Human Punk

by John King

  My head’s throbbing and I feel like I’ve been on a session, pissing it up the wall. I walk faster, eyes down now, ignoring the yuan touts on the corner shouting hello-hello and quickly lowering their FEC exchange rate, past the youths crowding round one of the heavy pool tables that dot the street corners of China, in the countryside as well as the cities. Don’t have a clue where these tables come from, how they end up in tiny dirt-track villages, and for a moment Gary’s face fades as I think of Xiahe, how the green baize of the table was the only patch of colour in the Han section of the town, even the blue and green of those hardcore Mao uniforms washed out after years of cold water and Tibetan winds. They’re good tables as well, with thick wooden legs and proper nets, better quality than the ones we play on at home. Males are the same everywhere, shooting pool on a street corner or in a bar, hanging around. I flash to Guilin, a grim town near Yangshou, in Guangxi Province, see the police on the steps of the train station, a line of ten teenage boys in front of them, two coppers to every kid, plaques around their necks, megaphone blaring, an officer behind a table denouncing the criminal element, proud police, humiliated boys, kids off to a prison camp, execution maybe. I push the picture away and Gary comes running back in, gasping for breath.

  I’m staying in the concrete block up ahead, with its flashy entrance and dead lawn, the rest of the hotel a lot different to the front hall. It’s obvious packaging, with a big mural of a smiling Chairman Mao, his rosy red cheeks beaming with sheer innocent joy, the look on the faces of the peasants around him reflecting the same pure happiness, showing how much they love their leader and system. The peasants are as chubby as Mao, a lot different to the people I’ve seen since I’ve been here. They say you never see a fat Chinaman because the food’s so good, but you see them if they’re party members. I’ve been to Tibet, seen how the Chinese treat the Tibetans, seen the difference between the skinny Han peasants in the countryside and the fat party members in Canton, Xian, Beijing. I’ve lined up with the card-holders and filed past Mao’s embalmed body lying in state in Tiananmen Square, a glowing waxwork complexion and bloated face that keeps on smiling as trains ship the Guilin boys off to prison. They’re the lucky ones, a sentence instead of a bullet in the head.

  When I go into the reception area my feet echo on the stone floor, turning the heads of the girls on the desk. They’re cocky as fuck and look down on me, forced into their jobs by the party but willing to go with the flow and sneer at non-party members, ready to accept their sniff of power, and they’re racist too, see themselves as the chosen people. I’ve been in China for three months now and reckon I’ve learnt something about the place, had my easy views blown away by the reality of life in a dictatorship. Unless you see things first-hand you don’t know, and then it’s only a glimpse, the view of an outsider. People say they understand, but they don’t. It’s impossible. At least I’m more clued-up than when I arrived. Three months ago it was different, fresh off the night boat from Hong Kong and straight into a Canton dormitory, buying black-market yuan under a bridge from wannabe gangsters keen to make sure their customer was satisfied, something that jarred, wondering why these spivs were being so polite. And later I worked it out, realised they couldn’t afford problems with the police. Chinese coppers don’t muck about. It’s the big time here.

  Everyone in Canton was smiling, and coming into China from Hong Kong for the first time it made me feel easy, specially after the stories I’d heard, and everything seemed perfect till I walked into the animal market and saw every sort of creature tied and caged, waiting to be sold, dogs and cats along with the chickens, pigs, snakes, monkeys. Two men in suits were laughing as they took turns kicking a pregnant pig in the belly. I pushed them off and they thought I was mad. Their eyes glazed right over and they came back in, a crowd gathering, screaming at me. I walked off. There was a monkey in a bamboo cage, and the man with him had a cleaver, a sharp iron chopper to chop off his head. The monkey had the eyes of a child, something off a BBC programme except a million times stronger. The monkey was real and there was no escape. Under the surface there’s all this anger bubbling away, and one day China is going to go up. It was my first glimpse in the market, and over the last three months I’ve seen it again and again. Don’t know what’s going to happen, but I can feel the tension.

  I run up three flights of stairs and hurry past the room where I’m staying, just make it to the toilet. There’s five cubicles, but I have to make do with a sink. Poison burns my throat. I gag and spew my guts up, the phlegm specked with chilli seeds and soy sauce. The seeds look like chicken skin, and I think of a white cockerel wandering around a hut in Yangshou, five tables and an open kitchen, the woman in charge grabbing the bird and slitting its throat. She kept talking with her friend and dropped the cock to the ground where it bled and kicked about in the dust, thrashing its claws and flapping pure white wings. The woman took a chopper and gently sliced spring onions and greens. The cockerel died slowly, the beating of his wings slowing down as his blood seeped into the dirt, leaving a damp stain, losing strength, life seeping away, the animal finally lying still. At the time I thought of Gary’s mum cutting her wrists in the bath, how she must’ve died so slow, and I think of her son all these years later and the picture I have changes from a gently twisting suicide to a man panicking and struggling to break free, thrashing his legs as he tries to grab the banister with his feet, hands reaching to the knot but his fingers too weak to get under the fibre, Gary fighting for his life suddenly, now he’s faced with the reality, knowing he has no chance, strength sapped through the years, one last flash of energy taking him back to the boy he was before he became a man, when we used to call him Smiles.

  I turn the tap on and wash the seeds away, run my hands around the rim making sure they’re all gone. Water does the job. I want to see my face but there’s no mirror. It’s something you realise after a while in Asia. The people don’t bother with mirrors much. I’ve forgotten what I look like. I shave without a reflection, and know I must’ve changed. There’s no plug so I turn the power up and scrub my face and hands, the blockage in the pipe backing up enough water for me to dip my face under the surface. I blow into the water and hold my breath, feel the skin close around my temples. It’s cold and refreshing, and I open my eyes, the blinding flash of the porcelain giving way to a maze of cracks, each one with a depth that’s confused by the water, a trip of canyons and craters. When I’ve finished I rinse the sink and dry my face on my shirt. My throat tingles but I don’t feel sorry for myself. How can I after what’s happened to Gary?

  The dormitory’s empty when I go in, and I’m glad, fists clenched, knuckles white. My head’s buzzing, everything crowding in on me as I roll my sleeping bag out and stretch across the bed. The mattress stinks of bodies, the fabric soaked in the sweat of thousands of travellers. It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. I don’t bother wrapping my sweatshirt around the pillow to take away the smell of all those heads, the dead cells and old hair, bald men snoring, blonde girls tossing, every one of us slowly rotting, spines drilling into the bed, creating a dip down the centre. It doesn’t matter. I look at the ceiling high above me, plaster peeling away, the pale skin of an old building, different shades of white, a gecko darting forward and stopping near the fan, just outside the reach of the switched-off propellers. There’s two black blobs for eyes, and these are rock solid, specially compared to the yellow glow of a see-through body. There’s no blood in there, and this little gecko stares straight back into me. He doesn’t blink or move, the suckers on his feet giving him the edge as he hangs upside down, his breathing so deep and subtle there’s no sign he’s even alive. I stare at him, waiting for his eyes to roll, but he’s not giving in.

  I close my eyes and try to imagine the rope cutting into Gary’s neck, how it must’ve hurt, the slow suffocation and flashbacks, his life whizzing past, the panic he must’ve felt when he realised there was no escape, no second chance, that he couldn’t reach out and steady himself,
cut the rope, make up for the mistake and come out a stronger person, go back to the past, to what he used to be. I can’t help wondering if he thought about me as his life passed by, if he saw us how we were when we were younger, kicking a tennis ball around the playground, no cares in the world, least till his mum slashed her wrists. Then when we were older, looking at the girls but too afraid to go and talk to them, sitting for hours listening to David Bowie and Roxy Music albums in the winter, knocking around outside in the summer, saving up for the new records. The past is long gone and I don’t usually look back. Gary wasn’t thinking about the good old days either, just the present and maybe the future. Least that’s what I imagine, but who knows. You just don’t know. My eyes water and I do my best to think about something else. Poor old Smiles.

  Smiles was a diamond, an innocent who was never going to grow up, least not the same as the rest of us, because this boy never had an ounce of spite in him, stayed open-minded against the odds, least till he got sick, but that was just the shell, the real Smiles could think further than black and white, wasn’t stuck on one set of rules, shifted this way and that, making the best of things, the grin on his face hiding the horror of finding his mum in the bath, and Asia would’ve suited him, the contradictions less important in the likes of Hong Kong and Thailand, something you pick up day-to-day, China more materialistic, and thinking back I suppose our friendship was rooted in music, a shared interest, it was all we ever really talked about, and even now I can see Smiles coming into school with that first Clash album under his arm, ‘Anarchy In The UK’ tucked inside the sleeve, and when I got in that night I played them, hooked from the first drum roll of ‘Janie Jones’, my strongest memories of Smiles start from around this time, never mind I knew him since we were small, my snapshots stuck between 1977 and 1985, and I’m no good with dates, the exact order, and right now all I want to remember is the good times, the social side of things, words melting into the background, teenagers drunk on cider, snakebite, lager, filling up on the sulphate that was cheap and convenient, running off at the mouth, full of big ideas, speeding through our lives, out and about watching the best bands going, bouncing along to the Clash, Pistols, Damned, Vibrators, UK Subs, Dr Feelgood—the Jam, Buzzcocks, Ramones, Chelsea, Motorhead, Generation X—the Slits, Members, Lurkers, Stiff Little Fingers, Penetration—999, X-Ray Spex, Elvis Costello, Sham 69—the Boys, Adverts, Innocents, Siouxsie—the Rezillos, Undertones, Cortinas, Ian Dury, Public Image—the Ruts, Business, Exploited, Billy Bragg—the Rejects, Upstarts, Anti-Nowhere League, Cock Sparrer, Madness—the Specials, Beat, Selecter, Bad Manners—on and on, a long old roll-call, tons of groups, millions of memories, electric chords and electric soup, fizzy drink in plastic glasses, crushed cans and torn tickets, watered-down lager and hundred-per-cent-proof vodka, the thud of Doctor Martens and the flash of dayglo badges, the memories tangled up same as a ball of string that’s been left under the sink, the threads frayed and knotted, soggy from leaking pipes, specked with paint, leading every which way, from the first groups to the second wave, the punk lyrics of 2 Tone and the stripped-down sound of Oi!, mohawk anarchist bands and punk poets, and even though they slagged each other off there was a common attitude, brilliant times, and there’s me and Smiles down the front of the crowd pressed against the stage banging our fists on the boards, stuck inside Topper Headon’s drum kit, ribs ready to splinter with the surge behind us, heart pounding and blood pumping, alive and angry and happy, knowing every single word off by heart, singing along, tuned in, lights picking out the dust, mingling with smoke, hundreds of people glued together, there’s a glow in my head, crowding around dim-lit bars in the middle of winter, us in our donkey jackets and the girls in black leather, DJs out of sight spinning records, we did what we wanted, never dressed up to get in anywhere in my life, never will either, fuck them, and after three years away from England those punk years are right back in my mind, because this is what Smiles was all about, that was our link, and from this soggy tangle comes the night we went over to Uxbridge to see the Sex Pistols on their SPOTS tour, when they were travelling around undercover, skirting righteous councils and militant preachers, and it was Smiles, Dave, Chris and me on top of a double decker sipping cans of lager wondering if the Pistols would really play, whether the plug would be pulled, and we had a drink in the Three Tuns opposite Uxbridge tube, the front bar full of dossers, smelly junkie girls and weedy greasers who fancied their chances seeing as we were a few years younger and they had the numbers, they came over and started spouting off about gob and safety pins, the same newspaper headlines that get people hurt in real life, and we fronted them up and they bottled out, snuck back to their corner, sat around scratching their scalps, picking at the lice, and we got cocky, started going on about rickets and the pox, how the plague was going to come back if they didn’t have a bath soon, least till the landlord came round the bar and asked how old I was, next up Smiles, both of us saying eighteen when we were fifteen or sixteen, he was trying to put us in our place, and then it was Dave’s turn and I knew what was going to happen, I could always read Dave’s mind, he swore blind he was fifty-seven, then started arguing the toss so the landlord turned red, Dave going on about the time he spent in a German prisoner-of-war camp, how it kept him young, digging tunnels and building gliders, and we got turfed out with the greasers grinning as we went, so we went down the Printer’s Devil and arrived a few minutes after some kid was axed in the back by this mob from Hayes, we still had a quick drink as the police questioned the bar staff and an ambulance took the boy to hospital, drank up and walked along the Uxbridge Road, past the Spitfire in the gates of the air-force base, found the sports hall where the Pistols were playing, everything busy now with the usual mix of herberts, and because this was Brunel University there was a lot of students, the sort who wouldn’t normally go see a punk band, and Dave was going around with this meat hook in his coat at the time, we had to keep an eye on him, make sure he didn’t hurt someone, he started giving these hairies an ear-bashing and was going in his pocket when I pulled him away, told him it was bullying, even if they were a few years older than us, they were from a different world, all Yes albums and lungs full of dope, acid trips and philosophy lectures, I was always rowing with Dave but we never had a proper set-to, not till we were grown-up and filled out, and then it was nasty, but I push this bad memory away and do my best to keep things positive, because we saw the Pistols and how many people can say that, it was pure luck we knew they were playing, a chance conversation the night before, and the Pistols were brilliant, didn’t give a toss about anything, the hall was stacked and the Pistols had this bulb on stage, none of that progressive-rock shit, no expensive light shows for millionaires having a break from the country mansion, swimming-pool rebels saying fuck all, lost up their own arseholes, wankers who think spending thousands on illegal drugs means they’re fighting the system, we hated all that, still do, the music pumped right up as I run ‘Bodies’ through my head, a song I haven’t heard for years, dead babies, dead embryos, it’s so sad right now, go to ‘Seventeen’, dead mummies and lazy sods, move on to ‘Pretty Vacant’, that’s one of the great things about going home after you’ve been away, the chance to play your music, the soundtrack of your life, and Sid had taken over from Glen Matlock by now, poor old Sid, changing to the Exploited song ‘Sid Vicious Was Innocent’, a Wattie chant over Big John’s guitar, and we missed the last bus to Slough, forced to nick a car to get back, and Chris was good at that sort of thing, training for the future, and Brunel had some decent bands over the years, the likes of Steel Pulse, the Ruts, Magazine, there were these punks who used to come over from Northolt and Ruislip, loads of miniature Sids, we got friendly with them, plus a load of kids from Uxbridge, West Drayton, Hayes, places like that, they were a hard little crew, and being a university the drink was cheap in the bar, a modern fleapit stuffed with hippy students, we used to take over one side of the bar, where the bogs and Space Invaders were, and they had the other, sometime
s they tried to stop us getting in but there was a lot of us so they didn’t have much chance, and it was easy being a punk, all you had to do was get rid of the flares and cut your hair, just live your life, we went with the times, and from where I was standing it was never about art students and fifty-pound haircuts, and while we laughed at some of the blokes playing at rock ’n’ roll, the birds who dressed up were well appreciated, but mostly it was the same kids who went to football and ran around rioting in the bus station after school, who stood in the Shed and smashed up the trains coming back from Luton, the same hooligans who built that bonfire at Charlton and went in the Millwall end at Cold Blow Lane, that was all there was to it, stuffing Bowie’s albums under the bed and letting the new music in, an education a million times better than what we got at school, and I can see Smiles laughing like a loony when we left, we all hated school, a waste of time, and I remember his face for a split second, know there’s a better picture, something not quite right, look for another happy memory, fighting the inevitable, and later on Dave’s mum and dad bought a caravan on a site outside Bournemouth, started going to the seaside every chance they got, and because Dave was the oldest he stayed at home and had the place to himself, he went once and said it stunk, couldn’t get the smell out of his clothes, and with the house empty we started having these parties, there was fuck all to do locally, a disco here, a nightclub there, soon wrecked and closed down, funk all-nighters at the community centre, nothing for us lot, and the parties we went to stuck to the familiar sounds, shit off Top Of The Pops mingled with classic hits, everything laid on so the girls could dance, that’s what I remember, had to keep the fanny happy, and we did something different, played punk all night, so there was a worse-than-usual shortage of girls, and Dave wanted some slow songs, love songs, reckoned there was no chance of getting off with a disco girl if all they could hear was Jimmy Pursey telling some sort he was breaking out of borstal to see her, or Paul Weller going on about a row down near Slough, but the rest of us had a go at Dave, why give in to prick-teasers, and I suppose he was a loyal mate seeing as it was his house and he could’ve done what he wanted, and the thing was, we got the best girls coming along, the ones who were into something different and dressed the part, there just wasn’t very many of them, what we needed was a venue of our own, but this was Slough, a satellite town with a plague of soulboys coming through, but we had a laugh, till we played non-stop Ramones one night, and I suppose there was only two or three Ramones albums out at the time, we kept playing them back to back till in the middle of ‘Go Mental’ a punch-up started and the whole downstairs got smashed up, windows kicked in and the doors ripped off their hinges, something on top of the usual commotion, and next morning Dave had to sort out the mess, glass to replace, doors to fix, and it was lucky for him Smiles’s brother was a carpenter and knew a glazier, and after that Dave was more careful, can’t blame him, and it’s funny what’s in your head, right now everything shaded that bit darker so I have to force myself to think about the socialising, the drink and drugs and punk rock, that’s what I remember most about Smiles, what I want to remember, and we got out and about, nobody can say we didn’t have fun.