London, sometime in the 1990s.  On a bench in Wandsworth Park sits a man.   He is hunched forward, elbows on knees. In his right hand is a cigarette.  He’s a non-descript man in the most anonymous of cities. He’s not wild eyed, he’s not weeping or tearing his hair.  But below the surface he is being torn into pieces.  He wants to stand up and walk to his left. He wants to pass through the park’s western gate up a small lane to Putney Bridge Station. He wants to catch the District Line to Earls Court and then the Piccadilly Line to Leicester Square,   walk a couple of blocks to the Quaker Hall. He’s never been there before but Becky on the phone said he “can’t miss it”.  He really wants to go left.  But he also really wants to stand up and walk to his right.  He wants to go through the eastern park gate to his flat. He wants to go back to bed, pull the covers over his head and shut out the world.   And he really wants to sit just where he is smoking cigarettes until he turns to dust.

He feels a surge of optimism, he’s going to go left.

I’ve already signed up; I’ve paid the money. What’s the worst that could happen?  This could be life changing.  Writing is what I have wanted to do since I was five.  This course could be the snowball that starts the avalanche.  The thing that’s going to take my shy, self-loathing ass and turn it into an extraverted ladies’ man who writes best-selling novels like I’m shelling peas and is the life of every party.  On the phone, Becky, the course coordinator sounded hot, and super relaxed and friendly.  Maybe when she said “Can’t wait to meet you on Saturday” she was meaning on a personal level not just being nice.  Maybe she got a vibe from me and now she’s intrigued.  Maybe she’ll be one of those willowy free spirit types who’s just never found the right guy, but we’ll make eye contact and fall instantly in love and go in live in her parent’s cottage in the Cotswalds and have unbelievable sex 5 times a day.

Right I’m doing this, I’m going left. 

Then the prickle on the skin, the clench of his stomach, the shiver at the back of his neck.  His breath gets short.

What if I bump into someone I know. What will they think of me doing a writing course.  Will they want to read it? Who will they tell? And what if I go to the wrong place and I’m like “is this where the creative writing class is?” and the people are at an anger management class and having this strange man wander in and ask if they are novelists tips them all over the edge and they pick up metal chairs and start beating me with them? 

What if Becky ignores me or even worse what if she does drag me to the Cotswalds and I’m really bad at the sex and she gives me a look of pity and suggests I leave.  Oh God, the shame, the shame, the shame.

And now the shame fire is burning his mind adds fuel, a surge of shameful memories he’s experienced from the age of about 8.  Bang, bang, bang, have that that; his Form 2 Teacher laughing at a picture he painted, flunking first year Uni, the terrible sex with Natasha when he was high and paranoid as fuck.

I’m fine the way I am.  Why risk all that?  And what if the course doesn’t help.  What if it reveals the truth?  That I can’t write for shit.  I’ll be the same weak ass coward in a dead-end job but now I’ll be without hope as well.  The same loser that gets blackout drunk and pisses himself, who can’t talk to a pretty girl without 8 beers and a couple of pills or a line of coke onboard. Who isn’t a good friend or a good brother or a good son. It’s better not to know, better to hold out hope and live in misery than know that the misery is permanent.

This battle has been raging for days, ever since he signed up and paid for the course. The night before he’d been a millimeter away from tossing it in.  Upstairs the music was getting louder. His flat mates were drinking, doing lines, planning to head to a house party and then probably out clubbing.  Fuck it just go with them.

Yeah, good plan.  Flag the writing bullshit.  Head down to the off-license and get a couple of four packs of Fosters tall cans.  Tom’s got a couple of grams I can get in on and there are some pills in the top drawer of your bedside table. We’ll drink here then head to that dodgy mate of Anna’s in Ealing who is always trying to fuck her behind Paul’s back.  We’ll do more gear and more beer and then go to a terrible nightclub and dance in the fake smoke for an hour or six before heading to an after party and sitting on couches having bullshit conversations with people who I wouldn’t give the time of day to if I was straight.

And then it will 3pm on Saturday and I’ll still be awake and all alone in my bedroom and the false pleasure will have leaked out of my system and those great moments when I was dancing with hot girls and having great conversations will start to morph and I’ll see flashes of other memories.  That girl who turned away from me in the drinks queue, did she think I was weird?  That guy who laughed near me on the dance floor, was he laughing at me?  The doors are open and the demons pile inside.  She definitely thought I was weird, he was definitely laughing at me.  And maybe Anna and Paul were laughing at me too when they turned their heads and whispered that time.

And on Sunday I’m still fill of chemicals and I wander around like a lost lamb just wanting human contact but I’ve no-one to hug because I’m alone in the world. 

So, he stayed in his room, tried to get to sleep despite the rising noise from the boat above and the battle raging in his head.

“Just get on this piss, i want to so bad.  Maybe that tall girl with the black hair and the nose ring will be out tonight. No, stay in bed.  This course is going to change my life.”

He’d won that skirmish.  He’d stayed in bed and slept fitfully until his alarm.  Then, after 20 minutes of struggling with himself he’d managed to force himself out of bed and into the shower.  Then, unbelievably, outside.  But as he’d walked to the train, he had found himself sitting down on the park bench lighting and lighting a cigarette.  He didn’t remember wanting to sit down and have a cigarette it had just happened.

And here he is still.  He lights another cigarette.

“I’ll go left after this one”

“Sure you will.”

And then he sees it.  The District Line train winding its way towards the station, flitting in and out of sight amongst the tenement houses. He’s missed it now for sure.  He has lost.  He can’t show up late, that’s worse than not showing up at all.  He tosses the cigarette and grinds it under his foot. He goes right.