..... and there
were
CRACKs ...
Alice B. Frieh
Published by Alice B. Frieh at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Alice B. Frieh
December 9th 1997
Hi-ya Josie.
Hello.
How do you feel?
Uptight.
I thought so. Do you know what makes you feel uptight?
Things.
Do you know what things?
Just things.
Things have to be something. Either material or emotional. Do you have any idea?
I am guarding them.
Who are you guarding them for?
I don't know. I wasn't told.
Did someone tell you to guard them?
Yes.
Do you remember what yo are guarding?
Feelings.
Do they need guarding?
They are pretty mean.
What sort of feelings? What do they feel like?
Sadness.
Do you really want to know?
I do. I want to know what you're guarding. I don't mind what it is. I'll be on your side. I'll look after you.
You'll look after me!
I will. I changed. I want to sort us out.
There's more than fear.
I want to sort me/you out. You're pretty edgy, you feel like you're shuffling and wobbling about, not still, all edgy.
I am.
So would you like to tell me what you are guarding?
......... You're not saying a thing.
.......... Are you struggling?
Yes.
Don't you want to say? ....... Do you trust me?
...... Are you hearing me?
....... You feel like you've covered your ears.
I have.
Now what shall we do?
Nothing.
Nothing is not much. Come on throw open that secret door and we'll have a feel and look about what comes out.
It's a bit black.
What's black?
The thing behind the door?
Mmmmmmmmmm .........
What does it feel like?
Black with fiery red edges.
Sounds pokey.
It is.
I reckon if we can keep it in there safely .......
...... It's not safe!
Well, the more reason to let it out and transmute into love.
..... Why are you holding it?
...... OK how do you feel about Paul?
............ I hear you scream,
... in silence,
... in my head.
... What is going on?
I am screaming.
Screaming behind walls.
Screaming for help but there never was any.
A menacing grin.
HIS grin.
His power over my scream.
I scream but only in here, nobody hears me.
Nobody should hear me.
You know that!
NOBODY SHOULD HEAR ME.
Why are you screaming?
DON'T ASK ME.
You know!
Don't push me.
I don't like it.
I would like to know what emotions you've got packed away.
You can FUCK OFF with your emotion crap .......... leave me alone.
Do you really want to be alone?
NO.
So why say it?
You know why!
Because I am too close to my pain.
I've guarded it for too long.
It's become precious.
It's become me.
I want to swear.
Go ahead.
ahhhhhrrrrgh aaaaahhhhrrgghh
More?
I feel small and vulnerable.
I want my mum to hold me and stroke me.
But I am here in a dark room in a cold bed and outside this flimsy door, the door that hides me, is he.
The big HE with the bickering tone and sharp tongue and knives in his eyes and a lust that makes me so alone.
A lust that I don't understand.
Why am I here in this cold, cold room.
* * *
Sex, drugs and motorbikes.
Long nights and long lines.
Lines of biting, scratching wizz.
Wizz ..... Billy ..... Speed; it's all the same.
It's always fast, speeding.
I loved doing a line and then going for a ride on a bike.
I liked pillioning when I was speeding. The best bike for pillioning is a Harley. Come to that, the bike I like most, speeding or not, is a Harley.
Harleys are the Iron steed of tarmac.
I liked riding pillion on Josh's Harley. It was a big 1200 cc shovel head.
On a sunny Saturday afternoon after a snort or two, Harleys have a lovely vibration.
I love the sound of a Harley, deep and powerful. I guess I'm a Harley snob. The engine, the power, the noise, it's a powerful ride.
You can ride slow on a Harley and enjoy it, you can't do that with a Japanese bike, they're all speed and adrenaline.
Not that Harleys can't go fast, they can. Josh's could do 120 mph.
It did 120 mph on a Dutch motorway at about 4 in the morning. We were heading back to Amsterdam after spending the day and most of the night at a bike show. Josh was wasted, he'd been drinking and smoking and snorting for the last 12 hours. Bob and Rikki, the friends we had gone with, thought it was an all-night do. Much later we found out that the show was closing at 4 am.
Bob and Rikki had a bit of a strop with each other. Bob was stropping most of the day. His Harley wasn't running right so he had to go to the show on Rikki's Triumph. He kept telling her what a pile of shite her bike was. Rob's ego was dented turning up on a Triumph, especially since Josh was on his Harley.
We spent a hot afternoon poking around odd looking machines and bikes. There were traction machines with jet engines roaring, tearing the leaves off the trees above them.
There were cool people and Saturday shoppers, there were Hells Angels and kids all milling around. There were people drinking and smoking and a band was playing on an outdoor stage. Every now and then a policeman would amble through. The Dutch were pretty cool about having a big bike do in the middle of their town.
I liked sitting at a table skinning up without feeling all paranoid.
I liked doing a discrete toot without shutting myself up in the ladies toilets.
I enjoyed people watching, some real cool, some trying very hard, some neat and tidy and some good and scruffy. Some real biker bitches in leather and lace, some folk with rap round shades and mean tattoos.
We got speeding and we got stoned, Rikki and I tapped our feet and talked a lot. Bob and Josh went looking at bikes; carbs, Fat Bobs and Quick Bobs, wide glides and slab yokes in lovely shiny chrome.
They got to drinking Jack Daniels and as the Jack Daniels mixed with the speed they started to wonder why those lovely chrome wide glides, Quick Bobs and slab yokes weren't theirs, and as more Jack Daniels mixed with more speed they got to wondering why all those lovely Harleys were owned by a bunch of tossers, and as they kept on mixing they were getting more mixed up.
Rikki and I started to wonder why they did it. Why did our nice boyfriends turn themselves into warped out hillbillies?
At 4 am Josh and Bob couldn't believe that the show was really closing, 'what a bunch of light weights everybody was, 'fuck the law' ... 'let's party' ... 'call yourselves rebels?' ... 'you tossers' .... 'bla bla bla', said under their breath and to no one in particular.
Bob wanted to go home in the early hours of this cool, cool morning. He was pissed off, his ego even more dented having just been shown out of the bar door by a prospect of the Hells Angels.
Rikki had her foot in plaster, she didn't fancy getting bounced around, I suppose she wanted Bob nice and sober and not crabby and wasted.
I felt worn out and tired, my eyes were heavy, my mind was chugging on empty. I just wanted to lie down, I didn't care where, next to the bike, on a bench, under a tree, I didn't mind. I suggested that we'd get mellow and crash out and wait for a cafe to open, but Bob wanted to go home.
The Triumph had been playing up on the way to Amersham and Josh wanted to make sure Bob got back OK. Bob wasn't that good at the old mechanics, he was a bit too short tempered for it. I didn't see why Josh felt obliged to see him home safe, when he himself was in no fit state to ride, but he did and there we were, flying down cobbled streets with a canal on one side and tall, dark buildings on the other.
We were bumping, jumping, out of control. I boxed Josh in his ribs, got him to stop and suggested he should slow down. He thought that that was a really good idea. I thought, 'Oh Fuck, he really is wasted.'
We'd already lost Bob and Rikki somewhere. Josh wanted me to ride with a more sober friend of ours. I declined. I knew Josh wouldn't make it back to Amsterdam otherwise. I found our way to the deserted motorway, Josh headed for the middle lane and opened up, the engine roared.
We were flying.
The night was warm and clear, the sky dark above. I loved Dutch summers, they were so much warmer than our English ones. I didn't need leg warmers or my donkey jacket, no, just a T-shirt and leather jacket on top, not even a scarf. All that whistled round my neck was warm, warm air.
We flew past a spacey looking all night garage, all lit up with different colours, blurred by the wind tears in my eyes.
Josh turned round shouting, pointing at the speedo - 120 mph!
I gesticulated for him to look forwards.
I shouted for him to slow down.
He kept the Harley open.
He turned round, excitement in his eyes, a big smile on his face and shouted, "You love it really!"
I did, but I was also acutely aware of my fragility.
I heard Josh hollering a big, "Yeaaaaaaaaa!"
I felt his excitement.
I could feel the speed rushing through him. I could feel him becoming one with the bike. His hand griping the throttle, his head high, held to the wind, blond hair blowing wildly.
With my arms around his waist I pulled our bodies close together.
I hunched down to be in his wind shadow. We were one rider, feeling the same exhilaration, seeing the same darkness rushing past us.
It was fast speed tunnel vision.
He kept the throttle open, we were flying down this dark stretch of tarmac lit up only by the light of the high beam.
It was a powerful adrenaline rush, to feel the engine doing its stuff, explosion after explosion propelling us at vast speed down this deserted highway.
It was spacey, trippy, and hugely exhilarating.
Finally we turned off the motorway. The slip road did a sharp right. I could tell that Josh meant to go straight on. I boxed his side pointing, he braked sharply and together we pushed the bike down and round.
My exhilaration turned to acute awareness. His riding, now that we were off the straight was awful.
I started to pray, I promised never to ride on a bike again in such a state. I just wanted to get back to Rikki's flat.
'PLEASE, please let us get there!'
Josh kept forgetting to go slow, he kept racing, racing through the deserted suburbs of Amsterdam.
I kept boxing him to slow down, he kept putting his thumb up, for me reminding him.
The streets were wide and quiet, the traffic lights were all on orange. We blatted through the middle.
I was aware of the tram lines, a Hells Angel had got his wheel jammed in one a few weeks earlier and gotten run over.
I wanted to stay on that bike!
I wanted to get back safe.
I kept thinking of what I was going to do when I got back to the flat.
I'd have tea and roll a joint.
It seemed a long way, it got longer and longer.
I thought about walking up the five flights of stairs as street lights whizzed past.
I saw myself filling the chipped, white, enamel kettle and lighting the gas cooker with a thin, wooden match, out of the assortment of half used match books from a variety of bars around town, as I was looking out for Amstel station signs.
I imagined the smell in her flat; un-aired, smoky and a touch greasy, as houses and office blocks flashed by.
I pictured the table I'd skin up on, loaded with empty beer cans and over-flowing ashtrays, as we headed down familiar roads.
When we bumped up the curb outside her flat and parked the bike next to the still hot Triumph, I saw myself gouched out on the settee, knowing I was safe.
I have never felt so relieved as I did when I finally put my feet down on the still and solid, concrete pavement.
When we got to the flat we found Bob and Rikki arguing. Rikki was in tears because Bob had blatted home without any consideration for her ankle.
I made tea, skinned up and kept my promise.
I loved doing a line and then going for a ride.
I'd give him a squeeze round his slender waist. I'd squish up close to him. He'd give my leg a squeeze back. We knew that it was one long turn on, the ride, the pub, the club. It was all a big tease.
Speed got us addicted to sex or maybe it was the turn-on. That luscious turn on that comes from beautiful bodies, sexy clothes and a loving of each other.
Not that we ever said, "I love you".
Not once, we were both too insecure for that.
I didn't want to scare him off with such serious stuff.
I didn't want to lose him.
He didn't want sex, he wanted to give sex.
It meant a lot to me that did.
He was the first man I could relax with sexually.
I'd always been uptight with my boyfriends, we'd split up because of sex stuff. Either I'd finish with them for coming on too strong or they'd finish with me for lack of sex. Either way my relationships never lasted very long. I split up with my first boyfriend for wanting to snog with me!
I had just started to go to the pub, The Red Lion, when I met Dave. He was 19, 6'3 and blond, I don't know if I ever loved him, I think I really liked the idea of him being taller than me. I went out with him for two weeks, on the second weekend of our great romance we went to Leicester with a bunch of friends. It was an icy, foggy night. I sat in the back of this cramped and steamed up car, I was watching a guy called Ben clowning around in the front. I remember thinking that Dave was a bit boring compared to Ben.
After the gig we got dropped off in Bourne and Dave had to take me home on his bike. I only remember this bit because we came off his 250 cc bike. It wasn't serious, a slow fall on a quiet, country road. We were all right and so was his bike except for a bent handlebar. I also remember him strutting up and down the road to find something to blame before giving me much notice.
The next thing I remember about Dave is him trying to snog me. I'd gone to his folk’s house and he asked me upstairs to his bedroom. I thought, 'cool, we can talk without his parents around,' then he wanted to snog!
Ahhhhh, shock, horror.
I think I suddenly went home, and the next day when he came to visit me I finished with him to the tune of 'Snow Blind' by Black Sabbath.
Not much later I was going out with Ben. We swapped leather jackets, I was the girl in the black leather jacket with 'Ben' written on my back in big white letters. It made our relationship feel more secure!
I thought Ben was cool. He usually had some hash, which he was always really tight about, but at least he had some.
To me the world of drugs was still very new and unknown.
Ben also had a good record collection; Cream, the Stones, Free, Led Zep (his favourite) and many, many more. All his records were neatly stacked in alphabetical order and he burnt patchouli joss sticks!
He always stashed his hash in the garden or in a hedge and never told me where, just in case I got interrogated! He once stashed an eighth in the woods behind our house and never found it again, though he suspected me.
He was the first man/boy I had sex with. He was all chuffed at my being a virgin, but afterwards he was all narky because there was no blood.
My first sexual experience was a big disappointment.
I was all geared up for this romantic shebang and all I got was a bonk!
Sex with Ben was totally one-sided.
I was only 16 and totally insecure about the whole thing, about what it was meant to be.
It was meant to be SOMETHING GOOD, wasn't it? .......
It wasn't that I didn't want sex, I did but I couldn't enjoy it. There was always a disgusting feeling of having to do it.
Feeling of something wrong.
There was a door in my subconscious waiting to burst open.
I had over the years done too much back-logging.
I had smothered my inner child's screams with sound proofing, locked her in a cellar deep within.
But there were cracks.
Fragments of memory escaped, flashed before my eyes.
Pictures of the past.
Disturbing and unreal.
It couldn't be true.
I'd plaster over the cracks.
I'd pretend it wasn't me.
My mind didn't let go, it chewed and chewed.
When one memory was barely digested, another one would bubble up before my mind’s eye.
Mental indigestion!
I thought to come out.
But you wouldn't listen.
You didn't want to believe that someone had hurt you.
Abused you.
Finally you gave up the illusion that you were OK.
And when you realised that what I'd shown was true, you began to heal.
I remember the nightmare very clearly. Its constant repetition imprinted it on my mind.
I am about 7 or 8 years old.
I am in our VW camper van with my parents.
I am sitting behind my dad, we are driving up to a border check point, my mum rolls down her window and there HE is!
My stomach knots, I look at this balding face.
He smiles his knowing smile.
I say, "It's HIM! It's HIM!"
My parents appear to know him and don't understand my fear,
"Of course it's him"
I feel helpless and vulnerable.
This nightmare repeated itself until one night it changed.
We were walking up the hill behind the beautiful monastery.
I am with my aunt, she is young and exciting to be with.
Suddenly I hear a noise behind us.
Without looking I know it's him.
He is in a car with sledge runners, quietly creeping up on us.
He pulls up beside us, slowly winds down his window, his ugly grin.
There is someone beside him.
My aunt and I run.
A house appears where normally there isn't one, we run in and lock the door.
I know he's trying to get in.
I find myself upstairs, alone, consumed with the fear of his presence.
I look out of the window and there below me he stands, grinning up at me.
I run to the shelf and grab a heavy, old, cast-iron presser. I drop it out of the window.
Without looking I know I have killed him.
I know he's gone.
When I woke up I knew that that was my last nightmare about him, I was 12 years old and had dreamed that dream for years.
Not every night, but often enough to dread it.
Now I had buried all my precious knowledge.
I shut off.
I forgot about my dream until I was eighteen and then it surfaced again.
When HE came back it wasn't in a dream, it was a picture memory.
I was minding my own business when it crashed into my mind.
WALLOP!
I feel this memory as I see it.
The room is grey.
It is clean and narrow.
I am sitting on a table, the same table the scale electric set is on.
The curtains are drawn, the door is closed.
I feel detached.
I want my mum, but all I got is him in his smarmy suit.
He stands in front of me, all powerful.
He is showing me some roundish wobbly thing that he's pulled out, like magic, from the zip of his trousers.
His face changes as he keeps pulling at this wrinkly shiny thing.
"It's a sweetie,' he says.
"Eat it".
It goes hard and big in my mouth, it tastes horrid.
Choking, struggling.
I can't pull away.
It exploded in my mouth.
Choking, retching.
Eat it!
I mustn't cry.
I have to act normal.
He'll tell my mum and dad how bad I've been.
He'll tell the police!
And then my mum and dad won't ever want me back.
He said so.
Jesus Christ.
Repressing my fear doesn't sound normal to me.
It's a child's illusion.
Act normal and cry.
Cry the pain and the fear out.
Let it all go.
Cry honey cry.
My head feels sore.
I feel strange.
Since I have started to write, and in effect let the truth in, my emotions have been thrown into confusion.
I don't feel like I normally do.
I don't feel in charge.
I feel small, vulnerable.
I feel lost.
I don't know what to do with the feeling I get because of my uncle.
I fear and turn it into anger.
I have managed to pervert my feelings to such an extent that nobody knows what's upsetting me, not even myself.
I have never cried in public, mustn't let them know I'm hurt.
I don't as a rule get sympathy.
Eat it!
The bastard.
I've debated to and fro whether to use his name or not, should I protect him?
Why?
Because I'm on a forgiveness trip.
I don't know if I have forgiven.
Sometimes I think I have. I tell myself that it's OK now.
I don't hold it against him. But right now I'm shaking inside.
I'm raged, fucked off with you, you bastard.
Why should I protect you, because it's a long time ago?
Because you might be a nice man now?
Because I'd feel guilty again.
I'd feel guilty again.
I'd feel dirty again.
I'd feel all that stuff again.
The stuff that rots away your self esteem.
You bastard, you got right in there.
You got right inside that little girl in every possible way, and 30 years later you're still in there. Oh yes you're still inside of me.
You, you can walk away and forget.
Can you forget?
Come to think of it, you can't.
I bet you haven't forgotten.
What do you feel, guilt, self hate?
Or are you still of the opinion that little girls forget?
That they forget the fear, the guilt and self hate for being who they are.
The fear of being locked up, of being taken away from mum and dad.
The fear of you.
The fear of that absolutely helpless feeling of being small and scared.
So you see I have no reason to protect you.
I know my aunt didn't help me any but I also know she didn't know how to. I guess she was face to face with what happened to her. She could have told my folks but I suppose she didn't feel too good about that.
"By the way, Paul (Ups!) my husband is abusing your little girl."
Doesn't sound too good, she probably didn't even want to believe it.
I am feeling the after effects of my writing.
An emotional earthquake.
I let that feeling in.
I let the truth in and it gutted me.
Every time it gets me.
I don't know who I am.
I feel lost.
I feel scared, I'm scared of my fears.
I feel so small and useless.
My heart pounds.
Every beat builds up this inescapable pressure.
My thoughts collide and smash.
All I have is white mess in my head.
I know I'm me but I don't recognise me.
I guess you feel small because I am small.
I hide because he can't get me then.
He said if I let anyone know what happened they'll take me away!
To a special place for kids like me!
For my first two years of school I had a nun as my teacher.
Where we lived in Switzerland it was terribly catholic.
Catholicism with all it's deformed and mutated thought forms. With its oh so clean exterior and dark, dark underneath.
Secret passages from the monastery to the convent, unmarked baby graves along the convent walls.
Centuries of repression, people hunched with guilt, pure people, people with love and compassion in their hearts, floundering under the weight of illusionary sins.
Sister Marionella was small, round and firm. She was a flowing mass of black, except for her face which was framed in white.
She especially bought a carpet thrasher for Susi.
Susi was 7 years old, we were all 7 years old.
All thirty of us.
Twenty nine of us would watch Susi getting a thrashing, twenty nine of us would worry.
Susi would kneel in the front right hand corner mumbling the lords prayer over and over.
Marionella was liberal with the cane, but only Susi had the sad honour of the carpet thrasher.
I never got caned. I was too scared. I did my best to be good.
Two years I spent in fear of that woman.
Two years from Monday to Saturday. One day off from the short, sharp lady.
Doing religion, lots of religion. Colouring in picture from the bible, purple and black for the baddies. It's scary stuff this religion.
Then there is the first holy communion.
Your first confession.
Your first confusion.
Learning the 12 commandments.
Learning what a sin was.
Learning guilt.
"I stole jam." "I touched myself." "I was impolite to my mother."
Bastards.
The bastard religion drummed my guilt in even more.
I did touch myself.
I did have unclean thoughts.
I lied.
I lied because there was no way I'd confess away my inner being, confess that I was 'one of those children'.
What would they have said if I'd told them my thoughts?
So I lied.
I lied and felt guilty.
God knows and sees all doesn't he?
Well, I lied anyway, risked getting struck by lightning as befits all liars.
"I stole some jam." "I disobeyed my parents." "I used a naughty word......
..... "Amen."
"A padre a madre a horilibus. Now child say two 'Our ladies' prayer and 'the lords' prayer ten times and you will be forgiven."
But I can't be forgiven can I? The whole thing is a lie.
Oh guilt, guilt, guilt.
I'd kneel on the hard wooden plank and pretend to pray. I didn't know my prayers, I still don't. Doesn't seem to make much odds. I am forgiven for a bunch of lies. I'd slink by Sister Marionella who took us for our weekly confession session — in school time.
"Good bye Sister."
"God bless you child."
What a farce.
All that stuff got muddled and mixed and brewed and added to, fermented for many years and a pokey thing if became.
We ventured into the world with our own brand of fully fermented mind garbage.
Garbage that ruined friendships and bits of life.
I was traumatised by it.
No way to speak up for myself.
No way to stand up for me.
Not knowing it's my stuff and not the worlds.
The world was fine and still is, but I wasn't.
From my early teens on I would daydream that a bunch of Hells Angels would ride into the school yard. They were my friends and had come to collect me. No waiting for the bus for me.
No.
I got friends on big, mean bikes.
Goggle your eyes out kids, these are my friends.
I dreamed that dream every afternoon as I leaned and gently bounced on the wire mesh fence waiting for the bus. Sometimes the bus was early and I'd miss my day dream. I liked the idea of big mean bikes and handsome fellers in denim and leather, all friends of mine.
I got my first motorbike when I was 16. I called it a motorbike because it looked like one, even though it was only a 50 cc trialy bike and could have been called a moped. It wasn't mean or cool but it gave me my first experience of motorcycling.
I loved that feeling of zooming down the road. Nothing between me and the surrounding countryside.
I liked that feeling of opening the throttle, even though there wasn't much power in my dinky little engine, it pulled more than my bicycle ever did.
It felt so much more out there, better even that pushing down on an accelerator, surrounded by glass and metal.
I looked at big bikes and dreamed.
I watched Easy Rider and dreamed some more.
I started to buy bike magazines and developed a definite idea of what bike I liked.
I liked them big.
Big and mean, the classic idea of the iron steed.
My first few bikes weren't steeds, they were standard bikes from the factory, a few hands old.
Being a girl and riding a bike got me looks. I liked that feeling of people looking at me. People made way for me when I was wearing my leather jacket and carrying my helmet. I felt like I was getting some sort of respect. It felt good to be respected be adults. It felt good to be noticed after years of blending into the surroundings.
It felt like I was me.
I was showing me to the world.
No more uniform, here was I, in my tie-died, rainbow, fluffy, hippie gear, a multitude of necklaces, and beads and ever changing patchwork jeans and of course my leather jacket.
I remember riding my bike to college for the very first time, strutting my shy stuff in my leather jacket, with "Ben" written on the back. At the end of the day I got on my bike very aware of the two coaches full of college students. I was even more aware of the lads in the back watching me. And what a bollox I made of it. I got all uptight, I started kicking it over once, twice, more and more.
Oh God why were they all watching?
Why wasn't it starting?
I got all hot in my helmet. I wanted to appear cool, not all hot and flustered.
Keep cool!
Let's start at the beginning, you walk up to your bike, you get on, you turn on the fuel.
You turn on the fuel!
I turned it on and two kicks later I was off, head down.
I always remembered the fuel after that.
It never occurred to me that I could ride a big bike.
The guys I was hanging around with were of the opinion that girls were not physically strong enough to handle a big bike. The collective opinion of the "Red Lion" lads was that girls could just about manage a Honda 400/4, which happens to be a very small bike. I didn't fancy that, I wanted my own Chopper, Easy Rider style, with all the freedom and good weather, and Steppenwolf playing all the way!
I just carried on dreaming about a fella with a big bike for me to pillion on.
I was 16 and revised for my exams when Mark came to work for my parents. He was 17 and good looking. He had dark eyes and black straggly shoulder length hair. His clothes were raggletaggled and he didn't bring any lunch, saying he was never hungry at lunch time. My mum offered him dinner and he ate like there was no tomorrow. From then on he had lunch with us every day.
For weeks he cycled 15 miles or so to our house.
Our first conversation started with "Do you like Pink Floyd?"
He did, and we began an odd courtship of circumnavigating each other. We kept it platonic for a long time, at least a year.
He got jealous about my boyfriends. My mum and dad thought it best for me not to date the work force.
I went to a few parties with him and got mighty stoned. I met townie folk for the first time, folks who lived in the estates around Peterborough. It was a new world to me. I was a country bumpkin, new to parties in semis, loud music, people with hash, I'd never seen so much hash, everybody had it.
Listening for the first time to Ian Dury and the Blockheads over and over, really stoned, stoned silly and crashed out on a bean bag in the corner. I was always one for the corners at parties.
I was always worried about anyone threatening me with the police. Parties in semis were an adrenaline trip, fear, always waiting for that knock on the door.
Shit, I just always worried about getting found out like my uncle said would happen. I was scared of the police because my uncle threatened me constantly with the police and how they would take me away if they ever found out.
If they found out what?
That HE was abusing me?
But the I was only 3 years old and it all got muddled into a big fear of authority.
A really big fear of authority.
A deep fear.
I am still scared.
Authority is scary.
I am helpless.
I spent a lot of my teenage years feeling lonely.
I got real scared of people.
I couldn't talk to folks without stuttering and going chronically red in the face. That was pretty bad. I could feel the heat rising in my face and I knew that who ever I was speaking to could see it too.
Oh God, I hated blushing, but I did it all the time. It wasn't only blushing though, with it came a pressure in my head. The whole thing was pressure, like I was on trial and every body could see by my blushing that I had something to hide.
All through the of my 16th year I would meditate. I didn't know that that was what it was called but every day I would light a candle and sit down and look at my Donovan LP which I'd stuck onto the side of my desk and tell myself that I could talk to people.
I could talk.
I was going to talk.
I was going to make friends.
I was going to be confident.
I always felt that I was little even to the same age people as myself and horribly little to real adults, even when I was an adult.
When I was 18, and had long handed Ben his jacket back , I got myself an inter rail ticket and went to Greece.
I'd been to Greece before with my then boyfriend Graham. I liked the country but hadn't seen much of it, we'd argued nearly all the way.
It was the first time I had hitched so far away from home. We had 200 pounds between us, to last a month.
We bought ferry tickets and a train fare to get us from Milan to some ferry port half way down Italy, we saved on as much as we could, Graham would blag the bread of the people eating in nice cafe's or restaurant gardens.
He'd blag everything they didn't want. I was embarrassed, he blagged cigarettes and swigs of drink. I hung back.
We slept under bridges and on beaches and at the bottom of gardens. At some border check point we slept on the wooden tables because the ground was too wet and cold. It wasn't very comfy!
We got chucked out of the Paris underground at gone midnight by serious looking gendarme with big sleek Alsatians. They had a go at Graham for not finding a decent place for a girl to sleep. Silently I agreed. I had enough of the roughness of it all. I liked sleeping on beaches but not in parks and doorways.
We trudged away through the pouring rain, leaving a sad looking collection of old ladies and men huddled around the station entrance clutching their tattered plastic or canvas bags and found us a doorway to shelter in.
We argued about a flat in Stamford which Graham wanted me to move into but didn't have.
I didn't want to move away from home as it was nice there.
I didn't want to share a flat with Graham.
I like it at home.
So we argued across France, across the Alps, down into Italy, argued all the way to Greece.
We argued in lorries and in cars.
In between arguing he wanted sex, a hand jobbie of a blow job or just a quickie.
He'd insist and I'd refuse and we'd carry on arguing.
What a scene!
I didn't want sex or move into his non-existing flat, I just liked how he looked.
He said that if I wasn't going to live with him he'd stay in Greece and go tomato picking. I freaked and said I wanted to go to Switzerland where my granny lived. We were in Greece for three whole days!
Eventually half way up Yugoslavia I said he should go and pick his stupid tomatoes. He never mentioned them again.
We had quite a strange relationship. I thought he was ace because he'd been to India, seen Lynyrd Skynyrd, done lots of drugs and had long hair, he was 23 and seemed very worldly to me.
We didn't have such a good time, in fact it was totally stressful to live with him. He wanted to go upstairs every time my mum and dad had gone out for a quickie!
I didn't, we argued
He did in all my dad's Valium, that he had left over from a recent nervous breakdown.
He guzzled my mum's home brew sneakily.
He did in a whole bunch of his own uppers and downers that sent him into various states of incomprehension.
He went of with the Swiss girl who was staying with us to get of a smack habit.
He constantly threatened to tell my parents that I smoked hash.
I was constantly on tip toes. And all the time he wanted me to move into a non-existent flat in Stamford.
After every big argument he would ask me to drive him to the train station. He'd have a rucksack full of his tat and I'd drive him to Peterborough.
The first time I drove him I thought he was gone, only to be woke up at 1 in the morning. He was outside throwing pebbles at my window.
I took a long time to let him in, trying to comprehend what was going on.
Then he wanted sex smelling of alcohol!
We repeated the trains station scenario a few times, in the end I would only take him to the bus stop in Deeping. He'd get drunk in the Five Bells and then phone me up to collect him.
I got totally stressed, so much so that I started to black out. I'd get this fluffy feeling in the top of my head and then it would start to spin and my vision would go black from the edges, it was horrible.
In the end I got my mum to ask him to leave, a task she was glad to undertake, she didn't want him in the house in the first place.
I had to pretend to be upset, I couldn't let Graham know that it was me who wanted him gone, he split on me.
Mum gave him the money to hire a car so that he could drive himself and his stuff to his parents home in North Wales.
He went to town and came back with a guitar!
Mum hired the car herself, in his name, and sent him on his way.
I was totally relieved and instantly set about changing my bedroom back to how it used to be, I got rid of our makeshift double bed and got my single bed back.
A week later whilst shopping in town, mum and dad saw Graham sitting on the library steps, he hadn't really recognised them. I took the afternoon of work and drove to Stamford to find him still sitting on the steps. He told me amongst lots of gibberish, that he'd gotten some really good Nepalese temple balls, and he was going to stay at the Samaritans. He didn't know how long, he just wanted to be close.
He had my name tattooed on his arm!
I left him on the steps and went home.
I'd made plans with my friend to inter rail to Greece together but when it came to the crunch she didn't come so I went on my own.
I liked going south, it felt really adventurous. I loved going over those mighty Swiss Alps.
I had set out from my Grandma's in the Zurich drizzle. The train climbed it's way towards Italy, up the St Gottard, through the longest tunnel and out into the Italian sunshine. The heat seeped into the carriage, hours and hours of Italian countryside flashed by.
In Brindisi I had my first experience of travelling on my own in the South. I got followed from the train station to the ferry port by a young Italian in a flash car. Every other Italian male, loose on that street that morning made some comment or gesture. In the end I sat down on a bench next to a girl about my age, luckily she spoke some English. I explained my dilemma and asked if she could pretend to be my friend. She did, and we spent the day together, she turned out to be a junky.
In the early afternoon some of her friends turned up, they were keen to score, money flashed from hand to hand and one of the guys disappeared. When he came back we all went to this derelict house. I was fascinated, this was like being in a movie.
They all cranked up in this shit covered house and then we went back down to the ferry port.
They weren't much company now, and as soon as I could I got on the ferry.
That experience left a deep impression on me, how these young people, all handsome and pretty could fade away behind their open eyes.
The train to Athens was crammed full of backpackers, all sweating and excited.
Outside the earth was baked and bare, the horizon shimmered and danced to the beat of the sun.
The train track ran straight through hamlets and villages. On approaching these the train driver would give a long whistle, goats and chickens scampered of the tracks.
It was on this train that I met Rocco, a south African.
I thought he was heavenly, tanned, with light, curly hair and a good figure. We got together for 3 weeks and hitched around Greece, we got drunk every day, courtesy of me. We spent out first night in Athens, in the park below the acropolis. We were drunk and crashed out somewhere in the park.
Next morning I woke first to the noisy tune of a bird above our heads. I watched him as he chirped and sang.
I sat up to see where I was. When I looked at Rocco I burst out laughing and I couldn't stop.
The bird who had sung so loudly had also by the looks of it spent the night pooing on Rocco's sleeping bag. Not just once or twice but all over.
Rocco didn't laugh and I couldn't stop myself.
I tried to look away so that I could stop laughing but every time I looked back I burst out again. I had tears of mirth running down my cheeks. I tried to sound serious about what a bummer it was, but couldn't stop giggling.
I'd only met this guy the evening before and here I was laughing because a bird had shat all over his sleeping bag. He saw the funny side eventually.
Sex wasn't a problem, we were drunk every night.
Every day I would buy us some salami, margy, bread and a bottle of Ouzo.
I liked being drunk, I never thought about the why of it.
We did lots of holding hands sitting close and snuggling.
The day I left we bought an extra big bottle of Ouzo and I drank an extra large amount. I got myself into quite a state.
Having waved our good byes, and having watched Rocco disappear behind some buildings, I remembered that I was thirsty.
I remember walking around the ferry which was crammed full of backpackers, and German tourists.
Feeling sad and completely dehydrated I saw a young man pour some orange juice into a plastic bowl. I was parched and asked if I could have a drink. They gave me it and I drank the lot only to be told that they'd never seen anyone drink Ouzo and orange like that!
Then I talked English to some German folk and German to some English guys and vaguely sensed that I was making a mess of things.
The next fragment of memory still perplexes me, one of the Swiss guys I vaguely remember tagging along with gives me some Valium tablets.
I remember swallowing them.
Next I find myself hanging over the side puking up huge amounts of disgusting tasting liquid.
The Swiss guys are still there, I assure them sluredly that I'm OK.
Bollox, I was shit faced.
When I woke up the next morning I was outside lying on a bench surrounded by pink puke.
Oh God, how disgusting, but even in my annihilated sate I managed to miss myself and all my stuff.
The sea was flat as a pancake, but I felt sea sick.
I felt so sick. People I didn't know asked me if I was OK now!
What Had I been up to?
Later on one of the ship's crew offered me his cabin. I declined a number of times, but he said I'd feel much better lower down and so I went for it. He said he'd wake me up at 1pm when he finished his shift. He did wake me up but not how I expected though.
I was pulled into awakeness by an arm sliding over my waist, I pushed it away, but it came back.
I registered in my mind that this wasn't meant to be happening and pulled my hung over head together.
I sat up, feeling nauseous and protested.
He was lying next to me with nothing but his pants on.
He was old enough to be my grandfather.
He said this could be a secret between us.
I wanted to puke.
He kept telling me how much I would like it, and how much it would mean to him.
I pulled on my shoes, grabbed my bag and headed for the door. Meanwhile he was pointing at his huge erection, saying in broken English,
"Look at this. Look at what you have done!"
I wanted to puke.
I wish I had puked on his floor.
Not much later I was sitting on deck, rattled and horribly hung over, when this little Sicilian comes up to me and starts telling me what a "Bella, Bella" I am. He wants to take me to Sicily.
I feel rough and wish he'd leave me alone, but he goes on and on. At last the ship docks and he scurries off to his lorry. I get my things together and head off. The little Sicilian lorry driver spots me as I disembark.
"Eh Bella, Bella!"
He starts to run after me.
I snap round, catch his eye and stop him in his tracks with a gut felt loudly yelled,
"Fuck off and leave me alone."
I was love sick and hung over and feeling sorry for myself.
I guess that was when the veneer started to crack.
His crooning voice, sticky, sticky, smarmy.
"Eat it! Eat the sweaty. Lick it. Go on!"
Shove her head between your legs.
"Bite it!"
Slap.
"Not so hard." ...... "Lick it."
Pull her head back. Open her mouth and shove your smooth shiny dick in. She's chocking, physically and mentally, wild panic in her eyes.
Where is the life she knew?
Where were the dolls and toys?
Where was the safety, the innocence?
He's thrusting, dancing on his toes. She retches on his sticky load.
"Eat it!"
No point crying. Last time, crying just caused more pain and confusion .....
He, big and intrusive in my world, telling me all the bad stuff about me.
No reason to cry.
I push the pain down, deep down. There is no pain now, only confusion. Push that down too. Push every bit of my feelings down, they aren't safe. My feelings get me into trouble. Doesn't matter that I don't understand, shove it down.
Act normal.
Nothing happened. Nothing happened.
Act normal.
I'm happy. I'm acting normal.
Nobody knows, they can't tell.
They mustn't know. They mustn't know.
I'm three and a half years old and acting normal .......
I'm acting normal.
I eat it, and act normal.
He shoves his finger in a hole I didn't know I had and act normal.
I act fucking normal!
Please don't let anyone know how wicked I am. Please don't tell my mum and dad, they'd give me away, you said so. You must know, you are all powerful. You can do with me as you chose, you must know, you are so much bigger that me, you must know.
I'll act normal when he spreads my legs.
Act normal when I'm gagging.
For god's sake I'm acting normal.
Act normal when I'm kneading that lolloping warm thing that comes out of his trouser zip.
Act normal when it goes all hard.
Act normal when he shoves it in my mouth,
Act normal when I want to cry.
I remember coming back from Greece, sitting on the train and noticing lots of motorcyclists and thinking that I wanted to ride again.
Sometime around then I had a party and there were three young men wanting to go out with me.
Jeez!
Josh won by being totally and utterly stroppy. He rode off on his motorbike when we all knew he was drunk.
I worried and felt guilty. When he came back a while later I went out with him.
First time round we lasted three weeds.
It was then that Josh said of cause I could ride a big bike, and so not long after that I bought my first big bike, it was a Honda 550/four. It had 4 shiny exhaust pipes, was big and was mine, and I didn't hang out with the Red Lion crew anymore anyway.
I was riding my own bike.
I was living my own dream.
I was in charge of the throttle, no one else.
I loved doing the riding, not just sitting on the back.
A few months later I got off with Mark at a party.
I was 19 then.
It was a hard 50/50 choice that night, between him and another.
I fancied them both, but Mark won the night.
We went on to have a pretty turbulent relationship.
We were both hot headed Leos.
He was the love of my life. In my mind we were a couple for ever.
We were bright eyed and bushy tailed. Everything was new, everything was exciting.
We were into hash, music and motorbikes.
We both worked and had enough money to go out and have a good time.
Mark and I got stoned a lot, stoned silly. We'd get stoned and then walk around Bourne where he had a damp garage conversion bed sit. It felt good though, sort of grown up. I spent most nights there, crammed onto his single bed, with Sam my faithful dog on the armchair.
Mark and I were together for a bit over a year.
Things went wrong when that whole sex thing reared it's ugly head again. I was very uptight, but the more I got pushed the more I balked.
We had so much going for us and at the same time so much against us.
I was more uptight than a clam.
I felt it was safe to be aloof.
I was hardened.
No kissing and cuddling.
One did that sort of thing behind closed doors and with light of.
Our parting was the bitterest and I wonder if we could laugh together now.
I got pregnant.
I was too young.
I had too many problems that hadn't even properly surfaced. I think the abortion actually triggered my memories. The abortion that never happened!
I took the day off work.
I was so scared and worried.
I had no kind words or counselling.
A surgical rape!
A part of me ripped out, disposed of.
No help to make sense of things.
There was guilt, lots of guilt.
Men talking about the murder of the unborn child on the radio, about what type of woman has an abortion.
About .... About loads of stuff they didn't know about, didn't have a whiff of a clue about.
Talking shite.
How the fuck would they know?
They didn't know how I felt.
How I needed to talk.
How my parents needed to understand.
And so we all suffered.
Each of us silently.
Mark went out with other girls.
I found out and an all out heartache was loose.
I don't quite know what to say, it's a shame but we haven't talked in a long time.
It was bitter at the end.
It's kind of strange because as I remember the good times and the fun we had, I remember the way I felt. How I felt towards him, how we felt as a couple.
During the summer of 86 I spent a few weeks in Switzerland with my aunt and granny.
I had just split up with Mark, my world had crashed around my feet, and I was still standing in the rubbly ruins, with a bad attack of the dreaded scabies. I didn't know that I had scabies, the doctors couldn't tell me what it was. I itched for weeks, for a whole summer and God how it itched.
It was while staying with my aunt that I wrote a big long letter to Josh.
I was pouring my heart out in a witty drunken manner.
I spent three weeks of warm Swiss summer evenings on her balcony drinking cheap Italian wine, writing to Josh and watching impressive, noisy, thunderstorms over the mountains round the back of Zurich.
Josh thought I was after his body and when I got back home he was there and took me out. We went with a bunch of Chopper Club folk.
I liked their bikes. I was new to the big bike scene but it felt good.
Later Josh and I went back to my place. I had a party shed in the field, there was straw on the floor and a fire pit in the middle. We lit the fire and sat and laid round it all night. I felt secure because I had my period, there were no hasty first date sex worries. We talked and talked, by the morning we had talked and stroked all our clothes off. I'd never felt so safe. He hadn't wanted anything from me. I found myself wishing I didn't have my period. It could have been around then that I gave him some of my scabies.
It was during this time that I decided that I was going to teach myself to enjoy sex.
I started by buying a book called "Sex Watching".
I felt so proud of myself, I had managed to buy something with the word sex on it.
A book filled with the thoughts I didn't expand beyond the word sex.
Sex, one word for what they used pages and pages. Not only did they think beyond the simple word sex, they actually used words to articulate the, and then put them onto paper, for me to read.
For me to take my thoughts beyond the pubic area.
For me to travel upwards heavens forbid my vagina, and then further up to who knows where!
There were pictures of men and women, all very decent but there were pictures none the less for me to ponder.
To look at from the safety of my own caravan, safely tucked away in the field.
Nobody was going to walk in on me and, well, see what I was reading.
It was there that I read about desire and active involvement in sex.
There I came across the notion that it was OK to say what one liked, it was OK, sex was enjoyable, sex could be fun.
Some months and much sexual mind expanding later, while visiting Josh in Harlem Holland, I browses through a soft porn mag. I was on my own on the house boat, I looked at pictures of 'sex'.
Proper pictures.
That sounds like I just picked up this mag and flicked through it, I didn't. I had eyed it up for days. I wondered whether anyone knew it's exact position on the floor, and whether they would know that I had picked it up and I worried about what they might say. I mean there usually was only me and Josh in his room anyway, and the woman he rented the boat of, well, it was her mag she wasn't going to say anything.
But I worried all the same.
Josh and I used to do lines, lovely lines of speed. I'd tap a small pile of wizz onto a mirror or the back of a cassette case and then neatly chop it with a blade.
Chop, chop, chop.
Scrape it back into a pile and chop, chop, chop, until it was just right to be gracefully run into two lines. One for him and one for me.
We'd use a rolled up note or an empty biro as a straw, and whoever got the last line got to wizz about all over the mirror or cassette case snorting up any grain that had been missed.
We'd sit around and do some more wizz and chat.
Make tea and stoke the stove.
I'd roll a joint, he'd have a pipe.
We'd talk more.
We'd become electric.
We'd play strip poker.
We'd get so turned on.
We'd stop, do another line and have a smoke.
Make more tea and not touch each other.
We were singing with sex energy, magnetised together.
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(Pages 1-37 show above.)