billytheseal

I'm four or five, and I'm watching my great grandfather make ice-cream. He's smoking a cigar and drinking home-made whinberry wine, and telling me he and his father went down the docks at four in the morning to get ice from the ships every day. They then dragged it to their store in the market and made and sold ice-cream. In the house, he wears trousers and a white vest, the skin now hanging off his arms. Sometimes he puts in a set of plastic vampire teeth to scare me, and lets me drink the sickly sweet drink, making me feel light-headed.

I'm six, and my father has just brought home a colour TV and video. I've never seen a colour TV before, having watched my grandparents black and white TV all my life. I sit entranced as he put on Conan the Barbarian, the first film I'll ever see.

I'm nine, and my great grandfather has died. I serve at his funeral, as an alter boy, helping the priest and holding the incense. The white, hooded monks robe with red rope belt is the coolest clothes I'll ever wear in my life. I have no thoughts towards my great grandfather, just that he'll no longer be around, and I'll never taste ice-cream like his again.

I'm twelve, and I sit drinking home-made beer in my living room. My mother looks at me strangely, and asked me if the book I'm reading scares me at all (it's Piers Anthony's Guide to Xanth). I laugh, explaining that's it's only a bit of fun before going back to reading Huxley. She looks sad, and I realise that some connection between us has been lost. Both of us want to say something, to reach out to the other, but we don't. She walks away, and I go back to reading.

I'm sixteen and helping my grandmother make her spice and sultana cake. It's my favourite cake, and I'll never learn how to make it. When she dies, it will be lost forever. I'm the only member of my family she doesn't have blazing rows with. No-one else knows what a wicked sense of humour she has, and how quick witted. We trade subtle insults, and her friends pity me and tell her to stop. We buy each other tacky and cheap ornaments from Hypervalue for Christmas and birthdays, a joke no-one else gets.

I'm seventeen, and I'm leaning on a mop and bucket. I'm in the morgue at the hospital, and am watching one nurse chase another around with a dead baby, whose shrieking get that mutant away from me. I don't know what to feel, but notice everyone else is smiling. My colleague leans over and nudges me it's how we deal with this shit job. I shrug, and reply I guess so. In six months, I'm laughing with the rest of them.

I'm eighteen, and persuading my father to drink a better drink than Brains Bitter. I explain the taste matters, not just the effect, and there are much better drinks out there. He eventually concurs, and joins me in drinking Guinness. I feel like something is backward in our relationship.

I'm twenty-one, and I stand naked while looking out into the darkness. I can still taste my girlfriends cum, now mixing with the Jack Daniels. Behind me, she is giving my best friend the best blow-job he'll ever have. I feel like I'm standing on the edge of the abyss, and as I turn around, I gleefully jump off.

I'm twenty-five, and I sit drinking in a lap dancing club. My friends, like everyone else, are leering and jeering at the girls, enjoying the show, while I'm sat talking to a red hair woman. She's a stripper I've spent some money on, and we got to talking. I don't know if it's for more easy money, but she seems to like me, and we talk about her going through university and the Philosophy of Mind. Eventually, she puts my hand down her panties, and she cums quietly in the darkness. After I leave, I ask my friends if something similar happened to them. They shake their heads and laugh, and I'm left feeling confused.

I'm twenty-seven, and there is a Scarface amount of cocaine on the table. It's nine in the morning, and I'm drinking port, waiting for the others to get ready for the Mardi Gras. Around me is chaos, a six foot two biker is fixing his make-up, and putting on his dress, his flatmate is in the kitchen cooking up ketamine whilst bragging about time two brothers split-roasted him and high-fived. My friend is laughing, stark naked, and complaining that she can't go out like it. She's fixing a twin towers and airplane bonnet, and models it with pride. I realise now that nothing is sacred to me anymore, and there's no limit to the decadence that somebody can sink too. I realise I'm still falling.

I'm thirty and sat in a Menorcan restaurant with my closest friends celebrating my birthday. We're laughing over the cake, which has turned out to be marzipan and polystyrene, and we toast the holiday. As we hold our glasses together, my gaze moves from my girlfriend to her/my bestfriend, and we smile that secret smile between lovers. I know how this will end, and this is the last time I'll be happy for a long time. I resolve to distance myself from everyone, no need to drag them down with me.

I'm thirty-two, and I've just been released from the police station. My two year spiral of self destruction might have come to an end. Plans rush through my head about what I'm gonna do, is there anyone left I haven't driven away? Would I be able to find my homeless friend? Would I be able to afford another drink? I'm interrupted by a text from the one person who I've hurt the most, who should have turned her back on me long ago, and who says she'll never let me be completely alone, that I can always come to her for help. For the first time in years, I feel humbled, and cry. I've hit the bottom.

Today is today.