This Is Memorial Device

by David Keenan

  I heard about Big Patty before I met him. At the gardening I worked beside a guy called David Nesbitt who would pick me up on the kind of bright, autumn mornings that felt like conduits into the past although back then I was inevitably too tired (or too hung over) or just too tied up in the future to notice the way the past was already impinging on the present. David would drive us to whatever job we had that day, dilapidated stately homes, secret bungalows in the shadow of tall hedges, walk-up apartments in the East End with patches of overgrown grass and wild flowers, Victorian semis with red-chipped driveways and yellowed lawns (dreamy cottages with abandoned bicycles and trees as tall as my expectations of the next year and the year after that). It was David’s business and it was going well. I’m taking on someone else, he told me. I’ve worked with him before. This guy can dig holes like no one else, he said. I once saw him dig a five-foot hole in less than twenty minutes. I looked around and all I could see was the top of his head sticking out with this battered top hat on. He’s a real character, he said, a musician. He’s a vegetarian plus I think he’s a Hindu or a Buddhist or something like that.

  Patty actually wore that battered top hat while he was gardening (he looked more like a gravedigger). Plus he wore a jumper with only one arm in the sleeve, so that it looked like his other arm had withered and died. I’m always too hot or too cold, he said, so I thought I would wear half a jumper and that would solve it (why don’t you just wear a tank top, I thought to myself, but I said nothing). When we were gardening we would have discussions about music. I’ve never been to a gig in my life, David told us (we were working in the garden of a semi-detached council house in Grahamshill Avenue that was occupied by a drama teacher called Miss Sweden). Music sounds different when you play it live, David said. Doesn’t it? It doesn’t sound as professional. Who needs it to sound professional? Patty said. The wilder the better. Who do you like? Patty asked me. I like Dylan, I said. What does she sing? David asked. You’ve never heard of Bob Dylan? Patty burst, and he dropped his spade in the dirt and sat down on a rock and lit a cigarette. What songs does he sing? David asked. ‘Mack the Knife’, stuff like that? ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’, Patty said. ‘The Times They Are a-Changin’’. No, David said, leaning his chin on his spade, sorry. I never heard of them. What about AC/DC? I asked him. You must know AC/DC. Do they sing the one about the train? David said. I fucking give up, Patty said. You are a total space cadet.

  Patty had no television in his house and David couldn’t get over it. What do you do for entertainment? David asked him. I read, Patty said. I listen to music. I play guitar. I paint. I cook. I play chess. I walk the streets at night. How long would it take you to read an average book? David asked him. How many pages? Patty said. Say, three hundred pages, David said. In that case, one night. No way, David said. That’s not possible. Okay, two nights at most, Patty said. Have you ever read a book? Patty asked him. Once, David said. I read the first thirty-three pages then I forgot what I had read and so I had to start all over again. Then the same thing happened and I thought fuck this.

  The first time I saw Patty play with Memorial Device I was blown away (I didn’t know what to expect). I talked Michael into coming with me. It’ll be dark in the club, I told him. Plus there’ll be no one there who would ever know who you are. It’s a whole other scene. Plus these guys are like John Coltrane on guitar, I said (back then that’s what they were saying, that it was like free jazz or improvised music only with guitar, bass and drums). They were playing at a club in Coatbridge. Coatbridge had more live venues than Airdrie, but rather than get a train or a taxi or jump on the bus I suggested we walk there, leaving as soon as it got dark (which honestly was about four o’clock at that time of year) and dropping in at a few choice bars along the way (although I say choice when really I mean terrible, desperate and kind of depressing). We had a drink in The Barrel Vaults on the main street and then in The Staging Post (and then in The Tudor Hotel) and by the time we got to Coatdyke (to The Five Keys) Michael was acting a little crazy. He ordered two whiskies and a pint of heavy. One drink at a time, the landlord said. What the fuck is this, Nazi Germany? Michael said. A few heads turned. I paid for a whisky and a pint of heavy and I led him to a table near the door (I was thinking we might need to make a quick escape). The bar smelled of urine (it was unmistakable) as if after hours they all got their dicks out and pissed all over the floor and soiled themselves and passed out and woke up the next morning and went back home to their hateful wives with no memory (it had that kind of vibe), like a prison cell or a hospital or a dosshouse (or a care home), a place where you could just go on the floor and people would mop up after you, a place to escape every decision you had ever made, except one, the decision to piss on them all (which is something I understood, especially in the mornings, when directing my piss, into the toilet or into the sink, felt like the only thing I had control over, as my heart raged and my brain beat). This place stinks of piss, I told Michael, and he looked at me, looked at me like he was seeing right through me, and he said to me, is that all you have to say? No, I said. I have plenty more to say. But you’re in no state to hear it. He drained his whisky. Then he sat there like a scrawny stick of dynamite. What do you think? I said. About what? he said. About it all, I said. All of what? he said. You need to speak up, pal. I bought him another drink. At first I thought that the landlord was going to refuse to serve us but he acted as if he had no memory of what had happened so I ordered us two whiskies each (I don’t know why, maybe I saw the precipice from a distance and decided to accelerate towards it in the hope that we could leap the chasm altogether or failing that be wiped out in a split second on the cliffs) and when I brought them back to the table Michael grunted and said something about dropping little bombs on ourselves (torpedoing ourselves, I think he said) and he laughed, this constricted, hollow laugh, like an overflow on a drain, like he had spilled himself, accidentally, and I thought of a submarine with a leak (scraping the bottom of the ocean) spilling air up into the sea.

  There was one more bar to go before we hit Coatbridge (a family bar just next to the fire station). By this point Michael was completely steaming (he was looking around himself like he was taking his first steps in fairyland). Oh my god, he said. Did you fucking see that? There were girls walking past (it was Saturday night, they were dressed to kill). There was a bouncer at the door. I’ve got my eye on you, Michael said, as we walked past him. What did you just say? he said. Michael had this way of not moving his head when he was talking that was extremely unnerving and he sort of walked backwards with his head perfectly balanced (like rewinding a videotape of a puppet or a wooden doll, like his head was on a string or on the end of a fishing line and was being reeled back in) until he was standing right in front of the bouncer (whose bald head reflected the light from the sign like a birthmark or a tattoo of South America). You’re a chib merchant, Michael said. A squib-packer, a chatterina. I recognise you, he said. I’ve never seen you before in my life, the bouncer said. But if I was you I would take care. Oh, I’ll take care alright, Michael said. I’ll take care of business. Not tonight you won’t, the bouncer said. Not with that attitude. With that attitude you’re going straight home. What are you going to do, Michael said, call me a cab? It’s not home time yet, the bouncer said, but when you’re ready I’ll drag you up the street by your hair like a gypsy. There was a moment of silence between them (a split second where their moon faces were like a pair of empty brackets ( ) in a crime report or a Russian novel). I looked between them like a telescope where you’re gazing into time as well as space. If you could stare to the end of the world (I thought to myself) this is all you would end up with.

  14. Scatman and Bobbin the Dynamic Duo: Big Patty’s secret sidekick Miriam McLuskie is on the razz with Ross Raymond.

  Is the tape running? Oh my god, this is like making an album. It’s never gonna pick your voice up from over there. You’ll need to move closer. Okay, whatever.

  So I met Patty during his satan
ic period. He thought he was the devil of Airdrie, the bogeyman in his big cadaver hat like he had just leaped out of a cardboard coffin which in reality was what his house was like or his room was like more accurately. He had this theory about central heating which was like his theory about bugs which was like his theory about urine which was like his theory about sweat; he was always sweating, sweaty hands sweaty palms, so that on those recordings where people praise his slide guitar saying it was like Blind Willie Johnson it’s really the sound of the guitar getting away from him like he had lubricated his dick too much and couldn’t get a grip on it. Oh my god, he had a room above The Capocci Man on the high street in Airdrie, I’ll never forget it, that dump is singed on my brain, a single room that didn’t necessarily smell of ice cream more like stale yogurt which was what his bedclothes smelled like. He had all of these glass bottles filled with medicinals he would call them that looked like bottles of milk gone bad but with black herbs rotting in them and olive oil or more realistically urine. He drank his own urine, I’m dead sure of that. If you asked him about it he would just say, give us a kiss. That said it all. I was like that, no thank you. And his windows were always open. He had a single radiator and he claimed that allowing the air to circulate meant it would work more efficiently despite the evidence of everyone sitting on the edge of his bed freezing their balls off. All of his books had bookmarks in them; sometimes just drink coasters or torn pieces of cardboard but bookmarks nonetheless always in the exact or really the estimated middle. It’s important to separate the beginning from the end, Patty would say. Then he would take a drink from one of his foul concoctions and stare out the open window like he was trying to hypnotise the horizon or something. How like a book a body is, he would say. I might be misquoting, essentially, but you get the drift. Then he would take a volume down from the shelves and turn it on its side so you could see the bookmark between the pages. It looks like an ass crack, he would say. I would be like that to him, not really, an ass has a hole in the middle and he would look at me like I had just made the worst joke in the world and then he would laugh and then he would get up and pace around the room. I would be like that, fuck this, but I stayed with him anyway.

  What are we drinking, by the way? An IPA? Fuck is an IPA? Tastes like melon juice.

  I was his secret sidekick, I admit that much, although sometimes I thought of myself as his sense of permission, like an imp in his pocket, a wee imp keekin’ oot his pocket. It was never anything sexual. Naw. No way. He was never my type. My taste in men is quite conventional, depressingly ordinary, murder, actually. I have no kinks and zero foibles but outside of the bedroom or the restaurant or the holiday home I’m all ears if you know what I mean. I thought of myself as a magician, to tell you the truth, someone who had mastered the most elementary act of magic which did you know is the practice of invisibility. I could infiltrate any circle, put up with any behaviour, indulge any eccentricity yet it would never get to me or affect me on any level. I looked dead ordinary, you wouldn’t look twice at me in the street, but I thought of myself as a punk, as a real punk not as a picture postcard. I was like invisible ink written in the corner of the room so that it would take a candle and some patience to even see me there. I would go on these nights out where people would do pure outrageous things in front of me because I was more like a voice in their head or a pair of eyes in their head more properly, a pair of silent eyes that would watch and wouldn’t comment and wouldn’t care or judge or report back either way but who at least saw them. Later on I heard that our nickname was Scatman and Bobbin, the dynamic duo. I was pure like that, whatever! That says it all.

  You gottae have a can. That’s what my faither would say, sitting on the front steps at eleven o’clock in the morning drinking a can of Tennent’s, he’d be like that; you gottae have a can. Got any more in the fridge? What is this brand? Never heard of it.

  I got to know Lucas, I did. I always felt that we got on dead well. Not that we understood each other. I wouldn’t say that. But that’s my point. We made no attempt to understand each other if you understand what I mean. In fact we were more like figments of each other’s imagination. Right there was this one time where Memorial Device were playing in Kilmarnock, don’t ask me why, it was some pure bikers’ bar and Richard had phoned them up out of the blue and asked them if they were interested in some live music and oh my god the owner had agreed without even hearing a fucking note of their music and said that it was lucky actually as another group had been booked to play on the same weekend and why not make a night of it. I offered to drive them down, I had an estate car at the time which I got from working a job for a petroleum company entering meaningless data five days a week, meaningless fucking data while listening to music on the headphones, it was a piece of pish. On the day of the show it was pishing down, it was April and it was pishing down, the kind of spring rain that really stings and that makes you feel like you’re made of tin. A wee tin solider getting battered aboot in the rain … I remember being caught in a pishing storm, not this one but another one when I was much younger travelling back from the huts at Carbeth where we had been fishing for the day and missing the last bus and my mate telling me that it would take two days to walk back but when we eventually flagged a lift in this pishing rain, this rain that pure battered off ma body like a bell, like a rusty bell, and that generated a tone, a low drone (nnnnnnnnnnhhhhhhh like Memorial Device like hhhhhhhnnnnnnnnnn), and that had me thinking oh my god I’m hollow, I’m like a milk bottle or a wine glass, and in the end it only took thirty-five minutes to drive back home and for years afterwards I would be like that, oh my god remember being stranded in Carbeth, several days from civilisation ya muppet? And he’d be like that, remember ringing like a bell in the rain, he would say, remember being empty like a trash can ya plamf?

  Do you even know what a plamf is? A plamf is somebody that sniffs dirty knickers.

  And as we drove to Kilmarnock in this pishing rain, this pishing rain that was more like a memory than something that had simply been remembered do you get where I’m coming from, it was like the same rain falling again and the car felt like my body and with the rain falling down on it and Memorial Device like my mind, you know that song, the red light was my baby, the green light was my mind, although I don’t know if it’s possible to split your mind up into four, into two possibly but into four seems like a pointless division, what is the point, and as we crossed the moors everyone was dead silent, no one said a fucking thing, no one said zip, do you feel me, and there was no sound except for this rain on the roof that sounded like a hand drum or a heartbeat and I felt pure like a witch with her black cats on the way to a seance.

  Oh my god, I’m getting pished already, is this strong? Seven per cent, is that strong? Fuck it. We’re in the beer game now.

  We arrived in Kilmarnock just as the sun was going down though really it felt more like some cunt had stashed it in a black sock and tossed it into an empty parking lot. Remy was like that, why is it so dark? Lucas was like that, what a question. Why am I rolling my eyes, he said, why is my breath passing through my lungs? Richard was like that, why do I have a huge pain in my ass? I was pure like that to myself, it’s like the fucking Three Stooges only the Three Iggys is more like it. Patty said nothing. Dead typical. That was his style. Dead typical. He would separate himself from the rest, aloof, sit silent in the back of the car and never make a move to lift a fuckin’ finger or help carry in the amps. If there was food going and most times even that was a rarity he would eat apart from everyone else, either that or he would sneak a sly Pot Noodle when no one was looking. Fuckin’ Pot Noodles man, best hangover cure known to man.

  I took some flyers, I had printed them up at my own expense. I can’t remember what it said now, something about outlaws or feral rock or something like that, I wrote it myself, and I headed into town and handed them out in a few bars including this poncey French-themed bar in Kilmarnock, that was a fucking joke, seriously, in Kilmarnock? They’re fucki
ng barbarians in Kilmarnock, give me a fucking break, they’re fucking cannibals in Kilmarnock, though they all eat snails mind, that’s no problem, they eat fucking slugs too, and they made me pick up all of the flyers I had left on the tables, this woman came out and began yelling at me and halfway through I was like that, I just picked up a wad of them and pure threw a handful of them over my shoulder, fuckin’ scattered them everywhere.