Extracts

August 1998. Strange and deadly ruminations? An odd and dangerous
history, or psychic combat with an old and well loved friend? Decline
and fall: Staring at the Abyss? "We are the dead"? Timeless loathing on
the fringes of affluence? The long road home?

William S. Burroughs lived his entire literary career with the idea
that writing is dangerous. Dangerous not to the reader but to the
writer. If the writer is truthful and honest, unshirking and prepared
to take his art to the furthest possible point then that life will take
on properties of actual physical danger that will threaten the writer
in a real and actual sense. Burroughs believed that the actual true
moment of honesty could destroy the world. "The naked lunch is the
moment where every person sees what's on the end of every fork."

It's for that reason that I've never tried to fully talk about what
happened to Mam. I've made a few starts at trying to write it but have
had to abort them after about a page. These feelings are physically
dangerous to me. They have promoted various illnesses over the past
year and still have the power to stop me dead even now. I am aware of
them inside of me all of the time, like some strange parasite. I
realise that this sounds melodramatic, but these feelings feel like
something separate. I've closed them off, shut them out until they've
taken on a life of their own. They exist independently of me. It is
possible for me to feel happy and contented with these feelings
maintaining a presence of their own within me. The best way to describe
it is like John Cale's viola on 'The Black Angel's Death Song' by The
Velvets. The viola rises and falls on its own behind Sterling
Morrison's guitar, Lou's vocals and guitar and Mo Tucker's drum. It is
not the tune, it is not the song but it is the backdrop against which
the tune is set. It is the feeling of that drone, seasick and queasy
and out of control, that shapes the song. To me it is like these
feelings have underpinned all that has happened to me in the last year
and three-quarters? I cannot think of one occurrence where these
feelings have not followed me like a darkness.

You know the feeling that you get when, from some vantage point, you
can see the rain falling from the clouds onto some distant point while
the place that you are basks in the last gasp of sunlight? The feeling
of encroaching blackness, the knowledge that your safe place will soon
be over-run by some threatening and undermining force? Tonight I sat
writing this as the full moon became clear in a purple sky, dragonflies
and bats cutting through the cooling air. I could feel the grass with
the soles of my bare feet. Those times felt like the last wisps of some
hideous and tiring nightmare, the kind you wake from and remember
nothing but the underlying emotion. All of the above feels like
pretentious shite. I'M NOT BEING HONEST ENOUGH. All I'm doing is
talking around what I feel, wreathing it in heroic words and tired
allusions. It's not what I really feel. I'm trying desperately to
protect myself, to shield and distance myself from what the thing
really is. I'm trying to write myself away from it, to turn it into
some great literary adventure, to produce the things inside me that
will give it greater meaning. I MUST BE MORE HONEST, EVEN IF IT BRINGS
ME CLOSE TO DEATH?

 "An experience most deeply felt is the most difficult to
convey in words. Remembering brings the emptiness, the acutely painful
awareness of irreparable loss. From my window, I can see the marble
slab over Ruski's grave? Ruski, my first and always special cat, a
Russian blue from the woods of East Kansas. Every time I see the grave,
I get that empty feeling where something was, and isn't anymore, and
will never be again." (WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: "MY EDUCATION: A BOOK OF
DREAMS)

A different vein now. The sky is darkening. I feel weak and tired
and displaced. This will never be easy to write. In your letter, you
said that we've never talked about what happened to Mam. I think for me
it's because I haven't had time to think it over, or, more accurately,
I've tried not to think it over. I haven't been in a position where I
could let that pain out, it's felt like even a slight opening would let
it all spill out, rushing across the floor, flooding the building,
drowning the world. I can and do talk about it but different bits to
different people at different times. Even then, I can feel the pressure
behind my eyeballs like it'll all burst out. It's like you don't want
to give other people your pain or, correctly, you feel the weight that
you are carrying will crush them so, so easily because they think that
they're ready and strong enough but they're not. It's horrible because
you know that there is nothing that they can do, and that the more they
want to help, the worse they will feel. It's like you're behind a glass
wall and they can watch you suffer but the more they try to break the
wall on their terms, the less they help you. My experience will be very
different from yours. I've never asked what it was like for you because
I didn't feel I could tell you what it was like for me. I'm sorry. It
felt like we needed each other to remain ourselves, not lose that
essence that has made us ourselves. That's why we went and bought
videos, watched films. That's why some of the things that I brought
back to Newcastle were albums to listen to. I know that for myself I
had to establish that we, you and me, were still alive and always would
be so. I remember half way through my A'levels Neives Soria's mother
died in similar circumstances and that I sat in Psychology lessons that
lasted an eternity, watching the light in her eyes go out. It was like
the essential essence that made her alive, that energy that produced
who she was, was slowly winking out. Eventually it seemed that it was
her who had died as well. At the point of her mother's death the person
she had been, the Nieves Soria that irritated the fuck out of me, who's
face I cannot even remember now, who I found intimidating and was
probably jealous of, disappeared. I think we both knew that must not
happen to us. It might have seemed that I didn't give a fuck, but I
needed to survive it all. I think we've both managed it. I don't know
what you know or don't know. It's possible that I've just invented it
or misremembered it but this is the way the film plays across the
screen in the darkened cinema in my head.

A FICTIONAL ACCOUNT OF HOW IT FEELS NOW? I'VE NEVER PROPERLY
CRIED.

"I go into a full cupboard looking for a half read book. Opening the
door a pile of books falls forward and hits me on the head and body,
spilling out around my feet. As I bend down to pick them up I begin to
cry uncontrollably. For the first time in months I think about my
mother. It's close to a year since I received a phonecall at six in the
morning on a cold Oxford dawn telling me she had slipped in to a coma
at two in the morning. I feel the empty pain inside and want to die
too. I sit down and light a cigarette. A phone-in on the radio starts
talking about cancer. I cry even harder, water from my nose wetting the
filter in the cigarette as I breathe it in. I want to shriek and scream
and throw myself on the floor, anything to get it all out. I can't. The
pain is always there. Over the months I've tried to outrun it, to drug
it into silence, to stifle it with noise, to shame it with silence. It
remains like a deep void in my lungs, just a second away. Sometimes I
feel that I am only a shell around it. My mother became a shell around
her cancer, just flesh covering the thing that was inside of her. She
was like an egg with a giant worm at the centre. I remember my faith
that she would get better, that we would be able to laugh about it when
I was starting to go grey and lose my hair. I got a phonecall two days
before she died telling me they had drained two litres of fluid from
her lungs. I didn't even think about it." (THIS IS ME AROUND APRIL
1998. I WAS UNEMPLOYED, SACKED FROM THE OLD PEOPLE'S HOME AND ALMOST
STARVING)

This is sort of how it feels now, but you and I know that it changes
from day to day. I've just had the strangest week after mine and
Carolyn's trip to the hallowed hills of Cumbria. I had to take Monday
off work. It was strange but I was looking forward to seeing you but at
the same time dreading it. Standing at the station at Penrith in the
dark I had butterflies in my stomach. The thing was that I wasn't sure
how I would react. It's a horrible feeling to be unsure of the only
thing you possess, that is, your mind and your feelings.

Standing at the entrance to the station, I made futile jokes and
comments watching the cars and taxis go by in the purple night. Inside
I felt a heavy fear pushing down on me. What will it feel like? How can
I use all of the things I've learned and felt over the last year to
carry me through this time? The thing that brought it home to me was
our walk on Sunday afternoon. Carolyn and I walked to the top of Keldas
. A bunch of tired flowers lay on the very top. Dad asked Carolyn if
they were still there, not me. We cannot bear to talk about it, even
now. Dad talks in tired platitudes like he's following a script. You
shine like a star around everything but that subject and I sink into
the most hideous self-pity and anger.

None of us can actually sit down and talk about the fact that FREDA
BROWN IS DEAD.

For me it all starts when Vicky leaves for London. I remember
getting the earliest train to Durham from Newcastle so that her parents
wouldn't know that I accompanied her down. Some fuck up left me sitting
at Durham station knowing I would miss the train she was on. I rang her
at home and her dad came and picked me up and drove at breakneck pace
back to the central station. I remember sitting on the train trying to
joke and smile but I couldn't. We arrived at King's Cross and she went
hurrying off down the platform dragging her suitcase behind her. We
queued for a cab, both sobbing with the empty in our chests. The cab
driver was black and smiley with dread right down his back. Traffic
roared past in what seemed like impossible amounts. The city crushed in
around us. People spoke in foreign languages and drunks sang next to
the phoneboxes, a Big Issue seller chatting with the man on the
newspaper kiosk. We hugged, kissing with bitter salty lips. The cab
driver weaved off with a smile and a happy comment and was soon lost in
the traffic. I'm alone. Suddenly my life had lost all shape. Time
passes in a cavalcade of Dole offices; evening walks in the shadowy
grounds of the hospital, lonely days with Richard and Judy, desperate
phonecalls to London trying to get some commitment, aching hours of
loneliness?

EXTRACT FROM A HOPELESS FILM SCRIPT? SCENE I: MONTAGE The titles
appear in bold type over a montage of MARK. Variously MARK is seen:
trying on second hand clothes, reading in a candlelit room, standing in
a pub coke in hand, typing at an electric typewriter, standing in a
phonebox, signing on, listening to records, playing Nintendo, buying
second-hand records, browsing in bookshops, crying in his bedroom. He
is ALWAYS alone." (WRITTEN AROUND MAY/JUNE AT WORK, TRYING TO FORGE
SOME SORT OF GLORY FROM MY LIFE. NEVER GOT ANY FURTHER THAN A FEW
SCENES)

Everything that I thought I was then fell apart. It was during that
time that I picked up all of the habits that I have today. I was alone
for endless afternoons as the leaves turned orange and brown, blowing
down the familiar streets. I made the most ridiculous fool of myself on
so many occasions during that time. I remember standing in phoneboxes
at night as cars passed through the orange night, crying down the line
to the only person who I thought could save me. I remember forcing
myself on busy teachers trying to maintain a relationship that had
never existed. I remember hanging around Reggae/Dub nights, hunched
over a Coke at the indifferent bar, walking home crying in the cold
air. It was this time where I made two breakthroughs, the first the
realisation that I really owned no properly 'adult' books, the second
that I must write. I suppose

I was trying to invent myself. I'd used Vicky to make myself feel
special and magical, and with her gone, I felt I was nothing. In a way,
she had been my life and she had carried my dreams with her to London.
I had no friends, I had no direction. All I had was time, more time
than I had ever had. Those early days alone took the shape of awakening
late, reading or watching TV then going for a walk in the last gasp of
Summer. I didn't know what to do to be whole. I was half a person. So,
I started trying to mythologise what I was doing. I wasn't simply doing
nothing. I was a writer. You know all of this, you saw it. I was
desperately clutching at straw, trying not to be normal. At this time I
still thought me and Vicky would eventually be together. I believed. A
few trips down up to Newcastle and a few trips down there, big
adventures for the kid who'd never been anywhere kept that alive. I
dreamed that Vicky was lying in her room crying for me every night. I
thought she was scared and alone in London just wishing for me to be
near her?

When I look at these words and these feelings I feel my face flush
with embarrassment and my eyes begin to feel tired and salty. It is
like reading someone else's thoughts, not mine. These are the thoughts
of a different me, one growing weaker and more indistinct, fading and
wavering, losing colour as it drifts away in time. I know these
thoughts are me and will always be so. During that time I rang Vicky
every night, going to a phonebox so that I wouldn't run up a big
bill.

Initially I felt a warm glow stretching out across the humming
phoneline. We were both alone. We were both lonely. We both loved each
other. Then, as the weather cooled so did the glow, love was flickering
out. More and more things began to encroach into our conversation.
Vicky was going out to places I had only heard of in songs. She was
getting drunk. She was meeting people. She was doing drugs. One day,
sitting on the floor of Mam and Dad's room picking out strands of wool
from the carpet I said "I love you" and she said she didn't know. She
said don't ring for a week and let me decide. She decided she didn't. I
was in Newcastle and she was in London. She needed to live. I've
written these words and it's like I'm back there -

"?My past is like a poisoned river from which one was fortunate to
escape, and by which one feels immediately threatened, years after the
events recorded. -Painful to the extent I find it difficult to read,
let alone write about. Every word and gesture sets the teeth on edge?"
(WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS: INTRODUCTION TO "QUEER")

Typing this makes me want to lie down curled into a ball and sob my
heart out. I have to write through that, to achieve what I said it
would. All of this may seem irrelevant. I haven't even talked about Mam
yet. What I'm trying to do is give you a picture of me at the time it
all happened so that you can judge what happened to ME. It is
impossible for me to detach what happened to Mam from the rest of my
life, and to understand what comes after, you have to understand what
came before. To understand how I felt you have to understand how I was.
(I opened "Queer" and two of Vicky's train tickets fell out. Newcastle
to Brockley. I lent Vicky "Queer" just after she moved to London?)

AUGUST 1998. The woman in the newsagent looked tired and bored. I
remember the greeny-blue rings under eyes and the way she inclined her
head as she took the money, weighing the sweets on one of those old
scales with a chrome basket and a big hand that swung across a white
dial. Outside of the dim interior with its pornographic magazines and
teenage bibles, the air was crisp and sharp. Buses and cars lisped by
on tarmac still grey from winter grittings. The sun stung my eyes as I
lit a cigarette. I was nineteen, a head full of ideas curtailed by an
unassailable reality. My mother had cancer. Flat, blank, unchangeable.
Flash forward to a phonecall in the hallway of a house in Oxford,
window looking out onto men playing cricket in balmy summer air, the
smell of grass and trees. Static crackles in my ear. I lit a fag then,
head slightly woozy from an afternoons drinking. My Dad said, "Your
mother's gone into hospital."

"Right"

"They've drained a litre and a half of fluid from her lungs. You
know how she was scared to lie down to go to sleep? Well she was
drowning in her own fluid."

Drowning.

"We'll keep you informed of what's happening. I'm just going to go
back up there."

I flick ash into the small crystal ashtray next to the phone.
Drowning. She's drowning. "She said she had a dream about you. She was
in bed and she woke up and you were beside her in bed." "Yeah?" "She's
gonna be alright." "Yeah?" "She is." "Yeah." I feel nothing. I put the
phone down and finish my cigarette, blowing smoke into the air,
watching bees weave lazily over the dandelions and daisies in the
garden outside. Looking back. It's indistinct, like a story that
happened to a friend of a friend, action but no detail. I remember the
tiny click of the phone on the cradle. I remember a small faded patch
on the carpet the size of a fifty pence piece but nothing unifies these
images. I walked back to my room after that. Michael is lying on the
sofa bed reading an old magazine. The floor is strewn with papers. A
fridge hums rudely in the corner. The light is warm and fuzzy falling
through the bay windows. In three hours time we will be eating chips
and drinking beer sitting on the stone wall of a church as the evening
begins. Two hours after that I will cut my mouth on a cheap bottle of
lager when I knock the cap off on a wall. Six months prior I am in
Newcastle with a bag of sweets in front of a newsagent, smoking a
cigarette in the harsh, hard winter light. My mother had been diagnosed
with cancer just after Christmas 1996. I remember that Christmas in
shades of grey. There was a kind of tenseness that seemed to constrict
everyone. It was the first Christmas in two years that I'd been without
my girlfriend. She'd moved to London and we'd split up. She'd slept
with someone else called Mark who ran hustles on empty, vacant ground
in Greenwich, charging motorists to park there. She'd rang up a few
times when she was tripping and couldn't come down, asking what would
make it stop. I didn't know. It's funny. When it came to just before my
birthday in October I would say on the phone that I loved her and she
wouldn't answer. She said that she couldn't answer if she didn't know
if she did. She told me not to ring for a week to give her time. She
was living in Lewisham. The sound of the thrumming on the line still
deafens me. I would go to phoneboxes and ring her. One night a group of
kids put the windows through, little diamonds of glass falling all over
me. It didn't make any difference. I have no feelings? These days on
these misty evenings I cannot even talk to the people I love? I am
merely an actor in a B movie acting the role of me? What can I do to be
closer to the me I am sure I am? Christmas 1996 and my mother and I are
arguing over the Queen's speech. I said that I couldn't see the
validity of the Queen's opinion over anyone else's. "I reckon they
should let the person or people who win the lottery jackpot become the
royal family until the next people win the jackpot." (Half crackers
with plastic toys lie between wineglasses and streamers and plates
smeared with gravy.) "But it's the Queen and she's the monarch of this
country. She's an institution." "I reckon she should be in an
institution." "How could you say that?"