You came from the council estate, and we respected one another. One summer, when we were kids, we played football and afterwards lay on the grass. I couldn’t take my eyes off your legs. You asked me if I was a faggot. I said no. You laughed, and rolled on top of me, and I remember that sticky body. You told me you’d give me what I wanted. You never did, and we grew apart. Years later, I met you in a bar, and we agreed to meet up for a drink, but you never turned up. Then I heard you were in prison after robbing a Post Office.
There is a boy in a wheelchair, and he’s dressed in a hospital gown and plays the guitar. There might be nothing underneath that flimsy gown, but he does wear black socks. I always associate black socks with black moods, and I recognise that I permanently wear black socks.
The surroundings are bleak. An abandoned room with plaster dropping from its walls, and there is a floor lamp, with a tassel shade, like the one our parents had in the living room.
This is going to be a serious music video, but I ignore it, as I do most social media posts. What somebody else likes, doesn’t mean that I will like it too.
But something had piqued my interest and I listened to the song on Spotify instead.
“Hi there Ren. It’s been a little while. Did you miss me? You thought you’d buried me, didn’t you? Risky… Because I always come back.” The voice is weird.
“Hi Ren. I’ve been taking some time to be distant. I’ve been taking some time to be still. I’ve been taking some time to be by myself. Since my therapist told me I’m ill.” This voice is that of boyish innocence.
Ren sings in two mind sets. A song between two people but always the same person. ‘Sick Ren’, the one that suffered illness, depression, and doubt, and ‘Now Ren’, who got better, writes, plays guitar, sings, raps, and makes videos. A lot of his work is about his nightmarish experience.
“When I was 17 years old, I shouted out into an empty room. Into a blank canvas, that I would defeat the forces of evil, and for the next 10 years of my life I suffered the consequences…”
Afterwards, I watch the video, in which Ren switches between alter egos, and there is that fine line between sickness and health, and a fear that never goes away. That one day it might come back.
Dig deeper and you find a teenager who got a record deal and lost it when he fell sick with a mystery illness that took away a dream. There is an old YouTube video where teenage Ren speaks from the prison of his bedroom, and the trepidation that he might have been about to give up.
The illness was diagnosed as Lyme disease and after a stem cell transplant, he returned to the ‘world of the living.’ But the damage was done, it played with his mind, and we see an insecure young man.
This is performance art, and grown-up Ren jumps from the screen and works his way into your conscience.
There is mental illness in all of us. I see it in myself, and I see it in other people.
I’ve since watched interviews with Ren, and I see misery and torment, and I see my friend Liam, who I first met when he threw his skateboard into a bush so that nobody would steal it while he slipped into a bar for a drink.
I soon recognised that alcohol was used to numb his troubled mind.
When he is sober, Liam talks good sense. When he is drunk, you struggle to understand his mind set. And he can never look you in the eye, because he might see you backing away.
All the time, you think that there might be a key to end this misery, but that key is lost behind another locked door.
But occasionally, there is a glimpse of what lay beneath.
“I should go to bed,” he says. “But I think I’ll have another drink before I go.”
“I think you should go now.”
“But I don’t have a bed I like.”
“Then you can share my bed.”
“Will there be lots of cuddles?”
“I always give lots of cuddles.”
“I like lots of cuddles.”
Liam never gets those cuddles because I won’t let him anywhere near me and then I feel guilty.
But one day, I would like to think that Liam, like Ren, will move into the light.
***
“I was walking down a pavement after jumping out my mum’s car in a crossroads in a moment of frustration and distress with my condition. I was trying to run from myself. What appeared to be a homeless man with a dark complexion approached me and asked me what was wrong. I explained that I had been sick most my life, and I wasn’t sure I had the strength to continue. He looked at me and smiled and told me ‘Everything is going to be okay in the end Ren.’ I had not told him my name. There was something so overpoweringly sincere about this simple message, which brought with it an overwhelming feeling of inner peace, and in a flash, he vanished.” – Ren
One Two Glitch – Part 1 of 3/Chris_iphone/Instagram
“Too much self-centred attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centred attitude is the source of suffering.”
Somebody once said to me, “I bet you enjoy your privacy.” I didn’t reply.
Because there is a downside to being the person you are. It is only recently that I realised that people are in awe of me. They are afraid. They want to talk. But they daren’t.
And you end up being on your own wishing that somebody, anybody, will be brave enough to sit down beside you and hold a conversation.
But they never do.
“It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain.”
I messaged bad boy Jamie and told him that I missed him. But he was probably asleep and never answered.
I once visited a Mediterranean island. Every night I took a book onto the balcony and read for a few hours.
Across the street was a restaurant, always busy. A young Greek boy politely greeted every customer. In between, he would pace up and down, lost in his thoughts. I watched him all the time.
My book became my excuse.
One night, the boy stopped his routine and waved. It became a nightly ritual, and I would wave back. And then he started smiling and acknowledging me with a friendly nod. He would get back to his customers, stealing a glance whenever he could. And all the time I had the advantage of watching him from above.
And then he was gone, simply disappeared.
One night, he didn’t appear, nor did he the one after. I enquired about him at the restaurant and a waitress fetched the owner.
He asked if I knew the boy well, and I said I did, sort of.
And then he told me that the boy had been riding home from work on his scooter and collided with a taxi. He had died instantly.
Have you ever grieved for someone you never knew? It is probably worse than grieving for someone you did.
All these years later, I think of that young boy, and in my thoughts, he waves, and he smiles, and he nods and casts furtive glances. Then he turns his back and is gone.
They played Stayin’ Alive and the kids had orgasms. It erupted. More than it did when we knew it. But that twinge of teenagism stirred and I was thirteen again.
Inky. Arty. Sexual. A magazine of the human skin. That tender moment became an exploration of naked flesh. It meant something to you. It meant nothing to me. But then your obsession became my obsession too.
My friend Blake can see dead people. He tells me I am surrounded by two of them. They watch me. They follow me. They talk to me. But only Blake can hear what they say. He says he knows all my secrets because they tell him.
There is John, a great-great uncle, who died long before I was born. He found me when I was a small boy and has kept me from danger. I amuse him. He regrets that he lived his life at the wrong time and was deprived of the life I lead. But he says I lived his life for him.
There is a teenage boy, and he is called Anthony. We met once, but I can’t remember him. Barely an hour after we talked, he died from a heart condition. That’s tragic. He told Blake he became my guardian angel because I was the last person he spoke to. He liked me. And he is happy that I have lived a longer life.
One day I will die, and I will meet John for the first time, and because age means nothing Anthony will become my eternal lover.
It was true. We had good times. My first girlfriend. We were young. Then you talked about engagement, and I was confused and uncomfortable. Our relationship was a falsehood, because I was in love with your 17-year-old brother, and he was with me. I had to be ruthless and I told you I didn’t want to see you anymore. That was forty years ago, and you never knew the reason why.
Perfectly Hard and Glamorous 