The cell of foul memories...

The wolf was busy over the next few days.

First Liam, then Merlin, two more houses of wood that fell at my feet and confirmed the new truth in my life, that sex was the way to go.

And go, and go, and go.

Something changed about my perception of myself as victim in these liaisons. I became predatory and aggressive in my demands.

Dean, Shane, Dillon, each of these making me stronger and more certain of my direction. I had clearly been born to live this life and I mused on the fact that I had finally found my talent. If only Gypsy had approached me sooner. Pulled me from the drab and fucked up mediocrity of suburbia and shown me the power of a new belief.

Sunday saw me sat around the fire at the bender site again, somehow able to look all of them in the eye and feel the pride of achievement. I sipped the hot cup of soup and chatted to Polly about the festival in Northampton. They were leaving in two days.

Suddenly I felt an explosion of pain on my back and a shower of hot sparks spun around my face and body. I turned stunned to see a long haired woman brandishing a burning log from the fire. 'Fuck you.' She screamed, swinging the wood again and this time hitting my hands which I raised defensively. Gypsy seemed to appear from nowhere and held the arms of this stranger in restraint. I watched as the woman went from frantic struggling to limp submissiveness. I searched startled around the faces of the fire and found my answer in Blackum's pained expression. So this was Nicky. Gypsy dropped her sobbing to the ground and gestured to me to follow her.
'She's just jealous.' Remarked Gypsy. But this seemed a horrible underestimation of what Nicky must have been feeling.
'Tell me,' I was shouting now 'Tell me that this is real. Tell me that what I am doing is all for you. Tell me that you speak the truth to me and that I'm not bad, not evil, like they think. Fucking tell me Gypsy!'
She screamed back. 'You take my drugs, you take my friendship, I can't make you take my word as good. You need to come to us completely. We're all you fucking have. Remember that.'

Was she right?

I dialed the numbers on the phone with trepidation. I had not spoken to Sarah in months, but I needed to talk with someone that was removed from this insanity. She agreed to meet me in The Boater and seemed concerned at the state I was in. It seemed ridiculous to mention my story of wolves and torrid liaisons to my gentle friend. I spoke instead of my isolation, of my deep desire for a home, for a bed, for a family.
'I can't leave you here like this. You know, each time I see you, I feel relief that you're not dead yet. You're killing yourself before me. I hate you for that.' It had never occurred to me that my demise was hard on others, I wiped a tear from Sarah's face. 'What happened to make you like this? What happened to the girl that laughed with me at the stables and walked with me to school? Where has she gone?'
'She's sleeping.' I smiled, gingerly.
'Then wake her up because soon enough you'll be in this too deep. You know, your new friends scare me. They're all fucked up on drugs and shit. Why are you with these people? You seem to have forgotten all about your real friends. We're still here you know. We haven't changed.'
'I am sorry. I just feel so lost.'
'You've got to fight. Stand up and be 'you' again.'
'Be me?'
'You are so caught up in this fucked up world of yours that you can't even see what's going on around you anymore. See him?' She pointed at the dredlocked man stood near the door with a bottle in his hand. 'You remember John? You thought that he was the prettiest man that you'd ever seen. The fucking Adonis, you used to call him. He's a friend of mine now. You wouldn't know that because when we meet all we do is talk about you. Fucked up, pretty little you. Truth is that John, the fucking Adonis, has been infatuated with you for months. He offers up about a mile of raw desperation every time you cross his path. But you, you're too fucked up to notice or care. Now, here's my little gift to you. My attempt to save your crying soul. John's a good man from a middle class family. He has a reasonable job, he studies hard, he lives in a beautiful house with his parents who love him and for some incomprehensible reason, unblighted by the fact that you are desperately in need of a sensible hairstyle and a good bath, he would like nothing more than to sweep you off your feet and take care of you.' All of this was said with a hint of a smile.
'Really?'
'My suggestion is, that I take you home and try my best to persuade my mother that you can stay for one night. We clean you up, change your clothes and get you a good night's sleep in a warm bed. Tomorrow will be the first day of the rest of your life. And him,' She nodded at John who was now smiling at the two of us 'He's the key to the fucking door.'

We were halfway to Bath Easton when Sarah phoned her Mum. I sat on the wall behind the phone box, smoking and listening to Sarah's raised voice and desperate pleading. 'Where will she go if we don't let her stay?' 'It's only for one night.' 'I hate you for this.'

We sat together on the wall for a little while in silence. Sarah holding me and crying. I felt silly that I had hoped for this night of normality. I had to remember who I was and forget the sanctitude of old dreams.
'It doesn't matter.' I offered reassuringly.
'I can't bear to leave you out here. It's so cold. I could never get used to this cold.'
The cold was in my bones now.

Sarah looked at her watch 'It's almost one thirty. I have to go. Come with me. I've got an idea. You can sleep in the toilet block over the road. I'll sneak out in the night and bring you a sleeping bag and some food. When Mum leaves for work in the morning you can come in and have a bath.'

I didn't like to tell her that public toilet's were disgusting to sleep in. That the chilly, damp, urine soaked floors, offered little in the way of comfort from the cold of the night. I sensed that she needed me to stay nearby. I would do this for her.

The toilet was a small tiled building with three separate cubicles, two sinks and a hand dryer. I pressed the button on the hand dryer and joked about 'central heating', but the hot air on my skin made my fingers burn painfully.

'Take my coat as a blanket.' I did. 'I'll see you in about an hour.' She hugged me. 'Take care of yourself.'

I hit the button on the hand dryer once more and surveyed my new home. Out of the three cubicles the middle looked the cleanest but the end one offered more protection from the cold. I chose the end one and lay Sarah's coat down on the floor. If my head lay behind the u-bend and my body length ways down the cubicle, I could just tuck my legs in and keep my feet this side of the door. The smell of piss and pine disinfectant was choking. I wrapped my own coat around my legs and lay there until the cold dictated that I should use the hand dryer again. I returned to my bed and slept fitfully for maybe an hour.

More time under the hand dryer. More time in the cubicle, before footsteps.

Sarah?

There were two steps of footsteps. One pair of high heels clicking towards my door and the softer tread of trainers behind them

'Claire?' I recognised the voice as Sarah's Mum's. 'Come out Love. You can't sleep here.'

I was so grateful that they'd come. I opened the door to see Sarah in her dressing gown and her Mother wrapped warmly in a winter coat.

'I phoned your Mum.' She said softly. 'Your Dad's coming to get you.'

I lied

Not so much a lie, more a 'forgotten'. But when I said in the first chapter of this blog that it would be four long years before my father and I would speak again, I had not remembered this. This night was hidden in my yesteryear, where I place all the bits of me that I need to hide.

This night was red.

We stood outside the building at the side of the road,waiting for the Volkswagon Jetta to pull up and collect my sins. I felt completely out of control. If I had been willing to sleep in the toilet to please my friend, was it also possible that I could get in this car for her?

My father was a good looking man in his late forties, most would have placed his distant origins as non-white, but to speak of that was to arouse his aptitude for denial. He pulled the car to a sudden halt, wound down the window on the passenger side and leaned across to me.
'Get in the fucking car.' He said this with a forced smile as he looked at Sarah's Mum, who was huddled from the cold, just out of ear shot of us, with her daughter. He unclicked the lock on the car door with a slim brown finger and motioned me inside. 'Thanks Brenda,' He shouted 'Sorry if she caused you any trouble'.
I climbed in beside him and with a roll of his eyes we were off towards the place that I had once cared for as home.
'Do you know what time it is? Three o'clock in the bloody morning. I was supposed to start work at two. I get this bloody phone call by some condescending woman that wrongly assumes that she is doing me a favour by pointing out that my child is sleeping in a piss hole down the road. If you wanted to come back you could have come during the day and had the balls to phone yourself.'
'I'm not coming back.'
The car burnt rubber and mounted the pavement as Dad's anger fired.
'Then get the fuck out. Stop wasting my time, the time of this family. Do you know what you've done to your mother, your sister, to my reputation!'
'I'm just cold. Let me come back for one night. Please. I'm just really cold.'
He rolled his eyes again, returned to the road and off we went to the silently waiting village of Longwell Green.

There was the same curtain. Twitching again in an upstairs window as the car pulled into the driveway. My desperate mother stood once again at the top of the stairs wringing her hands in pain. I heard the car behind me leave as I stood in the doorway looking nervously up at this lady, this woman, that had once carried me warm and safe inside her womb.
'I've made your bed.' She squeaked. Then finding strength in her hatred she barked, 'Have a bath before you go in the room. You look disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.'

The lavender scent hung heavy in the steamy air as I lay in the bath soaking myself presentable and clean for these people. I wrapped myself in a snow white towel and pondered the pile of filthy clothing that I had discarded on the floor. It seemed incomprehensible to put these soiled clothes upon my skin. I threw them in the bath and poured in a whole bottle bleach from the shelf besides the sink. My fingers burnt again as I stirred and kneaded until my knuckles shone red at the effort. The smell of bleach and this room evoked a powerful emotion. I padded downstairs to the kitchen where I met my Mother once again, standing at the sink.
'Why are you here Claire?' She slapped the soapy water with angry hands of frustration 'Why do you do this to us? I can't cope with any more from you. I just can't cope.'
I took a glass from the cupboard on the wall and smiled at the confrontation of absurd neatness. Was my Mother the only person that cared if all her cup handles pointed in the same direction? I poured orange juice from the fridge and turned back to face her.
'One night. That's all I ask. Just one night.'
'You ask so much and yet you don't even see it. This isn't one night. It's bloody revenge.' I threw the glass of orange juice at her feet, spraying her drssing gown and legs with shards of glass and sunset drips. Both of us were crying now. I hung my wet clothes on the line in the garden and stormed upstairs, stopping only to collect one of Mum's night dresses from the airing cupboard at the top of the stairs.

My room had changed a little.

Four small walls, one door, one window. No bigger than a cell I'd guess. It's walls papered in a garish mauve clover print. Shiny wardrobe and matching drawers, not too dissimilar from Barbie's, all the same as before. I opened a drawer carefully and quietly. Nothing. The same with the next and the next. All trace of me, of what I was, had been vanquished. My pictures were gone, as were my drawings. It seemed almost unbearable that only a cell full of foul memories remained.

I looked around sadly. It was important that I didn't forget this, this was my life, my destiny, my shame.

That night I slept without dreams. I had never slept so well in my life it seemed and I would wake with a rested soul.

Continued...

Little pig, little pig, let me come in...

Will somebody stop the tape?

I cannot bear to post this next part without initially offering up an explanation for my actions. It is sometimes so difficult to type these words as I feel so deeply the pain of judgment, mostly my own, but I know that often it will be the judgment of others. I want you all to know that this story appalls me. That I hate both what I was and all I did. Fear is something that accompanies almost every night when you are homeless. I was terrified to think of what might happen when the darkness fell each night and I learned fast that 'a quick fuck' was small price to pay for warmth, a bed or even a simple cuddle. I would pay the price again and again in a desperate attempt to feel some worth, to glean some level of acceptance in the void of the every day. I was desperate on so many levels and I was aware how dangerously close to suicide I floated.

Press Play



If someone were to say to me right now,

'Claire, you're not human. Life as you knew it, has all been a lie. You are a Wolf. You are part of an elite species that exists alongside and above human beings and it is your duty in life to live as part of our pack and have sex with casual abandon'...

Now if I heard that today then I would probably need clean underwear for all the laughter. Back then though, with my mind muddled by a cocktail of drugs and living in a constant state of desire for emotional comfort - I listened intently to Gypsy's words and wondered how much of them had truth. Andy sat with me and squeezed my hand tight as she spoke to us. He seemed unphased by the revelation and nodded as Gypsy assigned him as a Protector to me.

Protector. I liked the sound of that word.

'Wow' I said in response. Then for want of anything better to say. 'Fucking hell!'
'You've always been part of our family.' Said Gypsy. 'I've been looking after you for a long while. Remember many years ago, the house on the hill in Longwell Green? The one with the painted concrete boulders out the front. The one at the end of your road. I was there, looking out for you, checking that they took care of you properly.' Something clicked in my brain. I remembered the house. Squatters had taken over a mansion at the end of my parents street back in the very early 80's. The locals had been up in arms at the dirty travelers that brought filth and drugs to the quiet community and violated this beautiful home. It seemed impossible to believe what Gypsy was saying to me, but how did she know of my home and my father?
Nick finished working on his bike and came and sat with us on the bed, unwrapping the fur throw from Gypsy's shoulders, he snuggled up besides her.
'Welcome to the mad house Shebari.' He leaned over and kissed Gypsy, then looked back at Andy and me 'Isn't it time you two kids got off to bed. Gips and I need to catch some shut eye.'

Andy and I left happy and holding hands. The site was dark and mostly quiet, just the faint sound of a radio playing quietly in someones home and the bark of a dog in the distance. I felt more grounded out here, as if the sharpness of the air had dwindled Gypsy's magic. I tried to leave behind Gypsy's words and instead worried about where Andy and I would sleep tonight. I asked Andy where we were heading, after all, Old John had not left for Northampton yet.

'Follow me.' Andy whispered quietly. We walked around the glowing, sparking ashes of the fire and headed downwards, to the front of the site. Andy stopped by a big bender with a heavily smoking chimney. He called out 'It's Andy, can I come in?' I recognised this place as Blackum's. The tarp was suddenly pulled sharply back allowing a glimpse of the inside. This bender was more homely than the others, a woman's touch noticeable in the shelving and decoration.

Little pig, little pig, let us come in

Blackum smiled, 'Sure you can.'

Inside the bender, Andy positioned me on a rug in front of the wood burner and headed to the back to talk to Blackum who was sat on the bed. I caught most of what they said. Blackum was to put me up for the night. Andy would pay him with drugs. Andy was leaving now. I looked up at Andy with confusion as he went towards the door. 'Sleep here. Blackum's family to us. You'll be safe here Claire. I'll come and get you tomorrow morning. Ok?'
Blackum threw a pile of blankets down beside me.
'Ok.' I said to Andy, then I watched him leave 'Should I sleep here on the rug?' I asked Blackum.
'If you like. I'll throw you a pillow.' And he did 'Do you mind if I blow the candle out? I'm tired.'
'No, that's fine. I'm tired too' The fire left enough light for me to get comfortable and then I lay there wishing sleep would come. It didn't. I hated lying there alone. I wondered for the first time in a long time what my sister might be doing. I longed for a clean bed and the smell of soapy detergent on my sheets, for the little things that marked a life as normal. I longed for more than this.
'Blackum, can I sleep up there with you? I don't like it down here.' I wanted to be back with Andy, maybe back with Gypsy and Nick, perhaps back even further, back in Robert's arms.
'Nicky wouldn't like it.' Blackum mumbled.
I pushed my covers aside and crawled over to the side of the bed where I knelt sobbing on my knees, 'Please?'
'Oh for fuck's sake. I'm going to kill Andy for this. Get in.' And he lifted the covers, moving aside to make room in the bed. 'No sex though. I need to bloody sleep.'
'No sex.' I whispered back in agreement cuddling into the back which he promptly turned to me.

We lay there like that for about an hour. Neither of us any closer to sleep, but me much happier now I had a body to lie beside for comfort, I thought perhaps I would never get used to the loneliness I felt. Some days the loneliness consumed me.

I lay my arm over Blackum's side, rested a hand gently between his legs.

Blackum spoke first. 'I'm a good fucking man ya know. This doesn't mean anything. I love Nicky, always will.' And he slid his hand up my skirt and kissed me.

I felt sorry for Blackum in the morning. He looked sad and that made me sad too. I left him there in bed, unwilling to look at his guilt any longer.
Polly joined me by the fire. 'You still here young lady?'
'Where else would I go?' I laughed.
'I don't know. Where did you come from?' She had a calm and matter of fact tone to her voice.
'I came from there' I said. Pointing a shameful finger at Blackum's bender.
'Ahhhhhh,' Said Polly 'You'd better come with me.'

Polly's bender stood just beside the main fire, it was a small round dome with just enough room for a single mattress, a chest and a wood burner. The sides of her bender were tied up on the frame leaving a gap of about a foot around the base, 'To let it breathe' She pointed out when she saw me staring. 'A home needs to breathe.' Polly sat on the bed with me and looked intently in my eyes, 'How's Gypsy?'
'Oh fuck!' I held my head at the insanity of it all 'She's fucking crazy. She thinks she's a wolf you know.' I laughed at the memory of last night.
'That's right.' Said Polly quietly, 'Her, me, you. All wolves. Does that bother you?'
There was something in that sentence. Something that happened when Polly spoke those words. It all became glassy clear. Gypsy was speaking the truth, I had always felt different and now I knew why. I was different.
'What of Blackum?' Asked Polly 'It's not like him to fuck around on his woman.'
'Maybe I made him.' I answered. Looking at her with a streak of defiance in my eyes.
'Maybe,' said Polly smiling 'Maybe you didn't.' She threw me a package wrapped in brown paper, 'You can cook the sausages.'
'But I don't eat meat Polly.'
'Yes you do.' She said.

The meat and bread sat heavy in my guts after so long without. I felt like I was evolving completely, nothing about me felt the same as yesterday. Chillums smoked with Polly and Old John after the food pushed me up so high I was carried by Angels to bed. There was whispering. Someone mentioned the words 'white death' and wiped the sick from my mouth and clothes. I was so out of it that I had no clue where I was laying. Guilt was the first thing that came back to me. Guilt as I remembered the flatness in Blackum's muddy eyes that morning. I had never felt such regret for someone else before. They must all hate me now. I was sure of that. I was the girl that came to this site, to these homes and prayed on their men like a desperate Lolita.

I even felt sorry for Ian.

I was in a terrible state by the time Andy returned to me.
He listened to my fears and embraced me 'You're just paranoid. It's the drugs talking. Just calm down and I'll get you something to help.' He lit me a cigarette and placed it in my quivering mouth. I realised for the first time that I was in Gypsy's bed. I heard her voice over my shoulder but couldn't understand her words. Moments later I felt the roughness of her scarred hand on my forehead.
'I'm going to give you a Valium. Take it and get some more sleep. You'll wake up in a bit and feel much better. Andy will stay with you and make sure that you're ok.'

Soon enough sleep found me. I remember nothing until evening time, when I finally stirred proper from the coma that they gifted me.
'Andy?' I shook him awake.
He stretched the sleep from his bones 'You feeling better girl?'
I gave him the biggest hug then sprung up to my hands and knees and bounced on the mattress beside him.
'I feel great.'
'Hey lie down and check out the new mirror!'
I lay beside Andy and looked up at the canopy of the four poster bed. A huge mirror now hung between the posts.
'Cool! I feel like a queen lying in Gypsy's bed. I wish we could sleep here always. Imagine if this place was ours! I'd never get out of bed.'
'Yes you would.' Giggled Andy 'To make my dinner.'
'We make a very handsome couple. Sort of like Sid & Nancy, don't you think?' I smiled at the Andy in the mirror. 'Did they tell you about Blackum?'
'Blackum told me about Blackum. Don't let it bug you. It's not your sin, it's his.'
'I feel bad though. He didn't want to touch me, it was my fault, I made him.' Andy tilted my face away from the 'him' in the mirror to the 'him' beside me.
'That's not what Blackum says. He thinks you are a beautiful girl. He feels bad that he took advantage of you. Don't ever feel sorry for Blackum, I know that I bloody don't.'
I moved to kiss Andy but he turned his face away.
'Now you and I, we'll be friends for a long time I reckon.' He said. Again we stared at each other in the mirror and I worked a hand under the covers to his warm belly. He pushed my hand away, 'Friends. Not lovers. But good friends.'

My Protector.

'We need drugs!' I shouted. And the Andy in the mirror nodded in agreement.

I just knew it was going to be a good day after all!

Continued...