Baseball Furies

I'm sitting in my room, opposite from my friend Will. Me and Will first met years ago at a Ninebar gig at the Dome, back in the days when hardcore shows in London were plenty and taken for granted. Will has a chequered background and is a complex character. However, for all his complexity, his mentality is one I detest. Too quick to open his mouth and criticise, pouring bitterness into the room like some toxic, rancid fumes escaping a factory that would fail any kind of environmental safety checks. Why and when Will had metamorphosized into this shell of what he once was I'm not sure. Maybe he uses it as a defence mechanism, like how many people build walls around themselves to save them from hurt. What he had to defend himself against, with an affluent background and loving parents, I have no idea. Perhaps he is just too self conscious.

"Don't you think it's a joke? How can they represent skateboarding in this way? That video is a piece of shit anyway..." and so he drones on. I'm thinking to myself he must have some kind of limit to what he can complain about, some time when he will run out of things to put down and criticise. "Like it must take them 2 or 3 years to make such things, skating really isn't like that..." and so he drones on and on. It's at that point his words start losing any sort of form. I can't work out where sentences and syllables begin and end, I can see his lips moving but all I hear is something that resembles the way the adults sound in Charlie Brown cartoons, "waffle waffle waffle, wah wah wah" and I feel something negative welling up inside me at the base of my stomach, like a sickness. Let me make another point about Will: he's an absolute fantacist. He'll talk about what he intends to do, but never does it. Then goes on to put down those with the balls to do what he wishes he could do. He also has conservative ideals : Hardcore should be like This, skateboarding should be like This, a man should be like This, whoever deviates from this staid template is a cunt and blah blah blah blah my mind cuts off after a point. As you can see, he isn't the most likeable chap.

All of a sudden in the middle of one of his pointless tirades a word cuts through and hits me with the force of a train with nitro boosters: a name of one of my friends. "He's such a meathead, do you think he was bullied at school?" dribbles out of his mouth with the bitter monotone that was his forte. "Look everyone is bullied at school one way or another" I shout in his face "What the fuck do you know about him anyway, you shapeless spineless twat of a manchild? I've never seen you even speak to him, just in case you're scared you might actually like him like all the other people who you're absolutely terrified of!". After just one sentence my throat is hoarse as if I had been shouting for hours, I never knew I was capable of such sheer force in my voice. "I'm not terrified of them it's just..." I cut him off before he continues his weak counter "Yes you are. You're scarred. Mentally. Something happened to you with someone that may have resembled him and so you use him and all the others as a target for your frustrations" I feel very calm and collected again, but he continues "Thanks for the breakdown Sigmund." Typical. This is the kind of derisive tone he took when he was cornered, always. "Haha yeah I've never studied psychology but you are so transparent that an absolute fuckwit in the street would make the same observation. Your personality is so simple that even the most uneducated can see through you like an invisible man. Which is what you are. Invisible, pointless. No one would even notice you being there at all." Before I know it, Will snaps. He grabs a baseball bat from the side of my desk and I feel the sharpest pain in my left shoulder. I'm on the floor. Then it comes down. Crack. Splat. I feel nothing at this point. I now seem to be standing outside my body, observing all of this like an angel looking down on the Earth. I have never seen such unrelenting violence. True violence. Now, when you see people having a fight outside the pub on a Friday night, it's all a show. A display of a pathetic approximation of macho bravado and a ritualistic dance that feeds the ego as opposed to blood lust. Not this. This is something savage and primal. There is nothing of my head left, just a bloody mess. Will is left standing there, shoulders heaving like a 100 meters sprinter post-race. I don't know what to make of all this.

"Bryan! Bryan!" I wake up. I'm in the Camden Underworld. The all too familiar smell of stale beer and drains from the toilets fill my lungs. Sounds grim but is a damn sight better than the dream I was having. Will is telling some story about touring with his old band xStreet Beersx to some young girls who have started coming to shows only recently. One is the prototypical hardcore kid : piercings, too many tattoos for one so young that were chosen on a whim and a Rucktion tee shirt. She has unusually stony grey-blue eyes, a small round nose, long blonde hair and pointed chin. Her skin is pale as if she has been in hibernation and would burn to a crisp in even December sunlight. Her lip curls up as she speaks, prattling on about what most young hardcore kids talk about who have been in the scene 5 minutes: straight edge, getting more tattoos and the latest CDs she has bought. Dull conversation. Her friend seems a little more interesting, dyed red hair tied back with a perfect fringe across her forehead, big heart shaped ear rings, nice eye make up that makes her look slightly Oriental, lovely olive skin tone that brings to mind the mediterranean and a smart, sophisticated sense of dress that is years beyond her youthful, pretty face. Black boots with leather trousers and matching jacket. This girl is giving me a nice stare, and leans over and says "You fell asleep for 5 minutes, are you feeling ok" and touches my left arm. I feel a sharp pain, like when people touch a sensitive and bruised part of your anatomy. "Yeah I'm alright" I reply, trying not to gawp at her too much. "Listen, I need to go to the little boy's room, get you, me, will and your friend a drink" and hand her a £20 note. I get up and walk to the toilet. I do my business and turn around and almost have a heart attack. Blood is dripping from my nose, pouring in fact. I feel dizzy and my head is becoming faint, shapes lose their form and my legs give way. I hit the ground hard and everything goes black.