The Acid House Read Free

rhythm.
    — Yeah, he says, — people change when you pull a gun on them.
    The weapon is still pointed at me. He reloaded it when he took that slash. I know it.
    — I heard that you were seeing quite a bit of my missus when I was inside, mate, he says softly, caressingly.
    I try to say something, try to reason, try to plead, but my voice is dry in my throat as his finger tenses on the trigger.

EUROTRASH
    I was anti-everything and everyone. I didn't want people around me. This aversion was not some big crippling anxiety; merely a mature recognition of my own psychological vulnerability and my lack of suitability as a companion. Thoughts jostled for space in my crowded brain as I struggled to give them some order which might serve to motivate my listless life.
    For others Amsterdam was a place of magic. A bright summer; young people enjoying the attractions of a city that epitomised personal freedom. For me it was but a dull, blurred series of shadows. I was repelled by the harsh sunlight, seldom venturing out until it got dark. During the day I watched English and Dutch language programmes on the television and smoked a lot of marijuana. Rab was a less than enthusiastic host. Without any sense of his own ridiculousness he informed me that here in Amsterdam he was known as 'Robbie'.
    Rab/Robbie's revulsion for me seemed to blaze behind his face, sucking the oxygen from the air in the small front room on which I had made up a couch-bed. I'd note his cheek muscles twitch in repressed anger as he'd come in, dirty, grimy and tired from a hard, physical job, to find me mellow in front of the box, the ubiquitous spliff in my hand.
    I was a burden. I had been here for only a fortnight and clean for three weeks. My physical symptoms had abated. If you can stay clean for a month you've got a chance. However, I felt it was time I looked for a place of my own. My friendship with Rab (now, of course, re-invented as Robbie) could not survive the one-sided, exploitative basis I had re-modelled it on. The worse thing was: I didn't really care.
    One evening, about a fortnight into my stay, it seemed he'd had enough. — When ye gaunny start lookin for a job, man? he asked, with obviously forced nonchalance.
    — I am, mate. I hud a wee shuftie aroond yesterday, trying tae check a few things out, y'know? The lie of the land, I said with contrived sincerity. We went on like this; forced civility, with a subtext of mutual antagonism.
    I took tram number 17 from Rab/Robbie's depressing little scheme in the western sector into the city centre. Nothing happens in places like the one we stayed in, Slotter Vaart they call it; breeze-block and concrete everywhere; one bar, one supermarket, one Chinese restaurant. It could've been anywhere. You need a city centre to give you a sense of place. I could've been back in Wester Hailes, or on Kingsmead, back in one of those places I came here to get away from. Only I hadn't got away. One dustbin for the poor outside of action strasser is much the same as any other, regardless of the city it serves.
    In my frame of mind, I hated being approached by people. Amsterdam is the wrong place to be in such circumstances. No sooner had I alighted in The Damrak than I was hassled. I'd made the mistake of looking around to get my bearings. — French? American? English? an Arabic-looking guy asked.
    — Fuck off, I hissed.
    Even as I walked away from him into the English bookshop I could hear his voice reeling of a list of drugs. — Hashish, heroin, cocaine, ecstasy . ..
    During what was meant to be a relaxing browse, I found myself staging an internal debate as to whether or not I would shoplift a book; deciding against it, I left before the urge became unbearable. Feeling pleased with myself, I crossed over Dam Square into the red-light district. A cool twilight had descended on the city. I strolled, enjoying the fall of darkness. On a side-street off a canal, near where the whores sit in the windows, a man