An almighty bang on the head, that’s what my crummy childhood amounted to. That’s what did it for me. Ten years in the sickest schools in Kent, in the whole country if you like. Absolutely the worst. Buggery and corruption from the Headmaster down! Education in a brothel! Not so much time for innocence or childhood games, not with my background. My childhood ended some time around my ninth birthday, shamed into sex, obedience and fear.
Us kids built this camp over the back, we take off our clothes and run around screaming, then roll down this grassy bank with our little stiff dicks. You could feel the grass on your willy as you rolled over and over, dig-a-dig-dig! dig-a-dig-dig! right the way down to the bottom of the slope. Then some big kids showed up and we had to scarper. No more fun and games. We had to leg it and cover up our dicks! ‘Hide it, get it out of sight!’ And my father walking round bollock naked in the bathroom, daring us to exist. . . That’s some God, who makes us piss and shit in shame! Secretive, that’s what we become, secretive and ashamed, ashamed of our little dicks.
The projector was clattering, in truth I was afraid. I flex my retinas, the screen in the distance . . . seen through the smoke. A movement of flesh. There’s a hair in the gate.
I unbutton it, light up and swallow. I feel my brain pushing in behind my eyes. I want to disappear . . .
Hollywood can’t hold a candle to those characters, cocks, cunts and agony. They’ve exposed the lie of the silver screen. Tinsel Town: pure hokum! Just one giant yawn from start to finish! The biggest scam of the century! The camera that lies, that duped a whole generation and three more besides!
Go ask my mother, she’s still alive, she can tell you for herself, in her own words. Those flattering camera angles fooled everybody, a special effect of light and sound. And somehow, no matter what, there’s always a piece of heaven, waiting for the winners, that touches you right where it shouldn’t be allowed to touch you, and it chokes a man up . . . That’s when every sweet little country girl got herself stitched up with a belly-ful of kids and romantic notions.
‘Oh, we believed in it!’ my mother tells me. ‘We believed in it, alright, we fell for it hook, line and sinker!’ She shakes her head in disbelief, swigging from her can of Guinness.
And now everybody’s running around as if they’re on TV, starring roles even! Stars? More lies, incidentally. The actors can’t act so let’s see what they’re really made of — pot bellies and arses round their ankles! Ten cartloads of descended tits — let’s see the colour of their dirty juice! Hideous grimaces, nose jobs and insertions. Let’s watch them rough each other up a bit, with real blood! That would be a little bit more like entertainment, heads on sticks, a bucket full of entrails maybe? Oh yes, at the least, at the very least! Then we’d really be seeing something, we’d know that we were getting our money’s worth!
I sit up the back rolling bogeys and sucking my teeth. All that vile sucking humanity, right up next to my eyes, I feel it against my face, but still I don’t know if I’m alive.
I feel my dick inside my trouser leg. I flex it against the material, trying to wank it off without touching it. I sweat and I writhe. I twitch and stamp my foot. It sings through me, I grip the arm of the chair so tight that the wood cracks. My mouth goes dry. I take a swig of Scotch and the juice goes down my leg.
A half bottle of Scotch and easy love, cheaper than any whore. A little squirt onto the dust and fag ash of the floor, and it’s all over, back out into the hard daylight, bang! like a dust cart! I adjust my hat, squint my eyes and take another nip.
I’m drunk, don’t listen to me, turn on your tellies and forget. You see it’s gone, they’ve closed up shop. Soho? It doesn’t exist! Bistros and boutiques, new developments, the civilised face of man . . . The heart is rancid, the bowels are boiling, but the face must keep its composure . . . Everything will happen in the end, and it will happen behind locked doors . . . Now, go home and talk with your loved ones. No more fine art erotica, it’s been ex-ed, not fit for human consumption! It’ll turn us all wacky, we’ll go blind. Heartache, cock-ache, balls-ache, cunt-ache, clap and crabs! We’re all unclean, sexist and stark-raving-bonkers! The next thing you know, they’ll be forcing us to talk to each other, and abuse won’t be good enough, polite conversation only!
And I walk round the streets and, apparently, I require nothing. I stare in past the shop windows, my face pale and indistinct in the reflections, ghost-like, and I walk on, part of the crowd, depraved, prejudged and boycotted . . . But still the flags wave, the flags of the righteous and the good, at the head of every parade, upholding and denouncing. It’s an ugly thing, trying to be a bog-man; the dignity and beauty only grow with distance. The voyeur is the only one who’s got a chance, a safe seat, for the time being.
It didn’t take long for my tutor to start showing his fatherly concern. He barges in and starts sounding off about my unholy absences, my lack of education, and my crummy portraits in particular! Figurative painting is one thing, but drawing pictures in front of the other students? It looked bad, my avant-garde attitudes had been noted.
He sneaks up behind me, that grey-beard, and almost makes me spill my coffee.
‘Hello stranger.’
Ah, a joker, and now he’s cornered me, tracked me down so to speak. I sip at my rancid brew and stare him back.
‘We haven’t seen your grubby little face much this term, have we? So, to what do we owe the pleasure? This is no way to go about getting a degree, you know?’
I look out the window. ‘What would I want a degree for? Just so I can teach people to get a degree to teach people to get a degree, like you do?!’
‘Then what the hell are you doing here?’
‘Getting a fiver a week, you?’
‘What I earn is neither here nor there! Do you think I enjoy coming in here and seeing empty studio spaces?’
I look to the cells of my playmates, to all those beautiful white walls — there’s empty studios galore, so what’s he want to go picking on me for? Just a kid, ten and a half stones. It doesn’t look like he’s been missing too many lunches, an arse like a cow and three chins on him. He stares up at the skylight, searching, his tongue finds one, he comes over all diplomatic.
‘Look, just don’t rock the boat, alright? Why give yourself a hard time? At least pretend to be working! You know your trouble? You think you’re so much better than everyone else, don’t you? If you’re so clever, why don’t you have the courage to leave? If you despise us all so much, if you’re so bloody superior, have the courage of your convictions!’
‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll leave if you resign! You’re always crying about what a waste of time it is you coming in here and half the studios are empty . . . Well, you resign and I’ll leave!’
His little eyes dart into flame, he takes off his specks and polishes them.
‘What I choose to do is not the issue!’
‘Oh, so you’d teach for free, would you? It’s a vocation, not fifteen quid an hour that drags your fat arse in here?’
Now I’ve torn it, I’ve forgotten the rules and gone and sworn at sir. He licks his lips and replaces his specs.
‘I’ll remind you that there are plenty of other students who’d give their eye teeth to have half the opportunities you’re squandering! Who’d be more than pleased to take your place, put in some hard work and get a decent degree result under their belts!’
I look at him and swallow, I feel the blood in my ears . . . I go to speak, I make voice . . .
‘And there’s plenty who wouldn’t mind your job ’n’ all. . . You wander in here gassing about fuck all! You sound off, go to lunch, a few beers, and that’s your day over with, isn’t it? The only reason Erol got the boot is because you lot knock off early, so there’s no one left here to lock up and cover your arse, because you’re too tight to take a fucking pay cut! And you know it! It’s all sewn up, isn’t it, time to piss off back down the boozer again . .. And then you come in here whinging that there’s no one in the
studios. My heart bleeds, it really does! If you don’t like the job, then resign!’
He puts his fingertips together and closes his eyes; he goes to speak, he coughs, and mutters in his beard.
‘My mortgages . . . my work . . . my studio . . .’
‘Mortgages?’
‘Yes, two of them, in Clapham . . . my house and my studio . . .’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have been so greedy then, should you!’
He purples up, rising a little blush; he explodes in a spray of spittle . . .
‘OK, I’ve warned you, don’t rock the boat, punk, or you’ll be out on your ear! Get it?’
I’ve ruffled his feathers, easily done mind. He puffs himself up and gobbles like a turkey.
‘Portraits? Portraits? Where the hell do you think you’re living, the nineteenth century? So, abstract expressionism isn’t good enough for you! Well, I shit on you! If you think that I enjoy coming into this arsehole college day in, day out and playing wet nurse to a bunch of pimply-faced students, you’re sorely mistaken! Give me a break . . . I’ve got better things to do with my time! I could have been someone, you know. My pictures sell. Sell! Sell! Sell! I sell them all! I was lionised. I am someone!’
I rinse my ears out, I stick in a finger and try to unplug the wax. I hear him on and off, intermittent.
‘Obviously, I’m wasting my time pretending I can teach any of you pasty-faced pillocks the first thing about composition! You know it all already, don’t you? You’ve seen the whole fucking world from your bedroom windows and you’re sick of it, you want to pull the curtains and go back to bed!’
Now he’s talking my language! This grey-beard knows his Sermon, he’s got it all rehearsed.
‘Fifteen pounds an hour? Can you believe it? After how many years is it? Ten, twenty? How’s that going to pay the rent in central London? Don’t make me laugh! Fifteen pounds? A pittance! ‘But for my art and my family, I will endure ’til the end’: Egon Shiele.’
He delivers his quote, he waits for the applause to subside, walking in little circles, winding himself up into new crescendos. Then he turns on me in a hot whisper.
‘Did you see the colour supplement last weekend? My ‘Orange on Orange’ . . . Did you see it? A feast for the eyes, tangerine, buttery gold, all the hues . . . Mind, the colour reproduction wasn’t all that it could have been, but what can you expect? They’re not artists, they’re printers, mere machines really. I offered to mix the inks myself, but would they let me? Would they let me, hell! I told them, ‘take the slides in a natural light or you’re bound to flatten out the magenta.’ Argh! Such imbeciles! But did they listen? Shit, did they!’
He pulls at his whiskers and prances on one foot. ‘I’ll tell you what I could use right now, a drink! What this shithole really needs is a bar, bottles stacked to the ceiling, with dancing girls in all the bubbles! Move the whole fucking show two hundred yards into Soho and throw open all the doors! A tit in every cocktail! Raspberry! Mmmmm . . . I need a glass of milk!’
40. TOILET WALL HUMOUR
It wasn’t easy moving a dump like that; there’s the plumbing and the wiring for a start. It takes the best part of the morning for the contractors to jack up the foundations. They wind her up, bit by bit, tottering on her foundations. A piece of loose masonry crashes down on Charing Cross Road and explodes like a bag of sherbet.
All nine floors staggering, she sways and shimmies like a belly dancer . . . First the fire escape collapses, it becomes entangled in a passing bus and is dragged up the street clanging out like a euphonium, a whole steel band, each rail with its own special note. Our biggest single problem is the traffic, we bump an articulated lorry and all nine floors lurch like a stack of playing cards . . . The doors burst open and the air rushes through her like a bellows, blowing like a concertina, a whole gale of wretched doodles from one end of the corridor to the other! She lifts her petticoats and scuttles up Wardour Street, then crouches for a piss next to the church, it’s all she can manage . . . She makes it inch by inch . . . She dips in her toes, dainty like. It takes two hours before she finally stops shaking her tits.
We throw our bowlers up in the air and light a bonfire. We rip up all the passes and piss on them from the gantries. A gang of road workers calls in from the Blue Posts, dragging the bar fittings behind them, spittoons, foot rails and beer pumps. We scream and holler like fish wives. Everybody’s welcome, beret or no beret; we crowd in, hobos and bugger queens. A visiting deputation of Labour MPs drop in, socialists who really know what they want for lunch: ‘Norfolk ham rolls garnished with Dijon mustard, and a bottle of Moet & Chandon!’
A twenty-four hour, non-stop sex show in the basement. Six films, special rate for all our regulars! The one-eyed Turk introduces us to the usherettes, two little Thai girls, cute little hats and turned up tits, their socks roll right up to here! The place is jam-packed. We literally have people queuing round the block, clogging up the corridors. Eighteen hobos fighting over two cider bottles, and a queue right the way down to Piccadilly. That’s an exaggeration.
The college quack injects everybody for the clap, a giant needle right in the pecker. Elisabeth dances in slow motion, the cute little one with the gappy teeth and the sticky-out arse. She grinds it at me, both cheeks, solid muscle! It really is the morals of the gutter in here.
Apparently, a kid in the sculpture department was jogged, it was that serious! OK, I know when the game is up! I go quietly . . . there’s no point in telling you that I was stitched up . . . Not one voice was raised in my defence! Even my tutor plays dumb and denies all knowledge . . . He knows that I’ve got no grant, and he gave his full permission for me to work from home. But when the principal questions him, he goes wet as a beer fart, can’t remember a thing!
What I’m trying to tell you, in my fashion, is that they laid the whole blame at my feet. I was the one who had to carry the can for the whole rotten show. Quite frankly they were sick of my poxy attitudes, they knew all about my crummy writings and my literary pretentions. My ‘toilet humour of absolutely the worst kind.’
That old silver fox, that ponce of the podium, he carpets me on the grounds that he’s saving me from prosecution under the obscene publications act. That he’s only got the other students’ morals at heart. He comes over real polite, his little dead eyes sat in all that rouged flesh . . . In his dictionary there’s absolutely no doubt of my guilt. So, if it’s all the same to me, would I mind getting out of his fucking college?! His exact words, no exaggeration. He carved them into his desk with his bare teeth!
So what’s new? I know their sermons back to front, before their lips even move. There’s no way the righteous of Sevenoaks are going to have any sympathies for a young writer from Chatham, down on his luck. Just a kid, ten and a half stone and a fiver a week.
It’s a fact, the harder you try being polite, the more unpopular you become! You try coming round to ‘their way of thinking’, and that’s when they really stick the boot in! The lower you scrape, the harder they rub your face in it.
My mother took it the worst, she really would of liked to see me do well. She just couldn’t understand.
‘You’re as bad as your soddin’ father!’
‘Your fucking husband!’ I reasoned with her.
41. SANCHIA
It was winter time and they turfed me out on my ear. Snow, hail, rain and fog. Great gusts of it, whole aquariums suspended in mid-air. Only held there by the gale.
Ordnance Street, Chatham. Come out the station, cross over by the York pub, and there it is! You can’t miss it, opposite the old bombsight, bombed one day in 1940 . . . And across the street the whore house . . .
You get to know what damp is all about living on a river like that. The mould takes over, waterfalls of condensation cascading out of the walls, glacial . . . We had mould growing in the bed, green fingers of rot inching their way up from under the mattress. A regular mushroom farm . . . And our breath like cigar smoke, dirty great lungfuls of it.
Sanchia stood knock-kneed in the tub. Six inches of tepid water, her teeth rattling with the cold. The water heater wheezes and dies. It just isn’t up to it, it spews black smoke, the whole bathroom choking with soot. The air vent’s clogged, that’s my opinion. She stands back as I pour in the kettle, she goes on tippy-toes . . . The cold makes her nipples go like that! I smile at them, rub noses with them like little puppies . . . I watch her arse as she goes for the soap, but control myself. The only time she wants it is when she’s bleeding, otherwise no! She doesn’t like the idea of things being pushed into her. She wants me to smarten myself up, get a job and to stop picking my nose in public!
In her opinion, I’m like some kind of unruly child, the way I keep fondling myself. In fact it’s true. It gets to the point that she’s always making loud remarks about my behaviour and shoddy appearance in general.
I go out to the kitchen and stagger back in with another cauldron of hot water. You have to watch your step -I nearly trip on the busted tiles. Two patches of black and white and then bare concrete. Just then the flood siren goes off just outside the window . . . Sanchia clutches at her breasts.
‘What’s that!’
It winds up into a fearful crescendo.
‘Must be the flood siren . . . They must be checking it.’
She holds onto her little teets. ‘Is it the early warning siren? You don’t think they’re going to drop the bomb?’
‘I dunno . . . I doubt it.’
She looks at me in wide-eyed panic, then bursts into tears. ‘They’re going to drop a bomb, aren’t they? We’re all going to die!’
‘I don’t think so . . . I doubt it . . .’ I try and placate her, but she’s convinced. Me? I don’t know, I’ve got my doubts . . . I’ll wait and see . . . I try and discuss the possibilities with her, but she won’t have it. It’s doomsday and that’s that! She’s written the whole planet off as dead and buried!
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