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CJ STONE |
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Fierce Dancing
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Prologue: New Year The last thing I remember was the whiskey. I remember the soft, golden glow in the glass as I raised it to my lips like a warm promise. It twinkled at me merrily, reflecting the multi-coloured Christmas-lights stretched across the bar. And that's it. No more. I disappeared. I was absorbed into that amber light like a drop into the ocean. I was gone. Vanished like a cheap magician's magic trick, down a trap door into the basement depths; banished to the nether regions where the light barely shines, and where consciousness is just a dim and distant flicker. I woke up on my own bed, fully dressed on New Year's Day, with a raging thirst, a sore nose, and the vaguest gossamer-like images of some sexual altercation with a woman I hardly knew. |
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There's a place I know called alcohol heaven. I've been there once or twice. It's not like God's heaven, because it doesn't last forever. And it's nothing like E-heaven either, because it's not entirely dependant on the drug. You have to be in the right mood. You have to have the right people around you. You have to be in the right place at the right time. It's no good just drinking. |
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But -when the conditions are right-
alcohol heaven really exists. I'd been there last night,
briefly. Kodan and Marion had come round with a half bottle of brandy Kodan had pinched from the superstore. And we'd shared that and some khat that someone had given me: chewed the khat stems down to a fibrous pulp, and then washed the tongue-cleaving bitterness away with drafts of liquid fire. It seemed like a good combination. After that we'd gone out. Khat is a North African herbal stimulant, by the way. You shouldn't really take it with alcohol. But I was in a good mood. It was New Year's Eve. The brandy had warmed the heart, while the khat was stimulating the brain. We shared a pint in the Lazy Barman, and I was in alcohol heaven. Strangely exuberant, as I'd said at the time. After that I'd struck out on my own. I'm not really sure why I'd left Kodan and Marion. I think it may have had something to do with not wanting to be a gooseberry. After all, they were in love. They'd be going home for a fuck tonight, whatever else might happen. Whereas I was on my own. So the truth is, I was on a personal quest really: high up in alcohol heaven, and looking for love. I went to the Logical Cadaver and drank a pint, and then to the Crow's Nest. After that -and the whiskey- I don't remember a thing. I decided I needed to see Fen. I was a bright, clear, New Year's Day morning as I walked the mile or two, along the suburban streets of our town, to where Fen lives, on a forgotten council estate in the middle of nowhere. Fen is an old friend of mine. He's impossibly thin, built like a taut bow ready to spring. He once told me that he's this thin because he's preparing to leave the Earth. That's the way Fen talks. He's in his mid-thirties, with long, greying hair and a thin goatee beard. There's something of the Devil in him, and something of the Elf. He's a painter and decorator by trade (currently unemployed) and an astrologer by persuasion. Fen is my type of the self-educated working class. He was reading before he ever went to school. He taught himself. But the scope of his education is entirely outside the norms of the formal system. He was always a rebel. He hated school and left without any qualifications. After that he got into drugs. Glue at first (from which he boasts a collapsed lung) and then cannabis. The cannabis saved him. Later he started taking LSD. For two years in his mid-twenties he took it religiously (that's his word): 4 or 5 every weekend, and a couple during the week to keep him going. He says that for those two years he never came down. I woke Fen up. He was bleary-eyed and blinking in the morning light. He invited me in and put the kettle on. Fen said: "What happened to you last night? I bought you a whiskey and then you disappeared." "That's about the long and short of it," I answered. "I disappeared." "I thought I saw you at the Assembly rooms. Everyone else was there." "I don't know if I was there or not. I didn't notice anyone. I think I've broken my nose," I added. "It hurts like fuck. It think somebody must have hit me." I was still haunted by this faint image of a woman. She had straight black hair and was wearing a rat-tailed Afghan coat. I must have been round her house, though I couldn't remember at what point. I had the vaguest recollection of her pushing me away. What was she doing? What was I doing? Was it her that punched me? It was all too embarrassing to contemplate. I felt certain that it involved an indiscrete proposition of some kind. "Fucking alcohol," I said. And Fen said: "Alcohol reverses the psychic polarities." That's what I love about him. He's the only man who can use an expression like "psychic polarities" at nine o'clock in the morning and still sound sane. I laughed. So we were in Fen's messy living room, surrounded by Astrology books and dog-ends and ancient copies of the Daily Sport. We were drinking tea and smoking: me cigarettes, Fen spliffs. Fen doesn't believe in tidying up. There's no carpet on his floor and he uses the floor as an ashtray. I tried flicking my ash on the floor too, but I couldn't handle it. I had to have an ashtray. I was in this absurd dilemma, surrounded by ash, and yet having to insist on a clean ashtray. It was like a piece of anti-art: a whole room full of ash and roaches and cigarette butts, and a clean, sparkling ashtray in the middle of it. I wanted to tell Fen my theory of miracles. I wanted to tell him my version of the loaves and fishes story. This is it. The crowd are out there in the mountains and hungry. Well, one lad had the foresight to bring his lunch with him didn't he? Five loaves and two fishes. And he was willing to share it. Did everyone else forget? In that immense crowd, was there only one with the good sense to pack some food before setting out? Of course not. Some had food tucked away, and some didn't. Some of them were rich and came well-stocked. Even those that were poor had their lunch with them, like the boy: a few crusts of bread and some meat or fish or salty goat's cheese. The miracle of the loaves and the fishes is a social miracle. Once the loaves and fishes were being shared, and everyone else brought out what they had hidden, there was more than enough to go round. This is the secret of the loaves and the fishes. That there's more than enough to go round. This is the secret of free festivals too. I'd been thinking of the loaves and fishes story as an image for this book. Fen rejected my theory. Fen believes in miracles. Real miracles. He believes that the fundamental property of the Universe itself is that it is miraculous. He says that the Universe is constantly spewing out matter. He rejects the Big Bang theory. He says that Pulsars create matter out of nothing. The whole thing is a cycle. Pulsars pour out matter, Black Holes draw in matter. They are two sides of the same process. And the truly developed being can harness this fundamental principle, and can create matter. He can create miracles. Thus Jesus was able, in fact, to turn the loaves and the fishes into a feast of plenty. He created it, as the Universe creates itself, out of nothing. Then he launched into his theory of existence. Human beings, he said, far from being no more than glorified animals, are divine beings. We were with God at the beginning. We are almost god-like in ourselves. We helped create the Universe. We've been around forever. We've travelled from star-system to star-system from the beginning of time. Our last home was Sirius. And when we arrived on this planet we were huge, gaseous beings made up of a double pyramidic structure: two pyramids facing each other at the base, with a gap in between. So I'm sitting here on an ordinary Winter's morning, with a god-awful hangover, and an aching feeling in my insides as if something is ripping me apart. And Fen is talking about huge, gaseous, pyramidic beings from Sirius. And I can't help it. I just started laughing. "Oh come on," I said... "Yes," he said, in all seriousness, "and when we were in Atlantis we created the animals. The whole animal kingdom is just this massive genetic experiment started by us. We even created our own bodies, which we now inhabit like machines. Our bodies are part of this experiment. We've forgotten, that's all." "You don't expect me to believe all that do you Fen? It doesn't make any sense." He looked at me slightly hurt. "Oh alright then, I might as well believe it mightn't I?" And we both laughed. Fen is the perfect cure for a hangover. He has a different view of the world than most of us. Acid-inspired, you could say. Acid-addled, you might add, if you were in a cynical frame of mind. Well it doesn't matter to me one way or the other. Fen makes me laugh and that's good enough for me. Fen is extremely talented, by the way. He does astrological readings and hand-paints intricate birth charts, complete with all the arcane symbols of the trade. It doesn't matter whether you believe in the philosophical basis of astrology (I'm none too sure myself), the fact is he has an uncanny insight into the structures of the personality and a great depth of vision. He is often alarmingly accurate. In another world - in a world not dominated by class, perhaps - Fen would make a good living from his talents. As it is, he's always short of cash. He gives his charts and his readings away for a small lump of hash, or a pint or two. The story of my New Year's Eve came out in embarrassing dribs and drabs over a number of days. Every time I went to town I'd be cringing as a new revelation was revealed to me. I saw Kodan. "What happened to you on New Year's Eve?" he asked. "I don't know." "You were out of it. I saw you outside the pub and it was like all the lights were on but there was nobody at home." "Were you at the pub?" I asked, and groaned. "Me and Marion. We tried to get you to come with us, but there was no persuading you. You didn't even know who we were." "Didn't I manage to get a New Year's kiss, even?" I asked. "You were kissing everyone, it didn't matter what sex." I groaned again. Later my son asked me if I'd been hit. "I don't think so," I said, trying to put a brave face on it. "Somebody told me you'd been hit by a woman and had fallen down." Kodan managed to piece the rest of the story together for me. Everyone knew some detail or another. We went for a drink a few days later, and he told me what had actually happened. After the pub, it appears, I'd actually been seen lying in the gutter, rolling about and groaning. After that I'd gone and gate crashed a private party. I was stumbling around rolling against the wall, moaning fitfully. That's when Rick had found me. He was pretty pissed too, though not as bad as me. He decided that we should go into partnership. I remember none of this. We were lolling around in a drunken gaggle trying to stick our tongues into anything that moved. It must have been an appalling sight, to see me or Rick, dribbling and smelling of beer, lurching toward you saying, "Gi's a kiss..." And at a certain point I lunged at someone, and tried to snog her and put my hand on her breast, and she simply knocked me down with a weighty punch on the nose. She's a well-built German and has formidable biceps and fists like clubs. I went flat out: sprawled on the floor like a puppet with broken strings. "We hadn't even been introduced," she said. She was going round the town for weeks after that, asking people if they knew CJ Stone. And if they did she'd say, "don't talk to me about CJ Stone." Later I went round to Rick's house. There was someone asleep on the settee. This was the girl in the Afghan coat. Apparently she was woken up to find me with my hand between her legs saying, "I love you, you know, I've always loved you," and trying to kiss her. I cringed when I heard that. Not only that I'd woken her up by putting my hands between her legs (although that was bad enough) but that I'd tried to make out I loved her. It made the rude awakening even more rude. It was so tacky. I avoided her for weeks. When we did meet I said, "I'm really sorry. I just don't remember what happened." "It's alright," she said, giving me a cuddle. "You were drunk and randy, that's all. I rolled you a spliff and you went out like a light." |
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Photographs by Helen Stone. Illustrations Ian Pollock and by Eldad Druks. Website by Bridgefield Consulting. Expression Templates |