Chapter 1 The Bottom

“We are what we repeatedly do” Aristotle.

                           

As I sat considering ending my life it was two weeks since I’d returned from teaching in China.  Back at square one, planning to find a job, planning to get back to doing what normal people did. It was the same every time I’d returned to England, telling myself it was time to settle down, time to stop asking my questions, but I couldn’t. Ever since the day I’d walked out of on my job, the day I’d walked out on my wife, I’d been tunnelling towards something and until I got there I couldn’t just stop.   

As my mind raced I tried to focus on the distant whir of a lawnmower, a summers day outside I looked around my father's lounge the same T.V., the same bookshelves, the picture of Lake Garda hanging above the La-Z-Boy sofa, nothing had changed in fifteen years. It was the blueprint for my life, to go to university, to qualify to do something, get a house like this house and for a while I had. 

My heart thumping I walked upstairs turning on the computer and entering my password.

‘Password accepted’

I brought up Google and entered a search for ‘Asian porn’ choosing a site and waiting impatiently as an image downloaded.  She was at the edge of a swimming pool, possibly Thai, dark brown skin, yellow thong, she was bent forward, head turned backwards, a close up of her vagina and breasts hanging invitingly.  Pulling my penis from my trousers I masturbated, intermittently closing my eyes as I held her image, my body was temporarily at rest, my mind free of thoughts, it was the only way I knew to switch off.  I’d tried meditation, single-pointedness and all that but it was only porn which sucked me in and guaranteed a fleeting satisfaction.

 

After ejaculating I closed the page and deleted the search history, looking back to the empty search box flashing on the screen in front of me ‘What are you going to do?’ Until my mid twenties I’d never had a problem answering that question, I just did as I was told or did what I thought I was supposed to be doing.  I’d done it all until I was sick, until all the life inside me had left.  That was when I’d known I had to change things, February 2002, another day at the office, a business analyst sat in a meeting room we’d been discussing price changes, altering a vast labyrinth of computer systems built by individuals and stapled together until no one knew what they did anymore. 

“So Paul, what’s the SP on those workarounds?” my manager had asked.

“Yeah, we’ve identified a couple of changes I.T. are looking at, should have it ready by the end of the week,” I’d said. 

That had been my piece, the only part I’d understood, as the meeting progressed I hadn’t even known what they were talking about, sat gazing from the window considering whether I’d be there until I was as round as everyone else in the room.  Returning to my desk that afternoon I’d sat in facing a spreadsheet, tuning out as all the voices around me merged to one.  Every grain of energy gone, not the slightest desire to continue living my life as it was.  I sat until four thirty, until I was free again, free to go home, cook dinner, watch T.V. and go to bed to be ready for another day.  Walking to my car that afternoon I’d asked myself ‘Am I happy?' I hadn’t even known that day, twenty four years old and I hadn’t even known what made me happy anymore and that scared the shit out of me.

That’s when I’d known I had to get out, known if I didn’t make a change I was as good as dead.  It wasn’t just work, I’d married at twenty two for the simple reason my parents had and we’d run out of other things to do.  Moving in together after a holiday romance, we’d settled down, had a house, a cat and a car.  Two years on I didn’t even like her anymore.  She was good looking, top draw, knew how to dress a but when it came to spending time together all she did was shop or talk about work.  She was an advertising executive and she liked to tell people about it ‘Hi, I’m Suzy from The Times’ she’d say.  I’d cringed every time I heard it ‘You’re not Suzy from the fucking Times,’ I’d think ‘,you’re the sexy girl I met on holiday, the girl who loved dancing and unprotected sex’.   

Weekends were dedicated to shopping, my money spent before I’d earned it, filling the wardrobe with things we couldn’t afford, things we didn’t need. That was my life at twenty four, getting ready to upgrade to a swank apartment, buying a new Hyundai coupe.  What more could I have wanted?  Meaning's what I fucking wanted, to know my life would by more than a routine accumulation of possessions leading towards death.  A life hemmed between shopping malls and office blocks.  No one else seemed to care, went through the motions, occasionally complained they hadn’t had a pay rise, but for me, there had to be more.

I'd bunked off work a couple of times after that finding myself in bookstores looking for answers.  I’d picked up my first self help book shortly after meeting Suzy and now I read everything on the shelf  ‘Do It’, ‘Quarter Life Crisis’, ‘What Colour Is Your Parachute?’.  They all said the same things, you can do anything, you just have to decide what, get organised, set some goals.  The ‘what’ part was where I always got stuck, how was I supposed to know what?

I completed an exercise ‘Imagine you’re a millionaire, you could do anything, what would you do?’ I thought about the lottery winners I’d seen on T.V. buying flash cars and bigger houses only to find themselves more unhappy and I scrawled my list 'Travel the world, open a restaurant with the recipes I’d collect on my travels, banish poverty, write a book, make a movie, have a threesome, have friends from around the world, apartments in Tokyo, Hong Kong and New York'. When I’d looked at the list getting started hadn’t needed a million.

That’s where the books said most people stopped, they knew what they wanted, just didn’t have the balls to go after it.  I chewed over things over for a couple of weeks, read a tale about a backpackers adventures in Thailand, kept going to work, but when it came to buying the new apartment I knew I was out, out of my marriage, out of my job.  It was a crisp January morning when I shared my thoughts with Suzy.  A covering of snow falling overnight we were walking in the hills above Manchester.

“I know you don’t like your job, I’m sick of hearing about it,” she’d said. “If you don’t like it, do something else.”

That’s when I’d told her, told her I wanted to go away, told her I wanted to see what I could do with my life.

“I could be a solicitor, a doctor, a scientist like Terrence.”

Seeing the city in the distance that day I’d seen my future, the place I lived, the tall buildings where I worked.  If I kept going as I was that would be my life, an endless circle from doorstep to office and back again. There’d be the occasional visit to my parents, a holiday in Spain, but my future, for the most part, that was it.

“Can I change?” I’d asked myself that day, “ Is it already too late?”

When it came to acting I didn’t plan it meticulously, I just didn’t get out of bed one morning. I didn’t call work for two weeks, didn’t answer the door to anyone, just ate leisurely breakfasts and sat in my dressing gown until midday.  In the afternoons I’d walk to the library or across the fields.  I read Hemmingway’s Death in The Afternoon and practiced Spanish in the garden. I went to a doctor at the end of the second week to check I hadn’t gone mad. 

“Your blood pressure's a little high but other than that you’re fine.  I’ll make you an appointment to see a counsellor”

He’d been an old Jamaican with tight greying hair.

“So my friend, what seems to be the problem?”

I told him everything, and when I’d finished, he just looked at me.

“Well, sounds like you want a change, nothin wrong with a change.”

It was all I’d needed to hear, my most immediate ambition to see the world I was going.  I bought ‘The Backpackers Bible’, pinned the biggest world map I could find to the wall, drew a line between all the places I’d visit. Moscow to Beijing on The Trans-Siberian Express, overland through China, across to Bangkok, a flight to Australia, home via San Francisco and New York.  I spent two months planning it and for a while Suzy was coming too.  I could tell she never really wanted really to, I had a vision of her dragging half a dozen Gucci suitcases through a Delhi slum, a vanity case crammed with blushers and toners, the look of disgust on her face when she saw an old mattress and a whirring fan. I remembered a day visiting my parents.

“I’m going to see that,” I’d said, showing her the African savannah in The Sunday Times.

“You can see anything you like but you’ll be seeing it on your own,” she’d replied.

I never made it back to the work, collected sick pay for a couple of months, went to see my manager to talk things over.

“Would you consider a career break?” she’d offered.

I’d told her I wouldn’t, that I had absolutely no interest in returning. Sat in my red trainers that day I’d felt liberated, beyond the doors everyone working as they had been the day I left, as they always would be. I was taking a leap of faith, betting however things worked out it was worth taking the risk.

The day I booked the trip I was excited for the first time I could remember since childhood, laying out my plans as the consultant smiled at my ambition.  His name was Mark, sitting in pumps and jeans and telling me he’d been to China himself.

“Your first time?” he’d asked.

He recommended downsizing to start in Beijing and finish in Australia and that had been it; a round the world ticket, a couple of hotel nights in Beijing and Hong Kong, a years insurance.  I planned to go for eight months.

Suzy and I never really talked about what was happening in the relationship. I helped her move to a new apartment, buy the sports car and on a June morning I left.  I cried at the airport, barely a day apart in four years I sank to a seat and sobbed as a member customs handed me a tissue.  

After that the overwhelming emotion had been exhilaration, knowing I wouldn’t have to get up for an alarm call in months, complete freedom to do as I pleased.  In China I felt like I’d discovered a new world.  It was exactly as I’d planned it, an extreme as far from home as I could imagine.  Expecting to find the third world I’d found a country on the rise.  I was struck by the oddities, everyone having mobile phones, spitting in the street, rich people I hadn’t expected to find. 

After that I saw The Terracotta Warriors in Xian, travelled overland through the grasslands to hold a panda in Chengdu.  In Hong Kong I was seeing the place which had captured my childhood imagination, east and west thrown together, the view of the harbour from The Peak.  In Bangkok I found a different pace; packed streets, boxing, lots more backpackers, I hadn’t liked it, left after a couple of days and headed for the islands I’d read about in my backpackers tale.   

Putting me on the wrong ferry I’d ended up on the island of Koh Samui, picturesque beaches, the bluest sea I’d ever seen.  I rented a beach hut and did nothing but swim and take leisurely walks.  It was the first place I saw a moonrise and the place I’d realized I couldn’t just travel.  Moving from one guesthouse to the next, sitting around on beaches all day, it was pointless.  I watched the other travellers to see what they did, those who seemed to stick around being the drinkers, those happy to spend every night drinking themselves to a stupor and days recovering on the beach. As far as meaning went there seemed to be no more than I’d found in my jobs.

My self help books had never touched on meaning, all telling you how to get what you wanted but never suggesting what that should be.  One author had talked about rooting life in Christianity but I’d never had a religion, dismissing Christianity when my parents had failed to explain the absence of dinosaurs in the Bible.  I’d speeded up my trip after that, diving the Barrier Reef and calling Suzy from Airlie Beach to tell her I was coming home. “Why? Don’t rush back,” she’d said, but I’d had to, had to sort out whatever was still left between us. 

The day she’d picked me up from the airport she was as beautiful as ever and cold as a fish. Listening to Girls Aloud ‘the girls are doing it for themselves’ in the sports car, telling me how she’d just spent £100 on drinks on company expenses, the flat decked out for one, a fortnight later I’d agreed to move back to my parents.   

She hadn’t needed me anymore, I’d helped her pay off her debts, taught her how to manage her money, but now, I was obsolete.

“Stupid girl,” my mother had said.  

I went into survival mode then, swallowing my pride and taking a bar job, lying in bed at night as my head filled with thoughts of what I’d lost. It wasn’t so much Suzy but the things that came with her, the assets we’d accumulated together, the progress I’d made in my career. I threw myself into being busy the way you’d see people when somebody died.  Went back to my list and decided I’d make movies, filled my days with a film course and evenings working behind the bar.  I went to a hypnotherapist who told me to forget the past as we were going to make the future, then a traditional counsellor.  It was my younger sister who saved me, handing me a book about philosophy, people asking the questions I’d been asking, giving answers where the self help books left off.  I took a weekend in Amsterdam and read Plato’s Republic, the ideal state, how future leaders would be brought up by their teachers, the three classes.  When I got back I looked for university courses in the subject and came up with a correspondence degree.

For a while I tried to save my marriage, going to see Suzy in Manchester and sharing a meal but she hadn’t wanted me back.  She had her job, her money, she hadn’t needed me anymore. It was her birthday when I lost it for the first time, taking my mother's car and driving towards London ‘I’ve had enough’ I’d thought, I can’t start over again, I’ll book into a Travel Lodge and end it with some pills'.  I got as far as Northampton, calling Suzy and taking the train to Manchester that night.  We didn’t make progress, and when she left for work on Monday I smashed up her flat.  The last time she came to see me I told her I didn’t want to keep in touch, there wasn’t any point. 

I went through phases then, left my film course and started night classes in counselling, looked into becoming a chiropractor, read The Dali Lama's Art of Happiness.  It seemed if there ever would be a religion for me, Buddhism would be it.  No God, no sin, I went to a local centre and spent my evenings meditating, found a new job as a charity fundraiser, I thought that would put some meaning back into my life, and before I started I went to see where the Buddha started out.  A six week trip to India, up in the Himalayas studying their philosophy, I got to see the main man but something put me off.  I didn’t know all the knitty gritty, couldn’t recite any sutras, it was the overall message ‘we’re peaceful, we maintain harmony by living in control of our emotions and we don’t go to extremes’.  But it was extremes where I found myself alive, my desperation making my happiness, armies keeping the tyrants at bay. I didn’t want to live on a mountain, 'What a waste of a life,’ I’d thought.

I met a girl just before I left India who told me she’d taught English in Japan, and I thought that would be good.  I couldn’t do it without a degree but I could teach in China and that was a place I wanted to see more of.  So I’d gone back to England, signed up for a philosophy degree, made a plan to get me to China and started my charity job.  I was a street fundraiser, stopping people in the street and asking for their bank details.  I was good too, bad at the start, but flying four weeks in, bouncing down the street asking people if they wanted to build a well in Africa but it was all consuming, seven days a week, I knew I had to get to China.  Finishing in September I stopped at home and went for coffee with my parents.

“We’ve got something to tell you,” My father had started. “You know your mother had cancer a couple of years ago. They tested again last week, it's back, and its terminal this time.”

That was the day I lost my mum, I called my best friend Stuart and cried down the phone.

I went to Newcastle for a month then, did my course in teaching English and the day before it ended my father called.

“You’d better come home, the doctors aren’t sure how long your mother has.” 

When I’d arrived her body had been bloated, sores on her arms, she was asleep with my sisters at her side.  I’d walked to the corridor and sobbed.  When she knew she was going she spoke to us one by one.  “I love you sweetheart, and I want you to know, I’m proud of you.”  They were the only words I’d ever need to remember, my failed marriage, giving up my career and she’d been proud of me, those were the only words I'd ever need to remember.

We mourned for a month after that, the whole family hanging around the house, sitting silently at meals, my sisters crying alone in their rooms.  My father worked as hard as ever, spending nights drinking and sleeping over with friends.  I couldn’t stand it, no job, just my plan for China. I left in January, went to work in a kindergarten where I decided I’d have time to study and read my books.  Chengdu, China’s southwest capital, it was great for a while and then it wasn’t.  Teaching on autopilot, I spend hours smoking in my apartment and making aimless trips to the supermarket.  Some afternoons I’d sit in a coffee shop reading Walden Pond or The American Constitution between bouts of introductory philosophy.  It was interesting to a point, but I’d sensed I hadn’t been living, at times uplifted, breakthrough moments when another mystery was resolved but the more I read, the more I realized, no one knew it all.  That’s what philosophy was, the questions which lay unanswered, a field where you could spend a whole lifetime and never creep forward more than an inch. 

At the end of term I’d flown to Hong Kong and spent a week in solid indecision eating the best scrambled eggs I’d ever tasted and then I’d left.  Returned to England with no plan, just a fear of having nothing and that’s how I’d ended up at the bottom. I seemed to have done everything I wanted to do, seen the places, read the books, had great sex.  ‘Is this the time to end it?’ I asked myself. I conjured the image of a hotel room in Amsterdam, a suite with a view to a square, crimson décor and long curtains falling to the floor.  I’d take the last of my money, drink champagne, try drugs delivered by exotic prostitutes, and when the money had almost run out, I’d end it with some pills.  I might become part of a poppy, or be ingested by an earthworm, but me, whatever that was, would be gone - all programs deleted.

Finishing the scenario in my head I considered why I’d come back to England.  ‘Teaching in China had run its course, remember the American who said don’t get stuck here, philosophy had hit a wall. You were going to go back to it later, when you had some security'.

I’d set off for China with the intention of staying three years, learning the language, doing my degree, moving to Japan on graduation, possibly settling in Australia, but like all my other plans it hadn’t worked out.  I felt like a juggler, a dozen balls in the air, earning a living, maintaining self respect, staying healthy, getting to the bottom of my questions, each time I got going I came crashing to the floor.

'Have I had enough?' I asked again.  Only a faint voice came on the side of reason ‘You have a body, money, you love adventures, how about another adventure?’  I just couldn’t raise one.  When I really looked at my life it seemed to laugh back at me ‘There’s no point here, stop looking, choose an illusion, chase it, you’re insignificant.’

‘Can’t someone just tell me what to do,’ I’d thought, ‘then I can just get on with things, stop thinking’.  One of the books I’d read had described finding a career being like diving, trying different jobs until you found a best fit, but for me it was more like trying different lives.  Every time a wholesale change of location, livelihood and relationships and I was tired.  The book closed with a simple sentence ‘For those of you who don’t find a career, you might want to write’. 

I could still feel the life inside me, my passions for food, sex, good conversation, ideas, coffee, football but I couldn’t find a routine for it.  I’d dived so far trying to experience everything, loved so many things, I just couldn’t fit them into one life.  Starring back at the screen I waited for an answer. 

*The French Foreign Legion*

Raking my consciousness, all the places I’d been, all the people I’d met, it was the only thing which came up.  ‘Could that offer something more?’ I’d wondered.  It was the place for people with nowhere left to go, a graveyard for those who needed to die and be reborn.  It would be a new level of high and low, the ultimate physical test. I still had questions, but maybe they could wait.  If could imprison myself for a while, take stock, I could survive. 

The first time I’d heard someone talk about The Legion I’d been in the Himalayas, my climbing partner for that day a twenty three year old Canadian.

“I split up with my girlfriend in Australia and someone told me about The Legion.  I’m a cook; armies always need cooks, meant to be amazing,” He’d told me.  When I was younger being a soldier was all I’d dreamed of, spending evenings dressed in uniform I had a vivid memory of a bus ride back from school.

“What are you going to do when you grow up?” My friend had asked.

“Join The Marines,” I’d replied.

The idea had been buried over time, my family telling me the army was for people without qualifications and I’d listened.

Searching the net I found the website.

Requirements.

• to be between the age of 17 and 40 years old (Parental or legal tutor authorization is required for minors),
• to hold a valid official identity card,
• to be physically fit for duty wherever he may be needed,
• knowledge of the French language is not necessary because it will be acquired during the contract.

It seemed straightforward, run three kilometres in thirteen minutes, as many sits ups and press ups as possible in two, complete a minimum of six reverse arm chin ups. They took your passport on arrival and if you passed the physical you were in.  Should you wish you can change identity or acquire French nationality, that was possible too.  I’d seen a documentary on The Legion, they’d shown The Farm, officers waking recruits in the middle of the night and forcing them up an impossible incline.  To the bottom and they’d made them do it again.  It was as tough as it got.  At the end graduates sent to the jungle where they’d receive their tattoos, the badge to carry through life, the brand which told everybody you’d been to the edge.   I imagined myself in a brawl, stripping off my shirt to reveal my mark.

“Fuck Johnny, that’s a Legion tattoo,” They’d say.

Those had been my choices; normal life, death or The Legion.  I’d not had a problem dismissing the first, normal life seemed lead straight towards inescapable depression.  What I’d needed to know was whether I had the desire to keep going.  I’d turned back to logic for an answer ‘life’s a game, your theatre's the outside world, while you’ve still got credit, you might as well play’.  I’d sat recycling my options, I was going. 

Leaving the computer I walked downstairs, leaning over the sink as I filled a glass of water.  I could still feel my heart pumping in my chest but it wasn’t anxiety anymore, it was adrenaline, the feeling I’d had every time I'd planned a trip, the moment an idea become a decision.   

‘What do I need to do?’ I questioned myself. ‘Get fit’

Returning to the computer I sketched down the requirements. At was twenty seven, I wasn’t in my prime, but with the right regime I could still make it. My head beginning to race again I decided on a drink.  My old friend Olly seemed like the perfect partner.  Six months ago he’d run out of patience with life at the office and applied to join The Marines.  Talking about it since leaving school it had taken the gradual accumulation of grind and his 30^th birthday fast approaching to push him into action.

“Ol, you busy tonight.”

“Nar mate, why? You fancy a drink?”

“Bar Casa for 8.00.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.”

“Later buddy.”