The Acid House Read Free Page A

approached me at a threatening pace. I decided quickly that I would put my hands around his neck and choke him to death if he attempted to make any contact with me at all. I focused on his Adam's apple with murderous intent, my face twisting into a sneer as his cold, insect eyes slowly filled with apprehension. — Time ... do you have the time? he asked fearfully.
    I curtly nodded negative, striding satisfyingly past him as he arched his body to avoid being brushed onto the pavement. In Warmoesstraat it was not so easy. A group of youths were fighting a series of running battles; Ajax and Salzburg fans. The UEFA Cup. Yes. I could not handle the movement and the screaming. It was the noise and motion I was averse to more than the threat of violence. I took the line of least resistance, and slipped down a side-street into a brown bar.
    It was a quiet, tranquil haven. Apart from a dark-skinned man with yellow teeth (I had never seen teeth so yellow), who was wired up to the pinball machine, the only other occupants of the place were the barman and a woman who sat on a stool at the bar. They were sharing a bottle of tequila and their laughter and intimate behaviour indicated that their relationship went beyond that of publican-customer.
    The barman was setting the woman up with tequila shots. They were a little drunk, displaying a saccharine flirtatiousness. It took the man a while to register my presence at the bar. Indeed, the woman had to draw his attention to me. His response was to give her an embarrassed shrug, though it was obvious that he couldn't care less about me. Indeed, I sensed that I was an inconvenience.
    In certain states of mind I would have been offended by this negligence and would definitely have spoken up. In other states of mind I would have done a lot more. At this point in time, however, I was happy to be ignored; it confirmed that I was as effectively invisible as I intended to be. I didn't care.
    I ordered a Heineken. The woman seemed intent on drawing me into their conversation. I was just as intent on avoiding contact. I had nothing to say to these people.
    — So where do you come from with an accent like that? she laughed, her X-ray gaze sweeping over me. When her eyes met mine I saw a type of person who, despite their apparent camaraderie, has an instinctive drive towards manipulative schemes. Perhaps I was looking at my reflection. I smiled. — Scotland.
    — Yeah? Where about? Glasgow? Edinburgh?
    — All over really, I replied, bland and blasé. Did it really matter which indistinct shite-arsed towns and schemes I was dragged through, growing up in that dull and dire little country?
    She laughed, however, and looked thoughtful, as if I'd said something really profound. — All over, she mused. -Just like me. All over. She introduced herself as Chrissie. Her boyfriend, or he who, given his indulgence of her, intended to be her boyfriend, was called Richard.
    From behind the bar, Richard stole injured glances at me, before I turned to face him, having clocked this in a bar mirror. He responded with a ducking motion of his head, followed by a 'Hi' in a dislocated hiss, and a furtive grope of a ratty beard which grew out of a pock-marked face but merely seemed to accentuate rather than conceal the lunar landscape it sprang from.
    Chrissie talked in a rambling, expansive way, making observations about the world and citing mundane examples from her own experience to back them up.
    It's a habit of mine to look at people's bare arms. Chrissie's were covered in healed track marks; the kind where ugly scar tissues is always left. Even more evident were the slash marks; judging by depth and position, the self-hating, response-to-frustration type rather than the serious suicide-bid variety. Her face was open and animated but her eyes had that watery, diminished aspect common to the traumatised. I read her as a grubby map of all the places you didn't want to go to: addiction, mental breakdown, drug