Nine Foot Tall Page 11

  I pushed the switch to let the next song start and looked for the reaction around the room. I was overjoyed. People were killing themselves laughing, the girls, the guys, my mam, the bar staff. My dad was shaking his head in disbelief but laughing all the same. I’d just told everyone to go fuck themselves, more or less, and they thought it was hilarious. The girls were looking at me and smiling and winking. I felt as though I was the bee’s knees, man. The dog’s bollocks. I continued in the same vein throughout the night. I got more confident after each song I played, after each comment I made, after making the whole pub laugh. I took the piss out of people’s clothes, their hair, their faces, the way they walked, their choice of partner, anything.

  And guess what? They loved it.

  They loved me.

  A little trick that I employed to ensure that I didn’t get my cheeky little head kicked in was to not only take the piss out of the punters, but to take the Mick out of myself too. To show that whatever I said was meant in fun. I called myself a skinny twat and a little bastard, y’know the score.

  The end of the night came and as I played out my final record – New York, New York – the place was heaving and the entire pub was on its feet dancing. The music went down and I was given a rapturous round of applause. I stood glassy eyed – I’d downed quite a few brandies – and revelled in my triumph. I felt like a star.

  Two of the girls who had been sat at the tables in front of my decks all night came over to me as I began to unplug my equipment. One of them was extremely beautiful and her mate was pleasant to the eye but not quite as stunning. I’d never seen them before tonight. Both were extremely pissed.

  ‘Gaz, you were ace tonight.’ The stunner slurred this into my ear as her friend nodded furiously. ‘What yer doin’ now that you’ve finished?’ She smiled at me when asking and gave me a super sexy wink. Oh man, I’m in there.

  She purred at me, ‘You can come with us if you want, we both need shagging.’ She giggled, as did her friend, who didn’t say anything, just nodded and giggled some more.

  I can’t believe this, man. My dad said that the girls would love me, but this is too much. Am I dreaming? Two that go together, fuckin’ hellfire.

  My dad walked past me collecting the glasses and gave me a nod, a nod that said “See?” Then he sauntered off, shouting at people to sup up and fuck off.

  So here I am, two shag-happy girls, gagging for it, bleedin’ kissing my ears and shit as I’m trying to clear my equipment, and what do I do? This is what I do…

  ‘Not tonight, ladies, I’m afraid.’ What the fuck am I saying? ‘I can’t, girls, as sweet and beautiful as you both are. I’d love to, trust me I’d love to, but I’ve got a girlfriend…’ I pulled a mock sad face at them. ‘Sorry, ladies.’

  They just drunkenly shrugged their shoulders and wandered back to their friends at the table. The stunner turned her head back to me and shook her head, licking her lips, real porno style. I must have been crackers. I couldn’t do it though, I couldn’t cheat on Jenny. Bloody hell, I’d only told that I loved her this afternoon. She wants to shag Mel, I know, but that’s not the same. I love Jenny. And that’s it. Simple. No other girls for me. Ever.

  I’ll tell you what though…

  I love being DJ Gaz.

  14th July – The Next Day

  ‘She wants me to shag her? You are kiddin’?’ Mel was amazed at what I’d just proposed.

  ‘Yep…’ I tried to reassure him that I wasn’t having him on, that it wasn’t some kind of Gaz joke. ‘I’m tellin’ yer, man, she hasn’t shagged anyone else before so we arranged it for you to shag her. Why not? Yer me best mate, aren’t yer? I’ll even watch. I might squeeze one off while yer shaggin her.’ I laughed at my last comment even though I wasn’t entirely sure about the whole situation. But if it would stop Jenny from going off with another bloke, then why not?

  Mel laughed out loud, he couldn’t believe his luck, he was gonna get a free shag, just like that. From my beautiful, sweet, sweet Jenny.

  We arranged to go to the park that night in my car, all three of us. Mel and Jenny would get in the back seat whilst I remained in the front, keeping an eye out. And to see that he didn’t “damage” her too much. I didn’t want her to be “ruined”, did I?

  We picked Jenny up from her house at about eight that night. It was still light, being the middle of summer and all. We drove to the park in my Mini, a little black one that my dad bought me for my eighteenth birthday a few months ago. We didn’t say very much to each other – it was a really strange situation to be in, and we were all nervous to say the least. We arrived at the park and drank a couple of bottles of Thunderbird between us. Thunderbird makes you pissed. That’s all I can say about it. I don’t even know what it is. Cider? Beer? Lager? Fuck knows, it just gets you pissed. The more pissed we got the less nervous we became. The sun started to go down and the park began to empty.

  We were sitting on the grass outside the car chit-chatting away in the half-lit summer dusk when:

  ‘C’mon then, let’s get down to it.’

  Jenny jumped to her pretty little feet and placed her hands on her hips as she barked her order. She opened the car door and climbed into the back seat. As she did, she let her skirt hitch up to reveal that she wasn’t wearing any knickers. We both got a flash of her bare backside. Her lovely, smooth, untouched by anyone else but me, backside. Fuck. That’s not like my Jenny. My sweet, sweet Jenny. Mel looked at me and said:

  ‘Gaz man, do you really want me to do this? I won’t, you know. Not if you don’t want me to.’

  I had a terrible, sad, sinking feeling in me, a feeling that it was now inevitable, that we’d come too far.

  Jenny shouted from the back of the car, ‘C’mon, stop fuckin’ about, Mel. Get in here and shag me.’

  She was clearly pissed out of her box. Mel and myself got up from the grass and looked into the car. Fuckin’ hell, Jenny was laid out on the back seat, legs wide open, as naked as the day she first got her peachy little arse smacked by a midwife. The mucky bastard. My beautiful, lovely, sweet, angelic Jenny. Legs a-fuckin-kimbo.

  I stood open-jawed as she beckoned Mel into the car with her index finger, mouthing the words ‘C’mon’ to him.

  He looked at me again, kind of half smiled and said, ‘Are you sure, Gaz?’

  Still with my chin on the grass I reluctantly said, ‘Yeh, go on, man, she’s gaspin’ for it.’

  ‘Wahey…’ Mel started to rip his trousers off, ‘thank fuck for that, Gaz. I’ve got a right hard on, man. A fuckin’ cunt buster!’ And he dived in the back of the car with Jenny.

  I sat in the front and turned on the radio. I Feel Love came on, the old Donna Summer disco classic, but it wasn’t by her, it was Bronski Beat, a kind of souped-up ’80s version. Pretty funky, as it goes. I nodded away to the music as I tried not to look in the rear-view mirror to see what was happening in the back. I could hear all kinds of squelching and slapping and groaning. My sweet little Jenny telling Mel ‘that’s the hardest cock ever!’ Fuckin’ hell, Gaz, what are you doin’? You’re sat in the front of your car while yer best mate’s butchering your bird in the back seat. It was too much for me to bear. I had to turn round and look. Aw fuck, now I wish I hadn’t bothered. There’s Mel, proper annihilating my poor little Jenny, real porno style, pounding away like a bastard jackhammer. Fuckin’ hell. I can’t stand it. It’s too horrible. It’s pure destruction! They’re oblivious to my watching them, they’re too caught up in… that! I cough to try and get their attention. No. Too busy shagging like bastard dogs. I can’t bear to look anymore so I jump up and out of the car, slamming the door as hard as I can behind me, y’know, to let them know I’ve gone. If they even care.

  I march away from my little Mini, head swirling. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Jenny’s getting ruined.

  After I’m about twenty-five yards away I hear Jenny coming out from the car and
trying to catch up, still bollock naked, trying unsuccessfully to pull her clothes on.

  She shouts, ‘Gaz, Gaz, are you alright? What’s wrong?’

  I stop in my tracks and turn to her, my eyes filled with tears.

  ‘What’s wrong? What’s fuckin’ wrong? Ha. I can’t believe you have to ask. What’s wrong? Fuckin’’ell, Jen. I’ve just watched you gettin’ shagged half to death by me best mate and you ask what’s wrong. Fuck off, I don’t wanna know yer, ya fuckin’…’ I’m shaking my head and growling, thinking of something to call her, something to make her feel the way I was feeling. ‘Just fuck off away from me, you fuckin’ slag! Fuck off.’

  I started to march back to the car where Mel was being extremely sheepish, saying nothing at my outburst.

  Jenny was in tears now, and she screamed to me, ‘But it was your idea. Not mine. It wasn’t my idea. I love you. I’m not a slag.’

  She fell to her knees and sobbed into her hands. Naked.

  I climbed into the driver’s seat of the car and revved up the engine. The song on the radio was Easy Lover by Phil Collins, fuckin’ charmin’. Mel fake coughed from the back seat to get my attention. I turned to him with my face like stone.

  He whispered, ‘You’re not mad at me, are ya, Gaz?’ His bright red, sweating head was bowed when he spoke.

  My stony features turned into a smile, then I laughed and said, ‘Course I’m not mad at yer. Yer me best mate, aren’t yer? I’d have done the same if I got it offered on a plate. That’s what blokes do. It’s not your fault, mate. It’s hers…’ I stick my head out of the window and shout to a weeping Jenny knelt on the grass, ‘her fuckin’ fault. The slag!’

  I leaned into the back, grabbed Mel around his shoulders and gave him a hug.

  Then we drove home.

  Without Jenny.

  To think, the day before I’d had it offered on a plate by two girls, not one, two, and refused them because I loved Jenny. Well, she can fuck off. I’ve made my mind up.

  Women are twats. Who wants to fall in love anyway? Not me. I’m DJ Gaz.

  Super-fuckin-star.

  And I’m gonna fuck ’em all. Every last one.

  Christmas 1996 – Aged 29

  ‘You’ll do it standin’ on yer head, Gaz man. You’ll only get two year or summat. It’s easy. A piece a piss.’ Unsolved gulped the last part of his pint down as he tried to reassure me that prison wasn’t too bad. ‘It’s just an inconvenience,’ he said. ‘You might even get off, man. You always do, you’re a right lucky cunt. Always come up smelling of roses. C’mon, let’s go for a drive, matey.’

  He picked up his keys and we walked out of the pub to his car. There was a freezing chill in the air.

  ‘Fuck me, Stevie boy, it’s brass bastard monkeys out ’ere.’ I rubbed my hands and blew into them as we got into the motor. ‘Where we off to anyway?’

  Steve didn’t answer me straight away. He started the car and drove for about two minutes, humming to himself, not a tune, just humming. Then he piped up…

  ‘We’re off to pick up a package off Mick the Human. He owes me.’ He said this as though he had some kind of unfinished business. Business that I knew would not be to my liking. At all.

  I laughed. ‘Mick the fuckin’ Human? Who’s he? How come every fucker we know has got a mad nickname? Except for me. The Human? Fuckin’’ell, what is he? Everyone’s a fuckin’ human, ya mad twat.’ I was giggling like a girl, muttering ‘human’ as I laughed.

  Steve laughed too. ‘Aw, Gaz man, I don’t know.They all call ’im it. It’s just his nickname, innit? It’s funny, I suppose. Anyway, you have got a nickname.’

  I was intrigued. I never thought I had a nickname. DJ Gaz maybe, or one of the ridiculous stage names that I’d used over the years?

  ‘Have I? What is it?’

  Steve turned to me from the driver’s seat and whispered something that I couldn’t make out.

  ‘Eh? What is it? I didn’t hear yer, man. Speak up, yer whispering old twat.’

  He laughed a little and then raised his voice.

  ‘It’s Gaz the CUNT. Ya cunt.’ At which he nearly pissed and shit himself laughing.

  I was bemused. ‘Funny fucker, aren’t ya. Gaz the Cunt. Very funny.’

  Still laughing he managed to say, ‘Nar, mate, I’m only messing wi’ yer. It’s not Gaz the Cunt. It’s Fast Gaz. That’s what they’re all callin’ yer. Fast Gaz.’

  I smiled a little. ‘Well, it’s better than Gaz the fuckin’ cunt, I suppose. Fast Gaz? What do they call me that for? I’ve not had anyone call me it before. First I’ve heard about it. Fast Gaz?’

  ‘They all call yer it, Gaz man. Even me when yer not about. It’s nowt bad, it’s just coz yer always fucked out of yer head, man. Always whizzing yer bollocks off on phet. Dashing about all over the shop, man. You never stop buzzin’, always in a good mood an’ that. Whizzing yer tits off. That’s all, man. Nowt bad.’

  There was never a truer word spoken. I was always speeding me nuts off, morning, noon and now. I didn’t much care for the Charlie. I still took it now and again, but I preferred to slam loads of whizz down my Gregory Peck. Fast Gaz, eh? Could be worse, I suppose.

  I was puzzled though. ‘How come you ’ant got a nickname like that then, Stevie baby? You’re worse than me. You’re always at it as well, Charlie an’ everything, man. Miles worse than me.’

  He looked at me again and whispered, just so that I could hear him this time, ‘That’s coz I’ve got a nickname already. I’m Unsolved Steve. And that, my son, is a scary nickname. Just the way I want it. I’ve never killed no cunt, honest. But if cunts wanna believe that I have, then let ’em. Ha!’

  He turned back to look at the road in front of him and started humming his no tune song again. We drove for a mile or so heading towards Mick the Human’s gaff, talking bollocks as we went.

  ‘Have you ever noticed, Stevie boy, that wherever there’s a posh area there’s always a poor area next door?’

  Steve chuckled. ‘Whaddya mean?’

  ‘I mean what I just said. Fool. It’s true. Look around Leeds, or any city for that matter, and you’ll see what I mean. If you go to a rich area with nice houses and nice cars and that, there’s always a poor area within a mile radius. An estate or run-down area where every cunt’s a dealer or a smack head or summat. Just look around you, man. They do it on purpose, I swear.’

  Steve’s intrigued now. ‘Who? Who does it on purpose? Does what on purpose?’

  ‘Them! The government. The council. Them cunts. The builders. I don’t know. Just them. The powers that be. What they do, Stevie man, is they build lovely big posh houses with tree-lined boulevards and lovely driveways, then they build a council estate nearby. On purpose. Or they build a lovely area close to an already dilapidated area. On purpose. They do. I’m tellin’ yer, man, they’re cunts for it.’

  Steve looks across to me as he’s driving. ‘Why on earth would they do it on purpose? Ya nutter. They do it wherever they can buy land. Don’t they?’ He appears unsure.

  I proceed with my “theory”. ‘Nah, man, my theory is this. They do it on purpose. They do it to make cunts jealous. Then when cunts get jealous of what they see all around them, they turn to crime. So that they can have the nice shit an’ that.’

  Steve’s laughing again. ‘You must be wrong, Gaz man. Why the fuck would they want people to be fuckin’ jealous? They wanna cut crime, man. Not make it go up, you fool.’

  I get real serious now. ‘Do they fuck wanna cut crime, man. Oh yeah, they bring out these figures every now and again about crime fallin’ an’ shit. But who believes them? How can they prove it? They can’t, can they? We just have to take their word for it, don’t we? No, man, they do it on purpose to make people jealous. Without crime there’d be no coppers, would there? No crime, there’d be no lawyers, no judges, no fuck all. They’re not gonn
a make all those bastards out of jobs, are they? No, are they fuckers like, man. They love crime, man. They want crime to increase. On purpose. So that there’s summat for all the judicial cunts to do. That’s what I think anyway.’

  Steve’s nodding now, seeming to be in agreement as we turn into an affluent suburb of Leeds, close to the airport.

  I didn’t know Mick the Human from Adam and the Ants, but when we pulled up outside his house I wanted to know him. It was a fucking mansion, man. Huge fucker, great big ornamental steel gates with electronic security and all that bollocks. Impressive. Steve had to speak into a thing on the gatepost in order for them to open. Once through the gates there was a long, winding, tree-lined drive up to the house. Like the Road to Mandalay.

  ‘Fuck me, Steve man. Look at this gaff. What the fuck does he do? It must have twenty bedrooms, man.’ I was in awe of the sight before me. It reminded me of Hugh Hefner’s place, the Playboy gaff.

  Steve was grinning like the cat that got the cow, forget the cream.

  ‘This, Gaz… is bastard Disneyland.’

  We got out of the Beamer and walked up the drive to the door. We could hear loud music and laughing and singing from the windows. It sounded packed. Steve knocked on the door. It was Clockwork John who opened it, a James Brown song pumping through the door, I Feel Good.

  ‘Come into the parlour said the spider to his flies.’ Clockwork winked his mascara eyelash at us as he said this. He sounded scary to me.

  Steve just laughed and pushed past him, grabbing my arm and pulling me in. The entrance hall was like a hotel lobby. It was enormous, a great golden staircase before us. I thought I was in Hollywood, man. Real Scarface shit. What a place. There were people everywhere. Not the kind of fuckers you get in Mad Marko’s gaff, scraggs and cunts. No. These were beautiful people. Supermodel girls swanning around, millionaire looking dudes swanning round the girls. Champagne seemed to be in everybody’s hands. Handsome men bobbing their heads to the music. It was a good place. I could tell. The people were nice, girls were coming up to us with Champers and cocaine, the guys were telling us to get whatever we wanted from the bar. A good place. I could get used to this.