Generation Doomed Pt. 2
Talking about the doomed generation and the mysterious disappearance of one of our numbers triggered my memory...
I wrote this letter at the time a body had been discovered and I was certain that it would be what was left of my friend. Turned out that the identification revealed it to be the body of a local smackhead instead. The mystery was still there.
This is more than accurate description of events, however I have omitted the names for reasons that are obvious. Nobody who is one step away from grieving needs to know the truth about how the person for whom they feel arrived at wherever they have.
Well it looks almost certain that the mystery of what happened to ***** ********** is going to be unravelled fairly soon. As you may or may not know a body has been found in Nunthorpe woods, the body of what is only described as a “white adult male”. The body had been there for some time, buried under a pile of logs, not far from a footpath that although isn’t strictly for the public, is in common use anyway. ***** went missing at the back end of February; If I was *****’s family I would fear the worst…
And yet could this whole sorry state of affairs have been avoided? I mean, I spoke to mine and *****’s mutual friends and it all seems to be about money. I’d bet top dollar some of these “friends” even know more than they are letting on. What is for sure was ***** owed some very nasty characters money, and it came back to haunt him. The money was a mixture of Cocaine and gambling debts, certainly going into the thousands. And yet, even though I know the workings of the world and all things criminal, it seems incredible that a man nearly six months younger than I should have been murdered over what amounts to quite possibly the same amount of money I owe in student loans. Wasn’t there somebody he could turn to in order to secure this amount of money - He was not from a deprived background by any means. And if he knew the trouble he was in, why not come clean and tell your parents, friends, anybody, about the ugly situation you’re in? Anything to get that money, to pay off the debt that ultimately killed you…
I can’t quite get it clear in my head - But I can take a guess as to why. Perhaps what ***** never understood about this world, not coming from a deprived background, not mixing with these people on a regular basis, and certainly having no status in the “underworld” of Middlesbrough, is that these people can never be your friends. I envisage him having run up debts before, paid them off just before it got to bone breaking time, and then ended up laughing the matter off - “These people know me, they know I’m good for it. They’re good old boys. I’m exempt from the same treatment the others get”. But no, there are no friends in this business, as both you and I know.
I come to this conclusion because *****, although knowing he had the debts and obviously talking to people about the debts (not the right people as it turned out), went out and got drunk at the ********** in Middlesbrough, and it is from there he disappeared. These are not the actions of somebody with massive debts and problems, yet we know they existed despite his behaviour. He even left by himself, no back-up if there was trouble. This almost smacks of confidence. Can you picture how it went down? Did they follow him, or pull up in cars? Did they act friendly and lure him away with promises of more drugs or a party? Or did they plump for getting straight down to business and dole out the beating that killed him there and then… Coroner’s report says four “serious” wounds to the head. Naturally the flesh is in such a bad state of decomposition by now they would be unable to see the bruises that doubtlessly covered his body. The serious wounds, the ones that they can detect, broke bones. Perhaps ***** knew what was coming, and was past caring. Depressed and miserable, he went out for one last drink instead of hiding and panicking in his house…
When I last saw him it was Christmas time. Me, Rich and Phil had gone to a party in Middlesbrough to see a mutual female friend and ***** happened to be there. I say happened, I think it may have been his house. I was too drunk to care. I was pleased to see somebody from School, especially one I had gotten along with well, and hadn’t seen in about a year. But he didn’t come over to greet me, and instead sent over our host. She told me he couldn’t remember if I wanted to beat him up or not, if I hated him or not. These were clear and obvious signs of drug psychosis, that slow creeping paranoia that gets you eventually no matter which drug it is, just as long as you keep taking something. The mind was not built to exist in permanently altered states of reality, not after the formative child years of setting down what is real… But you can push it so far and still keep a hold of something that qualifies as reality. *****, even at this stage, had gone too far…
I explained that far from “hating” him, I was pleased to see him and would like to have a drink with him. She relayed the message and he came over to talk. He was gaunt, pale, poor complexion to how I remember him in school, and he looked a lot thinner. Increased metabolism with diminished appetite no doubt the cause, classic signs of the nocturnal drug taker. We talked about some good old days at school, football, mischief, you know the drill, and he told me about his new job (as an estate agent if I remember rightly) and what clubs he would frequent. But I could see that he was a derelict, a derelict with a child’s face. Which was the weird thing; he hadn’t aged since school, his thin build accentuating his young appearance.
When he was at school all the girls used to want a piece of him, but ***** didn’t want the nice posh girls who would let him get his fingers, or maybe even suck him off. He would opt for, and fuck, the girls from the estates, the ones who would drop mewling brats out of their boot topped cunts in record times, creating an army of bastard children all uglier and denser than the parents that sired them… He got lucky that not one of his “conquests” became pregnant. Together me and him would down half bottles of Vodka round the back of the school disco, wanting to get wrecked and face the music of horrible adolescence. Some nights, on the rare occasions, he would even take ecstasy tablets, for a school fucking disco no less, one of the few people I knew who were genuine in their drug use at this age. Despite how abnormal this may sound, all of this behaviour made total sense to me at the time and he had my utmost respect.
Yet, despite his obvious qualities and ability to not get bogged down with teenage bullshit and go his own way, he always tried to ingratiate himself into the gang of “hard” fighting kids (in a lot of cases much older than we were) from Marton and Nunthorpe. Why? He had no real reason to, people pretty much left ***** to his own devices, and he was popular enough. Who knows why? But he did start to hang round these guys who were going on to graduate from a very different kind of school we were going to - Me and him and many others like us wanted to experiment with the things we weren’t supposed to have, to prove that not only could we handle them but we could take more than the older generation that had forbidden us to touch them… Such joy from a simple agenda when young. Those kids were going to graduate from a school so brutal it makes the ones our parents hawk to us (The so called “school of hard knocks”) seem like a holiday camp. Life in these places was savage, and these kids were the product of that savagery, knowing that to make any kind of name for themselves, to secure any kind of future, they would have to be more brutal, more savage than the generation before them. Why would anybody want to become a part of that if they didn’t absolutely have to? But violence and crime can seem glamorous to those who don’t know it’s true colours.
It would come as no surprise to learn that it was one of these “old friends” that helped put the boot into ***** as he looked up helpless, held by two men both infinitely stronger than him. He more than likely tried to beg, tried to reason, maybe even went so far as to mention the good old days, but this was what these people had to do. Even with someone as ultimately small time as *****, because if they didn’t, then maybe it would be them in his position, and somebody with all their fears in their position, sticking the boot into them, as they choked blood and spat teeth and hoped and prayed for just one more chance to see their family and friends, even from the bed of a hospital.
Hell, I’ve made a lot of assumptions and conclusions, but I’ve seen this before, I know how it went down. Even if this body, by some crazy stretch of the imagination, doesn’t turn out to be *****, it is a matter of time before we do find his battered corpse somewhere. He died owing money, with money in his bank account, money that makes it look like he is dead because it has been untouched since his disappearance. Money that might have bought him time. But no, he is gone, and the money will go on something less important than keeping him alive, more than likely on his own funeral arrangements. A part of me would like to go to the ceremony, pay my respects to a kid who was little boy lost, a good guy with a good heart. But I doubt I will, because the whole thing is so fucking tragic and sinister, and the people there in attendance are more than likely just as guilty as the people who beat him to death. This could have all been avoided, that much is fact, even if everything else I’ve assumed is wrong.
I wrote this letter at the time a body had been discovered and I was certain that it would be what was left of my friend. Turned out that the identification revealed it to be the body of a local smackhead instead. The mystery was still there.
This is more than accurate description of events, however I have omitted the names for reasons that are obvious. Nobody who is one step away from grieving needs to know the truth about how the person for whom they feel arrived at wherever they have.
Well it looks almost certain that the mystery of what happened to ***** ********** is going to be unravelled fairly soon. As you may or may not know a body has been found in Nunthorpe woods, the body of what is only described as a “white adult male”. The body had been there for some time, buried under a pile of logs, not far from a footpath that although isn’t strictly for the public, is in common use anyway. ***** went missing at the back end of February; If I was *****’s family I would fear the worst…
And yet could this whole sorry state of affairs have been avoided? I mean, I spoke to mine and *****’s mutual friends and it all seems to be about money. I’d bet top dollar some of these “friends” even know more than they are letting on. What is for sure was ***** owed some very nasty characters money, and it came back to haunt him. The money was a mixture of Cocaine and gambling debts, certainly going into the thousands. And yet, even though I know the workings of the world and all things criminal, it seems incredible that a man nearly six months younger than I should have been murdered over what amounts to quite possibly the same amount of money I owe in student loans. Wasn’t there somebody he could turn to in order to secure this amount of money - He was not from a deprived background by any means. And if he knew the trouble he was in, why not come clean and tell your parents, friends, anybody, about the ugly situation you’re in? Anything to get that money, to pay off the debt that ultimately killed you…
I can’t quite get it clear in my head - But I can take a guess as to why. Perhaps what ***** never understood about this world, not coming from a deprived background, not mixing with these people on a regular basis, and certainly having no status in the “underworld” of Middlesbrough, is that these people can never be your friends. I envisage him having run up debts before, paid them off just before it got to bone breaking time, and then ended up laughing the matter off - “These people know me, they know I’m good for it. They’re good old boys. I’m exempt from the same treatment the others get”. But no, there are no friends in this business, as both you and I know.
I come to this conclusion because *****, although knowing he had the debts and obviously talking to people about the debts (not the right people as it turned out), went out and got drunk at the ********** in Middlesbrough, and it is from there he disappeared. These are not the actions of somebody with massive debts and problems, yet we know they existed despite his behaviour. He even left by himself, no back-up if there was trouble. This almost smacks of confidence. Can you picture how it went down? Did they follow him, or pull up in cars? Did they act friendly and lure him away with promises of more drugs or a party? Or did they plump for getting straight down to business and dole out the beating that killed him there and then… Coroner’s report says four “serious” wounds to the head. Naturally the flesh is in such a bad state of decomposition by now they would be unable to see the bruises that doubtlessly covered his body. The serious wounds, the ones that they can detect, broke bones. Perhaps ***** knew what was coming, and was past caring. Depressed and miserable, he went out for one last drink instead of hiding and panicking in his house…
When I last saw him it was Christmas time. Me, Rich and Phil had gone to a party in Middlesbrough to see a mutual female friend and ***** happened to be there. I say happened, I think it may have been his house. I was too drunk to care. I was pleased to see somebody from School, especially one I had gotten along with well, and hadn’t seen in about a year. But he didn’t come over to greet me, and instead sent over our host. She told me he couldn’t remember if I wanted to beat him up or not, if I hated him or not. These were clear and obvious signs of drug psychosis, that slow creeping paranoia that gets you eventually no matter which drug it is, just as long as you keep taking something. The mind was not built to exist in permanently altered states of reality, not after the formative child years of setting down what is real… But you can push it so far and still keep a hold of something that qualifies as reality. *****, even at this stage, had gone too far…
I explained that far from “hating” him, I was pleased to see him and would like to have a drink with him. She relayed the message and he came over to talk. He was gaunt, pale, poor complexion to how I remember him in school, and he looked a lot thinner. Increased metabolism with diminished appetite no doubt the cause, classic signs of the nocturnal drug taker. We talked about some good old days at school, football, mischief, you know the drill, and he told me about his new job (as an estate agent if I remember rightly) and what clubs he would frequent. But I could see that he was a derelict, a derelict with a child’s face. Which was the weird thing; he hadn’t aged since school, his thin build accentuating his young appearance.
When he was at school all the girls used to want a piece of him, but ***** didn’t want the nice posh girls who would let him get his fingers, or maybe even suck him off. He would opt for, and fuck, the girls from the estates, the ones who would drop mewling brats out of their boot topped cunts in record times, creating an army of bastard children all uglier and denser than the parents that sired them… He got lucky that not one of his “conquests” became pregnant. Together me and him would down half bottles of Vodka round the back of the school disco, wanting to get wrecked and face the music of horrible adolescence. Some nights, on the rare occasions, he would even take ecstasy tablets, for a school fucking disco no less, one of the few people I knew who were genuine in their drug use at this age. Despite how abnormal this may sound, all of this behaviour made total sense to me at the time and he had my utmost respect.
Yet, despite his obvious qualities and ability to not get bogged down with teenage bullshit and go his own way, he always tried to ingratiate himself into the gang of “hard” fighting kids (in a lot of cases much older than we were) from Marton and Nunthorpe. Why? He had no real reason to, people pretty much left ***** to his own devices, and he was popular enough. Who knows why? But he did start to hang round these guys who were going on to graduate from a very different kind of school we were going to - Me and him and many others like us wanted to experiment with the things we weren’t supposed to have, to prove that not only could we handle them but we could take more than the older generation that had forbidden us to touch them… Such joy from a simple agenda when young. Those kids were going to graduate from a school so brutal it makes the ones our parents hawk to us (The so called “school of hard knocks”) seem like a holiday camp. Life in these places was savage, and these kids were the product of that savagery, knowing that to make any kind of name for themselves, to secure any kind of future, they would have to be more brutal, more savage than the generation before them. Why would anybody want to become a part of that if they didn’t absolutely have to? But violence and crime can seem glamorous to those who don’t know it’s true colours.
It would come as no surprise to learn that it was one of these “old friends” that helped put the boot into ***** as he looked up helpless, held by two men both infinitely stronger than him. He more than likely tried to beg, tried to reason, maybe even went so far as to mention the good old days, but this was what these people had to do. Even with someone as ultimately small time as *****, because if they didn’t, then maybe it would be them in his position, and somebody with all their fears in their position, sticking the boot into them, as they choked blood and spat teeth and hoped and prayed for just one more chance to see their family and friends, even from the bed of a hospital.
Hell, I’ve made a lot of assumptions and conclusions, but I’ve seen this before, I know how it went down. Even if this body, by some crazy stretch of the imagination, doesn’t turn out to be *****, it is a matter of time before we do find his battered corpse somewhere. He died owing money, with money in his bank account, money that makes it look like he is dead because it has been untouched since his disappearance. Money that might have bought him time. But no, he is gone, and the money will go on something less important than keeping him alive, more than likely on his own funeral arrangements. A part of me would like to go to the ceremony, pay my respects to a kid who was little boy lost, a good guy with a good heart. But I doubt I will, because the whole thing is so fucking tragic and sinister, and the people there in attendance are more than likely just as guilty as the people who beat him to death. This could have all been avoided, that much is fact, even if everything else I’ve assumed is wrong.
posted by Richard Lewis at 9:04 PM
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