Loneliness feels like being a grain of sand moving along a great beach, or an atomically sized particle floating through the infinite oblivion of space, everything huge, overwhelming and ominous and you small and irrelevant. Inside your head your scream, you scream the scream of a million desperate souls locked away in a dauntingly dank dungeon, but your scream cannot be heard because loneliness is suffered in silence.
When we are born our eyes open for the first time to face the blinding light and we let out a wail of tears at the prospect of leaving the womb. It was so lovingly comforting and easy, biologically connected to a maternal saint making it impossible to be alone. Birth is the beginning of it all, it is the start of never ending human anxiety. My adolescence is where everything changed and my life path jolted one way. I had a great upbringing in a highly middle class area of London, Chelsea. I went to an excellent private school and was bought whatever I wanted.
The problem was I didn’t want what was given to me. I wished to explore the world as I pleased and dip my fingers into pies I had never heard of before. The world seemed limited under my parent’s wings and I wanted to face the full thrilling brunt of it with open welcoming arms. I left home at seventeen after an argument with my father. That evening is still a fresh memory as if it only happened yesterday. I returned from an afternoon class late that day. During this class the opportunity had arisen to talk to the most attractive girl in my year, we were put as a pair for the class activity. We stayed a little time after and just chatted, it was truly amazing for me because I had never spoken to a girl before then; I was a very shy boy. My father was upstairs as usual drinking whisky and reading the Times while my mother cooked for hours in the cellar wooden kitchen. The moment I shut the front door my father’s heavy footsteps could be heard clumsily plodding down the stairs to confront me. He came right up to me his breath stinking of booze and cigarettes.
“What time do you call this, boy?”
“Sorry, I had an evening maths class with Mrs Alesbury,” I told him.
He sighed. “How come we haven’t heard of this evening class?” He asked, eyes narrowing.
“Because the school doesn’t feel the need to tell parents about every bloody thing that happens. God sake dad, why do you talk to me with suspicion all the time?” I exclaimed.
My father burped in his mouth and groaned, he had demons to fight and drink was his issue; it had been all my life. He was a born Scotsman and grew up with a love for bourbon whiskey.The problem was whiskey and family dynamics don't really combine. In my father's case it destroyed every family dynamic that my family ever had. As with most nuclear families I knew it was the mother of issues, suffocating everyone into this modernized house with the mother cooking and the father working. After all this was the 1960's, my parents were strong believers of this type of structure, but it was just that which pushed me to abandon ship. Breaking free from such a system where sex meant marriage was juicy salvation; my parents married at age twenty when my mother got pregnant and have lived together ever since dedicating their lives to the family, oh how depressing that life sounded!
“I wouldn’t have to be if you tell your mother or me where you’re going before disappearin’ without a fucking word!”
“Are you hearing yourself? I was home one hour late and you’re asking questions” I said.
My father laughed. “You always have to be such a difficult child. Why can’t you be more like your brother? He’s younger than you and he’s more responsible, you should be ashamed!”
My mother tried to calm the situation down as it became heated.
“Bill, just leave it. Screaming at him won’t improve his behaviour.”
“It’s like a war zone every time I come home to you and mum. I’m sorry I’m not a golden child, maybe it’s because you drink all the time that I learn bad habits, fucking asshole!” I screamed running up stairs and slamming my door.
"You ungrateful fucking wretch!" My father screamed back.
This was one of many arguments alike, however this was the tipping point. I'm not sure why it happened on the fateful day but something changed within me; I would no longer take any more of my father's drunken nonsense. I left in the night and didn’t look back, the only hesitation was the possibility of never seeing my little brother again.
Living on the streets taught me two things: if you have nothing you are nothing and food is like water of Zion. You learn that you are nothing from the utter disgust by passer-by’s who look at you as a nuisance, asking them anything which isn’t in the form of begging is almost a crime; to them I was a contagious plague on the street. I had sprained my ankle badly one time just by the river and was hopping weakly towards a bench. I clearly needed help but people walked passed me like I wasn’t there, they didn’t even glance in my direction. It was then the realisation dawned on me that I had given up my rights to humanity at my parents door.
I stayed under a bridge in Elephant and Castle ten minutes from the river Thames. For the first year of living rough I made a decision any company was bad company and things would be better on my own. I did a lot of things to keep my mind right in the time of my social deprivation. One thing was learning to play the ukulele. It wasn’t too difficult, certainly not as hard as the actual guitar and music was bliss to my ears during the cold British day and nights. People and animals would pass by my little squat and hear the tinny sound and faint hum of my hibernating trance. The yellow simmering glow of light from the house opposite and the faint rush of water from the mill at the end of the canal added as natural music background to my play which I eventually learned to play in accordance with.
I’m sure the music saved my life. On most mornings I'd wake up and feel incredibly depressed, unsure about why I was still living, after all I had plenty of time to think about such a question. I sometimes planned my suicide and convinced myself it would be done that very day; there were many ways I could have gone but none seemed worth it enough.
On the New Years Eve of 1968 I was, as usual, playing on my ukulele the song, Happy Go Lucky, and having drunk a bottle of whiskey in the space of an hour it had put me in a sombre state, my eyes half closed and my mouth dry as cotton. Suddenly out of the darkness of the night, a woman in her mid-twenties appeared under the bridge. She had long brown hair that sat perfectly over her shoulders and wore a blue jacket and jeans. I couldn’t see her face because of her hood. It seemed as if she was going to pass me by like everyone else but she stopped in her tracks right by me. Squatting down to my level her face could now be seen; she had deep darkened eyes and big lips with a strange crooked smile.
“You’re quite handsome for someone that’s homeless,” she said in a clear high pitched voice.
I abruptly stopped playing the ukulele and looked up at her again, shocked and lost for words at the complimentary recognition of my existence. She laughed at my facial expression.
“Well I was expecting you to say something. What’s your name?” She asked.
“L- Louis,” I stuttered.
“I’m Tiffany.”
She held out her hand and shook firmly.
“I heard you playing from all the way down the street and thought it was truly brilliant,” she said, beaming as her crooked smile turned into a crooked grin.
“Thank you, miss.”
“Oh and very well spoken too. Call me Tiffany, please,” she insisted.
“Look, I own a pub two blocks from here and musicians come to play on Fridays and Saturdays on the little stage in the corner. What I’m saying is I’d love to book you in for a slot. You’ll get pay and food.”
I was confused. Such random generosity from a stranger seemed too good to be true.
“I’m not sure, why me?” I asked.
She laughed again. “Why not you? You play and sing really well, you seem like you need the money and you’re clearly not like some of the other bums I see on these streets, you have talent!”
This was true. I looked like a regular teenager if not for my scraggy coat and ripped up jeans. I regularly took showers in the public utility centre in Belsize Park, and the lack of narcotic intake also helped my image against the common hobo’s.
“Okay, I’ve never done something like that before. Where is it?”
“It’s on Old Street main square called, the Red Buffalo. You’ll see it clearly when you arrive in the area,” she explained.
“Don’t worry about that, just come early. At least see what I have to offer."
And so it was that I planned to play at Tiffany’s pub in a week. I had no idea what it was going to be like playing in front of an audience for the first time, nevertheless what was expected of me. The sleep that preceded her was terrible. I awoke unable to move any of my muscles. I imagined a bloodthirsty demon sitting on my stomach looming over me, salivating over my tasty soul and there was nothing I could do about it, helpless and hopeless at the clutches of this monster. I managed to escape the paralysis after an hour of trying to move every and any muscle in my body, but it didn't take me long to realise I was still dreaming; the walls around me moved in zero gravity and a distant woman sang 'hallelujah' sweetly to a harp. On the other side of the bridge a dark figure lurked. It moved with the breeze and perfectly whistled to the harp.
"Such a shame," the figure hissed.
"Hello? Who's there?" I yelled, terrified of the unidentified stranger.
The figure didn't seem right. It had a strange aura, something about it was inhuman; supernatural even. The edges around it glowed a deep blue and the hiss sounded as if there was a number of voices talking simultaneously.
"How can you not know?" The figure demanded in an incredulous tone, and then rushing across the river to where I was lying down.
The figure lost its blue glow and its bodily details came into view. He had grown a large scraggy beard, while his thin brown hair had large bald patches dotted across the scalp, and he gained several ugly scars across his face. To my utter disbelief, so much that it questioned my own sanity, it was my own tainted reflection that stood there in front of me.
"Pathetic tramp. How long have you been hiding for? You've abandoned your post," it said.
I couldn't muster even a sound from my mouth, what I was witnessing prevented me thinking rationally to come up with a sentence that made sense. The only reaction that I managed was a confused gawp.
"Get it right, you fool! And start walking upstairs instead of down," It screamed with a piecing shrill.
I sat up with a loud gasp noticing that I had urinated on myself, and was sweating profusely that had drenched my already dirty shirt. My reflection had disappeared, a nightmarish wisp drawn away by my knight in shining armour, good ol' consciousness. The only sound now was from my heavy breathing and pounding heart. It was a frightful nightmare and it kept me up for the rest of the night until day broke and the sun appeared with an orange glow on the horizon.