A Jaded Man

Chapter 1 - Stopping the Rot

It was easy to see, and feel, the bleak decay of poverty and low expectations.

He sat, staring, at the passing garbage. The river, only forty yards away, always visible from his default well-worn chair. The debris of his youth in his eyes mirrored by the debris from his hometown really, floated mindlessly by, giving the river a sense of poverty. His top floor council flat offered the ideal viewing platform to see the daily decay he felt in his gut. The river, pushing onwards into the estuary, with its relentless collection of garbage confirmed his own bleak thoughts.

Today, a small surprise, a shopping trolley. They normally sink as soon as the spirited youth, or the lost drunk, pushed them into the river. You could often see the trolley collection, when the river ran low, only half a mile from his flat in the Chapel Hole. He caught that thought, Chapel Hole, and he remembered the stories told during his days as an alter boy in the nearby Chapel. The sinners went there when they had had enough. The black, deep, bend in the river the perfect supporting act for the stories of sin. This trolley though, was fighting to stay afloat, snagged on a large broken branch. The stream of thoughts broken by the irritating clip coming from the endless sequence of YouTube clips.

Pushing the remote, the clip flicked to the next one, he smiled as the TV settled into a less irritating conflagration of stuff. One irritant gone his mind drifted back to the trolley - he smiled at it's wilful avoidance of its fate at the bottom of the river. It passed, the trolley almost like the centre piece, bottles, plastic bags, a trainer, it's adornments. Decay was not far away. It was right in front of his eyes - every single day.

It had him, this decay, and he knew it. Four decades he had fought to escape this place. An angry Scottish teenager, scorned for his scholarship attendance at a private school, one of many angry young lost souls in the Big Smoke. Alone, but powered by anger, he had not hesitated to board the train for London - determined to do whatever was needed to escape from the life he had known. Escape from the white lips of anger, escape from the threat and the beatings, escape from newspaper for toilet paper, escape from hopelessness, escape to matter, escape to make a difference. To change the fucking world. Escape the place - he blamed for his life. Not knowing, in his angry youth, that he was taking himself with him - tarnished and warped by the batterings and the bruises, visible and emotional.

The decades passed quickly enough.

He flicked another reel - his mind briefly focusing on the Godfather clip. He could see the passion for life in the eyes of Al Pacino and the decay of life in Marlon Brando. They seemed to connect with his memory of his angry youth and his current failed, and failing, state. His eyes flicking back to the passing river. A flicker of regret in his eyes as he realised the trolley had passed. Why he had wanted to watch the trolley disappear rather than be surprised by its absence he pondered briefly. Pushing his finger into the well-worn remote and another movie reel came on.

His Father, funeral yesterday, would have taken some joy in his decay. The low-level jealousy of his success had always been there. Even as his success faded, three decades of anger eventually taking its toll on his mind and body, he felt the glee in his father's words.

"You belong here." He had said it simply enough.

It was the look in his eyes though. The look that said, 'who did you think you were'. It punched him then, and it punched him now, it's truth adding weight to the emotional gut punch. He had got above his station - and people just did not like that. His Father least of all. The river, it's jetsam sometimes a good distraction from his thoughts. YouTube with its easy dopamine pleasing scenes his main diet of pain relief.

His buzzing phone pushed away the ruminating avoidance. Looking down it was her, again. She had been a bad idea then, when he fought his demons. She was a worse idea now, that his demons had won, and his life had contracted back to the poverty of his childhood. He let it ring out. He did not feel like he had the energy for other humans. He wanted solitude, safety, from the threats of others. He needed isolation. Watching his brother give the eulogy at his father's funeral, when he knew it was expected of him. The drunken chats of the wake flaked with 'what happened to you'. All combined to suffocate what limited ability he had, these days, to engage in life or with people.

Her text followed. She had always been persistent. As always, she did not disappoint, her direct approach and lack of compassion he had once found addictive. No longer, she was part of that stage of his life, when addiction and demons won. He needed his wounds to heal now. He had no fight left. No falseness to soothe her need for attention and companionship.

"Your Dad's funeral was yesterday. You will be hungover and feeling sorry for yourself. You hated him so you get no sympathy from me. You were just never brave enough to tell him how much of a shit he was - and now even that chance has gone. You can wallow in your pathetic stupor but I warn you it will piss me off! Now answer your fucking phone. I will call back in thirty minutes - go get showered!".

He read. He re-read.

He did not want to but his addiction, as ever, reminded him of her power over him. His arousal, sitting soft and wrinkled in his grey unwashed pubic hair, pushed alive his needs. If his cock could speak he knew what it would say. His cock had the same critical, demanding, cold voice of his Father.

Not wanting to hear the thoughts of his cock - he got up and headed to the shower. As instructed.

Standing under the hot shower. Water hot, not warm, burning away the malaise of self-pity. The stench of dried alcoholic sweat scalded away into the yellowed ceramic floor of the shower. Standing, head bowed, his mind was easier to be with. He felt slightly alive again - he hated the effect she had on him. He hated the effect booze had on him. He hated the effect socialising had on him. He hated the effect his Father, even buried, still had on him.

He knew before he touched, and he touched, he was aroused. Fuck. She knew too - he could feel that in his head. She knew the power she had.

Drying with a fresh towel he started to feel just a little more human. Fresh, if not ironed clothes, he drifted back down to his living room just as his phone buzzed again. It was her again, as expected. A small warning. Well, in her eyes - 'coaching', as the message reminded him that it was five minutes until she would call again.

Kettle boiled, tea made, he sat back down to await her call. His dog, ever loving, sat quietly waiting to be noticed go the gentle clap it so craved. The shower, fresh clothes, clapping his dog, his anticipatory arousal all making him feel just a little bit more like the person he always thought he could be. The river did not look like the epitome of decay anymore. His Gran's words still able to push into his head, as though on instant recall, 'You see the world as you know the world'.

He always wondered what that one meant. No longer, he knew the wisdom now, but the pain to get to that wisdom had taken too long. His life fading, his spirit jaded, he wished for her words now. Maybe now he was ready to hear the wisdom and not just the words.

Before another wave of regret could grab him he settled back into feeling human again. This time he noticed the fly fishermen. A quick memory search and he could not be sure he was there before the shower - though he may have been. He stood at almost the same spot as his grandfather, over forty years ago would stand and wave to him, when walking home from school over the bridge. The fly rod, whipping back and forth, the steady relentless movement of the water. The odd splash, his eyes never quite catching the fish, the seagulls happily floating along for the ride. He felt human.

His phone rang. It was her. It had been months since they had spoken - he was on a 'time-out' she had told him. Something to do with tiring her out with his navel gazing self-indulgent pity - she had never held back. He had told her he did not want to speak to her again - his childlike reaction to her decision. He knew, though, that it was her decision and her 'time-out' was the reason they had not spoken. She had allowed texts - no more than ten a week was her rule. Talking though, no. He had to earn that right again. Just because he wanted to drift into some malaise in his life did not mean she had to like it or accept it.

It rang a second time. His arousal eager - his heart nervous. He loved her. He had to stop speaking to her because he wanted more than she was willing to give. It hurt to be dismissed and controlled. He hated her.

Third ring. He knew he was going to answer - she had always said five rings was as much as she was ever willing to wait. If he missed his chance, she had told him often enough, there were others that valued her time. Looking down at the river he could see the fisherman had a bite - yes there was life there. A lot of life. Sure it was battered and beaten down but that river had flowed since the days of history, feeding the die factories of the industrial era, feeding the ship building at the entry to the estuary in centuries past. It never, ever, ever, stopped. It was alive in ways that everything around it either accepted or not - it lived. Decay was temporary it told him - as though to bring him back to the phone the fisherman's line snapped - the fish had escaped to fight another day.

He answered.

"Four months Paul. Four months. Are you hard?" No hello. No warm welcome. No words of nurture or compassion. She knew him.

She knew his weaknesses, his demons, his fears, his needs, like no other person on this planet.

Ever since that night. Catching her, on her knees, above the Central Lobby ceiling. In the domed secret walkways known to staff and sluts, it seemed, she had let her eyes take him in - not shocked. Relaxed. He could see, as he stood in silence, the spasm. Cold eyes, she swallowed, staring at him. Just as the MP, Member of Parliament, also saw him - panicked. His zip up and him gone as she took the time to purse her lips. Relaxed. The MP, of the moment, there was more than one on the go he would learn, gone beyond the slammed door at the other end of the walkway.

She stood, her eyes still on his, walking calmly towards him. From that moment, to this, she had known him like no other.

She did not wait for an answer.

"It turns out. I am close by young man," she laughed at her own humour, "are going to have a visitor."

That startled him, his guilt at the state of his council flat immediately fixed a look of panic on his face. Before he could sputter a response - the buzzer from the close door.

"Answer it dear!"