Fur coats and bow ties

Yesterday fairly routine, just as I’d expected, and later Stu and I trekked out to the Indian takeaway on Wickbourne Road. We went to the Westdorgan at nine, and I was in bed by 1 a.m. . . .

Went to University at one, a tutorial, and so it begins again, this weekly bind of self-recrimination, baulking at the boredom entailed in reading Faulkner—so dull. Then into town and Lee’s for a cup of tea.

P. Monmouth told me he was “going to be an artist” in the commercial sense of the word, making big money selling artworks to the gallery fraternity, the fur coats and bow ties who queue nightly at places like the Barbican. Lee has hopes of doing the same with his 360-degree pinhole photography. I will make my fortune writing hardcore porno novels.

Later Lee and I partook of £2.50-worth of sulphate and the buzz we felt walking along the seafront gave way to leaden-limbed torpor and an overwhelming fatigue by the time we got back to Westdorgan Road.

Gayl

Later yesterday evening Mark went to Capone’s with Guy, so Lee, Michael and I went back into town and broke into a derelict house which stands in a three-storey block of buildings opposite the Art College.

We climbed in through a partially boarded window in the basement (this a very conspicuous entrance) reached down steps choked with dead leaves, next to a busy bus stop and main road. Earlier we’d filched two flashing road works hazard lamps and these were the only lights we had; each time the yellow lamps blinked on we could barely glimpse the floor of the darkened interior, a chaos of rubble, planks and discarded newspapers, tantalising shapes that were lost moments later as the lights switched off.

Our progress was slow and ludicrous, clutching our yellow flashing lamps and whispering loudly. Upstairs there was more light from the street outside, but all we found were a few forlorn reminders that some people have been dossing down here recently—empty cider bottles, old broken shoes etc. We had a close shave on climbing out as the pavement above was full of noisy laughing drunks waiting for a bus, who scuffled and fooled inches from our hiding place.

“I thrive on the excitement,” says Lee.

Michael and Lee stayed the night and we jammed two mattresses into my room.

I got up at twelve thirty today—a grey dismal Sunday in November. Lee washed up and cleaned the kitchen, but it got very messy again when Mo cooked Pete a meal. I slammed out of the house in a real mood, leaving everyone else watching TV, and hitched in to University. I didn’t even tell them I was going.

I went to the library and in a few hours my inexplicable anger had spent itself in the restful silence. It seems Pete and I are nearly constantly at odds these days over some trifling matter or other.

Bill moved into his new flat yesterday, taking the TV aerial with him, so we had to shift the TV back into Pete’s room. I haven’t seen Shelley, Gareth and Lindsey for days. Susie says Shelley is “settling down to a cosy domestic routine with her menagerie of doting males.”

I stayed at the library until seven and hitched back. It began to rain as I walked down the library steps. I have Corregidora by Gayl Jones to read for 2.45 p.m. tomorrow. Stu has just come round, and he and Pete have bought a gramme of speed between them. I have a lot of work to clear up in the next week, two essays to write by this time next Sunday, one for each course. The term is drawing in to a close already; in just three weeks I’ll be going home again.

It seems so long since I was there last.

Perverted by language

Pete and I went to Gloucester yesterday to see The Fall and also to see Grant.

Pete didn’t get up until late afternoon and I was getting very annoyed by the time he did, at about four. We bought a gramme of speed for £14 from Phil (of the grey Renault from last June), and got Alex M. to get us an eighth of dope; he’s off to Peru on Friday supposedly. As it was I regretted buying both and I’m going off drugs altogether. They’re just a waste of time and energy, and rarely make me feel good.

It was growing dark as we got on the train. Got to Gloucester at eight-thirty and both Pete and I felt very excited about the prospect. We rushed from the station, caught a cab to the University and followed the crowds to the Refectory building where The Fall were playing.

This was the fourth time I’d seen them since March 1982. The tickets were £3.00 and the place was packed. I searched the sweaty crush of people for Grant’s dark brooding features, but eventually it was he who spotted me in the plush main bar as I made a bee-line for someone I thought was him. He seemed very surprised and pleased to see me; I explained that since I couldn’t be bothered answering his last letter I thought I’d make a personal appearance instead.

He wore the same brown shabby jacket, and sported the usual unkempt, stringy locks. He smokes like a chimney, and there was scarcely a time when his fingers weren’t clutching some miserable stub of badly rolled cigarette; he has pretty huge nicotine stains on his hands. Nik and a silent blond friend of his were up from Camberwell Art College and I actually said more to him that than I had on the previous few occasions I’d met him. He seems OK.

Pete and I left after this to go for a high-spirited dance in a crowded disco nearby; we’d taken some speed and I felt very good here, very carefree, the future and the present glowing with promise and pleasure. We went back to the main hall which was fairly empty and so only a few people saw the performance of the support band, The Wasp Factory, who Grant said were really good. Pete & I didn’t like them very much, finding cause for amusement and scorn in the lead singer’s pelvic gyrations and passé extravagances.

The Fall came on next, almost taking me unawares. They were up and into “Mere Pseud Mag Ed” before I knew it. They played a fairly good (long) set and it was good to hear “Man Whose Head Expanded,” “Marquis Cha-Cha” etc. Their new LP is called Perverted By Language. Grant, Nik and co. had vanished in the melee up front so Pete and I hung about where there was a bit more space and I leaped about with gay, speed-induced abandon and got very tired and hot. . . . One encore, then the lights came on ad the unwilling crowds were drifting out into the night.

Grant’s quiet and vaguely trendy Gloucester friend Gavin Spencer joined us and we walked back to the residence halls, finding everything quiet, dead and in darkness. We’d had a vague image of what to expect at Gloucester, based naively on Watermouth lines, but we’d been warned and should’ve listened.

No one was about and nothing stirred. The silence seemed oppressive; somewhere an air-conditioning or heating unit hummed quietly. We’d at least hoped for a few people to be up and having some midnight lunacies, but all we got was a friend of Gavin’s who had a girl in his room and hissed at us to go away. Grant kept pleading with us to keep the noise to a minimum as the Warden of the Halls lived on the end of the corridor, in the room next-door to his.

We had a joint – Grant kept reminding us about the noise and warning us not to leave any evidence of our illicit smoke in case he “got in the shit.” Eventually he and the others went to bed, leaving Pete and I to bore Gavin with our facetious comments and our incredulity at Gloucester’s deadness. We retired to the Common Room and Gavin went to bed.

Pete and I just sat there, mumbling to one another until the miserable light of morning filtered through the curtains and we tried half-heartedly to get some sleep. Grant made a tangled, scowl-browed appearance at eight, exhorting us to rise before the cleaners came. Nik and his friend left to hitch back to Camberwell and Grant lapsed into a gloomy and intense frame of mind, rarely raising himself from it sufficiently to laugh or smile.

We wandered around what is laughingly called the ‘campus,’ a loose aggregate of low-rise buildings reminiscent of some shabby council estate. The majority of the student population is apparently into PE and rugby etc. . . . What a faceless, dreary, utterly uninspiring place. Staying there will break Grant; he seems to move in a permanent gloom.

Pete and I began to feel very tired, and sat in the ‘bar’ (ha ha) most of the day. Grant’s mental misery rubbed off on me, and I felt a momentary pang of anger when he muttered “Why did you come here?” To see you, you oaf, why else!? I’ve known him since I was a kid, and yet at times he seemed very remote. The more the day dragged on the greater our collective stagnation and I slipped into a heavy, dull silence. I felt thoroughly drained.

Things livened up slightly in the evening, with smoking of dope and some traipsing about to and fro from various rooms with large groups of cheerful people, but I eventually had to leave at about eight. I took some speed and left Pete listening to records in someone’s room.

I felt better after making the effort to move and in fact I quite enjoyed the lone journey back to Watermouth. The speed threw my mind into forward gear and I spent the hours on the train staring glassily ahead of me, my mind awhirl with thoughts and ideas.

I’d got a copy of Grant and Nik’s joint collaboration The Spike, an A4-sized pamphlet featuring Nik’s pen and ink drawings and Grant’s sparse lines of verse, some of which I quite like (for the record – “Lighting Up,” “Hedonist (Socially Mobile),” “Night-Walk”). Most of them concern his usual themes of social isolation, full of images of street-lamps, dark decaying cities and repulsive social/sexual interactions. . . . This inspired me to contrive verse of my own, and elaborate rambling word-structures that I developed into long letters on various themes, but I had no pen or paper and so the creations were lost. Speed is the best drug I’ve had—such glimpses of Potential—but I don’t know whether it’s worth it physically or financially. Perhaps if I took some one morning and allowed a day to run its natural course. . . .

I arrived back in Watermouth eager for paper and pens to convert my speculations into hard actuality, but as usual, I allowed myself to be distracted by Barry, who was crowing triumphantly over some address he’d been given by a girl he had chatted up in the Cellar.

It’s now eleven at night and everyone has gone out to an invites-only party at ‘L.A. thrown by the University trendies. Mo spent ages primping herself up for it, getting her looks in order for the night ahead. I didn’t get invited.

Inga came round wet-eyed just as Mo was leaving, quietly wrought over some bad-feeling in her house. She’s asleep on Pete’s bed now.

Righteous maelstrom

Lee turned up late last night. He’d been to see the wrestling at the Starlight with Ian and Mick and he’d been at Ian’s house earlier while Ian and his friend Gav snorted heroin, got sick, and generally behaved oddly, talking of travelling down staircases in their minds, etc.

Then they’d all watched The Exorcist, the only light coming from the single candle on Ian’s windowsill in the other room. Ian is strange. They offered Lee some H. but he refused, & he says he wants to become “totally puritan” and cut even alcohol out. I see what he’s getting at. I hate the crap that goes with the ‘drugs scene,’ but I suppose looked at in the right perspective they can be useful.

Lee stayed overnight and I failed to get my essay done; my head was too full of ideas to sit down and focus. I planned on getting up early this morning to make a start, but I slept for eleven hours and didn’t get up until after twelve.

Barry got back at eight a.m. He, Guy, Gareth and Stu went to two parties, the one in New Lycroft and another one at Sutton Road. He found out that Alex Margolin has supposedly blown his grant on a ‘plane ticket to Peru and isn’t coming back. Goodbye Alex. I doubt I’ll ever see him again.

Dexys

It’s ten p.m. and I've just about recovered from the excesses of last night. Barry, Lindsey, Susie, Stu, Guy, Ade and Gareth and I—Gareth back after a couple of week’s seclusion through illness—went as usual to Masquerades. For once, Masquerades was crowded and I got drunk and took four small yellow pills—dexys—which Gareth got for six of us for 35p each from a couple of contacts of his.

We got back home at about two-thirty in the morning and one of those classic ‘peak’ experiences ensued. The effects of the pills had taken hold in a very subtle and undramatic way, but perhaps this was only because I was drunk when I took them.

We settled in Barry’s room and the talking began. Conversations raged at blistering pace on all sides, or rather monologues, for we directed long streams of words at one another, only shutting them long enough to let the other person speak, waiting until they stopped so we could begin the stream again. Guy and I talked at each other for four or five hours in an inspired way about school and family—Guy said he was “ecstatically happy,” and I was going through a great ‘Yea-saying’ explosion of optimism and excitement and felt so full of potential that I could only be happy. A delusion, but a good delusion to have nonetheless. Oh to feel so full and intense every minute of every day. Maybe I was glimpsing a higher plane of existence?

I kept going at a relentless pace all through the night. We carried on drinking too, constantly passing around a bottle of whisky Mo bought us as her contribution towards rent. Pete got up and joined us but eventually, after he’d slipped away back to bed, and as the grey unwelcome light of another day and Responsibility glared weakly through the curtains, the talking stuttered, and finally died all together.

And now we paid for our night of rare delights. Stu crept into my room to rest and the others slid into mumbling weariness. I wasn’t feeling too bad and neither was Guy, but Barry and Stu were suffering “utter hell.” Ade collapsed onto the sofa in the back room—Barry said he couldn’t move. We were almost delirious, cracking weak one-liners and saying ridiculous things, laughing weakly and stumbling into verbal dead ends and illogic. I had a tutorial at 11.30 too, so mid-morning, leaving the others lying down and spent, Guy and I emerged into sunlight like new men.

The world looked different, we were different, separate, removed from the people who had just got up and filled the quiet streets and shops. We were different by virtue of what we’d just gone through. Our secret knowledge set us apart. My stomach felt hollow, my eyes ached and my whole body felt weak. I felt a curious sensation of expectancy, almost like anticipation, as though ‘something’ was about to happen to me. Perhaps because I hadn’t slept the night before lent some significance to the new day, as if the Act of staying awake had been rewarded with a glimpse of a sense of PURPOSE. I walked slightly unsteadily down the road to the hitching spot opposite The Cat and Lizard willing something to happen and Be different, filled with that old yearning for more depth and meaning.

It was chaos getting into Uni. because of a strike by BR men over a sacking. A dozen people were trying to get lifts and the buses sailing past packed full. I got to the tutorial room just in time. There are just two people in my Romanticism tutorial and it seems aimless and without a point. I left thoroughly dissatisfied. Our ‘discussions’ take place in a listless atmosphere. The things we say and the things we do don’t seem to be getting us anywhere or even near to approaching the core of Wordsworth’s experiences and feelings.

There has to be more to the study of Wordsworth than this, I told myself—I know there must be. Still, I couldn’t shake off the hopeless insight that perhaps there wasn’t anything other than what I’d just gone through, just second-hand, abstract intellectualising. I suppose I want to FEEL the emotions and sensations as Wordworth felt them in the raw, but then I suppose too this is just the “idealism of a bourgeois escapist mind” at work and is a fruitless point to make.

I met Susie outside the library and sat in the coffee bar with her. My words spilled out in a haste of enthusiastic talk, and after she had gone I even wandered around the library looking for someone else to talk to. I came home and feel utterly washed out, and so to bed.

Flux

I spent the day in New Lycroft searching out contracts for sub-letting. No success. I did actually buy a contract but discovered on the train platform that it was the wrong kind, so I was an hour late to my prearranged rendezvous with Pete at Crown Racing on Old Priory Road. He was inside paying the rent when I got there; we got everything sorted out and wandered back through Westdorgan Park in the sweltering heat.

We dropped in on an American Studies end of year party in the bar of the Millikin Arts Centre; Pete and I cased up the adjacent gallery while the drinking and genteel chatting burbled on downstairs until Guy arrived and we walked across to the Town and Gown.

The French-windows were open so people could sit out on the grass and we sat there drinking and watching Brenda, our forty-something but still glamorous and (desperately) fashionable school-secretary flirting with, then openly groping, being groped by and finally snogging, several bronzed student-types. We couldn’t believe our eyes.

Pete scored speed from some bloke in the Millikin Centre toilets and we sat snorting it in his battered Renault in the car park while all around us people enjoyed the fine evening. The melodrama of the situation appealed to me. Afterwards we retired to Wollstonecraft and thence to Westway Loop Bar where I talked with Shelley and Carl Cotton (down again to do the RCP stall with Barry). I found him unexpectedly easy to talk to.

Guy, Pete and I ended up catching the tail-end of a party in Wilberforce where Pete and I spent the night chatting to a girl called Doreen who, in eight months, I’d never once seen around campus. We left her asleep sitting up in bed and tracked down Guy over at Fabian’s where he was wrapped up in a conversation that had been going on for hours—the usual speed-inspired fluxes of enthusiasm and awareness of spontaneous joy, knife-edges of excitement, tingling and pulsing down through my legs.

Grave

I got into a panic over the outstanding essays for my major and so planned to stay up all night.

I bought ¼ gramme of speed from Stu, but I'm spending the night in that flush of grave enthusiasm speed always gives me, talking over-seriously about the summer with Gareth, Shelley and Guy. Shelley's staying up all night too,