People readily pigeon-hole this wild and ragged ’geezer’ when passing by; my unkempt locks, the tinge of sun-bed burnish, attire of the Street laced with chain after chain of gold. Stereotype: middle-aged wheeler-dealer. Am I ’middle-aged’ ? - yes, if that means of a certain age. Am I the ‘man of the street’ that my appearance might suggest? - well, I am quite often involved with what could certainly be labelled ’dodgy dealings’! ( I’ve got bills to pay just like everyone else! ). But don’t go labelling me - there’s plenty more to me than that. Don’t go getting all superior on me either; I might not have your formal education, but don’t let that fool you - I know plenty. Bet I’ve read more poetry than you, more philosophy than you. Bet I know a whole lot more about what’s going on in the world. Also, I’d put money on doing a whole lot more thinking than you. Do you think about much? To any great length or depth? Or are you just like the majority of morons out there, engrossed in the latest features of your mobile phone, addicted to the mindless pap of soap operas, enthralled by celebrity? Do you like ’food for thought’ or would you rather just keep your brain ticking over on the fast food of the world? Don’t get me wrong; if the facile stuff’s what lights your candle, you go for it, just don’t go lumping me in the same category. All that’s not for me. I like the finer things, so to speak. Give me Foucault over Friends any day. The quantitative loses out to the qualitative every time in my book, but like I said ’each to their own’.
I meet a lot of supposedly educated, apparently intelligent people in my line of work, and it never ceases to amaze me that if you take just a few seconds to look through their shiny polished Standard English Received Pronunciation façade, you can see just how bloody inept they truly are! It makes me smile to myself; there they are, the young hot-shots in City Boys’ clobber, talking the talk, trying to be the big ’I am’, and really they’re just big kids let loose in the world without a fucking clue, playing at being grown-ups. So eaten up by the thought of next month’s bonus cheque and the flash fanny-magnet sports car they’re going to buy with it, that they never quite get round to anything ’real’. Not that I mind; while they’re making all that money and wanting to live the hedonistic life, I’m in business! They pay nearly twice the going rate, no questions, and that suits me just fine. I felt a bit guilty about it in the beginning, but it’s better they buy from me and get something half decent, not too cut, not too dangerous, and if that costs a bit more, so be it. Yeah, my conscience is fairly easy to appease in that department…
Did I mention I’m a dad? He’s a good lad, my Jamie. I take care of him and he takes care of me, mainly the latter; we’re a pretty tight-knit little unit! He’s 25 now, which makes me feel ancient. Still lives at home; says he needs to keep an eye on me. Says he worries about me, though I tell him not to be so bloody stupid - he’s got to get on with his own life, not be held back by his ol’ dad. There’ve been some bad times, some low times, times when he was right to be concerned, but these days I’m pretty good, on the level, sorted pukka. I’m very proud of him. And of myself I suppose; I’ve not done a bad job with him, all things considered; he’s got a good head on his shoulders, and he’s got a good heart. Since his mother didn’t have either of those qualities, he must have got them at least partly from me, I reckon! Jamie’s sensible though, responsible, and neither of us can take credit for that; I’ve never been grounded enough to be anything other than a bit of a tearaway, and Fay was always just an OTT bundle of fucked-up-edness…harsh, but true. All things considered, Jamie’s an absolute credit, a work of art.
I guess my life’s what you’d call unconventional. I deal, I read, I think, I keep myself pretty much to myself. Suppose my life’s always been alternative, one way or another. It‘s been one hell of a learning curve, that‘s for sure. Granted, it might have been nice to have had a slightly more ’normal’ upbringing; if my mother and father hadn’t gone AWOL, if they’d actually given a damn, maybe my highs and lows wouldn’t have been quite so extreme, but who knows? Maybe a bit more stability in the early years would’ve been the making of me, but then again maybe it’d have turned me into one of the brain-dead automatons that I hate so much. Perhaps the path that led me to where I am today had to be just so, cause and effect. Anyway, regardless, you can’t turn the clock back, can you? No point wondering how I would’ve turned out if thing’s had been different. They were as they were and I am as I am.
The question that goes through my mind a lot, the big question, is, ’Am I happy?’. I’m certainly contented, but ’happy’ is a whole separate continent. I mean, are you happy? Really happy? And, anyway, what exactly is ’happy’? It’s one of those oh-so-elusive states, maybe a fiction, an unachievable goal in life, the carrot on the end of the stick that keeps us plodding away. Actually, scrap that; the question should be ’Is it possible to be happy in a non mind-altered way?’ What I mean is, I’m sure I’ve been happy when pissed, happy when stoned, but sober happy, beyond the momentary, just hasn’t happened. Think about it, really think about it, and tell me I’m wrong! You can look at beauty and find it pleasing, you can do a good job and feel satisfied, but happy is different. I swear, if you asked everybody, and I mean absolutely everybody, what it was they wanted from life, most, me included, would say ‘to be happy’. Yet, ask any one of us to define ‘happy’, to actually pin it down, its essence, and I bet no-one could do it. How the hell can we all be chasing the indefinable? Ridiculous. Not to mention depressing! Mice in wheels, that’s all we are. Round and round we go. Round and round…