Protest Names

She propelled me for years. Anger. Gave me purpose. In my perception of a cold unforgiving world where I lay exposed, anger was the warm bubble of belonging I could always rely on. I knew her. And she knew me. My hard-wired other. We belonged. We were made for each other. This new sister I did discover.

As the idiot. As the perpetual victim. When the fog of shame descended. And I mean real shame. The kind you can smell. The kind that declares itself as fact. Queue-jumper. Like grief. "I'm here and you will deal with me now." I had this one beautiful retreat.

Secret as dens. Resilient as beggars. Continuous as the Byker Wall.

With her I was whole. I made sense. All of my instincts aligned. Everything was happening. Everything was illuminated. This is true purpose and meaning and value. Never trash anger if she hasn't really held you. As logic goes, you only get it if you got it.

You're too young. I get it. But when I was, like, your son's age now, there used to be this advert on TV. For breakfast cereal. Ready Brek. And on cold suburban streets children were running around in a sheen of orange. A blanketed glow. You know. A metaphoric warmth. Like psychological but actual. Protection and all.

Anger as home. Pop-up. You get creative when the one made of bricks is unsafe.

I know: pathos. The vanilla staple of bad poets. What do you want, Milton?

...

Later, as an adult, I would learn a substitute cereal, that too many adults got a hold of. And never enough.

There was no bottom. There was never an off switch. There can't be an off switch when you've always been on. It would defy the definition of itself. And just because you never knew this didn't make it untrue. Doesn't make it unyou. It makes the corners of the truth shiny sharp because we were in plain sight but all potential saviours were hidden by their own values and their own stories and their own shit. The dying and the rescuers all standing together. None of them seeing the other. Giddy as a stage of clowns.

I recall ordering two more Smirnoff Black Ice in The Sovereign on Preston Street. That straight steep street. The English Channel glistening black at one end. Traffic on the Western Road at the other. Oh those Brighton summers!

And Dave came around my side of the bar and put his arm around me. I was sat reading The Times. Suited up. Calm on the inside. Enjoying the economics section. And he held my arm up as would a nurse checking for a pulse. Just to see I wasn't shaking. But his head was shaking. He couldn't get it. I'd cleaned off twenty-seven bottles inside three hours and he was clean out. And I wasn't even drunk. Just warm and kind on the inside. Stillness. Finally. Calm as a pond. Just disputing Dave's maths. But he was right. Like I said: you only get it if you got it.

So under the cover of darkness in old churches we'd gather. Alone together. Sugar, milk and tea urns. Old school chairs in a circle. What you hear here. Who you see here. All you learn here. Let it stay here. Hi my name is Gary.

Hello Gary.

It was when people started really dying that things shifted. And even then not quick. Even then it was slow, for me. Like I was watching from behind a screen. The sound muted. My ability to gather myself in a normal sense not so much deprived. It had just never developed. Not yet. I wasn't alive. I was just breathing.

That circle of chairs with a new gap in it every single week. Or every second week. That often. I kid you not. Who was sat there? Between Jessica and Mike. What happened to Alison? Is she stuck in traffic or working late. Has she gone north up to London like last time? She never misses Fridays at St John The Baptist. She loves this one. The candle-lit one of Hove's Palmeira Square. Anyone give her a call?

But you just knew. We all knew. That empty chair had plenty to say. And none of us could shut the damn thing up.

I'm in a circle that's shrinking fast. There's a hops fermented bullet in the barrel and it's Russian Roulette. Who's next? Sure as hell ain't no one. Somebody's always up next. Spin that wheel. The cold steel against my temple. The grip of a yeasty finger on the trigger. The weight of it exerting a downward pressure on my skull. Heavy as bodies. Rooted in earth like headstones. Clamping me. Too late now. The whizz-click of the wheel gun vibrating behind my eyes in kaleidoscope fires like the last known truth I'll ever get. Click. The slinky sub thud of an empty chamber. Phew! See you next week. Apart from the poor soul who got left standing when the music stopped.

Why the fuck are we playing Russian Roulette? I mean, now that we know it's this. Why the fuck are we doing this?

It's a story as old as time. It's not always our fault. It is always our problem. Lots of us took a well-meaning wrong turn. Don't get me wrong. Plenty of us are rum fuckers. All of us are in the boat, though. All of us are rocking at sea. I see-saw it as my fault. And I cleaned the thing up. Some of us just do it.

...

Do you know where you are yet? You know that no one gets out alive. But that you presume everyone starts off alive is on you. It's all on you. I can't help you here.

...

It was June and we were walking - a spring in our steps - through the barley fields above Little Gomersal. The cows were out and Mum was giving them a wide berth. I wasn't. The land dropped like a bomb gullet and we trod Cleckheaton and Luddite Way - where Yorkshiremen before me had signed their protest names on the face of technological intention. Somebody else trying to screw us. Not just London or a wayward parent.

The sun beat down hard and silence rose up loud. Louder than pins on glass. Shrill heat ringing. Wiley old witch. The taste of her alarm like lullabies in metal to my fervent tongue.

Jeez! The thirst of me.

We were walking the barley fields and I got it. I got it all. The anger. The energy. The need of it. The insecurity. The lonely, scrambling child. The sheerness of the fear. The all-encompassing urgency. The deeply embedded instinct. The innocent kernel of my guilt. The weird speed I could run. How I always came first in the grammar school one hundred and four by one hundred. Chariots of Fire, they called me.

I looked at Mum. She had just turned seventy-two. I was midway through my forty-sixth lap. Going around again. Attuned to the familiar momentum. Riddled in seasons and clock-time and behavioural obligations. The correct things to say and do. Reputation. Reputation. Reputation. Acceptance. Approval. Belonging. Alright.

Says who?

And she looked at me. She always looked at me. She could always do that. But for the very first time I was really looking at her.

And it all came at once and I got it. I got it whole. Like Phil's ambulances. Permanent and blank and true.

What an anti-climax!

Don't expect wisdom to add. It subtracts. It strips away and pulls off and nibbles down and oooh how cold that can feel! Is this it? Is this sudden steely nakedness the trove I so fervently sought?

Flashes of non-merriment: I'm knee-deep in fresh soil holding out skulls. Where is my money now? My jibes. My gambles. Who can I call? Who loves me? Would I find a way out of this? Just for a minute? Say something. Anything. For God's sake I can read you. I know that look.

Where's Mum? I need to speak to her.

...

And then, as if piped through a distant stone, her voice works through me. Knowing. Constant. Owning me. Waving me like a flag. Her star-striped runcible flag.

Is this a mockery?

Eh, no. That voice is hers but I'm doing it. That voice is mine. Everything until now was a show. A TV show. Made by me for me, featuring her.

The TV is off now. Silence is not the stillness they made out. It wobbles my vision. The walls move in and out. This haunted swing.

Ah! Wisdom. The full-bodied solitude of emptiness. The eternal sugar-spun echo of all the things I used to be scared of. Re-engineered. The prison break. Me in the middle. No edges.

You should have said.






gK