Dan Taylor

I just tell people what they want to hear, mush. I’m an expert at that, fucking… Psychologically reading people. They don’t know what they’re giving away. I can read you like that. You think I can’t bruv? I know you. I can figure you out. People’re more worried about their fucking selves than what they’re giving away. And I can see that. Small signals. It’s all a construction. You’d be amazed. I can just put on a costume and go out there bruv, West End, Mayfair, the City… and I’ll have it. It’s all an act. Dress and act the right way and you can be whoever you want.

I’m an expert. I used to have to be a different person for everyone bruv. My dad, my mum, her man, my uncle, my nan… I never had a home. I was always going round people’s houses. They had different rules, different expectations. I had to play them. I can play everyone bruv. Cos there’s rules you learn, how to play each part, and you do it. Fitting in. And that whole time you’re away from… whatever it is you are. I didn’t want to be that person. I never felt that person. The real me? That’s fucking funny… I don’t think I was myself until I was… 18, nah… But… It ain’t like I’m that much different. It’s only more shocking.

That’s why I like to be in my own. Not loneliness, just being me. No faking. No noise. No having to say the obvious things for other people’s… convenience. I can just relax. Only when no-one else is around.

Bruv, you’re asking me about what I’m doing. Look around you. No-one’s fucking getting anywhere, people are just surviving. Tell me mush, how’s it supposed to help an addict if the one place he goes for his fucking treatment is bang full of others all clucking? Go down to the pharmacy at 9am, there’s forty other fucking smackheads waiting for a fix. Geezers on the floor drinking Skol, engraved fucking arms… Bruv! That’s the last fucking place you go to come off. Or down the fucking […] centre. Come on. You put a bunch of gearheads in a room and get em to talk about drugs all morning and what’s going to happen in the afternoon? I’ve been there bruv. You can’t help it, you’re hungry, you either corrupt others, or you get corrupted. Tell me, where would the best place be for a smackhead to pick up in a place they didn’t know? Go down the fucking drug centre. Someone will have a number for a dealer bruv. Just fucking ask, and ask, and ask the next man…

The system don’t work. They’re always sending you round the fucking houses, one hostel to another. You never get no peace. No one gets out. Where’s a smackhead gonna go if he gets off? There’s fuck all there bruv, no housing… and what about his criminal record? No place will take him. The gavvers are always onto you for one thing or the other. So it ain’t like I can do much different. I’m running out of […], I go out there, charvy innit. Bruv, don’t tell me… I know. Where can I fucking go? No… I can’t. I ain’t got people like that, not now.

You don’t see it, but you’ve got a fucking… freedom, a freedom I don’t have. Bruv. This is life. And this is mine innit. And now you’re thinking you wish you never knew. I can read you. You don’t even fucking know what the answer is yerself.