eighteen-year-old, looking back at you. Now I feel as if I am looking at myself. He is me; I am him; both of us part of one another, but separate in the world. For now it is myself I am carrying in my arms.
I lay him down and cover him up.
I wonder when I will sleep beside him again, if ever. He has a vicious kick and a tendency, at unexpected moments, to vomit in my hair. But he can pat and stroke my face like a lover. His affectionate words and little voice are God’s breath to me.
I creep down the stairs. I put my jacket on. I find my keys. I get to the door and open it. I step out of the house. It is dark and cold. The fresh wind sweeps through me. It invigorates me.
Go. You must go.
I am kicking over the traces.
You could go into the dark
You could go into the dark and fear that you will never emerge.
This must be the death hour, the lowest part of the night. Barely a living thing is moving, including me.
Outside, the dark leaves on the trees flap in the wind like hundreds of long green tongues, the branches knocking at me.
I will roll a joint, if I can. This grass smells obnoxious. Like a damp bonfire, Susan says, particularly if I smoke it without tobacco.
I like watching the plants grow at the back of thegarden. When I get home in the evening after a few drinks, and there is nothing for it but to shut the front door, and I know I have to remain under this roof until the morning, as if I am under some kind of house arrest, one of the few things I do like is to go out into the garden. There I spray away at my dope plants, with my youngest boy, packed into his Babygro and felt shoes, tugging and pulling at the hose pipe behind me.
Occasionally I strip off a few leaves, wrap them in newspaper and dry them on the boiler. I have Ecstasy, LSD and an old bottle of amyl nitrate in the fridge. For a while I’d take the ‘E’ every day, starting after breakfast. It made me feel worse, and I knew it. But I didn’t stop. I have always preferred to take drugs in the straightest situations, at supper with my parents, for instance. I still do the occasional parent-teacher evening, in my latest favourite suit, on acid. The annual nativity, I find, is always improved by a tab of Purple Haze. It is the secrecy I enjoy, and perhaps the challenge.
Nina used to tease me, saying my attitude towards drugs belonged in another era. It is true that when I was growing up, drugs were fuel for a journey intothe self. They also connected me with a more dangerous and defiant world, and even a literary one: De Quincey, Baudelaire, Huxley. For Nina they mean sordidness, prison, and overdoses. It was her fear of needles that had kept her safe, if she is safe.
I’ve decided to forget the pinstripe suit. It’ll get crumpled in my bag and there’s nowhere to hang it over there. The Lennon picture is a definite. But I must find a photograph of the children to take with me.
I go to Susan’s desk, which is covered in her papers. Hoping to find evidence of some recent betrayal for which I can reproach her and then walk out, I snatch up her wallet and open it. I find only a picture of us with our arms around one another.
In the drawers there are packets of photographs. I select one of my eldest boy a few days old. I am bathing him in the hospital, his head lying in my hand. My face is grave with concentration as I splash his ribs and screwed-up face for the first time. It was Karen I was seeing then. I waved goodbye to Susan in the hospital, picked up the champagne her father had left us, and drank it in bed with Karen. Susan mentioned it the other day.
‘I will never forget that you left the hospital without kissing me. Our first child, and you didn’t kiss me. Still, at least you love the children. When you go away.’
‘Go away?’
‘Travel. The children ask for you all the time. The first thing they say in the morning is, “Is Daddy coming home today?”’
I put the photograph in my pocket.
For old times’ sake I glance
I lay him down and cover him up.
I wonder when I will sleep beside him again, if ever. He has a vicious kick and a tendency, at unexpected moments, to vomit in my hair. But he can pat and stroke my face like a lover. His affectionate words and little voice are God’s breath to me.
I creep down the stairs. I put my jacket on. I find my keys. I get to the door and open it. I step out of the house. It is dark and cold. The fresh wind sweeps through me. It invigorates me.
Go. You must go.
I am kicking over the traces.
You could go into the dark
You could go into the dark and fear that you will never emerge.
This must be the death hour, the lowest part of the night. Barely a living thing is moving, including me.
Outside, the dark leaves on the trees flap in the wind like hundreds of long green tongues, the branches knocking at me.
I will roll a joint, if I can. This grass smells obnoxious. Like a damp bonfire, Susan says, particularly if I smoke it without tobacco.
I like watching the plants grow at the back of thegarden. When I get home in the evening after a few drinks, and there is nothing for it but to shut the front door, and I know I have to remain under this roof until the morning, as if I am under some kind of house arrest, one of the few things I do like is to go out into the garden. There I spray away at my dope plants, with my youngest boy, packed into his Babygro and felt shoes, tugging and pulling at the hose pipe behind me.
Occasionally I strip off a few leaves, wrap them in newspaper and dry them on the boiler. I have Ecstasy, LSD and an old bottle of amyl nitrate in the fridge. For a while I’d take the ‘E’ every day, starting after breakfast. It made me feel worse, and I knew it. But I didn’t stop. I have always preferred to take drugs in the straightest situations, at supper with my parents, for instance. I still do the occasional parent-teacher evening, in my latest favourite suit, on acid. The annual nativity, I find, is always improved by a tab of Purple Haze. It is the secrecy I enjoy, and perhaps the challenge.
Nina used to tease me, saying my attitude towards drugs belonged in another era. It is true that when I was growing up, drugs were fuel for a journey intothe self. They also connected me with a more dangerous and defiant world, and even a literary one: De Quincey, Baudelaire, Huxley. For Nina they mean sordidness, prison, and overdoses. It was her fear of needles that had kept her safe, if she is safe.
I’ve decided to forget the pinstripe suit. It’ll get crumpled in my bag and there’s nowhere to hang it over there. The Lennon picture is a definite. But I must find a photograph of the children to take with me.
I go to Susan’s desk, which is covered in her papers. Hoping to find evidence of some recent betrayal for which I can reproach her and then walk out, I snatch up her wallet and open it. I find only a picture of us with our arms around one another.
In the drawers there are packets of photographs. I select one of my eldest boy a few days old. I am bathing him in the hospital, his head lying in my hand. My face is grave with concentration as I splash his ribs and screwed-up face for the first time. It was Karen I was seeing then. I waved goodbye to Susan in the hospital, picked up the champagne her father had left us, and drank it in bed with Karen. Susan mentioned it the other day.
‘I will never forget that you left the hospital without kissing me. Our first child, and you didn’t kiss me. Still, at least you love the children. When you go away.’
‘Go away?’
‘Travel. The children ask for you all the time. The first thing they say in the morning is, “Is Daddy coming home today?”’
I put the photograph in my pocket.
For old times’ sake I glance
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