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I was having a conversation with ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
captain_lila this morning, and I told her some of the things I don't usually tell anybody. And I've been thinking ever since, and perhaps it's time to open myself up a little more.
I don't like talking about the junkie days. My priorities, my motivations, have changed so much that it mostly doesn't seem relevant. And I particularly dislike the thought of people seeing me and immediately thinking "oh, that's the ex-junkie". If I'm going to be known I want it to be for my big arse, my dogs, my awesome blowjob skills, my complete inability to meet deadlines, my capacity for self-delusion, the fact that I can put my ankles behind my ears - anything except the junkie thing.
So why am I writing about it now? Because I'm a masochist and I loathe Sunday afternoons with a burning passion, partly, but also because I have a few things I wanted to point out about people.
People suck. People are capable of the worst sorts of cruelty, selfishness and thoughtlessness. People are vermin on the face of the Earth. They're all hateful and it's futile to expect anything from them except to be kicked when you're down, right?
Actually, not. I love people. I love just about all of them, and if anything's taught me how worthy they are of love, it was the junkie years.
The thing I haven't told most of you is that when I was homeless, addicted and living rough, after Mike and I had exhausted shoplifting as a way to make our daily drug money, we took to begging. Most of you have seen homeless people sitting on street corners, sometimes with dogs, asking passers-by for their spare change. For over two years, with my dog Scampi, I was one of them. I had a regular shop doorway I used to sit in on Firvale Road, and I used to turn up there every evening at sevenish with my dog, his cushion and blanket and water bowl, and stay till 3am while the Bournemouth nightclubbing crowd streamed, danced, lurched and staggered past me.
And let me tell you something - that crowd were awesome. I've never in my life, before or since, seen so much kindness and compassion as I did in those years. For every person who made a snotty noise or walked past studiously looking away, there was at least one who gave me money, bought me food, bought my dog food, brought me hot tea, went back to their flats and fetched me new blankets, jackets, gloves or shoes, or, perhaps most importantly, sat down and had a conversation with me. On a good night, my doorway would turn into a spontaneous sitting-down party, with four or five total strangers laughing and joking and drinking together. Or sometimes there'd be just one person pouring his heart out and asking me for advice - that happened too, more often than you'd think.
See, this is a tricky thing to explain, and I'm a little scared of it being taken the wrong way. I wasn't happy with my life, obviously. Being addicted to heroin was one great big ball of no fun, being homeless with an elderly dog was a massive pain in the arse, and there's nothing on earth that would persuade me to go back to that life.
But my evenings on Firvale Road were a lot of fun, all the same. Every night there were kind people and lovely surprises. And I had friends - the stripper who always bought Scampi and I a burger each, the bouncer at the strip club who looked out for me and swapped dog stories with me when business was slack, the staff at the fish and chip shop who gave us all the hot food they had left at the end of every evening, the Iranian gambler who always gave me money on his way to the casino because I apparently brought him luck, Candy who went round the nightclubs and bars collecting for charity and who always spent half an hour sitting chatting with me... there were more, but my memory of those times is mercifully blurred and distant. There were the memorable one-offs, too - the guy who sat with me for two hours and then gave me £150 when he left; the veterinary chiropractor who spent an hour feeling and adjusting my dog and complimented me on his general good health before he left; the guys who, when someone kicked my dog, chased him down, brought him back and asked me if I wanted the shit kicked out of him; the guy who gave me an ounce of cocaine out of the blue; the guy who kissed me.
Obviously it wasn't all good. There were fights, there were insults, there were rainy nights when no one met my eye, there were drunken arseholes who thought throwing their leftover takeaway cartons at me was funny. The thing is, though, the goodness and the kindness far, far outweighed the nastiness, both in quality and in quantity. And this is why I'll never be a true cynic, despite all the bad shit in the world. I've seen too much human kindness at close quarters when I really needed it, and I will never, ever let myself forget it.
captain_lila this morning, and I told her some of the things I don't usually tell anybody. And I've been thinking ever since, and perhaps it's time to open myself up a little more. I don't like talking about the junkie days. My priorities, my motivations, have changed so much that it mostly doesn't seem relevant. And I particularly dislike the thought of people seeing me and immediately thinking "oh, that's the ex-junkie". If I'm going to be known I want it to be for my big arse, my dogs, my awesome blowjob skills, my complete inability to meet deadlines, my capacity for self-delusion, the fact that I can put my ankles behind my ears - anything except the junkie thing.
So why am I writing about it now? Because I'm a masochist and I loathe Sunday afternoons with a burning passion, partly, but also because I have a few things I wanted to point out about people.
People suck. People are capable of the worst sorts of cruelty, selfishness and thoughtlessness. People are vermin on the face of the Earth. They're all hateful and it's futile to expect anything from them except to be kicked when you're down, right?
Actually, not. I love people. I love just about all of them, and if anything's taught me how worthy they are of love, it was the junkie years.
The thing I haven't told most of you is that when I was homeless, addicted and living rough, after Mike and I had exhausted shoplifting as a way to make our daily drug money, we took to begging. Most of you have seen homeless people sitting on street corners, sometimes with dogs, asking passers-by for their spare change. For over two years, with my dog Scampi, I was one of them. I had a regular shop doorway I used to sit in on Firvale Road, and I used to turn up there every evening at sevenish with my dog, his cushion and blanket and water bowl, and stay till 3am while the Bournemouth nightclubbing crowd streamed, danced, lurched and staggered past me.
And let me tell you something - that crowd were awesome. I've never in my life, before or since, seen so much kindness and compassion as I did in those years. For every person who made a snotty noise or walked past studiously looking away, there was at least one who gave me money, bought me food, bought my dog food, brought me hot tea, went back to their flats and fetched me new blankets, jackets, gloves or shoes, or, perhaps most importantly, sat down and had a conversation with me. On a good night, my doorway would turn into a spontaneous sitting-down party, with four or five total strangers laughing and joking and drinking together. Or sometimes there'd be just one person pouring his heart out and asking me for advice - that happened too, more often than you'd think.
See, this is a tricky thing to explain, and I'm a little scared of it being taken the wrong way. I wasn't happy with my life, obviously. Being addicted to heroin was one great big ball of no fun, being homeless with an elderly dog was a massive pain in the arse, and there's nothing on earth that would persuade me to go back to that life.
But my evenings on Firvale Road were a lot of fun, all the same. Every night there were kind people and lovely surprises. And I had friends - the stripper who always bought Scampi and I a burger each, the bouncer at the strip club who looked out for me and swapped dog stories with me when business was slack, the staff at the fish and chip shop who gave us all the hot food they had left at the end of every evening, the Iranian gambler who always gave me money on his way to the casino because I apparently brought him luck, Candy who went round the nightclubs and bars collecting for charity and who always spent half an hour sitting chatting with me... there were more, but my memory of those times is mercifully blurred and distant. There were the memorable one-offs, too - the guy who sat with me for two hours and then gave me £150 when he left; the veterinary chiropractor who spent an hour feeling and adjusting my dog and complimented me on his general good health before he left; the guys who, when someone kicked my dog, chased him down, brought him back and asked me if I wanted the shit kicked out of him; the guy who gave me an ounce of cocaine out of the blue; the guy who kissed me.
Obviously it wasn't all good. There were fights, there were insults, there were rainy nights when no one met my eye, there were drunken arseholes who thought throwing their leftover takeaway cartons at me was funny. The thing is, though, the goodness and the kindness far, far outweighed the nastiness, both in quality and in quantity. And this is why I'll never be a true cynic, despite all the bad shit in the world. I've seen too much human kindness at close quarters when I really needed it, and I will never, ever let myself forget it.
