When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth.

Sherlock Holmes

This world was over long ago.

ACIM

Trivial Tales of Everyday Madness 1

Having somehow contrived to bring about a situation where I find myself in almost
complete isolation, I have to wonder just how much this is intentional on my own
part or whether I should allow myself to be tempted to see myself as, if not the
unwitting victim of circumstance, then certainly not quite in control of my conscious
processes as I would like to think I am. Poe’s Imp of The Perverse immediately
floats into mind and not for the first time. A story that disturbed and fascinated me
ever since I read it in my teens. I knew he was speaking a general truth. That he was
describing the unconsciously destructive impulses we all share to a greater or lesser
degree, only I was incapable of describing it as such at that time. Now its accuracy
seems obvious, becoming all the more so over the years. In fact, it would be little
exaggeration to say that the remainder of ones life can become a kind of damage
limitation if you’ re not too careful. And that is being careful, if circumstances
warrant it as I say. Worse, the present, in collusion with time, would seem to join
forces to thwart all your best efforts. Not a line I ever heard in Poe I think. But one
set of observations in one period leaps across an apparent chasm of time to influence
little ol me in another, and my sense of wonder will never cease. Sometimes the only
thing that’s kept me going I think.
The aforementioned collusion, the rather abstract way of describing what
impacts me as nothing less than a ganging up, a full frontal attack on my existence,
my very sense of being, would also have me feel that my whole life has been oddly
out of synch for as long as I can remember. Or blatantly out of synch. Oh I can put
this down to the awareness of not having achieved specific goals I perhaps rather
half-heartedly set myself for all the deep convictions I felt at the time. But is it also
any exaggeration to say that it might be possible to say these objectives were so
attractive to me, so coveted, again, on some deep unconscious level, that to have
attained my goals in any real sense would have been the first step into a downward
slide. That, in essence, the reality of the situation as I felt it at the time was that it
was too painful an enterprise to contemplate, the ruination of which as I say, would
amount to an unforgivable grievance against myself. But better to regret what you
have done than what you didn’t; or might have done as they say. I’m saying that the
world would seem to conspire to have you screw it up from every side if you’re not
paying attention, and I all too rarely was. This at least is one of the positives of the
awareness of the long haul. That going through shit and the internal hells we would
subject ourselves to can also be a gradual awakening process; if you manage to come
out the other side in one piece that is, with all your marbles still intact, and relatively
unscathed. Matters of interpretation as are all things in this world I’ve come to learn.
A part of that very process. This, if you haven’t succumbed to some rampant if
undiscerned egotism, whether by oneself or others or both. Malignant narcissism
perhaps, or full blown psychopathology. Start off on the wrong foot – and most of us
do, and you find the first day and every day of the rest of your life is a process of
trying to get back on track. What’s more, the world would also seem to do its
dandiest to ensure this will never be the case. If you fuck up, you’ve fucked up for
good as far as the world is concerned. Could there be any worse sense of ostracism,
of being left out in the cold than finding the world seems to have decided it doesn’t
want you as a member? I’m not really asking, but stating it. Fortunately this doesn’t
literally apply in my own case, but if I genuinely thought or believed it did would I be
likely to tell you? You might be one of the “enemy.” You could be struggling with
your own Imp of the Perverse, in which case, I congratulate you and I tentatively
suggest we may be brothers or sisters engaged in the same struggle (And who am I to
pretend the “battle” is won?).
I say “tentatively” because you could, for all I know, slip imperceptibly over into
the other camp, so to say, where the characteristic complacency and smugness of the
conceits of the ego is the norm. In cloud cuckoo land. Haven’t we all. But not as a
way of life, regardless of how the worlds thinking would like to have it. Perhaps I
sound a little paranoid. Aren’t we all. Only time and a more acute perceptiveness
will tell. But as I indicated, time would conspire to have me dwell in the past as I
contemplate a potential fearful future. And that’s no way to live. In truth, it isn’t
really living at all. That much I’ve come to see at least. So this is my goal now, as
Dostoevsky once had Raskolnikov say, is to “refuse to go on living like this.”
Enough is surely enough. I really can’t stands no more. It’s not on. I’m out of
clichés now.
But that out of syncness that I mentioned. I look on others, the panorama of
history; which is really a history of murder, and criminal intent. A history of
madness, of insanity. And I see… my own reflected in it. On the level of form,
where it all takes place, after all. Then there’s that quiet part of me, discovered in
childhood and through reading Poe for instance, where I can seem to temporarily
separate myself from my actions, and become aware of that inner space. The same
interiority I would feel sitting or lying on my back letting the sun’s rays shift in my
peripheral vision as I screwed up my eyelids, and shifted the angle of my palm and
shaded my eyes. A revelatory experience in its way. And wholly foreign to the
consciousness of my mother for example. And who did descend into a kind of abject
paranoia.
But is it really always ever so simple as that? I doubt it was for her. It was
obvious her life was drastically out of accord with what she had envisaged for herself.
But we never talked about it, except for once perhaps. I was never a real person to
her. My own thoughts or feelings were of little relevance to her. She saw no
connection between my state of mind, whether relatively happy or unhappy and her
own. This was her main failing, and as much for herself. This is my point, and
something she just never understood or ever grasped. Few do it seems, even now. Or
have I lived too sheltered and lop-sided a life. Anyway, I was older, in my thirties,
and her all her relationships had come to naught, aside from other female friends and
relatives who were concerned for her well-being. And for some reason we slipped
into a real if brief conversation. I knew she had experienced life as a kind of hell, so I
wasn’t surprised when she asked if there is a hell. Even if I had thought so I doubt
I’d have said so. I found it simpler to say, as if talking to a child, that this is hell; this
world. I was as surprised myself I put it that way. And felt suddenly that it may have
been an even crueller thing to say. That she would likely still interpret it in terms of a
self-justified guilt, as was her way I intuitively realized. That it would only make the
sense of being in a nightmare more real for her if possible. On the other hand, I
realized as quickly, it also indicated the possibility of release, of escape.
Perhaps my brother came in and I didn’t have time to pursue it. But I felt
dissatisfaction with my own answer, and thinking about it later, I knew why that was.
What I had really wanted to go on to say was I don’t believe this is literally hell, as
she was inclined to take it, but that it’s a hell of our own making. That hell as such
isn’t real. That none of this is real in fact. An observation that would only have
opened up further levels of incomprehension and possibly denial. She’d think I was
as crazy as herself; crazier. Such is the power of denial. And she made existence a
kind of hell for me as others had for her. A connection she was clearly incapable of
making in any other way. She still saw herself as being acted upon without any input
of her own and for no apparent reason. Hers was the perfect victim mentality. For
me she had been as if a kind of demon at times. Possessed with an incomprehensible
and constant fury. But towards the end of her life it was becoming apparent and for
the instance just described, that she wasn’t wholly unaware of the split between her
awareness of her own input or lack of it into situations and the denial it engendered.
She had always conveniently rationalized her failings, when I once challenged her,
blaming it on pills, and so indicating she wasn’t in her right mind. Which would
mean most of her life, up until when I was able to physically defend myself, and even
beyond that when she could or felt in her warped perceptions it was justified. I came
to agree with her in part in any case, with the proviso of sorts that blaming her
behaviour on pills was as much of a pretext as any other erroneous justification. But
if it’s all crazy from the outset, looking for whom to blame can become to seem
pointless. I can blame her doctors and the pharmaceuticals industry for believing in
quick and simplistic solutions and big bucks. Logically then, I might hunt down her
former doctor and take my revenge. Or better still, find a way to impact the multi-
national conglomerates. A tall order. Or refuse to ever take any pills myself, for
anything ever. Not likely. (I've never been on medication, nor am I now). And
without penicillin I’d have died of the pox when I was barely out of my teens. Or
however long it takes to end you.
But I know I’ll be coming back to my mother. Not to blame her as such but to
fathom the situation, that I could put in a nutshell as: However was I stupid
enough to ever be born into such a situation? Not that she was the only culprit. Far
from it. You know how it is or can be. Maniac teachers and other loony so called
adults. We’ll be getting into this later no doubt. You’ll have your own story and
associations. I have a goal here as I say. An agenda even. I want to come to peace
with it all. I want to end it, and the lesson learned over the years is that this can only
be done in the mind. Further, the mind is the key to the matter, as it’s where it all
takes place. Or seems to take place. These are the “new” revelations. Really the
wisdom of old. But when you’re young you don’t know about any of this. And the
oldsters, to use Martin Amis’ phrase, are too deluded and in denial to be of any real
use to themselves, let alone in the presence of the incorrigibly sane. With the
exception of my granddad and the odd few. My headmaster at primary school, Mr
Young, for instance. But most of the rest are either terminally indifferent, or worse,
they make it their goal to beat and manipulate it – sanity – out of you. Bitter? No,
just realistic. When I did acknowledge the level of hostility and hatred towards me,
however disguised it might be – and it wasn’t always, I think I found the thought of
it, the realization too unpleasant to contemplate in full. So once again, denial has its
way, if in another form. And love becomes as impossible to contemplate if not more
so, than the commonplaceness of casual indifference and plain hatred or dislike.
Because as with my mother – and this is the point I forgot to emphasize, there is
always the sneaking suspicion, the underlying belief morelike, that you somehow
deserve this. Otherwise how else could it possibly come about or be allowed to? And,
that worse, and by the same reasoning, God must have a hand in it somewhere along
the line. That he’s chortling malevolently to himself somewhere behind the scenes.
Snickering to Himself in the wings. An unspoken, unformed, almost unimaginable
thought, but lurking there at the edge of awareness, rarely if ever to be fully
expressed. Because if you focus on it God might strike you down for such
uncharitable, ignominious, arrogant and grandiose notions. Or your elders and
betters certainly would. The interior life wasn’t always a hazard free zone. There
were as it happened, whole areas that were no-go. Something I only picked up on
later. That’s the nature of dissociation and denial.
And by then I had serendipitously drifted into popular studies of Freud and the
unconscious. I could then go on to see myself as a mass of hopeless “complexes,” as
they were described. This didn’t help me much that I was er, aware of, but any new
insight at all was welcome. The sense of discovery would also correspond with a
sense of getting to grips with things and so, feeling I might one day be my own
master. That was the crux of the matter for me. I might not have been out of touch
with my own deepest impulses whether of lust or love – though I was, and it was the
same with anger – but I felt powerless to take anything I saw as positive action, and
so be doing something about it. And so the slide into the sense, the conviction of my
life growing slowly and sometimes abruptly out of alignment with my own wishes
and desires came more overtly into awareness. I had done absolutely nothing about
Lynne over the years. Attractive, possibly beautiful, highly intelligent, as I believed
myself to be (it had become obscured somewhere down the line); witty, warm, she
had resorted to virtually throwing herself at me. She had at some point, which I will
very likely delineate in painfully exquisite detail in the near future, decided I was the
one for her. For me, this was literally unthinkable as it turned out, though fathoming
my own motivations as to why was a contradiction in terms. If I knew at the time I
assume I would’ve reacted in a very different way. And what can seem like almost
inconsequential little incidents can come to haunt you in later years. I should be clear
about this. I came to see her – this, as the reason, my focus as to where and when
though not why it all seemed to come apart at the seams; or at least the expression of
it. Meaning the beginning of the unshakable conviction my life was now
incontrovertibly out of synch, and not only that things would never be the same
again, but they would always be the same. The past can’t be changed, so there was
no way I could ever change this. From then on I felt I lived a kind of posthumous
existence.

Now that may be a kind of Poe-esque exaggeration, but the purpose here is to
attempt to refrain from denial and explore my true feelings on it. I almost said “the
subject,” but that would be to distance myself from it. No bad thing I hear you
mutter, but first things first, and first I have to look at it. Not wallow in self-pity, but
stare it squarely in the face, without resorting to some macho-esque or “mature”
rationalization of how there are plenty more fish in the sea. No, I want to explore
why I often feel I’m living someone else’s life due to not having taken any actions I
might have. And, while we’re on the subject, so I can stop my life descending into a
hopeless litany of might haves and should haves. Of course the real irony, or even
paradox is how I could have read the haunting and some would say often-morbid
stories of Poe and not see any of this coming, but you know what they say about
hindsight. I didn’t, it seems. Or I found my own reasons to rationalize it all away.
But denial and unconsciousness is just that. Out of sight and out of mind. And I
want my mind to be out of time, whenever I choose. The secret that isn’t a secret is
to come to know how time can be under your control. As if I know. We’ll see what
happens.
So I let the girl slip by me. What else is new? It happens all the time. Not to
me. In her case, once was enough. We have our one life and our one shot. In my
case, with that one particular person. And being particular is the key description here.
I could also have said she’s only a girl. Was only a girl. But she wasn’t any girl.
And I wasn't any kid, and I don’t see why I should look upon myself that way. But
just to jump ahead and spoil my own case, or perhaps salvage it, I did once feel pretty
much exactly the same thing for another girl called Jacqueline Watson. Lynne wasn’t
around at the time for some reason, and the girl was new in our class. I liked her
immediately. There was something different about her, and not just that I’d never
seem her before. She was as unique as Lynne was unique. And somehow the same –
as me. I found my feelings were the same for her. It wasn’t only an infatuation.
When I thought about her, the natural curiosity as to her life and circumstances would
expand beyond my conscious volition it seemed. Strangely – to me – I seemed to
accept my deep enthusiasm for her in a way I hadn’t or couldn’t with Lynne. Perhaps
because it had been knew to me. And not least that she had been around a whole lot
longer and had made her interest plain after a while. Neither did I feel any sense of
betrayal. A further paradox, then - that I accepted something that had previously (and
presently) scared the hell out of me. But predictably I didn’t make any moves to
bring it into the realm of actuality. I was wildly flattered she seemed to like me also.
Perhaps I wasn’t so repulsive as the persistent voice inside me would have me be. I
say voice, but the feeling was entirely non-verbal. Out of conscious awareness even.
It expressed itself as avoidance. That much at least should be clear by now. For me
it was as clear as mud. My life was a fog of inexplicable feelings. And again the
sense of paradox that I wasn’t overly concerned through any conscious awareness of
avoiding emotional highs and lows. I neither acted on it nor allowed myself to dwell
on it at any length.
But memory is unreliable, and it’s more likely I would only allow myself to
think of both of them within specific contexts. I could even fantasise being with
them. It was probably easier with Jacqueline and for some reason a memory of a
rocky shore comes to mind. She may have been from up North somewhere. I also
never imagined anything even remotely sexual. Again, what with the distance of
memory, I must surely have imagined kissing them. Certainly Lynne, as we were in
each other’s presence in class for years. And this has been the case for all my life.
Not that I would have any reason to deny any potential sexuality in her case. I would
think of sex, and more so in my teens of course. Just not with her. In primary Seven,
she had been caught truanting, with others. She had been with Billy Devine. His
sister Emily was in our class. I liked her in a platonic way, though I did also think
she was attractive in an unconventional way. I felt very jealous watching L as she
was paraded in front of the class. When she was brought back, in fact. I felt for her
also. And I also felt an obscure anger at myself. It was more of a sense of loss, at the
realisation she was so available; so accessible, more accurately. In retrospect it’s
obvious I had her on a pedestal that may have bore little relation to the reality of the
situation. The thought that we could be alone or as near as in the same room together
would have been for me a kind of dream, I was so enraptured of her. Neither did I
ever doubt or question my feelings for her. I somehow knew it was the real thing.
That still being a child was neither here nor there. And I felt it to be real in her. She
had got classmates to ask me out, not once, but twice.
Maybe she had thought I wasn’t convinced the first time. Or they hadn’t carried
it through. But the truth as far as I’m capable of understanding it now, was it was a
combination of deeply unsympathetic circumstances, and my own overwhelming
affection and love for her. If I had really stopped to think about it honestly, I would
express it now as the conviction that they were two separate and irreconcilable worlds
I could see no way of adequately bringing together. She was a separate universe from
my mother. To have her see the commonplaceness of my surroundings, the crude
indifference, or casual insults of my mother was unthinkable. Too unpleasant to even
contemplate. I would cringe with embarrassment when she made a rare appearance
at school. Now I can feel some compassion for her. But as a kid, existence feels too
naked. Final even. The opinion of ones peers, however indifferent to me some of
them might be also, was of grave importance. Stylish me in my flared blue trousers.
That my mother bought at my suggestion of course. But rather than feel guilty now, I
see my reaction as understandable. And the simple fact was, it was no environment
for any kid, never mind complicating the situation beyond endurance as any attempt
at “normalising” the situation with Lynne would have done. There’s always that
element of regret of course. The sneaking thought that perhaps we could have
reconciled the situation by seeing each other at her home for example. Her mother
seemed normal enough (though what did I know). But that would only open up the
possibility of rejection when the facts became known. But as I say, I never thought of
any of this consciously, let alone in any methodical and consistent way. It would
have opened a Pandora’s Box of impossibilities. The scope and complexity was
beyond me of course. All I knew if unconsciously, was they were separate worlds
and to keep the real one intact, things had to say that way. I had no doubt my feelings
for her were the real me, the real world so to say. But it was an existence, a state of
mind so fragile I felt, that it could be negated by a word or a look. Not least from
Lynne, and I suppose I was unwilling to put it to anything I saw as a test. That would
be my life as it was. I could live in a sort of free-wheeling limbo, as far as my
emotions were concerned. I could do no better than I was capable of. She would just
have to bear with me. We wouldn’t be children or even teenagers forever. Things
would somehow change for the better, even if I had no clear idea how. If she loved
me she would surely still be around when I had a better grasp of the situation and
myself.
In effect, I lived in my own head. Not exactly a fantasy world as I paid attention
and my apprehension of her was accurate. And I was correct about circumstances
changing in the future, but just not in the way I might have imagined. And the fact
was, I never truly broke the ice with her. It was forever unstated. Our teacher, Miss
Leaburn had picked up on it and put desks in fours, two each facing each other, with
her facing me. I recall my sense of disbelief and restrained terror. I wasn’t just shy;
it was the beginnings of a real problem, that came to a head in secondary (or high)
school. But it didn’t have me in such an almost pathologically vice0like grip then,
and it had the desired effect of thawing me out to an extent, and becoming a whole lot
more comfortable in her company as well as cementing out intense liking towards
each other. But I still couldn’t express it in any direct way. And I would all too easily
lapse back into bashful, intensely self-conscious and avoidant mode in unfamiliar
circumstances as when I was going down the stairs and there she was standing
outside the headmasters “office.” She smiled and looked slightly embarrassed and
flicked her hair, but she was as friendly as ever. I looked and no doubt barely
managed some incomprehensible grimace as I flounced on, clearly with far better
things to do than waste a single second on the likes of her. It was the same story
when John Reilly passed on her massage that she wanted to go out with me. Of
feeling put on the spot in a way I categorically didn’t want, or so I felt. That fight or
flight reaction. Everything an unbearably intense and serious big deal. No lightness
at all in my response. I don’t think I even answered. I’m sure of it. Both times.
Later I would see them sitting together looking at a book and feel more jealous than I
ever had. My first real experience of the emotion. At least it had brought them
together in a way. I must have been unfathomable to her. But then it’s not as if I
clammed up for evermore. It was clear I was somehow compelled or had decided to
keep her at a distance however friendly I might be after it. And I was naturally
friendly and communicative. There lay the pity and the pathos of the situation, along
with my unacknowledged conviction, to myself of course, that she was the most
important thing in the world to me. The stage was set for a fuck-up of the most
egregious kind, or it would take a miracle to see my way through this. The last time I
remember seeing her was at secondary school in the corridor, and this is where I
emphasize we were back to having to break the ice again, as she stood there smiling
at me, waiting. Now I might finally talk to her. And I wasn’t capable of it, it seemed.
I couldn’t talk to any girls in class, except the unattractive ones, not surprisingly. I
had no emotional or psychological investment in them. Anyone whose opinion I
might care about, I was a wreck.

When I was at my mother’s that time – she was in the process of being
“decanted” (a word she seemed to love to use, as she kept repeating it – and new to
me) temporarily from the council house we had spent most of our lives in – some
repairs or other needed done (I can’t remember to be honest) – to another on the same
street as the school my brother and me had went to, along with Lynne of course. I
couldn’t believe her luck; meaning mine. Visiting that New Year, or was it Xmas, I
thought it would be silly not to take the opportunity for a closer look at the place now
I was older. In my thirties in fact. I’d passed it often enough when in Dundee, once
even having a walk around the playgrounds. The main one leading into the school
proper was very small, but that was irrelevant of course to the myriad memories it
could conjure up, as did the shed adjacent to the toilets. (I had once tormented Stuart
Anderson, a bigger kid in the class above me – it was a small school of only 150
pupils – by repeatedly gobbing on him and running off, ignoring his warnings. I
wasn’t that small myself, but I could be quick. Idiotically, stupidly, I thought no
more about it, when at the end of the day as I was almost at the few steps that led
down to the school gate and out, I was all of a sudden in this vice-like grip, my head
pulled up to face him as Anderson looked down at me casually, snarling that I would
see how I liked it, before drenching me in phlegm and spittle while I struggled
ineffectually. “Like a girl,” he might have said if he was so inclined, but as he was
too intent on grim revenge he couldn’t even laugh at my plight or the state of me after
it. And he was right; I didn’t like it. But if he’d wanted to he could have given me a
good kicking, not that I was inclined to appreciate it at the time. We’d meet again on
better terms).
The school was now a further education centre for the handicapped. I toyed with
the notion of going in and having an unaccompanied wander; that I could leave it to
others to challenge me and was still considering it after I’d went inside and walked up
the stairs and by the headmaster Mr Young’s office, where Lynne had been waiting
outside all those years ago (Presumably sent there on some petty misdemeanour, but
he had shown himself to be an exceptional and perceptive man, so it hadn’t occurred
to me to be anxious in any way for her). My nerve failed me as I walked by a couple
of classrooms, each of which I had spent a year of my life in, the first one and my
first day at that school was Mrs Marshall’s, a slightly bulbous eyed woman. I would
describe her now as tough but fair. How she managed to toss those keys up and down
as she presided over us in the dinner hall I’ll never know. Balls of steel. But I was of
course projecting my sense of insecurity onto her. She was in charge, so what did she
have to concern herself about. But for me she may as well have been the Who’s
Roger Daltry swinging the microphone around before he caught it mid swing. The
woman was beyond my ken. Another classroom and some of my classmates took
shape. There was the tall, slim and to me, rather regal Helen Webster. Alex Roberts
liked her. There was also Sharon Scott who I was interested by and attractive to me.
I had once see a new kid, Charley McLaren kissing her during the break over the
railings at the front of the school and that separated us from each other. I was
fascinated and stunned. And slightly sickly jealous that she would allow it so easily.
Again, even at that age it was a level of involvement with a girl I couldn’t
contemplate. And there was Rita Galazzi, small and brunette as I recall, and Valerie
MacManee, and of course, others whose names I’ve forgotten because they were of
less interest to me. Oh and there was Heather Borland, a plumpish and quite
attractive redhead who sat beside Lynne. And there was Alan Anderson who I really
liked along with Alex, and John Reilly. And there was Colin Heron and others. It’s
simpler to say I felt a deep affection for most of them, which was mostly returned,
though not always. But it’s remarkable to think on the level of contrast between the
warmth I felt for them and the interest I had = an overflow of my general interest and
enthusiasm – and the demonstrable lack of it shown towards the girls, when in reality
I was as intensely curious about them also, needless to say, and would have loved
nothing more to have spent as much time with them as I did with my classmates. I
had once spent some weeks at Macalpine School where girls and boys shared the
same huge playground, and it was a kind of revelation to me. They played games
together. A girl I liked was Marianne Wily. She liked a fat faced kid with a crew-cut
named Bruce. One lunchtime – dinnertime to me – I was climbing some semi-
circular playbars just outside the school when a girl, slightly younger than myself,
looked up at me to say something and I was struck by the blueness of her eyes.
Short-sighted and shy I had rarely looked into another girls eyes. She seemed to me
at that moment the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. My mother has been afflicted
with cancer, benign, and my brother and me had been shipped off to cousins, mostly
girls. An experience to treasure.
Then when my mother recovered, we were back at Mitchell Street, where I was
now, fascinated by the very texture of the place. The wide space that served as an
Assembly Hall, where kids were selected to give out readings. I would experience a
primal fear one day when the possibility arose I would be selected along with others.
For some reason it never came to pass. I would happily have slit my throat to avoid
it. Not quite, but I well recall the sense of horror. How other children could be so in
control of their emotions and perform without a qualm in front of pupils and adults
was an unfathomable mystery to me. I had once had to attempt to sing in front of the
class for the Lang medal competition. I had a good voice but I was useless; too self-
conscious to find the right key to carry it on as some teacher tinkered on the piano.
She quickly gave up, no doubt picking up on my self-consciousness. I assume.
Another one was reading out poetry. Burns’ Ode To A Mouse. I had little interest in
the poem. I preferred stories. I don’t recall my bland attempt. A little kid called
Willie Henderson won it. Whatever he won. Perhaps nothing, and he was only the
best in the class, according to the teachers who ooed and aahed over his wildly lilting
pronunciations… “Wee, coorin, timorous beastie…” I liked him. I had no reason not
to. He was a pleasant kid. But sitting there, listening to their crap, I would happily
have shat on the floor if I wasn’t so fearful of the consequences. I liked the more
progressive chart singles of the day and Tamla Motown. These people were idiots.
They would have you prance around like a performing monkey if you were silly
enough to buy into it. I preferred to be in control, make my own choices. That meant
being unresponsive to anything where it was required I express emotion. The whole
idea was absurd (I felt). The very notion robbed it of all spontaneity. I never sang at
home except when by myself, or oddly enough, if I was excited as with friends, and I
would forget my self-consciousness and jump up and down on the settee, singing
along with the Beatles.
I loved music. I did better at school writing stories, once basing a story on H.G.
Wells’ short story, The Red Room. I called it The Red Room. My own story went
nowhere, but it was precociously literate compared to the rest of them so Mrs
Leaburn read it out, to my barely disguised glee. Probably because it was an
opportunity to shine in the eyes of Lynne. If she was there. She wasn’t always
around. This was in Primary Five. Sometimes in my proclivity for getting into an
overexcited state – I saw the humour in most things, paradoxically, and was almost
constantly in a state of high spirits – a teacher had got into the habit of making me
take my desk outside and sit in the corridor. (Possibly Leaburn, more likely
McDonald. But then it was Primaty Four, and we'd had MsDonald in Three. Odd,
because I really came ot like Leaburn. I did have Mrs Palmer twice; an attractive,
tall, dark-haired woman, but I'm sure it wasn't her, Iiked her too, as she was
considerate; she could also be pretty blunt when she wanted to be. I think it was
Leaburn; attractive also, with fairish hair and a badly pockmarked face. I came to
take incredible liberties, treating her almost as a schoolfriend, and she tolerated it. I
must have grown on her later. What is noticable is that they didn't belt me). A form
of solitary confinement, as I wasn’t allowed to have anything to occupy me during it.
I had gone to take something and wasn’t allowed. That surprised me, as it seemed
needlessly punitive, though I was incapable of formulating it that way to myself at the
time. So my education was temporarily and frequently on hold. I didn’t need anyone
to encourage me to read. It was part and parcel of daily life for me. Not to be
allowed to felt like an unwarranted interference into my personal choices, my
psychological space. This obscurely perturbed me. These people missed the point
somehow, I felt. Again, I had the conviction, if obscurely as I say, that these people
were idiots. And clever. That was the disturbing part. She was utilising time, and my
very existence against me. It was a sentence to boredom through non-activity. It was
simple enough to keep my mind occupied, but the underlying sense of resentment
made it weigh heavier on me than it need have. I accepted I had to go to school, and
had went along with my side of things I felt, and now I was having the rug pulled out
from under me in some infuriatingly understated way. I was beginning to feel the
stirrings of an intense dislike towards her. I wanted to walk back into class and say,
“look, this is ridiculous. I’ve had enough now and I think you’re overreacting, and
it’s about time you were reasonable.” In so many words. Sections of my life were
being unfairly stolen from me I felt. I pictured going back into class and throwing
her out as I carried on with spontaneous gags, followed by some singing and dancing.
After that I would allow any of the best looking (and kind) girls to ask me out. I
considered going for a walk, but knew I’d be discovered. I fumed impotently. But
occasionally, when she had deigned to make an appearance, fortunately without
rubbing it in any way, I would discover I had slipped into reverie by being brought
abruptly out of it, and then feel vexed for that reason. I had been enjoying it and had
virtually forgotten my surroundings. Later I would get into the habit of slipping into
an almost contemplative state at will, in passing moments between class on the way
to dinner or gym.
One train of thought centred on the concept of infinite regress. I soon gave up
when I realized it was infinite, which was extremely interesting to me. Another
episode was when we were waiting in a line to go back into class, and as I looked at
the serrated boards that made up the top half of the wall beside me, my mind stilled
again and it came to me with all the sense of the obvious that clarity brings, that there
is only now. The future will definitely take place, short of some unforeseen mishap
(accident, I would have said), and the past has come and gone. It’s in the past. Yet
each of these moments I’m experiencing as I focus on them are all future moments.
No, they are also of the past because each one has come and gone as I think of it.
And as quickly I thought “There are no future or past moments, because at best you
can only say they are both at the same time – as the same time I think it. So there is
really only now, and past and future are the same thing. Now” A paradox as
unfathomable as it was unarguable; to my mind. There was no one I could discuss
any of this, or if there were it never crossed my mind. This was a part of myself, an
interior life I preferred to keep to myself. I didn’t want some adult condescending me
or worse. I would figure it out myself and in my own time. Wasn’t that what time
was for? All I needed was more time in which to make further discoveries through
any reading and thinking on what I read, if that came naturally. But these musings
seemed to be my own thoughts, somehow the essence of me in some obscure sense. I
never directly made the connection, but they were my minds response to the sense of
injustice I would feel at having my freedom of mind restricted. That was somehow
more disturbing and sinister than the relatively straightforward abuse and beatings at
the hands of my mother. It could also generate a sense of being hounded from both
sides. On an unconscious level – and consciously, I was feeling victimized. The
anger stemmed from what I sensed to be an accurate perception that all was not quite
right in the socially acceptable and friendly persona the adults, the perennially
responsible, or so they insisted on presenting themselves. There was the glimmerings
of awareness they used rules to hide their less creditable emotions and personal
reactions to hide behind, so that where the difference between them was obscured,
each fusing into the other. It wasn’t only my mother who could be petty and
personally malicious. I would forget it of course, until the next time it would happen.
My reveries, unbeknownst to me were providing moments of timelessness in time. I
was escaping into true sanity, if temporarily.
Yet in another sense, the temporal had nothing to do with it. On a behavioural
level, outside of school, I was going off the rails. I had no idea of what my musings,
my contemplations could mean. At best, I was becoming aware that when you
thought about it, when you got right down to it, existence was an unfathomable
mystery. I didn’t have to voice it to any adults. I knew by their attitudes, their likes
and dislikes, their silly fawning and pettiness over relative inconsequentialities they
would be as in the dark over these questions as I was, if they ever thought about them
at all. Mrs MacDonald when I was in Primary3 and when I learned the twelve times
table, had once told us that God is everywhere in the middle of some lesson on other,
so it was in context. A remark that inspired some curiosity in some of us, and a
notion I was deeply intrigued by but it seemed unlikely. She never elaborated and we
took it literally of course. “Is he in my schoolbag? Is he in my ear? I quipped, to a
classmate. But this crazy old bint at some point tossed my copy of POW! into the
bin, when I had looked at the cover lovingly, contemplating the future joy of reading
it, before putting it away and out of sight as I intended. Issue number 10, it was the
one where Spider-man tackles Doctor Doom. There was little in life more exciting
for me than the thought of reading this as soon as school was over and I got back. I
was outraged, if restrainedly so. I even contemplated taking it right back out of the
bin when class/school was over. At least when she wasn’t paying attention, but I
chickened out at the last second. The woman was self-evidently a buffoon. A cretin.
I didn’t question my own tastes. I knew what interested and excited me and
superheroes being winners in an often hostile world along with themes of future
evolution in the present as with The X=Men was of a value that wasn’t open to
interpretation. As for Spider-man, his alter ego Peter Parker would grow in
significance and stature through the years as I came into my teens. Like millions of
others I would project many of my deepest fears and aspirations on to the character.
The loss would haunt me for weeks if not months. Was there no end to these myopic
minded lunatics and their petty interference?
I was almost as keen on Batman and pounced on a badge with the bat logo as
soon as I saw it, pinning it to the centre of my pullover. Fortunately that didn’t
interfere with my lessons as she interpreted it, so it stayed, though your guess is as
good as mine as to the actual sequence of these events. I also got into the habit of
drawing Batman until I could rattle one off in a few minutes, which I did for 2d. It
was the sixties. Batman was on TV and later in the cinema, I was captivated. The
metal model of the Batmobile was a work of exquisite craftsmanship to me. The Bat-
Cave a place of limitless fascination. Robin less so, but it was natural to me that
Batman would have a sidekick and buddy to share their adventures as well as gags.
Even Superman had his own special aura. A boy’s mind brings them all to life almost
to the point of reality. The world could be a mundane but also very unpredictable
place. But it couldn’t be so bad, surely when it produced things like this where all
was made right in the world in stories that rarely condescended but only seemed to
surprise you with their increasing complexity and psychological subtlety. Sometimes
the good did die young and bad things did happen to good people. But there was The
Watcher keeping his eye on it all, somehow above and beyond time if not space as he
had to exist somewhere in the panels of a comic. And there was The Silver Surfer to
question it all for us. Not only that, but he seemed to have lost his girlfriend, or I
should say, the love of his life. Again I never made the connection. I could be very
slow to pick up on things, “Romantically” dense to a fault. When you’re a kid you
think you’ll live forever. That everything will somehow come out magically right
sooner or later. A childish dream that turns out to be true as it happens, just not in the
way I perhaps thought. Or didn’t think. I think to say there was denseness there isn’t
an exaggeration though I don’t want to be too hard on myself unnecessarily. It was
more than difficult at the time after all, and I’ve touched on some of the reasons for
that before, not least the question of denial and only being capable of coping with so
much, psychologically and emotionally, under the circumstances. But I would run
down the Pend as we called it, a narrow and enclosed lane that led onto Lochee Road
and the foot of Cobden Street, with Joni Mitchell’s refrain of “You don’t know what
you’ve got ‘till it’s gone,” from Big Tellow Taxi ringing in my head – it was also a
fantastic melody – not in the least grasping the later (and present) significance of it to
me. It was the same with Smokey Robinson’s The Tears of a Clown; another sublime
song that was peculiarly haunting to me. This song more than any other somehow
fused into my feelings for Lynne. In a profound way, they became indistinguishable,
by which I mean my inexpressibly intense feelings towards her. A specific and
intense, yet also diffuse emotion that also became associated with anything even
loosely to do with her, such as the surrounding area and where she lived, though I
only had a rough idea of where it might be. The end of the street perhaps, from
where my mother had been temporarily moved to. (I had once nipped into a likely
close and upstairs to gawk out of the windows that look over the back green. Had she
ever traversed this area I wondered). These truly bitter-sweet, if sublimely condensed
works of art.
They also became associated with a large chestnut tree off Benvie Road, which
intersected Mitchell Street. A bunch of us got into the habit of going there every
lunchtime for a while. I threw myself into it with my usual obsessiveness for
anything I became enthusiastic about. For me it was an oasis of nature in our back
yard, literally. It as good as finished when one lunchtime after a session of kicking
and shuffling our feet through leaves to find the precious greenish and yellow shells
that housed them. I, typically, in my engrossed state had ignored the growing
urgency of my bladder and relieved myself in a nearby close, along with another kid.
A neighbour had heard us and went on to inform the school, presumably the
headmaster. Suitably nervous when called into his office along with two others, I
was surprised my legs were shaking a bit. This was a new one to me. But both the
offence and the headmaster were relatively unknown territory to me at the time,
though I had been used to punishment for as long as I could remember, so perhaps
that accounted for it. That I had no idea where this would go and how it would be
resolved. A brief explanation from each of us that it wasn’t meant intentionally, and
we were free to go. It had been the sense of shame and guilt, the disapproval of the
“dirtiness” associated with the act that preyed on my mind, elevating it to a
seriousness it neither deserved nor warranted. The new headmaster, a Mr Young
seemed to be aware of this. I had made a token effort to play “conkers” with the
chestnuts, where you push a string through the centre of each of them with a bodkin,
a large pin, then proceed to try and obliterate as many of your opponents guys as
humanly possible before it’s his turn. One downward swipe and smack for each
conker. They rarely shattered in one swipe, and if your opponent combined
inaccuracy with aggression or meanness you were as likely to get a part of a hand
smacked or the string and conker wrenched out of your grasp. There were too many
variables. I settled for putting all the conkers I had accumulated over the days into a
string, a necklace that was around twelve feet long when I’d finished then left it in the
drawer and forgot all about it. Later, my mother, unusually, asked me if I would
throw it out as it was gathering mould there which was or would spread over the
inside of the drawer and cabinet. I was slightly reluctant, partly because she seemed
to be giving me an option. But in reality, the effort I had put into it wasn’t important.
It was the indirect acknowledgement of it by asking me that made a difference.
Usually she would just throw out whatever she pleased without a so much as by your
leave. She wasn’t having my endless junk cluttering up the place. When it’s my
house, then I can do it she would say. This included reams of sketches, often in
colour – I liked to copy other drawings from cards of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not
curios - and even the very occasional painting, when I got my hands on some paints
whether through a present or stealing them. Inconsistently I would be given some
cheap art materials or other over Xmas only to have nothing to show for it later.
Some years later, my younger brother mentioned she was once about to throw out
what she had taken to be a small photograph of David Bowie, circa Ziggy Stardust
period. It was a drawing I had done in my teens in ’73, from the inside of a cassette
cover, with Rembrandt-like precision, in pencil. For me, it only begged the question
as to why she was throwing it out at all. And where it was now.
At the classroom at the other side of the corridor a man called Mr Patton had
taught us. A rather undiscerning one-dimensional dullard of a fellow.