Renegade Ambition

Renegade Ambition

Let me introduce myself - My name is Ben Parker, I'm twenty-seven years
old next week and I'm going nowhere fast. Of average height, average
build - if somewhat malnourished and gaunt looking of recent times.
I've got a longish mop of thick dark hair, a few wrinkles and the odd
blemish here and there, but my paper-round wasn't the roughest if you
know what I mean. Some would say that I'm completely crazy; I suppose
I'm as mad as a tin of milk. I have that perpetual studenty appearance
and dress pretty dapper, when circumstances permit. Some say I'm a bit
of a looker and I've got the healthy glow you find with the moneyed-
which is all the more surprising if you consider the abuse I've given
my body over the past few years.

I've recently fulfilled my life's ambition - I've become a genuine and
fully paid up member of what Daily Mail readers call the 'underclass',
I'm downwardly socially mobile and proud of it! I'm the type you pass
over in the road, drinking cheapo white cider or obstructing public
telephone boxes whilst waiting for a score. The type, who has
disappeared from electoral roles, is credit blacklisted, has a social
worker and is by all means beyond the pale of mainstream society. When
I talk of this as my ambition, it's not at all in the conventional
sense of the word you see, it's the antithesis in a sense - an
anti-ambition, a self destruction of a colossus scale, a sabotage, a
denial of life - or the sad life were forced to choose. This is where I
always aspired to - where life is really at - rejecting consumerism,
materialism and greed - I never wanted to be another mindless clone, so
I've stepped outside the boundaries of conventional life. It was
incredibly hard work getting here and even harder still maintaining it.
Those trips down the social security offices, the haggling with jobs
worth officials, begging, poncing and collecting nub-ends - it's not
work cut out for everyone you know.

It was back in late 1993 that I first decided at least in part on my
chosen vocation. It was at the University of Nottingham's History
Society's 'Autumn Ball'. Me, my ever present and annoying Welsh
sidekick Matt Stacey and a few of our new found associates from the
faculty were sitting around an opulently laid dinner table discussing
our future career plans, following an inane debate on the question,
"What is History?" or some other poncey undergraduate philosophical
dilemma.

It was Robert Whitings, public school rugger bugger and overly tanned
meathead who was first to pose the fateful question, "And so Reeves,
what the devil are you going to do when you graduate, old man?"
"Well," stumbled Reeves in his fined tuned home counties manner,
"......Skiing of course..........Robo," to the applause of the rest of
the dimwits that had latched on to him in fresher's week. "But,
seriously chap, I'm going into the Law. It's already paid for even if I
bottom out with a third........safe job in Daddy's firm,
sorted......Mas vino! Por favor!"
Utterly disgusted, I feigned laughter anyway. I was more than
accustomed to this type of banter. I'd come to university expecting
radical Marxist sit-ins, to burn effigies of Margaret Thatcher and for
wild sex and drugs. The latter I was to discover no problem at all but
where I sought polemics, I saw blandness, arrogance and
small-mindedness. Deference to class and money was all around me. The
discussion continued around the table in similar style with guffaws
about safe jobs in the city, media, etc already secured through
nepotism.

Some pig-faced girl with an etiolated accent was foolish enough to ask
Stacey. He cocked his head nonchalantly, then raising one eyebrow in
the best of Sean Connery style he sardonically replied, "A Shepard."
There was silence for a few prolonged seconds before the table
erupted.
"A Shepard...........I like it, man!" whistled Whiting. "How
original... your such a card Matt!"
Stacey was totally serious of course, in fact he'd spent several hours
round my room a week or so before outlining his vision of
'Flock-rearing in the declining Methodist Valley's communities' and was
even preparing a paper on 'Animal Husbandry for the Twenty-first
century: A new contract for man and beast.' He was completely cracked,
but we shared the same contempt for the bland muppets that made up the
majority of our peer group and an unconventional outlook on life.
By now I was getting pretty annoyed with the conversation and could
feel nausea slowly rising from the pit of my stomach and racking
through my nerves. The pig-faced girl gestured a sideways glance and
uttered," And you? Benny boy?"
I paused for a few moments, intoxicated by the two bottles of
Chardonnay I'd made my way through, before replying, "..........Well
I'm not sure really. I have never given it any real consideration. Most
likely I'll end up being some kind of bum, drifting along like flotsam
and jetsam on life's waters. I'll probably live in some high-rise and
claim dole, the sort of scrounger that Peter Lilley is so fond of
talking about. That's of course unless we have some sort of social
revolution and socialist justice prevails." I started laughing at the
ridiculousness of what I'd said, so did pig-face.

Of course what I really wanted to say was, "Everything you and your
middle class wanker friends stand for makes me physically sick. I want
nothing to do with your jobs in the city, your fat-assed fathers, you
know nothing about life, you bunch of cunts!" but diplomacy got the
better of me.

The evening then subsided into a hazy, drunken blur as more and more
wine was imbibed and public school voices confidently rowed for
attention. There was a time lapse before I found myself back at the
room in the halls of residence, I felt sick and the bed felt damp and
sweaty. I got up for a quick wash, when I returned I noticed there was
someone in bed with me - It was Pigface!. Oh! Dear - still another
notch on the bedpost, must be well into double figures now!

That's me all over you see, I've got that chip on my shoulder, that
angry young man thing going on. I always wanted to change the world; I
hated injustice, poverty and privilege. I read E P Thompson the great
Marxist historian biblically, had posters of Tony Benn on my wall as a
child not too mention all his autographed diaries, 'To Benjamin, in
unity - Tony' was written on the inside sleeves. I loathed the Tory's
with a passion as even a young child. I cried for days when Labour lost
the elections so direly in 1983 and 87. Growing up in 1980's West
Bromwich was a harrowing experience. So much poverty, dereliction and
depression as the industries were wiped out in the early 80's
recessions. I'd watch the empty face's of long redundant
thirty-year-old men, trying to support families, jostling at the
jobcentres, or youths getting less than a pittance on dead-end YTS
schemes.

I was the first on the Parker side to get into one of the elite
traditional universities and was dismayed by the middle of the road
conservatism of the place. By now though I was realising my visions of
Utopia through different chemical means. The true sociality of the
spliff going around at the party, the loved up 'E' head at the rave or
camaraderie of a drunken lad's night out on the town. As I became more
disillusioned with politics I found solace in an alcohol and drug
fueled world. My history essays began to suffer of course, but I'd
didn't give a 'flying fuck' anymore, as Stacey so astutely pointed out
to me once.

Class - so what's all this class business, eh! ; My unhealthy obsession
with class definitions and stereotyping. My quest to find the
underclass, it all probably sounds so dated, contrived in fact. But to
understand where I'm coming from, why I behave the way I do, it's
something I have to rant about from time to time, so please excuse me
or skip the page.

I told you about reading my E P Thompson and being a Marxist in my
youth, class was inseparable from politics; it was the engine behind
social change, the force that oiled the wheels of history. Now it's a
bit of a disappointment to be told that 'class' no longer exists, were
just placed under different criteria as consumers, AB's, C1's, E's,
etc. Just given arbitrary labels by the marketing men, all told that
we're all middle class now, or all members of the 'classless society,'
that John Major once talked about. History ended in 1989 for us
Marxist's those fascist historians keep telling us, just like the
socialist dream has come to an end itself. We're all monetarists now.
'Unemployment is a price worth paying,' states the mantra. We don't
question such notions; we just pile up the bills on our plastic and
ignore what's staring us in the face. We walk past the cardboard cities
in our town centres, the children starving in the most deprived
estates, as if there's nothing wrong at all. Relative affluence for the
'middle classes' has been great desensitiser, who cares, after all?
Numbing our minds with retail therapy, we kid ourselves that we live in
a just society because everyone has a TV in their homes. It's like the
increasing power of the global multinational conglomerates - for
goodness sake I worked for one, even thought that was morally
defensible for a while!

I've taken dialectic materialism to the to the extreme, I've applied to
to my own life. You need that polarity, that thesis and anti-thesis to
promote synthesis. So I'm still going down now, I've transgressed all
the empirical definitions of class and sunk down to where class doesn't
really exist at all. Substances are the great leveller, you enter the
world where need has replaced the other nuances of social convention.
Every

So, what class did I come from -? Me, I come from the middle classes of
course. I'll try to tell you different, kid myself even to pretend I'm
not. OK, so my value system has entered into a amoral void, I'm
petrified of the work-ethic and pretend not to aspire to wealth, in
fact the only thing I've got to show for all my efforts is a mortgage
sized debt! But perhaps you can't change where you've come from. I'm
trying my best, granted, but I have all this guilt. Guilt and shame,
those dreadful middleclass afflctions, they'll beat you up and take you
to the grave if you let them. I'm trying to bypass them, ethanol or
opiates are the usual tools. But it's those dreadful lucid moments,
those moments of clarity when the programming and conditioning of
childhood rear their head, I've tried sucicide on many occasions but
the very values you're trying to escape, pull you back from the edge
and into more and more pain and hurt. The ongoing cycle

Why all this angst then? I viewed it as being a process beyond my
control, a Darwinian response to the pressures and unnatural trials of
modern living? Along with many other young men, I feel like we're being
weeded out in a great selection process, unwanted rusks and hulks to be
cast aside, as society progresses and the forces of change flush us
away. This aside, is probably bollocks, I've got to admit though, I've
always been both pretentious and perverse and subject to the most
horrendous of flaws, phobias and obsessions. I'm exceptionally fond of
excuses and justifications - that's how the selfish, the weak and the
downright lazy live with themselves.

My anti-ambition has taken me down, too right. It's taken me to crack
dens, brothels, psychiatric wards and other such places of vomit
encrusted infamy. Whilst
Now's the time, I can feel it. Things have started to come to a head
now. Decisions with have to be made, choices taken and more to the
point actions taken. Drastic action is what's called for, indeed! If
I'm ever to get out of the mess I've engulfed myself in. You see the
thing is I had some strange notion that once I had bottomed out on this
anti-ambition thing, or reached my prized nadir, some invisible force
would spring into action and propel be back to salvation. "Hard
practicalities," my Father once told me, "are what you need to deal
with first son, you need to take steps for yourself." Unfortunately I
like my comfort zones and I'm the kind of person who expects some kind
of miracle, or 'Road to Damascus' type vision to cure all my ills.
Minimum effort, maximum pleasure has become the ethic I've subscribed
to.

My feet ache from the long walk back from the 24hr garage on the
outskirts of town. I soothe them by gently massaging my fingertips
along the edge of my soles. The odour of stale, sweat-ridden socks and
dried rotten skin, perversely almost amplifies the pleasure. "Let us
breathe!" they almost cry out, gasping for the fresh air, nerve endings
flickering on and off from my hands caresses. I'm both mentally fragile
from lack of sleep and physically weak from the week's repeated
hangovers and total lack of decent food.

So where did it all begin. With my shattered illusions of what's called
love? With my alcoholism and addiction to drugs? Or just my plain
sadness - a long standing sadness and melancholy, the fact that I'm a
little boy lost, swamped by harsh realities, my over sensitivity and
general aversion to life. The seven year old, that wept at reading
about, a baby who died of starvation that was reported in the 'Express
&; Star' down Brandhall flats back in '83, who wanted to make things
right?

So this is when it all started, my renegade ambition and aspirations to
be downwardly mobile.

Steve Thomas, April 2001.