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Circling the Black Dog By Glen Flowers
Trudi bustles, making no attempt to hush as she prepares to leave. I lie, folded deep in crumpled bedsheets, anticipating the snap of the kitchen latch. She knows, understands even, that I am listening to her, waiting for her to go so I can be alone. I smile, relaxed. For the first time in recent memory I have slept without the exhaustion of dreams. We talked. For hours we talked until we couldn’t bear the thought of not touching. I look around. Our clothes lie intertwined, scattered across the floor. An empty whisky bottle lies overturned in the corner, its neck cracked. I smile. Maybe I’ll be here when she returns, most likely not. She’ll understand. It is early morning. The street above her basement window is alive with the disembodied feet of shop girls on their way to work. My mouth reeks of garlic and bar-stale bourbon. I know already that I need a drink. Breakfast will be Jim Beam, straight, no ice, a quick gargle and tongue brush to clean the teeth. It takes seven minutes this morning, yesterday it was five before I get out of bed and head for the bottle. Glass in hand, I catch a glimpse of my skinny body in the mirror and am appalled at the scratches on my arms. No time to shower. I throw on last night’s clothes, knock back the glass, pocket the half bottle and head for the street, I’ll be home in half an hour if I hurry. Something soon will have to give. *** Gillian Lewis loved me, innocently, when I was eight and she was nine. Because of this crime, we spent three weeks incarcerated but apart in our adjacent bedrooms, hers in number 23, and mine in number 25, with the double bricked wall of our terraced houses between us. Her mother discovered us naked, under a blanket in the tree house that straddled the border between their house and ours. Mrs Lewis, sixteen stone, bloated by too many chip buttie TV dinners, clambered up the ladder and dragged us scrag necked like two drowning kittens to my father. I remember thinking I would be OK with Dad, smirking even, a boyish game. Maybe I’d escape with no dinner and a few hours in my room. I was wrong. As soon as the Lewis’s had gone he took off his belt and whipped me across the legs. He expected me to scream, to beg for forgiveness but I wouldn’t, I don’t know why. I stared at him, stunned, not believing what he had done. This made him even angrier and something changed in his eyes that scared me for the first time. He was a placid man, broody, but that day he lashed out at me with the belt waiting for me to cry. I remember I hit against the dining room chair with him still coming at me with the belt. I could taste the saltiness of blood on my mouth and feel it smeared across my face. My Mum must have pulled him off because next thing I knew I was in my room, cuts down my legs and across my back. Dad had disappeared to the pub so he wasn’t around to witness my defeated sobbing. Only my mother got to suffer it as she rubbed antiseptic into the wounds on my skin. The wound inside she could do nothing to repair. For a year after the ‘incident’ Gillian and I talked only at school. We held hands under the gym and once, out of sight of the clandestine smokers we had our first hurried kiss. It was dry, a peck, rather like a grandmother would give you, except lips on lips. I floated for the rest of the day. A month later the Lewis’s moved away suddenly, to London. I was sure that someone must have seen us and told. *** 47 Meadow Avenue is home. Gillian’s picture postcard cottage in an awfully sensible street, ten minutes drive from her mother’s and a hundred light years from mine. The bus leaves me bleary eyed and stinking almost at the door. The sun is too bright, there’s a light on in the porch and the milk sits uncollected on the doorstep. Time for a quick drink, dutch courage. I‘m still swilling the sharp tasting amber around, deadening taste buds, attacking the hangover when the door flies open and the nightmare begins again. ‘Darling, you’re back.’ Gillian, eyes like ice, scans the street for neighbours, never looking in my direction. ‘Shoes off. Get your filthy carcass through the door.’ ‘Morning darl. Held up, Harvey called in sick.’ ‘Spare me. We’ve got an appointment with the counsellor this morning. Try having a bath.’ Molly clings to her legs, three years old and pretty as a lorikeet, her bright orange blouse has knife edge creases and she looks like her mother on a good day. I hold out my arms to her and she buries herself in her Gillian’s dress. ‘I’ve got to get Molly to pre-school. Back at eleven, don’t touch anything.’ I’m alone in the house, our show home. Everything is in its place, not a speck of dust to be found. Each leather bound volume in the bookcase sits at attention, never to be touched. A hundred china ornaments mark the minefield between me and the couch. I drag across the pristine carpet, slopping a muddy dirt trail as I go. Thank God for the bourbon. At the back of the cupboard beside the TV are two CDs, the top one’s called ‘IV’, sometimes ‘Runes’, sometimes ‘Zoso’ or even ‘No Title.’ Gillian calls it ‘that fucking racket.’ I turn it as loud as she’ll go and lie down on the carpet. The bourbon starts to take effect. The room shimmers softly as I’m hit by Black Dog, Robert Plant at least is speaking my language. Been Dazed and Confused for so long
it's not true, I can sleep until eleven. *** Dad never touched me again. We hardly talked. I retreated from the family areas and stayed in my room. Mum was always in work, she had three jobs. For some reason, unexplained then, Dad gave up his work at the glass factory and instead split his time evenly between daytime TV, the Carpenter’s Arms and a multitude of doctor’s clinics and hospitals, some as far away as London. He fought his own demons, dreamed his own serotonin triggered dreams and slid downwards, preparing a path for a son to follow in his father’s image. Mum bought me a Sega to keep me occupied. I spent three years ripping the still-beating heart out of opponents in ‘Mortal Kombat’, tearing their heads off and pulling out their bloody spinal chords while Mum and Dad dozed next door. I slept at school. Mum gave me money and shied away. I bought graveyard black clothes, made my hair into spikes and slept under a poster of Jean Claude Van Damme. Dad faded to a maudlin black and was hospitalised, depressed. I hardly noticed. I put black curtains up in my room and sealed up the joins. When I was fifteen I met Marty. Marty was eighteen and owned his own car; a Ford Escort XR3i RS Turbo spunk rocket. He approached me under the gym. ‘You Hendy’s cousin?’ ‘Errr, Colin, my cousin, yes.’ ‘Great bloke Colin, not fair what happened. Any cousin of Colin’s is a friend of mine. You seen him?’ Stupid question but I wasn’t about to tell Marty that. Colin was in Pentonville prison, had been for the last year. Robbery with Menaces was the charge, feeding an addiction they said. ‘Not for a while.’ ‘You know his girlfriend Susan? She’s having a party Saturday, want to come? I’m sure she’d like his cousin there.’ He picked me up. At my house in that flash XR3i. I was terrified, these kids were eighteen. Dad was nodding to himself in the front room when I slunk out in full black vamp gear, black from head to toe. The kids in the car didn’t laugh, Marty lit a cigarette and handed it over. At the party he introduced me to an older girl, Trudi, the first girl I ever met who could speak Led Zeppelin.
‘And if I say to you tomorrow,
Take my hand, child, come with me.
It's to a castle I will take you,
Where what's to be, they say will be.’
At 2am only six of us remained. James Hetfield was crooning “Nothing Else Matters” from Metallica’s new album and Trudi was dozing against my shoulder. I’d had four beers, my first ever, when Marty sat down beside me. ‘Fucking ace party eh?’ ‘Kerrrrrrannnggg.’ I thought I was cool at the time. ‘Trudi says she likes you, Susan too, says you could be Colin’s twin.’ ‘They’re awesooome. We’re gonnna parrrttayyyyy!’ ‘You wanna party, you should try this, it’s ace, will make you fly like Axl Rose. I’m having one. They’re the buzz.’ He showed me something that looked like off-white rock, handed me a scrunched up cigarette paper in my hand. ‘Swallow it’ he said, ‘it’s a bomb, Billy Whizz, you’ll love it.’ It drove me crazy, I couldn’t sit still. I sprinted around the house and rolled around the garden yowling. When I came back inside Marty was fucking Trudi on the bed. I couldn’t believe it, I’d never seen sex before, Trudi was squealing like a punctured air bed as he rammed himself into her again and again. Four of us stood there watching, my heart was beating out of my chest and I had to go outside again. I felt faint but exhilarated, couldn’t stop running around. I loved these people. I wanted to always stay that way. Marty made me feel important. I didn’t mind him taking Trudi, ‘I was only talking to her anyway’ I told him. ‘That’s OK Robert, great whizz though eh? I know a guy who can get you some more if you’re interested.’ If you believe in fate then that party led directly to my wedding. It also led me directly to court and into jail. I needed money, lots of money, I didn’t care where from. It was an easy escalation from pawning the Sega to selling the ornaments from around the house. They fetched almost nothing. I stole a computer from the school and sold it for a hundred pounds, the money lasted three days. I stole a second one and was expelled. Let’s keep this short, it’s a familiar track. I stole some money, about twenty pounds I think from a petrol station while holding a surgical scalpel. Not long after, I found myself in the same cell that Colin had been in at Pentonville, I scrawled my name on the wall above his. He wrote to me. ‘We’re building a dynasty’ he said. The same day my mother wrote ‘Don’t come back, it breaks my heart.’ Three weeks after prison I was in rehab. *** Gillian Lewis isn’t the prettiest of girls, externally at least, but she cares about people. Cares about them more than they deserve. In the years that I retreated to my room she retreated to St Helena’s Catholic School for girls. She was working at the St Saviour clinic, East London when I arrived, chose it for the name no doubt. ‘It’s Karma’ she said. ‘I heard it’s gonna thunder’ I said and she laughed. ‘I can’t believe I’m seeing you again. Unbelievable.’ I am not the boy she knew. She popped me dextros, benzos and Murray’s toffee mints. I chewed on the sheets and threw books at the wall. After a few months I was ready to leave. ‘You’re coming home with me.’ ‘Lead on Florence.’ There was nothing else. In her heart I was that eight year old boy. In my heart I was Ozzie Osbourne. She wrapped me up in mental cotton wool, drew boundaries around me, put fences up in every room. I became her project. ‘Don’t touch the furniture. Keep out of the kitchen. Don’t make a mess, back at five.’ We made missionary love in the dark, her face covered by a blanket and I wondered what had happened to that girl from the tree house. We fumbled conscientiously and when we finished she sobbed. ‘We should have waited’ she said. ‘It's better to marry than to burn with lust. Corinthians, chapter 7.’ ‘Tell me I'm a sinner I got news for
you When her mother phoned to protest we got married. When her mother phoned again we moved back to Sheffield. When we found we had nothing to say to each other we had Molly and something snapped. I got myself a job, my first. Harvey’s Car Wreckers and Scrap Metal Dealers Drive in, Tow in, Drag in. We come to you. On my first day at work Harvey told me. ‘If someone doesn’t pay, you whack them. In the stomach, always in the stomach. Leaves no marks. You’ve been in the slammer. Don’t get caught.’ On my second day I saw him hit a man with a metal bar. I was thrilled. I was back in ‘Mortal Kombat.’ He was Bo' Rai Cho, teacher and I was Liu Kang the student fighter. It took six months before I first attempted suicide. Gilli says it was the tablets, Harvey said ‘that fucking ice maiden must drive you nuts.’ I saw that my sensei was right. I went to collect a debt from an accountant. He paid. Harvey filled in some of the gaps in my life, taught me to drive, taught me to drink, taught me what a fucking sham my life was, for a while he even stopped the headaches. Gilli spent Friday evenings with her mother. Harvey took me to the Velvet Slipper to see the exotic dancers. Trudi Parker has silicone tits. If she jiggles them she can make one tassle go clockwise and the other anti-clockwise. This talent is worth at least twenty five Santa Cruz dollars stuffed down the garter. She repeats the performance at each packed table before heading for the pole. This girl is going to be rich. When I look at her face I’m surprised that I recognise her. Harvey didn’t stay. ‘I’m getting too old ’ he said and left. After that I went six times alone, paid Trudi fifteen pounds each time to fetch a drink before I dared shout above the music. ‘Remember me?’ ‘Sure darlin’ Came in last week, week before too. Like what you see?’ ‘Can we talk?’ ‘Fifty pounds for privates. Ten minutes. No touching.’ ‘Robert, Colin’s cousin remember? Marty’s friend.’ ‘Still fifty pounds sweetheart.’ She remembered. I paid her fifty pounds and returned the next week. After five weeks she relented and took me home. We had sex. We kept the light on. ‘You sleeping or something?’ she asked me. ‘Or do you prefer men?’ I thrust harder and Trudi clamped her legs around me. ‘Come on Motherfucker’ she said, ‘ride me.’ I almost fell over with surprise. We thrashed around the bedroom, grabbing wildly onto headboards, chairs and carpet. She fought me like a lioness battling for her cubs and then gently she let me down, exhausted, panting, licking. She had a metal stud through her tongue. ‘Drives men wild’ she said, ‘fantastic for ‘O.’ She demonstrated. At 4am she threw me out. ‘Two hundred pounds’ she said, ‘plus fifty for the bruises.’ ‘Yours or mine?’ Gilli was waiting up when I arrived home. ‘Mind your shoes on the carpet’ she said. *** My first ever formal date was with a prostitute. I took orchids and had my hair cut short in the morning. I was twenty five years old. Trudi wore a summer dress, demure and done up at the neck, her supercharged breasts bursting to escape. We lunched on Greek salad and sipped Roederer Brut Premier champagne. It was a Wednesday afternoon in summer. We sat out beside the Tinsley canal and watched the river barges rising and falling through a lock. Afterwards we went ten pin bowling. We talked for four or five hours, my jaw ached from laughing. We made love to the thrills of Def Leppard, ‘Love Bites’, Joe Elliot on vocals while Rick Allen pounded out a one-armed electronic drum rhythm to drive us both to the edge, and over. When you’re alone, do you let go? After that I stayed the night. She didn’t charge. *** 47 Meadow Avenue is a place from my past. I’m lying on the carpet, empty bottle in hand when the door opens. Gillian is back. I am thinking ‘Is there ever such a thing as the victimless crime?’ and all I know is that I have found a way to open my body to the music and let it sing away the dark dreams and the chemical imbalance that is eating me away. From somewhere far away she speaks. ‘The counsellor. Eleven. We’re late!’ The music is still blaring. She moves to turn it down. Going down, going down now
END
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