School Schmool (rewrite)

'School Schmool' Acrylic on canvas board 40 by 30cm

This is the fourth painting in my ‘Strange & Sometimes Troubled Memories’ series.

I hadn’t seen my dad since I was about seven years old, and only sporadically before then.

I didn’t like him much.

My mum had told me many times what an awful man he was (but you had a load of kids with him). She said he used to hit her, I never saw that but have no reason not to believe her because he was an awful drunk. She also told me how he cheated relentlessly. A week after they were married, she received a letter from a lady who claimed he was still living with her, part-time, when he said he was working away.

She hammered other dad-bashing information into me regularly with more detail than I cared for. I could understand her complete anger at him but didn’t really see what purpose it served to fill my head with it all the time.

I didn’t need pushing to loath the man, He was unpredictable, loud and boisterous when up, morose and guarded when down, and always a little bit scary. He used to squeeze me too hard, almost to death, when he was drunk, I wouldn’t be able to breath, it wasn’t a loving fatherly squeeze, I don’t know what that was. He wasn’t in my life for much of my childhood and then left for good, so that didn’t really put him in my good book.

I didn’t much care for my mum and stepdad either. She’d taken no interest in me once I turned from baby to toddler, she had a tough time raising five, (or by this time six,) self-inflicted offspring, so I understood her neglect but still it made me a little resentful. My stepdad worked hard and times were easier when he worked away, as when he was home, he would stagger in drunk from the working men’s club, plonk himself on the couch and we’d have to creep around him. Mum was rigidly protective of his space. He was funny when he was drunk though, slurring his words as he went on a pissed rant about some subject, I had no interest in. Then they’d watch the soaps and everyone had to be deadly quiet, it depressed the shit out of me. He read ‘The Sun’ newspaper and I remember as child I’d always check out the page 3 girl, most of the time they’d look like grotesque caricatures with unappealing ballooned breasts, once in a while there was a pretty one. One time I read the paper to see what engrossed him so, every day, I shook my head in disbelief, and I thought to myself ‘This is dumb as fuck.’

My older sister, who’d left home years before and already had her first child, was still a teenager, she was planted firmly on the dad side of the fence, which I couldn’t understand at all. She was loud, proud and seemed to think it was cool and funny to be a scumbag. Me, I was quiet and ashamed, and I couldn’t respect anyone who didn’t display at least a modicum of decorum.

Her raucous house, rented with housing benefit, was a welcome break from mums’, as I could hang out there, get stoned and not be bothered too much, just watch the circus unfold around me. She had taken to nagging me to go and visit our dad, like it was her mission to turn a sibling to his side. I reluctantly agreed and we walked the two and half miles it took to get there.

We arrived at his sordid bedsit, situated in a large stone terraced house on a road nicknamed ‘Death Row’ not only by it’s residents and those of the surrounding areas, but also the police. It had this name because it was the road most saturated with registered addicts anywhere in Bradford and maybe even West Yorkshire, it could’ve been all of Yorkshire for all I knew, or the reason behind the name could have been an urban myth created by people, to give themselves a little perverted pride about where they lived.

My sister rang the doorbell, a window slid open and dad, who I couldn’t see because of the sun hitting the window, mumbled something and threw the keys down. Once inside, the absent man looked a bit older, harsher and thinner than he did in my memories. He only dashed me a quick stern glance and then backward nodded his head and said to my sister ‘Who’s this?’

She raised her eyebrows in disbelief and said ‘oh my god dad, it’s your son, Joel!’

(later in life I changed my name.) My childlike body had reconfigured itself into that of an oily teen, not matching the son in his memories.

His demeanour changed, he became affable, I recognised the smile which bore clenched teeth. He shook my hand firmly and said ‘hold on,’ fumbled in the fridge, pulled out a can of lager and handed it to me.

My sister piped up, ‘What the fuck are you doing dad, he’s thirteen?’

he shot her a look of feigned anger and said ‘behave! I’m having a drink with my son.’

Then he offered me a cig by pointing the packet at me, one of them pulled slightly out from the rest. I put it in between my lips, he whipped out a lighter and lit the end, and grinned at me as I took a long pull and the flame bent towards me. He had a kind of ‘that’s my boy’ look in his eye as he could see that I wasn’t a novice.

A little light bulb pinged above my head and I thought to myself 'This is where I'm coming to knock off school from now on'. Funny how you can discard your morals and switch allegiances so fast when you’re that age, if someone shoves cigs and booze in your face. Maybe that was just me. I neither forgave nor forgot what sort of person he was, but there was no harm in using him a little to provide a few basic teenage needs. Over a period I grew to like him though, his unusual wit and unlikely charm were endearing, although it was a mild liking and I never grew to care about him in a familial way. It soon returned to resentment though when I realised, he couldn’t really be arsed with me.

I hardly went to school at this point and I stopped going altogether by the time I was fourteen. School and me didn’t get on, I’d become quite slippery with my nimble manoeuvres, wiggling free of its half-hearted attempts to pin me.

My all-boys grammar school was built, high on a hill, in a semi-affluent area. A leafy walk through a mediocre park with a shallow lifeless pond, descended in elevation as well as class. Staggering further downwards, class dissolved altogether in a place where, from that guttery position, even the normal working people were seen as saps who ‘think they’re better than us.’ In the middle of this area lay ‘Death Row’. It was about a twenty-minute walk between the two, but a couple of bus rides in and out of the city centre, from my mums, made possible by a free bus pass.

In the front room, she would use an armchair to step up onto the half-hexagon sill of the bay window and put her cheek close to the glass so she could determine from that slither of a view, whether I’d got on the bus to school, or if I’d darted off up a side road to bunk-off with some local losers. Little did she know, I had a new plan in place.

The journey on the first bus was acceptably quiet but then I’d have to change for the tedious, school allocated double decker, infested with rat-faced teenagers. I’d do my best to be invisible. Arriving at school, the bulk of the adolescent idiots scrambled off, drunk on testosterone-shandy, totally unaware of how cringingly embarrassing they were, I’d hang back with the dorks and geeks, until the way was clear to alight in a civilised manner. The bulk of the boys, crowded through the iron gates, like dim-witted hooligans, while I slipped away, heading down through streets which became more sinister and inviting.

Around this time, I met Selina, my dad’s latest partner in crime. She was seventeen years younger than him, and 12 years older than me. She was a slightly more age-appropriate choice of partner when compared with his ex-wife who he married in his mid-thirties when she’d only been alive the same number of years as the age gap in his present relationship. The ‘ex’ became good pals with my older sister of the same age and that friendship long outlasted the marriage.

Dad had met Selina in a psychiatric facility that also had programs for addicts. He lovingly referred to it as the ‘loony bin’. He took holidays there in winter, to detox, knowing full well he’d resume his addictive activities once back on the outside.

Her life had been riddled with her own addictions, unlike him though, she worked to support herself, albeit it in a trade that left her feeling unclean. A clinging child had been taken from her by social services because of her unfortunate plight. This led to her umpteenth suicide attempt which she was recovering from when she hitched her wagon to dad’s black hole.

She was warm, attractive and funny, I took a shine to her right away.

I’d arrive at my dad’s, just as a ringing belted out from the girl’s school across the street, signifying the start of their day. Four identical black and white doorbells were attached to the flaking doorframe, each having a little plastic window revealing scrawled blue biro underneath, I pressed the top one without looking.

I’d wait a while, no movement, I’d ring it again, holding down for as long as I dared. The upstairs sash window would slide up and dad’s morning corpse would look out squinting, before dropping the keys down to me. By the time I got upstairs, the two of them would be sat up in bed shaking uncontrollably whilst passing a pint glass of cider between them, taking huge gulps.

That bedsit, sat, hunkered down, buried in my subconscious, before rebirthing itself, in manifested replicas at multiple points in my future, homing me in some kind of slimy hereditary fate.

In the corner, a double bed squatted, wearing no under-sheet and covered with blankets rather than duvet,. A grubby dimpled fabric headboard, unattached was wedged by the bed against the wall. In the centre of the room was a khaki settee, before that, a low wooden coffee table quaking under the weight of overflowing ashtrays and empty bottles and cans from the night before. A big old TV wobbled on a stand in the corner. One wall had a white tiled, nineteen seventies fireplace, the chimney boarded off and a three-bar electric heater mounted where the real fire should have been. Behind the couch a metal runner, the type that held carpet down in doorways, joined the living area carpet to a section of lino which bore orange and brown curlicues in a repeated, mock tile, design. This determined the small kitchen area, consisting of wall mounted units, a sink and draining board, a small fridge and an unused electric cooker. A large wooden wardrobe was near the window with heaps of clothes that wouldn’t fit inside piled against it. When I was much younger dad would sometimes tell my mum he was taking me to school, but he’d let me stay off and go with him on his rounds as he drunk-drove around pubs, delivering ‘pop’. He’d have a pint ‘on the house’ in most of them, I’d drink large amounts of cherryade and eat crisps and often throw up a red mush into the toilets before the end of the day. Drinking until I puked would become quite a significant part of my life. Going into those empty pubs with my dad before they opened in the mornings, had the same strangely nostalgic smell of his bedsit.

I’d spend my days there drinking, smoking and on lucky days, getting stoned. We would watch daytime telly and play cards. Various miscreants came and went throughout the day, some adjusting their behaviour to a more pleasant tone because of my presence, some not so much. Once, when Selina wasn’t there, I remember a big vinegary man dropped by, wearing a stained white vest that was too large for him and saggy stone-washed jeans. He put a tape in the video player and hit play. A grainy 70s porno was the distasteful matinee, I remember feeling very awkward as this group of aging delinquents giggled like school boys and I thought ‘oh no, I’m watching a porno with dad,’ after one scene he said,

‘I’ll never eat a cucumber sandwich again’.

Dad would dabble in dealing in a small-town kind of way, more an in-between man. I once turned up there and the place looked like he’d been burgled. He seemed in very good spirits despite the fact that the police had raided the place the night before. Cupboard doors hung off broken hinges, drawers were tipped all over the floor. They left empty handed and didn’t even bother doing him for the small amount of weed he had on a skinning up tray on the coffee table. The reason for his cheerfulness was then revealed, despite them ransacking and searching every inch of his dour drinking den, the one place they had neglected to look, was in the oven, where a sizable slab of hash sat undetected, waiting to bake his circle of acquaintances.

The next time I went, the sunshine that was Selina was back in residence, brightening his gloomy multi-function room. She chatted with me like we were friends and beamed at me the whole time with her big eyes. Dad played patience. Eventually he got up, put his leather jacket on and said, ‘I’m off to see a man about a dog.’

As soon as the downstairs front door slammed, she bounced closer to me on the couch and said ‘I’ve got you all to myself now.’

I laughed shyly, whilst in my head I was thinking, ‘Oh no, what’s happening.’

She put her drink-free hand on my face and said ‘look at those cheekbones.’

I was stoned and everything was in slow motion. She had tight shorts on and a thin vest, her big bare legs crossed in front of her. I was trying to be polite while avoiding her gaze and she kept telling me to look at her, when I did, I got the feeling that I knew what her glass of cider felt like.

She turned into Pepe Le Pew and I was a poor cat that had inadvertently got a white stripe painted down my back. In one movement she went from her cross-legged position to a kneeling position with a smooth womanly thigh on either side of my lap. I was conflicted, it was a thrilling experience and so surreal to my stoned mind, but the knowledge that this was my dad’s girlfriend bothered me somewhat.

She was mainly toying with me, she wanted to see me squirm, she did kiss me and wriggle about on top of me a lot but it never went further than that. This event repeated itself on a number of occasions. One time she said something along the lines of ‘You think I’m old and ugly don’t you?’

I said ‘No of course not.’

She tilted her head to the side resting it on the back of the sofa, staring into my eyes for ages, and then said softly ‘you’re so sweet.’

Another time just after my dad left, she grinned and an impish look that was on her face quickly changed to vacant and she said ‘Don’t worry, I won’t molest you’

Then took one of my hands and put it around her shoulder, leaned into me and rested her head on my chest. I rubbed her shoulder and she quietly wept.

five years later when I was nearly eighteen and hadn’t had a girlfriend for three years, I’d often beat myself up over not having been bolder in those situations with Selina. Further into the future still, I began to suspect that those secret Selina times had not been covert at, but instead a conspiracy between her and my dad to endow me with some real-life lady experience.

This deduction came to me after I visited my dad at a future flat, in our only ever pre-arranged appointment, when he’d told me to come over for drinks. When I got there, he wasn’t alone, there were two women who looked like they were out on day release. Dad plonked a crate of beer on the table and said ‘I’ll be back later.’

I drummed my fingers on my knees and smiled politely at them with raised eyebrows, they were staring at me like I was dirt then one of them said ‘Ow old ah you?’

I made my excuses and left.

Sometime after that, I’d been at my sisters and she said ‘Did you hear about Selina?’

I said ‘who?’ pretending to not know who she was talking about.

‘Selina! Dad’s ex.’

I pouted my lips and shook my head and she went on ‘She killed herself.’

I stared into space and nodded slowly and said ‘That’s sad’

‘Wow, she finally did it’ I thought, and was quite deeply affected despite the insouciance I’d shown my sister. She obviously stuck in my head otherwise this painting wouldn’t have ever emerged. It was a tragic waste of life. She was kind and lovely despite what life had dealt her and I thought about her often.

At the end of each of those days spent with Selina and dad, I’d make my way to rendezvous with the moron riddled bus. I’d be drunk, stoned or both, feeling like an old man surrounded by boys. I’d get home, or more accurately, I’d get to my mum and step dad’s house, at the usual time so as not to arouse suspicion regarding my truancy. They didn’t mind me enough to notice that I wasn’t completely sober.

School eventually noticed that my absences had now merged into one and began to contact my mum. There was a social worker lady who’s mission it was, was to find and apprehend me. I couldn’t go to my dad’s every day because he would get sick of it, the visiting son novelty having worn thin. So the remaining time I would be back to knocking off with some local dickheads. The only reason I tolerated them was because my own testosterone was rising in me like sticky sap, and on the evenings, girls would congregate around these tracksuited twats, the chance of getting off with one of them made it worthwhile.

On the days when we hung around, I was susceptible to capture, I think Sally social worker only got me a handful of times though. My mum had received intel regarding my haunts from my younger sister and passed on that information. Sally, was a lovely lady, very kind and understanding, the perfect person for that role, I was always polite to her and we’d chat as she drove me to school. When she got me to go with her, the dumbasses I was knocking around with, would swear at her, shout the worst kind of insults and make lewd gestures. I’d tell them to shut up and later, apologise for their behaviour

Once in school we’d step into to the headmaster’s office. He would seem temporarily refreshed by the presence of his new, extra-curricular colleague until they had to get down to the nitty-gritty of fathoming out my behaviour. He’d break off their discussion periodically to admonish me. I’d make all the right noises in a, perfect-pupil, polite manner, my courteous and thoughtful attitude confusing him as it didn’t align with my misconduct. Then he’d stare at me for a while over his glasses and say ‘Now get to class.’

I’d reply ‘Yes sir’ and walk down a corridor then out of the nearest exit.

Before then I had gone into school on some occasions, one time I made the mistake of walking into a physics class late, the teacher dragged me outside and began pushing me into the wall and then slapped me. I just grinned at him. Later the head of year asked why I’d stopped attending that class and when I baulked, he said, ‘I want you to be honest with me, did he touch you?’

I jolted my head back and said ‘no, no, not like that, he just slapped me... across the face a couple of times.’

I was never questioned again about what classes I showed up for and took advantage of the situation by only attending art, invigilated by rotation of unqualified stand in teachers. There wasn’t a time in either middle or upper school that I had an actual art teacher.

They had given up on me within the school walls but administrative protocol still triggered a series of events leading to a phone call which encroached on my step dad’s day off, forcing him off the sofa, when my mum wasn’t home. This disturbance and the involuntary recruitment into this problem riled him more than the problem itself and he made it known to me the next morning as I left for school.

He intercepted me at the porch door and jabbed his work worn finger repeatedly into my chest saying ‘You better go to school today’

I tried to back out of the door and he whispered ‘If you don’t go in today, then don’t bother coming home’.

I said ‘OK” which he took to mean I’d go to school but I meant OK, I won’t come home.

I went and hung around with the local numbskulls for the day then walked over to my dad’s in the evening. This unexpected visit from me was unwelcome but he didn’t throw me out. His bedsit filled up with undesirables and the alcohol piled up on the table. The whole affair was a loud blur of ugliness that I wasn’t enjoying, at some point someone gave me a blue pill, I didn’t know what it was but ate it anyway. I can’t remember much after that but I remember leaving, walking down the street feeling fucked up then everything went black. The next thing I knew I woke up on the pavement not far from his house, still in my school uniform, just as the sky was getting light. There was blood all over my ear and it seemed like it had come from inside. I remember thinking I was lucky nothing bad had happened, what with it being such a dodgy area.

I trekked over to my brothers and got stoned with him and his girlfriend for a couple of days, then he told me I should probably go home. Without knowing what else to do I went to my sister’s house, which was near my mums, arriving in the evening. I walked in the door without knocking, that’s the kind of house it was, a bunch of people were getting stoned and my sister protested when one of the lads passed me a spliff, but then she gave in and seemingly addressed me but was playing to her audience, speaking in a completely unnecessary loud and exaggerated tone, like people like her always do, ‘And.. where the fuck have you been?’

Before I had chance to answer she added ‘You are in so much trouble, mum is so pissed off with you!’

I looked down smiling and shook my head. ‘What’s she mad for’

She replied ‘How about not turning up to school, how about, not coming home for three days!’

I remember thinking how messed up it was that mum hadn’t seen her fourteen-year-old for three days, had no idea where he was and no way off contacting him and rather than worrying, it made her angry.

My sister said ‘you are going to be so grounded!’

And I replied sarcastically 'Yeh... course I am.’

People gradually dispersed from her madhouse, she was short on cash and only had about three cigs left. A selfish plan hatched quickly in my mind. I made a wager with her, that not only would I not be grounded but I would be back within the hour and have cig money. ‘There’s no way’ she said.

I got to mum’s house, knowing full well my stepdad had left to work away again. I kind of wanted to get a bath and go to bed but I was fuelled on by the thought of the look on my sisters face when I returned to her house and walked through the door.

Mum looked at me and turned red, her face contorting in anger, if she could have hit me she would, but once I got a bit bigger and started blocking her attacks karate style and laughing she’d stopped trying that shit.

‘Mum listen’ I said, but she went off on one, shouting ‘Just what do you think you are playing at, you promised dad you’d go to school, then not coming back, you realise you are causing problems between us.’(meaning her and him)

I waited for a pause in her rant and said. ‘I didn’t promise I’d go to school, he said If I don’t go to school then don’t bother coming home, I said OK and didn’t go to school and didn’t come home’ feeling pleased with myself.

‘You think your so clever don’t you’ she said and tried the tactic of sobbing to make me feel sorry for her.

I put on a calmer, serious voice and told her I’d just come from my sisters and that she was going through a bit of a crisis. I made up a story that my sister, was really upset and didn’t know what to do because she didn’t have any money for nappies for the baby, she needed money and I didn’t want to leave her like that. Mum couldn’t refuse, gave me a tenner and I said I’d be back the next day, then walked to my sisters, smug that my plan had worked.

I moved in with my sister shortly after that as it seems my mum gave up on me too. My sister's house was a drug-fuelled party house so that suited me just fine, I was fourteen and I could do whatever I wanted.