This is a view into the current teenage under-culture which is growing in many western countries, most notably the UK. Drugs, sex and violence are commonplace. I'll apologise for the sheer amount of unbroken text below, but its my only way of communicating what I've seen with you. If you want more proof, tell your friends about this page. A production company is considering my proposal for a television broadcast feature, while this blog will hopefully demonstrate that people do care what today's youth are doing behind closed doors.
I will update as often as I can.
Marcus.
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I'm sat in a smoky, dimly lit room. The solitary light swings erratically from the ceiling, disturbed by the sheer displacement of air from the two huge speaker stacks against the far wall. The 'Metal' screaming through the room is hurting my ears, and has been for some time. I try to keep my breathing steady, and sink a little deeper into the chair. Above me the smoke is thicker, almost a swimming, twisting fog of various drugs I don't particularly want to be breathing in.
My heart is racing. I'm uncomfortable about the obviously very drunk girl laid in the corner of the room, who has two boys feeling her up. I don't know whether she's in any state to be consenting to anything, never mind if she's even legally old enough to make those kind of decisions.
That isn't what my eyes are glued to though, because it isn't the most disturbing thing in the room. Sat, hunched over on half of one of the battered, stained sofas that line the walls of the room, is a boy who cannot be any other than sixteen. He is surrounded by his 'friends' who are cheering him on, but their eyes tell a different story to their voices.
The floor in between his feet is stained with fresh patches and spots of dark fluid, which are falling and landing with increasing regularity. I drag my eyes form the floor to his hands, as the light sparkles off the steel of a razor blade. To roars of elation from the watching crowd he carves the letter K into the skin on his knuckle. I'm sure I can see bone through the deep wound as blood oozes onto the floor. The other letters, F, U and C on the other knuckles of his left hand are still bleeding steadily. His hands are shaking as he swaps the razor blade over and begins work on the L. Truthfully, I couldn't bear to watch the I, F and E be sliced into his skin. Sure, he wasn't going to bleed to death, but the risk of infection was high, and those scars, even with prompt medical care, would be there for many years to come. I avert my eyes.
As he finishes the E, with one final cheer of the crowd a girl jumps into his lap and begins to kiss him passionately, her right hand quickly disappearing down his trousers. It's time for me to leave, I can’t do this anymore today. I can't be here any longer.
I stand up and accidentally take a breath of the smog in. It makes my head swim and I fight back a cough. I stumble a little as I negotiate the edge of my seat. On the sofa by the door...I'll call him my proxy... is sat with his girlfriend, who's hands I also cannot see, because of the trousers that are in the way. I nod on my way out and he grins, like he's pleased I'm shocked by what I've seen.
I reach the bottom on the stairs and let myself out, clicking the door shut behind me. I almost gasp with relief, the clean night air rushes into my lungs and clears my head like an electric shock to my senses. How I sat in that room for nearly five hours astounds me. I lean, bent over, against a low stone wall to my left as I suck in air like a diver brought back from the edge of drowning.
I gather my wits again just as two more girls turn the corner and begin walking up the path. The night is surprisingly chilly for mid April, yet they are wearing almost nothing. One of them asks me if the house is number thirteen and I tell them it is, although I am tempted to lie.
I dial my friend who I am going to refer to as my comrade; he had previously agreed to act as my backup/retrieval if or when he is needed. While I stand and wait someone comes and lets the two girls in, although only one goes upstairs. The other, and the youth who opened the door remain on the threshold of the door. They ignore my presence, barley ten feet away, and begin some very heavy petting.
I'm glad when the Audi with my comrade driving rolls up and I hastily clamber in. The couple, minus some items of clothing are still visible as the car pulls away, now on the stairs, the door still partially open.
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I suppose I should explain just who I am and what context the above is set in. I will be calling myself Marcus throughout this blog - and although that isn't my real name I hope you understand that my own privacy, and the privacy of others involved in the things I have seen, still remains important to me.
My story starts eight months ago, when after leaving university with a science degree, I couldn't find decent work in my local town due to a lack of graduate opportunities. The second largest employer here, as with many towns in the UK
It was on my third shift that I met the youth who, little did I know, would become my proxy (although facilitator is a more accurate descriptor for what he does, proxy just sounds better). I'm not going to lie, on our first meeting, I regarded him with a pretty high level of contempt. Not only was he a complete slacker at work, his appearance didn’t do him any favours either. He supported a collection of possibly offensive tattoos (which he was currently adding too) and had some choice facial piercings too. I just wrote him off as yet another idiot who I had seen a hundred times before throughout my life.
After a while though, an unlikely friendship grew between my proxy and I. It was during a chance debate I was a little taken aback by his ability to present a well rounded, articulate argument. This sparked my interest; perhaps there was more to this youth after all. As I began to delve into his past, I found a large amount of totally untapped potential.
As we talked more, he described events in his past which reminded me of some of the more extreme situations I wound up in while at university. Dangerous, and often brutal situations. At that point though, nothing he told me was particularly new or unusual, so the subject was left.
It was a few weeks later, when unexpectedly my proxy mentioned his underage girlfriend had been at one of these parties, I was slightly taken aback. I had automatically thought his friends were all like him, over eighteen, none university goers, grown 'scene' kids. He laughed, ‘’nope’’. Most of his friends are around sixteen. A lot of the girls are younger than that.
I couldn't quite believe it; his words remained buzzing around in my head for the rest of my shift. Kids, as young as fifteen were involved in a culture of brutality, sex, and drug use. And this was his norm. Yes, I had seen and to some extent been a part of the sex and drug culture which can be present at university. For many though, university was their first experience of this kind of culture. For my generation university was their first (or shortly after their first) experience of the growing sex, drugs and brutality culture. The things my generation had only experienced at university, when they were at least moderately able to make some informed decisions, the generations up to six years younger than us were experiencing at the age of fourteen and up.
It was that night which I realised I had to witness this for myself, and take a record. I had to find out if my proxy and his life was just an unusual, tiny part of modern teen culture, or whether this was as common as he said it was.
Initially my plan had involved a ‘fly on the wall’ style documentary with cameras, but while my proxy thought it was possible, he couldn't guarantee how his friends would react. More over, I realised cameras would draw a large amount of unwanted attention especially at large public parties and quite possibly alter normal, or even prompt unusual behaviour. Without the funds for effective discrete filming methods, this is what I had to settle for. A simple online blog, to show you, the reader, just what our modern day youth is up to.
Over the next few posts I will be describing in the best possible detail events which I have witnessed up to now. Then, hopefully (if I am not brutally dispatched in the meantime) we will investigate what has lead to things like this becoming the norm for certain groups in the under sixteen population, and exactly how common this kind of subculture is.
Welcome to the modern youth underground.
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Drugs 25/05/2011
Let’s take a step back to the first time I ‘hung out’ with my proxy and his friends. I had almost no idea what I was really letting myself in for. From his stories, I was certainly expecting the worst.
After meeting in town and getting on a bus, we arrived at a run down terraced house on the outskirts, around two fifteen in the afternoon. We knocked on the door, and were soon greeted by a very tall individual, who I am going to refer to as tallboy (for obvious reasons).
Tallboy was pretty much as I expected from one of my proxy's friends. Heavily tattooed, numerous facial piercings and the stereotypical ‘emo swipe fringe’ (although I am sure if he read this, that description of his fringe would cause outrage). I however, was obviously not what Tallboy expected from one of my proxy’s friends.
‘’So this is that Marcus you’ve been telling me about then?’’ He said to my proxy as we climbed up the stairs. He half glanced back at me over his shoulder more than once, looking me up and down.
"Yeah, it is. He's a good lad," my proxy said back, as if reassuring tallboy that I wasn't some sort of spy. Oh the irony.
With that though we stopped suddenly, three quarters of the way up the narrow staircase. Tallboy turned around to face me square on, his height even more apparent now he was stood two steps above mine. There was a moment of silence, and I detected just a flicker of something like worry pass across my proxy’s face, who was stood another step further above tallboy.
"Huh... well if you’re good enough for him, I guess you're alright by me,'' and he stuck out his hand to shake mine. I couldn't help feeling like I had been sucked out of my own life and rammed into some kind of low budget gangster movie. I shook his hand nevertheless and after a moment we carried on upstairs.
A single door awaited us at the top of the staircase, and I could hear the screaming vocals of some generic metal band tearing through the wood as we got closer. Once we reached the threshold, my proxy pushed the door open but Tallboy was blocking my view into the room. The only hints I had at what I was about to see were the roaring of the music and the distinct, pungent smell of weed. What the hell was I doing here kept running through my head, but I didn’t stop walking, and followed Tallboy through the gap.
What I saw though, was pretty anticlimactic. The decor of the room was just as none-descript and battered as the stairwell had been. The same drab, worn red carpet that was in the entrance hall was also underfoot in here. The only occupants were three youths, who were sat around on battered sofas, facing a tv mounted on the wall to the right of the door. They were playing on an xbox, each had a controller in their hands and untill Tallboy spoke, they barley looked up. The closest youth (incidentally the only one who's name I can still remember) glanced sideways at us, before throwing his controller down, yelling my proxy’s name and grabbing him about the waist in a bear hug. All three others stopped playing, and also gave him a warm welcome while Tallboy sunk into one of the empty sofa spaces.
After they were done with my proxy, it was my turn to receive their attention. Considering tallboy's reaction, I didn't really have high hopes of a seamless integration into the group. Surprisingly though, after a quick introduction from my proxy, the other three youths were more than accepting of my presence. In fact, once they found out I was reasonably competent with an xbox controller, I was positively welcomed.
As I sat there, clutching that white gaming conduit in my hands, I began slowly to notice the huge amount of drugs and drug paraphernalia that littered the room. This place was any member of the drug squad's ultimate wet dream. I could see three bags of a substance I could fairly easily identify as weed, another bag of tablets which I assumed to be ecstasy although could just as easily have been acid, and a tremendous bag of white powder. At first, because of the sheer size of the bag containing the powder, I immediately assumed it was fake, but I would later learn that it was indeed, cocaine.
Being around that quantity of drugs, although not totally new to me, made me very nervous. No one was going to believe that I was here exploring teen under-culture and wasn't actually doing any drugs, or more over, that this was all for personal consumption between just six people. How long do you get for dealing drugs nowadays?
After a couple of games on the xbox, I noticed one of the youths opening a bag of weed. A moment later, with the distinctive 'cling' of a lighter and quiet crackle of fire that the most incredible level of drug consumption I had ever witnessed began. I realised after the youth to my left had taken three long drags on the spliff and it had been passed along to me, that I was going to be expected to join in, regardless of the fact I had offered no payment towards the drugs in my hands. It was with a gesture from Tallboy, seeing my hesitation, that it became apparent as I had been accepted into the circle, in turn I was welcome to consume just as many drugs as everyone else, at least for now.
Unfortunately this left me with somewhat of a problem. I had no desire what so ever to take advantage of these youths’ generosity when it came to their drugs. I wanted to...I had to keep my wits about me when I was in these kinds of situations, and no amount of weed was going to have a positive influence on that. I knew though, that if I turned down the spliff in my hands, not only would I probably insult every person in the room, my acceptance into the group would reach an unceremonious grinding halt. I needed that acceptance. My whole plan was now in my proxy's hands, and I'm not ashamed to admit that my heart was racing as I lifted the drug infused paper to my lips and began to take a drag. It felt as if every eye in the room was on me.
He left it just a moment, probably to make me sweat, before chiming into the situation. "Woah, mate you shouldn't be getting baked remember!"
Thank god, he hadn't forgotten.
"Just a couple of drags matey, I'll be fine, nothing else after that though." I said, pretending to take another drag on the joint before placing it down on the table. "oh sorry," I said as the youth next to me leaned forwards to pick it back up. "I didn't want to bust your run," I gestured to the large screen. Call me paranoid but there was no way I was passing that spliff on.
Tallboy piped up, "What do you mean you can't have any more green, Marcus?" I opened my mouth to respond, but again my proxy did me proud. "He's got this kidney thing, means he can’t drink too much or take any drugs, it'll fuck him up."
To my absolute astonishment and joy, the short young looking youth with messy curly hair piped up, although he didn't take his eyes off the screen.
"My mums got that! She's always taking these purple tablets for it. You take 'em too?"
I agreed that I did.
"Wow I thought only old people got that, must suck for you pal, my mum hates it, she says it means she can't have any fun."
"Yeah it fucking sucks, I only found out I had it after I had this fit a couple of years ago. Apparently I nearly died or something. I goddamn miss being able to finish a spliff." I said, further concreting my cover. I couldn't believe my luck with the youth's mother.
"Wait, should you even be around if we’re smoking then? I don't want you like fitting out and dying in my house." Tallboy said leaning forwards in his chair, frowning.
I quickly reassured him, "Don't worry, like (I will call the Curley haired youth, Curley) Curley said, old people get it mostly, I'm just unlucky getting it but I don't have it too bad. I'll be ok."
He did nod and lean back into his chair, but I could tell after that he kept an eye on me. I had no doubt though, that if I did have some kind of ghastly condition and had fallen unconscious, there would have been no ambulance called. God knows what they would have done, but no one in authority would have been called here that's for sure.
It took about an hour for the first bag of weed to be completely depleted. The air was thick with the stuff, and although the spliff hadn't entered my hands since I made my cover known, I was still feeling pretty influenced. Luckily, not as much as any of the others, who were showing definitive signs of intoxication.
Time for some questions then.
I put my inquires forward tentatively at first, although I needn’t have. Even with the copious amount of drugs consumed, the youths didn’t seen at all inhibited when it came to discussing their lifestyle. In fact they all seemed proud. They explained that this kind of gathering was a pretty common occurrence at the start of each new financial month (around payday), and as much as half of their pay could go on drugs and cigarettes.
I then asked if their drug consumption affected their jobs, or their ability to get jobs. It became apparent that only Curly, Tallboy and my proxy had jobs, albeit dead-end, entry level positions from which they had no desire to advance. The other two youths were living on the dole and had little will to try and change that. They laughed as they told me their parent's did it and had good lives, so why shouldn’t they?
My proxy then recited a story I had already heard, about him being 'so baked' one weekend that he couldn’t go to work any of the three days he was down to work a shift. There were similar stories from both Curley and Tallboy; in one, tallboy said he took so many ecstasy pills one night, when he went into the work the next day he was grinding his teeth so viciously, due to the come-down, that it scared a customer who then complained to his manager.
I let the questions taper off with the stories of irresponsible drug use, I didn't want to pump them for information too soon. I was also less interested in these youths specifically, and more curious to see if this kind of behaviour was really as wide-spread as my proxy thought.
It only took another hour of heavy smoking until, I began to win consistently against the other youths on the xbox, and eventually tallboy stood and announced that he needed a burger. It was rapidly seconded by Curley and one of the nameless youths, so up we stood and off we went.
It was on this trip to get a burger I witness the first thing that would really astound me on venture.
After taking another bus into town, and a short walk to the MacDonald’s in the centre Tallboy, Curly and one of the other youths went inside, leaving my proxy, another youth and I stood outside. It was after a couple of minutes of idle chit-chat that I noticed a middle-aged man wearing a tracksuit staring at us from under an empty market stall awning.
He approached gradually and to my extreme right, almost as if he was trying to sneak up on us, before slotting himself in between my proxy and I.
''Orate lads," his gravelly tones were only slightly hushed, and I noticed his breath stank of some kind of unidentified alcohol. "Do any of you boys need a dealer?''
Yes. At around seven o'clock in the afternoon, practically in the centre of town, outside a well known, busy, fast food chain I was being offered this guy's drug-dealing services. I couldn't really believe it, no wonder these youth's had such a copious amount of drugs, if dealers were that easy to come by!
The situation further cemented my shock when the other youth we were with turned the man down flat. "Sorry pal, we already got all the numbers we need, no offence like." The man shifted his gaze to the youth before nodding, and without further ado, backed away, turned and walked off. I was about to open my mouth but it was then that Curly, Tallboy and the other youth came back out of the restaurant food in hand and we headed back towards the bus stop.
Once we had returned and a couple of spliffs had been lit, I voiced my burning question. "How many dealers do you have then?"
Tallboy looked suspicious, "what'd you want to know that for?"
I looked over at the youth who had been stood outside the fast-food joint with us, "This guy came over and asked if we needed a dealer while you were getting your burger."
Tallboy laughed, but the youth who had declined the man spoke "Yeah, some dodgy looking wanker...I take it everyone here does have enough numbers though?"
"Yeah I've got three," My proxy said looking into his phone. The other youths all sounded-off with similar quantities. Three drug dealers each.
The rest of the evening passed without any major incidents, although Curly did 'white-out' from weed over-consumption. This did allow me to witness the first hint of just how mercenary this group of youths really is, a glimpse of the brutality that I would see in the next few weeks. Even though Curley slumped off his chair, clearly hitting his face on the floor when he landed, the other youths simply laughed it off and didn't even bother picking him up. I could see blood dripping from his right nostril as he lay crumpled on the floor. He remained there until he regained consciousness a number of minutes later. Considering how little I knew Curley, it was still one of the most nervous waits I have ever experienced.
What also shocked me, was that although Curley was clearly annoyed very little was said about the lack of help. It seemed that it was just an accepted norm.
When the weed finally ran out, and Tallboy had fallen asleep in his chair, I dialled my comrade. I was done for the day.
I bid farewell to the group, at just before ten in the evening. I hadn’t eaten all day and had drunk very little, I couldn’t wait to get home to a hot meal and just a glass of cool water. My proxy and the other youths were staying the night at the house sleeping on whatever they could get together. I had been invited to stay, but quite honestly the stink of weed was starting to get to me.
On the ride home in the relative comfort of my comrade’s Audi, I ran through what I had learned. Drugs are easy to come by, as are people dealing them. A life which revolved around pay-day, with little or no aspirations, was the norm for some groups of teenagers in society, and this particular group at least, was perfectly happy to live that way. Even from the limited time I had spent with these youths I can already tell you there was a huge amount of wasted potential sat in that room with me. Where does the fault lie then? Why are these individuals capable of so much more, happy with this sedentary, pathetic existence. Society as a whole? Their parents? The education system?
When I got home I looked up some statistics on drug based crimes and arrests have gone up over the past few years, but from what I had seen this is obviously having very little effect on the ground level buyer. Something my proxy said came to mind after I had gone to bed, “When I was sixteen drugs were harder to get hold of, you really had to know the right person. Now, it’s a piece of piss. Getting an ounce of grass is as easy as buying a burger."
He’s not worried about ever getting caught.
He’s not worried about ever getting caught.
I can tell you that three months down the line, this lifestyle still continues for the youths I saw that day.
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