Bladesey’s voice is a high, incessant squeal through drink. – How can you be a racist and like Motown? he’s whining, – I mean, how can you be a racist and like Marvin Gaye?
– Marvin Gaye was not a black man.
– How can you say that?
– He wasn’t a black man to me. The cunt that shot him, that was a black man. That was a fuckin nigger.
– But that was his father!
– Yes. A black man.
I can’t feel anything, there’s no sense of me standing up and moving over to him, but I have some sense of grabbing Bladesey round the neck and him shouting: – What are you doing Bruce? It’s me! It’s me!
But I know it’s him and I want to choke the living shite out of the cunt, just turn off his gas for good cause I detest the bastard and he’s just one of the cunts who’s got it in for me.
Can’t fuckin save them
The boy up the Bridges
You can kill them casually
why can’t you fuckin well save them so casually
stop them
stop him
The walls are reverberating and it’s out of my hands . . . his neck . . .
How did it make you feel?
He’s still on the bed as I leave, rubbing his scrawny pigeon-neck, gasping for air.
I don’t believe I attacked Bladesey. My mate. My travelling companion. Brother Blades. A stalwart in the craft. A brother.
I’m down the narrow stairs, staggering past the pouting blond guy on the reception. In the street, a ragged junkie hoor smiles at me from under a streetlamp, a remnant of a t-shirt Amsterdam which seldom resembles the more sanitised and regulated real life. I get into a bar and order a Heineken. I’m thinking of Bladesey, that sad little cunt who needs very little and who can’t understand what a grievous rage his attitude and manner induces in the rest of us for whom everything in the world could never, ever, be anything like enough.
My chest throbs as I sit on the barstool. My hands are tingling and voices are ringing in my ear, speaking a language I can’t understand, but there’s no mistaking their murderous intent.
Bladesey. I’ve got to get back to Bladesey.
Bladesey.
The longer our friendship has developed, the more the destruction and humiliation of this sad little creature has grown to obsess me. He needs to be confronted with what he really is, he has to feel, see and acknowledge his inadequacy as a member of the human species, then he has to do the honourable thing and renounce that membership. And I will help him.
First I have to drink off those fuckin hippy drugs.
Goals
– You were in some fuckin state last night Brother Blades, I tell a furtive, shaking Bladesey at breakfast. He looks terrible, there are bruises on the side of his face and on his neck.
– I . . . I . . . can’t remember . . . I woke up feeling . . . he hesitates.
– I remember alright, I say wryly. – I came back to the hotel blissed out on this hippy dope and you came back three sheets after spending the day on the piss with these London guys. Anyway, you insisted on going out. . .
I look at his bemused face.
– . . . Do you remember Hunter’s Bar? I ask.
– No . . . I don’t actually . . .
– We got into a ruck with these German cunts. Then when we got back to the hotel you fuckin well went for me!
– God . . . I don’t remember . . . I’m terribly sorry Bruce . . . I was so drunk I . . .
I raise my brows and lower my eyes disapprovingly. – Fuckin well should be, I tell him.
I look at his wretched, uncomprehending expression and leave the cunt in his misery. I play at being in the huff and swan off to get a paper.
One of the brilliant things about Amsterdam is that you can get the Sun at the same time as you would in Britain, if you go up to Centraal Station. I bought a copy of the Sun for the football pull-out ‘Goals’. It’s a habit. Football is a habit. I think it’s a sex substitute for most men, admittedly not as blatant as rugby, because the guys actually fuck each other up their holes in rugby clubs. But that’s more to do with social class, because they’re rich pricks who went to all-boys schools. But football’s like that as well. When you think about it, most guys get into football when they’re too young to get their hole. When you go to the fitba you can always tell which of your mates has a bad or non-existent sex life. They always seem just that bit too much into the game. I’m sounding like fuckin Bladesey actually, with all this actual psychological analysis, actually. That wee cunt has to wait for his poxy Independent or Guardian or whatever commie shite he reads. I always buy the Sun on Monday back at the work to have a wank to page three and read ‘Goals’. Simple pleasures. Not that I really give that much of an Aylesbury right now. Out here I’ve been far too preoccupied with the Roger Mooring to be bothered about the fitba.
Anyway, I hit a bar to mull over the results and tables and I’m astonished to note that Tom Stronach’s got on the scoresheet in a two-one win at East End Park, which lifts us into third spot in the table, ahead of the fenian scum. Kiss Europe goodbye Leith motherfuckers. It’s there in black and white, Stronach (74). At the next table, these scousers have got the Mirror out. I’ve never been partial to scousers; those cunts ooze criminality. The Irish influence, no doubt. Same rules.
– Don’t know how you can read that shite, one of them says to me.
– Easy, I smile at him.
– Nobody who’s alright on Merseyside reads the Sun, the nosey scouse git continues in his preachy manner, – Not after Hillsborough, not after Souness, not after Bulger . . .
I feel an uncontrollable urge to laugh in his face. – You know something about scousers? I’ll tell you something about scousers, I snort.
– You don’t have to tell us anything about scousers mate, we’re from Liverpool, he pulls himself up to his full height.
– I noticed that alright, I bellow in a jocular way, pointing straight at him. – Scousers are a bunch of fucking sad drama queens. It’s like the whole fucking cess-pit of a city is auditioning for Brookside. Cannae be denied.
– You’re fucking out of order there mate, the big guy says, looking harshly at me.
– C’mon lads, says his mate, trying to calm him down.
– Cannot be denied. Same rules, I shrug cheerfully.
– C’mon Derm, don’t get involved, his pal’s saying. – C’mon mate, you’re a Jock, we’re from Liverpool, we’re just the friggin same for fuck sake. He tugs at his t-shirt, a red one, which has a quote from Bill Shankly on the front of it.
– No, we’re not the same. I’m not the same as you, I shake my head.
– We’re having a crack here, a drink . . . fuckin hell . . . the guy says. – You can read which paper you want mate, we’re only pulling your fucking leg, he tells me. He’s very upset which is good, because he should be upset coming from a shithouse like that. But he shouldnae be upset at me. The wanker should learn not to shoot the messenger, he who reminds one of bad tidings.
– Listen, you’ve obviously been thieving or fiddling the dole to be able to afford to come across here. That’s the way it is with you people. Same rules apply. I’m telling you what I think, I say. – I bring bad tidings.
– We don’t wanna know what you think!
Nearly Christmas. Santa Robertson. Yo ho ho ho ho! Bad tidings!
– Lerim speak.
– All I was saying is that when something bad happens in Liverpool, youse cunts go fucking do-lally. You take it as an excuse to parade banners at the football . . . illsburgh . . . i-sell . . . I put on an imitation gasping scouse nasal bleat. – Why can’t you just sit in the fuckin hoose and mourn quietly, why do you have to turn everything into a tasteless audition for Brookside, to show who can be the most fucked up by tragedy?