Welcome to my blog which, like last week's, concerns a short story competition that I will enter at the end of the month. This is the first unread draft of a story I have written over the last two days. It'll take another week until I can make myself read it and make the alterations that will inevitably suggest themselves. This story is just over 4,000 words long.
GETTING OUT AT THE BOTTOM
It’s a shock, I suppose. With hindsight you
can say, yep, I guess I should have seen it coming, and you tell people the
story but you don’t begin it there, you begin when it first went wrong. Was it
yesterday, or last week, a month ago perhaps, or even way back when you first
felt it slip? Did you say anything at the time? Some do, some don’t. I don’t. I
notice the change, the first time a lover looks cross or deceitful, the first
time someone fails to keep an appointment or breaks their word, and I hold my
noticing inside of me in a mental log so when it happens again I can think, ah,
is that a pattern forming, is this person not to be trusted after all, and the
log turns into a ledger. But I don’t say anything, don’t want to rock the boat,
don’t want to think I’m going to have to lose you.
And it’s no big deal. Literally.
…
1967 is a very long time ago. 17
then, 62 now. A lifetime.
I met him in a squat in North London.
I smoked a joint with him. My first. South African grass. He told me he was
going to the Roundhouse in Camden to watch Pink Floyd. On the way there we
dropped some acid. LSD was his thing. I loved the colours, the music and the
sex but I feared for my sanity. Barmi had no such reservations and he revelled
in discordance and darkness. I remember one early morning in the park as sun
rose. We’d been tripping all night and I was high and safe. Never had the
trees, the municipal fountain and the birds, looked so sensuous and beautiful.
It is a moment of life that has always been with me as the knowledge of
perfection. Maybe it was then, when I was at total peace, that I first opened
my log on Barmi because it was at that moment that he broke my reverie by
loudly disclaiming an Egyptian spell he had picked up from Crowley invoking
some dark force that I had no interest in.
For three years Barmi and I lived in
the squat, received grants to go to the LSE and London University respectively,
dealt pot, talked revolution and slept with an extraordinary number of
beautiful young women. What unified us more than anything was love of cannabis
in all its forms. A dope fetish that neither of us grew out of. Red leb, gold
leb, afghani, roccy, nepalese, thai grass. The names on their own turned us on.
We’d sit on sofas in our sittingrooom, with its decaying walls beautified by wall-hangings
from the east, like two potentates in calico, dishing out drugs and wisdom in
equal measure. Setting was everything. Our aim was to get our friends high and
if you got high you became our friend. Always there would be some free smoke on
the table. Try it before you buy it. Some incense burning, some music playing,
relax into it man, feel what you feel, let the mind drift, see the sparkling
colours, let the past go. We’d sit in a circle, ten, fifteen people at a time
sharing the same joint, the same chillum, the same dream of freedom. Revolution
with a smile.
The squat was demolished on decimalization
day in February 1971. By then, the scent of flower power had already faded. For
true believers, like Barmi and me, the die was cast. Turn on, tune in, drop-out. This was all we
wrote on our final exam papers. No marks, no degrees, no interest in the
rewards that society had to offer. What to do? We met Tabitha the topless tarot
reader when we were on mescaline at the Reading festival that summer. Ireland
for you Barmi, she said, and India for Tim.
On the 30th January 1972 I
was initiated by the guru swami maharaj in a small ashram in a village in north
India. Mesmerised, I was there for four years.
On the same date, although I was not
to know this for thirty years, Barmi was on a peace march in Derry when the British
army opened fire and killed 13 people. Barmi wasn’t hurt but he came home
soaked in another man’s splattered blood.
***
We were fifty-two years old when we
next met. In many ways I felt that my life had come and gone. And this was okay
with me except that I was stuck on what to do with myself. Of course I had become
disenchanted with my illuminator but the world is a dream vedantic philosophy
remained my cornerstone and saw me through the vicissitudes and joys of family
life, divorce, periods of moderate financial security and, most latterly,
bankruptcy. Pursued by creditors and an unnecessarily vengeful ex-wife, mostly
genially ignored by my then adult children and unable to find employment or pay
rent in London, I had out of desperation accepted the offer of a small one
roomed flat in Totnes, Devon, a small apparently sleepy town that I thought
would provide rural tranquillity. I’d been there less than a week when to my
astonishment there he was, striding down the High Street for all the world as
if he owned the place.
Same scruffy shoulder-length now grey
hair, same chest-tickling long white gandolfian beard encrusted in yesterday’s
dinner, same gleam in his small piggy eyes. His face, born old, had grown in to
itself, mature enough now to last him until his eighties. As he made his
strutting way down the street he was stopped or hailed every few yards by a
variety of people. Short conversations would take place, maybe a hug. When he
sat down outside a café, I joined him. I knew he wouldn’t recognise the bald
lined man sitting opposite him.
You okay Barmi, I asked. He looked at
me, studied me, couldn’t place me. Wondered if you had any acid, I said. Or
mescaline. Tabitha liked that.
He didn’t get it. Sorry man, he said.
Who are you?
A waitress brought coffee. Before I
could answer two young lads started whispering in Barmi’s ear. He put his left
hand in is decaying sports jacket pocket and then took it out and shook the
hand of one of the lads. Off they went.
I see you haven’t lost your touch, I
said. Just your memory.
Again Barmi consulted his pocket,
this time withdrawing a small lump of black hash. Tim, he said, I insist that
you try this. Let’s go to my place and have a couple of chillums.
****
The first year in Totnes was
difficult for me as I struggled both financially and socially to put myself on an
even keel. I soon realized that Barmi, who had been living in the town for
nearly twenty years, had established himself in the mind of many as some sort
of maverick anarchist magus. He didn’t have followers as such but he did have
an extremely large client base for his dope business and no-one could score
from him without a some point being battered by his views which he could only
seem to express negatively, that is by haranguing others for their weaknesses
of spirit or thought. As he was mostly good natured and retained the charisma
from our youth, his customers would buy into the idea that he personified and
represented the purity of the hippy traditions of love, peace, equality and
illegal dope smoking.
From what he told me, I gathered
Barmi’s lifestyle hadn’t changed much over the years. I’ve never done a proper
job and never paid a penny rent, he told me proudly when we first went back to his
flat which, I subsequently realized, belonged to his latest girlfriend. It seemed
to me that throughout his life this pattern had been repeated. He’d meet a
woman, charm her, then move into her home and squat there like a giant cuckoo, until
either the female found the strength to eject him or, more likely, having
squashed his hostess into numbness he moves on to find something or someone
more exciting. Like me he had four children, unlike me he had no idea what ages
they were, where they lived or what their qualities were.
For all his fecklessness in
relationship, Barmi remained loyal to the goddess that was marijuana and to the
male friends whose intelligence he thought might be equal or superior to his
own. Many of his friends, men and women, were stimulating people to get to know
and I was grateful for this. Through his dope dealing, Barmi also knew
countless other people and for many of these he was the only person that would
deal with them for they were the homeless, the broke, the disadvantaged, the
smackies; the riff-raff that no-one wants to see. This was Barmi’s social work
and he excelled at it. You try laying a £10 bag of grass on a smackhead or a
k-freak and then have the patience to wait for your money to come back. Barmi’s
only competition on the street was a local gang of hoodlum crackheads called
the Fosters who recuperated their debts with knives and boots.
Of course, even the most medicated had to
accept his sermon and occasionally be dragged off to wherever Barmi was living
to become educated into the arcane mysteries of the goddess Shakti in the form
of a plant. I must admit I was in sympathy with him on this. The newspapers go
on about skunk and schizophrenia but it’s mostly bollocks. I get riled about
this so I’ll have to try and skip over the arguments. Give these kids a decent
setting to smoke in, let them know you’ll be there for them if they panic, play
them some cosmic music, show them how to breathe, allow them to float away. Job
done.
Oh yeah, get them to lay off the
alcohol.
It was Barmi who suggested that I
bought a kilo of weed. Having found my skills as a sub-editor as redundant as I
had in London, I was further handicapped by the occult decision of a government
department to deprive me of any benefit. After six months of no income, I was
temporarily saved by a £4000 inheritance delivered by the death of an aunt.
That’s the price of a kilo, said Barmi.
Buy it then sell it to me at 140 an ounce; you’ll make a grand.
After much hesitation and
consideration, I agreed. What he hadn’t told me was that he needed me to lay
the weed on him because despite the fact that he had been dealing his entire
life and had no expenses to speak of, he hadn’t a penny to his name. What I had
to do, therefore, was give him five at a time, sometimes more, sometimes less,
and then wait for him to sell it before receiving the money. This could take a
day or three weeks. Often when he wanted more, he hadn’t actually paid for the
previous lot so then debt would swell up to maybe a thousand pounds. Initially
I’d worry but after a while I saw that whenever the debt was getting too high Barmi
would bring it right down to a reasonable amount.
Ten years went by in this way. Barmi
wasn’t to be my only customer because I had to make a living and because the
weed I was selling was so delicious and so strong that it was the connoisseur’s
delight. I don’t know what your opinions about drug dealing are but believe me
for a petty pot seller in Devon the pickings were moderate and far less than
the average wage. Nor were they tax free for as much as a detest the state, I
render under Caesar twenty per cent of the earnings from my ‘gardening’ business.
Barmi and I continued to meet
somewhere in the middle of a philosophic continuum which had him emphasising
social action and me advocating general detachment from the whole whirligig of
individuality and blame. We still shared our hippy values and our love of the
stoned state. The beautiful hash of the old days has gone but now there are the
new Moroccans and the endless varieties of skunk to lyricize over and I’ve
still never smoked a joint or eaten some hash cake and not felt the better for
it.
About six months ago, we had a weed
draught. None to be found – except in my tin for I always keep my personal
ready for the longest shortage. Once upon a time, Barmi and I kind of liked a
fallow period in which both to lie low and to anticipate the next shipment of
goodies. Not once had our purpose of selling pot being to make money; it was
simply about spreading the message and the joy and then buying more hash to drool
over. An ounce of grass forty years ago may have cost £3, now it is near on
£200 or £280 if you buy from Barmi. I
make £15 to £20 an ounce; he makes five or six times that. For both of us rapid
turnover is essential so by the seventh unproductive week we were in trouble.
For the first month your phone rings all the time. When it goes quiet you know
your customers have found another source.
Barmi, who unlike me had run out of
smoke, paced the streets day after day until he found someone who knew someone
who had mentioned someone who was looking to sell a healthy amount of weed. The price we were quoted was unusually low
which was both attractive and worrying. As collecting the stuff would involve a
400 mile round journey with Barmi and two people I didn’t know to visit more
people I didn’t know, I wasn’t keen. On the other hand, I needed the money.
For Barmi, the whole trip was a buzz.
I was driving. The guys in the back seemed cool and we chatted and smoked
amiably. When we got to the other end I was told I couldn’t go in and meet the
sellers. Barmi would go in with my money and one of the guys. Of course I wasn’t
happy. Five and a half grand for a kilo. You don’t want your money disappearing
and you don’t want to buy shit.
Trust me, said Barmi.
I hate it when people say that to me.
On the way home, I was uneasy. The
car stank of skunk. This was both extremely unprofessional and stupid. Barmi
should have checked it was packed decently. He assured me the weed was good,
and dry, but until I saw it I couldn’t be sure. When you’re carrying, the
motorway seems full of police. I kept thinking, fuck, I’m sixty years old, what
am I doing?
In fact the weed was a trifle damp
which meant by time it was properly dry it was 6% lighter. Otherwise it was
fine. A kilo is just over 35 ounces. As a favour and a thank you, I allowed Barmi
four at cost price. Because of the draught I knew other customers would buy
enthusiastically. Three days later, it had all gone.
Barmi, I slowly realized, was furious
when I told him there was none left. But I got it for you, he said plaintively.
I found it for you.
I’m sorry, I said. I sold it cheap
because it was damp. Went quicker than I thought. Look, here’s half an ounce of
my personal. There’s some Northern Lights coming at the end of the week.
Thinking he was pacified, I left in
good spirits but afterwards had a tinge of guilt so I went home and took back
three ounces I had promised to someone else. It then took me the best part of
three hours to find Barmi again. When I did so, he was standing by the
recycling point behind a supermarket. As I parked up beside him I saw the rage
on his face. It was then that I should have known, should have read the signs.
I felt bad, I told him. Got some weed
back for you.
The rage disappeared from Barmi’s
face. I found it for you, he said. I’ve been so angry that I told everyone I
was giving up dealing.
In truth he was pissing me off. He
hadn’t done it for me but for himself and the £500 he had already made from the
arrangement which was as much as I would make. Not to worry, I said with a
smile, I’ve sorted it now.
For Barmi and me the 2011 Occupy
movement and the activities of Anonymous hacking group came as a welcome
surprise. Barmi was ecstatic. He took offence when I described it as the last
hurrah of the hippies but I wasn’t mocking. Even cosmic nihilists want their
children and grandchildren to live in a kinder world. For the first time in
years, Barmi went to London where he camped on the streets, preached to the revolutionaries
at St Pauls and rediscovered his radical activist heart. When back in Totnes he
was up all night, reading and concocting theories about the collapse of
capitalism. Initially I was pleased for him because I felt he needed a change
in his life, needed a real challenge. For a while I had seen he was stuck in himself,
repeating the same day every day, saying the same things to the same people.
Atrophied.
Go to London, I urged him, stay
there.
Too late. Occupy were moved on. Barmi
stayed in Totnes and eased his frustration by shouting at people eating meat at
cafes and donning his Anonymous mask at night to cause petty damage to whatever
he considered to be the property of the one per cent. Personally I considered
this petty, pointless and demeaning, and I found it hard to congratulate. When
he told me he wanted to be arrested so he could explain the Occupy movement to
the local police, I began to realise he was losing all sense of reality and
that I should withdraw my money from him as quickly as possible. Unfortunately this
is easier said than done because you don’t supply these debtors with weed they
can’t earn you the money you owe you.
Then we hit another break in supply. You’ll
have to go up North again, decided Barmi. I told him I wasn’t bothered and felt
I should hang on to my cash for a deal that was already arranged for later in
the week. Straightaway Barmi became agitated. I’ll sell it all before your man
turns up, he promised. Again I demurred, partly because I didn’t fancy the
drive, partly because I wasn’t sure about the weed and partly because I knew damn
well that Barmi wouldn’t be able to shift that much so quickly. This time he
positively flared up. Well I’ll get someone else to do it, he threatened. Cheap
good weed, I don’t see your problem.
It’s damp, I told him.
Mine wasn’t, he said.
Later that day, another customer put
in a large order so Barmi once more got his way although a fortnight later he’d
only bought two ounces off me.
There’s no settled periods in the
dope business. Suppliers and customers alike are random in their appearances.
Up to about a year ago we had a regular supply of the best hash in the world.
Then overnight it stopped. Since then there has been nothing of note, nothing
that I could sell without shame, so when Barmi came round to show me what he
called an amazing bit of Nepalese hash
for half the price it should be, I was quite excited. The blim he showed me was
so tiny there was no way I could evaluate it. We can make a killing on this,
said Barmi. There’s a kilo waiting for us.
Because I have never known Barmi to
get his hash wrong, I consented to his buying a couple of ounces for me. When
it arrived, I judged it to be crap. As did my friends. Barmi acted unconvincingly
bemused. Seemed alright to me, he said.
How many signs did I need?
Two weeks ago, Barmy and his
girlfriend Blossom went to a small festival in Dorset. I must admit that as at
that point he owed me £750, and another friend close on a grand, I was a bit
peeved they were indulging themselves on our money. On the fourth night of the
festival, Barmi returned to Totnes and asked me to take some weed. When I arrived
at his flat he had someone with him I hadn’t met before. This is John, said
Barmi. I’m hoping that you will start selling weed to him. By saying this,
Barmi broke all the conventions of the trade for he must not identify my role
without my permission. Because I was anxious to get some cash off him and
because it was late at night, I hid my fury, ignored his attempts to get me to
be friendly to John and left as quickly as I could after selling him an ounce
and failing to reduce the debt.
Three days after that I met him again
in a café in Totnes. He was clearly wired. I haven’t slept for ten days, he
told me, and I’m in a state of gnosis. To me he looked dreadful and sounded
worse. Although the sun was shining in the café garden I was shivering as Barmi
rambled on about his plan to pay his debts by introducing other customers to me
and then taking a commission from them. Nothing he said made sense to me so I
just sipped my tea, blanked him out and waited for him to buy some weed.
Finally he said it. I want two ounces. Openly he counted out thirteen twenty
pound notes and out them on the table between us. You’re a hundred short, I
said. I can’t let the money go up. Without saying anything, Barmi went into the
café, returning a few minutes later with a further hundred pounds. Only later
did I find out he’d taken it from the till.
Yesterday, Barmi called me up again.
For twelve years the conversation has been the same. He calls, I fix a time.
Yesterday this wouldn’t do. Now, he demanded.
His new friend John was there. As was
Blossom, who looked distraught. I felt nervous and short of breath. No tea was offered. It’s time to implement the plan, said Barmi
portentously. From now on I want you to lay weed on John and Blossom. Charge
them £20 more than you charge me until the debt is paid off. We talked about it
in the café.
No, Barmi, we didn’t, I replied,
trying to be calm but hearing the tremble in my voice. You talked about it. I’m
not interested. I don’t want to deal with anyone else and I don’t want to lay
weed on anyone else. You’re my friend, you owe me the debt, you settle it.
For all the signs and adumbration, I
did not expect the weight of abuse, threat, condescension and intolerance that
I then received. It mystified me. Not only was it entirely contrary to any
hippy value system that we talked about but it simply didn’t make sense. You
make £100 an ounce, I said. Sell seven ounces and we’re clear; what’s the big
deal. And don’t you dare ever threaten me again.
I didn’t threaten you, he said. I was
just saying what would happen if you didn’t do it the way I told you.
Turning to Blossom, I asked, did
Barmi threaten me. She nodded. John wouldn’t look at me. Now, Barmi, do you
want some weed or don’t you.
Taking a wad of cash out of his
pocket, Barmi said, I want three.
Okay, I said. That’s five hundred and
forty pounds.
There’s four hundred here, he said.
I took out two ounces from my bag.
Three, said Barmi.
No, I said.
Jumping to his feet, Barmi kicked out
at the coffee table and began to roar abuse at me. My temper finally snapped and
I yelled back at him, accusing him of shitting on fifty years of hippiedom and
near on twenty years of friendship. During the ensuing row John escaped and
Blossom burst into tears. When Barmi had had enough of shouting at me, he went
off to find John and I tried first to comfort Blossom and then to try and
elicit from her some explanation for what was going on. Her explanation
astounded me. He thinks the Frazer gang are going to beat him up, she said. He
owes them two grand. He told them he’d get you and Phil to buy a kilo of hash
from them without knowing it was them. But neither of you were interested.
But why would he work with them, I
asked. He hates them.
And then suddenly the answer was
obvious. All the signs had been there, the boasted staying awakeness, the
self-absorption, the greed, the megalomania, the rambling garrulousness, the
stupidity, the destruction…
It’s mountain climbing, isn’t it, I
said.
Blossom nodded.
He was going to sell his friends for
cocaine, I asked. Really?
And me, said Blossom, sadly. He’s
leaving town, he says, running away. Afraid of getting his legs broken. Down to
me to pay the bills and pick up the pieces.
As Blossom sobbed, I made myself a
cup of tea, rolled a spliff and contemplated the sudden and inglorious end both
to a friendship and to a business that I clearly couldn’t continue under the
gaze of the noxious Frazers. Later, my own girlfriend, who had been a friend to
Barmi briefly contacted him on his mobile to see if he would give her an honest
explanation for his behaviour. It’s Tim’s fault for trusting me, he said.
Getting out at the bottom, maybe it
is better than not getting out at all.
