|I have about 40,000 words of this stuff. Some good, some bad. This is the beginning.
The place was strewn with boxes and bags containing, amongst other things, a camcorder, a micro-cassette recorder, posters (Miles Davies, Laurel and Hardy, the Glastonbury 1989 showcard, Hard Rock café: Amsterdam), James' oriental fan and videos, a selection of albums, sugar, milk, coffee and tea, clothes, decks of cards, Ian's history books and notes and various bits of smoking paraphernalia including a fat, gun-metal grey chillum embellished with crude filigree.
We were leaving behind a broken printer, printer paper, mattresses, candle stumps, house-bricks, a tray of my business cards and assorted junk and bric-a-brac. We were also leaving three sixes scratched into the wallpaper and paint around the flat (Nigel's handiwork) and the pentagrams that I had scratched into the polystyrene tiles on the kitchen ceiling with all our names plus 'honi soit qui mal y pense.'
Overnight the house had lost its geist. There was something about the current state of affairs that was having a mildly sedative effect on me. I think it may have been the loss of plausibility. I had been talking about living at Hollywood for about six months and now the dream was broken. True enough, there was a bad foreboding in the air, but I had sunk so low, was so wrapped up in myself, that I could not muster a sense of destiny. Life was no longer linear. I was stuck in the night of the Battle of the Boyne, sitting at the head of the table, guest of honour, spilling my guts, Ian crying next to me, seeing everyone attentive and barely able to make out what I was saying myself. From the moment I lifted my head to speak there would be no past or future in the normal sense. I would radiate certainly, sometimes in all directions at once, but I would be forever rooted to that moment. And although all movement had stopped, even a fool will eventually sense that he is living on borrowed time; and that's the magical paradox - stasis and massive change - that can really fuck you over.
Ian was arranging everything. We were moving to Gideon's place on the estate. As we didn't have a phone we broke in to Dorothy's apartment upstairs (without forcing entry), found a directory and rang for a removals van. We may have made some coffee, smoked some cigarettes, or even watched some television. We didn't take many liberties - not now that it felt like somebody else's home.
When the bailiffs arrived they sent in a locksmith. Ian engaged him in conversation. The talk was subdued, friendly, and forgettable. I was still paranoid, and saw through all kinds of layers of the exchange - many of which, on reflection, may have been completely authentic. To cap it all was the feeling that it was utterly beyond me to talk to that man. In fact, I couldn't really talk to anyone now. About two weeks ago I had even been on the lam from Hollywood. I tried to cut the ties, moving from place to place, looking for a peace of mind of course, but also understanding that I was a liability to everyone I came in contact with. I ended up at Roger's place in Staines. A very bad evening. The insanity threshold was low - a good thing because I might have killed myself that night if I had known the truth.
I was beginning to swim against the tide, in my own pathetic sort of way. Like now for instance, as the locks were being changed, I started to verbalise a litany in my head: "I must find the key. I must find the key. I must find the key..." But after a while this spectacular way of thinking, thinking out loud as it were, began to feel painful and ridiculous, like counting out time in your head.
The locksmith left the door on the latch. We shuffled around for a while, moving our gear around, rolling up sleeping bags, that sort of thing. On the surface we were calm and composed. To me the whole event was like a test to determine the existence of a reflex action; there was nothing to do but observe myself reacting.
Ian was keeping a low profile. There were important things that I needed to say to him but I didn't even know what they were. Almost everything was being communicated telepathically now, if you get my drift. It wasn't enough, not least because the astral plane is a notoriously unreliable medium for correspondence. Only the insane can make any sense of it.
There was a lot of water under the bridge between us. I looked to him at first as an elder brother, then as a father and sometimes even as a grandfather. He was two years younger than me.
Ian called out to me from the bedroom.
'Are you sure you don't want to film this Chris?'
I walked around to him. He was looking for cigarettes. I would have offered
him one of mine but it didn't seem right. It was a struggle to think of something
to say, even at this stage.
'I'd better leave it in its case. I think the battery might
be flat anyway.' And then: 'Is Gideon going to be in?'
'I dunno. I think he might be working.'
'I suppose he'll have some gear.'
'Yeah.'
'Will anybody else be there?'
'No, I don't think so.'
And that's how things were.
Outside, in the modest grounds of the house, was a well-dressed group - evidently the owners, lawyers and bailiffs. There was a young woman in a tired looking dress suit who was pacing up and down, smoking. She looked haggard. The new owner, I thought.
The old man had passed away more than a year ago, leaving a fortune (six million I was told) to a cats home. Dorothy missed a payment shortly after and when nothing happened she decided to try her luck. As far as I know everyone in the five apartments was living there gratis. There was the queen and his girlfriend on the top floor, then Dorothy, Nigel and Kingsley on the first floor and 'Digby' the lab technician who lived in a pad that was a dead ringer for J. F. Sebastian's place in Blade Runner. James, Ian and myself lived in the squat on the ground floor next to Digby. It was the old witches' pad and she had left little bags of herbs and charms around the place. All the fittings in the bathroom were painted in red emulsion. The flat was like a cross between the hotel in The Shining and the set of a Noel Coward play.
A car-van arrived in short order. The driver was young, lean, tattooed and stripped to the waist. He had a girl with him who looked about fifteen. We all looked like heads. Ian and I loaded the van up under the gaze of the suits. The fifteen-year-old kept looking at me in a vacant sort of way which was making me feel uncomfortable. I entertained the thought that everyone here, with the exception of Ian and myself, were in fact actors hired for the occasion. I was sure that Dorothy could pull that one off. Why was no one talking to me? Everything seemed contrived. The suits, assuming they were real, were tainted with a mercenary vibe to be sure. I could see it in their faces. They looked shafted. We were the real people. We were living.
When we finished we jumped into the back of the van. The driver took us away. We were leaving Hollywood at last...evictims.
We drove up Egham Hill then St. Jude's road. We turned down Bond Street and Ian gave directions to Beechtree Avenue. In a few minutes we pulled up outside Gideon's modern terraced domicile (strangely respectable) and set about piling everything outside the front door. Ian paid the driver and he left.
It was a sunny day and there were kids playing around the block. We walked round to the garden and broke into the house (without forcing entry), opened the front door and decided to take a cigarette break. We sat on our stuff outside, waiting for the next wave of energy in the shadow of our new home.
We stayed in that afternoon making phone calls, smoking cigarettes in the garden, toasting bread, drinking coffee and waiting for Gideon to arrive. When he turned up we engaged in pleasantries. To my surprise he seemed genuinely pleased to see us. We were all in our element. Ian and I were sparkling - on our very best behaviour. I felt no pressure. I had rarely seen the big man so happy and at ease.
The first time I saw Gideon I thought he was on the edge of losing control, intimidating or attacking someone. We were in A9, a big room Ian shared with Roger during the first year at Kingswood. There was quite a session going. I had two jionts behind my ears and things were ebullient. When Gideon walked in we all shat ourselves. I felt like a chicken watching a fox come into the pen. He was huge for one thing, but also his eyes were bulging out of his head. He looked at each one of us in turn, wildly I have to say, and took his seat. He had a Kiwi with him called Mike Farmer who looked like a prop forward. Gideon was much bigger than him.
There were about eight of us in there and we smoked about twenty-five jionts. Gideon was at the end of the circle (if you see what I mean) and when I looked at him an hour or so later he seemed to resemble the god in Jupiter et Sémélé by Gustave Moreau. I had a print upstairs.
Gideon made himself some dinner and told us that there is only one room up for grabs. Ian said he would sleep in the lounge and I went up to take a look at the room.
.......
Copyright Chris Light 2002