About Crazy Shit (2/3) By Joe Hakim

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3).

I get on with my parents, but my - how shall I say - lifestyle habits have changed in the last few years. I work anything up to fifteen hours a night, so I have to cram in as much drinking and smoking as I can, when I can. Creeping around my room in the early hours of the morning, smoking hash out of the window and having a couple of bottles of Bud, I would marvel at the irony of ending up back in that room, doing pretty much the same shit that I did back then. When you're seventeen, you imagine that in ten years you would have made it, whatever that's supposed to mean, yet there you are, back again.

So I had to move out. I could tell my mother was relieved. She wouldn't see me on the streets, but at the same time my step-dad and she need their own space as well. I don't blame them; if I had to live with me for more than a week, I think I'd go nuts as well, if y'know whadda mean... I've found a little room above a pub on Spring Bank. It's like a bedsit type-effort.

Cut to: It's my first day there, and I'm having a pint in the pub downstairs. Ticket to Ride by the Beatles is on, and I sit and talk to an alcoholic about his impending liver transplant operation. Doctors say it'll be good as new, he says, in between sips on his pint, Better than ever.

That's great, I'm really pleased for you. It's rare thing to find a good organ nowadays, you're a lucky man. Yeah, I know, and all those fuckers who said I needed to stop drinkin' are eatin' their words right now as we speak. I light up a cigarette and order another pint. This is sort of place I could quite happily die in, I think to myself.

I have my own room, but I share the bathroom and kitchen with four others. Luckily three of those people work at the same place as I do, so they keep the same kind of horrifying hours. It means they're not in the least bit shocked to find me in my boxer shorts drinking beer at half-past five in the morning. The other guy that lives here has a normal job, so this past couple of weeks has been a period of re-adjustment for him. One morning he awoke to find us in the kitchen taking pot shots at his cabbage with a paintball gun. But we apologised, washed his vegetables, and the incident was quickly put behind us.

From my window, I can see the KC stadium, Humber Bridge and the hospital. I've put my TV in the cupboard, and I'm supposed to be settling down to some serious writing, but shit has a habit of never quite working out like you plan. I've junked my relationships, my family and my home, all so I can have the space and surroundings to produce, but then I find that it's just not forthcoming. I take some speed to keep me awake so I can get some shit done, but I'm smoking dope in order to strip my mind of the crap that's accumulated from work, so I end up hyper yet too fuzzy to concentrate at the same time. After pacing around my room for a few tense minutes, I decide to go downstairs and see if anyone's awake. My housemates have just got in from work. They're sat in H's room, having a beer and a smoke, talking about this, that, and the other. I knock on the door and she opens it. Hey, how's it goin'? I say.

Fine, I'm just sat with D having a beer. Do you want one? Yeah, cheers. I've brought some CDs down with me. I go into her room. D is sat on the floor burning gear into a strange pipe of some sort. He looks up. Do you want one of these fuckers? he asks. Go on then. What the fuck is it? It's called a Bukket. He hands me the instruction leaflet. It never ceases to amaze me that there are entire industries devoted to producing and selling pot paraphernalia, yet you still can't buy the essential ingredient legally.

Continued ...next page(3/3),

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