Welcome to my world

I woke up today, as you do, and immediately remembered my last thought before going to sleep last night. If I told you what it was, you’d think I was coocoocobana.
Only empathy heals, and I wouldn’t wish empathy with me upon my worst enemy (a lie), so I’m going to tell you anyway.
‘What if I don’t wake up?’ had been my last conscious thought. ‘What if they’d spiked my squash at the forum for saying that the YMCA serves food only fit for cancer research, that their Christian beliefs were a cover-up to feed their corporate backers, who suck £209.48 a week from housing benefit (plus £23.25 from our weekly Jobseekers’ Allowance of £62.22 for ‘food’, heating and hot water) as rent for seven square metres of peace from the knockout world?’
£1000 a month to rot in hell? I have a whole death-time to do that.
If they intentionally make it so bleak as to encourage our escape, they’re doing a damn good job.
So I got up, pinching myself with joy, and went down for my ‘breakfast’.
On the way back to my room, I bumped into Carol, a friendly face, who was standing outside a door two down from mine.
‘Have you got a roll-up?’ she asked, hands shaking and lips quivering from her daily DTs.
People here seem to have an uncanny knack of asking me for roll-ups when I’m skint and about to run out, but she’s a nice girl. Her heart’s in the right place.
I take her to my room to roll one up together.
‘D’you know where he is, the guy in that room? I’m sure he’s in there,’ she said, clearly worried.
‘I don’t know who you mean,’ I said.
I don’t know anyone’s room numbers; a pact with myself not to get chummy for fear of being ripped off or sucked in too deep to get out.
‘The black guy,’ she said. ‘He got beaten up bad at a bus stop the other day and now he won’t answer his door. I’m sure that’s his room.’
‘What? How bad d’he get it?’
‘Baaaddd,’ she said. ‘Took his wallet, mobile and Christ, you shoulda seen him when he came back from A+E.’ Her eyes were on fire. ‘He had this big plastic bag over the back of his head, eyes like Rocky’s, and they’d done his legs, too.’
‘Shit,’ I said, wondering when it would be my turn.
That’s what ‘ordinary’ people do around here; find someone to take away the horror of their lives by taking them an inch from death and all they’re worth.
I tried to get her to remember his name but she couldn’t.
‘He’s about our age. We sat together once for dinner. Don’t you remember?’
I shook my head. The canteen’s a place to queue, eat and leave with as much dignity as is humanly possible.
Just then, I got a call. It was Alan, a tramp I’d met on the hill. I was trying to convince him to get a room here, just for a while. (He’d been hounded by police during school-runs and football thugs eyed him nastily at night. He looked scared, reaching out. I could see he was a strong man, defiant, steadfast in his beliefs, but he wasn’t stupid. They could have him if they’d drunk or snorted enough.)
Carol left with the unlit roll-up. ‘I’ll ask reception.’
‘They won’t know. They don’t give two shits.’
I was right. When I went to reception to make enquiries, the lady knew nothing.
‘Try the support office.’
So I marched there.
‘If he’s not supported, he’s..’
What? On his own? Not your problem? Just another plywood headstone? You heathen little bitch!
The beds are encased in plastic for all types of liquid. It had happened before and would happen again, and again, and again. Nobody really cared. Boxes needed ticking and rooms needed filling. Shareholders needed dividends and staff needed paying. Basta. End of.
Under the dirty, corrupt cloak of Christianity, bodies floated upwards without a whimper. Finally, they would be free.
The ambulance would take him away and the cleaners would be left to mop up the blood and suck up the rest on the carpet with a Vax.
No new bed required, and the sheets would be sure to survive on a hot wash. Maybe they’d need a fiver for a new duvet. Big bloody deal.
Alan had hung up before I could answer, probably out of credit, so I called him back, hoping he’d come with me to the council to be referred for a room.
‘You still got those euros?’ he asked, knowing how skint I was. I’d tried all the banks and travel agents but they didn’t take coins unless they came from a returning customer who’d already been had.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Why, you going to France, you old gallavanter?’
‘Maybe. I thought you might be skint still.’
‘Ah, mate,’ I said, gulping. ‘Is that why you’re calling?’
I love being loved.
‘I’m a good man, I am,’ he said. ‘Just don’t tell anyone.’
I had a dentist’s appointment at 10.30, so we arranged to meet at Ladbrokes, where he’d engineered a deal to use the loo to wash and shave (hardly a coup de grace, considering the amount of money he flushed away there), at 9.30.
As I was about to swoop as anonymously as possible into the bookies, I saw the mother of my children walking towards me.
She crossed the road when she clocked me and I walked on past the bookies. I didn’t want her telling the children that I was a good-for-nothing hobo-loser, throwing their money away.
I stopped and then walked back towards Ladbrokes, but spotted her watching me from the fruit and veg stall by the pub. When our eyes met, she walked off to gain a better vantage point. As luck would have it, a lorry blocked any hidden viewpoint, so I whipped into the bookies.
There was Alan, sat with his Racing Post and ballpoint, shaven and washed.
‘You look almost human, mate,’ I said.
He laughed.
Being too early, even for South African race-meetings, we watched some virtual racing and chewed the fat for a while.
He wouldn’t be coming to the Y. He’d staked the place out the night before and seen a bunch of spitters scrounging fags, wolf-whistling at girls and ridiculing anyone they thought looked remotely happy.
‘They’re a bunch of twats, that lot. I’m not stopping there. No way,’ he said, biting an ulcer on the inside of his mouth and sucking away the pus with his tongue.
‘Don’t blame you, mate,’ I said, relaying Carol’s story to cement his decision for him.
I had twelve euros, all in bits, and asked for nine quid in exchange, which he gave me in ones.
He begs at pubs in Soho and gladly accepts euros, but not dollars. We have a lot in common politically.
I noticed that his breath didn’t smell of stale booze for once, and wondered if he’s started making resolutions.
Yesterday, when I’d traded four euros for three quid so I could buy a sandwich, he’d offered me a box of Chianti that he’d nicked from Sainsbury’s and hidden behind a dumpster in the grounds of a church, but I’d declined.
Maybe it was rubbing off.
At 9.45, I ducked into the library to write to Julie Gregory, the incredible author of ‘Sickened’, which is all about the abuse she suffered at the hands of her heinous mother, a ‘sufferer’ of Munchausen by proxy. I thought that I’d seen through the ‘illness’ and understood the true origins of her mother’s ‘disease’. I wanted to explain it to Julie. If I was wrong, I was wrong. I didn’t care.
I get these urges; wanting to make sense of someone’s traumatic experience in order to heal it. Only empathy, or an overwhelming desire to help, heals. It’s a gift and I’m going to use it till the day I die, so help me.
I went to the dentist and called my lawyer on the way. The court case with my ex is in three weeks.
‘Do you want some anaesthetic?’ he asked.
‘Will it hurt?’ I asked.
‘No, but it’ll zing for twenty seconds.’
‘No drilling?’ I asked. ‘It’s the drilling I can’t stand.’
‘No. There’s no drilling,’ he said, smiling down at me.
I was having a silly little filling replaced.
‘Bloody Marathon Man did it for me.’
‘He didn’t have anaesthetic.’
‘No anaesthetic, then, please.’
I suddenly remembered back to when I’d left treatment, clean and sober, some twelve years ago, and had my wisdom teeth out.
Being clean, I had no fear. It was a breeze. I had my little earphones on and listened to the Manics’ ‘If you tolerate this’ as the huge boulders were plucked out from my gums (under anaesthetic, of course).
I’d never have done it if I’d been on the sauce. I’d have missed the appointment and they’d still be there now.
Back then, in that dentist’s chair, I’d wept tears of joy, realising for the first time how desperately I wanted to have children, to give my life real meaning and purpose.
My wish was granted a year or so later.
As I sat in the dentist’s chair and dwelt in peaceful thought, I felt no zing. Nothing.
I think I’d best go to that AA meeting tonight.