Chapter Five: Duct Tape Is Silver

Feel it break your bones Mr. Jones
taste me as I bleed, taste my need
- Smashing Pumpkins: Spaceboy (1993)

The sales rep that had given me a lift out of Leeds got me as far as a few kilometres past Durham. I had fallen asleep in the stuffy warmth of his Volvo, the constant drone of his voice merged smoothly with the purr of the engine. After what must have been an hour – though it felt like 5 minutes – he shook me awake.

“You’re bleeding.”

Bloody was dripping from my hand onto my lap and the upholstery of the passenger seat. I pushed the jacket from my shoulder and rolled up the soaked sleeve of my T. The bandages had come lose and more blood was trickling down my arm.

The sales rep brought the Volvo to a skidding stop at the side of the motorway.

“Get out,” he snarled.

I looked at him startled. I mean, I was sorry for the stains on his seat cover, but I hadn’t expected this reaction.

“I cannot explain why I had you in my car,” was all of the cryptic answer I got to my puzzled look. “Get out. Now.”

I grabbed my satchel and did as he said. He pulled the door close from within and roared off, leaving me by the side of the M1.

I treated the wound. My next attempt to keep it under wraps and pressure wasn’t  much better, but I’d had enough experience with cuts to the arms to know that it wasn’t all that easy to bleed yourself dry even if you tried. I would live.

I made it to Newcastle that night, and appropriated enough money to stay at another hostel. This time no one wanted papers or a story why I had none. The next day I hitched a ride with a lady who drove a bloody big Japanese SUV and who made me listen to saccharine soft pop and her own sob story all the way to Edinburgh. She told me the story in that wonderful, melodious Scottish sing-song that I would come to cherish like few other sounds in the world.

Her name was Cherry or Sheryl or so Valance. She was moving back in with her aging rents in Perth after she had been fired from a job as some sort of researcher. She’d been accused of fudging some numbers.

“The thing is, I haedna cheated. No’ the way they said I did, anywae. I hae go’en the numbers wrong, tha’ much is correct. Bu’ it must’a been subconsciously. My boyfriend hae just left me when I wrote tha’ paper, and wha’ I wrote, it sorta proved an argument we’d been having. At least, it wid if I’d been right. Tha’ is to say, if I cheated on anybody, it was mostly on him.”

I don’t know what she thought she saw on my face, but she grimaced and said: “Yer right. I only cheated on myself.”

And after a brief, uncomfortable pause: “So, tha’ is my sorry tale. Wan’te tell me yer oon?”

I eyed her wearily. She laughed.

“It’s okay, laddie. Ye don’ hafta. I can tell tha’ it’s no’ a happy one. No noodle salad there either, huh?”

“Excuse me?”

“Never mind. I s’pose, things are tough all over.”

I suppose she was right. On the stereo Paula Cole asked us where had all the cowboy’s gone, but neither of us knew the answer.

Word of Warning

Heavy sex or violence is out – although I think the kind of violence that’s allowed on TV is the very worst kind. There’s no feeling behind it, and that makes it completely diabolical.
- David Lynch in an L.A. Times Interview with Kristen McKenna (August 20, 1989)

This is a true story. I swear, it really is. Whether you believe me or not is of course up to you. But this being the truth, the whole and nothing but the kahretsin truth, there is a few things I should warn you about.
There is violence, physical and otherwise, and only some of it pleasant. There is sex, some more and some less pleasant than the violence, and sometimes the two are hard to tell apart. A lot of it involves same-sex, underage, and/or not-necessarily-fully-consenting partners. There are drugs: legal, illegal, and some just questionable. But most of all, there is crime. Shitloads of crime. Because this is the story of how I was a thief. How, for the last two years of my life, I deceived, betrayed, defrauded, lied to, and stole from pretty much everyone I came into contact with. And I wasn’t the only one doing that shite, baby.
Just to be clear on this: I do not necessarily condone any of this. But I do not necessarily condemn it either. It’s complicated. Anasını satayım, it’s life, you know.
I’ll also have the one or other thing to say about God. And Jesus. Mohammad. The Dalai bloody Lama. And about eternal life, and the soul, and spirits, and all that stuff. And about race, and ethnicity, and nations. And the character of such groups, and faiths, and entities. If you feel strongly about that sort of thing (and what sort of a person would you be if you didn’t?) some or all of it might bother you.
I’ll also use strong language in places. At times I’ll be crude. And rude. And mangle spelling and grammar and punctuation and good taste.
Amına kodum, I’ll just say whatever I bloody well please, however I bloody well please. If you don’t like it, please, feel free to look away anytime.