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7 November 2015

Robin Hood

Spike
His name was Graham Hood, so naturally, we all called him Robin. He hated the moniker, but he was stuck with it – many people thought it was his real name. Buddha was to blame; he was the first to daub him ‘Robin Hood’ as a joke – he once referred to me as Little John, but wilted under my baleful glare. The appellation never surfaced again and I was relieved, the wrong nickname can be a death sentence for your credibility and I often pondered what part his name played in Robin’s fall from grace. It must be hell to be referred to constantly by an alias that you hate.

Robin was the grand zombie and prince of thieves. His habit was tattooed into his flesh with a million track marks – there wasn’t a vein in his body he hadn’t tapped out. The monkey on his back was toothless with age and so was Robin; his teeth had long gone the way of his scruples. Robin’s idea of wealth redistribution was to rob the poor to pay his dealer. He was always on the lookout for a fast buck; which is why he once tried to rob a bank – with his usual half-arsed aplomb.

He was sick, real sick, after three days without a hit. We could see that he was in trouble which is why we were playing him at pool for pints and letting him win. We didn’t know that he had been down to the bank where he had taped an ‘out of order’ message over the night depository with the instruction to post the cash through the bank’s letterbox. He had also taped a plastic bag to the inside of the letterbox and stuffed it inside. He intended to return to the scene to fish out what money he could once all the local businesses had closed for the day.

It was a stroke of genius by Robin’s standards and he might have gotten away with it had a wary shop keeper not phoned plod with his suspicions. The fact that Robin was late and miraculously drunk when he finally got to the bank did not help. He was just about to extract the bag from the letterbox when Sergeant Holden stepped out of the shadows.

“Hold it son, don’t touch the bag!” He was doing Robin a huge favour. If he had laid his hands on the cash he would have been done with robbery – instead of attempted robbery. As it was a cruel judge fetched Robin three years in Saughton jail for his efforts. His life truly hit the skids after that. He could be seen panhandling for change in the High Street most days and the rumour was the he had become quite an accomplished cat burglar by night. It’s good to see that the government’s re-education and rehabilitation services had an impact on Robin’s life.

I sometimes wonder what became of Robin. I lost touch with many of my old compadres when I left the city. He was in so deep that I don’t suppose he ever got out of the life. I imagine that he overdid one day – his last hit proving as fatal as his first.
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4 November 2015

Astral Voyager

Meth_Lines

We were at Danny’s place listening to records and relaxing with some good ganja. It was chilly in his drafty flat, but the grass and lashings of hot tea kept our minds off the cold. Danny was at least ten years my senior – which seems like a lifetime when you are only nineteen. Despite the age difference we apparently had much in common, like literature, music and of course drugs – we were both very keen on drugs. It was deeper than a hobby with us – it was more of a vocation.

To tell the truth Danny was a much heavier user than I was; he had a long standing junk habit which meant he had to have hits at regular intervals or he’d get sick. I was never into skag; I was afraid of it. I could never have lived the life of a junkie; I hated needles for one thing and couldn’t deal with deprivation for another. I respected Danny, but I could never live in the frugal manner he did. Of course I attributed his thrift to the heroin; I did not realise at the time that he was also supporting an estranged wife and two kids. Many people had warned me to beware of Danny simply because he was an addict – but he was always straight with me and everybody else as far as I could tell.

We were listening to Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Danny’s choice not mine, and I was standing at the window watching the snow fall when the phone rang. Danny answered it and turned to me. “It’s Buddha”, he said, “he’s been looking for you,” and he held out the phone.

“Get your arse up here post-haste John boy – I have a surprise for you.” Buddha sounded excited, but I hated it when he called me ‘John boy’ I was a good three or four inches taller than him and only two years his junior.

“What is it?” I asked – knowing full well he would not tell me. He loved to be mysterious did Buddha. “It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you now would it?” he replied.

“This better not be a wind up”, I warned him, “It’s brass monkeys out there.”

“Just get your arse up here and bring Danny – you won’t be sorry I promise”

We took the lucky thirteen bus into town. The snow was still falling as we trudged up to Buddha’s pad. We found him highly animated and speaking at ten to the dozen.

“Come in boys – take the weight off. Would you like a cuppa, a glass of wine, a wee dram?” He was buzzing around his flat rearranging his soft furnishings and checking his reflection in the mirror, he was always a little vain was Buddha. “I suppose you are wondering why I sent for you?” he beamed. We both rolled our eyes but nodded in assent.

“Well, follow me lads,” and he led us into the kitchen where we found a mountain of white powder waiting for us on the worktop.

This,” said Buddha sorting out three large lines from the mound of white stuff “is pure methamphetamine sulphate – crystal meth to the uninformed; snort it and watch the diamonds roll from your eyes.”

So we did and it was good, it was very good. With the initial rush my blood engorged veins glowed electrically with a million watts of creamy power. It was prolonged and orgasmic, so strong I that I felt nauseous and only just held down my lunch as cold beads of sweat erupted from my forehead. Then I felt a great euphoric wave envelop me and I was expanding and unfolding into the universe over and over again. I was as light as a feather now that the weight of life was lifted from my shoulders; you could have dropped me in the ocean and I wouldn’t have left a ripple.

“So d’ya dig it?” asked Buddha, “I knew you’d be surprised. I can get unlimited quantities of this shit. I know the guy who runs the lab somewhere in Perth. I can lay it on you, any quantity you like, starting at eighty an ounce. You’re getting it pure because you are mates, but you can step all over it and still sell it on at a tenner a gram – it’s a license to print money.”

It was too good an arrangement to turn down, so Danny and I opted for four ounces each just to test the market. Little did we know that we’d be snorting a hell of a lot of this stuff ourselves in the months ahead. Nor did we realise what a problem that it would become – especially for Danny who was already strung out on smack. We toasted our new enterprise with another line and agreed that it was indeed auspicious karma that we had landed such a sweet deal.

“This stuff is ambrosia,“ said Buddha, “the crème de la crème. They’ll be beating down our doors to get to it. We’re gonna be rich gentlemen – we’ll be rolling in it.”

We glided out of Buddha’s place and onto the snow white streets a couple of hours later, it was already growing dark. We were immaculately high and did not even feel the cold. Our bus was late and we figured it might not arrive at all with the snow lying so thickly. So we decided to walk home, but stopped at Moscardini’s cafe for a cup of tea and another furtive line on the way.

We were wrapped in conversation all the way back; we just could not stop talking. We were so engrossed we didn’t see the police car drawing up beside us until an officer called out, “Hold it a minute boys.” My heart was in my mouth as the copper got out of the car and crunched through the snow towards us. He enquired where we were destined and we indicated we were on our way home. He asked our names and addresses and I gave him mine, but Danny hesitated a beat before answering.

“Astral Voyager,” he said.

“What was that?” asked the bemused cop.

“Astral Voyager,” repeated Danny, “It’s my name.”

My heart sank. This was no time to be playing jokes with the police. I had four ounces of pure methedrine in my pocket. I thought we were headed for the cop shop and a search which could only conclude in a bust. The copper turned and spoke to his oppo in the squad car who ran a radio check for Astral Voyager at 138b Leith Walk. It came back positive – there was indeed an Astral Voyager residing at that address. Evidently satisfied the cops drove away and we began to laugh the way only immortals can. Danny explained he’d changed his name by deed poll back in his Hare Krishna days and that he had never officially reverted back when he left the temple.

“You lived in a temple?”

“Sure, for three years almost.”

“I never knew that.”

“No reason why you should.”

I was beginning to realise I really knew very little about Danny, or should I say Astral Voyager. He was now a proper man of mystery in my eyes. I knew he was a sound geezer and a good laugh and I knew he liked Todd Rundgren and drugs, but I never knew he had lived in a temple. I didn’t know he was a skilled welder either until I bumped into him on a construction site one day. There’s the cliché about junkies; that they are all liars and cheats, but I never heard of anybody being ripped off by Danny. It was always a point of principle with him that he worked for a living and paid his own way. There was nothing tragic about this man; he was a born survivor and a decent human being.

I lost touch with Danny when I moved away, but I bumped into him again about twenty years later. He told me he was straight now and that he had remarried and was living in one of those fancy houses in the New Town. He asked about Buddha and we reminisced about how fucked up we both were with that speed and how fried our brains got through malnutrition and sleep deprivation. Of course Buddha was still tweaking – he couldn’t function without amphetamines; we marvelled at the man’s stamina but agreed that meth was too much like hard work to be considered fun.

We had a good long conversation and we agreed to meet up again soon, but we never did. Someone told me later that he contracted some virulent form of cancer that felled him quite suddenly. When I heard I felt my world shrink a little and my mind went back to that day in the snow. I hope Danny’s beliefs were a comfort to him in the end and that the gods were kind to him when his time finally came.

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3 November 2015

Compulsive



there is no gelt     in this writing lark     no final reward     just a hunger  an insatiable need     to press the keys     and play the notes   that fill the page     typing done     I am alone     I work best alone  but I sleep best     with company     and it’s meant     to be that way   no virtual life for me     I love flesh and blood     for I was born    of flesh and blood     to go the way     that all flesh does     not prematurely     but after a long while     when I’ve perfected     my papers     and catalogued     my women     in alphabetical order  or numerical significance     according to rank     and ability

1 November 2015

Buddha

Buddha_03blk

“You have to hustle,” that’s what Buddha says, “If you want to make a buck you can’t fuck about, no credit and no tasters. It’s cash on the barrel every time; cash is the only currency available. If your deals are straight down to the nearest fraction and the quality is high your reputation will flourish. A good reputation guarantees sales so remember to never be stingy with the deals and never punt anything you wouldn’t smoke yourself.”

Buddha’s been a speed freak most of his days. He’s a strict vegetarian and without blood and bones to fill his guts he’s outlived most of his contemporaries and never known a day’s illness in his life. Or so he says. His place is a mess; a sick fluorescent light stutters and strobes in and out creating jagged time in his bombed out kitchen. The sink is full of pots dishes encrusted with gastronomic anomalies like salmonella and botulism. It’s a regular doper’s scullery for weighing deals, cooking crack and smoking hot knives from the stove. Poor Buddha, he was once the golden boy – surely one of the chosen. He was that older kid who seemed wise to everything a young hipster should know. We were like brothers back in the day when we used to dex cough syrup together which he washed down with orange juice and I with El Dorado wine.

Disgusting though it is I’m in the kitchen because I have no time for fraternisation with the motley natives who festoon Buddha’s living room. Besides, I have a bottle of scotch which I will share with no man. I need the whole hit, the fire in my belly, the saturation of my soul. Music drifts in though the open kitchen window; a familiar melody from my youth and numb reverberations of times past have me untied for a moment until I recognise my surroundings. I’ve been here before – I’m in the Buddha’s kitchen and not fully compos mentis. I take a long slow drag and it feels warm and thick as it coils in my lungs and produces a dull throbbing in the brain pan.

“It’s simple.” Buddha says, “There’s no great mystery. No secret recipe. You breathe in – you breathe out, you breathe in – you breathe out. Everything is perfectly natural, but there is no explanation, so you can forget about that.”

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22 October 2015

Accidental

Car-Crash
it could happen   to anyone   at any time   but it should never   have happened here   not to me   and not to you   no, not to us   alone amongst smiling enemies   we’ll come to ourselves   on the rebound   praise the love sacrificial    eat our prayer books   and blot our jotters   with rapacious jealousy   but we’ll see it out    from the beginning   to the very end   all things being square   and on the level    in that moment    we’ll see the truth    that what should happen   will eventually happen   just like I said it could   just like you knew it would