It’s from 1982 to 1983. I'm going to several clubs and venues in Manchester city centre, and one or two all-day parties known as all-dayers. They were held in various cities once a month when I was still in school.
They were friendly, tastefully designed discos with strobe-laser lights, packed with girls wearing as little as possible. The ladies modelled pink string vests, and the odd no-bra welcomed one’s eyes.
The occasional jeans were cut too short, up to the bumper line and beyond in some cases. Some lovely, sexy women were dressed in fishnet tights with varied leg warmers.
At sixteen, I started attending Saint John’s College on Quay Street, Manchester, to resit my English and mathematics exams. I was more interested in the club scene and my love for the latest music.
Electro hip hop, jazz, R&B, breakdancing, body popping, and fusion are forms of street tap dancing, and they were the rave for my generation.
This was the same year I met my future baby mother, Alice Barnaby. Like some young men, Alice was my first after many failed attempts with other girls.
At twenty-one, she lost her virginity to me, and she was a practising Christian; I was not. As our relationship grew, Alice became more involved in the club scene.
The parties never stopped.
**Say no to Drugs**
One of the best nights ever was when I first pulled on a big head spliff. This night was different; my friends and I planned to go to The Reno, on Princess Road, the frontline nightspot.
The underground scene for upfront, fresh-as-a-daisy music, drugs, and guns. The boys were excited, like fluffy black bunny rabbits running around a tree and as joyous as a black church choir. It was our first time attending the venue.
While in an enthusiastic mood, some of the guys got into gangster characters. Not being thugs.
One of the four guys pulled out a fat £2 bag of weed; before I knew it, they were smoking, laughing, and joking.
They offered me some, but I refused many times. I knew the effects of drugs when looking at my father and his serious mental health issues.
No, it was not good enough for my mates. After an hour or so, they all jumped on me like a pack of wolves about to feast on a deer and similar to a bunch of rotten police officers. They ganged up against me, forcing me to have a blowback.
This is where they’d hold one’s nose and blow the smoke into one’s face; what can you do?
I didn’t fight back because I’m not violent, not that I can remember most of that night, but what a laugh.
After that, I became distracted in college and, after six months of further education, dropped out. This put me on the road in the catering industry as a trainee chef at Swan Street Youth Training Scheme, paying a weekly wage of £25 plus bus fare.
Things haven’t changed much in over twenty-five years. It may be a different name for another government scheme, Education Maintenance Allowance, E.M.A., which got £30 per week in 2009.
I started working for various catering establishments after completing the Y.T.S. scheme. After eighteen months of dating Alice, my love for her grew daily.
Other women may have been interested in me then, but my heart and mind were on Alice.
**Reggae Blues Party**
One evening, Alice invited me to a Hulme-on-Limbeck Crescent party. We both arrived at the party at various times with our friends.
When I arrived, I was there before Alice, and the party was in full swing. It was about 2 a.m. Alice appeared with her sister and a few of her friends soon after.
The heavy reggae bass rumbled in the packed house party, and we lined the walls, having a few slow dances together.
The heat was building up when Alice exhaled, ‘I need some fresh air.’
Then she went outside with her sister. A few moments later, Alice returns, uttering, ‘Why don’t you come outside and join us?’
I followed her outside; the evening was warm, and the night sky was as clear as day. There seemed to be more people outside the flat than at the party.
The area was buzzing with chatter, fun, and laughter. Drinks were flowing, and weed was being smoked.
We stood outside on the public balcony where the party was being held. The night air was fragrant with oats, hops, and barley from the local brewery. The delicate scent drifted in the calm, soothing silence of the whistling wind, wafting gently in the background.
Across Princess Road, light-running engines from the nighttime city traffic could be heard, vroom, vroom, vroom.
**Primitive Behaviour**
Alice noticed the door next door was open, as various people seemed to be welcoming themselves in and out of the flat. Alice declared, ‘Let’s have a look.’
Sure enough, I followed her into the eerily creepy dark hallway of the flat. All that could be heard was the boom, boom, boom in the background as the deep, rumbling reggae bass from the party next door played on.
As we walked casually down the hallway. I saw a three-seater sofa from a crack of light emanating from the open living room door.
I entered the room first to see an acquaintance, Dan Redbridge. He was a five-foot-six, short black guy with a very short temper.
He sat in an armchair opposite the three-seater sofa, looking at Alice and me. I sat on the deep leather brown three-seater sofa to hear Dan say to Alice, ‘Come over here and sit on my lap.’
His comment surprised me. I didn’t know Alice and Dan knew one another. I thought Dan didn’t show me much respect, talking to my woman in such a manner, and as a second thought, where does Alice know him from, for him to be that forward?
Alice turned her head to look at me. Feeling confident about our relationship, I said, ‘Come over here.’
Alice looked at me plain and square with a cold, blank expression, then slapped me down like a baseball when she replied, ‘No.’
I felt humiliated and didn’t feel respected by my girlfriend. After Alice’s short, abrupt, rousing speech, I stood up, left the flat and the party, then went home.
I never found out what happened between Alice and Dan that night, not knowing what had happened and never asking a question.
My trust was shattered, and I learnt from then that women would instigate or provoke jealousy with their female charms to test love. Over time, my passion for the attention of other women faded away.
In poetic prose, two types of text, italic and plain italic, represent two voices, John and Fitzroy, or two minds in one head.
Remember Memories
‘To see me, you wouldn’t want to be me, from all I can see of me.’
‘It is a tragedy, all the misery; why is there unhappiness?
Was there love lost with all the friends you have loved?’
‘Tragic it may have been, but there was no love lost; my happiness is that they still live so they can give love; isn’t that how you live?’
‘There is only us; one should only forgive, remembering one’s love, painful it may be, why hate the harm, embrace how love felt, not how you feel.’
John T. Hope
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