All The Way Down: Part One
The rising sun stabbed the darkness of the night and the dawn bled across the wide sky. A woman, standing alone on the dry, cracked sand, shivers in the cool of the morning. She waits there a while, contemplating the endless, stirring landscape that lies out before her.
A girl emerges from the gloom of the house, a stream of hurt damp on her cheeks. “Mamma”, she cried softly, moving forward into the ascending light. “Why Mamma?” The woman felt her cold body next to hers and wrapped the blanket around her child. “Why Mamma?” she sobbed again, looking up to face her mother. “Why does God not hear our cries?” The woman shook her head, wiping the tears off her daughter’s otherwise dry face. She took one last glance at the waking city, sprawled out across the bottom of the valley, and turned back with the child towards the house.
The all too familiar smell of premature death hit her like a bullet. So young for death.
Another child lost in the night. Is God even listening?
*****************
The phone rang for the third time that morning, its high frequency buzzing cutting over the sounds of New York City. “I’m coming for God’s sake. I’m coming!” he shouted, adding a selection of cusses before slamming the door behind him.
It was 11.38 am and Todd Anderton was leaving his flat. He acknowledged the cleaning lady as he rushed across the balcony and then past her into the lift. “Good morning Sir”, she smiled, lifting her trolley over a slight rise in the carpet. She was used to these hasty greetings as he was late out almost every day. She was also used to the smell of booze in his apartment, although the amount of filth that gathered there over twenty-four hours always astounded her. The usual puke on the bathroom floor came with job. A job that pays well mind you; B-list celebrities like to tip lavishly.
The lift door closed with a click and he turned on his mobile. He was late for another day of shooting and had the worst hangover. Or at least worse than yesterday’s. The lift opened, revealing a fully functional metropolis and a rather large queue of traffic barricading the street. “Sweet.” he muttered, unlocking the Audi parked awkwardly in the empty car park. His phone revealed a series of angry messages from the producer’s assistant and one from the producer himself. Two missed calls and a voice message from his girlfriend. Or, as a result of last night, his ex-girlfriend.
For Todd Anderton, it was just a regular Wednesday.
*****************
Filth, that’s what they all think of me, bloody filth. I’ve had enough. My mum, my dad, they didn’t want me. School was like walking through a forest of abuse. Uni wasn’t much better. And the thing is, I never actually came out, I thought ‘the closet’ would be the safest place to be. But people just knew. I was different to them. I mean I never had a girlfriend and I never looked at or talked about girls like they did. I wasn’t into football like my dad and was never one of the lads. Never wanted to be either.
I remember sitting watching a programme about the gay rights march in Washington. It was 1987 and I was twelve, almost thirteen, and had realised by that point that I wasn’t attracted to girls and was scared of who I was becoming. I was completely transfixed by the scale of the march, and of how many confident gay people were out there. There were all these quilts dedicated to people who had died of AIDS that were blanketed over the city and it was just the most beautiful and sad thing I ever saw. For a moment, the unity of all those faces, those gay faces, the thought that I needn’t be scared of what I was flashed across my mind. There were others like me.
Then my dad came in. He stood at the door, hands on hips, chest out like a puffin, you know the way those men stand. With a look of disgust across his face, he said, “What you watching those prancing puffs for?” He was a policeman and had just got back from work, stinking of lager. “Come on. Turn off this rubbish, the football’s on the other side.” I reached to get the remote and he grabbed it from my hand. “Forget these sodding pansies, here are the real men. Match Of The Day!” he laughed that ridiculously loud, macho cackle that I came to despise. I trudged upstairs. “Where you going Jerry?” he shouted up to me. “Homework!” I replied.
I put a Michael Jackson record on repeat and tried to console myself. It was I Just Can’t Stop Loving You, his duet with Seidah Garret, the number one from earlier in the year. I was a gay living in a strictly straight family, a strictly straight city. I was isolated and angry, confused and alone.
I didn’t know what love was.
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