Moving to a city after a life spent in rural hamlets crossed the rubicon between naïveté and eyes wide open. Although Southampton wasn't London, for me it may as well have been. I became a child of the night, roaming it's deserted back streets and parks at 3 and 4 in the morning, finding myself sitting down by the docks, watching the QE2 leave port.
My relationship with Clive began to dissolve almost as soon as I arrived. He didn't know who he was. This was his first "live together" relationship, he was a guilt ridden Catholic at the time, and even worse, he was a fanatical, with a capital F supporter of Southampton Football Club, and has his hand in their fanzine, the Ugly Inside. Football trumped everything. And, sadly, quite frankly, it bored the arse off me. Clive was also oddly thoughtless and weirdly parsimonious. I lived on a diet of microwaved poppadoms. Food shopping with him was a nightmare, but then again so was I.
He came home on one occasion to find his entire hall way and landing had been repainted with a mural - a bad one. My dog Boris, ate half of his sofa out of boredom, because I'd forgotten you had to walk dogs more than once a week. And I mean he ate it.
Clive had good intentions. He sorted out a college for me to go and do my A-levels at - he was friends with the principal, and I got in purely based on Clive's good word. This was no small feat, as I'd only got 2 GCSE's, due to the fact I'd spent most of my schooling doodling on bits of paper, arguing with Neo-Nazi teachers, day-dreaming or trying on my friend's nail varnish.
Although Clive was 32, it was though we were both emotionally 16 years old. I think Clive still hankers for the past. His Facebook profile picture is one taken of him thirty years ago. Clive is a sentimentalist. I've always been a futurist. The future is what really counts.
Around this time a friend of his, some horrible odious man, who happened to share my surname, came on to the scene, and claimed to be my long lost brother (yes it's true). And no, he wasn't. He did however procure for me my first ever LSD tab. Unfortunately, wandering around Bitterne Park, looking like a dishevelled zombie at 4:30 in the morning, walking in the middle of a main road caught the attention of the police. This made things even more surreal, and even more comical, until I told them my age and I was going out with a man in his thirties (thankfully I refused to give them his name or my address). At the time, the age of consent was 21, meaning that anyone "getting down" with me was committing a mortal crime.
I insisted that nothing sinful had occurred (lie) but this didn't stop them insisting on carrying out a medical examination (yes this is true). The purpose of which was to discover whether I had any scarring in my rectum that could indicate the fact I had been doing naughty and bad things with other men. This was all very peculiar, especially whilst tripping (those that have taken LSD will be sympathetique) and I oscillated between thinking I was in real life and on the set of some weird Australian prison daytime soap, as a be-gloved man hovered toward me with a rather salacious expression on his face. The oddest thing of all was, although they didn't find any "scarring", he said, "hmmmm, you have very good muscle tone", as he furked about. They eventually let me go, after quite some time, because by the time I got out, my LSD had all but worn off. This was not to be my last run in with the police.
Clive and me were to truly fall apart at the seams when, dressed quite inadvertently like a rent boy, I went to The Magnum Club - Southampton's answer to Heaven. I didn't think I'd stand a chance of getting in. But when you're only 16, it's amazing what doors open for you if you go to the right places.
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