 4 years but I only made two it was the usual scrum as we will push together and there was a lot of kids from the surrounding schools so in the class I knew a few people a few faces luckily none of my previous bullies were there Paul wasn’t there but Kevin Richardson the boys like to point out somebody’s penis and I sat with him again. On the first day there were two girls that was drawn to me and about in junior and that was a thing for a while I got a mysterious valentine’s card ones I think two for my aunt found them and ripped them up and they were immediately gone. The phone teacher was Mr pig on p i g g o t t and I think of all of them he was the most nondescript I wouldn’t say you actually hurt me at anybody I won’t back a couple of times he shouted at me but he never heard me other teachers always shout to that or I was one of them pulled me around by my head once you got my hair twisted I was hitting the face and books a few times he was quite excited and finance was acceptable around children but for you I kind of cruised along and to me the most significant event that this period is being allowed into town because my aunt was very controlling for example I didn’t have a bedroom full of posters all over the wall the order that was kind of controlled where things went in my room and what we ate and very controlling woman and I had to get my brother to have long conversations with that for me to be an hour into town by myself it was only a kilometer or so away from every year but if we sit for the granted permission there was something that I just couldn’t resist so one evening or the person from school but I didn’t get off of that correct store I accidentally missed two stops and I ended up at the kitchen Road and I got out just passed the real gem that have been putting me towards it the last few years and that was the occult shop I remember it was called me it was drizzling and it was no wooden door with a bed at the top old style and I pushed my way in and I could barely get the heavy door open and the belt clanged at the top and there was an old guy looked like a magician in the back and it was everything you think it would be it was dark and dusty and it’s not like incense and spices magical robes and crystal balls and swords more than anything they were books cool down the left of the the Asian Buddhist books and just beyond that with their antiquarian Victorian account books into the right side but new age in magic with a k and in the center that was incense in tarot cards and in the far right near the counter there was a cabinet with curios all sort of magic with things and seals and jewelry and I walked around completely in all with this place in a minute that I walked in because it’s just what I thought it would be attached me some other darkness and the magic and the mystery and the beer and I want two things I remember I bought a used pack of the Morgan bridge tarot card because I just look through the pictures and I love that as soon as I saw them from the distance I wanted them and then I both distant blue Egyptian mommy statue but the cancer I don’t think the guy what is this and he said it’s something from the pyramid and it’s probably just like some piece of tourists or maybe some the cultural but to me I thought it meant it’s something somebody actually took out of pyramids that it was magic and cursed in a thousand years old and I think I kept it with me all the time convinced that Sam Harris magic was going to protect me and I remember taking it to school and I remember I was at the contrast just like out of the contrast of prediction magazines sitting in some boring past trapped around nasty people that I hate you cold in the grave and his magical articles better than the realm and another possibility I never had this little blue statue the past 3 years ago and the power of the the money Egyptian magic with me it was really something maybe something from other another life that feeling was so strong. So that was significant thing number one but the other significant thing was my uncle.
What’s the start with he had a bad leg he went to the doctor and I was told he was sleepitis and yet to keep it up but he got sicker and sicker and he was coughing an awful lot and he started having trouble throwing up and down the stairs to bed and his leg was always propped up on his own camel saddle could have been converted to the footrest and at that point I wouldn’t see brother very often but occasionally she would come with Brian her partner and they play cards like Kryptonite and then by that time my uncle needed to be held at this day to bed and one night they were helping him up and it was my aunt on one side and it was Brian on the other side and they took him step by step and just do before the stairs his legs seem to completely give away like there was no string and collapsed and he started screaming and he screamed in him and totally right anyway there was no words in human or impossible with the look of at the pain and Terror on his face and I didn’t know whether to let him drop or to pick him up and in the end they dragged him back to the chair and it’s at the threatening and sugaring and pride grabbing Kenny is appreciate in pain and after a while they gave you to nothing go and they managed to get him upstairs how many came back down we sat around his silence at the table it’s over nothing had happened and it was a while later but it was decided he’s going to be easier to move to bed downstairs and no one told me what was wrong what was happening I know plans for show he couldn’t go to the boat anymore and we couldn’t go downtown and he was always going to be well one uncle gets better we’ll go back to the boat and run uncle gets better we can do this and my uncle gets better we could do that and it was only one time I said but he only ever gets worse and she completely lost his temper and I never bought that up again and you don’t know what he said what was wrong and I didn’t know what was wrong one thing I could see even though I was 12 was there was a definite trajectory to this and I’m not allowed to talk about it and so that isn’t good because it starts off with him just laying on the bed and it’s him laying in the bed we do breathing mask on 24/7 and then he’s him laying on the bed with roofing tablet. Soon enough did I see the morphine tablets and he’s laying on the bed and he’s calling for the lights to be turned off when there are no lights and he’s talking to people that aren’t there and it’s moaning in pain even with the morphine tablets and everybody’s walking around happy and smiling as though this is great and it’s normal and I know there used to be a nurse this is Jolene she’s coming in with her helping motion and helping with the back pain so that’s always completely normal then she’s smarting and happy too and you not allowed to not smile and my brother wouldn’t say anything in my sister wouldn’t say anything in my arm wouldn’t say anything in the middle just smiling making it through this and he gets better they’re going to do that when he gets better and everything’s really really great what is getting worse it’s sicker and brighter and thinner everyday puking up and moaning and screaming and shouting and one day we just sitting around whenever you was playing cards and there’s all these I’m sitting watching TV and he starts moaning and mumbling and I look and it’s all bubbles coming out of his mouth and my arm walks up and she looks down towards he’s going in my area I’m maximum I can’t tell him off and I realize that it’s going to need changing cuz she tells him off but then she said he looks at his face it starts moaning and 50 pain costs about pure chance he just wanted a few times that mother and Brian were there and they ran over and Brian just picked me up and he pushed me out of the room the topic to go so I went upstairs in the bedroom and I sat on the bed and then my mother came up and she said he’s dead when she went back downstairs I didn’t know what to do so I decided to clean up bathroom I decided to enter the bathroom cabinet of the olive oil and the ear wax and the acorn buds and the corn balls and tissue packets and to use wet tissue to clean it all and take the glass shells out into teenagers I just decided but it’s all the stuff going on downstairs I’m going to just for the first time in my life spend an hour cleaning the bathroom top to bottom cuz I don’t know what else I would do and I clean the bathroom and I clean the barn in the toilet and there was no River it was downstairs so I just got down on my knees and I picked up a little existing third I’m about the handles and I refolded the towels and I carried on working cleaning the perfect team bathroom until I felt tired and I was tired enough because my eyes and not be awake anymore.
I’m getting the timeline where I was living confused doing the end of middle School when yummy would come out and sit with me and said I was dark mother would take me to the pub where she worked outside of town with Brian my father long since disappeared them to escape the violence and they used to I used to wait for them to be in this they were working in that they’ve been given the the running of a pub the willow tree and that’s why they were late they were running the pub and they’re being there drinking till 2:00 a.m. and it was a other kind of holiday site whether it was right in the train and a carnival but there was nobody there was all closed they could ghost town almost like a hurricane is Stephen king horrored novel setting except it was boring it was just nobody around I remember just sitting outside the pub I wasn’t allowed out inside until 2:00 in the morning when they came out drunk and we’re just drive home with me and this went on until they will stop by their police and breathalies and he lost his eyes and then they actually stop coming home and I think at that point I went back to David my uncle and on and then
I saw the dark side of my aunt I mean I already knew that she drank not to the point of violence but to the point of being cruel one thing was she’d get very argumentative and she would talk about my father she would talk using his Asian name as though it was a swear word I had to say about when she needs to sell the shop one day she’ll never set it to a party because it would ruin the whole front and about the shame that my mother brought on the family when she married my father and Asian man I think they found out that when my mother got together with him she tried to break them up but my grandfather told them to stay together and they can get married if that still works and it did and why I’ll never forgive her that racism came out when she was drunk but also after my uncle died I remember at the funeral she kept thinking this time when she sent me out to go with him shopping and then I wouldn’t carry the shopping on the way back and she rented he just didn’t care he didn’t help him and he was dying and the thing is I was troubled and nobody told me he was dying everyone told me there’s nothing wrong and it’s going to be all right and another time she found these tarot cards and hidden in my bedroom I wasn’t allowed things like that she went mad and she said that it was cursed and then he died because of me because I brought these cards in then again I was getting deeply into the account by this point and she found a large pentacle she walked underneath a plastic rug in the garage and realize that being getting deeply into this but she directly blame me for bringing black into the house should you drink by herself in the evening and she bring up everything I’ve ever done that was wrong as of that contributed to some stress that it killed him I’m outside and it is so we went to bed soon for a while but she had the older sister Louise and we stayed with her for a bit she’s been running a retirement home it was like a mansion with maybe a hundred boobs and they had a library a basement full of full size sneaker tables near the empty it was closing down cuz her husband had just died as well and I decided two weeks of living by myself basically in a mansion and he came back and then I got the news that shit it also fell down the stairs and broken her neck and although I never heard different I just know that shit hung herself I remember my aunt saying on the phone to somebody how she been diagnosed with lung cancer and just a little while later was typical of my arms and not say something like that to change it for just decided I didn’t need to know that but the end result of all this was that I went back to my mother’s house and there was nobody there she was sleeping in the pub overnight because they lost their license to drive home and by this time I was allowed to walk to school and walk back and of course with no oversight my sister would come in once a week just to clean and give me money for food now it’s basically maybe 13 then and leave it by myself and I carried on for just 6 months before I stop going and the last thing was in that school but I met Darren 10 Tierney. He was actually in the French class that we just ended up sitting next to each other because that’s the way it ended up but we live just near each other I mean quite a few classes together and we kind of got on and he was a strange strange guy his mother was a devout Catholic and he’s fighting a crazy woman who barely let him out of the house she kept him in the lock and key and his father was a violin drunk Irishman and staring himself was a keptomaniac he simply was constantly on the lookout to steal things for me from people around him if you’re walking lonely saw a bike that was in a company did jump on it they just stop peddling off I think it’s because his mother wouldn’t give him anything but but he was kind of my main friend from when I met him as a 12 year old until I forever left Britain as a 21 year old I’m right up until I left the country and just came back once in a blue moon right up until he drank himself to death and died but back then when I stopped going to school and I stopped going out I might coast the cats and stayed in one room by myself and I stayed in the darkness of 4 years he was pretty much the only person that ever came around.
It wasn’t an instant thing there was a definite course to what happened first of all I was still living with my aunt and she was getting more and more nasty and drinking more and getting cruel to me and I started getting more and more arrogant and just ignoring her nobody speaking to her and I don’t know what happened but I was kind of been trapped one day I came downstairs and nothing said I’ll set it off she must have just said to her you need to sort him out he stopped taking to me he’s arrogant but I was calling to the lounge and I came into the lounge and as soon as I got there I was grabbed and thrown on the floor by my mother and I should always be quite violent at night hit me or slap me when I did something wrong but this time she physically grabbed me to the floor overpowered me am I understand the chair and Brian and they just start watching while she overpowered me and she got me on my back with the full weight of body on top of me and she pushed her hand into my neck and the back of my head was on the the carpet but you started punching me in the face so that she could and she did it repeatedly until I was crying and overpowered and broken and she told me to just don’t fucking about I pull myself together and she left me laying there crying and then they just going to back to the table and left me beating up on the floor and carried on talking or doing whatever I can’t remember but I remember crying and getting up and just walking out the house and I just walked down the street not really knowing what I was going to do and I go to spa as the church which is in the same street and I just walked into the church and it was open then it was empty and I went sat in a few one of the accused crying and I just looked at the icon of the Messiah and it was just nothing I can do but a while after that my aunt kept drinking and being argumentative and nasty at night so I went back to my mother’s house but you just accepted there was nobody there the arrangement was my sister would give me money every week or so to buy food and then I stopped bothering me and then I was at school but there was some kid could Graham township and it already started being nasty see me saying fucking days packets and there’s nobody there he had his girlfriend Jenny and I didn’t know if you didn’t know that I’ve never spoke to her set me down again if you like fucking package out it shouldn’t be any fucking packages in this country I wonder I was in the car and the corridor just came up and she tried to kick me in the groin out the blue it’s hard as she could but I managed to catch it and get away and that time I was walking home from school and Graham in this game of kids were there and they did manage to grab me and they beat me up and punched me to the floor it’s by myself if Darren was there he could kind of argue and calm them down but if I was by myself they got me this one time another time I was walking home and there was a gang of them there but we weren’t in the field are you in the street we were closer and if they attacked me they’d be the chance somebody would call the police so I managed to talk about a bit but this kid gray and he’s actually grabbed me threw me into a tree and then his hands around my phone was threatening me but he didn’t go as far as he’s full of salt that time because we were in the street and I got home and Brian happened to be there for some reason although I rarely saw him it’s straight away he was effing and being and shouting and why aren’t you at school and I just went out to my room and I had a razor and I remember sitting on the bed and mute today to myself and I got some ink and I’m put revenge in deep letters with blood dripping off me old over at the front of my hand and I think it to make a tattoo and I slashed open my chest and he just went off he wasn’t there he was downstairs he didn’t know and I didn’t see him again for months or whatever cuz I was nearly always by myself and even now I’ve got that tattoo it didn’t actually hold the only the only only the I need a first letter the letter r was in deep enough they still exist and the first girl I went with looked at and thought it was the Playboy bunny and since then I decided it’s the Germanic room that means journey but it was a while after that I realized I’m by myself in this house and there’s no need to go to school even I’m going to stop going for the first couple of weeks there were letters that would arrive from the education people I just threw them away and people came to the door and knocked on it for the first two weeks and I just ignored them and then I kept the curtain shirt and I was getting very very nervous going out I would get like anxiety symptoms and trembling and that got worse and worse until I almost never went down and then my sister would actually bring food every couple of weeks and I would very rarely be out at all when it kind of just carried on to the phone ibuprophobia where alone in that house that horrible cold house that I’ve no life energy to it nobody did that there was no family in this house if it’s just me and and easy watching the same video or meaningless TV and how the blue one day Matthew topped up to my address and just turned up and hang out with me for a couple of days but apart from that Darren would just turn up maybe once a week I mean it was so I was so dependent on him emotionally be one affectionate or anything but one day he disappeared he didn’t come for about a month is jewelry picture because he’s got his temper and every now and again he would explode but it’s going to a fight in the bar and somebody had kicked him in the face but apart from that I left alone from when I was 12 till maybe when I was 17 18 and I had very little contact with anybody.
There’s a natural division into four segments by teacher brief descriptions and what happened as foreshadow do what’s coming
Ma and hating billing Brian and the horrible house at Burns court Vinings violence
Roller city by myself on the little boat by myself
English class with phone on watc
Calling c o l i n in the love class
Meeting at home and retard
Last class Jenkins and all Lee and Matthew
Pull an out coughing at boats cathedral Jeff say stay out son
I’m suicide of Louise and the big home in Bexhill daughter not talking Belgian League links
New tongue machine tung shing Chinese restaurant
Funeral breakdown and and cruelty
Silver activity center
The prediction shrine Magic
Babysitting in Yasmine turning me against the World sabotaged
The exam backstabbing
the religious studies non exam
MIDDLE SCHOOL CONTINUED — CLEANED DRAFT
(Microphone errors corrected only. Structure, words and voice left untouched.)
[Sections marked [UNCLEAR] are places the original was too garbled to reconstruct with confidence]
—
In your youth the passage of life is neatly divided into years of school — or grades, as they say in America — a neatly packaged one-year period where events and your happiness, or the lack thereof, revolve around the personality of the one who’s supposed to be educating you. Although that was never the case in my youth.
In terms of school, that first year was nondescript. I was in Mrs Beale’s class and the fact she was nondescript is really the best thing — it really makes her the best of all of them in that her effect on me was zero, which is better than any of the others. It’s funny to be sitting now in my fifties looking at the river in Cambodia [NOTE: original says “Camborne” — assumed dictation error], and I can remember every single name. Titchener. Barker. Frost (2 years). Beale. Dearlove. Piggott. Jenkins. And Pigney (technically 3 years but I stopped going to school at 14).
In Beale’s. Nothing significant happened at school except the intense boredom. In a way I’d fallen on my feet. I was staying with my aunt and uncle and they were better than my mother — calmer. Richard [UNCLEAR — possibly a name that was cut short]. Less racist. They had three cats and they lived in a sweet shop.
It’s not just the teacher that defines each period of childhood but the boy that you sit next to, although that didn’t apply to me that first year because there was Gary — a gay nine-year-old that I didn’t particularly get on with. Each year of middle school — first year, second year, third year, fourth year — had its own little wing in a square building, and each wing had two classrooms so you got some variety. Occasionally you’d swap to the other teacher. For example, in that first year, Holdsworth would take the English class. In the English class, as it ended up, nobody sat with me. I was the only one at a single desk, and it was situated straight out the window onto a little courtyard where the school greenhouse was. That meant my back was to the rest of the pupils and the teacher, and that suited me fine because I could read horror novels for the whole lesson.
It makes me angry now, because I remember the book I was supposed to be reading — which was basically for retards. I can’t remember if I’d been put into a special class. But I wouldn’t be reading horror novels like James Herbert and Gary Brandner [NOTE: original has “James urban and Gary Brangler” — dictation error]. My reading proficiency was so high that when we went on the boat on holidays I’d be allowed one book and I needed to ration my reading so I wouldn’t go through it too quickly. It wasn’t uncommon for me to read the really good books — like Rats, or The Howling — in one day. Start at ten in the morning when we got back from the newsagents where we bought it, and I’d be past the halfway point before the sun went down. But the ladies at school just decided that boys aren’t going to be reading, even when they are, and need to be put in a special class. Looking back I’m really angry about that now. Honestly nothing and never a good grade, never any encouragement. But as an adult I got two university degrees. I’ve got these graphic memories — for example, when I did my swimming certificate: one length of the pool was 25 metres, and five lengths was 100 — the next certificate up. I basically taught myself to swim. The women teachers wouldn’t teach boys; they would just be left to play, because boys are seen as rowdy. But I managed to teach myself a doggy paddle, so I decided to get the certificate. And I’ve got the specific memory of swimming the length of the pool easily, and when I turned around to do the second lap of being held back on purpose. It’s not going to be popular for me to say this, but the women were there to keep our wings clipped and make sure the girls could soar.
Staring at that greenhouse was actually the high point of middle school — because of the books. Not because of the greenhouse. But I had the same problem as on the boat: I’d read the books too quickly. Another one I was supposed to read — the one with people being murdered, or psychopaths stalking, with demons rising up from hell.
When the book was finished the boredom would set in. I remember my digital watch at the time. The very first one I had — in 1975 you had to press the button and a little red wire [NOTE: likely “display”] would show you the time, but then the LCD was always-on. And my watch had a stopwatch, and I pretended it was a game where I had to try and stop the time on a certain number, and that was as exciting as digital games got when I was a kid. But it was boring to do. And another thing was I could look at the screen in a certain way and the sky would reflect on it, and I would pretend there was a TV in the watch, and I thought: in the future, when I’m a man, there’ll be TVs on watches and I’ll be able to buy them and watch whatever I want. They’re not up to it yet, but I’d look at the quiet greenhouse — it wasn’t even a good greenhouse, it was empty and the plants were dead because no kid wanted to plant things. It wasn’t fun.
I’m 55. Instead of my TV watch I guess I could have TV on my phone. As I’m sitting here looking at the river in Cambodia, talking into my phone, telling it the story of my life — what I want to say is that that memory is not a near memory. It’s a lifetime of study, spirituality and awakening. I know my mind is a place, and sometimes I’m mostly in this world and sometimes I’m mostly there. But that boy — I can see him at the greenhouse, looking at his watch and pretending that he’s where I am now. He’s still there. He’s still existing in another realm, in another reality, and I can look back at him. And I wish I could talk to him and tell him what’s coming. I wish I could send somebody back. But I can. Because it’s the dreaming and imagining people that aren’t there — imagining the way things are going to be. I could send back Phoung.
She’s sitting [NOTE: original says “He said” — dictation error] at the greenhouse, and there’s some scrawny, scruffy little Vietnamese lady. Matted hair. Beautiful folded eyes. A cheap dress that once would have been sexy but was now dirty and ripped. Feet black from walking without shoes all day. Talking to herself, babbling, completely crazy, completely alone in the world, and she doesn’t know anybody. But she knows my name — mine’s the only name that she knows. Although she doesn’t care about me, she’s everything to me. In a way you can look at it now and think it’s just daydreaming and fantasising — just some crazy Asian lady that entered his mind for no reason and he projected her out and superimposed her over the grey, monotonous, drizzling rain scene of the greenhouse. But I actually sent back this gem of my life, this gem of connection, as a sign for what’s coming: listen, Jay, don’t let these bastards grind you down. You’re reading that book because you are so smart and you love your darkness and the stories and the psychopaths and the ghouls and the monsters — because you’re drawn to a deeper, secret reality, because you know there’s a truth of awakening there, and there’s a life that’s calling you. And it’s just as strong as any calling that the priest or the monk or the nun feels. Just get through those stupid classes and that wretched time and that awful part of life, because there’s a much greater reality calling to you. And I’m here now, in the future, in another realm, and I hope you see it soon — that all the dreams in your mind are real like you’re real there, and you don’t know that you’re existing in my mind, and you don’t know that you’re my past in the same way that back then I didn’t know that I’d be my future, and the way all these realities are going to open over the coming forty years.
—
The first day of the second year couldn’t have been any more different. First thing, there was no scrum outside the year door. None of us were curious — we knew it was inside and none of us wanted to be there. When the doors did open there was a certain scramble to get into the new classroom and pick a seat. And I’m not sure why, because what difference did it make. Looking back I think there were three classes in that year, and Gary wasn’t in my class, and I looked around and I didn’t know anybody in the new class. But there was a desk in the middle, not too close to the teacher, so I just sat there. I was happy that at least I wouldn’t have to join somebody — they could come to me.
Who came to me was Colin Toal. I don’t know why he came to me because I was kind of the quiet nerdy kid and he was kind of the really hard sporty tough kid. I was taken aback. I specifically said to him I’m sitting here, and he said yeah, I know, so am I now, and sat down, and I thought well, okay. Even now I’ve got no idea why he did that. I think for the first few weeks we spoke okay, like friends, but maybe he then realised he’d never noticed me before, and I kind of wasn’t any of the cool kids — I was a nerdy kid — and he turned on me for no reason. He’d sit there relentlessly abusing me and complain that he’s got to sit with me. I mean, if we had to play outside in sports he’d dive in front of me and say that I fouled him, just trying to turn people against me. It was all racial. It was: he doesn’t want to sit next to this fucking Paki, how much has the Paki got to sit there. And I wasn’t a very eloquent boy. I was quiet. I didn’t know how to fight back and say something like: you chose to sit with me.
But I did make a little friend group away from him. It actually [was a] nasty two years, and in different ways [was] really life-changing.
—
[NOTE: The following paragraph about the summer on the boat belongs to the boat/summer section. Placing here as it appears in original.]
I don’t think I had a close friend that year. Largely because of Colin. To give you an idea how bad it was — for the summer holiday we went off to the boat in Ely, and I spent the time fishing and messing about with my dog, and enjoying the cathedral, but more than anything just reading horrible books every day. Horrible book on the back of the boat with the fishing rod. Sometimes I’d get a fish and I’d be so grossed [NOTE: original “selling grossed”] in the chapter I’d just keep reading, then ignore the fish. The boat was moored next to this little apple orchard — crab apple trees — and a dog turned up. That was it. We were living in my own sweet shop. And my mother would turn up late to pick me up to take me back to the shop, and then she’d go back to the pub where she was working. And one day she said, oh, that’s a surprise and you’ll get back and I was like, what is it? She said, no, you get there and you’ll see. I said no, tell me. She wouldn’t. She just sat there in silence and then she said, without thinking: well, you’ll have to feed it of course and walk it. I said oh my God, is it a dog? And I got home and there was this little collie dog. It was going to be put down. Somebody brought it into the shop and my aunt took it on. And that was my dog for about a couple of hours until my aunt started taking everything over and she said I wasn’t allowed to walk it in case it ran away, and I wasn’t allowed to give it a name because she’d already decided what it was going to be called. But I did get to play ball with it sometimes. It’s like everything — she was such an overbearing woman that it was immediately her dog. But when we were off on the boat, it was nearly [UNCLEAR] — then it was my dog too. And we went into the top of the [UNCLEAR — possibly a place name], imagining being in some magical forest, going up and down the river on the boat. And every now and again kids would be screaming about the fucking Paki on the boat. This is back in the early 80s when there really weren’t a lot of Asian people around these non-city areas. But apart from that it was idyllic. It’s my only happy memories of Britain — just drifting around on that boat, and meals at little riverside pubs, chugging up and down the river, and fishing. But more than anything the books. The werewolves and the ghouls and the murderers and the rat invasions and the possessed people rising out of the dark of other worlds.
But after the six weeks was up I’ve got two memories. One is laying in the apple orchard — I found a rock and I’d seen something similar on TV or in a film, so I balanced my shin across two pieces of wood and remember smashing the centre of my shin as hard as possible to see if I could break the bone and get a week off school. Another one is laying on the carpet in my aunt’s shop — just me and the dog — and I’m holding on to the dog, crying, because I don’t want to go back to school. And now I’m sitting in Cambodia forty years later looking at the river, and I want to cry again at the memory. And I’ll send someone back. He lays there and he thinks he’s just daydreaming, looking through the tears, imagining somebody there. Who can I send? What great memory from my life can I send back to that sad broken boy in the past, lying on the carpet, holding on to a dog and weeping into his fur? Listen — back Harry. Beautiful Harry with the Chinese Khmer face, light skin, the friendliest face I ever saw, completely crazy, talking and muttering and hallucinating and smiling and affectionate and holding me. That smell — [UNCLEAR]. And I swear she had some phobia about showers [NOTE: original unclear]. Literally I saw her go into the shower with all her clothes on and come out dripping wet before she’d join me. Always affectionate, always smiling, and then she’d lose her temper in almost every hotel and [UNCLEAR]. It was hard taking her somewhere because nobody wants to check her in — their reputation. But if you knew her the way that I knew her, and being so comfortable within sanity by that point — I might [have been] one of the few people that did know her then. There was such a warmth and kindness inside that madness. And there she is, laying down on the floor with the smell of sweat, and she holds on to that boy. The three of them on the carpet, raging against their life at that point. And he feels something. He just carries on. Wants to be dead but he needs to stay alive.
—
[NOTE: The following passage seems like you were musing aloud about structure or Jason — “It’s funny thinking about that teacher now, I’m sitting in their cars and there was me control over Jason buster through that ways that we could get it, I’m not with any Jason’s idea to get our mind of the other idea which was kidding ourselves and it was so bad and there was such hatred and I can’t remember what he actually did that we didn’t mind like.” This paragraph is too garbled to reconstruct. Flagging for you to revisit — this may be the Jason Marston army game scene from the previous chapter. Skipping rather than guessing.]
—
I can’t remember which year it was that I started reading Prediction magazine. My aunt’s got a sweet shop — but it’s not a sweet shop. It’s a sweet shop in the eyes of a nine-year-old. In the eyes of an adult it’s a newsagent and a gift shop, one of those newsagency convenience shops. It looks chaotic but stocks pretty much anything that you could run out of, and also books and magazines. And the only magazine I was interested in was Prediction, which would say on the front proudly something like “published since 1924.” And it was a mix of astrology and tarot and magic with a k, and New Age subjects, but it was mostly quite hard and cold [NOTE: possibly “old” — unclear] and it was a great introduction. Every month I’d look forward to trying something like using a crystal ball, or tarot cards, or trying to read my aunt’s palm. She didn’t really like me doing that kind of thing. She wasn’t super religious but she didn’t like it — she felt it was the dark arts. But I was so, so drawn to it. I still am. It’s the deep, deep part of who I am. I mention it now because it comes so central. And that magazine — of course I spent my life everywhere, and I came back to England in my thirties and that magazine had become just some stupid women’s magazine about astrology and magical cooking. But back then you could say the magazine was largely about hard, serious occult practice. In the same way, in the town centre there was an occult shop — the skulls and powders and [UNCLEAR] — in the town centre, not in the exact town centre but on a side street. There was enough business for that to survive. Because I wasn’t allowed in town. But if I had been allowed in town I would have been there. And I looked forward to entering those mysterious doors. And when I did, it was another life-changing event.
—
Sometimes in the holidays we’d go on short breaks — Easter, or long summer breaks. And it was on one of the short breaks that I took Paul to the boat with me. My aunt encouraged me to take students [NOTE: possibly “someone”] — to take friends with me. Although I was always happier by myself. I took one poor boy — I think his name was Simon — and I ignored him the whole time because he was a normal boy who didn’t want to sit around and read horror books all day, and I resented having to give him my attention.
Well, I took Paul this one time and it was kind of [UNCLEAR] and I did it that summer and I didn’t resent him as much because we did kind of get on. Also. But I remember a few things from that trip. I remember my brother being there. I didn’t see my brother much because he’d been offered a private school, so he was boarding, and I never saw him. But he did turn up then, and he was constantly criticising me — I was fat, my weight wasn’t good — I know [UNCLEAR]. So dark skin, and he’d be going on telling me to stay out of the sunlight, and it made me feel really uncomfortable. And another thing was my uncle — he was always coughing. I remember some guy came from the next boat to sit and talk to us. The boating scene in England is very friendly, people constantly coming and waving and saying hello. And this guy stopped by to say hello and talk, and my uncle was trying to hold the conversation but he kept stopping and coughing and sputtering, on for a long time. The guy talking to him seemed really quite uncomfortable. And the other thing was at night time. Usually my aunt would sleep with me at the two beds in the back, but Paul was sleeping there. And again — my name [NOTE: “my name” is clearly a dictation error for “Paul” or similar] — he was laying there. He exposed himself to me and asked if he could [have me] perform a sex act on him. And I couldn’t bring myself to say yes, and he didn’t touch me or force me or anything, but it did make me feel really uncomfortable. See, I’ve got this perfect memory of the boat and those two beds and laying reading every night with the fairy lights and the quiet pub over the river, something tapping on the roof while I was falling asleep, and talking to my aunt. But I’ve also got the memory of this. They weren’t — as far as they pressured me, it was words, not touch. But there was nothing beyond that. I think because it was a very short break, only two days. If it had been the summer holiday it could have been much worse. But he kept saying, well, it will be all right, and I said to him: well, if it’s really going to be all right, and this is how you want to be, then we should just tell everybody. Because I knew — deep down he didn’t want this to be public. He did want this to carry on. He wanted it to be a secret thing, and he saw it as an ongoing thing. And looking back, he was always wanting to be with me. I think he was simply a gay boy who’d fallen in love with me, and either he did not have the experience to know it wasn’t reciprocal, or he
Well, I took Paul this one time and it was kind of [UNCLEAR] and I did it that summer and I didn’t resent him as much because we did kind of get on. Also. But I remember a few things from that trip. I remember my brother being there. I didn’t see my brother much because he’d been offered a private school, so he was boarding, and I never saw him. But he did turn up then, and he was constantly criticising me — I was fat, my weight wasn’t good — I know [UNCLEAR]. So dark skin, and he’d be going on telling me to stay out of the sunlight, and it made me feel really uncomfortable. And another thing was my uncle — he was always coughing. I remember some guy came from the next boat to sit and talk to us. The boating scene in England is very friendly, people constantly coming and waving and saying hello. And this guy stopped by to say hello and talk, and my uncle was trying to hold the conversation but he kept stopping and coughing and sputtering, on for a long time. The guy talking to him seemed really quite uncomfortable. And the other thing was at night time. Usually my aunt would sleep with me at the two beds in the back, but Paul was sleeping there. And again — my name [NOTE: “my name” is clearly a dictation error for “Paul” or similar] — he was laying there. He exposed himself to me and asked if he could [have me] perform a sex act on him. And I couldn’t bring myself to say yes, and he didn’t touch me or force me or anything, but it did make me feel really uncomfortable. See, I’ve got this perfect memory of the boat and those two beds and laying reading every night with the fairy lights and the quiet pub over the river, something tapping on the roof while I was falling asleep, and talking to my aunt. But I’ve also got the memory of this. They weren’t — as far as they pressured me, it was words, not touch. But there was nothing beyond that. I think because it was a very short break, only two days. If it had been the summer holiday it could have been much worse. But he kept saying, well, it will be all right, and I said to him: well, if it’s really going to be all right, and this is how you want to be, then we should just tell everybody. Because I knew — deep down he didn’t want this to be public. He did want this to carry on. He wanted it to be a secret thing, and he saw it as an ongoing thing. And looking back, he was always wanting to be with me. I think he was simply a gay boy who’d fallen in love with me, and either he did not have the experience to know it wasn’t reciprocal, or he was a predator.
When we got back to school I didn’t know what to do, and I decided the best thing to do was to tell the other two. I just said — look, because we were always joking anyway, saying we were going to go off and have sex — now I said: unless you say otherwise, you know, this is what happened on the boat, and he wanted me to touch him, and we’re getting together as a couple. It’s not that — he’s going to carry on, this is going to escalate and we will end up doing that. And the simple fact is I’m not gay, I feel abused, and I feel violated. So one day in the afternoon we were there with the two friends, and he knew what I’d been planning to do, and he thought I was bluffing. And I said: well, we were talking about what happened on the boat. And I said: something happened between us, didn’t it, Paul? He said: yeah, we went fishing. And I said yeah. He would never confess to something like that as a twelve-year-old because as soon as you say that the whole of your life is going to become hell — that’s what he would have guessed. And he would have guessed right. Because that is what I said to them: what happened between us — they were escalating this and beginning to get together [UNCLEAR] and he fooled around like that. And they burst out laughing. The machinery was important [UNCLEAR — possibly “the machination was obvious” or something similar]. He went bright red and played along, made the joke of it for a day. And I thought: well, now it’s out in the open. He started saying: well, look, he’s not gay, he actually hates gay people and he would never do something like that, and I’m lying. But they were saying: no, you just admitted it, you just talked about it, you’re too gay. And this went on for the rest of the day. And after that I realised — he’s gone stone cold. He isn’t talking to me whatsoever. It’s just shutting me out and pretending I don’t exist, which in a way was quite uncomfortable because we had to sit next to each other in class. In our form class, once the seating was arranged at the start of the year you couldn’t move. So that was awkward. But on the other hand I had actually solved the problem. This would have been escalating towards non-consensual sex, and I’d managed to prevent it. That was a good tactic.
But the thing is, looking back, he was so obviously gay. And he started bullying me in a way that women and gay people do — which is not just the silent treatment, but the gossip. He managed to turn people against me, somehow. And I’ll never understand how he did this, but he turned the entire class against me. Nobody would talk to me. Even people that I hadn’t been at odds with treated me as a social leper. I’d go and sit down in the dining hall with my tray, and if I sat down at a table, everybody would leave. Now, there were only a few months until the end of that year — and that was the last year of school — but for those four months I was completely hated by the entire class. And it was Paul who’d done it. I don’t know what he said or how he did it, but he turned my life into a living hell. And I only had two people that stood by me.
One of them was Yomi. Although I still didn’t hang out with him, he was [UNCLEAR — possibly: around]. And my mother was drunk and working in a pub out of town, and she was supposed to pick me up at four-thirty. So I’d get kicked out of school and I’d sit out on the road outside by the school gates, and people would start picking up their children, and it got more and more sparse until eventually I was the only child there. And then eventually the sun would come down. And the thing is, Yomi lived just opposite the school, and he would see me there, and he would come out and sit with me and say: what’s happened? Why are you here so late? And I’d say: well, you know, my mother’s always late. And he would just sit with me and wait until she got there. Because I was sitting alone in the street, on my own, for at least that last hour and a half. And it was such a kind thing. From such a kind, sensitive man. On the outside: aggressive, racist environment, ready for a fight, with that chip on his shoulder. But deep down such a kind man. Because he — it wasn’t [UNCLEAR]. Maybe it was just that we were two brown people in a racist environment, and that was enough for him. And I was a brother.
My other friend then was Matthew. [UNCLEAR surname — original has “top” which seems like a dictation error]. We didn’t have so much in common except we both liked computers. He was just a really nice guy. And he didn’t — Paul couldn’t turn him against me. He said to me: he doesn’t want to be Paul’s enemy, but he doesn’t want to be my enemy only. And the thing is, in that year when not one person in the school would sit with me or talk with me or look at me — it was the complete silent treatment — just him and Yomi would stick with me. But with Matthew I could actually go and hang out with him. At the dinner table, if nobody would sit with me, I could sit with him, and it would be just the two of us. That would make him a leper too, but he would accept it. Sometimes it would get to me. I used to have my school dinners at school and he went home. And sometimes it was not just that the kids were ignoring me — Paul would talk about me in the third person, some insulting thing I can’t even remember. But I remember being really upset. Sometimes it was so much I would walk out of school and go down by the gates and just wait for Matthew to turn up, just so I could tell him that they were doing this. And I remember, as soon as he’d see me he’d approach and say: oh god, what have they done now? And I think I wouldn’t have coped without him. And he came back to play another part in my life. It was a really life-changing friendship. And I didn’t realise it until I didn’t actually know him anymore — he’d already gone out of my life. And I’ve known very few people that didn’t hurt me in some way. In fact he might be one of the two or three people that I’ve met in my half century of living that haven’t hurt me. And he just disappeared. And I don’t know where he is. And I hope that he’s okay. Because he’s just a good memory.
—
Well at this point there’s another natural division. Mrs Jenkins’s class finished. But also I think my uncle and aunt retired from the shop. They’d received their shop as a wedding present. They met during the war, and my aunt was [UNCLEAR — “penny this” makes no sense — possibly “penniless”], and my uncle’s parents owned an import/export company, so they gave them not just the shop but also this house opposite. Three bedrooms in the front, back garden, garage — it was nice. But we moved in there. My sister had [a] house with her husband just around the corner, and she’d had her first child, and then her second one. Then they moved out to the edge of town.
The new school was the upper school and I was twelve years old by then, so I was supposed to do four years there — but I only made two. It was the usual scrum as we were pushed together, and there were a lot of kids from the surrounding schools, so in the class I knew a few people, a few faces. Luckily none of my previous bullies were there. Paul wasn’t there. But Kevin Richardson — the boy who liked to point out somebody’s [UNCLEAR] — and I sat with him again. On the first day there were two girls that were drawn to me, about and [UNCLEAR] — and that was a thing for a while. I got a mysterious valentine’s card once. I think two. But my aunt found them and ripped them up. And they were immediately gone.
The form teacher was Mr Piggott — P, I, G, G, O, T, T — and I think of all of them he was the most nondescript. I wouldn’t say he actually hurt me or anybody. He shouted at me a couple of times. But he never hurt me. Other teachers always shouted at that, or I was one of them. One pulled me around by my head once — got my hair and twisted it. I was hit in the face and with books a few times. It was quite acceptable then around children. But with Piggott I kind of cruised along.
And to me the most significant event of that period was being allowed into town. Because my aunt was very controlling. For example, I didn’t have a bedroom full of posters all over the wall. That kind of thing was controlled — where things went in my room and what we ate. Very controlling woman. And I had to get my brother to have long conversations with her for me to be allowed an hour into town by myself. It was only a kilometre or so away, but [UNCLEAR] — if we sit for granted permission there was something I just couldn’t resist. So one evening — or the person from school [UNCLEAR — this sentence seems garbled], but I didn’t get off at the correct stop. I accidentally missed two stops and ended up at [UNCLEAR — “kitchen Road”?], and I got out. Just past the real gem that had been pulling me towards it the last few years. And that was the occult shop.
I remember it was drizzling. And it was an old wooden door with a bell at the top, old style. And I pushed my way in — I could barely get the heavy door open. And the bell clanged at the top. And there was an old guy in the back who looked like a magician. And it was everything you think it would be. It was dark and dusty and smelt of incense and spices. Magical robes. Crystal balls. Swords. But more than anything, books. Along the left the Asian and Buddhist books, and just beyond that the antiquarian Victorian occult books. To the right side: new age and magic with a k. And in the centre: incense and tarot cards. And in the far right near the counter there was a cabinet with curios — all sorts of magical things, seals and jewellery. And I walked around completely in awe of this place from the minute I walked in, because it’s just what I thought it would be. It attached me to some other darkness, and the magic and the mystery and [UNCLEAR], and I wanted two things. I remember I bought a used pack of the Morgan Greer tarot [NOTE: original has “Morgan bridge” — likely dictation error] because I looked through the pictures and I loved them. As soon as I saw them from the distance I wanted them. And then I bought a distant blue Egyptian mummy statue. But [UNCLEAR]. I don’t think the guy said — what is this? And he said it’s something from the pyramid. It’s probably just some piece of tourist tat — or maybe some cultural artefact. But to me I thought it meant it was something somebody actually took out of the pyramids. That it was magic and cursed and a thousand years old. And I think I kept it with me all the time, convinced it had some magic that was going to protect me. And I remember taking it to school. And I remember the contrast — just like the contrast of Prediction magazine. Sitting in some boring class, trapped around nasty people I hate, cold [UNCLEAR], and this magical artefact — better than the realm and another possibility — I never had this little blue statue [UNCLEAR — “the past 3 years ago” seems garbled]. And the power of the money [UNCLEAR — possibly “mummy”?] Egyptian magic with me — it was really something. Maybe something from another life. That feeling was so strong.
So that was significant thing number one. But the other significant thing was my uncle.
—
What started with — he had a bad leg. He went to the doctor and I was told he was [UNCLEAR — “sleepitis” is not a word; this may be “phlebitis”] and he had to keep it up. But he got sicker and sicker. He was coughing an awful lot. And he started having trouble going up and down the stairs to bed, and his leg was always propped up on his own camel saddle — which had been converted to a footrest. And at that point I wouldn’t see my brother very often, but occasionally he would come with Brian, his partner [NOTE: possibly “her partner” — may refer to his sister], and they’d play cards — like Kryptonite [NOTE: likely “Canasta” or another card game — dictation error]. And then by that time my uncle needed to be helped to bed. And one night they were helping him up. It was my aunt on one side and Brian on the other side. And they took him step by step. And just before the stairs, his legs seemed to completely give way — like there was no strength in them — and he collapsed and started screaming. And he screamed in a way that [UNCLEAR — “totally right anyway” makes no sense] — there were no words in it, it was inhuman. The look of pain and terror on his face. And I didn’t know whether to let him drop or to pick him up. In the end they dragged him back to the chair. And it kept [UNCLEAR] threatening and — his pride, grabbing — he was appreciating [NOTE: possibly “excruciating”] pain. And after a while they gave up on [UNCLEAR] and they managed to get him upstairs. When they came back down, we sat around in silence at the table. As though nothing had happened. And it was a while later that it was decided he was going to be easier to move to bed downstairs.
No one told me what was wrong, what was happening. I know [UNCLEAR] he couldn’t go to the boat anymore, and we couldn’t go downtown. And it was always: when uncle gets better we’ll go back to the boat. When uncle gets better we can do this. When uncle gets better we could do that. And it was only one time I said: but he only ever gets worse. And she completely lost her temper and I never brought that up again.
And you don’t know what he said. What was wrong. And I didn’t know what was wrong. One thing I could see, even though I was twelve, was that there was a definite trajectory to this. And I’m not allowed to talk about it. And so that isn’t good. Because it starts off with him just laying on the bed. And then it’s him laying on the bed with a breathing mask on, 24/7. And then it’s him laying on the bed with morphine tablets. Soon enough I see the morphine tablets. And he’s laying on the bed, calling for the lights to be turned off when there are no lights. And he’s talking to people that aren’t there. And he’s moaning in pain even with the morphine tablets. And everybody’s walking around happy and smiling as though this is great and it’s normal. And I know there used to be a nurse — Jolene, she was called — coming in, helping with the back pain so that it’s always completely normal, and she’s smiling and happy too. And you’re not allowed to not smile. And my brother wouldn’t say anything and my sister wouldn’t say anything and my aunt wouldn’t say anything. In the middle — just smiling, making it through this. And when he gets better, they’re going to do that. When he gets better. And everything’s really, really great. But he’s getting worse, sicker, thinner every day. Puking up and moaning and screaming and shouting.
And one day we were just sitting around, whenever we were playing cards, and there’s — I’m sitting watching TV — and he starts moaning and mumbling. And I look and it’s all bubbles coming out of his mouth. And my aunt walks up and she looks down towards him — he’s going [UNCLEAR] — and my aunt [UNCLEAR]. And I realise it’s going to need changing because she tells him off. But then she looks at his face and it starts — moaning in [UNCLEAR]. By pure chance, just at that moment, my mother and Brian were there, and they ran over. And Brian just picked me up and pushed me out of the room, told me to go. So I went upstairs into the bedroom and I sat on the bed. And then my mother came up and she said: he’s dead. Then she went back downstairs. I didn’t know what to do. So I decided to clean the bathroom. I decided to empty the bathroom cabinet — the olive oil, the ear wax, the corn buds [NOTE: likely “cotton buds”] and the corn plasters and tissue packets. And I used wet tissue to clean it all, and took the glass shelves out into [UNCLEAR — possibly “the hall”?]. I just decided: with all the stuff going on downstairs, I’m going to, just for the first time in my life, spend an hour cleaning the bathroom top to bottom, because I don’t know what else to do. And I cleaned the bathroom, and I cleaned the bath and the toilet. And there was no [UNCLEAR — possibly “noise”]. It was quiet downstairs. So I just got down on my knees and I picked up a little [UNCLEAR] and I refolded the towels. And I carried on working, cleaning the perfectly clean bathroom, until I felt tired. And I was tired enough because my eyes couldn’t stay awake anymore.
—
I’m getting the timeline confused — where I was living during the end of middle school. When Yomi would come out and sit with me. And I said [UNCLEAR] — my mother would take me to the pub where she worked, outside of town, with Brian. My father had long since disappeared — to escape the violence — and they used to [UNCLEAR]. I used to wait for them. They were working in it — they’d been given the running of a pub, the Willow Tree, and that’s why they were late. They were running the pub, and they’d been there drinking till two in the morning. And it was another kind of holiday site, or whether it was right — by [UNCLEAR] a train and a carnival. But there was nobody there. It was all closed. A ghost town almost. Like a Stephen King horror novel setting, except it was boring. It was just nobody around. I remember just sitting outside the pub. I wasn’t allowed inside until two in the morning when they came out drunk and just drove home with me. And this went on until they were stopped by the police and breathalysed and he lost his licence to drive. And then they actually stopped coming home. And I think at that point I went back to David [NOTE: likely your uncle] — my uncle — and my aunt. And then.
I saw the dark side of my aunt. I mean, I already knew that she drank — not to the point of violence, but to the point of being cruel. One thing was she’d get very argumentative. And she would talk about my father. She would use his Asian name as though it was a swear word. She’d say about when she’d need to sell the shop one day — she’d never sell it to a [UNCLEAR] because it would ruin the whole front, and about the shame that my mother brought on the family when she married my father, an Asian man. I think they found out that when my mother got together with him, she tried to break them up. But my grandfather told them to stay together and they could get married if they still wanted. And they did. And why I’ll never forgive her. That racism came out when she was drunk. But also: after my uncle died, I remember at the funeral she kept thinking about this time when she’d sent me out to go shopping with him, and I wouldn’t carry the shopping on the way back. And she ranted — he just didn’t care, he didn’t help him, and he was dying. And the thing is I was troubled, and nobody told me he was dying. Everyone told me there was nothing wrong and it was going to be all right. And another time she found these tarot cards hidden in my bedroom. I wasn’t allowed things like that. She went mad, and she said it was cursed, and that he died because of me — because I brought these cards in. And then again: I was getting deeply into the occult by this point, and she found a large pentacle she’d noticed under a plastic rug in the garage. And realised I’d been getting deeply into this. But she directly blamed me — for bringing black [arts] into the house. She’d drink by herself in the evening, and she’d bring up everything I’d ever done wrong, as if that had contributed to some stress that killed him.
[UNCLEAR — missing transition.] So we went to her older sister Louise, and we stayed with her for a bit. She’d been running a retirement home. It was like a mansion — maybe a hundred rooms — and they had a library, a basement full of full-size snooker tables [NOTE: original has “sneaker tables” — dictation error]. It was nearly empty. It was closing down because her husband had just died as well. And I decided: two weeks of living by myself basically in a mansion. And then we came back. And then I got the news that [UNCLEAR — “shit it” likely a name] had fallen down the stairs and broken her neck. And although I never heard differently, I just know that she had hung herself. I remember my aunt saying on the phone to somebody how she’d been diagnosed with lung cancer, and just a little while later — it was typical of my aunt to not say something like that, to just decide I didn’t need to know that.
But the end result of all this was that I went back to my mother’s house. And there was nobody there. She was sleeping at the pub overnight, because they’d lost their licence to drive home. And by this time I was allowed to walk to school and walk back. And of course with no oversight — my sister would come in once a week just to clean and give me money for food — now I was basically, maybe thirteen, left by myself. And I carried on for just six months before I stopped going.
The last thing: in that school I met Darren [UNCLEAR — original has “Tierney,” possibly “Tiernan”]. He was actually in the French class. We just ended up sitting next to each other because that’s the way it ended up. But we lived just near each other and had quite a few classes together and we kind of got on. And he was a strange, strange guy. His mother was a devout Catholic — a crazy woman who barely let him out of the house; she kept him on lock and key. And his father was a violent drunk Irishman. And Darren himself was a kleptomaniac. He was simply constantly on the lookout to steal things — from people around him, from anywhere. If he was walking along and saw a bike in a company [UNCLEAR — possibly “in an alley” or “unattended”], he’d just jump on it and pedal off. I think it was because his mother wouldn’t give him anything. But he was kind of my main friend from when I met him as a twelve-year-old until I forever left Britain as a twenty-one-year-old. Right up until I left the country, and then just came back once in a blue moon. Right up until he drank himself to death and died. But back then, when I stopped going to school and stopped going out — I’d miss the cats and stayed in one room by myself [UNCLEAR — possibly “moss the cats” meaning something specific, or just garbled] — stayed in the darkness for four years. He was pretty much the only person that ever came around.
—
It wasn’t an instant thing. There was a definite course to what happened. First of all I was still living with my aunt, and she was getting more and more nasty and drinking more and getting cruel to me. And I started getting more and more arrogant and just ignoring her, nobody speaking to her. And I don’t know what happened, but I’d been kind of trapped. One day I came downstairs and nothing — she must have just said to [someone]: you need to sort him out, he’s stopped talking to me, he’s arrogant. But I was called into the lounge. And I came into the lounge and as soon as I got there I was grabbed and thrown on the floor by my mother. Now she’d always be quite violent — she’d hit me or slap me when I did something wrong. But this time she physically grabbed me to the floor, overpowered me. And I understand there was a chair, and Brian. And they just sat watching while she overpowered me. And she got me on my back with the full weight of her body on top of me, and she pushed her hand into my neck, and the back of my head was on the carpet. And she started punching me in the face as hard as she could. And she did it repeatedly, until I was crying and overpowered and broken. And she told me to just not fuck about, to pull myself together. And she left me lying there crying. And then they just went back to the table and left me beaten up on the floor, and carried on talking, or doing whatever. I can’t remember. But I remember crying and getting up and just walking out the house. And I just walked down the street, not really knowing what I was going to do. And I got as far as the church, which is on the same street. And I just walked into the church — it was open, it was empty. And I went and sat in a pew, one of the pews, crying. And I just looked at the icon of the Messiah. And it was just — nothing I could do. But a while after that my aunt kept drinking and being argumentative and nasty at night. So I went back to my mother’s house. And you just accepted there was nobody there. The arrangement was my sister would give me money every week or so to buy food. And then she stopped bothering me. And then I was at school.
But there was some kid called Graham [UNCLEAR — possibly “Grantham” or similar]. And he’d already started being nasty — seeing me, saying: fucking Pakis, and there’s nobody there. He had his girlfriend Jenny. And I didn’t know — he didn’t know that I’d never spoken to her [UNCLEAR]. He sat me down again. If you like: fucking Paki out, it shouldn’t be any fucking Pakis in this country. I remember — I was in the car [UNCLEAR — possibly “in the corridor”] and she just came up and tried to kick me in the groin out of the blue, as hard as she could. But I managed to catch it and get away.
And that time I was walking home from school and Graham and this gang of kids were there. And they did manage to grab me and they beat me up and punched me to the floor. If I was by myself. If Darren was there he could kind of argue and calm them down. But if I was by myself, they got me. This one time. Another time I was walking home and there was a gang of them, but we weren’t in the field — we were in the street. We were closer to houses. And if they attacked me there’d be a chance somebody would call the police. So I managed to talk for a bit. But this kid Graham — he actually grabbed me and threw me into a tree, and then had his hands around my [UNCLEAR — possibly “throat”]. Threatening me. But he didn’t go as far as his full assault that time, because we were in the street.
And I got home, and Brian happened to be there for some reason. Although I rarely saw him. And straight away he was effing and blinding, shouting. Why aren’t you at school? And I just went out to my room. And I had a razor. And I remember sitting on the bed [UNCLEAR — possibly “mute”]. And I got some ink and I put “revenge” in deep letters with blood dripping off — all over the front of my hand. And I tried to make it a tattoo. And I slashed open my chest. And he just — went off. He was downstairs, he didn’t know. And I didn’t see him again for months. Because I was nearly always by myself.
And even now I’ve got that tattoo. It didn’t actually hold — only, only, the first letter — the letter R was deep enough, it still exists. And the first girl I went with looked at it and thought it was the Playboy bunny. And since then I decided it’s the Germanic rune that means journey. But it was a while after that that I realised: I’m by myself in this house and there’s no need to go to school. I’m going to stop going.
For the first couple of weeks, letters would arrive from the education people. I just threw them away. And people came to the door and knocked on it for the first two weeks. And I just ignored them. And then they kept the curtains shut. And I was getting very, very nervous about going out. I would get anxiety symptoms — trembling. And that got worse and worse until I almost never went out.
And then my sister would actually bring food every couple of weeks. And I would very rarely be out at all. And then it kind of just carried on into full agoraphobia [NOTE: original has “ibuprofen” — dictation error]. Alone in that house. That horrible cold house. No life energy to it. Nobody did that — there was no family in this house. It’s just me. Easy [UNCLEAR — possibly “TV” or similar] watching the same video or meaningless TV.
And out of the blue one day Matthew turned up at my address and just hung out with me for a couple of days. But apart from that, Darren would just turn up maybe once a week. And I was so dependent on him emotionally — not that he was affectionate or anything — but one day he disappeared. He didn’t come for about a month. [UNCLEAR — possibly “I was worried” or similar.] Because he’s got his temper, and every now and again he would explode — he’d got into a fight in a bar and somebody had kicked him in the face. But apart from that, I was left alone from when I was twelve till maybe when I was seventeen, eighteen. And I had very little contact with anybody.
—
NOTES AT END (appear to be structural/planning notes, not prose):
There’s a natural division into four segments by teacher — brief descriptions and what happened as foreshadow of what’s coming.
Ma and hating [UNCLEAR] Brian and the horrible house at Burns Court [?] — Vinings — violence.
Roller City — by myself on the little boat, by myself.
English class with Phoung on watch [i.e. the greenhouse/watch scene].
Calling Colin — in the love class [?].
Meeting at home and retard [UNCLEAR].
Last class: Jenkins, and [UNCLEAR] and Matthew.
Paul — [UNCLEAR] at the boats. Cathedral. Jeff [?] say: stay out, son.
[UNCLEAR] suicide of Louise and the big home in Bexhill. Daughter not talking. Belgian [?]. Jenkins.
New Tung Shing Chinese restaurant.
Funeral, breakdown and cruelty.
Silver [activity centre?].
The prediction shrine. Magic.
Babysitting and Yasmine — turning me against the world, sabotaged.
The exam backstabbing.
The religious studies non-exam.