Chapter Four: Bleeds

Disarm you with a smile
And cut you like you want me to

- Smashing Pumpkins: Disarm (1993)

I never walked in the Malvern Hills. That Sunday night I just dug up my little baggie of cash from under that root and then asked some peeps more or less at random if they’d give me a ride, like, wherever. Wherever turned out to be Manchester.

Justin and Zelda, the couple who’d given me a lift, let me stay that night on their couch. The next morning they both went to work and I went for a stroll through Manchester. At a Tesco’s I got underwear and T-shirts, and at an army surplus shop some cargo trousers, and a satchel, and treated myself to a black M65 jacket. I changed in the loo of a McD and gave Louie’s clothes to OXFAM.

Manchester was nice to walk around in. I checked out the Canal Street area, where I had lunch in an empty pub: a ploughman’s, a bag of crisps, a coke, and a chat with an old queen. The queen was wrinkly like a prune, wore a flowing sequined gown, and smoked non-stop. While I ate he told me all about how the scene has changed in recent years, with the Queer as Folk fame, all tourists now and no regulars. I can’t understand how a poofter of his generation can be talking about the good old times. Maybe it’s like veterans talking about the war. I don’t know. Anyway, I liked the old coot, and the sandwich was really good. (I really dig British pickles. And have you ever noticed how cheddar in the UK comes in about a zillion different colours and a dozen textures, and they all taste exactly the same?) When I asked for a place for the night he recommended a hostel in Oldham.

You have to be 16 or older to stay in a hostel on your own, and you need to be able to prove it with a picture ID. I substituted that with a sob story about having had my wallet stolen and planning to report that first thing in the morning. The next morning of course I didn’t report anything, although for appearances sake I did let the staff give me directions to the nearest police station. Instead I walked through long stretches of Victorian terraced red brick houses alternating with muddy summer meadows, from Lees to Lydgate to Grasscroft to Greenfield.

I saw Greenfield first from atop Colt Hill that demarks the reach of the Greater Manchester area from the moors of the Peak District National Park. Like many 19th century industrial villages Greenfield clings to a small stream whose lazy bend is echoed by a railway line that has long lost its former importance. Back in the day Greenfield must have been part of Manchester’s clothes manufacture industry. Nowadays, I suppose, it was part sleeper town, and part gateway to the Pennies.

The hills on the far side were Alderman’s Hill and the Alphin, treeless and scabbed with disused quarries. The gap between them opened on a series of reservoirs, quiet, artificial bodies of water that blinked blindly at the sky. And behind them the land rose to the moors, or so a guidebook I had gotten in Manchester had promised me. I had a quick lunch at a Fish’n’Chips, which I wolfed down hungrily, eager to get there.

I followed Chew Brook uphill and soon the moors stretched out towards the horizon before me, an undulating landscape of gray-green grass, a weathered, bearded face scarred deeply here and there by brooks. This was a land that looked truly wild and cursed, a broken, jumbled wasteland, too desolate to be claimed by anyone but toads and snakes, mice and birds.

The day before, in the same little, musty bookshop where I had found the guide, I had picked up a book about the Moors murders. Some 40 years ago, right here, in this beautiful, haunted, haughty land two crazy lovers had tortured and murdered five children. Out of boredom and madness, lack of belonging, lack of meaning, Ian Brady and Myra Hinley kidnapped and killed three boys and two girls aged 10 to 17. For the heck of it. To feel being a part of, well, anything, I suppose. The world.

I walked through the windswept moor, across the very spots where – at least according to the book – some of the murders had taken place, and where four of the five bodies had been buried; one of which remained unfound to this day, still hidden by that sodden, dark, mute earth.

Hinley had died six years before, but Brady was still alive, locked up in a loony bin in Sefton, Merseyside, the same Borough where Jamie Bulger had found his death and immortality as the child victim of child murderers, just 10 days before I uttered my first cry in this life.

While I was in the moors, I very much wished to speak to Brady. I couldn’t have really told you what it was I wanted to know; something about irreversibility, and about stepping away from humanity I guess. Apparently many had tried to get an explanation from him, in vain. If he had any answers he probably wouldn’t have done it in the first place.

In the afternoon I reached Marsden, a small village lost in the expanse of the moors. Marsden is a maze of old bridges, roads, railway tracks, canals, locks, and tunnels. The day had been gloomy, the incessant wind had torn at my soul, and a bleak mood had seeped in as peaty bog water had seeped into my trainers and soaked my socks. So, as the rain picked up, I held out my thumb at the northbound A62, again accepting the first car that would take me, to wherever they would take me.

And that was how I came to Leeds.

Chapter Three: Chilled (Part IV)

What can I tell you about The Big Chill? If you’ve been to festivals you know what I am talking about. If not, how can I paint a picture that does the experience justice? Wandering in the pouring rain from act to act, sweating under a poncho made from bin bags, queuing for hours for the loos, paying outrageous prices for warm and beer and cold hot dogs, watching the grounds turn from green meadows to muddy fields littered with rubbish and noz cans, dealing with totally shitfaced punters convinced that your tent is theirs, unable to make them even understand that they are on the completely wrong campground?

Yes, all that is part of it, and even if it may be hard to understand, those aren’t the bad parts. The bad parts are finding out you’ve missed an act you were desperate to catch because they rescheduled it, or being disappointed by one you waited to get in for over an hour. The bad parts are finding your tent slashed and your stuff stolen. (No, I didn’t do either, this time, nor did they happen to me. Huey had both his camera and a stash of weed nicked, though. And our camp ground neighbours had their tents demolished by some arseholes.) The bad parts are being roughed up by fist happy security blokes, or losing Dewey in a field of 5,000 MDMA-dazed dancers, and spending a panicked half an hour before finding her just in time to get her away from some dodgy bloke who is about to sell her little red pills.

But then there were those utterly perfect moments that you do it all for: Hearing Martha Wainwright rising to the challenge left by her dead brother, being in a water balloon fight with totally chilled out security blokes, kicking Huey’s arse at the table football tournament in the Disco Shed, laughing yourself silly at Eddie Izzard’s voice acting during a kid’s screening of The Five Children and It, winning the three-legged rave contest together with Dewey and cheering her on at the organic egg & spoon race, having a damn fine cup of coffee all alone over at the Sunrise area while everybody is still asleep, forgetting everything while you and Dewey lose yourself in the rhythm together with 5,000 MDMA-dazed dancers, or just drifting through the crowd at 3 o’clock in the morning and watching a bloke twirl a glowing baton in the darkness while all around you peeps are singing along to the Commodore’s “Easy like a Sunday Morning.”

Huey and Dewey were always fun to have around. They both appreciated that I was pretty free with Frank’s money, getting food and drinks for everyone. (I didn’t touch the Queen Mum Charity Fund for Student Travels to the UK, though. I had stashed all of that money in a zip lock bag under a root in the woods around Eastnor castle.) I even eventually told them the story of how I had made Frank pay for the very ticket he sold me and all the grub they were now enjoying with me. They both thought it a very funny story, but I made sure not to let Louie in on the joke. I noticed that apparently Huey and Dewey didn’t either.

Louie I didn’t really get. She was damn smart, and she saw and understood a lot. She read me a lot better than most peeps I’ve met. And she mostly wasn’t afraid to speak the truth, in fact, it seemed to me she enjoyed speaking it as unvarnished as she could without compromising it, using it like a kosh. Hell, even her ellipses usually spoke louder than other people’s sermons. Poor Huey often got a good pummelling of such truths, sometimes looking dazed and confused trying to keep up with her.

Of course every now and then, like, twice or three times a day, she’d go to far, and Huey would turn on her like a rearing snake, and they’d be off on another of these ear-blistering quarrels that had caused Dewey to almost step in front of a 4x4. Louie usually won the arguments, though, and afterwards wore smugness like an armour, while Huey did his best to swallow his anger and slip back into his well worn joviality or finding solace in Dewey’s company. Sometimes it seemed rather as if Louie was mum to both of them, and Huey just the wayward older teen son, who got all the scoldings. Still, it was sort of fun to be part of a family for a change where the rents fought and the kids stuck together.

That meant that I had little to do with Louie during most of the festival. Either I was looking after Dewey, and Louie and Huey were off together or apart, or I did something together with Dewey and Huey, with Louie off on her own, or one of them had Dewey, and I did my own thing.

The only act we all attended together was The Mighty Boosh. Dewey had been telling me all Friday and most of Saturday how totally funny they were, and the crowd seemed to think the same. Many seemed to expect that show to be the highlight of the entire festival. Huey was also massively excited, and even Louie was obviously looking forward to it.

Well, paint me square and call me a German, but I utterly failed to see the humour in a bloke in a bad robot costume with an extensible dick or a bunch of zentais jumping up and down and singing off-key and off-rhythm “bouncy, bouncy, everybody”. Still, I was the utter minority, they had everybody else in stitches, and after a while the general hilarity was sort of infectious.

And then Sunday evening rolled around. I had spend the day enjoying Orchestra Baobab doing alternately hauntingly bluesy rumba and intoxicating African pop that made you forget the deep hanging clouds, and later Imagined Village totally rocking a rain-soaked audience with a drum and bass supported, violin flagellating rendering of “Tam Lyn”. Everything promised to be gloriously concluded by the only act both Louie and I wanted to see at all costs: Leonard Cohen live! Dewey was totally partied out from the preceding two days and even though she pretended to protest and sulk when Louie decreed that she would go to bed early, it seemed to me she was secretly relieved. Huey said he’d keep an eye on her.

“You two pansies go listen to that old crooner. I’m too young at heart for stuff like that, I’ll keep Dewey company and twiddle my thumbs.” And he held up his PSP.

So we went. We got in and even found a really good spot. And then the man got onto the stage. Hey, he may be in his eighth decade on this planet, but he sure has more generosity, humanity, and humbly sincere, subtle, sophisticated sex appeal than any other you are ever going to see. He was a dark and soulful saint. In fact he was so bloody good that I asked Louie if we shouldn’t get Huey or at least Dewey to have a taste, too.

Louie looked at me as if waking from a trance. I repeated my question.

“I’m not going to leave.”

“It’s okay, I’ll dash over to the camp ground and fetch them.”

I weaved out of the densely packed crowd to the skipping tune of “So Long, Marianne” and raced off. I got to the Volkswagen camper and tent in record time, running mostly on exhilaration and pure joy.

At the camp things were quiet and dark. I was about to run my fingernails over the tent’s nylon skin and call out “knock-knock” to see if Dewey was approachable, when I noticed the quiet groaning from the T3. Without thinking much I peered inside.

Huey was standing inside, hunched over and leaning heavily with one arm against the head rest of the back seats, the other hand between his legs. My first thought was that he’s having a wank, and I thought about how to call attention to myself without embarrassing him. But then – since I really thought he was pretty hot looking, and anyway, he must have known the risk of doing something like that in such a public place – I risked going to my tip toes and catching a glimpse of his dick. And that is when I see the small head with the long blond hair between his legs, when I catch his murmured, crooning words: “That’s it baby, that’s it. You make daddy feel so good.”

I wandered away, unable to form a coherent thought. Night had fallen. In the darkness a bloke mocked me. He was wearing a black suit adorned with glowing lines of neon, turning him into a living stick man. At the push of some button he toggled the set of blue-white lines that gave him a smiley face and a halo on his head to a set of fiery red ones that had him poke a tongue at me and wear devil’s horns instead. I stared at him, unable to make sense of it, when he toggled back to the white-blue, empty smile and strolled off.

I couldn’t be certain it hadn’t been just any slender, blond girl, of which there must have been hundreds attending the festival. Hey, I’ve had blokes getting off on calling themselves daddy during sex with me, that didn’t have to mean shit. Huey certainly had reasons enough to seek out some fun on the side, and who was I to judge infidelity? I never checked the tent, maybe Dewey was lying there deep asleep. I wanted to believe that, I didn’t want to find out anything different. Maybe I should have told Louie.

“Dance me to the children who are asking to be born.” Cohen’s gravelly, searing voice drifted across the lake. “Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn.”

It was only rain running coldly down my face. I didn’t feel anything.

“Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn,” he sang, as I disappeared in the night. “Dance me to the end of love.”

Chapter Three: Chilled (Part III)

I had gotten my ticket, but still two problems remained. The first was that with a teen pass I needed an adult to usher me in. I would have just jumped the fence with my pass, I had after all been studying their security all afternoon, but you needed to redeem the pass for the wristband, and without someone passing himself off as my guardian they wouldn’t let me have that.

I suppose it wouldn’t have been hard to find someone, if I’d asked – hard as asking is for me – because peeps were generally really friendly and relaxed at the festival. But there was the second problem: As the day went by the weather had gotten worse, and by early evening it was raining hard. Without a tent or anything like that it would become an uncomfortable night indeed. And by the time I realized that it was too late to even try to go back to Eastnor or Ledbury and see if I could purchase one there.

So that left me with the option to ask random peeps at the festival if they had a second tent they might be willing to sell to me (I still had a lot of dosh, after all). Or I could do what I did: I lifted someone’s mobile phone and called Dewey.

They came all three. Dewey ran up to me, screaming “ISH!” at the top of her lungs as she threw herself into my arms.

“Whoa, easy, Tiger,” I gasped and hugged her back.

“I knew you would be back. Huey and Louie didn’t believe me. Hah, I was so right, though.”

“You sure were. Did you have a good day?”

“Nope, it was totally boring. We went to There-ford, and that was boring, with boring old houses, and a boring church, and a boring whole grain lunch because Louie wouldn’t let us go to Burger King. And Bled-bury was totally the same only even smaller. And then Huey took me fishing, but we just sat there for one whole hour and he didn’t catch anything at all, not even an old boot or some rusty tin can. Will you play with me, please?”

She beamed at me and held up her LED illuminated Frisbee.

“Louie is tired and Huey sucks at Frisbee, he never catches it, or, like, once in a thousand throws. I mean, I hit him in the head with the thing more often than he catches it.”

“Dewey, it’s pouring.”

“Yeah, but it’s warm rain, and we’d be running, and I’m bored. Pretty please?”

“Let me talk to your rents first.”

Huey was amiable, Louie guarded. She could smell a con, even if technically there wasn’t one. But I suppose I’m not exactly the most trustworthy of fellows. I showed them my ticket.

“Where did you get that?” Huey asked.

“Did you…” Louie cut in, leaving the sentence hanging.

“I didn’t nick it off some poor sod who now has to cry bitter tears over being excluded, if you mean that,” I said slowly. “I paid good money for it, quite a lot at that.”

Technically that wasn’t even a lie, and I didn’t see any reason to burden Louie with the particulars of that transaction. She looked doubtful but nodded.

“Thing is, it’s a teen pass. I thought, we could maybe help each other. I’ll spend some time with Dewey, keep her out of trouble, so you two can catch some acts together, and you get me through the gate?”

I could sense Huey tense up at that. He threw Louie a furtive glance. The moment passed. Louie smiled wanly and put one raincoated arm around my wet shoulders.

“It’s a deal, Ishmael.” She sure liked to rub my nose in that one. “Welcome in the family for the weekend.” And to Dewey: “Why don’t you show your big brother the way.”

And so I was in. I offered to take care of my own sleeping arrangements, but I suppose I knew them well enough by then to not seriously expect them to take me up on it. They didn’t.

Chapter Three: Chilled (Part II)

Do you want to know what kept me up that night? Not little Dewey tossing and turning and whimpering unhappily in her sleep. Not a single thought of my mum who probably had a hell of a time right then, knowing that she had somewhere, somehow lost another child, or of my aunt who’d be sick with totally undeserved feelings of guilt. No, what kept me awake for the longest time was being pissed off at myself for trying to steal that backpack without wearing my shoes, or at all if I wasn’t able to run. That had been so stupid. I should have been better prepared, I should always be able to run at the first sign of trouble. Okay, I had been lucky, but relying on dumb luck just wouldn’t do. If I was going to make it on my own I’d have to work on stuff like that.

Eventually I fell asleep, at first only superficially, bobbing in and out of sleep, adrift amongst the shoals of nightmare and chased by all manner of unwholesome fears and memories. I remember waking up once, but uncertain if I was still dreaming. Huey and Louie were having an argument in the camper. They were trying to keep their voices down, and I couldn’t understand what they were fighting about, but it sounded vicious and bitter, in that way that betrays a deep seated and little understood hurt. I turned my head and thought I saw the gleam of Dewey’s eyes, wide open in the dark. I might have said something to her, but if I did she did not answer. When next I looked the gleam was gone. And then the current of the night took me over that unseen ledge where the continental shelf of the subconscious drops into the abysmal reaches of unconsciousness, and I sank like a ship once the last large reservoir of captured air has been blown out, trundling, circling into the blackness, tailing fragmentary dreams like tiny bubbles.

I did not wake again until late the next morning when the sun burning through the teal nylon of the tent was giving me a headache. My face and neck were taut with sunburn and my calves felt sore and leaden, but my feet were a lot better, and even though I was hungry for some breakfast, last evening’s gnawing pain was gone from my gut. I felt bloody good.

Dewey wasn’t in the tent, so I crawled outside. Louie was sitting in one of the chairs, wearing sunglasses and a straw hat, and read a book. Without looking up she said: “There’s cornflakes and coffee, sleepyhead.”

“Where are Huey and Dewey?”

“Jogging.”

Ah, a daddy and daughter pastime, I thought and sat on the unoccupied chair. The coffee was instant, and the milk for the corn flakes only UHT, but still I tucked in. While I ate I felt Louie look at me above the rim of her sunglasses. Uncomfortable I adjusted the neck of the shirt to better hide the tat on my chest, and lowered my face.

At that moment I hated her. I hated the assumptions she was making that reduced all of my history to that of a queer boy runaway. Of course being queer had something to do with it, but hell, being queer was just me, it was neither all nor nothing, just one of many parts.

After breakfast Louie began to pack up. I helped her some, but it was awkward since she was all testy and impatient. Obviously she didn’t trust me around, well, anything valuable, as if I might suddenly limp off with half their possessions or something. Then Huey and Dewey returned, flushed and hyper. I wanted to say good-bye but Huey insisted he’d drop me with a long shopping list of travel necessities at a pharmacy in Ledbury, a Herefordshire village close to Eastnor Park where the festival would take place.

Ledbury turned out to be a pleasant medieval looking market town with lots of timber-framed houses, abuzz with people there for the festival. I said my good-byes and thank-yous, and tried to give them money for the food, lodging, and clothes, which earned me played-up indignation from Huey and an unbelieving snort from Louie. Dewey shook my hand formally and slipped me a piece of paper with her email address and mobile phone number. And that should have been the last we saw of each other. Only, it wasn’t.

***

The pharmacy had everything I was looking for. Afterwards I sat down on a bench outside and taped up my feet. Next to the pharmacy was a haberdashery that sold socks made of all natural fabrics. I still had my own clothes, stuffed into a plastic carrier bag Louie had given me. I got a pair of black socks, and put on my trainers. Then I stuffed the black thongs in the thigh pockets of the shorts and dumped the bag of dirty clothes in a public bin. And after some hot, black and surprisingly good coffee, I decided to check out Eastnor, Eastnor Castle, and Deer Park.

I was reluctant to admit it to myself, but ever since Dewey had asked me to come to the festival with them, a plan had begun to take root in my mind, or at least an ambition. And as I stood on the ridge above the meadow stretching down to the two small lakes, with the stages, tents, concession stands, and the fairground all spread out around, I knew that I wanted to crash that party.

I’d been to several concerts and festivals in Berlin. Love Parade, Fuck Parade and CSD were all free, but of course I couldn’t actually afford tickets to the Berlin Festival, the Waldbühne summer festival, the Lostprophets in ‘06, or Wir Sind Helden in ‘07. Fortunately Hector has an older brother who has made it a regular art to get into such events without paying a single cent.

There is the legit way: Get a job picking up litter and cleaning the port-a-loos, working for the food or beer vendors, or for someone like OXFAM. You’d have to work 3 or 6 or 8 hour shifts, but usually got a fair amount of down-time in between to attend some of the acts. Usually you have to be 16 or even 18 to be able to do so, though.

You can of course also pass yourself off as staff without actually working there. The main prop is the right T-Shirt. Look busy and important and act the required age and it’s surprisingly easy to get through. Or you can forge the pass, wristband, and stamps. That is less difficult than it sounds – as long as they aren’t equipped for individualized bar-coded IDs, that is – since most festivals use the same set of logos, letter-type, and colour scheme on their posters and adverts in scene magazines that they use for the passes and wristbands. So it comes down to a good colour printer and laminator, getting the correct material for the wristbands, and a lot of chutzpah at the check points. I had the chutzpah, but not enough time for the prep, especially with the resources that Eastnor, Ledbury, or even nearby Hereford had to offer.

Of course I could have stolen someone’s tickets. I almost had, by accident, after all – Huey’s, Dewey’s, and Louie’s had been in the front pocket of that backpack. And for a while that was my main plan. But the weather was fine, and people were happy and relaxed, and somehow I couldn’t bring myself to do it.

I spent half the day checking out security. I was certain I could get over the fence and around inside, but it would mean having to avoid their staff and check points all the time. It would be possible, but risky and bothersome. Still, that had become my main fall back plan by the time I met Frank.

I don’t know his real name, of course, but I called him Frank the tout after his line of introduction: “If I may be so frank,” was how he began his sales pitch. Tickets were his commodity, and he sold them with “only” a 100% mark-up. So for a teen ticket I had to fork over 120 quid. But Frank was such a spiv, from his chinless face to his fake snake-skin boots, that I knew I had found my mark.

I shadowed him for a while. He wouldn’t be carrying all his tickets or his money on his person, and right enough, he soon lead me to his black GTV6, where he dumped some of his earning and refreshed his stock of tickets. I waited for him to get back into the trenches, before I busted a window on his car. I have to admit, damaging that wonderful machine, no matter how rust-eaten and battered it was, hurt my soul. Still, it took me all I had to keep up the guise of the needy festival nerd handing over money he knows he cannot really afford to give away to get his hands on a ticket when I paid Frank with his own money (keeping some for beer and grub). God, that felt good.

Why didn’t I just take my illicit earning from Painswick? Well, if you even have to ask I probably won’t be able to make you understand. Of course it was against my pride as a con man to let someone like Frank rip me off. The sheer poetry of the act was worth it. But beyond that, I dunno, the idea of making the Cotswold Queen Mum pay for a Dance, Trance, and Folk Rock festival… I tried to imagine her lost amongst 35,000 ravers, turning confused and frightened around her own axis, holding on to her hat while her myopic corgi bit into a noz balloon and staggered away, yapping and whining. It just felt, you know, wrong.

Chapter Three: Chilled

Just because you don’t understand it
doesn’t mean it isn’t so.

- Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book, 2004)

Their names, of course, weren’t really Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Louie was Louise Thomas, and Dewey was her daughter Drew. Drew had been 3 years old and her biological father long gone from their lives when Louise met Hugh. I don’t know how they came up with those nicknames, but once they got them they stuck.

They were on their way to the Big Chill music festival that is being held every summer in Deer Park at Eastnor Castle in Herefordshire. This would be the fourth year that they attended. The festival started Friday, two days after we met.

Huey had pre-cooked the chilli Louie had been heating over the camping stove, and after he was done taking care of my feet, and checking – for the umpteenth time, because of the accident – Dewey’s pupillary light reflex, he relieved Louie of cooking duty for some last minute seasoning.

Louie disappeared in the camper. When she came out she tossed a heavy, clanking bag to Dewey. “Better set it up while there is still some light. It’s bugger to do by the light of a torch.” Dewey groaned and looked at me, but before she could ask, Louie interrupted. “Huey has just spent an hour patching up this young man’s feet. He is not going to do the work for you and ruin all of that again, you hear? Get going.”

Then she pressed a pack of clothes in my arm, topped by a towel, and some soap.

“Over there is a barrel with rain water. Please wash. Thoroughly. And then, I don’t know, burn your clothes or something. You stink. Oh, and…”

She put a fourth pair of flip-flops on top of the pile. They were black. I wondered if she sold them or something. “So you don’t get your feet messed up again.”

I put on the thongs and limped across the orchard to the barrel. The water was reasonably fresh and deliciously cool. I stripped and washed, head to toes. The clothes turned out to be hers: A pair of black unisex briefs, black shorts, and a black men’s shirt. When I came back she looked me over.

“Looks better on you than on me. Keep them. Now let’s eat.”

The chilli was good. They had crackers with it. Dewey drank coke, Huey and Louie had beer. At first Louie handed me a can of coke, too, but when Huey saw me look at the beer, he said: “Go ahead, take one.”

Louie looked cross but didn’t say anything.

Afterwards I shared my last fags with Louie and offered to do the washing up, but Huey wouldn’t hear of it.

“You keep off those feet until the morning, you hear! Just stay here with Dewey, Louie and I will take care of it.”

To that Louie added: “And no stealing.”

I was too relaxed to be pissed off by the remark. “Not on your watch, ma’am.” I said, grinning. (Come to think of it, she did look a bit like Demi Moore.) Dewey sat down on the chair next to me. Huey and Louie left for the rain water barrel.

Dewey and I made polite chit-chat. We talked mainly about music, and films. When there was a natural pause in the conversation like they sometimes happen when nobody really has anything more to say about the current subject, Dewey suddenly asked:

“What if I really did?”

“Did what?”

“Try to, what you said. With the car.”

“What?” I was puzzled. “What did I say? Hump it, you mean?”

She nodded shyly.

I stared at her. Above the cloudy sky was still a bright, if faded pigeon blue, but down here shadows were crowding in on us, and the trees, deadwood and underbrush had run into one another in the murk. Even the dark red camper was beginning to lose its definition. But Dewey’s face stood out clear and pale, like a frightened apparition on an age darkened painting.

“Dewey, that makes no sense. I was just making a stupid joke.”

“Never mind, hey, wanna come to the festival with us?”

Her conversational zigzagging made me vaguely queasy. “I don’t have tickets.”

“But it would be so cool. You could sleep in the tent with me. And it’s fun. But sometimes it’s boring, and it would be more fun with you. Please?”

“I don’t have any bloody tickets. I bet there aren’t any to be had one day before it starts. And if there are, they’ll be terribly expensive.”

“Can’t you just steal one? You’re a thief aren’t you?”

I hesitated. “Yeah, I am. And I suppose I could. But I don’t know…”

“But you will stay with us tonight, right? Sleep in my tent?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think your rents would be cool with that.”

“Why? Cuz you could steal something?”

“No, that’s not what I mean.”

It took a moment for the penny to drop. She blushed, giggled, and swatted me. “Nah, never mind that. I’ll manage that.” And she jumped up and bounced off, to join her rents at the barrel.

The three of them began lengthy deliberations, a dubious murmur punctuated by drawn out pleas, with the occasional sharp exchanges between Louie and Huey rising above the rest. For the second time that day I thought about scarpering, and if my feet hadn’t hurt so bad, I probably would have.

The night settled around me, and with the darkness clamminess crept into everything. Huey and Dewey returned the dishes to the camper and Louie sat down on the chair next to me.

“Well, thanks for the supper and everything,” I said.

“Yeah, well, you are welcome.” She hesitated. I was still thinking about how I could extricate myself from it all without sounding rude or crude, when she began: “Look, Dewey…”

“It’s okay, I’ll tell her I can’t stay.” I interrupted. “I’ll make it, like, totally my idea if you want.”

“No. Well, the thing is…” She floundered.

“If you’re not cool with it, that’s totally okay with me. If she was my daughter, I’d probably feel the same. And I’ll be okay on my own, really. What difference does it make if I go now or tomorrow.”

She swallowed. “No, we will not make you leave in the middle of the night. Yes, you will be on your own tomorrow, and that’ll be for the best, but you stay with us tonight. Don’t even act the tough guy, now, okay, it’s really just about you staying in her tent.”

I looked at Louie levelly. I don’t know, she was a bitch, no doubt about that, and I had no idea what kept Huey and her together, but somehow I respected her. So I decided to make that leap. I took a deep breath and said:

“Okay, listen. I don’t know if my word means anything to you, there isn’t any reason it should, but Dewey isn’t really my type. I mean, I like her, she’s a sweet kid and all, but it’s not just that she is a couple of years too young for my taste, she’s also not equipped the way I like ‘em. Chromosomally.” I adjusted my crotch. “And anyway, I’m way too knackered for any funny stuff tonight.”

“Oh.” She thought about it. “You mean, you’re…”

“As a bottle of chips. So, if there is anyone you need to worry about me hitting on, my first choice would be Huey. I like big and bearish. Just, don’t ask me to prove it, that’d be awkward. I don’t perform well in front of an audience.”

At that she had to laugh. She leaned back in her chair and looked at me. Then she nodded.

Dewey returned and told me I would read to her now. I asked if she wasn’t too old for that that but she gleefully said, nope, she wasn’t. So, after a second nod from Louie I crawled into the tent and Dewey switched on an electric torch and gave me the big brick of a book she had brought along. It was Inkheart, which gave me a bad sting. The last person I had read this to had been ‘Nette.

Dewey showed me where she had stopped reading. I began, and soon I was lost in the harsh, dangerous, and hauntingly beautiful world of Meggie Folchart. Eventually Louie poked her head in, handed me a second iso-foam mat and said:

“Don’t stay up too late, girls.”

Dewey did one of these happy little squeaks that only girls her age can pull off, hugged me, and then hugged her mum good night. After that Huey also came by. He was a bit more sombre and gave me a tube of zinc oxide cream for my feet before wishing us a good night.

After they were gone, Dewey snuggled up to me and had me read on. And while I did, she rested her head on my left arm and let her fingers trail the long, silvery scars on its inside.

Countdown: 6 - Attitude with no History (Part V)

I did stop fighting. I had stopped after that one fight with Hendrik, at the beginning of our affair, back in June. That had been the last time, actually the last time until Samuel, almost one year later. And when H and I went our separate ways, I started stealing, and I didn’t have to do it anymore. I know, no one believes me, but it is true. That thing with the rozzer in my mum’s flat that the judge got herself so worked up about, that doesn’t really count. I wasn’t trying to hurt her at all, you see, I didn’t even know she was there.

If Kreuzberg is one of the bad parts of Berlin, then SO36 is one of the bad parts of Kreuzberg. And the Kotti, the Kottbusser Platz, a market place, roundabout, and U-Bahn station, is the living, beating, rotted heart of SO36. At the Kotti it’s easier to find a pusher than a rozzer. At the Kotti German is barely recognized as business language, it is the sign of the outsider, the visitor, the tourist.

The Kotti is surrounded by tall, bleak, prefab tower blocks. And for as long as I can remember we have lived in a small, three-room council flat on the top level of one of those towers. My room had formerly been mine and ‘Nette’s together. Later I had to cede it to Lukas for a couple of years until he finally went away to join the military. The room was tiny and lightless, not much more than a walk-in closet. There was the mattress directly on the floor (it had been bunk beds while I shared with ‘Nette), a tiny desk, a chair, stacks and stacks of books and CDs, a rickety wardrobe, half of which was occupied by even more books and music, and still space enough left to turn around on your own axis without bumping your elbows or stepping on something – if you were careful and did it standing on one foot.

The only window was narrow and high on the wall. But that window was the best part of the whole room, and why I really liked living there. For the wall that window was set in for the most part separated our house from the next one, but ours was a few meters higher. The window was set so high because the roof of the next house ended just there. Which meant that through that window I could climb onto that neighbouring roof, a roof ten stories over the surrounding streets and courtyards, and watch all of Berlin spread out around me.

That roof has always been my favourite place in all the world. Whenever things got bad, I would get up there, smoke, drink, and let my legs dangle from the rim and my eyes travel over the skyline. Usually that alone would be enough to calm me down. And if it wasn’t I’d practice aikido during sunset or sunrise. Corny? Sure. But have you ever done it? Well, then don’t laugh. Just believe me, it feels great.

Of course the roof was also a great place to get away in the other, less metaphorical sense. There was a door directly to the staircase, and you could jump down to the roof of the next house and get into the staircase there. Lots of entrances and exits.

So when the rozzer came knocking that day that was what I tried to do – get away. Only she was much closer on my heels than I thought. Literally. When I kicked around to wriggle out of the window onto the roof she was just reaching for my ankle. Instead she got the sole of my trainer smack in the kisser. There was the crunch of cartilage and bone and a lot of blood. And the last black mark on a long list of such marks, convincing the judge that I was one pitch black sheep in dire need of separation from the flock.

Maybe it was an understandable mistake. Given my record why should anyone have believed my claim that I hadn’t intentionally hurt that lady copper. I was neither know for my pacifism or restraint, nor for speaking the truth. Especially not to my mum. But that one time it was the truth, goddamn it, it was.

It was only after I landed in juvie that they began to take note of my lack of further fighting. I was the model inmate. And they totally misunderstood that, too.

I only studied so hard for school because being inside was so mindbogglingly boring that even irregular French verbs were a welcome distraction. Also, I wasn’t stupid enough to go stealing from peeps I was locked up with. I mean, come on, folks. I was the bloody youngest bloke in there, by a margin of a whole year. And the others were there for stuff like drug trafficking, rape or assault – and not kicking a rozzer by accident during arrest but of the deliberate baseball attack sort.

Of course I was not going to steal from anyone there, I was not going to rip anyone off. And even I was able to discipline myself enough to not go psychopath on some bloke who would have been not only way stronger than me but who in all likelihood had a whole gang at his back, though there were times I had to walk away and beat my fists bloody on a wall to stay clean.

But none of that kept me actually on what the guards, the social workers, the shrinks, and my mum looked at as the straight and narrow. No, I just got along. I figured out the rules of the game and I played by them, not because I believed in them, but because it was the only way not to lose. When I saw a chance to bend or break those rules without repercussions for myself, I did so. Of course, there were less possibilities within the limited game of juvenile hall. But when I met Uncle Valya, I jumped at the chance to learn how to.

So maybe you could say that this was really where that path began, in Old Luisenstadt Graveyard, playing poker with my mates. Or by breaking up with Hendrik. Or I was pushed on it by whatever it was that made me fight and that could only be placated by becoming a thief.

Countdown: 6 - Attitude with no History (Part IV)

Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. I’m trying to tell you how I became a thief. The shoplifting, that might have been my first attempt at it. Well, it wasn’t actually. Before that I had sometimes taken some money from my mum’s purse, although never without feeling, well, not so much guilty as cheap. Dirty. Low. And when she sent me for groceries I often kept some or all of the change for myself. I usually did that with a rather clear conscience, calling it a carrying fee in front of myself. Once, when I was about 10, I stole a really cool key chain with a skull pendant from Leo, even though I knew I would never be able to wear it. Everyone would instantly recognize it. I stole it anyway, and I felt curiously good and bad about it at the same time. But none of that made me a thief. At best someone who stole.

All of this was before I went to juvie, obviously. This is what lead up to my arrest, to the whole year before that blacked-out Friday night in Neukölln, and my final break out at Wotton-under-Edge. My fighting problem was at its worst then, and I knew I was about to be kicked out of school. The rozzers were regular guests at my mum’s flat. I was going to counselling twice a week, but that was a total waste of time. I mean, I suppose it cannot work when you do not tell them what’s really on your mind. But how can you when you cannot even tell it to yourself, when the very thoughts they want to hear are the pain you are trying to get away from, are exactly that which is so bad that getting the shit beaten out of you is a welcome distraction. How can you reach someone for who being tortured has become addictive, the thing to look forward to?

The next school year my academic performance was really going below par as well. I mean, I am no genius, but when half your class is still struggling with the common language, it doesn’t take much to stay abreast. But that year, well, I couldn’t even muster the effort for that. By the spring of 07 it was clear that I would have to repeat the year if nothing was done. My mum made me take private tutoring, even though we really couldn’t afford it. All through summer I had to job to pay her back some, and the planned trip to my aunt in Gloucestershire fell flat also.

I managed to scrape by, just barely in French and Chemistry, but enough to move up to 4th form. With all my studying and jobbing, babysitting little Nicky, and the thing with Hendrik, I had hardly spent any time with my mates all summer. So when sometime in late August after football training Hector suggested a poker game at Old Luisenstadt Graveyard I felt more than obligated to agree.

My mum returned from work around 10 pm. ‘Nessa, Nicky, and I had already had supper. When my mum looked in on me I pretended I was studying for school, but I had hidden a Travis McGee novel inside the massive chemistry textbook. Nicky was asleep. Mum and ‘Nessa talked for a while in the kitchen, then Mum withdrew into the living room, where she slept on the sofa-bed.

Around midnight I went to the loo. Mum had fallen asleep over a crossword-puzzle. I pulled the cover up to her shoulders, put the biro and the puzzle book onto the couch table, and turned off the light. When I put on trainers in the hall, ‘Nessa came out of the kitchen.

“What the hell do you think you are doing, bro?”

“Just going to see Orcun.” Since he lived next door I figured that would be the easiest answer.

“And you are putting on a jacket for that?” She pointed out the tracksuit top I was wearing. Say about her what you want, but my big sister is a sharp one.

“Didn’t say I was going to see him at his place,” I conceded.

“You are not happy unless you are fucking things up, aren’t you, Rikki?”

What can I say? She’s right I suppose.

The night was bloody marvellous. The air was damp and cool, hazy with a hint of mist from the canal. It smelled of dust, straw and dew, just the way a summer night is supposed to smell. I biked down Admiralstrasse, Grimmallee, and Körtestrasse, and no ten minutes after leaving the house I climbed the fence of the graveyard.

I was the first and I had some time to visit ‘Nette’s grave. Leo found me there. He had brought beer and handed me one. I lit a fag for him. He squeezed my shoulder and we went over to the big stone angel with the chipped off face that guards the oldest part of the grounds. Hec and Orcun joined us there.

We stayed until dawn. On the way back to Kotbusser Tor we stopped at a bakery. Officially it was still closed but we went to the back door and the apprentice sold us a couple of warm sesame rings anyway. And when I let myself into the flat, mum was waiting for me.

I had expected her to sleep in, since that week her shift at the supermarket didn’t start before 10 am. Normally she wouldn’t have been up before 8. But Nicky had had a colic that night and his implacable crying had woken her around the time we left the graveyard. She had only meant to look in on me to get a glimpse of her youngest peacefully asleep or something, but when she had found me gone she had pressed ‘Nessa for info and ‘Nessa had told her I’d been gone all night.

My mum has never had the energy to care much about my private life, but with all the bother and expenses of getting me through the previous school year, she totally blew her top this time: I was grounded for three weeks, football training and all. I was to go to school and back right after. When she was at work, I was to call her from the phone at the flat so that she could see via caller ID that I really was where I was supposed to be, and she made sporadic calls to make certain I staid in. I was supposed to use the time to study. Of course she couldn’t know what this would cost us all in the long run. None of us knew what this would lead to. Because in those three weeks I discovered that art and joy of larceny.

***

Over the summer I had read Neil Gaiman’s American Gods. I had liked it a lot and read a number of interviews with Mr. Gaiman about the book. I learned that one of the books he had used for research had been The Big Con by David Maurer. I had tried to get that at the library, without success. What I had found instead, amongst a lot of books on card and coin tricks, was How To Be A Professional Confidence Artist by former Michigan rozzer Dennis M. Marlock. HTBAPCA isn’t actually meant to be a how-to book, or if, it’s rather meant to be a how-not-be-scammed book. In the end, I think, it mostly is a why-confidence-artists-are-really-not-cool-at-all book. But to me it was a revelation.

If I hadn’t been grounded I may never have read it. It didn’t look particularly interesting, but rather dull, a small press pamphlet. So I had put it aside and more or less forgotten about it. I might even already had gotten a reminder from the library to return it. But then I was grounded and once more began using my entire waking time to read. And eventually I picked up Mr. Marlock’s pamphlet.

At first I wasn’t really that into it. The writing is a bit too smug for my taste, too cocksure. The first chapter is on change raising. It sounded positively barmy. I was certain that what he explained would never work in real life. But the good thing about that technique is that you can at worst only embarrass yourself with it. Even if caught no one can prove you did anything with criminal intent.

I was bored. I was pissed off at my mum. I felt another fight coming on. No idea with who, but my blood temperature was rising, and I knew that sooner or later someone would be along, just when I was about to boil over. And I would be in trouble again. I needed a distraction. Hendrik, who had kept my temperature down for the last couple of weeks, was gone from my life for good, so there wouldn’t be any help there. So when my mum sent me to buy groceries one evening I decided to give it a try.

Like I said, this wasn’t the first time I stole something, but still this was different, I knew that, even before I did it. This was serious. I wished to defraud someone deliberately and see if I could not learn what it had to teach me. I wasn’t setting out to pinch some chewing gum or cigarettes, this wasn’t giggling excitement, a lark to pass the time. That I went at it alone was telling enough. This was like drinking on your own. When I went into the supermarket on that August afternoon, I went like a samurai going to battle.

At the supermarket they have these shopping trolleys that take a Euro coin as security deposit. It was early evening, rush hour at the checkout lanes. The sales girl had just started processing a mum with three hyperactive kids when I approached her about some change to release one such trolley. I had to wait a good while for the sales girl and the mum to get everything tallied, paid, and packed away (again, amidst kids climbing on the conveyor belt and other waiting customers, begging for sweets, and chasing each other around). I kept hovering patiently behind the sales girl and smiling benignly at the kids. This was going just as I had hoped.

By the time she was free to help me, she was quite apologetic and thankful for my patience, but at the same time also under pressure to get on to the next customer in line, who had already been waiting even longer. I handed her a twenty Euro bill and got a tenner, a fiver, and some coins in return. I smiled again and began to say thank you, when in putting the money away I discovered a 1-Euro-coin sized token that you can also use to release a trolley. I slapped my forehead and asked her to please take the fiver and the coins back, in return for a tenner, as I really did not want to carry all that lose change around.

“Okay,” she sighed, and took the fistful of money I put back into her palm, while giving me another tenner.

With just that hint of uncertainty and doubt in my voice I said: “That should be all.” Just enough to make her check if she really got the whole 10 Euro worth of change, enough to make me seem innocent if she hadn’t gotten all. And of course, she hadn’t. I was two Euros short. That was odd. I was puzzled. Hadn’t I just handed her back what she had given me? Had she really given me the full amount in return for my twenty? I searched my pockets while the annoyed murmuring from the queue was getting louder and more urgent. She still remembered my own patience with her and the mum, but worry lines were beginning to show on her face.

I put the tenner between my lips and patted myself down with both hands. There, some change, most of it in coppers. I count out three fifty cent coins, one twenty and one ten cent piece, that is two Euros.

“Look here,” I said, taking the tenner from between my lips, now obviously very embarrassed and in a hurry. “Here is twelve. Together with eight I just gave you that is twenty. Just gimme back my original twenty note and we are done; after all, I got the token for the trolley.”

Under pressure from the customers she counted the money and right enough, twenty Euro. She gave me back my banknote and let me go. She had a somewhat troubled look on her face, but even trying to think it through she could not find any fault. She shrugged it off, and hey, I was a polite and honest looking German boy, not some pidgin speaking Turkish hoodlum or a Yugoslav gypsy, it was probably alright.

But if you have been keeping count you know that there was nothing honest about the whole transfer, and in the end she paid me 10 Euros for the dubious pleasure of my company. I left with my old twenty and a brand new tenner from the supermarket till – and then took my token to another supermarket around the corner to do my shopping there, just in case she caught up later.

When I left I felt great. It wasn’t the money, though for a 14 year old from a household where a single mum had to work 2 jobs to see her family fed and clothed, 10 Euro is nothing to be sneezed at. But that wasn’t what gave me that incredible high. No, having been able to fool her, messing around with her in plain sight, und under the scrutiny of dozens of annoyed witnesses wishing me to hell, and still getting away with it… what a rush!

I did it as often as I could. When my mum ended the grounding, I spent my afternoons on the shopping miles of Berlin and milked every small and mid-sized store I could. I avoided the really big places, large department stores and such, figuring they would have cameras and detectives and that they might have schooled their cashiers to catch this form of deception. But I hit all the little boutiques, the expensive sweet shops that sell gift hampers and gold wrapped pralines by the ounce, and all the other shops scattered along Tauntziehen, Wilmersdorfer, Tor, and Schlossstrasse, around Hermannplatz and Leopoldplatz. I only steered clear of the area around Oranienburger and Kotti. I was too familiar a face in my own Kiez to risk getting a rep for change raising there. Word would have filtered back to my mum.

I made some fascinating discoveries. Computer shops were amongst the easiest targets – they were used to handle large amounts of money and the personnel was definitely more interested in the technical than the commercial side of any transaction. But every now and then there would be a math wiz amongst the nerds that would make me at once. Often enough they wouldn’t suspect foul play at all, though, but just correct me, complacent in their mathematical savvy.

Kindness is definitely a down if you want to go far in the business world: Friendly shop keepers are much easier to dupe than grumpy, forbidding ones. Gender and age on the other hand seem to be in no way related to how easy a mark can be suckered.

Every now and then I encountered a cashier that was trying to shortchange me as I was trying to raise the change. Shortchangers aren’t exactly thick on the ground, but shockingly common if you try enough. One time we both recognized each other at the same time. It was a cheap jeans shop off Rosa Luxemburg Platz and the garishly made up half-Arabic girl might have been doing it out of sheer boredom. Certainly her chewing gum held more fascination for her than her few customers – who, truth be told, turned out to be only window shoppers. But she was skilled enough to obviously not have started with it that day. Of that I am certain. When we made one another we looked at each other, first guiltily, then angry, sizing each other up. And then we both had to laugh. We each took back out original investment and I left, strangely relieved. I had met myself, and we had disliked each other less than I would have expected.

But as fun as raising change is, it is a somewhat elaborate con for a usually pretty low gain. Once you start to fish for larger sums than ten Euro people tend to get much more careful. (Once I did walk away from a computer shop with two fifty Euro notes that I had let them give me for allowing them to briefly handle the five hundred that I had brought along. I never could repeat that stunt, though, and eventually got into trouble for trying. I had to leg it and leave behind a good deal more than those one hundred, so in the end the attempt to go for big fish was a net loss for me.) Which meant that eventually I began to hunt for other games.

Most grifts require two or more peeps – usually at least one roper who engages the mark and a cap who comes in and takes over. Those that can be played by a lone grafter require some serious skill at sleight-of-hand when for example you swap the mark’s money at the crucial moment for a wad of worthless scrap paper faced back and front by a single real banknote. So, after doing a bit of research, and beginning to train my fingers to do what I wanted them to while I was focusing attention elsewhere, I decided that I might as well pick pockets directly. In the end, that to me is the purest form of the art: Your dexterity and skill at misdirection against the mark’s perceptiveness and presence of mind.

I said my first time going out to raise change I went like a Samurai going into battle. In a way that is of course total bollocks. The very essence of a Samurai is that he follows a lord, that he adheres to a code. A true Samurai is never selfish. He sacrifices himself for his lord, not just his life, but his personality, his innermost being. With Hendrik I actually tried that, even though I suppose in the end I failed. Or he proved unworthy of the sacrifice. I still do not know which it was. But being a thief I did nothing of the sort. It was utterly selfish. But there still was something of Bushido in all this.

Life in every breath. Focusing all of existence on a single moment, letting that moment expand to fill the entire universe, so that time stops and each second becomes an eternity. When I stole, everything else ceased to exist. I finally had found something better than fighting. I had found something better than wanking, better than sex. It was my daily worship, my mass and prayer.

If books had been my heroin than thieving became my cocaine.