I’m Pushing 45 and I Want to Get Fit So I Can Beat Up Strangers at Bus Stops

Photo by Al Overdrive

My name is John Doran and I write about music. The young bucks who run VICE’s website thought it would be amusing to employ a 44-year-old who will never play the Dane.

In case you were wondering or simply too lazy to use urban dictionary, “meff” is Scouse/Woollyback slang for tramp (meff = meths = methylated spirits). It also means someone who looks odd; someone who doesn’t fit in. As in, “Your Adidas Samba are boss la, look at that meff Doran, he can’t even afford Dunlop Green Flash. Chin him and grab his wallet.”

MEFF 1: WHAT WERE THE SKIES LIKE WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG?

“I grew up on perforated stone nestled under a lacerated sky.”

No. That’s pretentious and partially plagiarized.

“When I was young the skies looked like milk from a carton forgotten at the back of a shared student fridge.”

No. The imagery is ridiculous and convoluted.

“Under a sky that looked like burned toast…”

No. Utter nonsense.

I’m sitting at a bus stop near Abney Park Cemetery trying to write the first line of a novel that will never get finished, let alone published.

I start writing a novel every year and have done so since I was ten. I never get further than a page in before abandoning it. This will be my 34th consecutive opening sentence. This started in 1981 with an enthusiastic but extremely derivative attempt to pen a Target-style Doctor Who adventure in longhand biro. Soon after that there was the Douglas Adams sci-fi caper written in block capitals. Then there was the Hobbit/Hawk the Slayer hybrid. The Iain Banks knock off. The Kafkaesque nightmare set in a safari park in Kirby. The experimental novels I started writing at university while under the spell of low-grade acid and William Burroughs, which were so bad they still cause me to wake up sweaty and shouting in the middle of the night. Then there was the post-Trainspotting drug depravity escapade begun after university. The string of Bukowski-damaged failures about factory work. All appalling. All one page long. Would that I could forget all of them.

And now, unable to learn my lesson, I’m writing my David Peace-style, gritty Northern novel about Satanic abuse set in St. Helens in the mid 80s, against the backdrop of pit closures, Slayer cassettes, and lighter fluid abuse. I put less effort into this endeavor with each passing year. I can no longer visualize myself as a successful novelist. I can’t even remember what the actual desire to be a popular author even feels like. I’m just doing it out of miserable painful habit now. I’ll be lucky if I’m still working on it this time tomorrow. How do writers make things up? I think all good novelists must be psychotic.

I used to walk home to my flat in Stamford Hill through Abney Park Cemetery until I found the grave and now I can’t, so I wait here for the bus instead. Last April I was having my photograph taken in among the graves by my pal Al Overdrive when we found it by accident. Just before it was time to get off I said, “Let’s do one more there” and pointed at an interesting-looking headstone.

As Al snapped away a man walking his dog stopped behind him and watched for a while. He nodded at the gravestone and said, “Do you know who’s buried there?” And when we shook our heads he said, “William Calcraft—England’s most prolific executioner.”

We were a bit suss of him at first but we ended up stopping what we were doing and listening to him as he continued: “He carried out over 450 executions. He was really popular with the public… well, the public who liked to go to executions at least. He wasn’t popular with everyone, though. He favored a short drop, you see. When you have a long drop through the trapdoor, the neck snaps immediately if you’ve got your knot right. It’s the weight of the body, you see. But Calcraft favored the short drop, and sometimes the neck wouldn’t break. So then he’d come and swing off the poor bastard’s ankles or even climb up onto their shoulders and start jumping up and down; 30,000 people used to come to watch him sometimes. He was like the one man Glastonbury Festival of capital punishment. Towns all over England would bid to have Calcraft come and do an execution. His presence meant the hotels would be full, the pubs would be rammed and the cash tills would be ringing, you see. It was probably because of him that a law was passed in 1868, necessitating all executions be carried out in private.

“Calcraft loved his work. He carried out his last execution when he was 74. He would have carried on until he died himself, but they made him retire. He just kept on botching them.”

I used to love walking through that cemetery, but it’s impossible now as it just reminds me of death too much.

While I’m stood at the bus stop a man slopes out of the cemetery and slumps down on the bench nearby. He is carrying a packed lunch of wrapped sandwiches and a can of Special Brew. It’s 9:30 AM. If he eats those sandwiches now, he’ll regret it come midday.

I try to remember what the skies actually looked like when I was young. All I can see is a vast, featureless, blue expanse. I saw this big sky during the heatwave of 1976 when I’d just turned five. If I lay on the tarmac outside my house on the Tommy Jones Estate, Rainhill, Merseyside and looked down the road, I could see a mirage if I was lucky. It was as if a scratch of sky had leaked onto the road in the distance. But I couldn’t really stay down for too long. There would be too much of my skin touching boiling hot tarmac. The road got so hot on one of the days that it was easy in some parts to pull chunks of it out as if it were partially melted toffee. We laughed and pushed our fingers into the viscous road surface.

‘I’m pulling the road apart with my hands!’ I thought, arms covered in burning hot tar.

Later in the day my mum had to put me and my mate in the bath and use butter and washing up liquid to get the now-hardened bituminous pitch off us. We came out of the bath with angry, bright pink skin, like crabs with their shells ripped off.

That summer we wandered around dozily in the 95-degree-plus heat. The boys in Speedos, the girls in bikinis. Each day it got one centigrade hotter until my dad announced: “It’s hotter here than it is in Cairo!” And we could barely imagine what this even meant.

Over the road, Ste’s mum and dad had bought a self-assembly, steel framed, rectangular swimming pool from Argos, it was a meter deep and, at our age, you could actually even swim in it. Ste was very popular that summer.

I didn’t get much of a look in. While all the other kids were messing about in the pool, Ste’s elder brother said he’d teach me how to play golf. He got me to stand behind him and shouted, “Closer! Closer! Closer!” And then when I stood right behind him he swung the club violently backwards, hitting me in the face with it. I stumbled out of the garden and back home with the laughter of all the other kids echoing round me.

“I don’t think he was actually trying to teach you golf!” shouted my dad angrily later that evening.

Just before the heatwave broke, walking up my road, I saw the pool of red liquid in front of the drive and jogged into the house where I knew there were homemade lollies made from cheap blackcurrant cordial and wooden sticks in the freezer cabinet. I ran up to my mum: “Someone’s dropped a lolly outside! There’s melted lolly everywhere! Can I have a lolly? Can I have a lolly? Can I have a lolly?”

My mum winced and my dad said: “That’s not a lolly. Do you remember next door’s dog, King…”

And then it broke.

Read from VICE Magazine: ‘Engulfed’: Fiction by Curtis Dawkins

Suddenly one lunchtime there were the biggest raindrops I’ve ever seen. I would still swear now that I remember the first few drops hissing as they hit the pavement. I can see them now, falling slowly and hitting the floor like exploding 50 pence pieces. And the funny thing is, at first it only rained down one half of our street. If you looked to the right of our house it was all rain and heavy charcoal clouds. If you looked to the left, it was all blue sky and roasting sun. But slowly, the wall of rain rolled down the street until that was all you could see. Within an hour the parched gutter had become a torrential river bursting its banks, as seen from an aircraft window.

At the bus stop I think about Ste’s elder brother and laugh “wanker” to myself as a mild aftershock of shame runs through me. I think about Ste’s brother and all of his mates marching me out to the copse that day the following year. About how they wouldn’t let me go home. How they kept me there all day…

The guy on the bench is unwrapping his sandwiches, he pulls one free from the clingfilm and jams the whole thing into his mouth and masticates loudly.

He glances up and a sickly flash of electricity runs through me.

He looks exactly like me.

He’s my height, my build, my age, has a similar haircut, the same broken nose, the same baggy eyes, the same creased forehead. He’s me, but he’s drinking Special Brew, eating sandwiches, wearing a tracksuit.

I know he’s clocked me so I go to look away, but I can see him balling up clingfilm and dropping it to the floor.

I can’t help it. I double take glaring at him. He’s sat next to a fucking bin, for Christ’s sake—why not just put it in the bin. How much effort would…

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LOOKING AT?” he roars at me. “COME ON THEN YOU CUNT! COME ON THEN YOU STREAK OF PISS—I’LL TEAR YOUR FUCKING HEAD OFF YOU CUNT!”

He’s just sitting there shouting at me, eating his sandwich, screaming at me, making no move.

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU, CUNT!”

Bits of sandwich are falling out of his mouth.

I feel frozen by the unreality of the situation. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a fight situation I don’t even know what to do. Who looks for a fight in London? Stabbings—sure. Muggings—definitely. Shootings—apparently. But brawling? Really?

It’s such a surprise I’m not even afraid. What feels like one hundred years later (but is probably more like 30 seconds) the 476 turns up and I get on with him still screaming at me from the bench.

I sit on the back seat and look out of the back window at him; he’s still shouting at me when I lose sight of him. It is a good 30 minutes before the inchoate rage and the should-have/could-have self-loathing kicks in. I start to run through the event over and over again in my head, pulling all of it apart into its component parts and forces. I try to work out exactly what would have happened, by changing the event slightly with each successive replay. Each way I imagine it turns out terribly, and mainly for me.

Read on Noisey: I Survived Motörhead’s Motörboat Cruise

The following day, I’m standing at a different bus stop in the rain. I’m still stuck in a loop, unable to stop thinking about the guy with the sandwiches. If you’re a man and you’re lucky, you tend not to get people starting on you physically once you hit your mid-thirties. You probably look as intimidating as you’re ever going to. You probably represent an unknown quantity to those looking for a scrap, who are usually younger. But does this grace period end once you become middle-aged? This is a startling and unwelcome concept. It’s not something I’d ever considered before. Do men start looking like potential victims of violence again after a certain age? I had “victim” written all over me in my teens and twenties. I don’t want this to happen again.

A voice with a Caribbean accent snaps me out of it: “You’ve got nowhere left to run! Your time is run out!” A retirement-age lady in her Sunday best is addressing everyone at the bus stop, all of whom are staring intently at their feet or smartphones.

“He is coming! Even if you’re not a fornicator. Even if you are not a drug addict. Even if you are not a problem drinker. Even if you are a non-believer. He is coming and you need to be ready! You have no idea what will happen later today, let alone tomorrow.”

I take a leaflet off her. “Thank you, son. God bless you,” she says.

When I get to the gym, as always, I just can’t get into it. After about 40 barely taxing minutes on the cross-trainer I get off and head, slightly more crushed than when I came in, to the changing rooms. I went in looking like an unfit middle-aged man and now, in the unforgiving full length mirror, I look like an unfit middle-aged man who is drenched in sweat.

In the shower I make a snap decision. I’m going to get really fit and I’m going to learn how to defend myself. I’m going to get Fight Club fit before my next birthday. I turn 45 on June 15 next year, and when I wake up that morning I’m going to look ridiculous. I’m going to have a giant triangular neck like Henry Rollins, legs like Usain Bolt, and a six pack like Miguel. And if anyone fucks with me at a bus stop I’ll be able to kick their fucking head clean off their shoulders.

I stop at reception and ask how I get a personal trainer.

The man behind the counter says: “What do you need one for?”

Well, there’s this guy, I think to myself. He looks exactly like me. I think he might even be me. Maybe he doesn’t actually even exist. But either way I want to be able to destroy him with my bare hands. I want to be able to punch him until the air is thick with pink mist. I want to pull his ribcage out of his throat and smash him with it until he’s just a mound of disgusting jelly. I will be wreathed in his fucking viscera.

The man behind the counter repeats wearily: “What do you need one for sir?”

And I laugh and pat my stomach: “Oh, I just need to get rid of the old love handles.”

John Doran’s MENK column for VICE was reworked into the acclaimed memoir, Jolly Lad, which was published this year by Strange Attractor.