Lockdown Day 1: Monday 23^rd March, 2020.

God means to kill us all

“I’m collecting dead people, Trick.”

  Terry grinned eerily across the stark neon room as he said it.
“Strange occupation for a scouser like, you might say, but it don’t mean that I’m robbing graves and selling the body parts.

And don’t look at me like that, I’ve not lost it, the drugs ain’t that bad. I’ve had what seems a lifetime to mull it over lately, as I waste away in this fucking bed in this fucking room in this fucking state-of-the-art Chicago fucking hospital.

I’ve decided it’s the one thing we all have in common like, all God’s scallies – black, white, yellow, red, even dodgy old Scots gyppos like you. The moment we’re slapped into life and start bawling our lungs out we start growing this strange collection from everyone around us, the ones we love and hate, real friends and family, those we leave behind and those who come along for the ride, people we work with, get rat-arsed in bars with or just run into somewhere down the road, be it Mathew or Main Street.

It grows silently around us all the time. All the time.
All the while creating deathly order from life’s chaos filed away in skeletal ranks indexed in god.

Some collect dark cathedral-hosted congregations of the lost and lonely while others feature radiant royalty, kiss-kiss fairy-tale romancing. There’s diversity for you. Some dance wildly around this whole world stage, while others cast rank skid row celebrities in some Channel 4 skanks and manks soap opera. Some get barely started before they’re brutally ended as the young collector is gathered up in an early act. Others build tortuously over lost-love, lonely decades. But we all have our very own collection, vivid, vicarious, violent … the velvet lining to the coffin’s void. It’s all a matter of timing, who you collect and who collects you, because everybody we ever know will end as dirt and dust and ashes. That’s life.”

  He wheezed painfully and hunkered down into the starched bed, hollowing eyes challenging my response before I ever opened my mouth.

  Wired and tired after days in the saddle, as uncomfortable in this kind of situation as at a nana’s birthday party with Alex Harvey belting out Next on the playlist, I drew a dusty breath and checked the mirror, reassuring myself that I still had a reflection. I looked as exhausted from the road as I felt. I was drained, 2,000 miles closer to death and feeling the pull.
Still. Not dead yet.
Black-sky eyes flared. Ebony flames, the phoenix darkfire of the void. I’ve run this resurrection road before. On point, always.

This was too serious for serious. “Shit T, you need to get out more. This place is doing your head in. Sounds like you need to get some happy drugs in the mix. I’ll blag you some Es if you want. Take the edge off. Crack a couple of light sticks, slip some trance on the decks, drop a tab or two of acid.
Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they’re the scenic route. What if I get you mushrooms. Nature’s narc, no risk to the system except pulling a gut muscle from laughing too hard. Nothing to beat the good old fun fungus.”

I responded edgily, revving way too fast, pizzicato bearing point momentarily obscured in those long miles and staccato smiles. I’m not renowned for diplomacy at the best of times, often resented for keen honesty, and on a good day I’ve been a diplomatic incident on more than one continent. This was not shaping up as a good day.

    “Mushrooms Trick? Get fucking real will you. Mushrooms are about as much fucking use to me now as a condom machine in the loos at the Vatican.”

  He was right. I paused to gather my thoughts. “Don’t get me wrong Terry, I know where we’re at here. I’m not missing the point. I just … I just don’t know what to say. I don’t know what you want me to say.

  I do hear what you’re saying and I guess you’re right in a way. This world is hard and fast and sharp. It will cull the unwary. Nothing we can do will ever take that away. Not all the drink and drugs, good times, friends and family in the world. Never play leapfrog with a unicorn, God means to kill us all in the end.
But on the way…  well, hell. What a rock’n’rolling, rollercoasting road we get to ride. A cast of gods and clowns, heroes and supervillains, minstrels and morons. Don’t take this wrong, I know my view has never been – how would you put it …”

  “Normal.”

  “Cheeky bastard. Let’s just say I know the view from my head is not the same as the view from your bed. But you and me, we’ve been lucky. We were born to opportunity that few know and fewer realise. We won the lottery of life before we ever knew we were playing. It’s infinity to 1 we ever existed, a gutshot straight on the river to a full house that you get past adolescence even these days and 99.999% of every human being who ever lived had a worse life than us. Really. Truly. It can be a shithole out there. You’ve seen the worst. You’ve seen what people will do to each other given half a chance or half a dollar. You know how bad it can get. So always and forever it’s our God-given duty to make the most of it all until it’s wrenched bleeding from shattered fingertips that just can’t hang on any longer. No surrender to that dark gentle night.”

  “I know Trick. Bop till you drop as you always say. Bop till you drop.
And by the way, for a man who can’t salsa, did no-one ever tell you you use a hell of a lot of dancing metaphors. But I’ll tell you this, it may not look it, but I’ve seldom felt as alive as I do now. Despite being sicker than a Glasgow plane to Lourdes. Despite the drugs and the pain, despite this fucking catheter and this fucking drip and being wired to more flashing lights than a chavvy Christmas tree in Essex, despite the fact I’ve not left this room for ten days even for a piss and can’t get out this fucking bed, the fierce urgency of now makes me so aware of everything I’ve ever done, all the good times, all the bad times, all the troubles I’ve seen, all the places I’ve been… …

  I just want to get up and dance, pipe some Stevie Ray Vaughan through the tannoy and roll on out the door up to O’Shea’s, dancing with every nurse on the way.

But I won’t. I never will. All I’ve got now are my arse-end memories. So they need to see me through this, the friendships, the fun, the great times that we had, any good that we did. And all those chances I wasted? Every opportunity I threw away, every minute that I could have filled better, the regrets that I’ll take to my grave? Fuck’em. Fuck‘em all. Those ghosts can just dance around my marbled headstone, tear open my sealed casket and try to prise their ticket money back from my cold dead fingers. I did what I did and there’s loads I’d change if I could go back and do it all again. But I can’t. That’s the way of the world. They were my mistakes, my miracles. I’ve accepted that and no way do I go gently, beaten like some whipped mongrel with its tail curled up around its scrawny doggy bollocks. As you once said, ‘I’ll keep slipping the leash and disturbing the peace, hanging loose and escaping the noose, right to the end of the road.’ “

  His chest raised weakly three or four times as he paused to gather breath after this unexpected monologue, staring gauntly into the neon void, a spectral foreplay of things to come.  

  “One thing that has occurred to me while I’ve been lying here – and what kept you, by the way? You took your time to get here like. You rode? All the way from Seattle? Ashland?  What happened? On a no-fly list again? Never mind! I’m sure I don’t want to know.
Who would have thought that you’d outlast last me. Jesus, we’ve had a book on you checking out for the last fifteen years.”

  “Only the good die young, Terry. I’m going to live forever.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you. You’ll still never outlive those clichés you talk in though. You know, to get the kids to sleep one night when she was annoyed at you for some reason or other, Sue once told them a story that you had a Dorian Gray like picture stashed away in a dark musty lock-up, surrounded by dead Harleys and Triumphs and the ghost of Christmas rallies past, propped up against your Bonnie in a pool of 40 weight that had bled from the sump – growing quieter and more sensible by the day.” He chuckled.

“The kids didn’t get it because they think you’re just this funny, silly guy that knows their parents and reappears every so often covered in road dust.

So, the thing is, I never realised how much I was influenced by those unknowing members of my book of the dead. So then I wonder how much I acted on them without appreciating it, just as they moulded me, shaped me in ways I’m only now beginning to grasp and certainly never acknowledged. I never realised how much they meant to me, how much I learned and how much I owe them all. Who am I, if not for them? Bit of a sobering thought.

  So. Talk to me. Humour me here. If you’re back in town just to watch me peg out, we’re going to hit some awkward silences. I have no intention of slipping away quickly. Elvis will not leave the fucking building till the feedback fades, the crowd is silent and the fat lady has choked on the backstage buffet. We’ve known each other too long to have anything much new to talk about whatever you’ve been up to out west these past few months. I’ve rather morbidly reviewed my own collection enough so come on, it’s your turn. A little more conversation, a little less action. No arguing.

Tell me about your Book of the Dead.”