Confessions Of A Geordie Bouncer

Confessions of a Geordie bouncer

By Mark James

Copyright 2015 Mark James

Smashwords Edition

Table of contents

Prologue

Chapter 1 Stand up for yourself, or not.

Chapter 2 Depression the enemy of happiness.

Chapter 3 Fear, use it or it will use you.

Chapter 4 You shall have no other gods before me.

Chapter 5 Iron sharpeneth iron.

Chapter 6 Pressure testing, finding the leak.

Chapter 7 The dawn of MMA.

Chapter 8 Step into the dark.

Chapter 9 Fake it until you become it.

Chapter 10 Old ghosts still alive and well.

Chapter 11 Living in a bubble.

Chapter 12 In over my head and drowning fast.

Chapter 13 What happens on the door stays on the door.

Chapter 14 The last straws that broke the camel’s back.

Chapter 15 Decline of violence and rise of empathy.

Epilogue

Prologue

Fear, anxiety, sadness, stress and depression not the best words to open a book with I’m sure you will agree, but these emotions have controlled and manipulated my personality, mood and life for the previous 30 years, although at the time I thought I was alone with my personal struggle, but found at a later date that I was not, so by writing this book and giving stories (hopefully interesting, maybe funny), I may be able to help someone out there by sharing some wisdom. A personal gripe of mine is people talking about themselves, you know the type (the ones on reality shows like big brother or some other pointless shite, look at me aren’t I clever type, no skills, nothing to say, just fame chasers) , so writing this book has been an effort for me, as all I am is an ex-doorman so I am no better than the reality show cotenants, as in some cases I needed to talk about myself (so I apologise in advance).

If you want to awaken all of humanity, then awaken all of yourself. If you want to eliminate the suffering in the world, then eliminate all that is dark and negative in yourself. Truly, the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation. Lao Tzu

This book will talk about my own personal civil war I had in my head every day, a childhood of fear, bullying and intimidation which lead to depression, Ill touch on how I took life by the balls and turned a scared young boy and transformed into a feared psychotic doorman and then on to tree hugging peaceful vegan that I am today (well, that’s what I like to think).I always wanted to write a book that touched on bullying, fear and depression but felt like a fraud, who would look for answers from someone who has been haunted by fear and depression themselves, who would read a book about avoiding cancer by someone who smoked, it just seemed so wrong, until one day I listened to a audiobook while out running, the audiobook was by Dr Paul McKenna, Dr McKenna is a hypnotist who helps people with phobias, addictions, depressions and anxieties, what makes Dr McKenna different is that he suffered from depression and anxiety for a large part of his life, Dr McKenna also attempted to take his own life on several occasions, some would say Dr McKenna should sort his own problems out before he helps others, but not me, I would much rather read that book that was written out of experience opposed to how to guide written by the self-righteous.

The intention of this book is to help anyone else who has struggled as I have with these life destroying demons, hopefully someone may learn from my mistakes or even gain comfort in the fact they are not alone will attempt to be brutally honest as I can be, this level of honesty is difficult for most people and I’m no different, as it opens us up for criticism and even hate, its allot easier to sugar cote a story than face up to the darkness we all have within us.

I found myself observing an old man sitting across from me while I was on a bus a few months ago, this guy was no different to any other guy you may see, but for some reason he made me think a little differently than I had done before, I thought this guy would have had many chapters in his life, someone’s son, boyfriend, husband, dad and now probably grandfather, as we get older we tend to forget the person we were before, and take up the role we now are given, I like many others forget what my mind-set was like when I was a child, and find us self-condemning an earlier version of ourselves with our values and beliefs of today. When writing this book I have attempted to recreate the person I was back in the day, as you can imagine this has been emotional and at times exhausting. I only ask that you don’t condemn me and brand me as a thug, but as a frightened young man attempting the face his demons, and ultimately promoting the fact that violence is not the answer. I’ll do my best to recreate my thought process and mind set at the time, also please bear in mind, my outlook on life when I was 25 is very different to how I see the world today.

Growing up on a daily diet of Hollywood tough guy bullshit, I regularly questioned my masculinity and who I was as a person, as a young man, how do the guys in the movies not feel fear like me, even my mates did not seem to feel the way I did when confronted by life’s bullies, or so it seemed.

Like most young men I was captivated by action movies, the Schwarzenegger’s, Stallone’s and Van Damme’s lit up my TV every evening, even from a very young age I can remember picturing myself as a future Bruce Lee, I was enthralled how the action hero effortlessly dealt with the bad guys and after a series of kicks and punches and clever one liner, then ride off into the sunset with the leading lady, granted all the movies were not like this, but most depicted to hero with nerves as steel and fearlessness when facing certain death. Sadly the reality of violence is a little less romantic, the bad guys don’t always wear black and they defiantly don’t fall to the floor with a single punch (most of the time), in fact it’s not always obvious who the bad guys are.

Fear was killing me one day at a time, the world was a fucking terrifying place in my eyes and hearing stories regularly of friends coming to untimely ends did not help matters either. Being plagued by fear, anxiety and depression seemed to be by-product of my schooling system. George Stephenson’s high school was one of the most notorious schools in Tyneside and had a reputation for problem kids, along with a serious drugs problem to boot. The school was surrounded by 1970’s high rise flats that seemed to attract the dregs of society, these dregs had kids and these kids went to George Stephenson’s. The architecture of the school lent itself to a Hollywood interpretation of a prison, gangs roamed the halls looking for trouble, every year group had at least one top dog that no one fucked with, there did not seem a day went past that I had a physical confrontation of some description or worse still the threat of one. I recall talking to my Dad about the drugs problem at the school, but my Dad was from a different era and found it hard to believe drugs existed outside of downtown Los Angeles, ironically unbeknownst to him we lived next door to one of north Tyneside’s well know dealers. I recall being questioned by the head teacher in regards to selling drugs in school, he implied I had something to do with the drugs problem as the kids I socialised with were notorious for this type of thing, fortunately I oblivious to what was going on under my nose.

A year or so after I departed my school/prison, BBC North East interviewed some kids that were hanging around the local shops opposite the school, the graffiti glad walls and burnt out bus shelter were chosen as the backdrop, and the camera crew did their best to make this suburbia as dark as possible, anyone contemplating purchasing a home in the area, would soon reconsider after watching this 5 minutes news real. The reporter stopped and questioned what looked like some random chav kids, the BBC guy came across much like a war correspondent, every 30 seconds he was distracted as if there was going to be a bomb dropped, it’s all adds to the effect I suppose. This wannabe Kate Adie asked these future PHD graduates why so many kids were carrying knives, the young lad said it was for protection as everyone was carrying, I would rather have a knife and not need it, rather than need a knife and not have it one of the younger kids said. I could relate to these little hooligans, I can remember as a school boy observing how all the lads portrayed themselves as hard men, even the soft kids wanted others to think they were tough, this was a false persona the kids used so no one would mess with them, again much like a prison scene from escape from Alcatraz, act hard as fuck and nobody would have ago kind of thinking.

I maybe painting a fairly dark image of my school, but to be honest I am not doing it justice, the violence and drugs problem in the school was out of control, but nothing in comparison to the local area. A few years ago a Facebook group popped up and asked me to attend a school reunion, and although my time at this shit hole was not a pleasant one, I thought I would tag along, I found out that most of lads I knew from school were either in prison, committed suicide or dead by some other means, and some had even a worse time than me at the school (hard for me to believe), one of my pals moved out the area all together to York and vowed he would never return, not even to visit his parents (although he was very close to them they had to visit him in York).

Mark my mate from across the road was a year older than me, and one of the nicest guys you would ever meet, Mark never had a bad word for anyone, one night after work Mark met up with his long-time girlfriend Lynn to discuss a holiday they had planned together, Lynn had other plans and her topic of conversation did not include holidays in the sun, she could have took Mark to one side and gently told him the bad news, but gentle was not part of Lynn’s vocabulary, so Lynn took the bull in the china shop approach and dropped a bomb shell, that had a blast radius that had repercussions that spread across generations of Marks family. Lynn brutally told Mark she had been fucking someone else behind his back, and this had been doing this for over 18 months, Mark, blinded by rage and decided to make a house visit to the guy she was cheating with, unfortunately for Mark, his girlfriend’s new admirer was a fucking psycho and stabbed Mark to death in broad daylight.

Andrew L one of my mates from school sat watching an episode of EastEnders one evening when he heard a loud bang at the front door, someone had kicked the door down and confronted him while he sat on the sofa with his cup of Horlicks, the man wore a mask and pointed a gun at him, before Andrew could do anything, he was shot dead, apparently the gunman got the wrong house and the drug dealer next door to Andrew was the intended target.

Feners was a nasty piece of work, he was not your run of the mill school bully, unlike most bullies who picked on weaker kids, anyone and everyone who challenged him was a target including authority figures , Feners intimidation tactics did not stop at the end of the school day, he had a side line running a residential protection racket, bullying pensioners out of their money, he told then he could make sure they were safe for a small fee, after leaving school Feners went in to the army and during a tour of Northern Ireland he dropped his preloaded rifle and it blew his head off (What goes around, comes around some would say).

Chris H was not a tough guy in terms of being a successful fighter, but he was always in fights, Chris had a knack of pissing the wrong people off which brought him unnecessary agro to his door, being the son of a strict military farther caused Chris to be wound a little too tight, one night after breaking and entering an industrial building he broke his leg while being chased by a security guard, although Chris escaped imprisonment, his leg was seriously damaged. Any normal person’s first stop would have been the hospital, but Chris seemed to think it would heal itself, after a while gangrene set in and the pain was too much to bare, so he