A Legion's Requiem

A Legion's Requiem

November 6th, 1976

Me

my name is spike daft. i am Punk.

am i a culture? would, if a man of high class were to see me stabbed in the street...would he stop and consider my life? would he help me, or at the very least look at me for a lingering moment? would, as he lay next to the warmth of his soul mate that night in a warm bed...as he switched off the lamp, would he think of me and be grateful for what he is? no, i am saddened to say that despite all the optimism in england, even in the world, i do not think that he would do any of those things.

despite this dismal consideration, i believe we are a culture: one of leers and safety-pins, violence, anarchy, drugs. we are the culture, some think, of deterioration, our motto is DESTROY in big jagged letters held by hollow-eyed youth haunted by shadows that men of triple their years have never fathomed in their worst of times.

i am but one amongst so many of the hollow-eyed people clustered on the streets of london- we are disenchanted youth, apparently, with nowhere to turn but our music. to an extent, this is true. there is nothing to do on some days but slowly and methodically destroy ourselves. i've decided that the irony lies in the fact that many of us don't even realize it. forget wanting to die as old as possible. who would ever want to get old when they can escape it so easily, and have a beautiful corpse in the end? people see us as tragic and horrifying at the same time- the way people looked at lepers in the old days- with hatred and disdain coupled with morbid curiosity. but then again, people are naturally like that. this i have learned.

already i know that those who happen to have stumbled across these writings are wondering why i don't capitalize my name, or anything else for that matter, although there is one word i will gladly hold down the shift button for.

first thing's first: capitalization is the alphabet's way of making some things seem more important than what follows and precedes it, which is complete bollocks, as far as i am concerned. nothing is better or less than anything else. the same goes for me. i live no pretense; i am a human being, like everyone else. i am a loner, an anarchist, a Punk.

ah- there's that word i was talking about. and why is Punk capitalized? because it is my life, dear readers... and the life of hundreds of others who otherwise would exist in the mundane shadows of domestic life, never to be anyone, never to stand out, never to be noticed. we could die at eighty knowing that we never made an impact on anything whatsoever, knowing that we let the cruel fallacies of life conquer us. but no- we do not let that happen. we become Punk.



November 8th, 1976

Fear

someone once asked me to define, in a word, what it really is that i feel when i am out on the streets with others of my ilk. HOW DOES IT FEEL, HAVING NO HOME? they ask. ARENT YOU SAD? ARENT YOU LONELY? ARENT YOU COLD?

no, i am none of these things. i am real- i don't need material things, really . and i am home. i can't say that i know no other life, but i can truthfully proclaim that it's the only life i am willing to live. i'm not sad because i know who i am and who my friends and enemies are. i don't wonder whether or not one likes me or dislikes me- nothing is hidden, nothing is guessed at, nothing is fake. and i rarely get cold, really. the drugs help take the bite away, and so do adam's assuring words. i think he is the reason i am still alive.

people don't like adam just as they don't like me, but more so, and in a few different ways. his friends wonder after him and his enemies fear him, are disgusted by him. they call him mutie sometimes because he's got scars all over his body, and most of them weren't accidents. well, aren't accidents. so i guess he is mutilated like they say, but i think it's his life that's really screwed up.

adam is a heroine addict. he knows he's going to die one of these days. but what really takes the piss out of me is that he's not at all afraid of it. he only weighs eighty pounds, and he's got a long, irish face and these giant black eyes that seem to stare right through things, as though he exists on another plane of life. it's not the drugs that make them do that, not when you get deep into it. he's got cigarette burns all over his wrists and the backs of his hands, razor-slashes all over the rest of him. his arms are patched with bruises and his veins are scarred and stick out because he's always shooting up. adam has the smallest hands i've ever seen. it's because he's so skinny, of course. his hair is black and all in spikes, a mass of disarray just like his life. he's got a safety pin through the septum of his nose, has tons of them all over his body. many punks do, but he's got a lot of them. he pulls on them really hard when he needs to come back to reality. he says it hurts like hell and it grounds him. like being scarred like that isn't enough to keep you low. adam is, of course, a Punk too. i think he's beautiful, and he protects me from the ones who want to hurt us because unlike so many he knows what true friendship entails.

the ones who hate us...they follow you like wolves, you know. all of them- their number is alarming when you're on the losing side. they wait for you to come out of your hiding places. and you do, because you're not afraid of them. not when you're Punk. you take whatever they dish out because you know who you are. you won't change for anyone's fist or knife or broken bottle.

when you leave a place, like the sandwich shop on king's road, you have to look right and left, do it several times, just like you were crossing the street. but most of the time, they find you anyway. many of us never even speak to them- what would we say, after all, except spouting our hatred until our throats are bleeding?- but they attack us anyway. i guess to them we are a sort of subversive threat. we don't bother trying to assuage the corrosive anger they harbor against us. because no matter what, they're going to show up and sooner or later, and we have to take what they dish out.

WHAT'S THE PROBLEM, PUNK? they scream from behind windswept hairstyles and sneers glinting like the switchblades that wax nostalgic of the fifties in the palms of their well-formed hands. HUH? WHAT'S YOUR PROBLEM, YOU SCARED? YOU'RE GONNA DIE, YOU HEAR ME? YOU'RE GONNA DIE, PUNK!!!!

am i? am i going to die?

maybe so.

the question is, do i care?

one day, after two hippie- looking guys catch me alone on glaston street and thrash me with their broken beer-bottles, (and i wonder what they mean by peace, then, if they justify this) i mention my thoughts to adam; i ask him if he really thinks they'll kill us.

yes, he answers, because he never sugar coats the truth- he wouldn't be adam if he did. they will kill some of us, and we'll probably end up killing some of them. this is a violent time. but, he says, taking my chin in his hand with its bitten nails and lifting my eyes up to meet his, while in their depths my own bloodstained face looks back at me, don't be afraid of what people are going to think of you. 'cause when it's all said and done, they're no different from you, or me, or the queen. everyone is born and everyone dies. and never mind all that's in between because it's all mindless bollocks anyway. he wipes the blood off of my face with his hands. they smell of cigarettes and the street.

yes, adam is beautiful.



November 10th, 1976

Another Adventure

i woke up this morning to the sound of breaking glass.

adam was beside me on the cold floor, and beside him, a younger, mohawked boy of about sixteen. he had a skull-like face and didn't even wake up last night to greet us when we arrived.

the house we were staying in (we are already in another place now) was cold and impersonal- it belongs to a couple who have made well for themselves because they're drug dealers. so they bought the house and live, danny and julie brocker, the safety nets of london. they are terribly somber people, really, but generous; they too were street punks before they got together and made their money and they understand our plight. sometimes there is no place to go squatting, no abandoned buildings, no other houses, no sympathetic mums or dads, so they help us out.

the walls are flimsy there, and when the second shattering noise came it sounded as though someone had broken a bottle right next to my head.

adam sat straight up next to me, and i felt his hand on my shoulder. "what was that?"

"i don't know," i replied. the last shadows of my drug-addled sleep were scurrying from the corners of my mind like black spiders, leaving behind the slight trace of a headache that only promised to get worse as the day progressed.

i sat up, too, and looked to the boy, thinking he would have heard the racket and awoken as well. but he was still lying down, in the same position as last night, looking up at the ceiling with half-open, glassy eyes. his gaze was blank and dry, and after staring at him stupidly for a moment, puzzling over the dryness of his lips, the shriveled look they had, drawn back over his teeth ever so slightly, i realized that he was dead.

"oh god," i gasped, forgetting the sounds outside. "adam, he's dead."

adam mumbled dispassionately, "he died last night, after you went to sleep." his voice held an odd tone, its sound in my head translated itself from merely a noise in my ears to actual words. GET USED TO IT, it said coldly. adam described the fact of overdose to me as though it were a common occurrence, though with some thought i suppose that it is.

he got to his feet and padded to the window, where he cautiously drew back the dirty drape to see. he hissed like a snake after a moment and quickly put it back.

"bloody teds," he growled. "throwing bottles at the house!"

at that moment danny emerged into the room and directed his dead eyes at us. "they do it often," he said slowly. "they know we shelter other Punks here. but they're all cowards. that's all they'll do. it'll be over in a little while." the flat gaze moved to the boy on the floor.

"he died last night," adam said.

"yes," danny said. "i know. another overdose." he sighed. "what a waste."

i looked at his back as he left the room, his feet scraping the tile floor of the hall and then whispering ever so slightly as they hit the worn shag carpet outside our room. there were stains all over his shirt. "goodbye, brocker," adam said, and brocker stopped for a moment. he did not turn around. after a minute he started shuffling down the hall again.

i don't know that that means.

*

so now we've moved on again. we are staying an old flat with a couple of other Punks we've never met before. the owner of the place is a guy called weird. his parents left the place to him and went to live in america, but he won't tell anyone why. i don't think he knows, personally.

he works at a clothing shop round the corner on baker avenue and makes a modest sum that keeps the house paid and the heater working somewhat. the flat is warm and feels lived in, which is much better than the brocker place. i think i like it here.

i can't stop thinking about the dead boy. i wonder if he is still lying on the floor, in that same position. obviously no one cares, or they'd have wept over him, or at least looked at him a little longer and with a little more feeling. i didn't see any of that, even when, as we were leaving, some other people went into the room.

i don't say anything because adam's made so light of it. he'll tell me to get used to it, i know, because it's going to happen a lot. i have not lived on the streets long enough to see this as part of my everyday life, though. but what really disturbs me is that adam's absolutely right, whether i want to believe it or not. i guess he should know, and i guess i should trust him. he'd be the first.

but, sitting here in weird's living room, surrounded by new people just like me, i have to ask whatever god there may be to have mercy on that boy's soul. life certainly had none on his body.



November 20th, 1976

I Am Not A Monster

i was attacked by teds near the train station today. it was the first time in my life that I have ever been afraid, and the first time also that i had ever been so utterly transfixed by a single person.

weird's flat is twenty minutes from the station, and i was walking home alone with a pocket full of amphetamine sulfate that i had bought as a favor for weird- he loves the stuff. it was getting dark and the evening shadows were unfurling themselves over the streets like the final curtain in a play, triggering the streetlamps which winked on like a line of cyclopes just awakening after a long sleep. the train yard, once the dealer and his

accomplice had departed, was empty and silent.

my footsteps were crunching loudly in the still evening air, the noise ricocheting off the walls of the station. i became aware of the others halfway to the fence that would, after i crossed its chain-link threshold, release me onto burdock street.

"oi!" came a voice behind me. "what're you doin 'ere, Punk?"

i stopped, my jaw set in anger and tense surprise, and listened with growing unease as the crunch of their shoes in the gravel became myriad. i did not turn round now, dared not, for i was frightened at seeing the number of people that would be facing me should i do so. they saw this, no doubt, as an act of pride and pride alone. a filthy Punk who has the nerve to think he is worth his own ego!

"i says, what're you doin 'ere, ya lil bastard?" said the voice again, louder this time.

"what do you care?" i said back, and a fire began to burn deep inside my gut, surging forth until i realized that the inferno that had been brought forth was nothing but a blind, frozen panic.

in the silence that followed i began to wish fervently that adam was beside me. he would have known what to do, but i had no clue.

the first blow came on both expected and unexpected- i knew it was coming, but when i could not say, for the panic that now burned all within me had blinded me to the passage of time. the quickening of their footsteps in the gravel had grown louder every moment, and then in a flash i was on the ground, feeling glass in my flesh and boots in my gut. i did not fight back because the sheer number of them was crushing me ever inward as though i were an empty beer can. their blows rained down fast and...stinging....presently tapered off...and then stopped completely.

puzzled, i forced myself through blackened eyes to chance a look about me, and saw, from my place on the ground, another Punk, whom the teds were regarding with a kind of abject horror that held despite its intensity a kind of familiarity. they had seen this Punk before, and the sight of him took my breath away.

he was very small, painfully thin- an obvious speed addict. his eyes were hollow and shining with malevolence and lack of sanity...his fists were bloody and i realized then that he had attacked several of my own attackers. his narrow chest was heaving, his lips slightly parted and i saw the gleam of his teeth, surprisingly white in the pallid, unkempt face that looked as though the thin translucence of the first layer of his skin was the only thing attached to the bone there. he snarled hideously as the one ted that spoke to me now directed his grating voice at the figure before him that loomed like a giant specter not in size but in sheer, raw presence.

"'ey, freak, we don't want anything to do with yer, so shove off! we're not afraid of you- come closer and we'll cut yer fackin' arms off!"

the snarl never left his lips, nor did a single word, and without taking his burning eyes off of the gang he drew from his battered pants pocket a shattered piece of glass about three inches long- a relic obviously taken from the preceding skirmish. he laughed bitterly, a sharp sound deep and barking with bronchitis that came from a tortured throat, and then whispered in a hoarse voice nevertheless touched by his apparent youth, "if that's what you're wanting, i'll do it meself."

as the blade slowly dragged across his flesh, i saw from my vantage point that it was an inch deep into his skin, and he was literally carving it from his arm, methodically, relishing the pain, basking in it. the blood swelled for a moment in the wound, paused for a minute, a glistening orb of crimson, and then overflowed down his arm and dripped to the ground in a serpentine line.

his cup runneth over, i thought deliriously from my place on the gravel.

the teds recoiled in horror and disgust, and the lead one hissed, "you're a freak, a fackin' MONSTER!"

and then they were gone.

he stepped forward and, by some odd wash of warmth, i was not afraid- without a flinch i took his offered hand that was slick with blood, feeling the bones just beneath his flesh as delicate as those of a bird's... for a moment, as i pulled hard to get up, i was terrified that i might break them, shatter them like glass... but before i knew it i was on my feet and the unknown Punk was shrinking back into the shadows from whence he came. before his departure his glittering eyes fixed on mine as though in a fever- he bared his teeth at me in the harsh mockery of a smile and said in a voice that was legion...

"i am not a monster. "

*

even now, safe at weird's house, bandages on my cuts and ice on my bruises, safe in adam's company, safe and among friends... i cannot wash the sight of him from my eyes. with his emergence from the shadows and into my life, i have come to realize that as Punks we are not a collection of random testimonies to chaos and waste- certainly the elements are there, stronger in some places than in others like the bad places in an apple, like the unknown Punk, but it all melds together into one- as Punks, we are one and legion.

so who am i?