Nine Foot Tall Read online

  There were women everywhere. Centre, right and left.

  I was like a kid in a sweetshop, a bull in a china shop and anything else in any other kind of shop.

  I carefully cultivated an image to suit my ways. I always had a brandy in my hand, Courvoisier. What else would do? I wore white suits, not harking back to my love of John Travolta and my now effortless strut, more like Miami Vice. Pastel tee-shirts and sockless shoes. Sometimes I even wore a Panama hat like the Man from Del Monte. I was often known to stick a few twenty pound notes in the hat rim, just to show off. I involved the audience. I’d shout, they’d shout back. I’d dance, they’d cheer.

  I rocked.

  The punters loved me. The boss loved me. The bar workers loved me. The bouncers loved me. And best of all… the ladies loved me.

  Fuck off, Gaz the Geek.

  Bye bye, Gaz the Spod.

  See ya later, Gaz the fumbling fool.

  Say hello to DJ Gaz – the World’s Number One DJ and Porno Legend.

  Only this time… it was the truth.

  30th/31st August 1997 –Aged 30

  Scientists have a name for it, y’know the way that everybody knows exactly what they were doing when someone famous died. I don’t know what the scientists call it, but it does have a name. “Something memory”. Or something.

  Oh yeah, I know. They call it flashbulb memory. Weird, isn’t it? You can’t remember what you had for your dinner eleven days ago, but you know exactly what you were doing years ago.

  It’s crazy, man.

  My dad always tells me that he can remember what he was doing when he first heard that JFK was killed by the CIA. He says that he was kissing his new girlfriend for the first time, and that she tasted like margarine. So he got rid of her. Charming. He has a go at me for getting rid of a bald lass and he goes around blowing ’em out just because they taste like marge.

  I can recall way back in 1977 when Elvis Presley died. Wednesday 16th August. I was just getting off the ferry with my family, coming home from Ireland in the summer holidays. It was mad. We got off the boat and all the Scousers in Liverpool docks were crying their eyes out. As though he was their dad or something. I was only ten, I didn’t really give a monkey’s fuck.

  I’d pretended to my mam that I was too ill to go school the day John Lennon died. Monday 8th December 1980. She believed me, so I got to lie in bed all day listening to the radio. I ended up wishing I’d gone to school. All they did was play bastard Beatles songs. And cry.

  They say you never forget the time you first ever meet a mashed-out-of-their-tree Mick Jagger sound-alike as well. Tonight would be that night.

  Oh, and it was the night that Princess Diana was killed.

  We’d been on a mental session that day, me and Stevie boy. Our heads were on springs, like Zebedee, man. In the town all day and night and then on to Casablanca’s at about 2.30am. It was crazy in there, small, dingy, sweaty, loud, full of drugged-up fools not knowing what on earth they were doing. That included me and Unsolved. We were fucked. Just laid out on some beanbags in the chill-out room, talking nonsense to everyone and everybody.

  ‘I can’t take it anymore, Steve man. I’ve gotta get out. I can’t handle it.’ I was twitching like a motherfucker when I spoke. I was in a good mood but twitchy all the same.

  Steve twitched too. ‘Nah, Gaz, don’t go, man. It’s a good laugh in ’ere. Look. It’s full of buffoons.’ He points at some guys in leather, arseless trousers and chuckles to himself.

  I throw another E down my neck and jump to my feet to get lively again.

  ‘No, man. I don’t mean I want to get out of ’ere. I mean I wanna get out of the game. The business. It’s doin’ me head in, Steve man. I don’t make any money. Ever. I just eat everything meself and end up owing cunts money…’ Steve’s nodding in agreement as I continue, ‘You’re in too deep an’ all, Steve. You’re gonna get nicked or killed or summat. I’m gonna get sent to the Big House for fuck knows how long. It’s just shit, man. I’m fed up with it. I’s not normal.’

  Steve jumped up and started dancing at the side of me.

  ‘Chill out, Gazzy boy. It’s been a long day, that’s all. You’ll feel better tomorrow. Honest.’ He put his arm around me and hugged me up to him. I pushed him off me.

  ‘I feel alright now. I feel fuckin’ ace, man. That’s the point. Listen to this. We’ve lost some good friends this year. Dead. All down to drugs…’ My voice is getting louder as I try to make him hear me over the loud house music. ‘Alan hung himself after going on a downer after a session on the whizz. Young Graham died in his flat, man, all alone. He took too many Es. Fuckin’ hell, Steve man, they say that his blood fuckin’ boiled. They didn’t find him for five days. Poor cunt. Tony Smedley got his throat slit over a poxy twenty quid deal. John Flake got stabbed, I don’t know, fifty fuckin’ times in his neck. For fuck all. Coz some cunt was coked up. Sammy Mambo got set on fuckin’ fire, for fuck’s sake. There’s people being shot up all over the fuckin’ city. It’s no good, man. I’m getting out, before it’s too late. I need to settle down.’

  Steve laughed, ‘It’s a good point,’ and carried on nodding his head in time to the pumping beats.

  I sat back down on one of the beanbags and turned to some completely random stranger, a girl, obviously off her tits. Her jaw was everywhere. Her pupils came outside of her eyes they were that big.

  ‘What do you think?’ I asked her, not expecting anything resembling a coherent reply.

  ‘I think, therefore I am.’

  I was right. She was a div. Fuck her, she sounds like Mick Jagger.

  I looked back up to Steve. He was still dancing. No, more like shuffling. I beckoned to him to come and sit beside me. He did.

  ‘Look, Steve man, I’m getting’ out whether you do or not… WOW…’ My E had just kicked in – it was a “report to the dance floor” moment. I leapt back to my feet and jumped around like a rabid chimp.

  Steve pissed himself laughing and shouted, ‘You were saying?’ He jumped up and pranced about too. We were mullied. Ah well, you know what they say – sleepin’ is cheatin’!

  As the song was coming to an end a girl came running into the chill-out room, crying and screaming, ‘She’s been shot! She’s been shot!’ She was most upset. Was it her friend who had been shot? Was there a crazed gunman in the club? Then she ran back out again.

  I leaned over to the Mick Jagger voice girl and asked, ‘Who’s been shot? Is someone dead?’

  ‘It’s Prince Diane, man… dead as a fuckin’ Dodo.’ She Jaggered at me, then rolled over and threw up all over her sleeping mate.

  Prince Diane? Does she mean Princess Diana? She must do. Fuckin’ Prince Diane.

  I asked around the room. Everyone was cabbaged. I eventually found out from a bouncer what had happened – he’d been to a petrol station and had heard about the fatal crash in Paris.

  Fuckin’ shot. These people are mental. Steve’s mental. Jagger’s mental. I’m going mental. I’m going mental and I’m going home.

  I left Steve in his own little world and made my way home.

  It was quite upsetting the next day, when I came around a little. When I heard the news properly about the princess. What upset me was the grief that the whole world was feeling, as though she was their mother or sister. It was mad.

  The thing that upset me the most though was that Steve got into his car and drove home by himself. I’m usually able to persuade him to get a taxi when he’s on Planet 9. But because I’d left him, he drove home.

  He drove home and got nicked.

  Fuck.

  He’ll definitely lose his driving licence.

  The kilo of coke they found in his car boot won’t fuckin’ help either.

  Chapter Nine

  -

  Tommy Ten Men

  I Love The Nightlife–

 
; Alicia Bridges – 1978

  Summertime 1987 – Aged 20

  When does a boy become a man? It’s a difficult one I know, but I have this theory. The male of our species gets to the age of eighteen. And stays there forever. That’s my theory.

  You get twenty, thirty, forty year olds – inside they’re all eighteen. Fuck, even old grandads in their eighties feel eighteen in their heads. It’s a fact.

  We never grow up is what I’m trying to say. Ask any woman, they’ll say the same, and I agree with them. What’s the point of growing up? It’s shit. If growing up means having to be responsible and boring and all that shit, then stay eighteen. I’m gonna.

  So here’s me, twenty years of age but still eighteen, not much difference I grant you. But you see, now that my teenage years had gone, I felt that I had to act more like a grown man would. That meant moving out from The Fanny, away from the family and setting up on me own. Why not? I had plenty of cash. I needed some room. The Fanny was great, all the family under one roof. Me, my dad, my mam, my sister, my two brothers, my granny, my two uncles, both of their girlfriends, my sister’s boyfriend. And our dog, the drooling bastard that it is. Yeah, The Fanny was great, but the upstairs flat was often as crowded as the pub downstairs. Now, that’s all well and good, y’know, good fun. It was real family stuff. All mucking together, helping out the business, having a laugh, playing jokes on each other and that. But when you share a room with four other blokes, and two of them are your little brothers, then entertaining the ladies can get a little… how can I put it? Tiresome? Bothersome? Hard work, to say the least. There’s no fun in having to shove a mucky sock in some bird’s mouth so that your brothers can’t hear her in the throes of passion. Is there? I mean, who wants to kiss her after that? Or having them ask you every morning over breakfast, ‘Gaz, were you trying to kill that lady last night? Did you have a poorly willy? Was that lady kissing it better? Why were you bending her over and slapping her bum with your belly?’ Fucking hell, I always thought they were asleep. Questions like that from an eleven-year-old and a nine-year-old are too much for any man to bear. It had started to do me Swede in. Time for me to go.

  So I did. I upped and went.

  I was making good money at the new club. I’d moved on from Madrid to a town centre place, Fat Sally’s. One of the many “theme bars” that cropped up in Leeds during the ’80s. Irish bars, African bars, American bars, Aus-fuckin’-stralian bars, all sorts, man. This one was a Wild West bar, although the only thing that made it Wild West was the cowboy hats stuck to the ceiling. And a stuffed sealion.

  It was lively as hell, it paid well and it was full of women. Available women.

  Just my cup of tea.

  I became friendly with one of the bouncers, John Flake, or Flakey to everyone else. He was a good bloke, a little bigger than me and harder than a coffin nail. All the girls loved him. Girls always love bouncers. Girls love bouncers and they love DJs. It made perfect sense for me and Flakey to get a place to share. We got a rented house near The Fanny, so that I could be close to the family, go visit them when I wanted. It wasn’t a palace, but it wasn’t a shithole either. It didn’t really matter what it was like, we were gonna Party Harty Marty!

  Party central. Vice city.

  It was like a bleedin’ knockin’ shop.

  Every single night of the week was like Saturday night for us. Partying till all hours.

  Women everywhere. We loved it.

  We’d sleep until around 11am, get up, shower, pub for twelve. Drink until 7pm then work until midnight. Flakey on the door, me on the decks. We’d have a collection of girls to choose from at the end of the night, back to ours, and… Party Central. Vice city.

  It was fucking excellent!

  We worked seven nights a week. We didn’t mind , it wasn’t exactly hard, just tiring. But you know what they say? If you have a job that you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

  It did, however, begin to take its toll after about a month of living together in Party Land. We’d just done thirty-three nights insane partying on the trot, and we were goosed.

  ‘Flake man, I’m fucked. I can hardly keep me yoks open.’ I was propping myself up against the bar in Fat Sally’s. Flake was slouched on a stool beside me, rubbing his eyes and running his fingers through his long black mullet.

  ‘Me too, Gaz man. It’s only 5pm and we’ve gotta work soon. Fuckin’ Saturday night, it’s gonna get packed out, man. We’ll be busier than a bastard.’

  Before I came on at seven to do my thing there’d be background music pumping away. It’s A Sin was on by the Pet Shop Boys. The place was starting to fill up already. There were a couple of hen parties in. We liked the hen parties –always good for a squeeze, especially the hen. There were the usual gangs of fellas being a bit rowdy, doing shots of tequila and grabbing birds’ arses. Just an average Saturday teatime in Fat Sally’s.

  I noticed out of the corner of my tired eye, a guy walk in through the saloon doors and proceed to the other end of the bar from us. He ordered a drink and then sat on his lonesome in a booth, with his legs crossed like a girl and his pinky stuck out from his glass as though he were drinking Earl Grey with the Queen. I thought he looked a real weird fucker. He was suited and booted, but there was summat just not the full shilling about the dude.

  I pointed him out to Flakes and said, ‘Flakes man, keep yer eye on this fucker in that booth. He doesn’t look right, pal.’ Flakey looked across, and when he noticed who I was talking about he became super excited.

  ‘Aw, Gaz man, we’re sorted. We are FUCKIN’ sorted, mate. See that guy? I know him. He’s cush…’ He pointed at the well-dressed weirdo. ‘He’ll definitely have summat that’ll keep us awake and make us lively again.’

  ‘What? What the fuck could make us lively and awake? We’ve had about ten hours sleep this month. We’re both gonna die.’ I was curious. Tired and curious.

  ‘He’ll have some speed on him. It’s good gear an all, keeps you rockin’ like fuck.’

  Flake was real happy at the prospect of procuring some drugs from this fella. I wasn’t so sure though. I didn’t particularly agree with drugs – bad mazzle. Sure, I’d had the odd spliff when I was younger, but that didn’t do me any favours. I nearly shagged a fat bird on it. The nearest I’d been to drugs after that was when I’d taken some mushrooms, the magic variety, with Mel and a lad called Cocoa a couple of years back. I hated ’em. My body went squishy, I thought I was a jellyfish. Mel sat on the grass on the park. And fell off. Fuck knows how he fell off, the ground was flat as fuck, nowhere to bastard fall, but he fell all the same. Cocoa, well, he just died. He ate a peach while he was off his nut and choked on the stone. He didn’t even know that he was choking because his throat had gone numb. He didn’t know, and we didn’t care. We thought he was messing around. So up until now I’d never even considered touching drugs. Any drugs. But speed would be okay I suppose. It’s not like it’s heroin or coke. Is it? Yeah, why not? I might as well, I’m fuckin’ knackered. I’m knackered and I’ve gotta work.

  And shag loads of girls.

  I nodded to Flakey, ‘Go on then, man, go over and see him. I daren’t speak to him, he looks nuts. Get us some or we’re gonna fall asleep stood right here. Will it be okay? It won’t fuck us up, will it?’

  He gave me a wink and a smile. ‘Nah, Gaz man, it’ll be cushty, I’ve had it before. It’s sorted. C’mon over wi’ me. I’ll introduce yer. He’s cool, man.’

  We strutted over to the weirdo guy and sat opposite him. In the background, Whitney Houston was singing that she wanted to dance with somebody. I sat down feeling a little nervous. I really didn’t like the look of this weird fucker, he had dark staring eyes, shark’s eyes. He had a bandage on both of his thumbs too. How do you get a bandage on both thumbs? Had he fallen and landed on his thumbs? No, apparently what did happen was, he’d ripped some cunts off for two hundred qui
d, they hunted him down like a dog, beat him in an alley and broke both of his thumbs for him. Nice. We’re dealing with a real charmer here by the sound of it. Proper Errol Flynn. But Flakey knows him, and if Flakey says he’s a good lad, then he’s a good lad. Flake reached over and shook his hand, taking care not to hurt his bad thumb.

  ‘How are ya, mate? Long time no see. This is me mate Gaz, he DJs here.’

  Crazy weirdo guy looked me up and down and kinda whispered, ‘Hi Gaz, I’m Steve.’ Then he looked back at Flakey. ‘I bet I know what you’re after. Yer after some Billy, yeah?’

  Flake laughed and nodded. Weird Steve pulled out a bag of white powder, chucked it across the table and said, ‘Don’t eat it all at once, ladies, you’ll do yerself an injury.’ He then threw what was left of his brandy down his neck, jumped to his feet, straightened his lapels and fucked off. Just like that.

  Flakey was happier than Larry now. ‘We’re sorted, Gaz man, that’s us up all night now. No worries. Ha…’ Then he put on a Jamaican accent and kinda sung, ‘Don’t worry, be happy, man.’

  I was puzzled by his strange friend just up and leaving like that.

  ‘Yer mate Steve…’ I started to pry, ‘is he normal? Should I know him? What’s his full name? Steve what?’

  Old Flakey boy opened the bag of speed before he answered me and shared it, half each emptied into the palm of our hands.

  ‘Go on, Gaz man, down yer neck.’ He gulped his down and then mine followed. It tasted fuckin’ awful. Like piss. But almost instantly the hairs on the back of my neck stood upright and I got a terrific tingling throughout my body. I like this feeling. I like it a lot. Flake looked over at me and smiled, his body giving a little shiver from the speed. ‘Steve’s cush, man, he’s a real good lad. I’ve known him for years. Bit of a nutter but he’s okay. Do you know, Gaz, I don’t even know his surname. He does have a nickname though.’