Chapter 1

The bird was dead and there was nothing I could do about it. It was soaring high in the sky just a few minutes before and then, just like God shuffled his feet, it fell straight down, landing square at the end of my toe. That’s just how things happen, I thought, one minute you’re flying high and the next minute it’s all over. That’s when I suddenly remembered the strangest thing, the Queen loved pigeon racing.

I’d seen and heard the phrases Regina, Her Majesty and The Crown so many times I guess she was just closer to me than anybody else at the moment, so it would only be natural that I’d think of her.

But ya, it’s true – all those Royals loved pigeons – And I guess it makes sense, the monarchy would have an affinity with something that sits well high above the rest of us and then every once in a while just right-royally shits all over somebody. Why wouldn’t they? It’s just their nature, no need to hate them for it.

In fact, you might not know this but Sandringham pigeons were used as carrier birds during both the world wars. One bird in particular, Royal Blue even won a medal for gallantry for its role in reporting a lost aircraft in 1940. I remembered that story from some drunk I met in a pub once, he was probably dead now too but I appreciated the memory as I wondered what to do about that poor bird. It’s not like I had any other plans that day.

But for whatever reason, I think I realized that it deserved a proper burial, and that’s when it all came flooding back to me. A whole lot of emotions all at once, and I have no idea where any of it came from – But it was like every voice I’d ever heard in my entire life, suddenly flooded into my brain all at once but mostly I just heard The Queen. Under pressure.

On the buses, off the bloody buses – the new buses moving through London were supposed to continue building the excitement about the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, something that really wouldn’t gain steam until June of that year. And the fourth month in the year of our Lord, Nineteen Hundred and Seventy-Seven – Was the Queen’s jubilee celebration and why wouldn’t it be?

Excitement? I’m not terribly excitable I don’t think but I do know that Abba had the number one hit song that April, all over London, with Knowing Me, Knowing You. I think that’s a very curious thing, Knowing Me and Knowing You, but I’ll get back to that later. Just the same, don’t you think it’s important to really know about somebody? Maybe it’s more important that you know yourself first before you worry about anybody else – I don’t know and I’ve never thought about it much but I guess that’s why it’s the the first part of the song title, right?

When Studio 54 opened that same month in in New York City, the world’s most famous and elite disco that ever was, nobody seemed to make the correlation that explosion of unbridled narcissism was in the midst of the Son of Sam serial murders that held the entire city hostage. All things considered, it strikes me as odd that Son of Sam shared the exact same braggadocio that fueled London’s own Jack the Ripper precisely 100 years earlier. Class struggle and social injustice isn’t exactly a new phenomena, I guess.

Meanwhile, in the darkened depths of fate’s twisted hand, Southern Airways Flight 242 plummeted down from the heavens, killing 63 of the 85 people on board, along with nine people on the ground. The pilot attempted to make an emergency landing on a Georgia State Highway 92 and it didn’t work out so well. Exact same time, tornadoes killed 21 people in Alabama, while another tornado killed 900 people in Bangladesh. Switch the channel to Southwestern Iran where an earthquake killed at least 348 people and it was only a month earlier when the warning tremors killed 167 people as things got warmed up. It was like the entire world was exploding with some kind of unpredictable and seething rage, all at the same time, April 1977, as Her Majesty’s band played on.

And then while all hell was breaking loose all around us, a right regal present, the silver jubilee was for the world’s most notorious punk rock band, London’s own, Sex Pistols. John Lydon, alright Johnny Rotten, began writing “No Future,” which manager Malcolm McLaren renamed “God Save the Queen” after realizing its commercial potential during Her Majesty’s Jubilee year. It was the pinnacle of the Pistols’ brief career, the point at which the band’s concepts of subversion were perfectly matched to music and imagery, and the song was recorded multiple times until its mocking scorn and guitar thunder were perfected. To celebrate all of it, that April, they commandeered a barge and took one far too provocative punk party boat trip on the river Thames.

Later that evening, when the boat finally docked again, the air was thick with animosity from the police force. After being on duty all day at the jubilee celebrations and nice to all the bloody tourists in every damn London hole, you could tell these cops were ready for a fight – anything to work it all out, ready to explode. The streets of London are still echoing with the roar of police filing up that gangway in tight, steadfast and closed fisted formation. Sex Pistol’s manager McLaren loved every spotlight grabbing moment of it and immediately staggered to his feet. He was ready for a war as he lifted his clenched fist, and screamed, “You fucking fascist bastards,” before being dragged away, beaten up, detained, and shoved into a police vehicle. I might have downplayed that a little, they gleefully beat the fucking shit out him, as radios all over London blasted the first tracks from the next coming wave, and very first album of The Clash.

That’s what April 1977 was all about or so I’m told. All that rage just simmering under the surface, rage erupting from the surface, all hell breaking loose and shit hitting the fan at 1000 miles per hour – beyond the speed of sound. Now you might be wondering why I’m even bothering or what I’m even doing talking about it. I haven’t got a bloody clue whether any of it was very exciting or not, but I do know everything got stirred up, right royally.

“You’ve got a lot of time on your hands now, Stephen.” somebody said to me. “Lots of quiet time to yourself to just think – for once in your goddamned life.”

Cheeky bastard. Idle hands are the devil’s workshop.

Truth be told, I haven’t much idea about any of it, because in all honesty, I hadn’t even been born yet. I will tell you this much though, over in the farthest most borough of London, it was actually quite lovely, if you didn’t mind the constant roar of the planes at Heathrow. The London Borough of Hillingdon was a lovely green, far away from the madness all around us – But I suppose you’re likely wondering why any of this exploding rage matters much. I mean, I’d wonder.

Well in that relative calm, beneath all that lovely cancer causing, mind altering jet fuel and ear drum shattering sonic boom of the supersonic Concorde jet, is where it all starts for me – quite literally. A month of months, April was, in a year of jubilation no lest. Knowing me and knowing you.

Because amidst all that jubilant noise, death, rampage and mayhem, a determined sperm struck a very receptive egg just beyond the runway at Heathrow and I was conceived. I trust that triumph was just as loud, boisterous and portentous as all the other bloody anarchy that was unfolding around my young zygote self. It’s how I came into being, entrance stage right fucking raging, I guess.

“God Save The Queen!”

Nobody’s born pissed off.

But Nine months later I’d be screaming with all the rage, joy and rebel yell at my disposal as The Bee Gees announced my arrival into the world with their number one hit single, Stayin’ Alive – should’ve been my theme song, all things considered.

Just the same, it will likely come as no surprise to you that I really don’t remember one fucking minute of it but the sheer green of my surroundings in Hillingdon seems to have stuck with me to this day – it’s my favorite color truth be told but I must confess, not my most favorite of memories.

Looking at that razor wire perimeter fence that surrounds Heathrow today, I often wonder if I’d been born inside a cage or outside of it – One big long ugly fence is all that separates the jetsetters from the common rabble, the haves and the have nots. Just another wall I’d want to knock down if I ever got the chance, I sometimes thought.

“I just don’t want to discuss it.” I said to my beautiful blonde wife, Emma, who to this very day I can’t even quite reconcile how I was ever fortunate enough to meet her. She was mad, maybe hurt, that my foul and distant disposition was ruining our little getaway. I also strongly suspected that she knew what I was hiding from her. But of course, I couldn’t even begin to tell her, I wouldn’t have even known where to start. The last thing I wanted to do was have her worry but she was worried nonetheless and I was obviously making it worse. In fact, as the days went by, I knew that she was irritated with me and rightly so because I truly was keeping something from her.

It was our wedding anniversary, a simple weekend escape, a little hotel holiday, and all I could think about was that we couldn’t afford it – not any of it. Not even a second of time or even a moment to turn my head away from the seething inside my head. The more distant I got, the more bothered she was and the more infuriated I became with myself. Every time I turned to look at her I became even more angry, how could they do this to us? What right did they have to intrude on this weekend, interfere with my family, threaten to take it all away from us?

The rules were finally loosening up, and the COVID lockdown, that bloody cage that trapped all of us seemed to be almost over at last. But what kind of justice was it that in the few days of freedom we were actually sharing together for the first time in what seemed like forever, I’d be carrying around enough doom and gloom to wreck everything. Christ, I hated myself and everything around me but truly, the bloody bastards had screwed me for the last time, I thought. A year full of bullshit topped off by the ultimate bullshit, thank you so much. It was my own bloody fault for sure but it still all seemed so wrong to me. Wreck the life of my wife and my children because some sorry lot of cunts didn’t have the simple courtesy to treat us all with a modicum of respect and common decency?

What fucking right did they have? I could feel everything I ever wanted, worked for, cried for, fought for was all falling out from under my feet. I was sickened by it, furious and quite honestly, terrified of all of it. It was simmering feeling inside me, something that had been growing for a very long time, children have the right to have a home and feel safe. I’d failed them all but I just couldn’t get past the point of wanting some sort of vengeance or justice for all of it – for as far back as I could remember, really. Fucking razor wire fences.

A few drinks and a night out to forget but why wasn’t it working? Sure there were efforts from her, lots of of them but I just couldn’t face her. It wasn’t working, so I just sat there in front of her in that far corner of that little club that was supposed to be our celebration. I sat there, one drink after another, engulfed by the intensity of my anguish, as a seething rage swept through my body like a relentless fire. The burden of keeping this secret was crushing my spirit. What kind of husband would I be if I didn’t tell her but what kind of husband would she think I was for being so stupid? Seeing her keen gaze, knowing that something was terribly wrong, guilt tore at my conscience and tore me apart from the inside out.

My paranoia had a death grip on me, freezing my mind. Everything she said and did felt like an indictment, like a dagger being thrust into the soft spot where my secret truth lay. Did she have any idea? My inner anguish, could she feel it? Fearfully, I imagined when she found out the real truth.

“I need to ask…” she said, between drinks. “Are you seeing someone?”

“God no.” I stammered, wishing it was something just that stupid.

What was I thinking when I let it go to this point? The burden of my secret truth now threatened the vows we made and the love we shared. The guilt I felt for my lack of balls was crushing me; it was like a knife stabbing into my own soul.

Emma deserved far better than to be trapped in the shackles of my horseshit and ruining the entire weekend too. She deserved a husband who would stand before her with nothing but the truth, who would not be afraid to confront his problems and expose his deepest, darkest fears. Instead, I became frozen with terror, engulfed in the smothering grip of my secrets and praying against hope that they would remain concealed even as they tainted the atmosphere between us. I just needed time to come up with some solution and then I could tell her everything.

But my stomach turned every time she reached out to me, her hand outstretched in loving concern. Why couldn’t I tell her truth? I didn’t know how to share the doubts that had begun to cloud my vision of security. Suffocating beneath the weight of my secrets, I found myself hemmed in by my own silence.

“It’s work.” I said, “Just some things bugging me about work.”

I could tell she was mad, her eyes narrowed and she looked at me. I could already hear everything she was preparing to say without even listening.

“I’m really sorry.” I said, suddenly aware that if I kept talking I might cry. There was no way she could see it. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am that it’s interfering with our weekend and it’s all my fault.”

We’d lose our house, everything we’d built together, I knew it, especially as soon as she stood up from the table and walked away. I just sat there watching her dance by herself off in some distant spot just beyond the bar, Ed Sheeran wailing “Bad Habits”, the irony never even occurred to me as I bought another drink. Likely because I wasn’t even listening, all I could hear was the soundtrack of some TV show narrator talking in my head.

Maybe it was the look of the bartender, bald, glasses, totally nondescript but that crisp white shirt he wore, just seemed to make that TV soundtrack even more real. I don’t know how many years ago it was but I remembered seeing a documentary on television, about some bloke in America, John List was his name. He’d got his family a nice house, they all went to church like a bunch of goody-goodies and he had a grand job providing for his family, just like a man is supposed to do. Every day Mr. List walked out the door and went to the office, while the debts secretly piled up and he started stealing money from his mother’s bank account just to keep the illusion alive. In reality, he was just sitting in the park all day reading the newspaper until one day he snapped, put a record on the record player, and then just slaughtered the whole lot of them in cold blood.

Church organ music, go figure and I guess it was all because John List didn’t tell his wife he’d been sacked from his job, he just kept playing along, while the tension of all that stress built up inside him like a powderkeg. Day after day, month after month and eventually John started to think that his whole damn family would be better cared for in heaven.

“He killed his whole family and disappeared.” I heard myself say to the bartender as I sensed a tear welling up in my eye.

“Right.” the bald guy said, “Who did that?”

“John List” I said.

Now of course I’d never even consider such a thing but as baldy poured me another one, I sort of half-assed realized and almost understood how good ole’ John List just snapped like that.

“There but for the grace of God, go you and I.” I heard him laugh and it actually hit me like a load of bricks. I think that’s a bartender thing, they’ll say some real dark shit and then laugh right afterwards. If you actually think back to all the things that random bartender’s have said to you over the course of your life, you’d pretty quickly realize they’re all just fucking total psychopaths, just waiting to happen. They’re the opposite of therapists, it’s in their best interest to get you feeling as miserable as fucking possible and baldy sure nailed it that night.

“Just gimme’ another one.” I snarled, as my lady just kept dancing.

Ed Sheeran, fuck Ed Sheeran and his “Bad Habits” too, the little ginger bastard was just another wall between my wife and myself at that point. You could shove that isolation, that lockdown COVID horseshit too – And every other injustice in the world that just hit me like a sledgehammer. I could have punched that bartender right in his goddamned smug face just because I didn’t like the look of him – and he had it comin’ too.

“It’s no damned good.” I said as I slammed the empty glass down on the bar and he was more than happy to fill right back up again. Sonofabitch.

Empty was right. All I could see is my kids looking at their father who didn’t protect them, stand up for them and keep the devil away from them. John List you’re a weak fuckin’ man and so was I, and somebody better bloody well pay for all of it. Burn it all fuckin’ right down, right there, right now.