Baby Reindeer
Page 7
. . .
Gadd Most of it was anger. Anger over me bringing up the online article – or going to the police. The time I called her a stalker in the middle of my comedy routine. Meeting Teri at the Soho. She talked a lot about Teri. Unabating fury. Like no time had passed at all.
. . .
Martha Voicemail That is an Aids-ridden little tart with lips that could suck ten men – fucking hate her! The way she looked at me? If I had a clock, yeah? If I had a clock, I would turn it back and get someone to run straight through that ugly, nasty little bitch.
. . .
Gadd Anger over my sexuality. Anger over the abuse. Anger that I wasn’t who I said I was. Who I pretended to be.
. . .
Martha Voicemail How dare you say all those things to me and then come out with, all this, all this – this gay abuse business – how dare you treat me like that – I think you’re getting a flavour – a flavour of just what you’ve done to me.
. . .
Gadd That’s the thing with stalking, it doesn’t take much for the adoration to shift into something else.
. . .
Martha Voicemail Is it a genetic thing? With the Gadds? That you’re all so fucking ugly and mad looking? I mean, really. I mean, what does your dad think about giving birth to a part-time shirt lifter? He doesn’t look like the type to be so accepting, yeah?
. . .
Gadd I knew the homophobic comments would be enough for the police to charge her – it’s a hate crime. But – even though I had been saying it to audiences up and down the country – the thought of going to the police station and admitting it to a random stranger seemed like courage too far.
. . .
Martha Voicemail So you’re bi, yeah? Can’t be fully gay because I saw that skank you use to run around with – is that it, Gadd? Only able to get your rocks off when they look like a man?
. . .
Gadd Even now – after everything I had been through in Edinburgh – I still felt ashamed. All Martha’s words did was reinforce my irrational belief that everybody else felt the same.
. . .
Martha Voicemail The time I’ve wasted on you!
. . .
Gadd One week, two weeks, three weeks, four –
. . .
Martha Voicemail I’m angry, Richard, I really am angry.
. . .
Gadd Even with the headphones off, I start to hear her – late at night, panic in my chest, retching with the worry that she has forever changed a part of my brain and I would just hear her constantly for the rest of my life whether she stops calling or not.
. . .
Martha Voicemail I used to believe people who said they had been abused.
. . .
Gadd Come on, give me a threat – give me something!
. . .
Martha Voicemail So tell me – where were you raped? Ass? Ear?
. . .
Gadd One month, two months, three months, four –
. . .
Martha Voicemail I mean really, who are you fooling?!
. . .
Gadd How is this happening?! How is this happening to me?!
. . .
Martha Voicemail You won’t know what’s hit you, baby reindeer, when my team of lawyers come at you – hard, yeah?
. . .
Gadd Honestly, if I hear this baby reindeer shit one more time!
. . .
Martha Voicemail *Laugh.*
. . .
Gadd It still feels like nobody knows how to deal with this situation. Six months ago I won an Edinburgh Comedy Award and now I am sitting, for hours, every day, listening to this fucking mental cow – I don’t even care anymore – this fucking, psychotic, stalking cunt, over and over again!
. . .
Martha Voicemail So if I was bi, or a poof, or whatever, I wouldn’t talk so freely, yeah?
. . .
Gadd Belittling my abuse, telling me I’m a liar – I cannot believe, having gone a fair way to exorcising the demons of one man who caused me so much grief, she now takes up centre stage in his place.
. . .
Martha Voicemail Had I slept with you I would have contracted all sorts, Aids, VD, whatever.
. . .
Gadd Am I addicted to chaos? Did I summon her into my life through some vulnerability or is it God or fate, or whoever the fuck, chucking me a cold bucket of irony in my face at a time when I have just professed my abuse to the world – admitted to my bisexuality – a barraging homophobe gains access to my phone, to my life, twenty-four seven, to deny my experiences, and to remind me why I stayed scared and trapped for so long – because of people like her and opinions like this.
. . .
Gadd Isn’t that just fucking typical!
. . .
Martha Voicemail You think you’ve suffered?! You don’t know what the word means and no I haven’t been abused – no I haven’t been shagged up the ass in my twenties – I mean that’s hysterical anyway, isn’t abuse for little boys? And their piano teachers? But, no, you don’t know what suffering is. I’ve suffered, yeah? I’ve suffered. Fucking toyed about by you, haven’t I? A Fenian faggot –
EE Message deleted.
. . .
Gadd I don’t even feel sorry for you anymore. I hate you – I hate what you’re doing to me, to my family, I hate every viewpoint you espouse from your deranged mouth – I hate the fact you have devoted your life to making people miserable.
. . .
Gadd I hate the fact I’m scared of you.
. . .
Gadd I hate the fact, as I listen to every voicemail, your unpredictable jargon makes me now – more than ever – worry you are going to do something to me – stab me when my back is turned – write blogs about me sexually abusing kids – or go to the press – say something about me when my stock is high – when I have finally – after ten years of pub jobs and slaving away at the Fringe – finally got people to care.
. . .
Gadd Every time I go outside, I fear I bump into you, somewhere dark, cast in backlight, a knife in your hand, and I think, ‘This is it – this is how you get me.’
. . .
Gadd My thoughts have become corroded and out of shape. I fantasise about killing you daily – chopping your hateful tongue out of your disgusting mouth.
. . .
Gadd I hate the fact I care. How your words affect me. You were the one person who saw me as strong and now I stand before you as I truly am. As I have always been. Someone frightened and scared.
. . .
Gadd How even now – after all the progress I have made – you are there – in my phone – reminding me of how far I haven’t come. How I am still ashamed. How I wish I could go back to when I was safely hidden away. When nobody knew who I was or what had happened to me.
. . .
Gadd I hate that I relate to you. That I know what it’s like to be consumed by someone else. That I am to you what he was to me.
. . .
Gadd You’ve won. You’ve got everything you wanted. You’re with me everywhere I go. My first thought when I wake up and the last before I sleep. If I sleep.
. . .
Gadd You have compromised every facet of my life. Family, love, health, career.
. . .
Gadd I thought I was your baby reindeer?
. . .
Gadd I will never understand why you latched on, over nothing – and gripped on, over nothing.
. . .
Gadd Was it nothing? Do I deserve this?
. . .
Gadd Do I deserve this?
. . .
Martha Voicemail I’m fucking furious with you, Richard, I’m fucking furious. But I don’t know why I’m surprised. You come from a long line of liars. Like – your mum. Found out all about her. Problems with the council perchance? And your father? Some crackpot that nobody gets on with? You’re a mess, Richard Gadd. All of you. I know all about you and your litt
le lives and I know a lot worse. Keep your traps shut. Yeah? You’re all on your final warning. I fucking mean it this time – because I’ve got a pulsing PMT – you get me? This is off the charts big this is – I’ve a raging PMT where I could stab just about everyone in England – in Britain – and so you watch what you’re saying because maybe one day I will stab someone. You just don’t know. Yeah? So button it up. Right up. Or I might have to do something.
Scene Four
Gadd I was walking outside Euston station when I heard it. I played it back seven times over until I was sure it would be enough to charge her. And it was.
. . .
Gadd The restraining order was issued on 6 February 2017. The first time I met Martha was when I first moved to London in January 2013. It had been going on for over four years. The first time I went to the police was 8 September 2014. It took over three years for me to obtain it from the moment I first stepped inside a police station.
. . .
Gadd And in that time – she ruined my job, threatened my family, attacked me, followed me everywhere, made me move house, jeopardised my career, my relationship, and destroyed my mental health.
. . .
Gadd Forty thousand and seventy-one emails, three hundred and fifty hours of voicemail, seven-hundred and forty-four tweets, forty-six Facebook messages, three fake Facebook accounts, one hundred and six pages of letters, some sleeping pills, a woolly hat, a pair of brand new boxer shorts, and one cuddly baby reindeer toy.
. . .
Gadd All within the realms of legality.
. . .
Gadd I know her better than anyone I have ever met before. I know where she gets her hair cut, what she has for lunch, her degrees and the institutions she got them from, her first husband, her last boyfriend, her drug-dealing neighbour, which side of her back she has psoriasis on. I could write her biography. And I never chose to be commissioned. I never chose any of this. And here I am talking about her on stage, like we’ve shared a thousand memories together, all mutual, all consenting.
. . .
Gadd She is not allowed to contact me directly anymore otherwise she goes to jail. So instead she rings me off an unknown number and hangs up every day. Instead she harasses my parents at their work address. Instead she sends racist messages to my new girlfriend on Twitter. Instead she reports the bar to the licensing police for things they haven’t done.
. . .
Gadd This show doesn’t have a conclusion. Sometimes I question whether it will ever have one. She needs help – but the system cannot give her help unless she proves herself to be a physical threat to someone else – or herself. So they just let it continue.
. . .
Gadd There is a woman in an article online talking about Martha and how the police cannot do anything. That was 2003. Here we are sixteen years later and nothing has changed. So my life is a waiting game, waiting for something to happen.
. . .
Gadd Anytime my mum or dad ring out of the blue. ‘What has she done? Has she – done something to them?!’ The small talk at the top of the conversation when we both know we’re just waiting to ask one another, ‘Have you heard from her again?’ I find it weird that in my darkest moments that I have wished for something bad to happen so that would be the end.
. . .
Gadd I think, as audience members, we expect art to be virtuous and tell the truth, but the truth isn’t always virtuous. Sometimes the truth is messy and morally complicated. It wouldn’t be fair to paint myself as the perfect victim because I wasn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to paint her as a remorseless psychopath because she wasn’t. It’s somewhere in the middle.
. . .
Gadd I still check her emails from time to time. I still wait for the date on the restraining order to expire to see what might possibly happen next. I still look over my shoulder everywhere I go. I still question what she’ll think of this show, when she finds out about it – and she will find out.
. . .
Gadd I worry that she might be in here with us tonight.
. . .
Gadd On 4 February 2017, I got my last piece of written correspondence from Martha. It was a list – sixty bullet points strong, with no structure whatsoever – detailing all the reasons she loves me. It was the first moment I ever understood – Why me?
. . .
Martha Email 60 one final word about the baby reindeer, had it since I was born, earliest memeory ws Christmas time, my parents hasd an old photo of me, sitting with a papper hat on head and reindeer, cos I often wonderrd why do I like richard gadd and thre was another boyfriend way back when who lookd like this other toy, a big eared Eric the mous??? aren’t you glad yu don’t look like a big eared mouse????? Anyway, the reindeer was cuddlym. Had big lips, huge eyes and the cuutest wee bum. You are the twin of that reindder. I still have it to this day!!!! It was the only good thing about my childhood. I’d hug it when they fought. it means so much to me. you mean so much to me. its fifty-one years old!!!!!!!!!!! ive gotta go.
METHUEN DRAMA
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First published in Great Britain 2019
Copyright © Richard Gadd, 2019
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Cover design: Ben Anslow
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ISBN: PB: 978-1-3501-4342-5
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Series: Modern Plays
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