star wars and sulphate

“Fuck! you’ve really put on weight!” A pretty cutting comment huh? Never ever say that to anyone. Even if you think it, keep it to yourself.

It was not one of Zach’s most tactful moments. I told you he could kill with words at times. We’d just met and we were going to see Star Wars – the first one, in Golders Green I think. I can’t remember much of the film, but I can remember wanting to die when he said that.

After I’d decided I wanted to go back and get my A levels so I could go to university, I went to another tutorial college. My father refused to throw any more money at my education, but my grandmother stepped in, possibly partly to irritate him.

In those days you could condense the course into one year if you wanted. I was full of good intentions. No more pubs instead of lessons; actually doing homework; keeping notes; drugs to a minimum, of course. I was sure I could do it if I tried hard enough.

Joel was on tour in the States. I can’t remember where T was. I started so well. In fact I even had lunch every day with the other students, which was why I’d put weight on. I think I’d messed up my metabolism so much by then – all those drugs, all those missed meals – that my body didn’t know what had hit it.

Zachy was exaggerating as usual of course. I wasn’t actually fat, just probably a size ten instead of eight, and tens were a lot smaller than they are nowadays. The technicalities made no difference to me at the time – my fragile confidence instantly fell apart, along with my good intentions.

It was a shame because I had made such a good beginning. To start with, I fell in love with my history tutor. I didn’t want to sleep with him or anything. I just thought he was the most wonderful man I’d ever met. He was that rare kind of teacher who would wander off on odd tangents, all utterly fascinating. I was the only person in the room doing fifteenth and sixteenth century history, the others were all studying the modern period, but I used to listen, eyes wide open, to his lectures on anything and everything. I don’t think I have ever learned so much from anyone before or since.

I think he was around twenty-six at the time. He had a weird moustache, and wore tweed jackets, but none of that mattered compared to the stories he’d tell us. He took us through his life history – from Highgate School, through Cambridge, to a couple of years travelling through the States. The stories he would tell us about America were wonderful.

It’s so odd that I can’t remember them now, except vaguely, one long, funny description of American television, but I think maybe that’s an illustration of how brilliant he was – it wasn’t what he talked about, it was how he described things. Even stuff I would normally have yawned at and switched off at the mention of – military tactics for instance, or Bismarck; he always left me spellbound.

And now I’m going off on my own tangent for a minute, because years later, after coming back from living abroad, I would occasionally come across books written by him when I was at the library. He published one or two serious ones on military history, but the rest seemed to be trashy occult/horror stories – the kind where the illustration on the cover says “stay away from this book it is rubbish”. In the late eighties I saw him outed on the front page of the News of the World as an “evil black magic danger to children at top boarding school” or something of the kind. I didn’t believe a word of it.

I have always had a running list of people in my head that I would like to get back in touch with, and he was pretty near the top. I found him just after he died, in 2001. He was only forty-nine. It wasn’t until I read the obituaries that I discovered what he had really been up to. That long trip to America in the seventies, which he’d so lovingly described to us? It had been a research project for his work on the life of Aleistair Crowley. He'd become a leading expert in all things occult and had started his own group.

He sued the News of the World, and won, but he couldn’t ever teach again, and I think he embraced the bottle a little too enthusiastically after that, but the internet is still littered with tributes to his legendary generosity and inspiration to others. What a waste of a good man. So anyway, I grew to love history because of that man, and I still do, and there is an odd person somewhere in Scotland who loved him as much as I did, who sends me occasional conspiracy theory updates. They’re very amusing.

Love of history apart though, after Zachary’s comments, my good intentions rapidly disappeared as I starved myself. At around the same time, I started going out with Matt and the two things combined pleasantly; as we shared our love for each other, we also shared a passion for sulphate.

I remember in the spring of that year, wandering arm in arm through Kenwood in Hampstead. There was somewhere nice and private in the grounds where we spent a lot of time – some cloisters, or a covered walkway of some kind, with some twisted climbing plant growing over it – maybe ivy. We would sit on the stone bench, do a couple of lines, share a joint, and kiss, before wandering off again, sometimes racing each other through the beautiful gardens.

Matt was so funny – his dry sarcasm meant I never stopped laughing for very long. He kept me going, along with the sulphate, and the chewing gum, and the black coffee. I began shrinking at a quite impressive rate. My French teacher looked at me one day and asked, “have you got anorexia?” I think that was the only time anyone said anything to me about it.

I was very successful. I remember being delighted when my hipbones started jutting out, and when my legs became thinner and thinner, and the scales went down below seven stone. Matt and I split up at some point. I think he got fed up with my obsessing over it. I can’t remember being all that broken hearted at the time. I was too busy weighing myself.

There was a downside of course. I lost all concentration. Eventually I had no energy for anything, and I was always cold. I still loved the history lessons, but my memory had disappeared, and I did no revision. I honestly still thought I could wing it though; I’d never failed anything before. It was a complete shock to me when the envelope arrived, with the truly abysmal results. I hadn’t even managed to achieve the two Es, which were my provisional offer for a university place.

I went straight to Joel’s, as I always did in times of emergency and crisis, and there he was at the door, arms outstretched waiting for me, He never let me down, not once. He was the only constant, dependable person in my life. We polished off a bottle of very bad wine in record time. I can still remember that sour taste, mixed with the salt from the tears running down my cheeks and I can feel his arm around my shoulder, pulling me close, stroking my hair, telling me it would all be ok.

The next thing I knew I was waking up feeling like shit and my head hurt like hell. It was still light outside. I was in Joel’s bed, fully dressed. Someone had put a cover over me. I felt as if I was lying on something lumpy. I moved a little to see what it was, and found a huge bunch of flowers still in their cellophane wrapper, all crushed and broken.