Boy Friends, page 5
But, to me, he was worth it – the judgement, the ruckus and frays, all written off. He was ruthlessly devoted, my most trusted accomplice – anything I would have asked of Rowley he would have done for me. When I was not in his company, he was constantly championing my poetry and person (mostly in that order) with an amour fou that fortifies me even now. He once called up Daniel after I detailed our estrangement and lambasted him for his deplorable oversight. Far from being embarrassed about this, I felt my honour had been restored and a wrongdoing put right. There was something unconquerable in our dastardliness, something of great value in the amount it cost us to stay together. Nobody else would feel so vulnerable without me and a lack of Rowley made life too miserable to bear.
Rowley was lashing out and punctured by tragedy, his mother having died young after a vicious run with alcoholism. I never got to the bottom of whether she died of physical illness or whether it was suicide. The trauma coated his actions in a salve of forgiveness and made him all the more loveable.
I once brought him to my family’s Christmas gathering (on my mum’s side, less radge) – about twenty of us, BYOB and a buffet of discordant foods and flavours that would have been laughed clean out of the auditions for an M&S advert. Despite the humble set-up, Rowley bounded about the party fully riveted, declaring it his favourite Christmas in living memory. He thanked everyone profusely for the invitation and doled out more hugs and kisses than stolid men might grant in a lifetime. My grandad, a plumber, gifted him a piece of copper piping – cut, filed and polished – for racing up and down the fretboard of a guitar. Full of appreciation, he welled up then rang like a bell. For Rowley, the alternative to this Christmas had been a pot noodle and soaps on a tiny telly – he deserved better.
I always found friends who wanted to love too much, who collided rather than simply met – it fitted what my heart was looking for. This came from a dissatisfaction: that the emotional intensity coursing through the characters in books was barely evident in the most day-to-day acquaintanceship. I wanted to squeeze every note out the day and kept my antennae on for the crackle and flare of broken life forms. I soon found like-minded sorts, literature-worthy.
I’ve written several poems about Rowley and once mapped out an outrageous novel entitled My Upas Tree. Upas is the Javanese word for poison and, it seemed to me in my early twenties, a very clever name for a book about a tragic friendship. The novel waded in the myth of a tree that boasted a nonpareil beauty alongside the ability to produce a juicy poison; the toxins seeping into the soil and fending off its enemies. I’d later discover the title had been used to repletion by the likes of Alexander Pushkin and other literary savants.
Heavy-heartedly, I ran from Rowley down to London – it was becoming too dangerous for my health, for the future writer I wanted to be, for keeping hold of anyone that cared about me. We were supposed to go together. Me engaging in a legal training contract in a huge avaricious corporate firm and him intending to doss about in my fiscal foliage. It wouldn’t have worked for long and I’m lucky to have escaped the compact – a rare moment of restraint amongst the milieux of mischief.
Rowley’s fidelity was coeval with his pride, and so when I didn’t take him to London our communication simply ceased. He had a phone only intermittently – the number perpetually changing – and didn’t use any social media, so it was easy for him to disappear off my radar. We stopped communicating in 2009 and I’ve not seen him since.
Haphazard as it was, my friendship with Rowley remains a testament to how fast and hard you can fall for friends and the unflinching loyalty they can offer. I showed Rowley all my shades of being and he helped me ink things over. I mostly yen for Rowley in a way that doesn’t require satisfaction; it’s enough to know how much we loved, how we bandaged up some wounds together. Although I’ve not had eyes on him, I do have his postal address (not salubrious quarters) and have sent him every book I’ve written. I will continue to do so. He was (and is still) to me a wonderful, mis-wired weirdo of impetuous passions.
From what I garner, his life since I loved him has been hard and full of hurdles; in softer moments I will the world to shove us back together.
——
15 July 2018
Bafflingly, a friend, Janette, is holidaying in County Antrim and arranges to come for an evening visit. Janette and her daughters had been staring up at Curfew just hours before, looking for signs of light, listening for songs. I’m not sure where I was hiding, inside myself perhaps; or, more likely, inside one of our stories. Either way, I’m grateful to have her here now.
Apart from Zippy popping by to check in and keep me abreast of the week’s hurling fixtures, no-one has yet entered this domain. And even he never strays past the entranceway. No-one, not even you, until now. Janette moves around Curfew as if she’s always been here, bringing sparkle to even its darkest corners. She greets the space with such warmth it causes me to take better ownership of it. We drink villainous wine, talk about books and sex, and then drift towards Johnny Joe’s.
If local geography begins with a pub, Johnny Joe’s would be base camp. It is a former coaching inn, a big dwelling house that’s morphed into a bar, complete with roaring fires and a salmagundi of ornaments. The rooms have the quirky architecture of space being used for a purpose for which it wasn’t intended. Its inhabitants are a mix of stoic barflies and tourist visitants, with enough chatty regulars keen to present themselves as local patriots to bridge the gap. On a busy night it is instrument-filled and alive with stories and song. On a quiet night I can stake my claim to a private nook and sequester myself.
I ask for a half-pint of something and Janette returns instead with a pint a piece and shots of sambuca and tequila. This shot selection is a favourite loosener of my friend The Cous and so I guzzle them back with dynamism as if saluting an old friend. It’s a warm sticky night and we talk so bright the stars creep closer to eavesdrop on our juicy bits.
Leaving me in a plume of smiles, cheer and clanking jewellery, Janette departs promptly in order to make her home-time curfew, so as to be back for the kids’ lights out. I return to my Curfew, teeth caked in boozy sugar, and sit in the dark of the dungeon for as long as I can.
——
Just prior to my divorce from Rowley and moving to London, I spent two months in Manchester. There I made a friend called Jake.
Jake carried nicely pointed features and a sinewy frame; drainpipe denims looked boss on him, mod shirts too, his shoulders shapely as a coat hanger. He was tersely labelled a soppy git by some of his hardier friends. Jake, however, had a tongue that flicked flame, an electric edge and energy surging through him, so didn’t get much gyp from those all hot and bothered by his lovely emotions hatching.
In the infancy of our friendship Jake and I, along with two other friends, collectively lived in a flat at Parkers Apartments in north-central Manchester. This was a run-down hotel awaiting renovation and the next surge of gentrification to justify a facelift and a new shiny exterior. I was a short-term resident, Jake was in and out; the two friends had taken the lease longer term. It was a lax arrangement: four of us whisking ourselves into cream in a single-bedroom slot that became a prized home to rival its history as a fast pad for one-night stands.
Jake liked to climb cranes and danced with the stiffened aplomb of a chiselled Manc. This dance astounded me: harsh, jolting movements that remained captivatingly rhythmical – the body loosened yet taut as if being held up by wires inside the flesh and controlled by a joystick from above. Galvanic, both perfectly stable and completely erratic, true to life with Jake.
He seemed particularly heedful of my stories, especially any that resembled parables or involved a moral, and was catalysed by any conversation that led us into fact-finding. I lapped up his sermons vying for betterment, envied his ability to make a friend of anyone within a few choice words. In his company, I felt safe with life’s quickening pace.
Jake and I quickly let each other know that we were smitten for this alliance, that we had connected magnetically and that this felt like the start of a friendship that would heave and clutch us together. We had started a painting together that would move from thin lines by wee brushes to viscous handfuls of paint smeared across canvas, chests bare.
What Jake did one night would arouse a shift in me. He halted the disorder of the after-hours drinking party and built a circle with the seats. The five of us in that loop had spent the night together in impassioned confabs and tomfoolery – oily, sweaty, many smiles unzipped as we pounced around town, sneaking into clubs and private parties, wagering our faith in future glories. Jake wanted to honour the night; the hot spring of emotional juices flowing through him, he wanted us more deeply together. He explained that he’d love it if we could each go round the circle and profess one great thing about every human in it. Something special, a gift just for them. We all committed with varying degrees of emotional depth, given the freshness of some relationships compared to the mature oak of others. But we did commit and each of us remembered this ritual like we’d engaged in a séance.
Jake would sometimes interrupt conversations to let the group know a recent good deed one of us had done that he was either recipient of or witness to. He took time to credit friends and express his admiration. He would often do this softly and subtly and other times boldly and brashly with braggart brio. It could embarrass people or take them out of their comfort zone, but it mostly sweetly pleased. I was agog a couple of times at folk’s humbled reactions. Especially in what would be considered rowdier social settings in tired old boozers, where the company was caught between runs to the bookies or drug deals in plain sight.
At first a little in awe of his methods, I was but a casual observer. I soon found myself a devoted convert. I began by feeding back to Jake the love-filled approbation he was dishing out so freely to others. Then took to spreading the seed further, with and without Jake in tow.
Jake taught me to pay homage to my friends regardless of the company and was a source of vitality and righteousness within the realms of friendship.
Every time I finish an excellent book, I announce a list of reasons why it was memorable. I wouldn’t want it thinking that I thought it an arsehole or, worse, that I was incurious about it. This method of celebrating the greatness around me I apply to all my friendships. This is something Jake instilled in me: acknowledge important chapters, the beginnings and the endings. For Jake’s genius, I’m forever grateful.
It was also Jake who first offered and advocated heroin to me, taught me the ropes – how to smoke it and how much to use.
Heroin crept slowly into my life in a very social way but never became all-consuming. First it was something that would happen occasionally after parties in Manchester and London. Something that was smoked on tin foil through silver pipes, or sprinkled into roll-ups. It evolved into needles with relative ease and was nearly always administered by and with Jake.
I’m a tad reticent giving this period its spotlight, as I was still working full time, kept myself upright and financially stable. It’s not the Trainspotting story, that’s for sure. Although some of the folk I came into contact with were living that, I was not. All the same, it wasn’t without some deadliness.
I caused a few throbbing pains in delicate organs, vomited a little more than I should have for one so young and lithe, and had a bad attendance record at work. Jake once put air into my lungs to pull the peach and pink back into me after my breathing slowed and blue and green started seeping over the flatline of my cheeks. Whether this was a veritable overdose or not, I’m unsure. I wholeheartedly believe Jake stopped me from having a more definite answer to that question.
There was a very short period of time where my heroin usage was becoming more regular, whilst still based around Jake’s presence. When I found myself injecting without Jake, I realised my pupillage was complete and it was likely time to take umbrage. That’s to say, delete any numbers I had for accessing brown and keep away from Soho slingers. Jake going missing in action – locked down by family and friends for his own safety – and his visitations becoming less frequent, certainly oiled the wheels of this transition.
Jake’s quarantine was because he was getting lost in the wind; he overcommitted and had several overdoses. One involving some time in a coma and severe social estrangement. He would later be labelled Junky Jake and ostracised from a familiar friendship group – by their and his own volition.
About the most ashamed I’ve ever been is coming up to visit Jake, fresh from the clutches of his coma. Ashamed not because of his disposition, but because of our wholesome Sunday lunch descending into a heroin-smoking session in a public park. A park by Manchester University rife with picnicking students. I was his afternoon custodian and, though persuasive, those that loved him thought better of my duty of care. This episode made for a particularly bitter encounter on account of having to purchase the product off an acquaintance of his that had just lost his son in a devastating fishing accident. Jake’s acquaintance being dependent on our score to fund his own relapse worsened matters further still. Dependent on me overpaying and tipping him for his trouble in coming to us to deliver – a much mooted element of low-level drug transactions.
I left Manchester for London on the train four hours later than anticipated, tasting of cheap orange cheese from the sandwiches I had vomited up. Plagued by flashes of the acquaintance’s globular nose, peppered in blackheads the size of pinheads, sinking into his grief.
——
16 July 2018
The next day Janette returns with her kids for a tour of Curfew.
As these sort of lookout towers have become outdated compared to the skyscrapers and radio masts that commonly populate horizons, it’s enthralling to see the youth so enchanted by Curfew. As soon as they’re inside, they’re wrapped up in the mystery of it and instantly more receptive to legend and folklore. The same goes with me and the books and movies I consume here – they’re Curfew-enhanced. Just like my ability to pay vigil to your memory, these watchful old bricks bolster every element of my cognitive deep-dive.
Curfew enables me to write about reality as if a form of fiction; helps foment, and muddy, the life-and-page separation. I suggest to the kids that it’s the age gap between Curfew and me that keeps me on my best behaviour – Curfew flaunting its life-guru status over my tyro ranking. We must all respect our elders, I tell them, whilst only half believing it – them respecting their mum; me respecting Curfew; Curfew respecting the Lurigethan Mountain; the Lurigethan Mountain respecting the Irish Sea; and so on.
What I don’t tell them is that, really, it’s the looming presence of Curfew’s dungeon that keeps me on my best behaviour. Drawing the noise out of its stilling, stifling air is all part of the janitorial shift.
What I also don’t tell them is that when I get jittery edging past Curfew’s dungeon, I think of you. I think if something spooky comes out of there and meddles with me then I’ve confirmation of the supernatural. In the confirmation of the supernatural is the probability of an afterlife. And in the probability of an afterlife is the possibility of parallel universes – domains more utopian, abstruse and vast than this one. With that in mind, some spooky cunt appearing from a dungeon to meddle with a visiting poet suddenly becomes something pretty phenomenal.
Despite all this, I still carry a glass bottle for protection, knowing fine well I cannae glass a ghost. What I can do is be brave enough to endure it and reach back; open the door, let the ghosts in.
Janette and her pups truck off suitably amused and it feels only right to see myself out alongside them. I take the steep hill to the left, up Ballybrack Road, rather than follow the natural pull of cliff and coast.
——
It was London in 2007, and there was me and Ted and Rodriguez in my flat on Hibernia Street. Ted, too, bided at this address whilst completing a PhD at UCL in chemistry. He had gained a first-class Master’s degree from Durham – where we’d met – and would later complete post-doctoral research at Harvard. But his time in the Big Smoke collided with mine and so we bunked in together – the stint, for him, comparable to flying a blimp through a meteor storm.
The Rodriguez I refer to here is not Sixto Rodriguez – the singer thought dead from the 2012 Oscar-winning documentary film Searching for Sugar Man. Although I have reason to believe that until the film came out and foiled his charade, this Rodriguez may well have been posing as him. Unlike Sixto, he had not been working in Detroit factories spreading political liberalism nor was he of Mexican descent. He was in fact a Brazilian crack cocaine and heroin dealer mostly found in the Soho area of London during the ghosting hours. Akin to Sixto, he had the music in him.
Rodriguez had fled Brazil, undercover and with calumny close at hand; from Brasília to London on a passport he claimed to have acquired from a leather maker. The fairest dealer in Soho, Rodriguez would get a good price in a timely fashion. A gentleman amongst the rowdy hordes who’d stung me and my cadre on numerous occasions.
He had committed a Série A crime in Brazil and packed a tragic backstory to match it – one with which you’d sympathise yet caveat. You’d say, ‘That’s the sort of crime I wouldn’t be ashamed of committing for someone I loved.’ You’d say, ‘Good on him’ to your buddies but ‘That man went too far’ to a lover. You might consider, at night in bed, whether you too would carry out these criminal actions but would find it hard to reach a conclusion. Me too. It’s safe to say, Rodriguez’s actions surpassed the type of self-administered justice a reasonable citizen would employ.
