Into this world we’re thrown
Marcus Ignatius Friend was ‘Jim Morrison’ in a Doors tribute band called Pillion Passengers on the Storm. As career moves go, it panged of desperation. But I guess when you’re a forty five year old loser and you’ve written as many original duds as Marcus Friend apparently had, digging up the songbook of a long dead legend was about all you had left. According to Gabriel ‘Too much information’ Hogg, the closest Marcus Friend had ever come to an actual release was with an angst-ridden ballad called, not surprisingly, Gabriel. I was once blessed with an emailed attachment of this drivelling sobfest, which took fifty minutes to download on a painfully slow 56K modem and three minutes to play. To be frank, the download was less torturous. Not only did he sound like Leonard Cohen gurgling gravel, the whole thing was a drunken, incoherent rant about moons and lonely nights and I think at one point he might have warbled ‘I’m going to top myself’, which, to take Jim Morrison’s example, might have been a good career move.
The four members of Pillion Passengers on the Storm were all on the wrong side of forty and had been knocking about the seedier side of London’s live venues for six months, slowly building a loyal following of equally backward-looking fans and a growing contingent of spotty youths experiencing the Doors back catalogue for the first time. As such, they had a steady flow of gigs that kept them in bourbon and Viagra. And, much though I hate to admit it, baring in mind most drunken uncles can do a decent Karaoke version of Hello, I love you, they weren’t that bad.
We arrived towards the end of the set, by which time Pillion Passengers on the Storm were tidying up the loose ends of Break on through to the other side before a small but appreciative crowd that got slightly smaller and less appreciative with Gabriel’s arrival. I was determined to be scathing. I simply did not see how coming face to face with the man who had deflowered my fiancé could possibly enhance our relationship. Oh, and the blackmail thing. There was that too.
I didn’t know what I’d expected Marcus Friend to look like. Despite the proliferation of forwarded emails from this supposedly close mate of hers, Gabriel had been suspiciously reluctant to provide any visual reference. So I was forced to concoct an image based on what I knew of forty five year old men who preyed on sixteen year old girls. And all I had was drunken uncles singing Hello, I love you.
I hated this image. Found myself almost resenting Gabriel for it. I wanted, no, needed Marcus Friend, for all his advanced years, to be of a certain aesthetic calibre. I needed to see evidence of some sort of minimum standard in Gabriel’s screening process, because ultimately that screening process reflected on me. I needed to see how such a young, beautiful girl could fall for such an old man. Basically, I needed Marcus Friend to look like Mel Gibson.
He didn’t.
Let me put it this way: Jim Morrison died under mysterious circumstances in a Paris bathtub on July 3rd, 1971, apparently of a heart attack. The only person known to have seen his body – aside from the doctor who scrawled an illegible death certificate and promptly disappeared – was one Pamela Courson, his long standing, long suffering squeeze who committed suicide a few years later. The funeral was a closed coffin affair leading to much speculation as to whether it was actually Jim Morrison in the coffin or just a pile of rocks. It was suggested that he had done exactly what he said he would do – fake his own death and bugger off to live with some remote tribe in Africa.
My belief is that Jim Morrison is dead. One, because he hasn’t been busted for any public indecency since. Two, because I don’t care, I never liked his music anyway. All I know is this: Whatever Pamela Courson saw in that Paris bathtub was probably a wet, blue and bloated shadow of Jim Morrison’s former self. What I saw before me on the stage of Fiddlers was also a wet, blue and bloated shadow of Jim Morrison’s former self.
Granted the wet was now late gig sweat that plastered biker length black hair to his fat face like the tentacles of a dozen torched squid. Granted the blue was mascara that ran from his eyelids like ink from those same squid. But as for the bloat. The lean, mean figure of Jim Morrison would have had to baste in Badedas for a good two days to reach Marcus Friend proportions.
I was horrified, not to mention immensely disappointed. Despite the note perfect vocals he spat into a microphone on the receiving end of considerable spittle, all I could see was a middle-aged, black-clad, drunk, sweaty biker prowling the stage like a camp Ozzie Osborne.
Yes, he was camp as well. Blatantly camp. Julian Clarey camp.
I had no idea how to deal with this other than to glare at Gabriel who was currently buying me a Stella. Fact: the middle-aged biker boy poncing his way through Light my fire with full tea pots, half tea pots and mincing cat walks was my fiancé’s ex-boyfriend. Judging by the way she was singing along, she was the only one in our relationship remotely proud of this.
Then he spotted her. The girl in his dodgy video. Moments after that he spotted me. I could only assume he’d seen photos as I was giving him no visual reference linking me to Gabriel – I wasn’t touching her or talking to her. Nothing, I was just leaning on the bar five feet behind her. Yet, he spotted me. And did the strangest thing. He didn’t spit at me, burst into tears, or worse, knowing the maniac we were dealing with, rush down and strangle me. He closed his eyes and bowed. A slow, flourishing bow like a Knight of the Realm being presented to the Queen. I didn’t know how to deal with this in any appropriately British way. I didn’t know how to deal with it at all. So I did something equally strange: I toasted him with my Stella.
I toasted the man who had orchestrated a campaign of terror against my fiancé’s family; the man who was now blackmailing that fiancé; the man who had committed such lurid videotaped indecencies on that fiancé, they had to be erased. I toasted this man with my Stella. Loathe as I am to admit it, I couldn’t do anything else. Because Marcus Friend – whipping his mane of wet hair back off his face with a macho-feminine flourish, biker tattoos on forearms and neck, biker black clothes and cockily camp stage presence – was strangely, engagingly charismatic. I saw something in his devil-may-care attitude.
I saw me as I wished I was.
Pillion Passengers on the Storm completed their set, rather predictably, with Riders on the Storm, the last song the Doors ever recorded. Weeks later, Jim Morrison ran himself a bath. Had I been judging Stars in your Eyes, I would have given them an eight. Marcus Friend was ‘Jim Morrison’, albeit reincarnated after a long soak and too much heavenly exposure to Peter Allen. As for the rest of the band, they had merely been competent, largely anonymous session musicians. And, as they spilled off the stage and headed for the bar, I suspected a session was exactly what they now had in mind.
Marcus Friend left the stage last, stopping to assault his face and hair rather vigorously with a white towel, collect a half full bottle of Fosters and chat to a young female fan who held his hand and gushed into his ear like he was Bono. I doubted Marcus Friend’s cabinet was bare. To young drunk girls, even riders of other people’s storms were entirely fuckable.
Then he was headed our way. I’d expected him to mince. He didn’t.
‘Hello, my dear. Long time no see,’ he said taking Gabriel’s hand and kissing it. She let him. He turned to me. ‘And you must be Bradley.’
‘Bailey,’ I said with a smirk. It was an obvious attempt at belittlement.
We shook, slow but hard. His hand was soaked in sweat and I think he enjoyed this by the way he prolonged the gesture. ‘I’m dreadfully sorry. Bailey. How nice to finally meet you. Gabby has been highly complimentary. You’re…prettier than you look in your photos.’ He stared at my face and made a gesture round his own chin. ‘I love all this. Takes me back to when I started shaving. Come on. Let’s go somewhere we can talk.’
***
‘We’re only called terrorists,’ said Marcus Friend, ‘because terrorist is now the buzz word and it’s easier to lump anyone fighting for a cause in together. Terrorism fights for the right to believe in some adult version of Santa. Animal activism fights for the rights of living things. Kiddies believe in Santa because adults tell them Santa exists. Adults believe in God because adults tell them God exists. Now I don’t wish to start some sort of conspiracy theory, but adults have been lying to kiddies for generations.’
‘You do so want to start a conspiracy theory,’ said Gabriel.
‘All right, my dear. I do.’
The scene: A cramped, windowless, near empty basement bar somewhere in the West End. All I know is we cut down countless side streets and back alleys to get to it. I was just as pleased – we were hidden away from the world and best the world didn’t see us associating with a ranting Marcus Friend.
‘One is inclined to believe the world is now officially mad,’ he continued. ‘A troublesome dog is destroyed. Not killed, destroyed. We kill animals. We kill people. Why do we destroy troublesome dogs? The only thing we ever destroy is monsters, is it not? It goes back to childhood. Yet mass murderers are still executed.
‘The lowly beasts, dear people. There to give us mere factory workers in God&co something to feel superior to. To give us pause when the collection tray demands remarbling of the west wing. To keep us pandering obediently to the machine just in case God or Allah has us pencilled in for the next life as a lowly beast or, worse, a troublesome dog. Yet what is God? What is Allah? They are manmade fictions created to keep the masses in check through a ritualised form of self-policing. To suppress us and make us conform or send us into brainwashed battle as the case may be. The Old Testament. Not just a long winded homage to God as we once thought, but a blatant act of state formation written by the Kingdom Of Judea’s very own Taliban to smother resistance from the Kingdom of Samaria on what we now know as the West Bank. Not the birth of Christianity. No. The death of individuality. That, my friends, is a fact.
‘As for the New Testament…well, little more than a loosely linked compilation of daft fairy tales really. Santa rides in on a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer. How is that a sillier concept than a carpenter who walks on water? Man has walked on the moon (apparently), split atoms, cloned sheep and transplanted hearts. Yet I see no one running from their local GP crying ‘I was blind and now I can see!’ To this day wine is still made from grapes and our supermarkets still have disabled car parks. If Jesus was honest to God standing around in a sea of discarded crutches, dark glasses and redundant Labradors, he might have at least had the decency to pass on a few tips. No. He was a fucking carpenter! Name me one Christian who isn’t still bewildered by anything from IKEA.’
‘You’re very dark on religion,’ I said, in no mind to share my own scarily similar, some would say twisted, perspectives.
‘I am dark on religion for a host of reasons. I am an unwilling party to the Battle of the Gods. But mostly because religion began the whole concept of animals being inferior to humans and that’s still with us. The bible, the Koran and whatever other diabolical manuals these followers of dangerous fantasies subscribe to instilled in us the concept of ritual sacrifice where animals are routinely hauled out before the screaming masses, frightened out of their tiny skulls, tortured, then slaughtered. And all they did was be an animal.’
‘As for justifying our actions, well, terrorists strap explosives to themselves and murder innocent people in the name of something they can’t even prove exists. Animals exist, dear people. They’re flesh and blood. They’re not something. They’re someone! Male, female. Boy, girl. They’ve just as much right to be here as you and I and that’s why they’re worth fighting for. Now these fundamentalist cunts are fighting what they like to call A Holy War and they keep leaving the e out of holey! At least our acts of random civil obedience can be pinned to something tangible. I make no apologies. I am compelled to act. To fight. I can not lie in my nice cosy bed knowing animals are suffering and be fine with that.’ He prodded his temple. ‘They’re in there all the time. The images. The misery. It never goes away. It messes with your mind, torments you constantly. The only way to get any peace is to fight. I have to fight. It is my destiny, dear people.’
I had sat through this tirade with my elbow on the arm of my chair, my fist rammed into my chin, face set in my most dismissive, disdainful look. I was trying to imagine Marcus Friend with Gabriel. Oddly, I could. His hair was now dry – albeit dry sweat – and cascading quite gracefully down his shoulders like crude oil, thick and gushing from a bore atop his head. The ludicrous blue mascara and most of the lipstick were now merely traces. And yes, much to my relief, I could now fit Marcus Friend in above minimum standard. He was oddly, strangely compelling.
Much of this I put down to the voice – a voice made for car commercials and I can pay it no higher compliment than that. And while the man behind the voice veered wildly from the insane to the merely caustic, he veered so articulately and resonantly, the insane and the caustic were coated in great dollops of double cream.
All of a sudden, I felt entirely at odds with my own voice. For while I was assessing him, he was undoubtedly assessing me and my status as the man Gabriel intended to marry. And while our primary objective here was to seek some sort of resolution from a patently, resolutely, oblivi-ously, defiantly demented man, there were other agendas to address as well.
Unspoken male agendas. And I had to address all mine in a slightly alcohol-numbed New Zealand accent.
I embarked on this quest by sounding patently, resolutely, obliviously thick: ‘I’m sorry, Marcus. I didn’t listen to a word of that.’
His lips curled into a pursed smile. ‘Would you like me to repeat it in Australian?’
‘I’m a kiwi.’
‘Oh. I do apologise.’ He teepeed his fingers. ‘I’ve been to New Zealand, you know. Yes, an aeroplane I was on refuelled there once. It looked very quaint and I wish we’d had the chance to pop out and pat a sheep.’
I sighed. ‘Whatever. I think it’s time we got down to brass tacks.’
‘Down to what?’ He looked across at Gabriel who looked wide-eyed across at me.
‘Down to business,’ I said.
‘Oh, right!’ He sat forward rubbing his hands expectantly. ‘And what business would that be? Timeshare? Insurance? Smack?’ He smiled at Gabriel. ‘Cheese graters?’
‘How many copies of this video have you got?’ I asked.
‘I think the correct term is DVD. Answer: ten. Including the copy in a bubble bag addressed to the London CIB, eleven.’
Suddenly accents didn’t matter.
‘You sad bastard. Why are you doing this? What the hell possesses you to ruin people’s lives like this?’
He sat back, crossed his legs and stared into space. ‘What possesses me? We’re pigeonholing me with Linda Blair. That’s interesting. I’d never thought of it as possession before. Perhaps it is. Perhaps if one sees enough animal cruelty, be it first hand or via the endless stream of footage I am obliged to watch, one does become possessed.’ His lipstick-stained lips curled into a sardonic grin. ‘Owned by the animals.’
‘You’re obviously aware of my own beliefs.’
‘I am. And all credit to you. I don’t normally do chickens.’
He smirked and I laughed despite myself. ‘So this was totally about Gabriel and me?’
He flagged a waiter. ‘Not totally, no. Just mostly. A little archive video footage certainly helped sway the decision and gave us the luxury of blackmail. And, of course, factory farming is factory farming no matter how unappealing the victims. Fortunately I knew some people who did do chickens.’
The waiter arrived and we ordered another round of drinks.
‘Are you in charge?’ I asked after he was out of ear shot.
He chuckled. ‘I suppose I must be! In charge isn’t an expression I normally associate with myself. But, in the sense you mean it.’ Another chuckle. ‘Yes, I guess I am.’
‘So you organised the letters, sent them out—’
‘I wrote the letter. One has underlings to delegate such menial tasks as photocopying and posting.’
‘How many of you are there?’
Another chuckle as he looked to the ceiling and mouthed the count - one, two. ‘About three,' he said emphatically with a disconcertingly crazed grin. 'There used to be four of me but Gabriel saw off the happy one about five years ago.’
‘I meant—’
‘I know what you meant,' he said sitting abrupty forward and lighting a cigarette. 'And I can’t honestly say. We have so many fanatical little vegans running around the countryside at any given moment. There’s a cell of sorts, a hard core pool of what I like to call malleable maniacs who do all the research and reconnaissance, all that boring, behind the scenes fiddle that can go on for months and needs to go on for months if you intend to stay out of prison. You don’t just send a lunatic arsonist in to burn down a pub on a whim, you know.’
‘But you chose the targets,’ I said.
‘Gabriel helped immensely with her most informative and chatty emails.' He grinned and rolled his tongue around in his mouth unattractively. 'How did the barbecue go by the way? Quiet a brave undertaking in the depths of winter.’
‘Fine,’ I said flatly. ‘The graffiti?’
‘The which?’
‘The writing on our landlord’s barn.’
‘Ah, yes. That.’ He winced. ‘A spite too far, I’m afraid. May I say in my defence, that I was very drunk at the time. Somehow my bedraggled brain convinced me we weren’t going far enough to put you squarely in the frame. Hence my somewhat ill-concieved piece of personalised activism. Again, in my defence, I made the call at three in the morning. It was done by the time I was sober enough to regret it. Of course, it doesn’t actually change anything. We still have our cosy little stalemate.’
I felt like punching him, I really felt like punching him. But I'd never actually punched someone before and I had delicate wrists. ‘How do you expect this to work, Marcus?’
‘Oh, I think you’ll find it already has,' he said. 'Whatever happens now, Windy Dale Eggs is already worthless. Only the most devout masochist would be interested in it now. Then again, we are talking chicken farmers, so I suppose anything’s possible. Excuse my bluntness, but I can’t help feeling what you two are or were trying to do was about as morally bankrupt as the people you were attempting to extort.’
‘What extortion?’
‘All this moddlecoddling of Gabby’s family. Is it genuine? No. You are a couple of opportunist leeches no worthier than them.’
Gabriel’s turn to talk. ‘You of all people know what I went through.’
‘Yes, my sweet. I do,' said Friend. 'There was also a time I thought you had come out the other end an honourable woman. It’s fair to say you have found an equally two faced ally in Bailey.’
I groaned and flopped back in my chair. ‘Why are we here, Gabriel?’
‘I think I can answer that,’ said Friend brightly, settling back in his chair as well as if we three were going to chat the night away like old mates. ‘Gabriel, as you quaintly call her, thought you would come down here with a miracle cure. That your charms, or fists, or money – I am told you aren’t short in that regard – would somehow make me see sense. Do I need to explain to you that commonsense has already prevailed here? Do I need to explain that I stood to gain nothing from this?’
He didn’t. All he thought he’d gained sat on a threadbare armchair two feet away glowering at him. That was plain. All I thought I’d gained sat on the same armchair strangely mute. She’d been so much more upfront in her video.
So there we were. Sipping our drinks in a West End bar. The three of us it would seem biding time before we all went to hell. I wanted to ask about the legal ramifications of Gabriel’s video but, to be honest, I didn’t need to. Terrorism wasn’t funny anymore. Inciting terrorism was therefore, at best, only mildly droll.
‘Gabby tells me you’re a writer, Bailey,’ Friend said, tone incongruously chipper as though this was the nicest of gatherings.
I nodded.
‘Yes. She also said this nasty little business couldn’t have come at a worse time.’
‘Is there a better time?’
‘I hear you are on the verge of your dream job?’
‘I have an opportunity, yes.’
‘And am I right in saying that opportunity involves a certain well known brand of football boot?’
‘Did Gabriel tell you how many times a day I pee?’
‘About three. You are an animal sympathiser, are you not?’
‘Yes, Marcus.’
‘And you’re comfortable with the notion of selling vast quantities of these boots?’
‘If that’s what happens, yes. I’d be elated. It’s my job.’
‘And so, I have to also assume you are comfortable with the source of the raw materials for these boots?’
I shrugged. Boots were made of leather. Not ideal. But if people were going to eat animals, they might as well wear them as well. 'Yes,' I said.
He smiled darkly. ‘You don’t know, do you?’
Another shrug. ‘Don’t know what?’
‘Have you been living under a log? I’ll write something down for you. I suggest you have a look at it when you get home. There’s a nice little video you might like to see as well. The pictures are a bit grainy, but you’ll get the gist. I dear say you’ll get the gist very quickly. Then we’ll see for certain where your true loyalties lie.’
He handed me a beer coaster. On it in blue ink he had scrawled a website address containing the name of a prominent icon animal. Below that he’d written: Watch video – Killing for Kicks.
