Marcus

I remember the first time I got talking to Marcus. It was just as everyone started to have skinheads. Most of us went to the cheapest barbers, Polish Joe's, bragging about getting a forbidden number one and coming out with a number four after bottling out when the time came to sit in the chair. Just that little bit more acceptably longer to explain away at home. That was my excuse anyway. I don't think Marcus had that kind of bother. He did his himself with an orange and white Bic razor. I saw it when he turned up to school that Monday at the same time as a still-keen teacher did. Unlike the teacher, I never asked him if he'd had it done for health reasons. He hadn't, but said he had to avoid any further enquiries. They weren't bothered about nits, just keeping everyone on the straight and narrow. I thought he'd handled it really well, thinking he probably did have nits having been past his house.

His head was like sandpaper after a few days and about a week later he stopped looking like he was terminally ill. It still stood out a mile being so white and he got shooed off by the smokers who reckoned he was drawing attention to them. I walked off with him, not having any fags, and he told me he'd been going to Rebeccas, the less rough local nightclub, getting in by borrowing his brothers ID. I thought he was bullshitting, but after half an hour of his describing just how classy and fantastic it was, down to the colour of the wallpaper in the toilets, I pretended I believed him, just to shut him up. Then he put me on the spot. Asking if I wanted to come along on Saturday, before adding with an overdone casualness he was meeting some girl from the previous week. I had to say yes, because, I found out years later, of peer pressure.

I'd never been to a nightclub, just seen the queues on my way home from the late show of Star Wars or Rocky. I'd been impressed and had never stopped bragging when I got served in a few back street pubs, but was convinced that was because of the ratty moustache I'd spent months almost growing. And I didn't have that any more. Or the time to grow it again. It was Thursday. Two more nights of normal sleep then we'd be up so much later. And in a nightclub doing who knows what. Probably pulling all the birds if I'd kept the moustache.

I'd said I was staying at Marcus's house to my mum and she had the good grace to ignore the sound of me trying on all the clothes I had for over an hour before I left. It wasn't that I had many, just that I couldn't decide what people wore in nightclubs. I reckoned suits, but didn't have that option. I'd been warned it wasn't jeans or trainers so the usual Lois and Gazelle would stay under the bed. I ended up with a purple Ben Sherman, some Farahs and with no other options, my school shoes which were, fortunately, Loafers.

I was so excited to be properly going out on a Saturday, I didn't notice anything about Marcus's house at first. Then I noticed there wasn't anything in Marcus's house. In his room was just a bed, the few clothes he had folded neatly on the floorboards, which were dark brown and had tufts of carpet dotted about on the grippers round the edge. When I went to have a piss there was nothing more than the toilet, bath and sink except a half full bottle of red shampoo and a sad toothbrush lying on the sink.

I reckon he was embarrassed, but knew he couldn't do anything about it. He'd grown up with this and had long ago stopped being too ashamed to bring friends round. There was only one ornament in the house. The whisky bottle that permanently sat in the front room, occupying a spot reachable from the couch his mum and dad lived on. They'd long-ago stopped noticing their surroundings. And they didn't sell paint or decorating stuff at KwikSave, the drinkers choice of retail outlet. A cheap off-licence that thought stocking a few tins of beans made it a supermarket. No one ever bought the beans, just the own-label spirits. I'd only been in a few times trying to get served and noticed how silent it was with the focused rush to get the days medicine bought and back home before the shakes set in. Everyone I saw at the tills paid with loose change.

We had nearly 20 quid each to go to the club with. Him from his milk round and me from working at a shop selling wheelchairs. I say working but mean wanking. There wasn't a lot of walk up trade to keep me busy. Maybe I'd meet someone at the club tonight and get to try the real thing. The endless possibilities of what lay ahead were making me dizzy. That and the whisky he'd siphoned off into a half-pint glass from the display downstairs. He told me he had to sit through the Generation Game to make sure he was there when they opened a new bottle. It even started to sound funny when he said they started arguing about who needed to slow down when they noticed how quick their last bottle was running out. He sneaked out while they were still tutting at each other, the glass hidden behind a folded newspaper.

The whisky got us braver and braver. So brave, we stopped fearing what we might see in the mirror. With every glance we looked better and better. The gulps in between probably helped. This went on and on like it was looped. Finally tumbling down the stairs, it was a nearly a draw in the 'who sounded most pissed when saying goodbye' competition. His mum and dad edged it though.

The bus was full of people heading in the same direction in similar states. Like a magnet was drawing us there. To the shopping centre of our universe. But with regular stops to let more people on. Who I became convinced were giving me the eye, 'cos I was a real man on my way to a club.

There was already a queue outside. It sobered us up standing in it and grew faster behind us than it moved forward in front of us. The entrance, with a bouncer either side, was 10 feet away. About 12 people. Not about, I counted them enough times to know. Two impossibly glamorous girls went in, giggling at the bouncers, so it was now 10 people. The next four went in as a group, closely followed by a grey couple who didn't giggle or even look like they knew how to. It took ages for the next lot to go in. Then the final two ahead of us slipped through into the promised land. We could now see down into heaven. It was just past the cash till and ours for the taking.

The bouncer turned to us, 'Couples only tonight lads'.

It took ages to walk home.