by Paolo Hewitt
Brother P. said, ‘Cool, you take it. I know where I can get another copy.’
‘Where’s that?’ I enquired and we were off and running, parlaring about this, that and the other. We ended up back at my home as my P&M were both at work. I skinned up a huge joint in celebration of our link, smoked off a bit and then offered it to him.
‘No thanks, I don’t. It fuddles the brain too much.’ He left me ten minutes later staring up at the ceiling.
I had just started DJ’ing and my financial position was such that I was required to stay at home. This was cool with my folks but as they were itching to go AWOL and put their feet up on some large cruiser and watch the world go by, I was looking to move.
It was the Brother P. who threw me a lifeline by securing me a spot at The Unity and pointing me towards my flat on the Stroud Green, P&M helping out with the deposit and a month’s rent, which is where I was now heading for.
It was now 2.30 p.m. and as I hit the Stroud Green concrete, brilliant sunshine poured down onto the street, cutting through the fading crisp air. It was delightfully warm but very unsettling because February had no business being this hot and everyone around you knew it.
It was the most serious sign that seasonal changes, the secure routine of winter, spring, summer and autumn, which as a child you set your watch and life to, was now under threat and when something as fundamental as the world’s temperature starts to malfunction, a quiet panic slowly envelopes you. When you consider that the problemo is man-made you get even more panicky. Everyone knows about man’s capacity to destroy, but, sad to say, the judges are still out on his ability to see the light and start the healing.
A shrinking, bleeding ozone layer shrank the future and was yet another 20th century concern that made you want to holler at the way they did your life. It detonated inside you the kind of shock feelings you get when someone you know unexpectedly dies and in a terrible flash you clearly felt and saw how fragile life truly is, and what’s the point of making plans or dreaming dreams if that’s how it is, which, let’s face it, is not the most healthy way to conduct your affairs.
That said there was a real rush to be had by the scenery that swarmed around me as Africans strolled the streets in their traditional gears, and then there was the local guys and gals all dressed up as if they had just stepped off the set of the latest Spike Lee flick, old looking Greek guys disappearing into shops where the windows were all blacked out, shopkeepers shooting the breeze with their customers, children chasing each other in and out of the other shoppers who cursed them out, and not to forget the old folk who, like the young, had their own particular dress code.
It was like being in a film with so many characters to grab your attention that my mind was totally elsewhere when my heart dropped a beat and I realised that the very serious gal standing outside my front door was none other than Sandra.
‘Hi,’ she said, as I caught up with her. I said nothing, simply nodded at her and opened up the door, leaving it open for her to follow me up.
This she did, locating herself in my front room whilst I made for the bedroom where I keep basic coffee making equipment, utensils, I ruefully noted, that I had used not so long ago as she lay sleeping in my bed.
As I made the coffee I had the notion to try and keep everything formal between us as if we were two people who had just met and were about to have a coffee before we got down to business. I still have no idea where these crazy ideas come from.
‘What have you been up to?’ I asked her as I came in with the coffee. Sandra sat on my small sofa amidst the mess of records, sleeves, magazines, cassettes and opened envelopes.
‘Nothing much,’ she replied, taking her coffee. ‘Just getting on with things. How about you?’
She nodded to the three record boxes over by the dex. ‘Still DJ’ing I see.’
‘Yeah, normal runnings. Been going out at all?’
‘Nah, I’ve had other things on my mind.’
We sat in silence, the tension between us as palpable as the hot cups we held for we both had separate programmes to follow and were determined to do so, whatever the cost. It was time to get into one.
‘So what are you going to do about this mess we’re in?’
‘Jesus,’ she angrily shot back, ‘do you have to be so off all the time? I am pregnant, you know.’
‘Yeah, I heard. Someone told me. Congratulations. I hope you’ll both be very happy.’
‘Don’t be sarcastic, it doesn’t become you.’
‘Well, as far as I remember you were taking certain precautions. That’s what you said, yes? Or perhaps I heard you wrong.’
Sandra leapt off the sofa.
‘You calling me a fucking liar? Eh? Is that it? Think I’m trying to trap you do you? Don’t flatter yourself, sugar. I’m only dealing with you because of an accident. OK? It was an accident. Shit. You think I want a baby by you? Cha! I’d find better men than you living off the street.’
‘Well, why don’t you fuck off and find them?’
‘Don’t you dare use language like that in front of me. Or my baby.’
‘Oh, so it’s your baby now, is it?’
‘Well you don’t want it, do you? You got what you wanted and now look at you running a mile. Men! You make me sick, the lot of you.’
By now, we were standing up, facing each other in a red hot war of the words and it was getting us absolutely nowhere.
‘Shit,’ I said, sitting down for we both needed to cool it and try another way. Sandra must have thought so as well because she resumed her position on the sofa.
‘Have you got any cigarettes?’ she asked. I reached into my bag and we lit up.
‘What does your mum think. Have you told her yet?’
‘This morning. She’s actually quite pleased. She’ll stand by me.’
‘Have you thought at all about not having the baby,’ I asked in a quiet voice, sensing that the time was right.
Sandra sighed.
‘Of course I’ve considered it. I’ve thought about a lot of things ever since I found out. That’s why I came to see you. See if we can’t find a way through.’
‘What do you think? Is that a possibility?’
‘I really don’t know if I can do it. Just after my dad fucked off, my sister got pregnant and had to have one. She said it was the most painful thing she’d ever been through mentally as well as physically. It’s human life we’re talking about here.’
‘I haven’t got any money, you know.’
Sandra kissed her teeth in disgust, her expression changing to one of pure frustration, like a teacher talking to a child who simply refuses to listen and has now used up all the tricks of the trade to get through.
What depressed me about it all was that throughout the whole bitter exchange, I had discreetly, against my wishes I must add, been checking out Sandra’s form, just as I had on the fateful night we met, and although my gaze kept returning to her shapely legs and pretty little face, I have to say that I felt nothing.
It made me sad that I could not tap into my first feelings towards her for that would have at least helped me understand better the wild dilemma I found myself in.
It was not to be. All I wanted at this precise moment in time was Sandra out of the flat and out of my life but that kind of scene is for the movies and the movies only.
‘I have to be somewhere soon,’ I said nonchalantly.
Sandra looked at me for a good five seconds, stood up, crossed the room to where I was sitting and said, ‘I came here to try and reason with you but as you seem incapable of doing that, perhaps this will make you understand that you cannot treat people like throwaway rubbish.’
Then she pulled back her hand and gave me the hardest slap on the face that I have ever received. Then she walked, slamming all doors on her way out.
A red hot fire spread across my face and a buzzing sound started up in my mind, getting louder and louder and louder until I could stand it no more. I jumped up, pulled down my
window and shouted, in the direction I presumed she was heading, ‘Don’t you ever come back here you stupid fucking bitch or I’ll kill you, I swear it.’
I yanked down the window and made for the phone book. Picking out her number I dialled it and got, as I hoped I would, her machine.
‘You bitch, don’t ever let me see you again or you’ll regret it. Badly.’
I slammed down the phone and spent the next few minutes stalking my small front room, kicking objects out of the way and punching walls until the rage finally subsided.
I know, I know, uncool behaviour most certainly but when you reach that pitch where you find yourself consumed with so much anger that you’re dangerously out of control, then it’s best to let it all out then and there. If you don’t it will only come out later and some innocent victim is going to cop it for no reason at all.
Only it wasn’t just anger coursing through my veins but a real confusion as well, tangled up with feelings of guilt and recrimination, until, unable to stand it any further, I grabbed my spliff tin, built a peace pipe that Sitting Bull would have been proud of and, taking time to place some suitable musica on the dex, I lay on my sofa waiting for the magical smoke to take me somewhere better.
At first, the smoke brought on feelings of fear for the future but that soon evaporated as it swarmed around my brain and I closed my eyes and drifted off into darkness.
When I came to, which was about three hours later, dusk was creeping through my window, darkening my room and everything in it. The Stroud Green Road traffic was now reduced to a passing car every minute or so and the street lights were on.
All of which meant that it was time to wander down to Bee Wee’s, pick up some rotis, chicken and rice and then, in the fading London gloom, stroll casually back to my yard and listen to some tunes before heading out.
In the middle of this relaxed schedule I belled the Brother P. and he duly arrived at about 10.00, just as Westwood was signing off his radio show. After a quick spliff for me and a shot of rum for him, we headed out in his wheels to the club Dillon had told us about.
On the way down he asked me about the rest of the day’s events and I related to him my unhappy fable. After it had come to its unresolved finish, Brother P. nodded and said, ‘I spoke to that chick who knows Sandra and she swears that she is not one for moving around a lot. As far as she could check it, Sandra is a one man woman.’
‘Well, she was pretty live and direct with me.’
‘All I can say to that, my brother, is that she must have liked you an awful lot.’
I shrugged my shoulders, announced to my erstwhile companion that I didn’t want to think about it anymore and settled back to watch London flash past my window, once again finding myself amazed at how we always miss what is right under our very chins, for there are times when I clock certain parts of this old, majestic and mystic town which make me believe I must be in a dream, so rare are the sights.
As in right now as we turned into Trafalgar Square and caught sight of the National Portrait gallery, its white towering presence beautifully illuminated by powerful hidden lights, giving off the notion that the brickwork had somehow soaked in all the events and secrets of the last thousand years and was now slowly breathing them out again.
Brother P. caught my mood.
‘City’s nice tonight,’ he muttered as if he was the only person alive on earth and we journeyed Southside in silence, wrapped up in blankets of our own thoughts.
When the mood takes us we can both be very short on words but that is not a problemo for us as we both understand the value of silence which sometimes is just as valuable as speech.
Parking up the four wheeler, we strolled down to the club, a converted gym situated down a small alley. A familiar scene, that of people crowding around the entrance trying to make their way past two unsmiling, untalkative bouncers, greeted us and it made me glad to be with the Brother P. for he is on first name terms with everyone on the club circuit and this included the bouncer Chris, who, with a slight nod of the head, made space for us to step through and down some steps to the cloakroom.
The girl taking the coats was so vague as to where the cloakroom tickets were that in the end Brother P. kissed his teeth in disgust and we walked through some double doors into the club, carrying our coats.
‘She’s off her head,’ Brother P. said as I surveyed the club whose layout was totally different from The Unity’s. Directly in front of us was a bar area whilst to the right a longish, thin corridor took you down to the dancefloor area.
To be God’s honest such details were nothing compared to the noise and energy which assaulted you the minute you walked in. Over by the bar, young herberts, stripped down to just t shirts and jeans, their jumpers loosely tied around their waist, gulped at small bottles of lucozade or water, laughing raucously and often, slapping each other on the back and hugging each other as if they had just scored the winning goal at Wembley.
Over by the tables, people sat excitedly round in groups, shouting to each other as if their lives depended on getting their point of view over, whilst other couples embraced kissing each other up as if they were in the sanctuary of their own private boudoir.
To reach the dancefloor you had to push your way down that crowded corridor and what really took your attention was that the guys who stood pinned against the wall, many of them topless and with tattoos to display, were precisely the kind of geezers you crossed the road to avoid if you saw them coming towards you in packs of more than one.
Not this time. As we moved slowly down that packed corridor, far from getting the hump because you happened to look at the colour of their shoes, they started making way, shouting, ‘You alright, mate?’ and ‘How’s it going? It’s fucking great here, innit?’
The dancefloor was something else. Filled with dry ice which you could hear sho-ssing out of somewhere or other, the large speakers pumped House music’s primal beat to a crowd that couldn’t stop filling the air with wild whoops of delight. Above them, strobe lights flickered on and off every five minutes or so, the light distorting their crazy movements into slow motion.
But that was nothing to the eruption that occurred when the DJ, a face I had never seen before, kicked off a tune that began with a loud but distant voice, (one of The Jacksons, no less) shouting, ‘Can you feel it?’ and the crowd literally went wild, as the tune’s hard but staggered beats came roanng m and the crowd danced like their lives depended on it.
It was the total opposite of the cool manner that pervades most London clubs and it was dangerously fascinating to watch. It was as if the people had become children again, unfettered by manners or hangups and not concerned with what anybody thought of them. They were there to party forever and it gave the club a sense of wildness that I had never witnessed before.
It was not to the Brother P.’s taste. ‘Man, I’m outta here,’ he shouted in my ear. ‘This is craziness.’
‘Stay a bit,’ I remonstrated for I was hypnotised by the energy in front of me and I wanted to check it further, but once the Brother P. has his mind set neither Muhammad or the mountain can move him.
‘Nah,’ he answered, ‘I’m chipping. Check you, tomorrow.’
‘Laters.’
I positioned myself in the corner just as the cloakroom girl appeared out of the mist and pointed her finger to a point high above my head, saying, ‘Isn’t it beautiful, so very beautiful.’
I glanced up and saw that she was talking about the strobe light. ‘Yes,’ I replied, not really believing the conversation, and I moved off towards the bar as the lights were now seriously doing my head in.
As I made my way down the corridor of herberts, the noise of their words ricocheting off the walls at an incredible volume, I spotted Dillon coming into the club and disappearing into the bar.
I made my way through and tapped him on the shoulder. ‘How’s it going?’
‘Good man, good. I didn’t think you’d come here. What do you think?’
‘Of the club? It’s mad. I’ve never seen a crowd like this or heard any of the music. I can’t get to grips with this one.’
‘Take one of these and you will.’
Dillon reached into his pocket and carefully pulled out two white pills. ‘I got them this evening. Twenty quid each.’
‘Jesus, that’s a lot of cashola.’
‘Fucking worth it. I was going to take two but you have one.’ Now on the drugs tip I operate by a no chemical policy, sticking to a mix of herb and rum which always does the trick as far as I’m concerned and, what’s more, doesn’t, like some drugs, leave you staring at a wall which then turns into a mass of writhing snakes which proceed to wrap themselves around your neck.
A 16 year old kid at school convinced me of this policy. One bright day, he dropped an acid tab and then jumped off the top of a six storey car park convinced he could fly.
They buried him a week later.
Therefore, I find myself at this juncture, completely unable to tell you why I picked up one of the tablets, examined it, handed a score over to Dillon, and then popped it into my mouth as if I was taking a headache pill.
Maybe it was the day’s events that had pushed me and it was my subconscious trying to forget the last twelve hours. Or, perhaps, there are some things in life that simply have no rhyme or reason and that when you really check it, that’s what makes it such a kick because you never really know what is going to happen from one day to the next. It is only when you stop and look back at the tapestry of your life that you start to see how random so many events are, and even though each and every one of us map out in our heads the road we want to follow, we are always being sidetracked by obstacles we know nothing of.
That’s when you start to get an inkling of the invisible forces that can, if the mood takes them, move us around like chess pieces, blowing us here, there and everywhere, and all of us powerless to resist.