Bloodletting (7 page)

But there were some things that I couldn’t change: I still didn’t trust men. I didn’t hate them, but didn’t trust them. My solution was to beat them at their own game, to become the girl who didn’t want a relationship, who was happy to have a fling. It was less humiliating than getting attached to someone, only to find they were not interested in anything other than my body. Or to be more precise, sex. By keeping my expectations very, very low, I was able to avoid feeling—well, anything.

For months I existed quite happily in that strange limbo, without responsibilities, cut off from the world. I don’t know how long I would have stayed if I’d been given the choice, but I wasn’t. It was my body that rebelled first.

I was smoking dope in the warehouse one evening, which I did very rarely, as I knew it wasn’t good for my mood. I began to feel odd. Not paranoid, but tense. It felt as though my muscles were about to go into spasms. Remembering the Stelazine incident only too clearly, and terrified that it would happen again, I asked one of my house-mates to drive me to the local hospital. He volunteered to stay but I sent him home. If I was going to have convulsions, I didn’t want them to be seen by anyone I knew.

Maybe the problem was that I’d been mixing Lithium, Prozac and grass. Or it might have been that the dope had been laced with something else. I had no way of knowing.

Once in the emergency ward, I was given an injection to calm me down.As I lay on the bed,I chatted to my friend Emily who was perched on top of a cupboard, next to the fish tank.We’d been inseparable at school, but I hadn’t seen her for a long time, as she’d been living overseas. She’d been worried about me, she said, and had heard that I’d not been well. I told her not to worry. I was fine. Couldn’t she see that?

It was several hours before it became evident that there was no cupboard, no fish tank and, most disappointingly, no Emily.

Iwas in a hospital bed with the sides up and the curtains pulled around me.

Eventually I was told that I could leave, but only if someone collected me. I called Nicola, a very straight, conservative friend in her final year at law school. I don’t know why I chose her.We’d not spoken for over a year and she had no idea where I’d been in the meantime. Despite this, and the fact that it was midnight, she turned up with her flat-mate and suggested I stay the night with them. I insisted that I couldn’t do so without my toothbrush.

As we were approaching her house, I reminded her that we had to collect the toothbrush.

‘No, we don’t Vic. It’s in your hand.’

It was.We’d already been past the warehouse, I just had no memory of doing so.

Both of them admitted the next day that they were worried about me: the warehouse wasn’t a good place.

Perhaps not, I said, but I had no intention of leaving. I did give up smoking dope, however, and kept my drinking to a minimum, despite Angus. A heavy-drinking Scot, Angus was the latest addition to our little community. His accent was impenetrable but I didn’t care: he was beautiful. Long-haired, smooth-chested and tanned, he looked as though he’d walked off a Calvin Klein poster, not a building site.

We’d all been drinking vodka at the kitchen table one night, listening to someone’s plan for a new sport involving horses and balls.Angus had only just arrived, and I didn’t know him but by the end of the night we found ourselves alone in the kitchen. As I opened the fridge door, he saw the scars on my wrist.

‘Bad habit,’ was my response when he asked about them. He then pulled up his own sleeve and showed me a faded gash on his forearm. It had seemed like a good idea, he said, when he was sitting in a pub in Glasgow, high on magic mushrooms.

It was a bond, of sorts.

We started having what I thought of as an extended fling, not a relationship. He was happy enough for people to know we were seeing each other, but he had a ‘real’ girlfriend living in Melbourne. Only I knew this, and tried not to think about it. I focused on the fact that he liked me enough not to be embarrassed that other people knew it.This was a new thing for me.

There was a downside.I could hardly understand a word Angus said, and what little I could decipher related mainly to football, or beer. He also admitted that he was wanted by the Scottish police, and had skipped the country.When I asked him what he’d done, he was evasive, ‘It was an accident. I hit a policewoman.’ I tried not to think about that too—until he gave me no choice.

We were walking back from a pub late one night and popped into the kebab shop for a snack.As we were heading out,Angus told me to wait there for a moment. I assumed he was going for a pee, so stood on the street corner eating my kebab, trying to look nonchalant.After a few minutes he hadn’t come back,which was odd.After a few more, it occurred to me that he wasn’t going to. I started walking home in the dark.The bastard, I thought, getting more annoyed and upset with each step.

Lights were on at home, and I heard voices. Raised voices. Darren, one of the less tolerant members of the household, was worked up about something. I didn’t care what it was. He had regular fights with his partner, as well as the other blokes living in the warehouse. And he wasn’t the only one. I’d heard yelling one morning and gone down to the bathroom to find Ralph, who was well over six foot, with his boot on a naked, prostrated Ian’s neck. But this did sound different. I walked past the table where Darren and Ian were sitting, and they immediately turned on me.

‘I can’t believe what a fucking arsehole that boyfriend of yours is,’ Darren spat at me.

‘What’s he done?’ I asked, puzzled, but not surprised that Angus had annoyed someone else.

Ian took over. ‘He turned up here about fifteen minutes ago,’ he paused, as my jaw dropped, ‘and rushed in, saying he’d nicked a car. He then asked if anyone wanted to go for a joyride.’

‘The bastard.’ I was furious.

‘Oh no, that’s not the good bit.We went outside with him and he showed us a van—Darren’s van. He’d managed to nick Darren’s van which was parked up on the street outside the pub.’ He shook his head. ‘Can you believe that? And he screwed up the lock and the ignition while he was breaking in and hot-wiring it.’

I couldn’t believe it. I’d actually been ditched so he could nick a car. ‘Where’s he now?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know.The prick’s disappeared again. In my van.’

I decided that I didn’t want to be around when Angus returned, so went to bed.

A few days later, as I watched Angus expertly kick down the door to Arthur the landlord’s self-contained flat, I decided that it really was time to end it.

There had been a council inspection, prior to which we had been told to hide our beds.This odd request had led the guys to do some investigating and they had discovered that the warehouse was actually zoned light industrial, not residential.We were, therefore, living there illegally—and Arthur knew this. Furthermore, the guys had discovered that our rent, which was supposed to be funding improvements to the kitchen, bathroom and gallery space, was being channelled into one of Arthur’s other businesses. He’d never had any intention of improving the place for us, which had always been the promise.

We knew something had been going on, as new partitions had been going up regularly, followed by ads in the paper for new tenants.There were now fourteen of us.We were all pissed off by what we’d discovered about Arthur, and decided to take over the lease for ourselves, as he wasn’t actually the owner.

And then Arthur disappeared.Angus volunteered to break into his flat, to see if we could find out where he’d gone.There was nothing. No furniture, no food and no clues.The flat was empty.

A month or so later, just as we’d got used to squatting, a formal eviction notice turned up. We had a week to move, and I decided to go rather than wait to be escorted off the premises. I packed up my things and left.

I’d planned to stay in touch with everyone but by the time I had settled into my new flat and had the energy to call them, the phone had been cut off. I went to visit but the place was boarded up and vacant.

After living in a household of fourteen people with only two showers to share, the idea of a place of my own was enormously appealing. I rented a one-bedroom ground floor flat that had once been part of a Victorian terrace house. It was the first affordable place I was offered. A tall thin bloke with lank hair lived upstairs.

The design was peculiar.A home conversion had been made, and what would once have been a front sitting room was now a small kitchen and dining room. By ‘dining room’ I mean there was space for a table and some chairs.A bookshelf divided this section from the bedroom and bathroom. The high ceilings and open spaces meant the flat was impossible to heat but I didn’t care. It was mine.

It was wonderful to be able to do what I liked, when I liked, without regard for any housemates. I’d never had that kind of freedom before and it was amazing.And it was how I managed to overlook the hideous carpet, the damp and the weeds in the garden. But while I loved the privacy, it wasn’t exactly good for me.

At first I actually invited friends over, uni friends from whom I’d cut myself off over the last couple of years. I even cooked. But as the months passed, everything started to become more of an effort.When I went out, I tended to drink. Heavily.

One morning I woke up next to a bloke I hardly knew, and certainly hadn’t seen for years. I had no memory of what had happened the previous night. I threw up, dressed and went to the gallery, telling him to let himself out. I’d never had such a complete blackout before, but had certainly slept with people inadvertently due to drinking too much.

Most of the time I just stayed home in the flat, watching television or reading. Occasionally I went into uni, where I was still studying. I began letting the phone ring out and stopped returning calls.There was something wrong but I didn’t know what to do.The worse I felt, the more I thought I should keep away from people when I was like this: I didn’t want to ‘inflict’ myself on them. The urge to hurt myself returned as well. Sometimes I gave in to it. It was easier than dealing with the thoughts, which would be all-consuming until I finally picked up the razor blade.

Dr G, who I still saw on a weekly basis, suggested another spell in hospital.

The idea of going in again appealed but I was worried about my studies. I didn’t want to miss any seminars. Hospital stays could last weeks and that was too long. I’d never catch up. So I said no, I’d stay home and cope as best I could. Dr G didn’t think this was a wise idea, so suggested a compromise: I could go to hospital and attend uni on special day release.

For some weeks then, every couple of days, I’d catch the train from the hospital to the campus. Neither place was directly on the railway line, so there was a walk at each end. As I was now on a sedative as well as Prozac and Lithium, this trip wasn’t easy; I was constantly exhausted and each step was an effort. On the few times I arrived at the English department early, I’d collapse on the floor outside the seminar room and lie down, grateful to have even ten minutes’ rest. I didn’t care what people thought.

While I was able to force myself to attend seminars, I didn’t enjoy them anymore. I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t follow what other people were saying and I couldn’t understand the readings we were given. Nothing made sense. It was as though I were surrounded by a thick fog and I desperately wanted to escape it. The frustration grew to the point where, for the first time in my life, I began to feel violent— not just towards myself but others as well. I wanted to scream and throw chairs. I wanted to push tables over. I wanted to punch and kick and hit. But I didn’t, instead I sat there with my jaws clenched, hour after hour, wondering what was next. I then did the only thing I could think of: I told my psychiatrist.

The obvious solution seemed to be to stop going to seminars and take the rest of the term off. But the truth was that I wasn’t sure I was ever going to get better. Just giving up made no sense to me—I wasn’t going to do that. University was the only stable thing in my life.Without it I would be adrift and that was a terrifying thought.There had to be another way. Perhaps, I thought, I could change the way my degree was structured and instead of doing coursework, I could do a thesis or long essay.That way, I wouldn’t have to be in a classroom.

The course coordinator agreed to see me, and I told him about my problem, about the drugs, the hospital, my desire to throw chairs, and my suggested solution. My psychiatrist had agreed to supply any medical certificates the university might need.The course coordinator listened carefully, then said it wasn’t quite as simple as that. He would need to check my academic record and meet with several other members of the department before making a decision.

A week later, I was told that if I could come up with a suitable research topic and find a supervisor, then yes, I could complete the second half of my degree by writing a 30,000 word essay. All I had to do was find a topic and a supervisor. I chose Jackie Collins, transgression, and asked the head of the department to be my supervisor. She agreed, stipulating that I wasn’t only to write about Jackie Collins’ bonkbusters but to compare her work with that of a nineteenth century equivalent. I found one.