Devil Music - Chapter 1
As far as I'm concerned, man, you can fuck
Sundays right in the arse. Let's face it, that's what most of
us do. More people top themselves on a Sunday than any other
day of the week. It's a proven fact. Even here in the Grove,
it's deader than dead. Shops closed, even the pakis, fuck all
on the telly except for The Big Match, and what a pile of shit
that is, man. Unless you're a West Ham fan, which I most
definitely am not. It's always West Ham and they're always
losing. And it's always raining. West Ham, man. The fuckin
Academy. Playing the game the way it was meant to be played.
And always losing. Bobby fuckin Moore. Cunt.
I must get some sleep, these bombers are
fuckin with my head. I haven't had any real sleep since…
Friday? Thursday? I remember taking a trip with Bob on some of
that weird mescaline he'd been saving. Then it was the weekend.
Then it was now. Fucking that chick… what was that? Not
being able to come… Then we chanced The Ship in Wardour
Street, I remember that. We were falling over at the bar so we
had the bombers to straighten us out. Six each. Black. Then
some cunt bending my ear about some fuckin band, and that's
when we all fucked off in a taxi back to Bob's. Sitting up all
night helping ourselves to Bob's coke and talking shit.
Absolute shit. He didn't have any henry, he said, so when I
left he gave me a couple of mandies instead. “They'll
smooth you out, man.” They would, too, but if I do them
now I wont make the gig tonight and you know how that is. Rule
number one: do what you like, but don't fuck-up the gig. Keep
that together and you can forget the rest. Whatever else
happens in your head, it's only that - in your fuckin head,
man. And who needs that? Too much con-fusion, as Jimi sang.
Into guitar…
Fuck. It's not just my head, it's like my
whole body is starting to rebel. Can it do that at 25? Mine
fuckin can, man. I've been chucking up since I got back this
morning, only there's nothing there. You can't make good vomit
out of beer and fags; you can't chuck up speed and mescaline.
It's all in the bloodstream, trapped like a fire inside a
sealed bunker, only now it's starting to melt...
I want to fart but I'm worried I'll follow
through. And my hands are shaking. Not much worse than usual,
but I'm starting to notice it more. Is that what happens as you
get older - you notice more? Or is there just more to notice?
It's questions like this that can really bum you out.
Especially on a Sunday. Who gives a fuck anyway? Let John and
Yoko work it out. I just wish I had a little bit of that sweet
brown sugar. Sort me out good and proper, that would.
I'm not a fuckin smackhead, let's get that
straight. But there are times, like right now, when the old
slow boat to China is just the thing you need. Takes off all
the rough edges without putting you to sleep. Not totally,
anyway. Just the parts that are rebelling. Like the brain.
Smack takes care of the brain better than any other drug going.
It's a proven fact.
I switch off the match and put a record
on. Side Two of 'Free Live'. It doesn't do it. Not in this
state. Paul Rodgers just sounds ridiculous - baby-baby-baby -
and the band sound like a bunch of fuckin wankers. But then,
most bands are.
I take it off again and search for
something else but there's nothing there. Nothing. I get a
flash of myself kneeling on the floor flicking through these
piles and piles of old albums and I am sickened. I feel like a
gravedigger eating sandwiches while the coffin is being lowered
into the ground. It means absolutely fuck all to me. Why should
it? It's just another shitty job like any other shitty job.
Just keep digging, fucker. And worry about your own hole...
What am I gonna do? I can't hack these
fuckin comedowns the way I used to. I decide to take the car
back over to Bob's. That bastard wont have crashed out yet,
either. He was probably lying about the gear, too. He'll have a
bit stashed away for himself somewhere, I just know it.
I start to get my shit together but before
I can get out the door I realise I need to piss. Dragsville.
When you go as often as I do - it's either a weak bladder or a
strong one, I can't remember - pissing becomes a major fuckin
hassle; the journey to the bog and back an almost impossible
hurdle to overcome. It would mean going up the stairs and I
don't want to go up the stairs. Instead, I grab a nearly empty
coffee mug, chuck the remains into a plant pot, then pull out
my speed-shrivelled dick and aim it fairly successfully into
that. The hot dark piss hurtles down into the mug with a
pleasing whoosh and I am in fuckin heaven. I stand there
transfixed, deep in my own rapture as the cold mug gradually
becomes warm in my hands.
“Now that's what I call
rock'n'roll!” I shout defiantly at the prim-looking walls
and disapproving furniture. The voice sounds like it comes off
a record, with tons of reverb on it. Like the Big Bopper on
acid. Hellooo, baaaaby, you knoooooooow what ah liiiike!
We certainly fuckin do. Oh, yes…
right in the arse. I shake the drops off on the carpet and feel
momentarily better. But as I escape to the front door I slip-up
and take a last-minute look at myself in the full-length mirror
in the hall - always a big mistake - and my mood takes a turn
for the worse again. I gaze in wonder at the skinny,
marble-eyed fucker who stares back at me. The one with the
absurd blonde streak in his dyed-black hair and the
unconvincing three-week-old beard. He looks like Jesus after
they put the nails in. Pained, doubting, ridiculous, some sort
of cunt all right, only himself to blame...
I want to look away, forget about it, put
it with the rest of the unlistened to demo tapes, but it's hard
to take my eyes off him. He looks familiar in the way all guys
like me look familiar…skull and diamond earrings,
different ones for each ear, dog-tag round neck, coke spoon,
greatcoat, Helen Wheels T-shirt, old jeans, dirty white
plimsolls… I recognise the outline all right - he thinks
he's being right on - but it's like it's all been coloured in
by a child, the colours bleeding across the edges and mashing
spastically into other colours. Like a bad porno flick with all
the early scenes missing, there's no third dimension to him,
just pow, straight to the action. Pow, pow, pow. And no
regrets. No tears goodbye. No wanking in a dead dog's
eye…
The grey February light is depressing -
you step outside the door for the first time all day and there
it is already getting dark - but somehow it makes it easier to
get to the car without making a big deal of it. I feel like the
invisible man. Like you can't really see me, just the bandages
and dark glasses.
The cold nips at me like tiny pliers and I
pull the old greatcoat tighter around my bones. I need a fuckin
line. I can feel the comedown piling up around me like dead
ashes and I fight inside to pull myself free but it's not
working. Depression hitting you like a train. Depression and
paranoia. Fuck all that shit, man. Mind games don't work when
you're only playing them on yourself. Not in the way you want
them to anyway…
I find the roach of an old joint in the
ashtray, puff some life into it, gag, then start the car. Clunk
click, every trip. Bob only lives a few streets away but I
can't be doing with walking. Not like this. The traffic's bad
cos it's raining and there's a pig car following me as I swing
into Portobello Road but I don't lose it, I don't flip, I just
maintain. That's the secret. The pigs rely on guilt to trip you
up, force you to make that wrong turn or do something stupid
just when you know they're looking. And then the pull, the
search, the death trip to the station and all the shit about
your hair and your clothes and whatever else these fuckheads
can think of to get a rise out of you. Luckily, I don't suffer
guilt trips. I just drive on and pretend not to notice. Just
another titfuck going nowhere on another rainy day in hell...
The pigs soon lose interest and start
following someone else but I drive all the way up to the Gate
and double-back via Queensway, just to be on the safe side. I
keep my eyes on the rear-view as I circle slowly back down to
Portobello, then get to Bob's and park outside the chip shop.
It's closed but they keep the sign lights on bright and it's a
good place to leave the car if you don't want it nicked or
broken into by the spades. There's too many of these cunts
round here these days; this end of the Grove is turning into a
fuckin black ghetto. Of course, if they want it bad enough,
they wont worry about the lights, they'll just take it anyway.
But I learned my lesson with the little red Triumph and the
only car I drive round here now is the old Cortina and no
self-respecting spade's gonna want to be seen dead fuckin
around in that.
Dodgy Bob. The Bobster.
Bob-the-fuckin-job. A good egg and my main mainman. Most drug
dealers piss me off. They're such prick teasers, they're worse
than rock stars. They know what you want but always act like
they don't. Like it's just a passing thought. “Oh, right,
yeah, the charlie. Were you after… a little taste?”
Of course I was, you arsey cunt. Why else would I be sitting
here talking to the likes of you?
I despise those games. But with Bob it's
different. He's as full of shit as the next medicine man - what
dealer ever sells you anything but “the best”? But
at least Bob doesn't put on a front. Not when I'm around,
anyway. Bob's solid gold easy action. Born to boogie. With him,
it's deal first, chit-chat second. A cunt after my own heart.
Nevertheless, he looks surprised as he
peers out through the letterbox at me. And not perhaps a
hundred per cent best pleased to see his old mucker and number
one bad boy.
“Bobby, baby!” I cry, Laugh-In
style, as he reluctantly opens the door. “How long's it
been, man?”
“About eight hours, by my
reckoning,” he says, making a show of looking at his
watch. He's got that droopy-moustached, not-cool look on his
face, but I pretend not to notice and push myself past him into
the hall and up the stairs to his flat.
“I thought you had a gig to go
to,” he says flatly, following me up.
“I do, man,” I say over my
shoulder. “I'm not stopping.” We get to the top of
the stairs and I try to force a smile out of the miserable
bastard. “I just thought I'd swing by and see ma main
mainman! See if he'd had as much luck as I did getting some
sleep…”
But Bob's not interested. I notice he's
still wearing the same pink and green cheesecloth shirt he's
had on for days. It's so thin, the sweat has made it almost
transparent except for the collar and cuffs; patches of it
stick to his body like wet tissue. And there's a smell off him
like… fuck, like cat shit or something. Cat shit and
incense. Dirty tossbag. At least I managed to douse myself in a
bit of patchouli before I came out.
“Those fuckin bombers, man, where
did you get them?” I whisper. “The fuckin skin's
peeling off my back…”
But he's still not having it and we pause
at the doorway to his flat as he starts to go into one about
just getting ready to crash and bad time to call and dah dah
dah.
“Bird's been giving me
gyp about the place always being full of people,” he says
weakly, tugging at his tash.
“So what?” I want
to scream at him. “You're a fuckin drug dealer, man! What
the fuck does she want you to do! Open a stall on the fuckin
market!”
Bird is Bob's old lady, a hard-faced cow
and one of the new breed: a drug slut, atomic feminist and
former Stones groupie all rolled into one. They're all over the
shop these days but Bird is their leader. continue
reading
