A week later I struggled with a hang over on a Sunday morning from the night before when the landlord roused me from the bed to tell me that my mother was downstairs to see me. I politely told him that I did not have one and believed it too without malice as I tried to wake up fully. It simply did not occur to me that there might be a person in this world that had that title for too long ago I had accepted it as someone else's privilege. Then I thought there might be something in it and got dressed while carrying a bit more than apprehension in my head.

I bounded down the stairs to meet the woman who carried me for nine months but forgot about the rest of the journey. Coupled with the hangover, my excitement was dampened with thoughts like these and replaced with caution. It turned out I was right with the latter emotion.

She rose from the armchair as I walked in to the living room and put her arms around me. My mother looked and carried herself like a bag lady and her movements caught me off guard at first but then I gently pulled her off me and set her back down on the seat.

Her demeanour changed from open welcome to suspicion in a second as we both squared off to try and figure each other out. Polite talk started the ball rolling until she started to go down memory lane and landed somewhere between the Wizard Of Oz and survival mode. It quickly got exhausting for me for I had lost her in the first ten minutes of conversation and there was still two hours of that to go yet in my company. A feeling started to take hold in me that her visit had an ulterior motive and was really here to borrow money. Fifteen minutes or so left of this historic meeting she did just that. If it meant her leaving quickly, it seemed a good idea to me. I pressed a few pound into her hand as she pressed her address into mine, then bought her cigarettes from the corner shop and saw her off at the bus stop.

For the rest of the day I felt a mixture of depression and confusion and tried to put it behind me. After a short time I was able to rationalize what had happened and realized that my mother was suffering from some kind of mental illness and in my book that excuses a lot. In a way it made her all the more vulnerable and very easy to forgive. Time had moved on and I had moved with it and besides, without her they would be no Barry, and for that I will always be grateful. Strangers and friends are often given more sympathy than ones own parents, and my parents regrets are no less though perhaps more than mine. A sort of reference for older people confused my thoughts and saved them while also believing that they held some wisdom that only they were privy too. Sometimes I forgot that, given to an anger sometimes that never sat comfortable with me, and is such hard work that it is nothing more than an infected bandage on a wound that heals nothing. I tried to be careful with my anger and often forget how to be for it still raged within me, and sometimes that understanding was hard fought and even harder to maintain and keep. Youth did not help but I promised myself that I would visit her soon.

THE NORM It was back to 'normal' for a while and around me yet that was still a hard word to define for the norm was trouble and was about to come down again with a telephone call from my brother, Michael. The landlord handed me the phone and sat idly in a chair opposite a small table not realizing that a killing, depending on your point of view, was been discussed right in front of him.

Michael's voice was full of anxiety carried in a whisper that stroked the words that he spoke and quickly got to the point. "Sammy came home with blood on his hands and said he had killed some fellow". As he spoke it sounded like that he did not really believe his own words which made two of us.

"Are you sure", I asked casually trying to look the part as well when the landlord leaned forward a little in his chair. "Maybe it was a joke", I offered hopefully.

After giving me some gory details from the mouth of Sammy where truth and fiction often blended into a 'fact', Michael continued.

"Barry, He killed someone and he might kill me. I'll meet you in the morning outside Piccadilly station at 11 o'clock. We must make a decision." I did not like the 'we' part for Michael rarely used it to describe the two of us.

"Okay, I'll see you there", and then I added, "don't forget the level and trowel", as if I was talking about work and just to make sure the the landlord was tuned into a different station . I cradled the phone back in position looking somewhat bemused at the words that had just come through it. Sleep was a little hard to find that night and was glad when sunlight filtered through the bedroom at last. I anxiously headed out that Sunday morning to see Michael.

He looked the worse for wear as we sat on a park bench watching a few ducks in a pond doing what made sense to them. "Sammy said he deserved it", Michael said wishfully.

Then it all tumbled out. Sammy, eighteen and looking younger met this older man in a bar. After a long night of drinking and neither of them telling each other who they really were, it was a union that could only be forecasted with blood. A predator pedophile masked by his money and privilege, scenting another victim that was a predator marked by his past of being the victim of one, scenting there might be a stray wallet. Sammy was offered a spare bed that was better than the bus canopy he had slept under the night before and was happy to accept as they both left the bar a little unsteadily on their feet.

When Sammy stepped into the opulent apartment of this man and his world, he had entered a very different one. He noticed among the fine furniture and carpets some gay porn magazines, and not being a prude, could not care less. That is until just beneath them lay a magazine opened with naked children on the inside cover. Alarm bells had sounded in Sammy's head along with the other voices that had moved in over the years. Sammy was on red alert now. He had at last found the man who raped and sodomized him as a child. The fact that it was not the same man was a mere technicality. The inevitable happened. A few minutes later, the man was dead, pummeled to death with fists clenched tight with rage and hate. Sammy came back to the squat afterward that he shared with Michael, and as far as he could tell after Sammy told all, he had a hearty breakfast from out of date sausages found in a supermarket bin. He was now sound asleep and none the worse for wear. It seemed Sammy believed he had done the world a favour and maybe he did.

"What will we do", Michael asked again. The answer was not hard for me.

"Michael, you can do what you like but he is my friend and yours too. We have suffered enough and fuck this fella anyway. This ends for me right here, right now!! I meant everything I said with a strong conviction that Sammy was an avenging angel. My brother took some courage from my words if not a little intimidated by them, and any doubts that he had left were thrown aside and we both hoped that time would be kind to Sammy and to us. He also told me that Gerry Hunt was in town sharing a squat with some hippies and we should go visit. We did, if nothing else but to change the mood of In that strange time that seems that way to me now, I was somehow detached from it all except for Michael who was petrified that he had been drawn into a situation that he could not get out of. For me, something had gone to sleep deep in my soul and it would take a long time before I could get it back for the words that I spoke to Michael that day felt as if they came from someone else, and looking back now I know they did. My own path in life was still in constant conflict and most of the time it was someone else's battle, but the auto pilot that I was on was serving me well so far and it was as softly as I could go.

I bounded up the stairs of the squat house where Gerry Hunt lived, and despite the earlier drama of the day, I was very excited to see him and knew that he would be too. I could not be more wrong. From the boy that I grew up with and had last seen when he was fifteen years old, and one that carried great intelligence quietly and wide eyed humour loudly, he was long gone. In his place but carrying the same name there was now a nineteen year year old sitting cross legged on the floor strumming a guitar weakly as if each string weighed a ton and the effort of it too much.

"How is it going Gerry", I asked excitedly looking down at him. He did not look up. I said it again a bit more demanding and got a small reaction. He peered through his bifocals and with a hoarse whisper replied, "Oh, Barry, yeah ok," as if a boring neighbour had just come to see him, then simply went back strumming a song known only to him. I was confused. He was lost in himself with a name that carried no identity, and though I was unaware then, he would not find his way back. It would be the last time I would see him again for that feeling of being a nobody had at last caught up with him along with the stories I did not know about, and was now just marking time. There was not much of that left either for little more than a year later he poured himself a last bath of water, climbed in and pulled an electric heater in with him.

Michael never spent another night under the same roof as Sammy, leaving him to drift into the homeless masses of London. In short time we heard through the grapevine all sorts of fates had befallen him. He was in jail or had killed himself but I always believed that Sammy was a hard one to get rid of. I wished him well and felt one day that we would meet each other again. On that I would be right. As for Michael he promised himself he would get a job and keep in touch.

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