Free Life by Keith Richards, James Fox (Contributor)

Two pairs of trousers, the skin-tight ones under the regulation flannels, which came off the minute I was out the gate. Anything to annoy them. It didn't get me anywhere; it got me a lot of black looks from my dad, but even that didn't stop me. I really didn't like to disappoint my dad, but... sorry, Dad.
    It still rankles, that humiliation. It still hasn't gone out, the fire. That's when I started to look at the world in a different way, not their way anymore. That's when I realized that there's bigger bullies than just bullies. There's them, the authorities. And a slow-burning fuse was lit. I could have got expelled easily after that, in any different way, but then I'd have had to face my dad. And he would have spotted that immediately--that I'd manipulated it. So it had to be a slow-moving campaign. I just lost total interest in authority or trying to make good under their terms. School reports? Give me a bad one, I'll forge it. I got very good at forgery. He could do better . Somehow I managed to find the same ink, make it He could not do better . My dad would look at it. " He could not do better . Why does he give you a B-minus?" Pushing my luck a bit there. But they never detected the forgeries. I was actually hoping they would, because then I could be done, expelled for forgery. But apparently it was too good, or they decided that that one is not going to work, boy.
    I lost total interest in school after choir went down the tube. Technical drawing, physics, mathematics, a yawn, because it doesn't matter how much they try to teach me algebra, I just don't get it, and I don't see why I should. I'll understand at gunpoint, on bread and water and a whip. I would learn it, I could learn it, but there's something inside of me saying this is going to be no help to you, and if you do want to learn it, you'll learn it by yourself. At first, after the voice broke and we were given that boot down, I stuck very close together with the guys I used to sing with, because we all felt the same burning resentment for winning them all the medals and shields that they were always so proud of in their assembly hall. Meanwhile, we're cleaning their bloody shoes round the back, and that's the thanks you get.
    You cut some rebel style. In the High Street there was Leonards, where they sold very cheap jeans, just as jeans were becoming jeans. And they would sell fluorescent socks around '56, '57--rock-and-roll socks that glow in the dark so she always knows where I am, with black musical notes on them, pink and green. Used to have a pair of each. More daring still, I'd have pink on one foot and green on the other. That was really, like, wow.
    Dimashio's was the ice cream parlor-coffee shop. Old Dimashio's son went to school with us, big fat Italian boy. But he could always make plenty of friends by bringing them down to his dad's joint. There was a jukebox there, so it was a hang. Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard, apart from a load of schlock. It was the one little bit of Americana in Dartford. Just a little store, counter down the left side, jukebox, some seats and tables, the ice cream machine. At least once a week, I went to the cinema and usually to the Saturday morning pictures, either at the Gem or the Granada. Like Captain Marvel. SHAZAM! If you said it right, it might actually happen. Me and my mates in the middle of the field, going, "SHAZAM! We're not saying it right!" Other blokes laughing behind our heads. "Yeah, you're not going to laugh when I get it right. SHAZAM!" Flash Gordon, those little puffs of smoke. He had bleached-blond hair. Captain Marvel. You could never remember what it was about, it was more about the transformation, about just a regular guy who says one word and suddenly he's gone. "I want to get that down," you'd think. "I want to get out of this place."
    And as we got bigger and a little brawnier, we started to swing our weight about a bit. The ludicrous side to Dartford Tech was its pretensions to being a