(This is Part two - please ensure you’ve read PART ONE first)
THURSDAY
It had snowed heavily all night. I’d been up watching it until about four in the morning, smoking weed with an old friend who also gave me twenty quid. I was a bit concerned the trains might be affected, ‘wrong snow’ and the like. But it was all good, and someone gave me their travelcard at the station, much to the chagrin of the guards, who nonetheless let me through. Some of them were quite cool at Dartford, and would let Junkies through. But you had the other end of the compassion spectrum, who would do whatever they could to make life difficult for a group of people who clearly didn't need any more problems.
Having left Hunting asleep on the bench at Abbey Wood station, I wasn't too surprised to see him still there when I got off the train. "Have you been there all night?" "No. Are you scoring?" "No, I thought I’d go for a walk through the estate, might go to Thamesmead later too, enjoy a bit of the Béton brut." "Raw concrete." "Very good, Hunting," I said, quite surprised. "Why are you surprised? Do you think you're the only junkie that's read a book?" "Sometimes, yes." "Understandable, me too." "You got money?" "Yes, twenty quid." "No shit." "No shit. Where are we going?" "Pikeys, same bloke as Monday, but we have to go on site, he's not answering his phone because he's a fat, lazy cunt. So we'll have to walk on site, which changes everything."
We got curb-crawled by some gavvers, asking us where we were going, what we were doing, two questions to which they already knew the answers; and although we had the snow to thank for them not getting out of the car and holding us up for a lot longer, checking if we had warrants out, searching us, and all the usual shit they do out of idle spite, it also meant we had to walk straight past the pikey site and add about fifteen long minutes to our already freezing cold and uncomfortable walk, disappearing into the estate, putting them off our scent, and walking into the pikey site the back way.
Pikeys, do-as-they-likeys, Joe Dikeys, Gypsies, travelers, call them what you will, their danger is their unpredictability. And when you're on their manor, their rent-free, tax-free, scrap metal, and caravan-riddled plots, you play by their rules, or should I say their "rule" - what they say, goes.
"Aren't you dead yet?" was the first voice I heard, a boy of about thirteen, who followed up with a snowball that caught me slap on the side of the head. Much laughter from a gaggle of other pikey children who'd appeared to join in the fun. "Hey bag-head, you need ten pence?" was the next effort to welcome us onto their site, followed by more largely incoherent but definitely disapproving verbal attacks on the nature of our "lifestyle", as a shower of pennies rained down on us, and more snowballs whizzed past us.
It’s interesting how you can tap into the meaning of something even when the words don’t appear to line up in a coherent sequence, or are simply foreign. Certain aesthetics accompany certain intentions. It’s like advertising – hear it in any foreign language of which you understand no words and you’ll still know it’s advertising. There’s something in the rhythm, the timbre, the patronizing changes in pitch and gloopy excitement. No marketing for heroin though, it’s the perfect commodity in many respects. If the quality of the product goes down – you buy more. The more you use, the more you need. A fiendish trap, and then some. Perhaps there’s something of that in all commodities? But there’s all of that in heroin.
In 1972, five Americans were caught trying to smuggle more than two thousand pounds of cannabis from Mexico to The States. Ending up in a Mexican prison, they eventually decided to tunnel out. When the tunnel was nearly complete, they snapped a sewage pipe, causing the real human shit of hundreds of prisoners to start filling up their tunnel. Unable to bear the shitty stench, and the grotesque reality of crawling through it, they decided to ask another prisoner, an American called Benny. They asked him if he’d be prepared to swim through the raw sewage and patch-up the pipe. If he did, they’d let him break out with them. Of course, he said no. But Benny was a junkie, and when they offered him a couple of bags, he was down to his underpants and got the job done in minutes. Junkies will literally crawl through a river of shit for a bag.
Feeling normal is much undervalued by those who do. As well as detox centers, perhaps our culture would benefit from some ‘tox centers’. I’m sure if everyone had a taste of heroin addiction, there’d be a lot more gratitude in the world.
Whump! Another snowball catches the side of my head, and the cackles of a few lady-pikeys join the general sense of increasing hostility we’re nonetheless walking further into. And you just keep walking forward. Say nothing, do not respond. Because if you do, a snowball hits Hunting right in the face, splitting his lip and causing blood to pour down his chin, you’re going to have to fight them, fight children, children who’ve been fighting all their lives, children who can lay Tarmac and drive skip lorries before they can read, children who will win the said fight, while their dads, cousins, brothers, and uncles, all forty of them are encouraging them, goading them, and gambling on the outcome, and since they want their pound of your withdrawing, good-for-nothing, junkie flesh, they’ll pick you up when you go down and even hold you up as a thirteen-year-old smashes you repeatedly in the face until they get bored and find someone else’s life to entertain them. Just keep walking forward. Whump! On the back of my head, ice falling down my neck and burning my back.
“Up here,” and we turn into a row of chalets. “Little shits.” “Yep. Now listen, they’re a bit funny about bringing new people on here. He might not serve us. But we should be OK. I’ve scored here for a couple of years. Just keep calm, say nothing, and agree with everything they say.”
"Who the fuck is that? It’s not fucking Sainsbury’s," "Hello John, it’s OK, he’s my brother," "He’s not your fucking brother. I’m not serving you, someone might, but not me, fuck off," "John, what about if I send him home, can I grab a couple then?" I don’t like being here, and I don’t like pissing him off. But I can’t score from anyone else, so I have to try. "No, because then there are two homeless junkies walking off the site, and you came in the fucking back way, which you know isn’t how it works," "We got pulled by the police," said Hunting. "Oh dear. Be quiet, Hunting." "What?" I cut in. "In Dartford, the gavvers pulled us in Dartford, that’s why we came over, we had to ditch our product." John walks over to us. This isn’t good. "Yeah, we got…." "Shut it, shit-head…What did you say?" "What he said, we got pulled over in Dartford, we haven’t got anyone to score from." John looks at us for a moment. At this point, anything could happen, and I am frightened. "Because if you got pulled by the gavvers coming onto here, that would be really bad for you, really bad." "That’s not what hap..," "Shut it, shit-head." I shut it, but I am not a shit-head. "So, brother, what’s his name?" he says, gesturing to me, and my heart sinks as I don’t think I’ve told Hunting my name. Balls. We’re in real trouble. But then I remember, even though I’ve been scoring from John for two years, I don’t think I’ve ever told him my name. I call him, I say, "It’s me," and that’s that, so as long as Hunting says anything but ‘I don’t know,’ we should be fine. "Sorry?" "What’s your ‘brother’s’ name, simple question?" I can feel my face going red, my heart is beating so hard John can probably see it through my coat. Hunting just has to say ANY NAME, just not ‘I don’t know.’ It seems like an age. The next word, or words that come out of Hunting’s mouth could mean the difference between us scoring and leaving or us being kicked within an inch of our lives, stripped naked and dropped off on a roundabout or something equally hideous. Robert, Jack, Bob, Charlie, there’s loads of names – say one of them – and quickly.
"Hunting. His name is Hunting." Oh dear. Fucking ‘Hunting.’ Of all the possible names he could have said, he chose his own, bizarre, and utterly unlikely name, ‘Hunting’. Unbelievable. Oh well, I’m just waiting for the upper-cut at this point. John frowned. Not angry as much as confused, or at least unsure what his next move was. I mean, what do you say? But it looks like it’s worked. Maybe it just somehow short-circuited John, some things in life are just so unlikely you go with them for lack of another appropriate response. John has a little look about. "What do you want?" "Four bags, brown," "Please," adds Hunting, his bottom lip swollen and bloodied. And then I see Reg, another Pikey I’ve scored off from time to time. And yes, he knows my name; balls. "Wait there," says John and walks back towards his caravan.
"Oiyt," and of course, Reg's coming over. "Why didn't you call me?" "I did, the phone was engaged, I tried about four times." "Is John sorting you out?" "Yeah, just a couple of bags." He looks at Hunting, who is picking dried blood off his lip. "Who are you?" "Hunting." Oh, fuck me, so now we've both got the same name. "Hunter?" "No, Hunting." "What kind of name is that?" And of course, while Reg and Hunting are having an exceptionally tense and unwanted conversation about names, John comes over. "John-boy, do you know what this dosser's name is?" "Here you go, John," I say as I hand over the money and start walking backward because it's well past time to leave. "Where are you going?" "I just thought you're busy and that." "Do you know what his name is?" "No." "Hunting. What kind of stupid name is that?" "That's his name." "Yeah, that's what I said." "What?" "Who?" "Hunting, it's our family name, cos we're brothers, like I said." "Just fuck off, don't come on here again without calling, fucking junkies." Ah, the consumer experience.
FRIDAY
I bunked the train to Abbey Wood, absolutely brassic. I was so sick when I woke up, I just popped some benzos and shuffled down to the station. I didn't even wait for a gap in the guards, I just waited for the approaching train, climbed over the fence, skipped over the rails and onto the platform, then jumped on the train before anyone could nab me. Having no money was, of course, a problem, but something would turn up, something would happen, not because it always does – but because it always has to. I saw a spittle of junkies on the train, but they weren't people I knew well enough to blag a bag off, or go grafting with, so I just shivered the fifteen-minute journey in somewhat of a panic, trying not to think how bad this was going to get if I didn't get sorted soon.
It was really coming on strong, and the eight milligrams of Xanax wasn't – as expected – touching the sides. It was just adding a bit of most unwanted delirium and weakness to an already very delirious and very weak situation. It's proper jank grafting in this state; you don't have even a stain of your wits about you and the stench of antique sweat and lord knows what that surrounds you, the tears, the endless runny nose – it just made you a beacon of thievery and tatty deception.
As the train pulled into Abbey Wood, I saw Hunting dry heaving, one hand holding him up, one leg in the air, bent at the knee as he slowly pivoted on the heel of his other foot. He looked bad, really bad. Hunting had quite a gentle face, once certainly an attractive one too. I only really noticed when it was gone because the cadaver-like head that stuck out of his coat today was etched with fear and the utter desperation only junkies know. He held a hand on his chest, no doubt trying to stop the pain of hours of dry heaving, the crunching of his ribs, the contraction of his muscles from wave after wave of violent retroperistalsis that was looking for something to expel from his stomach that simply wasn't there. I saw his whole life in that face, trauma for sure, abuse probably, neglect definitely. But most of all the defiant heart that taught itself how to love no one. "It will be OK, mate," "Yeah, I know," he said, wiping the sweat, tears, snot, and saliva from his face across the already sodden arm of his parka. "Have you got any money?" we both said simultaneously, each of us losing more hope from our hopeless hearts. "Come on, let's get out of here while we can."
There were no guards at Abbey Wood, so the pair of us shuffled along and into Abbey Wood village. "Most of the scoring happens over the other side, but the petty grafting happens this side. Although with such a high concentration of junkies in the area, the pair of us weren't going to get very far. It was more just going through the motions, giving us something to concentrate on rather than face the hideous truth that we just might have run out of luck." "We could ask Zorba if he wants his windows cleaned?" "Worth a pop, I spose." And we walked around to the greasy spoon to see if he wanted his windows cleaned. "No," was his answer. He looked at us, confused again, disappointed again. "Do you lads want a cup of tea? Take-away though, I can't have you smelling like that in here." "No thanks," said Hunting, knowing I would also not want a cup of tea. "Thanks anyway." "Yeah, thank you," and we shuffled back towards Abbey Wood station. "Hey!" I turned around and he was holding out five pounds. Hunting started crying. I took the money from him, and we both shuffled off.
"Halfway to a bag," "Yeah, but the bags are shit. I was getting sick before I went to bed." "Yeah, me too." We sat down on the steps to a closed-down shop and looked into space. Hunting dry-heaved a few times, the awful sound of his throat stretching to its extremes as his digestive system contracted violently and pointlessly. I honestly thought he'd puke blood if it kept up. You can't die withdrawing from heroin, but you can experience a long, death-like, dying-like Hell, and while I was certainly on my way there too, Hunting was right in it. "Is there nothing you can do?" he mumbled, in an almost child-like, pleading yet innocent way. I couldn't help but think of absent fathers. "There's a man who hangs around Lesnes Abbey, about a ten-minute walk. If he's there, he'll pay you ten pounds to suck your cock." And there was indeed a man who hung around Lesnes Abbey who would give you ten pounds to suck your cock. "Can't we just rob him?" "Well, apparently not, or that would have been done by now. The rumor is he has a bodyguard who sits in the bushes." "I hate this shit." "Yup. There's a similar earner, but not so...er...penis-based." "Go on." And so, I explained to Hunting about Dirty Lynn. Dirty Lynn was a dirty woman who lived in a dirty house with a dirty husband who filmed you fucking her. For reasons I don't even want to think about, they especially liked junkies. Unwashed, stinking, desperate junkies. "It's worth a punt, right?" "I guess so. Any chance they'll buy us the gear before we fuck her?" "No, they're not as stupid as they are disgusting. Unfortunately, it also means spending this five-quid getting there on the bus, and then we don't know if they'll be in or up for it. But I'm starting to feel really bad too, and I'm all out of ideas," "Can't you phone them?" "No number." "I haven't been up there for about six months." "How many times have you fucked her?" "Twice." "What's she like?" "Oh, a real beauty, you know, the type of curvaceous blonde with nice round tits and a pretty face." "Right." "Right. It's not easy." "Come on then."
We couldn't bunk the train because there's always guards or gates at Woolwich, so it was a real risk spending the money on the bus. We shuffled up to the bus-stop, Hunting squatting down behind a bin in the street to take a shit on the way as three months worth of snack foods and pills decided to exploit the situation and make their escape. We took the 180 to Woolwich Arsenal, which was like a bumpy sauna that stopped a zillion times on the way to deliberately piss us off. Everything was designed to make a desperate day worse, so it seemed. Walking up the aisle on the bus, Hunting skidded on a burger wrapper, the gherkin and tomato-sauce providing extra lubrication as he did the splits, tearing the arse of out his joggers and, by the look of his face, the skin off his balls. I heaved him up and pushed him onto a seat as he leaned forward nursing his nuts, his chest, his everything. My rattle was coming on stronger now too. Once it starts proper, it increases with extreme prejudice. I could feel my guts tumbling about like a washing machine, and my skin was covered in a clammy, milky sweat; I could feel it running from my armpits, down my sides, and drenching the waistband of my joggers. Sex-ready we were not. "How long do we have to fuck her for?" "Until you come – which works in our favour." Heroin addiction is a largely sexless pursuit, where, since your dopamine receptors are already bathing in the stuff, you're not really motivated to seek practices which would otherwise provide more – except heroin – of course. However, once you start withdrawing, it's erection-city; your little man opens its tired eye, blinks a little at the first sign of light in years, and is suddenly rather eager. And so sensitive, it's not unusual for just a few strokes to get him to cough up his useless, watery, spunk. "Do we fuck her together or one at a time?" "I'd say together, one at a time is going to take twice as long, I think. Do those maths work out?" "I don't know."
We got off the bus at Woolwich Arsenal station, walked up the Grand Depot Road for about five agonizing minutes, then up the Woolwich New Road, turning into Viotti Heights, one of the nicer estates in Woolwich, which doesn't really say much. We both sat on the wall outside the main doors at the bottom of the high rise to catch a breath and rest our aching legs. This was where Dirty Lynn and her husband lived, number thirty-six, on the ninth floor. I looked at Hunting who looked at me; the sadness in his eyes was heartbreaking. No one, and no thing, makes you use heroin. Plenty of people had hideous starts in life and didn't become junkies. But - and for reasons I don't know - there's a certain injustice in heroin addicts. Hunting felt a particular pain, and once he'd found a particular solution, he'd be nothing but punished for it. He looked like a child, a boy of about four who'd lost his parents and didn't know what to do about it. Perhaps he still doesn’t.
If there was no reply to this buzzer, that was it. If Dirty Lynn was out, or dead, or perhaps not dirty any more, then we would most likely just lay on the floor and weep. "Do you want to press it?" "You do it, you’re luckier than me." "How d’you work that out?" "Please press the buzzer." I pressed the buzzer - two long presses - and waited. And waited. Hunting sneezed a few times, then facing down, moved his head in a circular movement, watching the snot swing round as it hung from his nose. Nothing. "Try again," he said, without looking up, caught up in the swinging snot as it got longer before finally dripping completely off and landing on the floor. Nothing. Hunting looked up at me, opening his mouth as if to speak, then pausing, closing his mouth, and smiling slightly. Nothing. I smiled back at him. I was glad to have met this man. We’d worked as a team all week, we didn’t speak much, but we understood a lot from the few words we exchanged. In another life, we’d be having a laugh, maybe a few pints on a Saturday afternoon watching the football in a boozer, or going camping and cooking a full English breakfast in the morning. Maybe we’d have gone on a cycling holiday or gone to see a band, maybe met some girls in a tea-shop who lived in a nice pad in Notting Hill. And. Kissed. Them. Like. Innocent. Boys. Would.
Nothing. "Shall we go back to Abbey Wood?" "I guess so. Shit. Five quid. Hang on, it might be thirty-eight!" I turned back to the numbers and gave thirty-eight three long pushes. I heard a crackle, little electric glitches of hope. Then a voice said, "Who is it?" "Do you want to make a video?" "How many of you?" "Two." And the latch clicked, opening the door. It's on.
We did our best to tidy ourselves up in the lift. Not because we had to - Dirty Lynn's husband was clearly into making his wife fuck absolute filth - I think it was more a bit of self-respect on our part, a bit. The lift door opened, and we stepped into a chemically fragranced hallway that was so strong we both had to stop to dry heave a few times. Hunting started laughing, the pair of us one hand on the wall, retching nothing as sweat dripped off our faces and failing to be absorbed by the water-resistant carpet. "How do I look?" I said to Hunting who cracked up, causing me to laugh, and then the pair of us giggling like school kids. Once we’d regained the small amount of composure we could, I gave the door a couple of loud knocks with my knuckle.
Lynn's husband was exactly what you’re already thinking - a scrawny, but somehow overweight little rat of a man, with 1980s glasses that were too big for his face and made his eyes look as big as plates. Hunting started laughing, which I immediately tried to make part of the excitement. "Hi mate, you good?" He had a look down the hallway behind us then ushered us in, locking the door, sliding a bolt, and slipping over a security chain. "This way." We followed him down the hall; the house smelled of off milk and stale, stagnant air, like the windows had never been opened. We went into the main room, where Dirty Lynn sat in a very unfetching tracksuit and slippers. Her long, drawn, and pale face poking out of thinning, long, brown hair that went down past her shoulders. She was looking Straight ahead at nothing and held a cigarette between two fingers, and an ashtray in her other hand which lay on her lap. “Just give me a few minutes to set this up,” said Dirty Husband, as he fiddled with the viewer of an old video camera he had mounted on a tripod. There was also a reflector and a light that he switched on and moved slightly nearer to where 'the action' would happen. “So how much do we get?” said Hunting to me. “Got to be about forty, right?” I said to Dirty Husband, whose tongue went side to side as it licked his top lip in anticipation. “I'll give you forty, yes, but you've got to come” (he smiled a libidinally overdetermined child-catcher smile) “both of you.” I looked at Dirty Lynn, who was in exactly the same position, still looking forward at nothing. “No problem,” I said, giving Dirty Lynn a little smile as if to say, 'I know how you feel love, we're in this together, believe me.'
Dirty Husband rubbed his hands together and said, "OK, let's go then, we're rolling," and with that, Dirty Lynn got up, pulled down her tracksuit bottoms and knickers, stuck her arse in the air, knees on the floor, and looked at the chair. I kind of walked around her, stepped over and onto the chair, and pulled my trousers down. My cock was hard – because it was anyway, if anything Dirty Lynn had softened it somewhat – and sat down. Lynn immediately took it in her mouth and began nodding her head up and down. It was all so unattractive, so totally asexual that I think it had gone full circle and become utterly animal. She put one hand round her back and pulled one arse-cheek to the side, but Hunting just looked at it. "Come on, Hunting, fuck her!" But Hunting just stared at the mess before him, looking terrified. "Please don't let me down now, please don't." I wanted to encourage him, I wanted to say, "Come on Mate, you've only got to stick it in a few times and we'll be out of this shit-hole," but I'm not sure that would have gone down too well. You never know though, perhaps Dirty Husband was Ultra Dirty Husband, and such an increase in desperation would have pressed his dirty buttons. "I can't do it," said Hunting. "It's all green, it's rotten, and it's moving, there's lice too..." He leaned forward for a closer inspection, a confused, sort of perplexed look of perhaps a scientist who was unsure why his solution was turning blue when it should turn red. "I can't do it!" "Come on lads, what's going on!" Dirty Husband wasn't happy, and I could see him getting tetchy, like we were going to rob him like no doubt countless others had, only his perverse desperation or desperate perversion causing him to keep taking the risk of letting the likes of me and Hunting into his house, and wife. But in truth, in our current state, running on fumes, he would have overpowered us, even if he didn't know it. With him and Dirty Lynn, the carving knife, and the sock full of coins I saw on the table, we'd be beaten, slashed, and chased out of the flat in no time.
I pulled Dirty Lynn's head off my cock and let it slump down on the chair. I pushed myself up and moved my leg over her so I could go and talk to Hunting and survey the beast that concerned him so. Now admittedly it wasn't that inviting. There was a bird's nest of hair, and a really overused and unpleasant cunt, it looked like Demis Roussos eating a squid. But it wasn't green and it wasn't moving. "Please just stick it in, and then we can get out of here, don't let me down mate, please!" And then he said what I thought he was going to say, what I'd had my suspicions about for the last hour or so. "I'm tripping. I dropped those blotters." I didn't have the time to be annoyed or the energy to have a go at him, I just had a moment of clarity, that I was standing in a flat in Woolwich, with my trousers around my ankles, with Dirty Lynn on her elbows and knees, cunt in the air, with a bloke called Hunting on acid, and her husband videoing the entire mischief.
‘Welcome to Australia’ it said above a poster in a glass box type thing screwed onto the wall containing a little boomerang and a toy kangaroo in front of a map of the continent. I considered wanking him off to get him hard, but instead told him to go sit down and I’d do the fucking. This worked out far better. For Hunting. It took him a while to negotiate getting onto the chair without kicking Dirty Lynn in the face, although I think he did heel her in the neck judging by her sudden grunt and his expression of absolute horror. But he was hard in no time and although he was looking at the ceiling, she was sucking him off. I was fucking her and Dirty husband had removed the camera from the tripod and was getting what I guess he thought were interesting or – dare I say it ‘sexy’ angles. “Tell me when you’re ready,” “What?” “When you’re ready to come,” “Oh yeah…Er… about now?” And with that, Hunting bucked a little bit, grit his teeth, and bolted his bit into Lynn’s mouth, I picked up my pace and thought of all the sexy things I could, anything but here. Now. This. And in a twenty seconds I came too, my instantly flaccid cock flopping out of Dirty Lynn as it spat pathetic beads of jizz onto her chin. We pulled up our joggers and tied the strings – Dirty Lynn included, who sat back on the seat, lit another cigarette and assumed the exact same mental-patient pose, two-thousand yard stare she had when we arrived. “Can I have a cigarette?” asked Hunting. “No” said Dirty Lynn, the first thing to come out of her mouth since we arrived, if you don’t include two cocks.
And that was that, we got the forty quid and left, not mentioning anything about it again, so as it didn’t happen. It’s amazing what having two crisp twenties in your hand can do for your sense of well-being, and we all but skipped back down to Woolwich Arsenal.
By chance we bumped into a couple of Junkies I knew called Dave and Linda, who were selling bags for the pikeys, and got a couple each, which we took to the electricity sub-station and injected. We both sat on the ground. ‘So, how’s your trip?”, “Better now”, said Hunting.
He woke me up about an hour later, and I could see it was starting to get dark. “I’m off, maybe see you again?”, “Sure” I said, and never saw him again.
Although. Ten years later I was sitting at the bar in The French House in Soho, nursing a Bloody Mary, and in the mirror behind the bar I saw a man I could have swore was Hunting. He was sitting with a girl, who was on my left. I studied his face for a long time. The gentle eyes, the handsome cheekbones, and the underlying pain that would always be there, even when he smiled, which he was. I leant forward, my arse a little off my seat and got his attention, both him and the girl on my left looking at me. “Hunting?” “Hunting? What about it?” “Nothing, sorry mate,” and I sat back onto my barstool.
About twenty minutes later I finished my drink, paid, took my jacket off the peg under the bar and put it on. I said goodbye to the barmaid and as I walked past the couple, said “Sorry about that, I thought you were someone else.” He looked at me, looking me up and down. “Me too” he said, and smiled.
The End
Chris Dangerfield
Thank you for giving this a read. I really appreciate your time. What I really appreciate is a LIKE and a COMMENT A SHARE on social media is the God Touch - it does me the world of good when looking at the bigger picture, which is rather small. Thanks again.
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You can write the hell out of a junkie story Dangerfield, I always find them endlessly fascinating. Do you reckon it was actually him in The French House? Nice to think he might have turned his life around.
Despite the grim stench of these tales you keep it engaging. I like how you were surprised to find a fellow thinker/reader after the Thamesmead brut bit. Hunting's unexpected eloquence and your sharp observations make it all the more pitiful given your sorry predicaments. You make a fair case for some sympathy for this lifestyle, describing well, for example, its bungling desperation up against the 'idle spite' of the law.
For all the junkie feebleness, I was shocked to be reminded of a 'defiant heart that taught itself how to love nobody.' That sense of defiance in someone quite broken, I always find touching.
For all this, the humour and drama are still there and nicely done. There's always some spring in your character's steps so it's a lively read. The asides about meaning of language etc, whilst running the pikey gauntlet, was good and seemed to tie in with your aforementioned acid clarity.
I'm left wanting to know more about all involved, how do people get like this? ...which I guess is a good measure of the stories told.
But they're great as shorts so even though you might only scratch some surface, the writing still gives a solid depth to those involved, stench and all.
Enjoyed it. Sweet ending with the 'me too.'